Tervell [he/him]
either he doesn’t see this as a negotiation (in which case he has a middle-school understanding of civics and should get the fuck off his high horse about it)
He doesn’t even understand the most basic facts about the legal system in question - he was going on about “b-but what if it sets a bad precedent”… the EU does not use fucking common law (completely, now that the Brits are out). They don’t give a shit about precedents (well, at least they give less of a shit than a common law system would)!
Yeah, some of these don’t fit so well. Metro isn’t open-world either (at least until Exodus, and I guess that’s more semi-open: still a linear sequence of levels, just with some of them being larger and more open), Tarkov I think had some ambitions for being open-world but that hasn’t happened yet (and probably never will given how that game’s development is going), and I’m not sure how well This War Of Mine fits into what people typically envision as the open-world framework.
A few of these should probably be swapped out with the Witcher 1&2, and maybe Boiling Point as a more obscure entry. Or just the “open-world features” part be removed from the description.
From what I know, there’s a distinction between dao (刀) and jian (劍) - the first for single-edged blades (sometimes translated into English as “saber”, due to a similar connotation), and the second for double-edged ones.
I guess in modern Chinese the word has evolved to just refer to knives, rather than swords.
It’s just another symptom of the games industry continuing to seek prestige and mainstream approval by aping existing artforms like film. It’s disappointing, but I guess it’s working out pretty well for them (apparently there’s no greater sign that you’ve “made it” as a work of art than getting a TV show adaption )
a little bit of analysis about Kursk
The only thing I’d want to add to Mikael’s excellent analysis here is that the Russians are actually fighting a much more conventional area defense than we’ve seen in the very static fighting in the Donbass. They’re not trying to stop Ukrainian drives at the screen line like we saw in the Hundred Days, they’re instead diverting them into engagement areas between their front line of screening troops and the main defensive line 5-10km to the rear and destroying them there. Ergo why we’ve seen Ukrainian units just go on these long runs in the last couple days - way past where the front line should be - and then get wiped out in what look like complex ambushes. That’s… actually just how you do a very normal area defense.
Why have the Russians changed tactics? Two reasons. First, in Kursk they - paradoxically - have space to fight. The Donbass is a cramped theater where real estate is at an absolute premium. They’re either backing up into the sea, key lines of communication, or critical urban areas there. There’s actual operational space in rural Kursk. Second and relatedly, the “forward” defense we’re used to seeing in the Donbass will not inflict crippling casualties on an attacker quickly for the simple reason that attacks often fail in the “cone of fire” in no man’s land or even behind the attacker’s front line, allowing defeated units to easily withdraw. In a conventional defense the attacker is defeated in a kill zone behind the screen line and it is far easier to annihilate an attacking force. Ergo why we’re now seeing huge AFU equipment losses, with entire Ukrainian companies burning out behind the ostensible Russian “front.”
Having found themselves in battle with the AFU’s strategic reserves, the Russians now very much intend to use the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo to destroy as much of those reserves as possible. Even if that means scaring some war mappers on the internet.
Sort of - there were different terms adopted by different countries. Submachine gun was an American term, while machine pistol was used by the Germans, Soviets (as пистолет-пулемёт) and French (as Pistolet Mitrailleur). The Brits had their own preferred term, machine carbine. The confusing part is that later on, machine pistol was also adopted as a term in American usage, except to refer to a specific subtype of submachine gun (in the most literal sense, just pistols that can shoot in full-auto, like the Stechkin, but also more broadly, really compact SMGs that have a form factor comparable to a pistol).
The StG-44 originally being called an MP was just a trick by the designers, since Hitler was initially opposed to it, so in order to keep developing it they just pretended that they were working on a regular SMG to replace the MP-40, and once it was accepted into service they redesignated it to Sturmgewehr. Interestingly, before the Maschinenpistole designation trick, the earliest prototypes were actually called Maschinenkarabiner - the same term the British used (except the Brits used it for guns in pistol-calibers, while the Germans already had Maschinenpistole for them, so Maschinenkarabiner now referred to automatic stuff in a bigger caliber).
So yeah, there’s definitely a bunch of confusing stuff about the terminology - part of the problem is that the focus on the “machine” part made sense when the vast majority of weapons were bolt-action rifles, so having something self-loading was a big deal, and it had to be distinguished from regular guns. But when the vast majority of infantry weapons become self-loading, technically they’re all some kind of machine something.
The “sub” just refers to it being smaller and less powerful than a proper machine gun, but the term is definitely rather vague about the precise point when something shifts from machine gun to submachine gun. And of course, with the later introduction of assault rifles, you now have something sitting between submachine guns and regular machine guns, so the “sub” part kind of doesn’t mean anything anymore. People have mostly settled on using submachine gun to refer to fully-automatic weapons in a pistol caliber, but that’s not something that’s immediately obvious from the term itself
Yeah, this is in a full-power cartridge, 8×50mm - it would be completely uncontrollable and impractical, hence why it never went past the prototype stage.
However, at this point in time, people were still figuring out the definitions, so the pistol-caliber as a requirement hadn’t really set in yet - I assume the designers of this one literally meant “machine gun but small” (hence the sub- prefix)