06:55 pm
Stuff You Learn: Have I mentioned I love Jane's Defense Weekly? They have a wonderful analysis of the recent Il-76 transport plane in Iran. The cool thing here is Jane's is the foremost source of info on -- well -- pretty much everything, so they went to their records on the Ilyushin and discovered the number of dead on board was roughly twice the load intended for the design, and this is likely a contributing factor. It goes further into recounting the major Iranian air disasters over the past decade, too ... and it ain't pretty. I think they've lost more Pasdaran in air disasters than we've lost troops in Afghanistan.
And Avoiding Godzilla: You know, I love it when entire countries make interesting decisions, like Japan releasing that in '95, their Defense Agency determined that while they could develop nuclear weapons ... its just not worth it. OK, a reluctance to create any giant kaiju to go stomping around the island might have played into that decision, too, or at least I'll remain thinking so.
More Whomp: My CMBB battles continue apace. There's a certain understanding you have to keep in mind re objective-based combats. It doesn't matter who kills more of the enemy, it matters who has forces on the objectives at the end of the game. You can, no, must play more slowly, more carefully, and with a lot more planning than you might otherwise. This is part of why I'd love to have a SF game based on this engine -- I can't think of a single SF game that's about taking objectives, where the pace of things is really reasonable. In MegaMek/BattleTech and, hell, pretty much every other SF wargame, movement far and away outstrips your range on your weapons, leading to all sorts of bizarre tactics that you'd never otherwise see in reality. Once you make range dwarf movement over the period, suddenly you start seeing people use the terrain, not simply run over it, hiding behind trees and hills, ducking out to shoot and scoot. Its all very different -- and far more interesting.
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crazy
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amused