1988 Global War Game Western and Southwestern Theaters AAR

[larryfulkerson]

Most of my planes are in reorg and a lot more are resting. I'm using 50% as the cutoff for whether or not to rest an aircraft unit. And the greatest majority of my aircraft are either in reorg or are resting. Out of the 249 aircraft units I have about 50 of them are flying. Part of the problem is that the WP gets to move first so they get to shoot first and the WP has a few SSM's with a tremendous range and if you do an airfield strike with one of those on a NATO airfield you'll kill some planes and drive the rest of them into reorg. And one of the favorite things for the WP to do is airfield strikes. And the next turn he can strike the airfield again and kill some more planes and leave the rest in reorg. So I hardly ever get a chance to strike back or move the planes to safety. This is a major problem for the scenario IMHO.

[LOK32MK]

Larry makes a good point. The SSM airfield strikes are way too effective in TOAW (so are port strikes by ships btw). Sometimes they are only marginally effective with 1-2% aircraft losses, but sometimes they produce significant (10-20%) aircraft losses. Airfield strikes by bombers almost never result in such losses.
I tried to reproduce the OOB as accurately as possible, so I'd hate to arbitrarily remove SSM units from the OOB. The Warsaw Pact did have a lot of SSM brigades/regiments - a lot of them not very accurate.
There are several possible solutions to this problem: combine several SSM brigades/regiments with fewer missiles, reduce the number of SSMs in each unit etc. I am open to suggestions to what people think it's the best approach.

The Theater Options are explained in the briefing. Basically, both players have the option to activate or attack most neutral countries. However, once one player has selected a Theater Option to attack a neutral country e.g., the Warsaw Pact player attacks Austria there is no reason for the NATO player to activate the same country (Austria). It's already activated.
I will make sure all Theater Options are removed for both players once a neutral country has been attacked or activated.

[larryfulkerson]

So um........hey you guys...I think I found another problem with this scenario. The CD guns don't seem to want to target ships within it's range. And I can't change it to "T" status for some reason. I can't tell if there's a yellow band across the bottom of the unit or not.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

So um........hey you guys...I think I found another problem with this scenario. The CD guns don't seem to want to target ships within it's range. And I can't change it to "T" status for some reason. I can't tell if there's a yellow band across the bottom of the unit or not.

Could be a "fixed artillery" instead of "coast artillery" icon- that would prevent it attacking units at sea. The formation report seems to suggest the formation isn't in garrison status (yellow band), I think it's the unit icon again preventing a deployment status change. In any case if it has the right icon the status shouldn't matter.

[LOK32MK]

The units have the correct icon - coastal artillery, not fixed artillery. I changed it to the other coastal artillery icon to avoid confusion.
I am not sure why they cannot be changed it to "T" status, but I've seen the same issue in other scenarios. I will deploy them in F mode and hopefully that will solve the issue.

[cathar1244]

ORIGINAL: LOK32MK

Larry makes a good point. The SSM airfield strikes are way too effective in TOAW (so are port strikes by ships btw). Sometimes they are only marginally effective with 1-2% aircraft losses, but sometimes they produce significant (10-20%) aircraft losses. Airfield strikes by bombers almost never result in such losses.
I tried to reproduce the OOB as accurately as possible, so I'd hate to arbitrarily remove SSM units from the OOB. The Warsaw Pact did have a lot of SSM brigades/regiments - a lot of them not very accurate.
There are several possible solutions to this problem: combine several SSM brigades/regiments with fewer missiles, reduce the number of SSMs in each unit etc. I am open to suggestions to what people think it's the best approach.

The Theater Options are explained in the briefing. Basically, both players have the option to activate or attack most neutral countries. However, once one player has selected a Theater Option to attack a neutral country e.g., the Warsaw Pact player attacks Austria there is no reason for the NATO player to activate the same country (Austria). It's already activated.
I will make sure all Theater Options are removed for both players once a neutral country has been attacked or activated.

Hard to tell without looking at the specific equipment.

The equipment file could be modified to reduce the AP value of the SSM units.

The SSM units could be placed into several dedication formations with lower formation proficiency to force them to reorg more an not be as available.

-Break, new topic: coastal artillery-

Look at the equipment used and ensure it has the correct settings (anti shipping is set in FLAG3 values). If all else fails, look at a scenario in which coastal artillery works and examine the characteristics of the equipment used.

Cheers

[LOK32MK]

Coastal Artillery:
The unit in question contains "standard" equipment: light coastal ASM (see screenshot).
The unit in the equipment file has the correct flag:
<ITEM_555>
<NAME>Light Coastal ASM</NAME>
<COUNTRY>Common equipment</COUNTRY>
<EQUIP1>264</EQUIP1>
<EQUIP2>372</EQUIP2>
<AT>0</AT>
<AP>120</AP>
<AA>0</AA>
<DF>10</DF>
<ARTY_RNG>20</ARTY_RNG>
<EARLY_RNG>0</EARLY_RNG>
<SAM_RNG>0</SAM_RNG>
<NUKE>0</NUKE>
<VOL>0</VOL>
<WEIGHT>0</WEIGHT>
<SHELL_W>0</SHELL_W>
<ARMOR>0</ARMOR>
<FLAG0>128</FLAG0>
<FLAG1>32</FLAG1>
<FLAG2>0</FLAG2>
<FLAG3>34</FLAG3>
<FLAG4>0</FLAG4>
<FLAG5>0</FLAG5>
<FLAG6>0</FLAG6>
<FLAG7>0</FLAG7>
</ITEM_555>
I will test the scenario now that I changed the deployment to "F".

On the SSM issue:
I will probably remove several SSM bdes/regiments and consolidate the rest into a just a few SSM units. Hopefully that would limit the number of airfield attacks.

[larryfulkerson]

'I will test the scenario now that I changed the deployment to "F".'

I fail to see how just changing the CD gun's status to "F" will somehow allow it to target ships. I never got an "attack" cursor when hovering over the enemy ship stack. Changing the status to "F" gives the CD guns a dug-in mode and "F" is one of the modes that allows shooting by the unit. But will it?

[cathar1244]

I fail to see how just changing the CD gun's status to "F" will somehow allow it to target ships. I never got an "attack" cursor when hovering over the enemy ship stack. Changing the status to "F" gives the CD guns a dug-in mode and "F" is one of the modes that allows shooting by the unit. But will it?

Larry, it was a good catch on your part.

The equipment in question is actually a generic "light coastal anti ship missile". I don't think that should make a difference, but I would have to compare the equipment description to a CD gun in a scenario where the CD guns work as intended to be sure.

I looked at some fixed gun descriptions. The difference was that they were marked for anti-ship capability, but were not flagged as "anti ship only" -- which the generic "light coastal ASM" equipment is. In the equipment, this distinction is made in FLAG3, which equals "2" for the fixed guns and "34" for the coastal ASM equipment.

Not sure if this is the root of the problem, but it may point to a need to test the modern equipment for naval and air action to see if it performs as expected.

Another thing I wonder about is if the scenario EW settings or other global settings could somehow inhibit the coastal missiles from firing. I would think such effects would occur in combat resolution, not during the target selection phase made by a player.

Cheers

[LOK32MK]

Coastal Guns bug fixed. I think the issue was the garrison mode of the formation.
The Coastal Guns now fire on naval units.

[coachi]

Can you send me updated version of game

[LOK32MK]

Give me a few more days to fix some of the bugs we found, and I will be happy to send it to you.

[LOK32MK]

Quick update: After some discussion we decided to stop play-testing this version and fix all the bugs we found. As soon as I finish the new version, I will post it on a website for people to download.
The issue of the WP airfield strikes has been resolved by limiting the range of the long-range Warsaw Pact SSMs units (mostly long-range Scud SSMs) to about the same range as the NATO Lance SSM units (15 hexes vs. 13). A couple of Warsaw Pact SSM units near Moscow kept their original range to counterbalance the Pershing II and GLCM NATO/US units. The NATO (and WP player) would have to keep its aircraft away from the front to avoid airfield strikes.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: LOK32MK

Quick update: After some discussion we decided to stop play-testing this version and fix all the bugs we found. As soon as I finish the new version, I will post it on a website for people to download.
The issue of the WP airfield strikes has been resolved by limiting the range of the long-range Warsaw Pact SSMs units (mostly long-range Scud SSMs) to about the same range as the NATO Lance SSM units (15 hexes vs. 13). A couple of Warsaw Pact SSM units near Moscow kept their original range to counterbalance the Pershing II and GLCM NATO/US units. The NATO (and WP player) would have to keep its aircraft away from the front to avoid airfield strikes.

Actually that shouldn't be detramental to the scenario's gameplay simply because the range on most of the NATO aircraft is generally generous. Some NATO aircraft can reach most of the map from England. As soon as the new version is out I intend to do a cut and paste of the aircraft of both sides and post it so that anybody can peruse it as need be, especially me to get a better idea of what NATO is up against, since the Warsaw Pact has a greater number of aircraft than NATO but the quality of the NATO aircraft usually trumps whatever the Soviets are fielding, generally speaking. I'm curious to see what difference it might make to set the aircraft on a single-dot stance versus setting all the aircraft on "ignore losses". I suppose it really depends on the proficiency of each side compairatively speaking.

[LOK32MK]

for anyone who was following or interested in this scenario AAR. I updated the scenario based on the feedback from Larry during our playtesting.
The updated version and other scenarios can be found here:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5145183

[coachi]

Is there a po. Would like to learn it first

[LOK32MK]

I am afraid the scenario is for PBEM. The PO will not work well, and I did not optimize for the PO. If you want to get a feel for the scenario, I recommend play in hot seat or play test it with a friend.