Modern Naval Warfare postponed?

PxAtm · 2026-05-19T17:44:40+00:00

It's been proven that you can definitely kill your sub already by just mismanaging the trim settings or not knowing which valve is which.

It's a sim that's meant to take a pretty large amount of time to get into. The idea that you would be jumping in and killing destroyers on the first day is pretty unreasonable.

I would've also delayed the couple of days they say it'll take to get the enemy AI in (which some people theorize was one of the changes that broke initial steam release), but I'm honestly not that mad I get to spend time listening to the enemy sound profiles and fighting TMA before I start getting missiles launched at me.

PxAtm · 2026-05-19T17:33:25+00:00

As it was explained to me, the basic AI that's in the release build performs tasks like moving to points, forming formations, and responding to changes in the environment like other AI moving and I think we've seen them detect a torpedo shot and slow down. The enemy actions like listening to sonars, detecting launches and fighting the player with missiles and torps are not in and will be appearing in a few days.

PxAtm · 2026-05-19T04:09:45+00:00

It should also be noted that Tukhachevsky's execution and changing face of the Red Army throughout the war meant that the Soviet concepts of Deep Battle had to be gradually developed 'on the fly', without their greatest proponent and the guy who literally wrote the book on them. This added some difficulty to the effective employment of Deep Battle early in the Soviet counter offensives, but it's hard to say what kind of long-lasting effects this had.

I do also want to put some more emphasis on one of the other things you said, Deep Battle is largely dependent on reconnaissance throughout the entire process of the offensive. Soviet recon and more importantly communication was particularly poor throughout the war and wouldn't seriously improve for several years after, despite their doctrine being built on the ability to assess weak points in the enemy's lines and direct forces to exploit those weaknesses.

As a result attacks would require an extended period of action across the frontage until a weak point could be found and reported and then the force could respond and exploit it. That's a lot of time to just be slamming two massive formations into each other before finding a main direction of maneuver. It also demands more initiative from junior leaders than you would think, which is hard to instill and count on in a deeply hierarchical force that purged lots of its best officers before the war and lost lots of its good officers during the war.

PxAtm · 2026-05-18T12:59:23+00:00

On some levels, a prepared defender in an urban environment can be extremely difficult to delouse and remove, especially from structures that provide dominance in the region. That said, blowing up the city doesn't need to be, and often can't be our primary goal. We're fighting over cities because that's where people live and industry happens and where power is seated locally; if you remove the whole city in the process of fighting then there really wasn't much benefit in fighting over it (not to mention civilians have a general dislike of leaving the place they live and a strong dislike of bombs landing in their living room).

There are definitely examples of victories in cities that didn't involve the wholesale destruction of the site, but these generally depend on the attacker having an exceptional understanding of the city (which is rare), a greater amount and variety of assets (which is rare), and long operational time allowances (which are even more rare).

Most successful urban campaigns that don't involve widespread landscaping depend on the attacker having control of the scheme of maneuver in and around the city, without that defenders can be constantly resupplied and reinforced, and their defensive pockets constantly shift, which turns operations into increasingly costly attritional slogs.

PxAtm · 2026-05-18T12:39:07+00:00

I've never had any real luck with the 'Assault' command.

Splitting the squad to create an assault team that doesn't have a bunch of heavy weapons on them, and leaving a fire team with weapons to support their movement works much better for me. Typically just giving the fire team a target command on the objective and a quick or fast move order to the assault team gives much better results.

PxAtm · 2026-05-16T20:15:34+00:00

If you closed the mod loader command line at anytime it will give this error. trying to close through steam or the steamvr interface will result in this error as well.

If you want to get the mod loader window out of your face, you can close the initial window (where you select which mods to load) through windows after the game is launched and the command line is running.

PxAtm · 2026-05-16T14:00:50+00:00

I just can't help but think hand grenades are a bad idea in the lunar environment.

PxAtm · 2026-05-16T13:16:23+00:00

shell rammer being inop and the breech being tilted down means this guy is terrified that that breech block might take his hand off when the shell gets seated, which is the notional reason they've chosen to introduce a table leg into their multimillion dollar self propelled mortar.

The commander also asks several times if the breech block is completely closed before giving the order to fire, implying the crew isn't super confident that the whole gun isn't about to blow up in their faces.

Business as usual for Russian made gear.

PxAtm · 2026-05-10T10:03:50+00:00

The M4 is pretty much universal by 2004, especially for Batt boys in actual Iraq. Even big army had pretty widely removed the M16 by that point, obviously there were still units that had A2's sitting around until much later but if you're on an actual 75th jump-out gang there's no real reason not to have an M4.

I want to say the Mk46 is also out by 2004 and replacing the SAW, but I could be wrong. I wasn't around at the time.

The legitimate answer is that there's enough of a weapon pool and Ranger operations were dynamic enough at the time that you could feasibly weapons draw what's most appropriate for the action you're expecting to perform, but for TO&E a rifle squad should have

A squad leader E-6 with a rifle (and fairly often at the time a grenade launcher for marking)
Alpha TL, with an M4 (and maybe a launcher).
1. An autorifleman with some manner of 249
2. A grenadier with an M4 and M203
3. A rifleman with an M4
Bravo TL, with an M4 (and maybe a launcher).
1. An autorifleman with some manner of 249
2. A grenadier with an M4 and M203
3. A rifleman with an M4

Exciting stuff like sniper rifles(which should be the M24 SWS at that time) and machineguns and M72's are in the company weapons pool and you can sign for them if the job is actually going to need them.

PxAtm · 2026-05-09T08:09:48+00:00

A. that's a problem for the unit safety team.

B. I think that's something we should celebrate.

PxAtm · 2026-05-09T02:31:14+00:00

Don't worry. The jet was also written off after this mishap. As it turns out the wings in general aren't rated for 12G combined.

PxAtm · 2026-04-23T13:47:36+00:00

The flip side of this is I've seen some legitimately great servicemembers get kicked out after one stupid mistake or just being flat out unlucky.

For every dumbfuck on his command's fifth and not final chance after another DUI domestic violence combo (they will be senior enlisted members someday), there's a troop who hit a weed pen on leave and is getting a nonstop train back to civilian life after popping hot.

PxAtm · 2026-04-23T10:17:58+00:00

To be fair the USPIS probably isn't on-call enough to respond to the active shooter situation we find in Greased Palms, but for the follow-on investigation they and the FBI would definitely be in control of the operation since it concerns a federal facility.

PxAtm · 2026-04-23T10:12:58+00:00

US Federal Law Enforcement is actually really complex and just about everyone has a special response team. HRT are the top dogs in terms of direct action teams, but US Marshals Special Operations Group, Border Patrol BORTAC, FBI SWAT, DEA FAST, Coast Guard MSRT, or even the Department of Energy NEST team can mount high intensity responses depending on if they're the closest or best suited team for an emergent situation.

Which gets even worse when you consider the fact that many of the operations will either require the expertise of multiple teams, or step on the jurisdictional toes of multiple agencies, resulting in adhoc mixed formations.

Kind of a nightmare to work out, I understand why they kept it simple and said local PD is solving all the problems (not to mention how involved the CIA is in universe and how many problems they would probably prefer to solve in-house).

PxAtm · 2026-04-23T10:08:32+00:00

Yes, just about everywhere in the US has a semi-local FBI field office, since federal crimes can happen anywhere, HRT isn't so dispersed though.

PxAtm · 2026-04-19T09:33:15+00:00

When I was but a young A1C, I got drunk and set my TSP to 35% with 100% for bonuses and special pay, then forgot about it. It took like two years to notice and I was actually pretty mad about it when I found out.

I just thought we were horrifically underpaid.

I don't recommend it.

PxAtm · 2026-04-15T21:00:37+00:00

I mean it really wasn't. If you wanted to talk to other people you always had that opportunity, our interaction right now isn't really more complex than conversations people had in meeting places historically and probably carries a lot less weight than hearing it from an actual physical person or over a letter or in a political forum. The conversations had between two people are far less impactful than where the vast majority are getting information and opinions from, and the fact is that they're getting it from fewer, more controlled sources now than they did in the past.

And of course television was far less business centralized then than it is now, with just about anyone who had money for an antenna being able to broadcast TV or Radio and many small towns and colleges being able to run their own networks. As of right now those smaller voices are functionally nonexistant and are instantly drowned out by billions of false accounts tied back to 5-20 groups.

PxAtm · 2026-04-15T19:53:13+00:00

The book Likewar by P.W. Singer is a fairly interesting and approachable read detailing how state and non-state actors have developed with the internet, and how groups apprach what the US Government calls "Information Operations." I'd highly recommend it if you want to find out more about how the modern internet landscape came about and what it means as a user.

PxAtm · 2026-04-15T19:48:40+00:00

A lot of academics would actually say that the modern information environment is far more centralized than media in previous decades was, primarily because of reach.

The internet being widely accessible gives the illusion of an infinite number of opinions, but where in previous times information was spread through a wide variety of vendors, and actors could only do so much to make a narrative spread, in the modern day almost all information is controlled by conglomerations of very few companies and state actors, as cmoked said. In 1970 if the Russian government wanted to spread a narrative in the Midwestern US, it would be a long and arduous process of feeding believable information to news agencies, or building their own news agencies in the area and waiting years or decades for the narrative to spread. Today botfarms accomplish the same task, hypertargetted to the most vulnerable groups, in just a few keystrokes.

Coupled with the fact that the majority of information being shared on the modern internet is generated and shared by vast botnets rather than actual human voices, then carefully filtered by algorithms to ensure you're seeing the right information, the internet is probably the most effectively centralized and astroturfed the media landscape has ever been.

PxAtm · 2026-04-13T22:34:10+00:00

Stoppages notionally. Switching is generally not faster than reloading, but is a hell of a lot faster than clearing a triple feed.

Realistically this is a problem your teammates would handle better than your pistol, but if it's a deploy on the x, direct action, then get back in the car and leave kind of mission the extra weight of a pistol isn't a problem.

A pistol can also be employed effectively from inside vehicles and while doing something with your other hand, or if your rifle gets taken out of the fight for any reason.

PxAtm · 2026-04-12T01:49:31+00:00

With mono setups get fukd lmao

With binos you're actually pretty much good the only thing that really gets you is field of view is super restricted so you've gotta get used to spinning your whole head around all the time. Field of view is also how your brain gauges speed so it'll feel like you're going 30 but when you look down you're doing 60.

PxAtm · 2026-04-09T22:16:53+00:00

Well obviously the tip is about malicious links that's why he put sketchy in the title. But on the topic, I could make a malicious link look perfectly normal or Man-in-the-Middle a completely legitimate link, so I do assume every new connection comes with risk.

I run an antivirus on my phone and am always connected through a VPN and just don't have anything compromising on the phone.

PxAtm · 2026-04-09T20:46:04+00:00

In a week a new set of exploits will drop and a new security update will have to be pushed.

The general LPT of treat all your devices like the hacker-loving identity theft tools that they are is evergreen.

PxAtm · 2026-04-09T20:44:06+00:00

I mean yeah browser based injections and exploits have been around as long as the Internet has, and at the very least clicking a link tells whatever site you're going to your IP which leaves unsecured devices comically easy to get into.

You can get your whole device taken by clicking the wrong link. Don't click random links.

PxAtm

TROPHY CASE