New Scenario for Testing: World War 85 - Kamchatka

[MBot]

This is my first scenario for CMANO. The Carl Vinson and Kitty Hawk CVBGs are moving in on Kamchatka to strike the submarine facilities at Petropavlovsk. I selected the year 1985 to have more emphasis on fleet air defence, ASW and strike operations and less on fighter air combat. The scenario is quite long and slow paced at some points, but I wanted to give the player enough room and time to approach the target in a deliberate manner.

Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. If this is received well, I might expand this to a small series of scenarios.

Some questions regarding scenario editing:
-The default file name for user-saves for this scenario is the name under which I saved the scenario for the first time (which was just a working title). Is there a way to change this default to the current scenario file name?

-I wanted a message to pop up when an area has been cleared of all enemy submarines (whose amount is variable). Since I did not find a trigger like "unit NOT in area" I set it up as follows: A dummy side is used as a variable and points for this side as value. A repeating trigger adds +1 to the variable as long as there are subs in the area. A second repeating trigger continuously subtracts 1 from the variable. As long as there are subs, the variable remains at 0. Once all subs are destroyed, the variable drops below 0 and a message is triggered. Now, is the performance hit of having two triggers firing every second something I should worry about? And is there a simpler way to achieve the same goal?


Edit 15 September 2015: Scenario file updated
Edit 25 September 2015: Scenario file updated

[Tomcat84]

For the last part: is it completely about destroying all the subs, or is it also an option that the enemy subs leave the area without being destroyed? If the former and they all need to be destroyed then maybe a simpler way is to add 1 point to a non player side every time when a sub is destroyed and when the score reaches the amount of subs, trigger the message. Make sense?

[MBot]

It is also about subs leaving the area. So the trigger has to detect "no more subs in area" rather than "x subs destroyed".

[AlexGGGG]

I would like more false subsurface contacts. Currently, there does not seem to be any?

[MBot]

There are about 1.5 times as much randomly placed biologics are there are submarines. Are false contacts any different than biologics?

[magi]

nope

[magi]

gonna try it....

id like to see this a little richer.. couple of more layers of events...
ok.... id like Shemya to be under my control.... i think there should be more purpose and assets at shemya... its just kind of there as some token now..... maybe have the commies try to strike it or something...

some supply ships with the cvbg or a supply group trailing might be cool... that has to defend itself...

[AlexGGGG]

I see that... well you may want to bump that 1.5x to, say, 3x. Currently, as far as ASW goes, the sea is sort of devoid of life. I don't believe sailing for close to 10 hours, sinking two submarines, and not seeing a single whale?

[hellfish6]

Are the "Add Counter Subs" and "Subtract Counter Subs" events supposed to be firing constantly?

[MBot]

ORIGINAL: hellfish6
Are the "Add Counter Subs" and "Subtract Counter Subs" events supposed to be firing constantly?

Yes, as mentioned above this was the only way I could make a "no unit in area" event make to work. One of the scenario objectives is to sink all subs anchored in the harbour. A trigger constantly checks whether there are still subs in the harbour and adds to the counter. Another trigger constantly subtracts from the counter. As long as the objective is incomplete, the counter remains in balance. Once all subs in the harbour are sunk, the counter starts to drop below zero and a third event triggers the completion of the objective.


Another question, is there a way to have a trigger on laying mines? One of the scenario objectives is to mine the harbour enterance, but so far I have exluded this from determining scenario victory.

[wild_Willie2]

Hi, I played the scenario until I destroyed all subs and its a good scenario with plenty of potential but am I missing something or has the trigger for the Backfire strike not been put in?

I intercepted all Bears before they could spot my TF on radar and thought, this is lame so I let the last Bear close on my TF and activated all bells and whistles in my TF and nothing happened. I checked the editor and could not detect a trigger so I guess that this still is a work in progress?

Also, the USSR's air opposition is a bit laughable, in two fighter sweeps my Tomcats destroyed all enemy AC without them even getting of a single shot of. Also, using two carriers for this mission is overkill, with some planning you can easily destroy all the air defense sites around the harbor and the subs/ships in it with a single strike.

[AlexGGGG]

I seen at least one Backfire strike, but either I was out of range or they didn't see me, but they did return back to base without firing a single shot. The strike was escorted heavily with the jammer aircraft.

[MBot]

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2

Hi, I played the scenario until I destroyed all subs and its a good scenario with plenty of potential but am I missing something or has the trigger for the Backfire strike not been put in?

I intercepted all Bears before they could spot my TF on radar and thought, this is lame so I let the last Bear close on my TF and activated all bells and whistles in my TF and nothing happened. I checked the editor and could not detect a trigger so I guess that this still is a work in progress?

Also, the USSR's air opposition is a bit laughable, in two fighter sweeps my Tomcats destroyed all enemy AC without them even getting of a single shot of. Also, using two carriers for this mission is overkill, with some planning you can easily destroy all the air defense sites around the harbor and the subs/ships in it with a single strike.

Thank you for your feedback. The Backfires are not triggered but set up with an open strike mission, so they should launch as soon as your ships are detected. I agree though that Soviet recon is quite limited. The patrol aircraft are easily held at distance and sonar performance of Soviet submarines is laughable. If I let the mission run withouth launching Tomcats, the Backfires do destroy at least a carrier. I would love to make the threat of a Backfire strike bigger, any ideas how to make Soviet recon more potent?

Regarding the Soviet fighter defence, a Su-15 regiment was all that was historically based on Kamchatka in that period, so I wanted to keep this. Regarding the two carriers, I belief that such high threat areas (also Norwegian Sea or Eastern Med) would not have been entered without at least two CVBG. One carrier alone is actually not able to continously put enough Tomcats in the air to defeat a divisional Backfire strike.

[wild_Willie2]

If I can give you some advice, have a look how Yokes build his Kamchatka scenario (Kitty Comes To Kamchatka ). His scenario is basically the same sort of scenario as you have set up but with just a single carrier and a much stronger air opposition (although his Backfire strike is preplanned, it's NASTY). Have a look and if necessary modify some of his ideas and credit him in the scenario description accordingly. Alternatively, use satellites to detect the US fleet and trigger the Backfire strike. Also make the random deployment area of your subs smaller, I now only found and destroyed a single one (also found 5 biologics) as the rest of the subs turned out to be deployed to the west of my route and strike point. As players will have to wait until they are at least within 400-500 miles from Kamchatka until they can perform a meaningful strike and mostly tend to not vary their course to much in order to get there ASAP, you can exploit this by preplacing subs in their route (I would not worry to much about replay value, this scenario is to small for this. just offer players a solid single or two play scenario with preplaced subs instead ).

Also let your submarines use kinematic range launches against targets, this lets them at least get a shot of before they come to close to the TF and are almost certainly detected and destroyed by the US ASW screen before getting a shot of.

Good luck!!

[AlexGGGG]

MBot,

When I was playing, it at least looked like the Backfires came near the range to shoot at me, but turned bingo fuel just before the range. I'm not sure if it is possible, but maybe you can set the mission so that they do not takeoff before I'm close.

[MBot]

ORIGINAL: AlexGGGG

MBot,

When I was playing, it at least looked like the Backfires came near the range to shoot at me, but turned bingo fuel just before the range. I'm not sure if it is possible, but maybe you can set the mission so that they do not takeoff before I'm close.

I do not think range is a problem, I just had a very successful Backfire strike almost at scenario start. I belief this might be related to the target contacts getting dropped after too much time, at which point the Backfires returned to base due to lack of target (I have seen it once too). I hope I can resolve this by giving the Soviets a more robust recon.

[magi]

What Willie says is pretty right..... I would like to see it a little more evolved some more layers of events… Would make it more demanding an immersive… Like there could be in here screen around Russian facilities… And some logistics going on or something like that... would be cool and more assets at Shemya...
I'm only a few hours into it and playing it right now actually… I like the basic premise of scenario a lot… Good luck…

[AlexGGGG]

I concur with magi that some screen around Russian base would be nice. So far, I figured I can sort of cheat by driving subs at flank speed inside the base and shoot there. I cannot get subs, because the shore and geometry does not permit a torpedo shot, but I can get ships and this weakens Russian SAM capability at least somewhat. TO a full blown cheat, Baloogan-style, I fired a nuclear SUBROC at the subs That did some good damage. From the Russian perspective, I would certainly have approaches to the base and probably the narrow part of the waterway mined, just for the case of rouge sub driving in.

[MBot]

Thanks again for all the feedback and suggestions. I made some adjustments and updated the scenario in the first post.

-I found a mistake by me that actually prevented all subs from opening fire. I was under the impression that units would assume the ROE of a mission when it was activated. It turns out they do not (I thought I could have a different ROE for units before they go on activated missions). So now all subs should attack correctly.
-Then I made the Soviet submarine screen stronger and set up more deliberately instead of just having a large random patrol area. The most capable subs of the Pacific Fleet (Victor IIIs and one Akula) are now forming a barrier which should greatly increase chances of even making contact with the Task Force. This in turn should solve targeting problems for the Backfires as well as provide targeting for SSGN in position behind. Otherwise Echo II and Charlie I will pretty much never find a target on their own (a flanking carrier needs to approach to 4 NM to be detected by their sonar).
-US SSN removed, as I do not think they add much to the overall scenario (and would probably have been sweeping the area way earlier anyway than the scope of this scenario).
-Concentrated biologics more closer to the player's task force.


I consciously left out meaningful Soviet coastal and ASW defenses of the base (other than some ships for scenery) as well as P-3s from the Aleutians, as I became concerned about performance if they start to drop hundreds of sonobuoys. The scenario is quite long and requires a lot of time acceleration which already now hardly goes above 15x (quickly testing anything beyond a couple hours after mission start became next to impossible). I think adding even more stuff will kill it. I removed the US subs, so the lack of Soviet ASW doesn't matter that mach (let's just assume both is happening behind stage).

Regarding the overall composition and strength of the enemy (fighters, air defence, subs) I would like to keep it like that. The scenario represents to the best of my knowledge the assets available in the area in May 1985. I wanted to make this scenario also to study this real-world setup for my own curiosity. So if it turns out a USN carrier attack on Petropavlovsk would have been a walk in the park in 1985, then my scenario will also be easy The concentration of subs in front of the task force might already streching it as far as bias for the Soviets goes.

[hellfish6]

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2

Hi, I played the scenario until I destroyed all subs and its a good scenario with plenty of potential but am I missing something or has the trigger for the Backfire strike not been put in?

I intercepted all Bears before they could spot my TF on radar and thought, this is lame so I let the last Bear close on my TF and activated all bells and whistles in my TF and nothing happened. I checked the editor and could not detect a trigger so I guess that this still is a work in progress?

Also, the USSR's air opposition is a bit laughable, in two fighter sweeps my Tomcats destroyed all enemy AC without them even getting of a single shot of. Also, using two carriers for this mission is overkill, with some planning you can easily destroy all the air defense sites around the harbor and the subs/ships in it with a single strike.

I had a Backfire strike on me. Actually surprised me pretty badly - I'd never been on the receiving end of a large-scale off-axis missile strike before. I didn't take any losses, but it was very, very close going. Took me a while to understand what I was seeing because the jammers were so effective.