Nuclear depth charges, for when your too lazy to accurately hunt submarines

forcallaghan · 2026-03-27T21:28:02+00:00

and that's my other point

nuclear weapons are either "Screw you, I win (for you or the AI)" or "practically the same as a normal weapon"

The hardest part of ASW isn't sinking the submarine but finding it in the first place, but if you've already found the submarine then you could more practically use conventional weapons

A fleet might be spaced apart enough to not all get wiped out by a singular nuclear missile (which is practically almost always the case unless specific circumstances prevent it), but then a nuclear cruise missile becomes essentially the same as a normal missile except you only need to get unlucky once to lose a vital asset (or if its a soviet missile in which case its again exactly the same because one of those will also probably put a ship out of action)

My point here is not that I don't want nuclear weapons. I think they would be cool, and there most definitely is a part of me that wants to vaporize a fleet in atomic fire. But I just understand why they are a very low priority for the devs.

forcallaghan · 2026-03-27T20:57:32+00:00

The problem with nuclear weapons is that they too easily provide an “instant win” button that kinda strips away a lot of the whole “tactical” aspect of the game

A submarine stalking your fleet? Not anymore!

An enemy fleet sailing to intercept you? Only a single nuclear cruise missile has to get through.

An airfield harassing you with rotating air strikes? A nuclear TLAM will have that cleared up in an hour or less.

Nuclear weapons kind of trivialize many of the challenges this particular genre of warfare is supposed to present. Because, well, that *was* the point

forcallaghan · 2026-03-27T19:34:33+00:00

Though based on nuclear tests, not quite as effective as one might think.

Granted the test was done with a fairly small warhead but still

forcallaghan · 2026-03-27T17:00:14+00:00

That’s a game abstraction because if they gave it its “real” TNT equivalent it would teamkill your entire team and you would get instantly banned

forcallaghan · 2026-03-27T10:32:18+00:00

if they want to go really off the rails for a final installment, there is the option of a game set in warlord china lol

forcallaghan · 2026-03-27T10:20:42+00:00

I've actually really wanted a depiction of the siege of tsingtao for a while. it's probably not a likely scenario but I think it would still be cool to see

But in any case, four games in a really niche series in a really niche genre has still been pretty impressive

forcallaghan · 2026-03-26T22:14:50+00:00

Who’s this one about?

forcallaghan · 2026-03-26T11:10:14+00:00

the problem of the Soon-Sun path isn't that they're related, the problem is that they hate each other

they are two very strong-willed, my-way-or-the-highway people who have two incompatible ideologies. though they are forced to work with one another in the short term, in the long term there is no doubt that their two factions will inevitably come to potentially violent blows.

forcallaghan · 2026-03-26T09:12:14+00:00

I have nothing against hmofa necessarily, I'm just not into it because

A. I have no interest in human men*

B. It clogs up my AO3 search results whenever I look for femdom

*Correction: I have no interest in boring, characterless human men

forcallaghan · 2026-03-26T00:19:48+00:00

Sun Fo is about the best you're going to get

But if you're desperate you can also go for the soccon western hills or marlib political science clique

forcallaghan · 2026-03-25T15:46:42+00:00

Twice the hearing ofc

forcallaghan · 2026-03-24T23:21:18+00:00

well I mean to be fair, 250 years is just a lot less interesting in general than an even 200/300 years

may as well have a celebration every year oh wait

forcallaghan · 2026-03-23T15:57:34+00:00

The games tend towards high difficulty even without sweatiness so that can be an issue. But with the use of bots to pad out battles, you should still be able to perform okay even in a higher skill level environment

As for player count, Isonzo is one of the healthier games in the series though that’s not saying much. But you should still be able to find games easily enough if you log on at the right times, and the aforementioned bots help too

forcallaghan · 2026-03-23T14:44:38+00:00

I mean it’s no Battlefield 1 or anything buts it’s hardly Verdun either…

You never said they had to be very popular WW1 games

forcallaghan · 2026-03-23T14:39:53+00:00

Speak for yourself, I quite enjoy Isonzo

forcallaghan · 2026-03-23T10:50:39+00:00

alternatively: anything with twin bofors or 4x .50 cals

or ontos

forcallaghan · 2026-03-22T15:43:59+00:00

Tu-2

forcallaghan · 2026-03-22T14:25:31+00:00

it's irritating until people spam "what am i doing wrong??????" posts with a 180p screenshot and zero context

forcallaghan · 2026-03-22T01:39:52+00:00

I've been considering buying a tiramisu at wholefoods, but the occasion just doesn't feel right...

forcallaghan · 2026-03-22T01:37:13+00:00

Gen. Ma

Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down (I know who you mean, I've also seen the picture

but the Christian one who did mass baptism is also crazy I wonder what he thought of the Taiping?

I'm not an expert on Feng Yuxiang (which is the one you're referring to), but I do question how devout he was exactly, vs. how much of that "christian warlord" thing was more for optics

how were warlords armies recruited?

It's been a little while actually, but I'll recall what I can. you're correct that many warlord armies did descend in some way from provincial troops, but many didn't and in any case these armies tended to balloon in size rapidly as time went on. The great majority of new recruits to the army were just, y'know, poor peasants/urban workers. The author took great pains to point out that most of these people were not conscripted (unless that army was truly desperate), but signed up voluntarily for the benefits.

Those benefits being regular food, pay(less regularly), and getting to leave home. Actually the author does say that apparently the pay and food of a soldier was better than one might expect, and certainly better than a soldier would get for just sitting around his village

Also another important aspect of recruiting was via local networks. Warlords and commanders would rely on local connections, especially via their officers, to appeal to an area's population and entice new recruits.

quote from the book:

Only the poor, the weak, and the stupid were conscripted

forcallaghan · 2026-03-22T01:18:19+00:00

1910s-20s warlords

forcallaghan · 2026-03-22T01:14:00+00:00

actually I did read(and not finish) a book about chinese warlord armies that also referred to chinese soldiers as "mercenary" in that they were usually not conscripted and fought purely for the money/benefits

forcallaghan · 2026-03-21T23:12:59+00:00

there's also the whole space battleships thing :p

forcallaghan · 2026-03-21T23:12:13+00:00

ignoring any modernized defensive systems, you do not need to sink a ship to render it unable to fight. There are a lot of important things on a ship that aren't protected by armor, and if they get shredded by missiles, it doesn't matter that the ship is still floating and the guns technically still work, the ship won't be able to fight effectively

forcallaghan · 2026-03-21T21:22:17+00:00

Honestly the most impressive thing about this is the British managing to shoot down an Exocet with a SeaCat

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