New Scenario for testing NF 11.1 Vagar Vengeance

[AndrewJ]

Aaaaand done!

I actually wound up playing this one in a bunch of chunks, due to technical problems on my end which were preventing some of the events from happening, but if it had run from end to end I think it would have gone something like this.

Both carrier groups were ordered to swing ENE along the British coast to fall in behind the amphibs, rather than making a direct approach to the Faroes. The range was short enough that getting aircraft over the target was not an issue, so there was no need to get much closer. The amphibs were to head due N in column, with ASW cover from the Nimrods, while TG de Ruyter was to head NW towards the amphib landing zones on the E side of the islands. ELINT aircraft, CAP, and ASW patrols were sent out in the usual directions. Upholder headed for its drop-off point, while the geriatric Nordic Narwhal closed in to do a bit of spying.

Things start happening fast. As the French CVBG swings around the front unit reports torpedoes in the water! An ASW torp is shot back down the bearing, the carrier, its close escorts, and the target turn to run, and the other ASW escorts work the target. It turns out to be a very dangerous Sierra, but this close in my ASW aircraft can react rapidly, and the contact is surrounded and killed. (Love those big French ASW helicopters - 4 torpedoes!) After that I split the group in two, pushing the ASW screen further ahead, and proceed up the coast. Other than a couple of Exocets lobbed at a patrol boat, and some Alize ESM work, the French played no other significant role in this fight.

In the air my Harriers take the lead role at first, with their long range AIM-120s being my best air-to-air weapons. They come sneaking in at low level to the east of the islands, keeping in the radar shadow to get close enough to engage the Russian AEW and surveillance helicopters, which I'm very concerned are going to get a solid detection on my ships. (So much so that I turn their jammers on to try and delay the detection.) The low level AMRAAM attack works quite well, and gets rid of ASW helicopters too, but its quite risky because of the Mig-23s that are angrily swarming up, and I have to rely on my Phantoms to bail me out from time to time as I run away. (Which does not always end well for the British Phantoms, with their poor missiles.)

I've detected several patrol boats (and a merchant) around the islands by this point, and an attack with Sea Eagles and Exocets carried by Harriers, Buccaneers, and Super Etendards manages to deal with the isolated units. (Again, staying low to hide in the radar shadow of the islands, so the SA-12s don't slaughter me.) This allows the Upholder to get to its unloading position and unleash the SBS. The Narwhal tries sneaking in on the other side of the island, but it detects another sub first, and at very close range too. This is considered genuinely bad news, because the Narwhal has no ASW torpedoes! All she can do is try and get in the enemy's baffles and disengage, but she's out-sonared, out-gunned, out-dated, and out of luck. The Kilo kills the Narwhal, but then the Nimrod kills the Kilo, so honour is satisfied.

The SBS teams, which are now heading inland, are crucial to this situation. So far the pair of SA-12s and associated SA-15s have been keeping me at bay by staying hidden with radars off until the moment of engagement. But now a series of mysterious explosions start plagueing the Russian radars. Muffled footsteps, shadowy figures, and WHAM!, another radar gone. One team even manages to get one of the SA-12 surveillance radars, while the other makes it to the airbase and finds that demolition charges work very nicely on parked aircraft too!

With their main surveillance radars down the Russians are forced to start using their SAM radars, which allows my incoming Buccaneer and Tornado raid to pop up from behind terrain and engage with ALARMs and Martels. The number of hits on the SAM sites isn't high, but the raid does consume a lot of enemy missiles, and the EO Martels do some useful damage to parked aircraft on the airbase.

With the SAMs down the first airdrops manage to deliver more special forces and artillery. Then, with no high altitude SAM defences left, my airforce is free to roam around with LGBs above the clouds, relying on the special forces below the clouds to designate targets. It takes a lot of hunting around, but the "night of terror" is very productive, eventually clearing the area before the main paradrops the following morning.

While all this is going on the amphibs and escorts continue to head north and then close in on the east side of the island, with TG de Ruyter leading. By this point I've pushed AWACS up NE of the Faroes, and they detect vampire launches from open water. SSGNs! With multiple missiles inbound my CAP burners to intercept, and the ship radars light up to engage. Fortunately, the missiles all seem to be aimed for my lead ship, the little Niels Juel, so they miss the main body of the task group, and I'm able to shoot them down without damage as the TG retires to get away from the shore. There's either a sub there or an observer on land, so the Upholder (which has come around the S side of the island by now) and a helicopter with FLIR are sent to scour the area, but nothing turns up, even when the amphibs start landing their advanced teams by helicopter. Three infantry-men and a radio dug into an invisible hole somewhere, I expect.

I eventually go back, drawing more missile fire, but since my AWACS can see where the missiles appear I have good hunting with my Nimrods. The crews get a little nervous as their fuel gauges drop, and I have to rush a tanker up in support since the Nimrod's tanks are nearly dry (60 km left!) by the time I'm finished.

After this the amphibs arrive, and I redeploy most of my long range SAM ships very near the E side of the island, with a screen of short range SAM ships a few miles further out to sea. The amphibs go in to their respective destination zones and anchor there, each accompanied by a single Sea Wolf ship for final close-in defence. (I've stripped the British carrier group of most of its assets, so the carrier only has one good destroyer and one good frigate in attendance, in order to provide these extra defences for the amphibs.)

A couple of hours later, when unloading is underway, my ESM crews start reporting jamming to the NE. Bomber raid inbound! And most alarmingly, it's escorted by a large number of powerful fighters that outclass anything I've got. I try sending some of my Phantoms around in flanking attacks, hoping I can stay outside their radar arc, but it doesn't work, and the escorts detect the Phantoms and chew them up without loss. I should have kept my Phantoms all back with the Harriers, which are setting up for anti-missile duties. When the missiles arrive, out of the Russian jamming cloud, my CAP gets a few, but it falls to the SAM ships to handle the bulk of the engagement, which they once again manage without loss. (Although a couple of the smaller frigates are now out of missiles, after last-ditch engagements only a mile out.)

I could try and persue the retiring bombers, but they've already turned back with a hundred mile lead, and they're faster than I am unless I go to burner, so my odds of catching them are poor. And then there's the escort... I decide discretion is the best policy and I let them go. My troops are unloading now, and the mission is accomplished.



General Comments

This one's tough because of the timing. The game starts at 3:00, but it's dusk by 5:30 and night by 7:30. So all your optical attacks (the EO Martels and visual bombing) are going to be rendered much less effective before you have a chance to do any recce with the SBS, who probably don't arrive until 6:00 or so. Since the Hercs are going to get themselves shot down at 7:30, you're almost forced to do a rushed blind attack to try and clear their way. I actually switched sides and orbited the arty drop for approximately half an hour in order to clear out some remaining opposition before allowing them to proceed. I wonder if I'd have had good luck with an immediate concentrated strike rushed in in the daytime, but I suspect it would have been a very high casualty operation if I'd included the planes with conventional munitions. (As it was I never actually used them, because it was dark before I had found anything to bomb. Martels, ALARMs, and LGBs were the only munitions expended.) I think either starting earlier in the day, or postponing the initial air-drops would probably be helpful. I suspect in reality the SOF would be in a day or two in advance of the actual operation, although I can see how that would make for a very boring and extended scenario. (Wait! Wait! Now - wait more!)

These concerns aside, this is a very interesting scenario, because of all the different things you can do. Night-ninja attacks with SOF, sub vs sub hunting, pop-up SSGN attacks, anti-shipping, SEAD, bomber raids, zooming around nape of the earth - the works! Heck, I was even looking up the satellite maps of the islands so I could find where the roads were, so my guys could manhandle their air-dropped artillery around. What other scenario gets you to do that? (I restricted them to 2 knots only on actual roads, which is probably optimistic, but much more realistic than 30 kts the game will let you do on the assumption you've got prime movers. I don't even want to think about how they moved all that ammunition!) So all in all I think you've got a winner here with a bit of time tuning.



Miscellaneous technical notes:

The briefing warns us not to damage the airfield, but then we're given Tornados armed with an anti-runway loadout. Essentially that's a 6 hour penalty with those two planes while you swap loadouts.

There's 4 Buccaneers with the AJ168 Martel loadout, and then one single plane with 1 Martel, 1 Sidewinder, and 1 DECM pod, which was puzzling. I don't think this would add any real protective advantage to the formation. I just edited it over so all the planes had the standard loadout.

The Runavik SBS units did not deploy after the helicopter drop.

The 3rd Para does not have any teleport events, so it doesn't appear after the airdrop.

A typo in the briefing: "HMS Upholder: Deliver SBS Teams, then Sea Control 7 ESM." The 7 should be an &.
Another typo in a message: HAHO jump is "competed", rather than completed.

The Tango is not assigned to the Tango patrol, so it just sits there motionless.

The Land Strike mission is set to go after the Invincible group with Hinds. Presumably it was supposed to go against troops on the ground?

The Helix RLD and Hormone B operate at low altitude, so their surface radar coverage is poor. Perhaps they should be at higher altitude? If I set the Helix B for high altitude it can see TG de Ruyter and the N ship of the Invincible group almost immediately. (Although this means the sea control Helixes then go running out to get shot while trying to visually ID TG de Ruyter, and the Hinds have a go at the Invincible group. The Maritime Strike has no interest in TG de Ruyter?)

There may be situations where SAM radar 1 gets destroyed, but not the entire SAM site. This means SAM radar 2 wil not turn on, even though there is now no operational radar at SAM 1, because SAM 1 has not been fully destroyed. I don't know if there's any way around that.

The bombers arrive in a 50 mile long stream, and as a consequence their missile stream was very long, allowing it to be defeated piecemeal. Is there any way to tighten up the bomber stream? Perhaps send them all to a small support mission, so they're close together, and then switching them over to the strike mission?

The WP side considers the SOF side to be Neutral. (The SOF side considers WP to be hostile.)

Plus stuff from the previous posts (paradrop missions on 1/3, and able to repeat, arty drop somewhat optimistic, etc.)

[Gunner98]

Hay guys

Away at the moment with very limited internet. Thanks for the report Andrew, I'll fix those issues and get another version out next week some time.

-Will muster the bombers prior to launching the strike, similar to the way they came in during 'Changing of the Guard'.
-I want the bombers to go after the Amphibs and not the de Ruyter group
-Need to think about the Radar activation sequence. Will work on that.
-Will fix the 1/3 rule stuff and the other mission, loadout & event issues you point out. I cranked this one out a little fast, getting a tad sloppy
-Will put the Helix B on high alt and limit the ships that the Helix's attack, probably the one seen by the 3 guys in a trench [;)]
-Will delay the Arty Drop by 45 min.
-L-118's do para-drop BTW, I doubled their ammo from the DB startup but take your point on lift. They can drop with striped down land rovers I think, ammo moved on trailers and ATVs. I think that Sqn has another 4 C types and I'll add 4 A types as well or maybe 6 for good measure.

Were the guns worthwhile? Did you use Naval Gunfire Support to clean up the Sovs?

B

[magi]

quote... andrewj...

"General Comments

This one's tough because of the timing. The game starts at 3:00, but it's dusk by 5:30 and night by 7:30. So all your optical attacks (the EO Martels and visual bombing) are going to be rendered much less effective before you have a chance to do any recce with the SBS, who probably don't arrive until 6:00 or so. Since the Hercs are going to get themselves shot down at 7:30, you're almost forced to do a rushed blind attack to try and clear their way. I actually switched sides and orbited the arty drop for approximately half an hour in order to clear out some remaining opposition before allowing them to proceed. I wonder if I'd have had good luck with an immediate concentrated strike rushed in in the daytime, but I suspect it would have been a very high casualty operation if I'd included the planes with conventional munitions. (As it was I never actually used them, because it was dark before I had found anything to bomb. Martels, ALARMs, and LGBs were the only munitions expended.) I think either starting earlier in the day, or postponing the initial air-drops would probably be helpful."

i believe this to be true... currently the time line and asset composition puts limits on a successful use of conventional doctrine... isr/istar, sead/dead, control of air/battle space...etc etc...

[AndrewJ]

The guns were useful for cleaning up the NE edge of Vagar. I would really have like them to deal with the SA-12s, but of course you can't get them in while the SA-12s are active. Catch-22! So, you probably won't be using them before the SA-12s are already down, and once those are down you can go tank plinking with 1000 lb LGBs from beyond SA-15 range anyway. So the guns turn out to be helpful, but not necessarily essential. (Although, come to think of it, there's a lot of aimpoints among the motor rifle platoons and whatnot that the guns dealt with before the main drops, and I don't know if I would have had the time or bombs to deal with them all with LGBs alone.)

I didn't do any NGFS at all. The sub in the opening minutes of the game made me quite uneasy about rushing to an enemy held shore under their SAM umbrella where I can't do any ASW reconaissance by air, and the loss of the Narwhal shortly after didn't make me feel any more confident. In addition, there was the possibility that there may be radars and shore-based ASMs in addition to the attack aircraft just waiting for me. I was far more concerned about sweeping my amphibs' path and guarding against the long range air threat, which is why I stationed almost everything on the E side of the island. In retrospect, it might have been okay to detach some of the SeaCat ships late in the game, since their AAW contribution is negligible, or the little Afonso Cerquiera which is a guns only ship, but I really wanted every available escort for the troops.

The other thing was that to be useful they'd have to be there and hitting things before the main drop. So if I want to be there by ~ 3:00 AM, for just an hour's bombardment, I only have 11 hours to get there. The French would have to advance at 25 kts (heck no!), the Brits at 15+ kts, and even TG de Ruyter at 12. If I'm sending just a few isolated units that means poor sonar performance all the way. I'd need a big enough group to do useful sprint and drift, and I really didn't have one.

[Gunner98]

OK

Finally had a chance to work on this one. Change log:

-Adjusted loadouts
-Starts 1 hour earlier
-Delayed the drop of 7 Para by an hour
-Added 3 Hurcs to the 7 Para drop and reduced the ammo
-SBS issues fixed
-3 Para mission fixed
-Typo's fixed
-Missions adjusted and fixed
-Widened scope of the Mar Strike mission
-Cobbled together an NGS group should you chose to use it.

[magi]

cool... finally....

[magi]

Gunner... on your updated NF series in thread.. "post ready scenarios for..." i believe you double did NF 9.2 and skipped NF 9.1...

[Maromak]

ORIGINAL: AndrewJ
The SBS teams, which are now heading inland, are crucial to this situation. So far the pair of SA-12s and associated SA-15s have been keeping me at bay by staying hidden with radars off until the moment of engagement. But now a series of mysterious explosions start plagueing the Russian radars. Muffled footsteps, shadowy figures, and WHAM!, another radar gone. One team even manages to get one of the SA-12 surveillance radars, while the other makes it to the airbase and finds that demolition charges work very nicely on parked aircraft too!

Possibly dumb question. Is there a trick to using the C4? I expended 7 rounds of C4 on the SA-12 and apparently didn't leave a scratch! Using version 819.

[Gunner98]

I think that the distance between the shooter and target is a critical factor. Haven't done it in a while but at max range C4 is near useless but at close range its quite good - too close and you get hit with it yourself.

B

[Gunner98]

Anything on this one guys?

Thanks

B

[magi]

i havent played it through.... on the last try... it was like a time, asset management IQ Test.... that i failed

[Maromak]

Almost done with this one. Has anyone else had issues with SBS/SAS lasing for GR7s? I have multiple SF teams within laser designator range of targets but the GR7s won't drop their LGBs. GR7s give the follow message 'cannot engage ground targets because the cloud cover is too low. There will not be enough altitude clearance to deploy weapon'. The GR7s are flying at 36k ft and the cloud level is at 10k ft.

I am about to try buddy lasing with Buccaneers. I have searched the forum and FAQ but nothing quite covers this topic. I don't think anything is 'broken' just might be in a situation where LGBs can't be used although it seems that others in this thread have been successful.

Update: Have been able to drop LGBs with GR7 and Bucaneer flying at 9k ft which is below the clouds but under the minimum launch altitude for the LGBs.

[Gunner98]

Maromak

I got the illumination to work by going to the SBS unit, F-9, removed the inherit parent settings and physically turning the Laser Designator to Active; However still couldn't get the Harrier to drop as the target went ambiguous on me. I didn't realize you need to do that to get the illumination to work.

Might help

B

[twwaxminer]

Gunner,

I have been trying to play Vagar Vengeance and continue to get the message that the database is not available. I have updated to build 823, am I too far advanced? I have tried to reinstall from the 1.09 and then work back up to the newest database as well.

I have really enjoyed your previous scenarios and can't wait to play this one.

Trent

[Gizzmoe]

ORIGINAL: twwaxminer
I have been trying to play Vagar Vengeance and continue to get the message that the database is not available. I have updated to build 823, am I too far advanced? I have tried to reinstall from the 1.09 and then work back up to the newest database as well.

You went directly from 1.09 to 1.11, the scen needs Database 441, which is part of 1.10, so you need to install that first.

[stilesw]

Gunnar98,

Same problem. I'm using RC22, Build 823, DB Build 844. I cannot load the scenario. I recently reinstalled CMANO releases 1.09, 1.10 and applied RC11 802-823 so, near as I can tell, I'm up to date. Won't say that I'm not doing something wrong though. Thoughts?

-Wayne Stiles

Update - I just read Gizzmoe's message and somehow DB release 441 did not get included in my 1.09/1.10 reinstall. Anyway I found DB 441 and added it - now the scenario works fine.

Thanks Gizzmoe.

-Wayne Stiles

[Gunner98]

Correct, DB 441. When I do an update I'll bring it up to 444 or whichever is the current DB. Hope it all works now

B

[twwaxminer]

Which update was DB 441 in? It is not appearing in my DB list for some reason.

[stilesw]

I found it in the Update to V1.10, UpdatePack_B775.16.zip. It came out on February 6, 2016.

-Wayne Stiles

[twwaxminer]

Wayne Stiles,

Thank you. Now I can't seem to find that updatepack anywhere. Any suggestions where to search for it?

Trent