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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

The Old Hack

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Posts posted by The Old Hack

  7. Posted

    On 5/15/2023 at 4:54 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

    Per Washington Post, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, head of the Russian mercenaries, The Wagner Group, offered to reveal Russian troop locations to Ukraine in exchange for them withdrawing from Bakhmut, where the Wagner group is taking a beating. There is speculation on his veracity, but there is clearly a deep rift between the Russian forces and the Wagner Group. He may want to avoid Russia for now.

    According to one interpretation what Prigozhin was offering was not the location of troops but rather their leadership. The leaders would 1) be harder to find and 2) be exactly the people Prigozhin has the biggest motive to get rid of.

    Whether it is true or not doesn't really matter. At this point everyone in the top Russian leadership are so paranoid that they won't dare to ignore it. It will create even more friction between them. If this is an Ukrainian psyop, it was brilliantly aimed.

  10. Posted

    11 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Difference without  distinction.  Either one results in Bad Things happening.

    And if it is both, is the result then Very Bad Things happening?

    On second thought, scratch that. I already have an example of that. Some guard in an Archangelsk munitions depot -- a really massive depot -- got drunk and then happened to spot what he thought was rats inside the depot. And then went hunting for them with his automatic rifle.

    The subsequent explosion was easily visible from orbit and for a while both sides thought it might have been a nuclear detonation. Fortunately they got it cleared up before the nukes started flying.

    14 hours ago, mlooney said:

    For context, in the last 2 days there have been 4 friendly fire shoot downs of Russian aircraft.

    Darth Putin said it was because of the increasing friction between Russian ground units. Apparently Aeroflot (or whatever the Russian air force is called) felt left out and started to shoot its own airframes down just to show how it was done.

    15 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Not only accuracy, but the amount of bouncing around that the crew does is major limiting factor

    True. It is a little hard to focus on combat when you keep getting tossed around and have your head banged repeatedly into the sides of your vehicle.

  11. Posted

    11 hours ago, mlooney said:

    I happen to like bagpipe music.  I'll grant that the're a bit off putting when played by an inexperienced piper

    I once had an utterly unexpected but SUPER AWESOME experience.

    I was riding my bicycle just south of the outskirts of Copenhagen and reached a fair sized hill. Then I heard bagpipe music. A lot of it and well played. As I ascended the hill I saw something like a dozen people standing at the very summit, all of them playing bagpipes. It was windy and they were all wearing what to my admittedly inexpert eyes looked like proper highland outfits. I stopped for a while to listen. The music sounded eerily beautiful and I really enjoyed it even though bagpipes are not normally my thing. I felt rather regretful when I finally set off again.

    I could understand why they picked that hilltop, mind you. The view was gorgeous and it was probably one of the tallest points in that part of Denmark, which generally is more or less as flat as a pancake.

  13. Posted

    On 5/12/2023 at 1:44 PM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    I've been waiting for years to be recruited by a shadowy organization.  Why should D-10 get picked first just because he has useful knowledge & skills?

    Because mummies and other people covered in bandages have a lowered priority. Yes, I know this is unfair. Unfortunately the leaders of shadowy organizations tend to worry when confronted with recruits that might possibly be more ominous and/or evil than themselves.

  14. Posted

    27 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    Never spent time on a farm?  Never were forced to slowly walk through every livestock exhibit at the county fair?  Their experiences as small town kids in the midwest do not resemble my own.

    I suspect they lived in suburban Moperville rather than in farm country. Besides, they grew up in a different time period. Their county fair exhibits would not have included scarab breeding or mummy grooming.

  15. Posted

    11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    A tank with a crappy suspension is a mobile gun emplacement at best.

    In fairness to the F-17, suspension becomes somewhat less of an issue when top speed is approximately 3 mph. :danshiftyeyes:

    11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    among them, it has a rim, so not suitable for an autoloader.

    It still sounds like something you really don't want to get hit by even when fired from a rifle.

    12 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Well, yeah.  Suspension is the most important thing for cross county at speed.

    And as Darth Fluffy pointed out, accuracy. I am really impressed by those modern tanks which can fire on the move with high precision. Doing so while moving cross country must be a nontrivial problem.

  16. Posted

    3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The 50 cal Browning M2 was developed near the end of WW I

    So still after Renault designed his tank. I reiterate that it is hard to design for something that does not yet exist at the moment you are creating your design. A more relevant question would be when the .50 round was created if any weapon capable of sufficient muzzle energy for it existed.

    (Perhaps more relevant would be the 13.2 mm Tuf which was developed by the Germans specifically to counter British and French tanks and might be considered in part a response to the FT-17 itself.)

    8 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    The only really design change is that the driver is in a separate section on most, but not all, modern tanks. 

    Possibly also the addition of decent suspension, which is arguably also of some little importance. For the crew, at least. :danshiftyeyes:

  18. Posted

    On 5/11/2023 at 2:34 AM, mlooney said:

    It's armor would not stand up to modern armor piercing rifle rounds, never mind a .50 cal

    In all fairness, I do not think Renault had the weaponry of a century later in mind when he designed it. And I do think the man could be otherwise called prescient. After all, I have yet to see any modern tank design that has deviated far from its basic conception: rotating turret with heaviest weapon in it, thick front armour, engine to the rear, tracked locomotion.

    Exceptions do exist but these tend to be specialized for nonstandard purposes.

  19. Posted

    5 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    I don't recognize the ancient armored vehicle. The vintage appears to be not much beyond WW I. The suspension is particularly primitive, and the armor does not look like it would hold up against a 50 cal. It might be best utilized as a decoy while you are running away.

    It's a Renault FT-17, often considered the ancestor of the modern tank. The first examples built in 1917, it had a rotating turret with a 20 mm cannon and an engine in the rear end. The vast majority of all tank designs since were based on this pattern.

  23. Posted

    On 5/7/2023 at 4:10 PM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    If they want a 250 year old gilded carriage, I know of somone who may be interested in selling.  Chuck looked thouroughly annoyed while bouncing down the Mall in that thing.

    Well if it is antiques they are looking for, maybe they could get Chuck along with the carriage. Admittedly he is more modern than a T-54 but not by much.

  24. Posted

    12 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    So in order it was:
    One T-34
    Some GAZ Tigrs and other 4x4s
    Six Z-STS armored trucks
    A BTR-82
    Iskander launch vehicles
    S-400 launch vehicles
    Yars launch vehicles
    And three Bumerangs, each with a flag of one of the branches of the armed forces

    No technicals? I am almost disappointed.