This is without a doubt one of the best designed scenarios I've played, and I think it was done in the days before Lua. Lots of interaction and events. The developing political situation keeps the excitement up.
I managed to score a very high score (Major Victory - 1033 points) successfully completing all of the objectives and safely landing my amphibious groups on the North side of the island.
I managed to keep my losses low. Basically I made heavy use of recon capabilities early on to identify targets and then I rotated my F-18s and F-35s on strike missions, starting with SAM sites, SSMs (I got all but one that managed to get some missiles off) and then AAA and Infantry. At first it was tempting to go around the map bombing everything, but I knew I would run out of ammo so I concentrated on the landing locations and only those units which were a threat.
I lost a P-3A because I missed two fighters that were near by and 2 F-18s crashed when they ran out of fuel - still have no idea how that happened. One of my ships took a hit from a TOW missile but managed to limp away with only a few % damage and as I bombarded the position TOW with over 200 rounds of 127mm shells from another frigate I was hit by the world's most accurate mortar operator, losing a ship to a few mortar rounds. 200+ shells later from another frigate I managed to kill the TOW missile after I dropped 2 x MK 83s on the mortar.
A few items of note:
- I had read about the civilian plane issue with the scenario so I went into the editor and changed their cruise altitudes, which meant 0 civilian losses.
- I had to use the editor a few times to replace my submarines because they weren't charging, so I just played like they were and ran them at periscope depth for most of the game anyway.
- Subs are completely useless at spotting coastal land targets, even from 2 miles away. Will run a few tests but I don't think this works at all.
- The 25mm guns on helicopters are completely useless - too much so - I think this needs to be fixed to be closer to real life - watching some Apache gun camera videos shows how accurate these guns actually are.
- Similarly, rockets are completely useless. Never scored a single hit with rockets despite having fired almost 100 of them.
- I lost one ship to an 81mm mortar at max range. There is no way a mortar could hit a ship out at sea moving at 28 knots with 70% accuracy.
- The RIM-174A is a seriously bad ass missile, scoring over 80% accuracy.
- The AMRAAM is crap against SU-27s and SU-30s, even at closer than 50% range.
- Hitting land targets with ship guns is still too inaccurate for my taste.
All in all, a great scenario!
I also have to give a bunch of credit to the guys that helped me develop it, I got a lot of good ideas from their input. Continual recon is definitely key, and you have several very capable platforms. F-35 EOTS, F-18 sensor pods, MQ-8... lots of options.