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For the next hour or so I will be attempting to purchase Star Wars Legos from Lego's web page.
They FINALLY released a new TIE Interceptor and I simply MUST have it because it appears to be to the same standard as the TIE from Solo.
The Lovely Harvey has a pile of things she wants too. Ahsoka themed this time.
Toodles!
Update:
This did not post on time, so I back dated it!
Tonight is consumed watching the only form of Sportsball that I even give half a fuck about.
Hockey.
The home team was eliminated Thursday.
But not all is lost!
Florida has TWO hockey teams!
Thankfully, the Panthers were able to knock Boston out in game seven! In overtime no less.
Since I'm backdating this, the Seattle Kraken were able to knock the defending Stanley Cup champs, The Colorado Avalanche, out as well. Also in game seven.
Forgotten Weapons had a raffle going to get a genuine, once issued to the 101st Airborne Div, surplus M17 pistol.
This was the link. <- Don't click that!
You buy an overpriced coffee cup and they put your name in the hat.
Except...
Marv bought himself a $50 coffee cup and an entry and now he's being inundated by spam and phishing emails.
From seconds after his confirmation email arrived, in fact.
It is out considered opinion that the value of the prize does not outweigh that Get Entered To Win is selling your information to scum, at best, or is so insecure that your information is freely available to the scum, at worst.
I once knew how to do calculus...
I have not used it in decades and never outside the classroom.
I suspect that it would take almost as much effort at this point to remember what I learned as it did to learn it in the first place.
Statistics, on the other hand, keeps coming up because of gaming and doing reality checks on GURPS.
Someplace I have my chicken scratching of figuring out the difference between 1d+4 and 2d and why a +4 is promoted to another die in GURPS. Hint: it's about the mean of a honest die.
I am very curious.
Except for COVID, what other disease still worries you once you're vaccinated?
I was vaccinated and exposed to measles. We didn't worry because I'd been vaccinated.
Mumps, same deal.
Polio.
Smallpox.
Diphtheria.
Pertussis.
Rubella.
Hepatitis A and B.
Even black plague.
Not one of them came with a "be sure to avoid people who haven't been immunized or are sick with the disease," like COVID does.
I see the hard sell, but the headline keeps recurring, "died from COVID despite being fully vaccinated."
Show me the headline, "died of smallpox despite being fully vaccinated."
I clear the land.
I plow the field.
I grow the crops.
I process the crops into ingredients.
I prepare the ingredients into a meal.
I bring the meal to your table.
I am a racist because you have to eat it yourself?
This is affirmative action in a nutshell.
As long as there's anything they have to do for themselves, they are being oppressed.
Stuttgart has a brewery named Hofbräu.
This is not to be confused by the more common Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München.
The local pico-brewery, Liquid Garage, makes a Czech pilsner named "Czech, 1, 2, 3," which tickles my taste buds the same way as the unobtanium in the USA Stuttgarter Hofbräu.
It could be time playing tricks on me, it has been 33 years, but this is nice.
Watching, "Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons," and there's a section on inclusion.
OK.
Fantasy settings are myth parallels of Europe for the most part.
You want to play a character who has dark brown skin, because you have dark brown skin and you want a character that looks like you.
Thag Grok. Though Thag always thought the idea was to play someone who isn't you.
But let's unwrap this.
There's black people in Europe right now. There's black people in America right now.
There weren't in medieval and renaissance Europe unless they'd been dragged there to be an oddity. They didn't have communities there.
Europe wasn't sexually egalitarian either, and most D&D games are.
Well, there's a reason that we don't see more black people in historical Europe. They aren't from there.
A white person in sub-Saharan Africa is also pretty damned unusual.
So, how did they end up everywhere?
Well, for America, it's slavery. Spain and England dragged them from Africa and dropped them here to work for considerably less than minimum wage.
Considering that a medieval or renaissance Europeanesque society might possibly still have slaves, that's probably not a good explanation for their presence.
First, your world will need a place where people with darker skin evolved. I tend to keep the reasons for darker skin the same as history. More sun more often. That will be a different place from where white people evolved, less sun less often means less melanin. There's lots of real reasons for skin color developing.
Next we need a reason there's black people in our Europe analog (or white people in our Africa analog).
Well, most fantasy settings have something that Europe and Africa sure as heck lacked.
Magic.
It allows for much faster travel than state of the art walking or riding. That allows for faster communication.
That magic doesn't require a technological base that means the place where the darker skins evolved can, reasonably, be expected to be on par with the white people when they encounter each other.
Faster and farther communication and trade means that people will travel between the two regions and magic also prevents the mass transmission of plagues!
So, there's no reason your elf can't be black.
There should be a reason they are is all.
It's your world you're making from whole cloth, you can even have the reason be so far in the past that the cultural differences between the black elf's home culture and the culture of the setting no longer matter. The reason for their migration doesn't even have to be happy, the Irish sure didn't get a happy first few years in America!
Also, it's your world, you don't have to have racism unless you want it. I tend to skip it. When you have Orcs and genuinely evil mages who can summon the literal denizens of Hell, differences in skin color starts to matter a lot less.
But, remember that reason for there being black elves? It works best if that reason is there from the beginning. If there weren't black elves in the setting for, literally, decades your explanation had better fucking ROCK.
That's why my fantasy setting having black elves doesn't raise an eye and there suddenly being black characters in Lord of the Rings causes outcry. Especially since there's no explanation even hinted at.
Can an Imperial Marine take on an M1A1(HA)?
The 2,400L DR of the front turret armor is more than proof against the 6dx5(2) burn ex 6dx12(2) burn ex from an FGMP-14 fired from a battlesuit.
The DR 240 of the battlesuit is not stopping an APFSDSDU round.
But that Crunchie in a Can isn't coming alone.
He's bringing a buddy with a 2.3 gigajoule heavy fusion cannon.
6dx650(2) burn ex.
That does an average of 13,650 points of damage...
It's going out the back of the Abrams too.
The tank that fusion gun is mounted on has 25,000L DR on the front quarter. Even a max damage roll of the 6dx48(2) pi++ M829A2 round isn't going penetrate. That won't even penetrate the roof of the cupola!
Even the Imperial Army has a decent chance of taking out an Abrams with their APC.
With just 1,100 DR on the front, it's vulnerable to the 120mm gun, but the 10 megajoule rapid fire fusion gun delivers 5dx50(2) burn ex. On average, no penetration, but its RoF is 8 shots a second! It's going to erode the armor off the tank in a few shots.
I was rewatching Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and it hit me:
What kind of undead are the cursed crew of Black Pearl?
They clearly have not suffered any loss of intelligence or will.
Nearly all forms of undead do.
They seem to be driven to end the curse, but aren't being compelled beyond a reasonable desire to end the misery.
Obviously the authors weren't forced to comply with any given template, but I still wonder what kind of undead they are.
A chickenshit anonymous commenter got his comment deleted because they couldn't follow the simple posting rules.
They alluded that I would feel different about drag queens if it was my kid that got molested.
Well, The Boy has been molested.
Obviously I feel the way I do despite that.
The convict was a trusted friend and significant other of one of Harvey's co-workers.
We'd hired them to babysit.
Raising a child like The Boy is demanding and when someone volunteers to take some of that load...
Except for the betrayal...
The convict originally got busted in a sting where a detective was a portraying a 13 year old.
We were shocked. The Boy overheard us and... um... reacted.
Because if Uncle Scumbag had told him if the cops ever came he'd hurt The Boy and he was SCARED SHITLESS.
So we called the cops to add our experience to the charges.
Charges that stuck.
So, thanks, Anonymous Shitbag, for dragging these memories out again.
But I cannot bring myself to hate people who have not committed a crime.
Not even if they are gay, like Uncle Scumbag. Not even if they are male, like Uncle Scumbag.
Lots of gay men aren't molesting kids. Lots of drag queens will be perfectly happy performing at adults only venues (assuming that they can get permits).
The scum really are the minority, and it's time to stop letting them dictate the terms and define the language.
Because there's lots of fine people out there whose only crime is being strange and that by itself is harmless. But the scum have people convinced that the strange part is dangerous when it's the dangerous part that is, and it's an independent variable from being strange.
Because we're going to miss a scumbag because they can pull off the appearance of normal while we focus on the strange.
Widner's reached out and asked if I'd like to give them a review.
Since they let me pick my own ammunition to test, I'm thinking that there should also a be a review of the purchasing experience.
First, there's their web page.
It's clearly navigable!
I can't say that about every vendor I purchase from.
The left sidebar lets you narrow your choices down to JUST the ammo you want to look at in short order then it's a simple matter of adding it to your cart and giving them your payment information.
In this case, my payment information was mostly a gift code they provided, but after taxes I had to add a few bucks of my own. I could have bought less and put it all on their gracious gift, but that seems really skeezy.
Shipping is down to two choices, FedEx and UPS. Pick the one which does a better job in your area.
There's nothing to keep you from making a purchase.
That makes it difficult to review.
Reviews are based on what goes wrong, not from everything going like it's supposed.
Well.
One thing is wrong.
Not one round of 105x617mmR in stock from any manufacturer. :)
Remember Hydra-Shok?
Federal still makes it.
Lucky Gunner did a bunch of gel tests to the FBI standard.
124gr Hydra-Shok, with a mean velocity of 1,053 fps expanded thusly:
Penetration was:
The newer 124gr HST flying at a mean of 1,135 fps expanded more uniformly
Penetration was:
Make your purchase decisions appropriately.
Personally, I like bigger holes than smaller in the bad-guy.
Action.
Reaction.
I hear that drag performers are going to protest a done deal today.
Florida has passed and the governor is going to sign a law that makes drag shows adult entertainment and can affect the business licenses of venues where drag shows are performed.
It's probably an overreaction on the part of the legislature, but...
It's a reaction, not an action.
I've read interviews from some of the drag performers and it's apparent that they aren't the scumbags that should be punished.
There were drag shows here and there and hardly anyone gave a fuck.
Then the scumbags dragged the kids into it.
Dragging the kids into it definitely causes a reaction and scumbags immediately begin countering that reaction.
Measure.
Countermeasure.
Counter-Countermeasure.
Until, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater and people who weren't causing the problem are punished right alongside the scumbags.
As gun owners, we should be familiar with this.
BUT.
Is this law really that bad? So far I've seen nobody cite the text and the author isn't coming across as someone who hates drag queens because they've got an invisible friend whispering in their ear.
Here's the meat.
827.11 Exposing children to an adult live performance.—
(1) As used in this section, the term: (a) “Adult live performance” means any show, exhibition, or other presentation in front of a live audience which, in whole or in part, depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities as those terms are defined in s. 847.001, lewd conduct, or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts when it: 1. Predominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest; 2. Is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community of this state as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for the age of the child present; and 3. Taken as a whole, is without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for the age of the child present. (b) “Knowingly” means having general knowledge of, reason to know, or a belief or ground for belief which warrants further inspection or inquiry of both: 1. The character and content of any adult live performance described in this section which is reasonably susceptible of examination by the defendant; and 2. The age of the child. (2) A person’s ignorance of a child’s age, a child’s misrepresentation of his or her age, or a bona fide belief of a child’s consent may not be raised as a defense in a prosecution for a violation of this section. (3) A person may not knowingly admit a child to an adult live performance. (4) A violation of subsection (3) constitutes a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 127 775.083.
It's mite subjective. Perhaps unconstitutionally vague.
Except. Click that link to 847.001. This is going to pass muster.
On the face, there's nothing that keeps a venue from having a drag show. There's nothing that bans drag queens from working at those shows.
What they need to do is keep the kids out.
Will that be hard? I do not know. I hope it's easy. I PRAY that it's easy to keep kids out.
The thing that needs to be addressed is this will have a chilling effect on places having drag shows which are fine with banning children and the proper licenses will not be sought.
Another thing that needs addressed is this will also be the excuse many religious kooks with government jobs will use to not issue the licenses in the first place.
The number of full-liquor bars, strip clubs and pawn shops are fixed in most Florida counties by the licensing agencies. You cannot open a new one unless an existing one goes away.
The drag queens protesting are correct, this is the end of their livelihood.
I do ask, though, where were they when the grooming scandals first hit? I don't recall a "drag queens against child molestation" organization or protest.
Shoulda got in front of this.
In the way back, I was playing an Arab in one of FuzzyGeff's Nexus worlds.
Said Arab bore little to no resemblance to the Arabs of today.
His flavor of Islam, likewise.
Near 200 years ago, both were different than today.
But those weren't the main defining characteristics of his being.
He was a gentleman. A right honorable one.
During one encounter, we found a giant spider threatening some innocent.
Firing his Martini-Henry at the spider would have been troublesome because the innocents were just beyond the attacking arachnid.
So he drew his scimitar and waded into hand to hand combat.
And promptly got bit and died from the venom.
I was thrilled!
I'd been playing forces of nature and to have a character get killed was novel for me.
I realized that I'd been missing the uncertainty of playing a character in danger.
The other players tried to get me resurrected, they even traded my Martini for it, but the spellcaster blew their roll.
I am still satisfied with the character's demise.
The backup camera was ever so slightly canted.
An hour later, it is no longer canted.
The side marked "top" was merely suggestive and not absolute, thus the cant.
Maybe about 2 degrees off, but really noticeable with the lines on one side hitting first because the lines are absolute to the screen and not the camera.
TTAG has an article about manual safeties and striker fired guns.
I have a couple.
All the M&P's have a manual safety.
None of the European guns do.
I tend to prefer a manual safety for carry and demand it for pocket-carry.
On the bigger M&P it makes a handy thumb rest!
But I carried a Glock for a long while with the chamber loaded to no ill effect. The same effect, in fact, that carrying an M&P with a safety engaged.
It is a preference item, do what you want. Which is basically what the article says.
The SIG is likely going to grow a safety before long because it's a tar-baby project gun.
There's a bit of hullabaloo about "stand your ground" in cases that aren't "stand your ground" lately.
One in particular seems that it could have been solved by not opening the damned door for someone you don't know in the wee hours of the morning.
Some of the others, most in fact, aren't "stand your ground" but are still legitimate self defense cases.
The press still thinks that you need to run screaming until you cannot run any more before you can even try to defend yourself or that you're obligated to debate with a criminal until over the issue until...
I'm not sure what they're going for here except that they don't think defending yourself is ever legitimate.
There's a line-of-sight thickness on the M1A1 that's 880mm thick.
GURPS is DR 70 per inch of RHAE.
880mm is 34.64". If it were rolled homogeneous armor, it'd have DR 2,425.
I'd given the M1A1(HA) DR 2,400L in this facing.
It's my understanding that even Chobham armor is better than its RHA thickness.
It's kind of why we have the phrase RHAE where the 'E' means "equivalent."
Challenger 2's version is supposedly good for double it's thickness for RHAE. If the M1A1 is using the same blend, then the 88cm section should be DR 4,850L!!!
What they're NOT clear about in these speculations is if this is the effective thickness against a particular round or if that's against anything.
If we're talking about JUST HEAT rounds then this is exactly what the rules say laminate armor should do to a HEAT round.
For the record. DR 2,425L needs a 6dx23(10) cr ex HEAT round to start worrying.
The "Dorchester" version in the Challenger 2 doesn't have the depleted uranium the M1A1(HA) has.
Even so, this stuff appears to be better than normal steel of a similar thickness against KE rounds.
Ye Olde GURPS: Vehicles makes laminate armor lighter for the same protection, so I'm going to make it the same DR as its thickness in RHA.
The DU plates seem to me that it might make it hardened armor and that'd change the armor divisor of the KE round from (2) to none at all. That means it takes 6dx115 pi++ to punch!
I have no idea if this is even realistic. The DU armor hasn't been tested in combat by a serious opponent. The Iraqis didn't have the top shelf ammo for their tanks and the standard DR 2,425 is sufficient to stop 6xd58(2) pi++. The 3BM46 "Svinets" round is only good for 6dx37(2) pi++, 3BM42M "Lekalo" is 6dx48(2) pi++.
Note: these are all "average" hits were every die rolls 3.5 points. The lightest hit that can penetrate DR 2,425L is 6dx33.7(2) pi++ with a max damage roll. 6dx202.1(2) pi++ punches on a minimum roll...
If you are a resident of Florida a credit hour at Florida State will run you $215.55 plus books. Out of state tuition is $721.10, just for the record.
You need 120 credits minimum to get your bachelor's. There's some requirements for how many credits you have to have at FSU and how many credits have to be above a certain level.
That's $25,866.
Let's assume that your part time job is at someplace that's paying $15 an hour.
That's 1,724.4 hours.
Except... A place to live, food to eat, transportation, taxes, etc...
But let's assume you have a benefactor and don't have to pay taxes.
Most "part time" work is 20 or fewer hours a week.
86.22 weeks at 20 hours at $15 an hour.
More than a year of saving. 1.66 years of putting your entire income from this part time job into an account to pay tuition.
TUITION
Books will add another $4k plus to this. A gigantic scam of the education industry is to require a particular edition of a text book. For some reason a new edition always has different page numbers from other editions making them nearly useless for the current class, so you have to get a NEW book instead of saving a bit on a used one.
You're still going to starve to death in the street while your attending classes and fail because you don't have books and supplies because every penny you made went into tuition.
20 hours at $15 an hour is $15,600 a year. You lose $175 to income tax. $2,386.80 to FICA.
$13,038.20 left.
Considering that the average rent for a 1-bedroom in Talahassee is $1,100 a month... you're now short $161.80 for the year and you're still gonna starve!
But 2-bedrooms places are $1,200 so you get a roomie! Now you have $5,838.20 for food, clothes and transportation. That's $112.27 a week. $16.03 a day.
You are NOT saving up for tuition on a part time job unless you have someone else paying your bills for you.
Even so, it will take prodigious will power to do so.
To expect such will is unrealistic.
Science is never, truly, settled.
Climate science very often reminds me of the "spherical cows in vacuum" statement.
Cows aren't spheres, so any experiment that hinges on them being so is invalid on its face.
Neither do cows live in vacuum...
If your experiment hinges on conditions which never exist in nature, then your experiment is invalid with regards to nature.
While isolating the variables is important, it's crucial to remember that variables interact in complex and messy ways.
Messes that don't support the narrative...
That was easy! I had examples once I looked for them.
Gen 0 is Night Vision 1-3 but requires active IR illumination. Active IR boosts the bonus of any IR sight too.
Gen 1 is Night Vision 4.
Gen 2 is Night Vision 5-6.
Gen 3 is Night Vision 7-9.
Gen 4 is Night Vision 9.
M60: thinner armor, M48ish turret, external M2HB.
M60A1: standard armor, new turret, cupola with M85. Late versions have partial stabilization.
M60A1 RISE and RISE+: Many small improvements some even show in game terms. I'm going to have to assign Night Vision levels to distinguish between 1st and 2nd generation passive IR system. The RISE+ gets smoke grenade launchers.
M60A2: radically different version.
M60A3: Two versions Passive and TTS. Adds full stabilization, electronic fire control and a laser rangefinder. The TTS gets a thermal imager that is arguably better than the later M1 gets!
I've already mentioned the speculative upgrades.
When the outside temperatures are similar to the desired temperature inside, our air conditioner goes schizo.
When I am sitting at my desk, this manifests in a cold current of air that hits my right elbow.
The rest of me is comfortable, and my elbow is stiff and cold.
So I bought a deflector for the register.
It uses magnets to attach itself to the register.
My aluminum register.
DAMN IT!
Double sticky tape to the rescue.
If you start down the rabbit hole of tank variants, you're going to encounter dozens of variations which are indistinguishable from each other when distilled down to GURPS terms.
And GURPS sieves finer than Twilight: 2000 did.
T2K didn't really have a system for fire control computers and stabilization systems. GURPS does.
I am also finding that I need to up my game (pun) with regards to the descriptions. They get repetitive fast.
I made a connection today thanks to The Cat Rotator's Quarterly.
They're talking about the demise of pig latin and describe what pig latin is.
An argot or cant.
That got me to remember "thieves cant" from D&D.
That made the connection to Cockney rhyming slang because, "an argot, or cant, is an insiders dialect."
I think that's pretty neat.
I did the research to make GURPS stats for the M48A5 and M60A3 TTS.
I can't just stop there.
Now there's the M728A1, M60A2 and upgrades to the M60 that happen in T2K, but not in the real world.
Soon I will have the M60, M60A1 and two significant M60A1 upgrades.
Then I will wade into the M48's variants...
Then the Leopard 1.
Probably end up with ALL the T-54/55 and T-62s before long.
Never mind the T-72, 64, 80 and 90's.
Got the stats lines for the OG Leo and some Pattons.
It's interesting that the M60A3 doesn't get near the armor upgrades as the T-62 over the years, but I have still to get the likely for T2K variants nailed down.
Reminder of that those are:
Skirts and ERA added to an M60A1 RISE (USMC) or M60A3 (TTS) (Army) becomes an M60A1 RISE+ and M60A3 (TTS+).
Super M60 without the added armor is M60A4, but few are made because the engine and suspension upgrades are expensive compared to the GLDS M60-2000.M60-2000 is the M60A4. I might even go to the effort of figuring out the old M1 turret armor because the M1(IP) and early M1A1 have more protection (than an M60) and some of those old turrets would be available.
I think I will skip the Super M60 as being too complicated and lacking customers due to the expense.
Are you speaking of slavery in America or slavery in The Americas.
Because if you mean America as in "The United States of America," it runs from September 17, 1789 to January 31, 1865. Even so, the issue was primarily thought of as a state issue until right before the war that settled the point.
76 years and change.
From April 19, 1775 to May 12, 1784 who's in charge is up in the air.
From May 12, 1784 to September 17, 1789 it's not the United States, it's that weird transitional confederation entity and it really can't be blamed for slavery in in the independent entities it composed of. The 1789 date doesn't even extend to slave holding places that were French or Spanish then, but are US now.
So prior to the ratification of the US Constitution, slavery is an English, French, Dutch and Spanish problem.
And it ran for far longer than the short seventy some years of US slavery.
Blame them.
I'd love to see Spain blamed for slavery as a whole in the US and be forced to pay for reparations under the same, tortured, logic that they've been hoovering up gold from salvaged galleons.
And if you REALLY want to pick at it, the American Indian practiced slavery until the end of the Indian Wars. Noble savages, indeed!
Everything I said about Kontakt-1 and Kontakt-5 assumes that the plates are metal and not rubber sheets and that the explosives are actually something that will go kaboom.
Several examples from the recent unpleasantness in Ukraine shows that Soviet quality control and corruption still rules.
THAT is a complex issue for a GM to decide.
GURPS puts the penetration values in terms of armor division.
That makes the effects of 2nd Gen ERA odd in game terms.
But since we have fractional divisors, then we can be realistic about it.
According to this article Kontakt-5 should change the armor divisor of a long-rod penetrator from (2) to (1.25).
That really affects penetration.
Reading between the lines is necessary. Then you fudge.
Kontakt-5 is an explosive reactive armor that actually works on KE rounds.
That's handy!
Kontakt-1 and Blazer sure don't.
The difference is that instead of a thin sheet-metal box with a thin plate at the bottom; Kontakt-5 uses a thick plate on the top.
When the nose of the KE round hits the explosive in the base of the box, it blows off the plate when the penetrator is about half way through it.
That does bad things to the penetrator.
Inferring the performance of this second generation of reactive armor comes from reading about the bragging about third generation reactive armor's performance.
From reading about 3rd gen stuff, it would nullify the armor divisor on AP rounds. Changing the (2) to (1). (1) is a normal bullet...
They phrase it as doubling the effective thickness of the armor.
3rd gen is supposedly twice as effective as 2nd gen... Or that the armor is, effectively, 50% thicker against KE rounds with the 2nd gen.
So, Kontakt-5 nullifies the special effects of HEAT and HESH, changes the armor divisor of KE AP rounds from 2 to 1.5 and changes the armor divisor of the second charge of a tandem warhead from 10 to 5.
There! Now I have a working rule.
I am happy!
The turret armor of a T-62M has DR 1,250!
That takes 6dx21(2) to punch.
The T-62MV is going to be harder because they stripped the BDD add-on armor for Kontakt-1 reactive blocks.
Twilight: 2000 gave an extra 400 points of armor against a HEAT round. This is a game where the frontal armor of a T-72 is 300. GURPS gives DR 1,130L for the hull and 1,695L for the turret of a T-72BV.
Reactive armor is meaningless to kinetic energy rounds with the ancient 3rd Edition's Vehicles.
Reactive armor is MENTIONED in the 4e High Tech, but not really detailed well enough to apply it to vehicles. It basically nullifies the special effects of HEAT and HESH rounds making them behave as if they were simply HE.
Kontakt-1 appears to be the kind of ERA that the books are talking about.
GURPS: T2K vehicles stats, so far...
There's a LOT of fudge factor going on with the armor bringing down to just a single value per facing.
The Soviet Union was hip deep in upgrading their T-62's to the T-62MV standard when The Cold War ended abruptly.
I don't think I've seen many pics of tanks going to Ukraine that weren't up to that standard, so even in our timeline they appear to have succeeded. Update: There's a few T-62M in those images...
 |
| T-62MV |
 |
| T-62M |
I think I am on firm footing making it the only variant I need stats for in Twilight: 2000.
The T-55 is a tougher nut. The Soviets were done with them by 1997, but just like today and the T-62 there were lots of them in depot.
I need to check what the other Warsaw Pact nations had done with them by then too. Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland tended to lag behind The Bear a bit in shedding old stuff.
 |
| T-55AM (It's even Polish!) |
Update:
Poland didn't shed their last T-55 until 2002 in our timeline! T-55AM was their standard.
Hungary was having problems buying T-72s all through the end of The Cold War and ended up keeping their T-55AM's 'til the end.
East Germany had a stable of T-55AM's too.
Czechs were running the production line on the T-55AM2 until 1999!
It looks like most of the Warsaw Pact transitioned from T-55 to T-72 and either skipped the T-62 or were never offered it.
Reading this story sure reminds me of stories Technomad told about his rental and the class of renters he had.
Landlords don't have property rights, they have property privileges.
The squatter thing is getting ready to come to a head and renter's rights will be dead for a very long time.
It's getting to the point of bulldozing a place is cheaper than renting it out and keeping a vacant place from sprouting squatters.
I also question the police position that this is purely a civil matter.
The fake lease is fraud.
They are literally stealing the house from its rightful owner.
Those seem like crimes to me.
This is just another example in a long list of where parasites are being protected from justice.
I have confirmed that my repair to the washer fluid line is the only way it could be repaired.
The factory part, 92203846, has been discontinued. Interestingly, it's the ONLY part of the wiper-washer system that is.
GM is strange.
While sitting here thinking about it, I realized that knowing how to figure out the problem and then fix it is a skill.
I learned this somewhere along the way.
I know people who didn't.
They irritate me when they insist upon talking about cars.
The other day I was coming home from buying beer and was struck at the light from the twilight.
Some nostalgia synapse was firing and the color of the sky and the intensity of the sun setting just reminded me of so many times in childhood.
It was still light enough to stay out and play, but we were playing chicken with the streetlights coming on.
It was a good remembrance.
