EchoFive USMC

July 5, 2002

Cut/Paste from a message during the most recent All Seeing Eye patch install:

GlobalOps demo, Gore, Neverwinter Nights, OpFlash Resistance and America's Army don't have public master servers, hence they will not be supported unless the developers add direct support for All-Seeing Eye. This is a free service to game developers, it's up to you to let the developers know what the number one browser is.

July 3, 2002

Actually, NorSu, that wasn't my point, lol. Think about it , how could I justify excessive amounts of western gear being modeled because Â of inferior Russian equipment, lol

My point was that, while there are exceptions, on the whole, the hardware fielded by Warsaw Pact forces to line units in any significant numbers, particulary in the mid-80's, WAS inferior to NATO gear, and I think BIS handled that fairly accurately. They've also omitted capabilites from the West gear as well, such as lack of firing ports and crew LMG's on the Brads and M1A1.

Rgr that on the lack of LGB , and the lack of a nimble attack helo for East..its not fair, so don't play MP maps that have that imbalance,or at least not in organized competition, or give both sides AH1 or AH64.

And as far as the game goes, my squad plays East or West, without issue, and we consistenly win on either side of the ball. In fact, just last Sunday we won a CTF match handily (6-1) that included BMP2, T80, Bradley, and M1A1, and we were playing East.

July 3, 2002

Actually, NorSu, that wasn't my point, lol. Think about it , how could I justify excessive amounts of western gear being modeled because Â of inferior Russian equipment, lol

My point was that, while there are exceptions, on the whole, the hardware fielded by Warsaw Pact forces to line units in any significant numbers, particulary in the mid-80's, WAS inferior to NATO gear, and I think BIS handled that fairly accurately. They've also omitted capabilites from the West gear as well, such as lack of firing ports and crew LMG's on the Brads and M1A1.

Rgr that on the lack of LGB , and the lack of a nimble attack helo for East..its not fair, so don't play MP maps that have that imbalance,or at least not in organized competition, or give both sides AH1 or AH64.

And as far as the game goes, my squad plays East or West, without issue, and we consistenly win on either side of the ball. In fact, just last Sunday we won a CTF match handily (6-1) that included BMP2, T80, Bradley, and M1A1, and we were playing East.

July 3, 2002

Actually, NorSu, that wasn't my point, lol. Think about it , how could I justify excessive amounts of western gear being modeled because Â of inferior Russian equipment, lol

My point was that, while there are exceptions, on the whole, the hardware fielded by Warsaw Pact forces to line units in any significant numbers, particulary in the mid-80's, WAS inferior to NATO gear, and I think BIS handled that fairly accurately. They've also omitted capabilites from the West gear as well, such as lack of firing ports and crew LMG's on the Brads and M1A1.

Rgr that on the lack of LGB , and the lack of a nimble attack helo for East..its not fair, so don't play MP maps that have that imbalance,or at least not in organized competition, or give both sides AH1 or AH64.

And as far as the game goes, my squad plays East or West, without issue, and we consistenly win on either side of the ball. In fact, just last Sunday we won a CTF match handily (6-1) that included BMP2, T80, Bradley, and M1A1, and we were playing East.

July 3, 2002

You guys crack me up with the debate about BIS 'downgrading' Russian gear when compared with NATO counterparts..

Admittedly, of late, Russian gear has improved dramatically, but those of us old enough to remember and serve at the time when the Bear was our enemy know the following to be true:

1) Pact forces outnumbered us man for man and unit for unit down the line, particularly with tanks, for the 45 year span of the cold war.

2) NATO, particulary the US, recognized the only viable way we could counter these sheer numbers was with weapons, equipment, training, and tactics of a superior quality to Pact counterparts.

3) The largest fear NATO had during the Cold war, particulary the later stages, was that money spent on qualitative improvements to our warfighting systems would not be able to counter Pact numbers.

There was never a question that helo for helo, fighter for fighter, tank for tank, we had superior gear, particulary in the later stages (post '80), when Reagan's ball-busting DoD budgets for R&D and procurement were hitting their stride. These same Defense budgets played heavily in the eventual economic collapse of the Soviet Union. This belief held up to scrutiny everytime we were able to get our hands on a captured piece of gear and tear it down.

Anyone remember (late 60's/early 70's if memory serves) the MiG-25 the Russian pilot defected and flew to Japan with?

At the time, the MiG-25 was feared greatly by SAC..We got our hands on it, stripped it down, and found its avionics suite to comprised of 50's era Vacuum tube technology gear.

Its airframe and engines were heavy, comprised mostly of titanium, not the high strength, low-weight alloys and composites we had under R&D, and not far from deploying in operational aircraft, at the time.

There are other examples from other times and wars..F86 vs Mig15 in Korea, Abrams vs T72/74 series in Desert Storm, and the various Israeli wars, where the Israeli's used NATO gear and the Arabs all had French/Russian gear.

There are numerous other examples I could cite with other aircraft, armor, helos, etc, but for brevity's sake (lol), on the whole, I think BIS has done a decent job representing the qualitative differences in NATO and Pact gear.

IMO, If you seek play balance in online multiplay, then urge your favorite mapmaker to represent the resource/tactical situation the way it was, numbers in favor of the Sovs.

THAT will give you the play balance you seek.

July 3, 2002