anyone else feel like these things make it sound like its important to the actor or whoever about the topic rather than them being somewhere and just asked a question so tyring to answer given the framing. ie the questions are tell us about the benefits, importance, impact, etc of whatever. Its like have they actually thought it was impactful or beneficial to begin with.
In many cases, yes. Puff pieces are usually just that.
But I already know enough about Gary Sinese as an actor to answer this, and the truth is that Forrest Gump and playing Lieutenant Dan, changed his life, not just his career.
He’s become an activist, working for veterans rights groups, performing at USO shows, etc. The disabled veteran community embraced him for highlighting their plight, and in return he has never stopped working for them.
I gotta say. Props to Lemmy users here. This thread is just post after post of generally reasonable take on how enjoyment and entertainment work in reality.
And really just a perfect argument for why infinite growth live service games are a fucking cancer dreamed up by humans who are fucking parasites.
Helldivers is great and the devs should be proud of their success. A+ .
They don’t have any kind of single player option which turns off a lot of players. It looked really cool, but as soon as I found out to really experience the game you have to play with others, became immediately uninterested.
There Will be a bump when the release the new faction and the mystery 4th faction. But as someone with everything maxed out I just drop in twice or thrice a week now. Just nothing to aim for. Some kind of prestige system could be good.
Intentionally misleading headline, but not technically incorrect.
These are designed to carry troops through an irradiated battle space and keep them safe from the fallout. At least while they’re inside and the filtration systems are functioning properly.
That doesn’t mean they were magically enhanced to be impervious to antimaterial weapons, or other types of kinetic damage that happen in combat.
Thanks for this, I didn’t know people thought that nuclear-proof meant that it could literally take a nuke. I certainly hope people haven’t been thinking that a MOPP suit will make one a super soldier impervious to nukes or anything considered a chemical (which could be interpreted as all matter).
I know I was assuming that the Russians claimed that they were nuclear bomb proof, at least for the 30 seconds that I knew about them before I read this thread. Seeing the picture I didn’t believe that they were in in actuality.
Plus, even if it was that kind of nuclear-proof, all that really means is that it can take the pressure of nuclear explosion over its body. Devices based on point pressure, like the kind used in anti-armor rounds or bunker buster bombs, can and do punch through nuclear-hardened targets.
As an example, RPGs use shaped charges to send a jet a molten copper through armor steel. Even though the devices may seem antiquated, they are extremely effective at burning holes through tanks. If that molten jet happens to come in contact with ammunition, it’s generally game over.
I have heard a few things, TBH. Everything in the range from simply vaporized and hot to the vaporized metal being in a near plasma state. Shrug.
Wikipedia gives a few numbers ranging from 660K to almost 1200K (copper melt temp is 1358K) from testing it quotes. It seems to be dependent on the cone alloy and the explosive type.
In practice, it’s probably is all over the place in regards to temperature. If you can round up a few RPGs, I would totally be down for some testing…
The point made in the article is that this isn’t supposed to some content that is released and over, like a TV episode. It’s a live service game that’s expected to be continuously played and generate income. This a huge drop is a mark against that model.
I do love helldivers, but I’m not exactly sad if live service games end up being not attractive to devs anymore.
Ladoga –a Russian armoured personnel carrier. Initially called Debut, this APC is designed for evacuation of Soviet government from Kremlin to airport under nuclear/chemical/biological attack. Ladoga uses tracks from the T-80U as well as suspension system and gas-turbine powerplant. The crew is 2 soldiers. It also has a four-seat cab equipped with a crew life-support facilities to protect the passengers against the radiological, chemical and bacteriological contamination of the environment. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladoga_APC
with life support facilities to protect the passengers against the radiological, chemical, and bacteriological contamination of the environment, but not a $1,000 USD drone fitted with an explosive device.
No fault of the design. It was meant for a particular role. It is being brought out and borderline misused in a different role. I can get behind loling at Russia, but this is like laughing at an M4 Sherman for not having ECM built in. I’d laugh at the people who rolled it into a modern conventional fight, but the design seems competent for the time and role.
The article’s premise is that this is a vehicle designed for a very particular role, which is now being brought out and used outside that role, illustrating how deep into reserves Russia is scraping for vehicles.
Never touched it again after the psn fiasco. I am not deluded enough to think the devs were on the players side. If you saw there early messages about it and still think they are with you, you are completely lost.
Compared to a golf-cart or dirt bike, a Ladoga is much better-suited for mechanized warfare.
I don’t know. Like, yes, by definition, a dirt bike isn’t what a mechanized unit uses; that’s a motorized vehicle. But…I think that there’s a fair question of how well the roles can match.
Specifically for nuclear war, then yeah, obviously the Ladoga is better. It’s got environmental protection.
But I’m not sure that light armor will necessarily have the role it has over past decades in the future.
The point of light armor is to deal with rifle and machine gun bullets – as in ambushes – and near-miss artillery fragments. It will work well for that.
I don’t know what portion of actual damage to Russian forces is presently coming from those, though. I mean, if the armor isn’t stopping what’s killing the thing, it might not buy much. It won’t stop top-attack ATGMs. It won’t stop drones carrying heavier munitions. It won’t stop guided munitions like GMLRS or guided artillery.
If we can provide enough tube artillery and shells, that might change. But if warfare here is characterized by mostly highly-accurate, long-range weapons capable of penetrating the armor that vehicles have…that armor might not provide much protection.
For an analog, think of how it used to be common for individual soldiers to wear heavy armor up until things like crossbows and firearms, long-range weapons that could penetrate it, killed it:
As firearms became better and more common on the battlefield, the utility of full armour gradually declined, and full suits became restricted to those made for jousting which continued to develop.
It’s not impossible that the same phenomenon could affect vehicle armor. Maybe not all vehicles, but it might make it a lot-less-valuable to have light armor.
And unarmored vehicles tend to be faster, which helps limit their time in a dangerous zone.
I think that a dirt bike, which might be good as a vehicle for a single person, maybe two, has some serious limitations – it can’t load up anyone if they do get hurt. It can’t pull towed equipment. It has a limited ability to carry supplies.
But it can also traverse trails that four-wheel vehicles cannot. It can be easily hidden. It is inexpensive and can be easily provided in large numbers. It is light and can be delivered via air. Many people each on a dirt bike are less of a concentrated target than a group of people in an APC; against a weapon that light armor doesn’t stop, the dirt bike may be more resilient than light armor.
In World War II, there were some very substantial successes that various militaries pulled off with bicycle infantry, which is pretty analogous; Japan’s rapid movement in the Battle of Singapore is probably the poster child for that:
The capture of Singapore resulted in the largest British surrender in its history.
Conventional British military thinking was that the Japanese forces were inferior and characterised that the Malayan jungles as “impassable”; the Japanese were repeatedly able to use it to their advantage to outflank hastily established defensive lines.
Despite their numerical inferiority, they advanced down the Malayan Peninsula, overwhelming the defences. The Japanese forces also used bicycle infantry and light tanks, allowing swift movement through the jungle. The Commonwealth having thought the terrain made them impractical, had no tanks and only a few armoured vehicles, which put them at a severe disadvantage.[25]
E-bikes can be very quiet.
There have been a history of unarmored vehicles that we’ve used in combat. And I don’t mean the Jeep, but in contemporary times.
Bikes or motorbikes can also bypass unexpected obstacles. If your APC is rolling down the road and there’s a tree fall you most likely need to stop your vehicle and get out and clear it. Bikes or motorbikes may not even need to slow down, just bypass the obstacle entirely. Think of that scene in Children of Men with the fallen tree and the flaming car rolled down the hill, that ambush relied entirely on stopping the target, but probably wouldn’t have worked as well on a group of bikers.
The player base was always going to decline significantly.
It doesn’t have the same kind of slow grind and wide open maps with tonnes of things to interact with that kept up the populations of a game like WoW or Overwatch, so it was going to naturally decline anyway as most people got their fill of the game play and move on to the next game. Anything that is comparable either had a ton of content that was drip fed or has random loot boxes to keep people playing. This game lets you earn enough to play even the highest levels of play fairly quickly, with getting everything taking a bit longer.
The remaining population is actually pretty high for this kind of game, and it is far from dying. I play randoms when friends aren’t on even though I have unlocked all the upgrades to earn myself medals, but also to help out the other players because the game does promote team play even with all the accidental team kills. I never have to wait when there are more than 1,000 players on a planet, and the there are often several planets with several thousand even when people aren’t grouped up for major orders.
The community is engaged and while there will certainly be more of a decline as time passes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game gets a significant bump in player activity (old players coming back) when they introduce the next faction. Probably not double whatever population is there when it hits, but maybe 50% increase as people come to check out the new content. I think the rapid release was their original plan to keep the player base going and I’m happy they slowed down to address bugs and do quality of life improvements for a bit.
This game also has the most friendly, or at least least antagonistic, player base I have ever experienced in an online game. Although most random games don’t have anyone speak up unless I do first, people help each other out, attempt to get everyone out, and there is often hugs on the ship after extraction. I have only had one player grief in dozens of random games and one match had someone who was rude. Far, far fewer negative experiences than any other game I’ve played.
It may get down to 3% of the highest number of players and will still be alive and kicking for those that do enjoy the game play.
forbes.com
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