Out of Megiddo -- The Battle of the Arabian Sea, 1973 (new beta for testing)

[Mgellis]

Newest beta for testing...it's 1973 and Nixon has declared war on the Soviet Union. A carrier battle group in the Arabian Sea must destroy a Soviet convoy and eliminate all other Soviet elements in its area of operation.

As always, I'm interested in any suggestions, observations, etc. that people have to offer. Thanks!

[NickD]

As an initial comment, what you've uploaded includes the scenario and a save file - did you mean for the latter to be a .ini file?

[Mgellis]

Ooops! Yes, I did mean for it to be the .ini file. I've fixed the .zip file if anyone wants the .ini file. Thanks for spotting that one!

[MR_BURNS2]

Something odd happened in my game, i had 6 phantoms on my CAP mission, Sundowner #11,12,7,8,9 and 10. After i RTB´ed my first pair the others took off, minutes later i noticed that they all set a course roughly for St. Helena and got unassigned from the CAP mission.

Do you have any AI to teleport, events etc in that area there? The Devs should probably take a look at this.

[Mgellis]

ORIGINAL: MR_BURNS2

Something odd happened in my game, i had 6 phantoms on my CAP mission, Sundowner #11,12,7,8,9 and 10. After i RTB´ed my first pair the others took off, minutes later i noticed that they all set a course roughly for St. Helena and got unassigned from the CAP mission.

Do you have any AI to teleport, events etc in that area there? The Devs should probably take a look at this.

No teleport events in this scenario. More likely solution...I've got a bunch of neutral air traffic flights in the scenario and some of the flights do run to the southwest of the battle group--if you went in that direction long enough you would get to St. Helena; even at the default zoom level for the scenario, some of those flights would be "off stage." The Sundowners may have noticed a contact, did not know it was a commercial flight--too far away--and went after it to find out what it was.

[dillonkbase]

First, thank you for the small scenario.. my CPU is so grateful.


The new persecution box really make dealing with all your commercial trafic much easier... you just tell everything to hold fire so you can I stuff.

However....

I think the weather in the scenario is causing issues for the Walleyes... either the weapon or my pilots can't find holes in the clouds at 5-7 to fire the weapons through.. and they cannot go any lower and still launch that weapon...

While this may be a realist problem... if you want weather to limit load outs... at least mention the weather in the briefing.

the soviet AI also seems a little reluctant to engage... I buzzed some ships with the recon flights and was not fired at...

Finally the way aircraft come to readiness is a little weird, the briefing said we had been planning this for a few weeks... and that execution was at my order... but the way the birds ready times are staggered makes me think the airboss has his own strategy in mind... I'd like to know what he suggests if he is going to be so opinionated.

[Mgellis]

ORIGINAL: dillonkbase

First, thank you for the small scenario.. my CPU is so grateful.


The new persecution box really make dealing with all your commercial trafic much easier... you just tell everything to hold fire so you can I stuff.

However....

I think the weather in the scenario is causing issues for the Walleyes... either the weapon or my pilots can't find holes in the clouds at 5-7 to fire the weapons through.. and they cannot go any lower and still launch that weapon...

While this may be a realist problem... if you want weather to limit load outs... at least mention the weather in the briefing.

the soviet AI also seems a little reluctant to engage... I buzzed some ships with the recon flights and was not fired at...

Finally the way aircraft come to readiness is a little weird, the briefing said we had been planning this for a few weeks... and that execution was at my order... but the way the birds ready times are staggered makes me think the airboss has his own strategy in mind... I'd like to know what he suggests if he is going to be so opinionated.

I added a line in the orders file letting people know it might be an issue--normally, what I do with weather is I just look up what weather was likely to be like at the time of year and put it in. Sometimes it makes a difference and sometimes it doesn't.

Actually, I'm assuming that while the US has been on heightened alert for a while, the order to go to war comes rather quickly--Nixon decides the Soviets are going to act and decides to strike first. In fact, the Soviets are surprised (they're set on "unfriendly" to the US rather than "hostile" when the scenario starts) that a war has started, although they are certainly ready to fight when they realize a fight is on. So I'm assuming that the carrier is not fully prepared to make a strike on a moment's notice...they've got more planes ready to go than they might under normal circumstances, but the order to go to war is both a bit of a surprise and comes sooner than people thought it would even if they were sure it was coming.

(In fairness to Nixon, I'm assuming he makes an attempt to fight a "limited" war--he wants to destroy the Soviet forces that are already deployed but not attack the Soviet Union itself. That way, the Soviets will basically have the choice of backing down or fighting a war when they are already behind the curve, but they won't have to fight because the Soviet Union itself is not being threatened with nuclear annihilation, and Nixon is sure they'll choose to back down.)

Those pesky politicians!

[Mgellis]

Any other observations, suggestions, etc.? Or is this ready to submit to the Community Scenario Pack? Thanks!