I want a game that simulates nation building, energy resource exploration and development, and international diplomacy.

(And yes, I know that Civilization IV has just been released.)

I think my evenings after work just got booked up for the foreseeable future. Note to self: set an alarm before you start playing to avoid the "whaddaya mean, it's 3am?" problem.

I'd be curious to hear what Jim thinks about the America's Army game-- specifically, its degree of realism and use as a recruitng/PR tool.

A five hour download on DSL? They're kidding!

They could well have taken any of the European offers of pebble-bed reactors. They didn't.

What more proof do you need? How about another threat to destroy Israel? "A world without Zionism, and the obliteration of Israel from the face of the earth, is not only the objective of Iran, but of the whole Muslim world,"

But seriously? About the game? If it gives Iran fits, good. Any country that regularly executes homosexuals, dissenting journalists, mentally disabled women who were forced into prostitution, and protesting student is not somewhere I'd worry about making a good impression in because of some video game. If they're not spitting bile about that, it'll be some other shit. They're like the leadership in North Korea - bug-fuck crazy, belligerent, and dangerous.

I believe that, if they build nuclear bombs, they'll sell it to as many Islamic nations and terrorist groups as they can. I have yet to see anyone put forth a convincing argument why they would not.

As time goes on fewer and fewer countries aren't going to have nukes. It's 1940s technology.

Also, the art is beautiful and interesting. Incredibly exotic steampunk worlds, so real that you feel you can almost touch things. In fact I found I had memories of being in some of the rooms...it's weird to have memories which you can identify as false even while they seem totally real.

What fool actually signed the approval to spend money on this bullshit propaganda? Did anybody in a position of authority stop to ask the game designers whether the games they were designing might actually be bad simulation training?

Meanwhile, the greens fees are soaring...

Because some of those groups would love to nuke the bunch of heretical apostate Shi'ite bastards who dare to call themselves the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Oh, and if Iran can meet some of its domestic energy needs through nuclear power, it can sell more oil on the world market.

The first step is to admit that you have a problem with Civilization

Besides, this is 2005. It'll be a bugridden piece of crap like every other game rushed out the door. Don't install until there's at least three patchsets released.

Civ-junkies don't know what long term addiction can do to you. It takes a NetHack junkie to show you that. Have you ascended your tourist today?

You're giving the Immans and Ayatolahs in Iran far more credit for sanity than you ought to. They're secound cousins to Kilm Ill Jong. Nutcases, the lot of them. I don't credit them with the foresight to not consider what third party might get a hold of any nuke they sell. They're simply that nuts.

AQ Khan sold nuke technology to Syria and Iraq. He'd proabbly have sold it to Lybia and Sudan as well. And Jihaddists in Saudi Arabia if he had the chance, and they had the technical base. What makes Iran any different from him? Did he worry about some anti-Pakistan group getting one of those nukes? Nope. It was about (a) money and (b) the possibility of a nuclear armed middle east.

Can you imagine the Chechen rebels getting a bomb and smuggling it in to St Petersberg?

Recall that George Bush identified three nations as the "Axis of Evil." The one nation of the three that he picked a fight with was the only one WITHOUT a nuclear-weapon program.

He's shown the bad guys a very thorough lesson in the importance of arming yourself. They took notes.

And now that our military is pinned down in the one country THAT DID NOT HAVE a nuclear program, the other two countries in the "Axis of Evil" are pretty much free to do what they want.

That sounds like it would be better fashioned after the Thief games - where the highest accomplishment was to get through missions without killing anybody - or even being seen.

Exactly. If I'm evading I don't want to be seen. And if that means sitting motionless in a leech-and-mosquito-infested swamp for three days, by golly I'm going to do it.

The Thief games, which are medievaloid, are also very good, and the early ones are in $10 remainder bins all over. Warren Spector's Deus Ex is excellent too (the sequel is less so), but while "stealthy" play is essential, there's no advantage to not killing people (you can play that way, but it makes things harder and there's no reward; indeed, you can leave bodies out in plain view and subsequent guards will walk right over them.)

The earliest computer game I know of with the "sneak or die" mechanic is Sid Meier's Covert Action, a DOS (and Amiga!) game from fifteen years ago that's now almost totally forgotten, like, uh, almost everything else from fifteen years ago, except maybe Tetris. You snuck around randomly generated offices, looking for evidence against the Evil Organization and trying to dodge the guards -- and you did have to hide anybody you knocked out. (It's interesting that while each "network" of villains -- a full campaign was 26 of these -- had a Mastermind who you had to go in and nab personally, for the most part you had to get enough evidence for warrants against the sub-bosses. Due process in a spy game?) It was structured like Sid's Pirates, in that there was a set of small games in support of the overall storyline. In addition to the sneaking, there was codebreaking (substitution ciphers, unfortunately not challenging even at top difficulty), vehicular pursuit, and a "wiretapping" module that was actually a logic puzzle involving chips on a board that switched or inverted current in various directions; move the wrong chip and the alarm goes off.

*Except when you have your starlight-scope or thermal-vision goggles on, which you do most of the time, since your character hides much better in the dark (and uses his silenced pistol more often for shooting lightbulbs to make more dark than shooting people). When this is the case, the beautiful rendering is replaced by either grainy monochrome or colorful enemy-shaped blobs.

I think the best example of realism in a game was Terry Pratchett's idea for 'Voyage to Alpha Centauri', a faithful simulation of STL interstellar flight. You start the game, and the screen shows an unchanging starfield. If you leave it running for forty thousand years, a small white circle appears in the middle of the screen, and a sign comes up saying "Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now go home."

The first step is to admit that you have a problem with Civilization

The problem is not that Civilization takes time away from other things in my life. The problem is that other things in my life take away time when I could be playing Civilization.

Besides, this is 2005. It'll be a bugridden piece of crap like every other game rushed out the door. Don't install until there's at least three patchsets released.

There's truth in that, but part of the fun (for me) is experiencing the improvements and new possibilities that come with ech patch.

Civ-junkies don't know what long term addiction can do to you.

With more than a dozen years of Civ playing under my belt, I think I have a pretty good idea.

The first time I finished a level, I got a rating of Mass Murderer, which is a hint that I caused too much collateral damage. The goal is to be a Silent Assassin, killing your target and no-one else.

Two of them, they looked to be brothers, seemed to be doing the fire and movement routine. Lasted about five minutes before one of them got hit by the shoot-everything-that-moves crowd, and the restart point seemed too far off for them to get together again.

This is what you get on a generation raised on Rambo and Arnold movies-- war is a game that can be won by one reckless fellow with a big gun and enough ammo.

I've never ascended a tourist, but I do blame my genocide-free extinctionist Wizard for the start of my RSI.

I don't dare try games like Civ because I know how easy it is for me to get addicted. (That reminds me, I never did get all the way through that abandonware version of Lemmings I downloaded a while ago . . . )

"fifteen years ago that's now almost totally forgotten, like, uh, almost everything else from fifteen years ago, except maybe Tetris"

Fifteen years ago was when I was prime for videogames, at twelve. Fifteen years ago I was playing the Infocom classics (Moonmist remains, and always will, one of my favorite games. I don't care if the release a virtual reality version of XBox with goggles, full-body tactile input, and erotic games; those old text-based ones will always have a place in my heart), and Zak McCracken (sp?) and Amazon. Fifteen years ago I was still putting floppy discs into my Commodore64 and enjoying King's Quest and Space Quest. And BC Grog's Quest for Tires (my sister, to this day, does the greatest impression of the sounds for that game). Oh, and Impossible Mission! That was such a great game.

God, I miss those games, sort of. And "sort of" only because I know that, if they were out and playable now, I'd play them for hours all over again. Sony and Microsoft can bugger off, and Tetris can take a long walk off a short pier; give me "Infidel" and "Zork" any day.

Little followup to what Bob said, in that there are credible reports that Rumsfeld has had the Air Force draw up comprehensive pre-emptive nuking plans for Iran, an Iranian expectation of needing a deterrent isn't crazy. Coupled with the large nuclear release policy changes being put forward by the Rumsfeld defence department and of course Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

They'd have to be deeply and comprehensively stupid not to be.

You might want to consider the success of a 'make American safer!' policy that provides such profound incentives to pretty much everyone on earth to get their own substantial nuclear deterrent.

Another visitor!

Welcome! Stay a while.

Stay... forever!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!

The earliest computer game I know of with the "sneak or die" mechanic is Sid Meier's Covert Action, a DOS (and Amiga!) game from fifteen years ago that's now almost totally forgotten, like, uh, almost everything else from fifteen years ago, except maybe Tetris.

I'd actually suggest Silent Service, a WW2 submarine simulator, also by Sid Meier IIRC, as being one of the first. I certainly remember it being highly unusual in that respect when I was playing it on my Sinclair Spectrum! Given that it was released for 8 bit machines, I'd guess it predates Covert Action by a few years at least. F19 Stealth Fighter, also a Microprose game although I don't know if Sid was on the design team for it, also had a degree of 'don't let them notice you or else'. I'm not sure if that was before or after SS.

And not every game from 15 years ago has been forgotten. I think Lemmings is 15 this year (?). Civilization is next year. Wolfenstein 3D is also 15 next year, which means we're only a few years away from Doom's 15th anniversary.

Doesn't the time go fast?

I keep trying to drive home the point that they're nuts, violent, and likley to use the nukes if they build them.

Is 'taking them out' the only option? God, I hope not. Bush would certainly screw it up horribly. But if they build a bomb, there's a real good chance sell it and/or use it.

I don't think diplomacy has failed yet, because I don't think Europe is actualy trying. I also don't think that the US government is capable of building a diplomatic coalition to cross the street, much less really pressure Iran.

I'm out of options on what to do to solve the problem, and there's a clock ticking. No one seems to be taking this seriously at all.

Have you noticed that the Muslim nations of the Middle East are not a unified bloc, and that some of them have been at odds with each other for centuries?

For that matter, have you noticed that their chief concern is not attacking us, but defending themselves from us? Look how often Syria's had to insist that they're not a threat. What they and Iran are both saying is, We will not allow ourselves to be cast in the role of your next target.

I wonder if Kuma have been bad enough for Sid to smite them? Perhaps just a little bit?

1. They want to keep every single one they can build or steal. At a minimum they probably want one for Iraq, one for Israel, and one for luck.
2. Subtleties of religious doctrine, over which they will fight to the knife.
3. Iranians are Persian (almost 100%, if I recall), while the rest of the area is Arab.

Plenty of things to fight over right there.

In the unrealism category- I just picked up a game that most people will probably find incomprehensible, boring, and really ugly. So far I love it. Dominions II. It's a God game made by a bunch of Swedes that learned how to make games from Ars Magica and Master of Magic...

I feel like that about some of the people in DC. That doesn't mean everyone in the US supports them, any more than it means everyone in Iran supports the ayatollahs who run that country (and I also don't see much difference between the ayatollahs and the neocons/religious right who think they're entitled to run this country without our consent).

Video games: I need to find my copy of Tetris and install in on my currently-in-use machine, and get some speakers or something and re-install Marble Drop (that one's no fun without the sound). Otherwise I mostly play gravity-drop mah jong and solitaire.

Josh, I don't accept your argument that the Iranians are "... nuts, violent, and likley to use the nukes if they build them." Sorry, but that's BS. They aren't cardboard villains.

I'm going to give you a preview, part of a post I'm writing about another subject. The topic at hand is the use of terrorists in contrived, third-rate thriller plots:

I must have seen it a thousand times. Everything turns on a random Evil Scheme hatched by generic terrorists. ...

Terrorists are useful for setting arbitrary plots in motion. As we all know, terrorists are randomly and indiscriminately malevolent, given to doing evil for its own sake. That means their actions don't have to make sense. Why should [these generic terrorists] [undertake the action described in the plot]? No reason. They're terrorists--they'll do anything.

We know these characters. When they aren't terrorists, they're Nazis, Soviet agents, alien invaders, wily Oriental masterminds, deranged inventors, serial killers, international drug dealers, lab-spawned monsters, sentient computers, runaway robots. Their capriciously evil schemes are the windup keys that have sent unnumbered little mechanical plots juddering awkwardly across the kitchen floors of literature.

I keep trying to drive home the point that they're nuts, violent, and likley to use the nukes if they build them.

That accurately describes Rumsfeld, by the best available information, and he's got nukes. Lots and lots of nukes.

Appealing to the better nature and common interests of the present US government isn't an option; they haven't got the former (or, rather, this is their better nature) and they're mostly people who still want bloody revenge for the hostage crisis, October Surprise or no October Surprise.

Selling bombs, well, the Russian unaccounted-for pile is just that, and this administration doesn't care. Pakistan has been making the tech available for ages, and any decent engineering team can do the work, these days.

And yes, this does statistically guarantee that the cities will die.

The only way around that was social, which is the sort of thing that these bozos have the utmost contempt for.

And, you know, Clinton's policy team had a fairly good grip on the North Korean problem; that situation was a whole lot better before the neocons got ahold of it.

Iran was a whole lot better before ratcheting up regional tensions -- in part through direct threats and in part by invading Iraq -- gave the hardliners the option of taking a tighter grip, too.

Fear is a terrible basis for policy.

Always.

Fear makes you stupid.

That accurately describes Rumsfeld, by the best available information, and he's got nukes. Lots and lots of nukes.

Much as it pains me to be forced to defend Rumsfeld, I must point out that the US has not used its nukes yet.

My point is that it teaches material that will require extra work and study to unlearn later.

You're quite right, the US hasn't used nukes. (Neither has anybody else, for that matter.)

But when someone you know has the good sense of diseased shellfish is trying to get the policy changed to include preemptive nuking of non-nuclear powers, after having the Air Force draw up detailed operational plans to nuke Iran, what's your conclusion about probable intent?

What's the only possible conclusion about probable intent?

This administration -- the US in general for the next fifty years -- can't use the "option available if we're compelled to use it" diplomatic dance, because that was the dance they did for Iraq, and now everyone knows for sure it was a deliberate, orchestrated lie. Even diseased shellfish can figure that out.

Will the preznit let him?

Hopefully not; Incurious George seems to retain some fragmentary sense of consequence and lacks burning ideological drive.

On the other hand, he's in the process of losing his grip, and I'd hate to think what might get authorized if he's angry drunk.

Be sure to smile when you say that around a Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivor.

The Russians haven't used their nukes. The Chinese haven't used their nukes. The Indians haven't used their nukes. The Pakistanis haven't used their nukes. Neither have the French, the British or the Israelis. Not even the North Koreans.

"...the US has not used its nukes yet..." Yet, he says.

Bartender!

Be sure to smile when you say that around a Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivor."

I almost posted exactly that comment, but then stopped because of the clause just before it, about defending Rumsfeld. I believe the "The US hasn't used its nukes" comments are being made in relation to Gulf War II, but won't put words in anyone's mouth.

"The Indians haven't used their nukes."
I didn't grok this for a moment, because my first thought was how it might have changed the course of American history had Columbus arrived to find a civilization with nuclear capabilities. Or perhaps even simply one sufficiently advanced as to prevent its own obliteration.
Of course, then I realized the real meaning.

On the other note, my father used to play Silent Service all the time. All the graphics advancements lately mean little to him, because he'd still rather blow up seven pixels the computer tells him are a destroyer.

And on an entirely unrelated note, Scooter Libby has resigned.

Ask the residents of Hamburg, Dresden, or Tokyo how much worse nuclear weapons might have made their experience of being bombed.

I don't think the USAF today can do what RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF did in WW2, but nuclear weapons let them do it with one plane, or one missile. That's how it's changed.

Will Entrekin, the Infocom games are mostly available on the net, if you wish to play them. The Zorks are freely downloadable from Activision, and all the others are available *ahem* informally. There are several different players (reverse engineered by fans) that will play any of them. There are also a lot of newer games written by fans; Google "interactive fiction contest" to find some of the better ones.

Iran has certainly been pursuing "more powerful".

The point is more that you can't complain when, if you threaten to destroy people, and implicitly threaten them with being destroyed by nuking, they then attempt to develop a nuclear weapon capability for themselves.

That was, indeed, my implication.

Graydon was describing Rumsfeld as "likely to use the nukes" and I was pointing out that he hasn't done so. My intent was to try to salvage at least a shred of credit for decency and right action by my country. Which, I know, is an uphill battle these days.

I don't know Gulf War II numbers- 30,000 confirmed civilian deaths, but I don't know military and I don't have any idea what the unconfirmed death toll is likely to be. [I'd believe 20% more, I'd believe 300% more.]

And of course, GW II doesn't have anywhere near a final count yet.

F19 Stealth Fighter was a bit too much "fighter" to be realistic, but it rewarded being sneaky. There was a British game called Tornado which was pretty good, and emphasised careful planning. Low level, high speed, and terrain masking -- it was a flight simulator which didn't depend on flying skill in the way that others did. And you could fly a whole mission with nothing visible outside the cockpit. Except tracers and gun-flashes.

There was another combat flight sim which would let you edit a few files and give a plane any armament you wished. A Spitfire with 8 57mm cannon was pushing the realism a bit.

I can't recall the name, but there was a program which tried to simulate naval gunnery engagements -- very limited graphics.

You're preachin' to the choir.

Having just checked out the link "We're The United States of America, and We're Helpless", I find that it speaks quite well for me. I'll leave all further comment to that.

Sandy - you do know who was egging on and supplying both sides in that war, don't you?

Or was that meant to be Subtle Irony?

Graydon, my point is that Iran, both under the Shah and under the mullahs, was seeking to develop nuclear weapons long before the US made any threat (implicit or otherwise) to destroy or nuke anyone or anything in Iran.

There is no country in the world that isn't under implicit threat from someone (or believes it is), and if that's sufficient justification for developing nukes, we are going to be in for a tough century.

Perhaps we will luck out and James Blish's prediction about war (in Black Easter) will turn out to be right, and "someday they will all be nuclear powers, and the art will become as formal and minor as flower arranging." I am not sanguine on this score.

So?

The complaining is happening now and now is when they're been threatened with being destroyed as a further distraction.

The history of seeking nukes isn't really germane to the urgency or obstinacy which presently pertain.

See, folks, that's hardcore.

Impossible as it may sound, I've actually gotten kind of bored with Nethack.

For the people who pine for Infocom: there are a lot of people right now writing freeware text adventure games. Sturgeon's Law applies, of course, but the best of them are extremely good. If that sounds interesting, go to Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive and start looking around. (I recommend Andrew Plotkin's games; or, look at the list of award winners in the competitions.)

Yes, Tornado did have a Gulf War add-on, with a lot of open, flat, desert, and flak. But in some ways it was a little too easy. As soon as yoiu can, go for high-level bombing with laser-guided bombs, and plot your missions to overfly as many extra targets as possible. You could hit more targets on every mission with that approach. The scenarios and campaigns in the original were much more demanding, and the enemy air force couldn't be easily shut down.

Digital Integration did a couple of helicopter sims that got Windows 95 versions, one for the Russian Hind, and another F-16 sim, and then seemed to fade away.

I'm not sure that MS Flight Simulator was ever particularly realistic, but it did let you fly something like a real plane in something like the real world. But it did rather show up the big problem with computer simulation games. They don't tell you all that much about the proper way to do the job. You might know the ILS frequency for an airfield, but you're not told much, if anything, about the default flightpath that will put you in the right place to pick up the beam.

You think we alienated the UN with the attack on Iraq? Boy, howdy. Imagine dropping the bomb, even a little one.

Leherer's "Who's Next?" has the line "Russia's got the bomb but that's ok 'cause the balance of power's maintained that way." Personally, I think this is a damn precarious and terrifying way to keep nuclear war from becoming common, but it appears to be the best we've come up with, so far. The most frightening thing about contemplating Rumsfeld being stupid enough to drop the bomb is the violation of that unwritten social rule. It puts everything up for grabs.

Yes, it'd be nice if we could keep lunatics like Al Queda, or countries with less than rational leadership, like North Korea, from acquiring nuclear bombs. In a lot of cases, I expect it's too late. But we do have a strong social mechanism, which we need to preserve until we find something better. No, I'm not saying abandon all attempts to prevent proliferation, et al. What I am saying is that the social mechanism is also an important tool, and that any lowering of the bar for the use of nukes makes us all less safe. And the more powerful the aggressor, the more damage it does to that unwritten social contract.

(I don't think it is entirely crazy to believe that the State of Israel, rather than the Jewish people, has turned out to be a bad answer.)

Anyhow, what we have is a country which fought a really bloody war, and the idea of fighting another probably isn't popular. There's a similarity to France, post-WW1, there. And they've had strained relations with the USA, especially since Bush came to power. And the Bush government doesn't seem willing to negotiate.

So, two things. You don't want a US invasion, and the US Army is next door, very busy fighting insurgents. It makes sense keeping the US Army busy. Second, if the US does come storming over the border, you want your own big stick. How on earth you'd use a nuke against the US, either on the battlefield, against the logistics base, or against the US itself; that's a huge problem.

If the USA is throwing Hulk-rhetoric in your direction, and if the USA has already lied about other countries to start a war, it doesn't make any difference about whether you have a nuclear program. The world knows that you don't actually have to buy yellowcake to be a target.

An Iranian nuclear program might have a lot of bluff in it, but what choice do they have against the current US government?

I must have seen it a thousand times. Everything turns on a random Evil Scheme hatched by generic terrorists. ...

Terrorists are useful for setting arbitrary plots in motion. As we all know, terrorists are randomly and indiscriminately malevolent, given to doing evil for its own sake. That means their actions don't have to make sense. Why should [these generic terrorists] [undertake the action described in the plot]? No reason. They're terrorists--they'll do anything.

We know these characters. When they aren't terrorists, they're Nazis, Soviet agents, alien invaders, wily Oriental masterminds, deranged inventors, serial killers, international drug dealers, lab-spawned monsters, sentient computers, runaway robots. Their capriciously evil schemes are the windup keys that have sent unnumbered little mechanical plots juddering awkwardly across the kitchen floors of literature.

When you find yourself arguing that some category of persons are so arbitrarily villainous that they'll do evil just because it's evil, you're in the realm of play-acting, not real-world foreign policy."

I know you just and Patrick just returned from lots of traveling, Teresa, but I just have to encourage you to post this soon, because I'm absolutely dying to read it.
And welcome back, of course.

You had a gun and a dagger; the dagger could be used to stab the guards in the back, silently killing them. You then had to drag the corpse out of sight, or the other guards would run for the alarm. If they set off the alarm, you were about to have a Very Bad Day.

This would have been 20 years ago or so.

I got interested in this stuff after reading Tom Clancy's first two books (when he was still producing pretty good naval thrillers), and learning that he and Larry Bond wargamed out the proceedings in the second book, Red Storm Rising, using tabletop Harpoon.

Speaking of Red Storm Rising, one of Clancy's first forays into computer games was a game called Red Storm Rising, in which you got to command an attack submarine trying, veeeeeeery carefully, to deal with enemy submarines and surface vessels. Evading enemy homing torpedoes was hair-raising stuff and wonderfully entertaining--and this was running on a Commodore 128 (ie, twice the RAM of a C64).

For multiship action it was okay; what I liked best was going to the gunnery station and being able to use a 5"/54 like a 5"/54. I haven't seen any games since that allowed me to do bracket-and-halving, walking ladders, and rocking ladders.

I knew that.

bracket-and-halving, walking ladders, and rocking ladders

what exactly do you mean? It sounds intriguing.

I might describe exactly how to do 'em in detail later.

Making Light: Inspiring the passionately distractible away from sensibly resting since 2002.

"1. LOGIC DIAGRAMS: Logic diagrams include troubleshooting logic charts (TLCs), fault logic diagrams (FLDs), fault isolation pyramid charts, and fault reference tables. The TLCs and the FLDs provide a simple yes-or-no, question-and-answer approach to fault isolation. They are generally based on either a ladder method or a bracket-and-halving fault isolation technique."

Google might save Mr. Macdonald some typing here or he may want to tell more and better sea stories:
NAVAL ORDNANCE AND GUNNERY
VOLUME 2, FIRE CONTROL
"18C4. Bracket-and-halving method
The bracket-and-halving method is used at long ranges by the main battery when no air or radar spot is available. At great distances it will be impossible to tell if a splash is short of or over a target, unless the two are in line. If the splash and target are not in line, or if the splash does not line up with a ship in the formation whose range is approximately that of the target, the first spot is made in deflection only. When target and splashes are in line in deflection, a range spot is made in such a direction and amount as to “cross” the target definitely. The direction of the next spot is reversed, and the size of the spot is cut in half. This “halving” is continued until a straddle is obtained, at which time it may be appropriate to shift to rapid salvo or to continuous fire. The spot should not be reduced below pattern size. Once a straddle is obtained, centering deflection spots only should be made, as long as the spotter is sure he has both short and over splashes. If, however, over splashes are obscured by the target or by shorts, every third or fourth salvo should be fired with an add spot of one pattern size, so as to lift the entire salvo over the target. Only thus can the spotter know his straddles were not all shorts in reality.

18C5. Ladders
When ranging is difficult and visibility poor because of fog, smoke, or darkness, the use of ladders is of considerable assistance to a spotter. Ladders are not particularly adaptable to fast-moving targets. There are many variations of this technique. However, it is only necessary to understand its fundamental principles. Fire is deliberately opened short, and succeeding salvos are fired so as to approach the target in steps not less than pattern size. As soon as the target is crossed, the steps are reversed and halved until the target has again been crossed. After a straddle has been attained, a rocking ladder may be used in conjunction with slow timed fire or with rapid salvo or continuous fire.

This consists of moving the pattern back and forth across the target by small arbitrary successive spots such as + 100, 0, -100, . . . introduced at the computer or rangekeeper. It has the effect of increasing the pattern size, which may be valuable when firing against a target capable of rapid maneuvering. When this method is used, care must be taken to make correcting spots only when the zero salvos of the ladder series fall. The rocking ladder can be used in conjunction with air on radar spotting, so long as the spotter is kept informed that this technique is being used."

5"/54 later became fairly common in a different gun and different mount - I heard tales jumpering around safety interlocks to make it work was a necessary skill in 5" guns eventually though I don't think the mount was actually manned? Dual feed very high rate of fire?

Seems to me I heard tales of a British/German engagement during WWI someplace around Africa where the German pattern was tight but never connected with the British ship while the British pattern scattered enough to peck the German to death with successive single hits?

Maureen McHugh's Half the Day is Night mentions something called an elephant walk, done with mortars IIRC. Is that the same as any of the above?

First: Elephant walk. You take your mortar, and fire a round. You see where it lands. You add elevation, and fire another. It lands closer to the target. Add elevation, fire another. Sooner or later you walk it onto your target. (For the guys inside the target, the successively closer and closer hits can be nerve wracking: see descriptions of the siege of Liege and the 42cm German mortars.)

Remember: Bearing is easy. Range is hard.

Bracket and halving (these are all techniques for when radar ranges aren't available):

First fire a salvo deliberately short. Then fire a salvo deliberately long. Halve the distance between them, and fire another salvo. Is it short or long? If short, halve the distance between your last salvo and your long salvo, and fire again. If long, halve the distance between your last salvo and your short salvo.

Continue thus halving the ranges until you achieve a straddle (half of the rounds falling short, the other half falling long). Now continuous or rapid salvoes.

Example: The target is actually at 6,435 yards.

Fire your first salvo at 10,000 yards, your second at 5,000 yards. One is short, the other is long? Excellent! Halve the distance and

Fire your next salvo at 7,500 yards. It's long. Excellent! You'll halve the distance between 7,500 and 5,000, and fire your next salvo at 6,250. Short!

Halve the distance between your shortfall (6,250 yds) and your last longfall (7,500 yds), and you get 6,875 yards. Fire!

Long!

Halve the distance between your last short and your last long, to get 6562.5 yards.

Long!

Halve the distance between that and your last short: 6406.25 yards.

Straddle! Rapid salvo, fire for effect! Mixed bag, AP, HE, and VT-Frag!

Great, everyone got that?

Now walking ladders go like this:

Start at some point on the ocean, while looking at your target. Say you start short. Give the following commands:

Add 100.
Drop 50.
Add 100.
Drop 50.
Add 100.
Drop 50.

Until you've walked your shots onto the target, and have him straddled.

(This is particularly useful if you have a high speed target, either heading toward you or heading away from you.)

Note: Torpedo bombers, low-level kamikazees, and cruise missiles are all particularly vulnerable to walking ladders. Aim for the ocean just ahead of them, and walk it on in (Drop 100. Add 50. Drop 100. Add 50...). Make 'em fly through the columns of water your shells are kicking up. That rips wings right off aircraft. (In the recent movie Stealth we saw a jet aircraft put out a fire on board by flying through a shell splash. That gave me the classic "facepalm" reaction.)

The rocking ladder is what you want to use once you have your target straddled.

It's simply this:

Add 100.
Drop 50.
Drop 50.
Add 100.
Drop 50.
Drop 50.
Add 100.

And so on. If the target maneuvers out of the straddle, adjust as necessary.

For all this you'll want to have a comrade standing by with a clipboard and a stopwatch. You may have several salvoes in the air at any given time, and you want to keep track of which one is which and where it's falling.

Further note: Shells have dye markers in various colors in 'em so you can tell which splash was caused by your ship. This is useful when several ships are firing on the same target.

Later on I might tell y'all how to build a rake. (It's a device used for tracking the fall of shot on a target that's moving diagonally in relation to you.)

1: Salvo and Broadside are different. Salvo fire was (usually) firing half the guns.

2: All these spotting corrections were applied to the Range Clock output. There was a lot of effort put into tracking the Range Rate, the rate of change of the range, which depended the course and speed and relative bearing ot target and firing ship. This gave a sort of virtual target.

Anyway, there's a pretty full account at the Fire Control page of the H.M.S. Hood Association website. Though the RN terms don't always match what the USN used.

The hang glider wing ran into the strings that hold the paraglider seat to his wing above. The impact would have been only about 25-35 mph, into a wad of tensioned strings that when untensioned you could easily encircle in two hands. Apparently it was like running into a concrete pylon.

The hang glider's wing broke (a hollow aluminum tube about 2.5" in diameter, perhaps a quarter-inch thick), and the glider flipped over backwards several times (breaking the other wing, probably from the pilot colliding with it)...

Upshot, both pilots threw their parachutes and survived totally fine, despite only about 1000 feet of airspace above the ground. It impressed me to hear how easy it was to break aluminum in midair, though.

Thanks. McHugh's use of it was a good match for this thread: her protagonist introduced it into a virtual reality combat game.

Bracket and halving

Fascinating: naval gunners invented the binary search, and presumably long before computer programmers got round to it.

And "creeping" suggests a slow steady advance, which it wasn't. The barrage would jerk forward, and the infantry would be rushing to reach the enemy trench before the enemy got out of their bunkers to the firing positions. But the lifts, at least by the end of that war, were small, and the attacking infantry were close to the barrage, in the danger-space. It was a choice between a shell-splinter and a burst from a machine-gun.

Artillery Fireplans

And this is The Coming of the Creeping Barrage.

The latter account maybe dents a few of the standard WW1 Myths.

British readers will appreciate the very last paragraph of this document.

The Royal Artillery. for immediate delivery.

I like your version better.

[Posted from 66.29.115.42]

[Posted from 66.29.115.42]