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Denver, 2:42 AM
Sun Nov 15
21 posts in the last 24 hours
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04/18/09
Just sayin...
04/17/09
04/17/09
04/17/09
You can tell who plays too many video games because they expect a "good looking woman" to resemble Rikku, Lara, or Joanna Dark.
04/17/09
It's like models forgot how to look awesome.
04/17/09
Trimmed trim ftw. I'll be damned if I'm going down with a snorkel and a sandwich on some Wookie-bushed vixen of yesteryear.
04/17/09
Someone call Chris Hansen!
04/17/09
04/17/09
04/04/09
Sometimes it's actually good for a country to lose a war. Especially when they've won too often before, such as the US with Vietnam... Granted, it wasn't good for the soldiers involved, but for the nation as a whole? Yeah, I think it did some good.
04/03/09
So really, how "realistic" could they get?
[www.combinedfleet.com]
04/03/09
WWII Star craft analogy (inspired by my reply in another post):
Germany -
Terran metal on a normal map. no hacks.
Strong combined offence but somewhat poor defence. Had a decent amount of resources and had very good technology. Radar technology was behind and all communication cracked.
Britain -
Protoss air. minimap hack. all units double vision.
Had air superiority which helped ground defence. Cracked the German codes so they knew most German positions and practised advanced information theory to keep Germany guessing. Radar was advanced.
Japan -
Zerg ultralisks, scourges and cracklings supported by using hydralisks as meat. all units with 1/3 vision. no hacks.
Japan had a faulty naval strategy. They thought battleships (ultralisks) were the most important unit and sacrificed carriers (hydralisks ) to save battleships. Used encryption codes that were fully broken and had extremely primitive radar.
US-
Mass carrier toss air supported by terran tank crawl and ghosts. Full hacks. starting position is from a money map.
Basically had every advantage and took it. Nuclear launch was also detected.
04/03/09
but more importantly, the japanese fought for the emperor and where ready to fight until the end for their country. that is, until the nukes where dropped.
but if america had had to enter the main japanese islands, they would have suffered very heavy losses, as the japanese soldiers would have fought to the last one. technology is one aspect of war. but human will power can do extraordinary things.
04/03/09
Ironically one of the key players in that technological dominance is a homosexual they would have gassed. Alan Turing. He helped crack all the encryption codes, laid down the theoretical and practical foundations for modern computing and played a hand in the Allied dominance in fire control.
German had given up on the bomb as impossible. Perhaps it was espionage/sabotage but they believed the bomb wasn't possible and suspended their a-bomb project. They lacked the political support, the resources, and scientists. Ironically again one of the lynch pins of the Manhatten project (although he did not work on it) was also an German Jew who fled to America. Einstein laid the theoretical ground work for it and lent his name to a letter to push for the project. This motivated the administration to whole heartily support the project.
What I'm saying is Germany and Japan were fighting at some pretty great disadvantages. They had their lines of communications compromised. Laboured under poor strategic assumptions. And were massively outproduced by America and between America and Britain they were out 'teched' in all the important technologies (encryption, radar, fire control, the bomb).
04/05/09
Indeed, that - with the Blitzkrieg in Europe - were the key innovations of WWII.
We caught up in those areas, and excelled in the others you note, but they innovated in these areas. Indeed, that's how they got as far as they did, and so quickly.
Ironically, one battle that Yamamato lost was the decision to attack the US. He saw it led to folly.
04/03/09
Or, they were attacking to remove the navy, which they had the possibility of doing, so that they could take hold of asia. After pushing the Americans back to their own shore, the [i]Germans[/i] could easily invade, thus destroying Japans main obstacle in holding asia.
04/05/09
04/03/09
Do Japanese people from today know what they did during the war?
I know it's a stupid question, but for some reason it seems most Japanese people are not aware of what happened in general during WWII. My gf and all her friends (boys and girls) have a very basic understanding of the history of the war as well as the specific battles and events.
Of course I visited cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I know the people there still remember the war, but in general in seems as if the Japanese like to pretend that nothing happened at all and that they were the victims more than the aggressor.
So how is it? How do Japanese see this and what do they think of the action their nation took during the war?
04/03/09
Then again, what do you want them (and us) to do? Get all emo and cry about the sins of our forefathers, for the rest of time?
04/03/09
I'm French-Canadian so for me it has always been stories of us being jumped on by some other aggressive country who wants to expand while we were dancing and eating! Or stories about how normal farm boys from Canada left their homeland to join the RAF and protect the skies of England against the German menace and to take back France, the land of our ancestors.
However it must be more difficult for Japanese teachers to tell the kids about how the Japanese tried to invade Korea over and over throughout history and how (and why) you entered in WWII.
For Canadian kids, it would sound very stupid for a country to go to war to expand territory.
I was curious because I think there is a lot to learn from WWII for a Japanese kid. Maybe that it is very dangerous to try to expand through war, but very rewarding to do it economically and technically? I don't know. What is the first thing you learned about war as a kid?
04/03/09
04/03/09
as a sidenote, during a trip to japan I met this french girl who had this idea, that the americans bombed pearl harbour themselves in order to provoke a war with japan. so you know, igonrance knows no country.
04/03/09
My aunt is German so I'm kind of aware of how Germans see it now and how they dealt with it.
The Japanese definitely didn't pass that chapter. They prefer to hide it, as they hide everything they are ashamed of. As they hide the homeless in Tokyo, denying their very existence, for example.
I go out with a Japanese and I have many Japanese friends. I regularly visit Japan and I truly respect their nation and people. Ever since I was a young boy, Japan has always fascinated me because it is so mysterious. However, despite the great technical achievements of its people, it seems Japan still lacks a certain wisdom and peace of mind that old Europeans gained after the war.
Just what I see for now. I still have many years to understand Japan anyway.
04/05/09
04/05/09
They're also the only post-industrialized country with an article in their Constitution forbidding force outside of (real) defense. And it remains a popular article.
For a country of their wealth, influence and vulnerability, they're a remarkably pacifistic people and nation. We could learn from them (and from yours).
But some of the specifics - Nanjing - they're a bit fuzzy on. No one's perfect.
04/03/09
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04/05/09
It was the Allies that were fighting the last war.
Granted, our mobilization, once began, overwhelmed Imperial Japan. But their strategic breakthrough was always based on marine-based aircraft. We were playing catch-up for most of the war, and McArthur improvised with his island-hopping campaign.
Capital ships, of course, require vast resources and lead times to produce. Thus they had a surplus of battleships, and after Midway, lost their air carrier edge. Most crushingly, they lost their pilots. Those were the hardest resources to replace.
But Yamato was the first to see the value of air carriers over battleships, which was genius.
04/03/09
It was empire building with a planned peace at the end. Japan never had any plans on invading the US only to sink the Carrier fleet and push the US Navy back to their west coast bases.
This game could try two different outcomes.
1. Disable the US Navy so they can't perform the island hopping that helped defeat Japan. If the US fleet can't get within striking distance to the home islands it would be a stalemate.
2. Force the US to invade the home islands and grind down the US invasion force so as to make public opinion go against it because of the number of deaths that would have occurred among US forces.
Either of these would have been a win for Japan.
04/03/09
You know people in California were killed because of their fire balloons, right?
04/03/09
04/03/09
04/03/09
As 'smart' as your comments are, you don't play a footsolder or experience the ground war in these games, ever.
HAR HAR HAR U SO CLEVEAR.
04/03/09
04/03/09
Is Mass Rape like Mass Effect or something? Or rape in a Catholic church?
04/03/09
Making generalisations is fun, huh? and good god we don't have any games about the Indian-american wars...
no country is better than the other when it comes to war-crimes and violations of human rights. no, not even america.
04/03/09
04/05/09
My understanding is that no Hawaiian US citizens of Japanese descent - none - were ever convicted of spying for Imperial Japan.
04/03/09
04/03/09
This only ceases to pump up my excitement. We're finally getting to play the 'other side' in games beyond WWII hex strategy games for the PC.
04/05/09
04/03/09
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