New 'Long Scenario' for testing NF 12.6 The Longest Battle

[Excroat3]

Just wondering, what's the backstory for South Africa being included? Not that I know much, but I have never really read anything about them cooperating with NATO, only select western countries (Israel mostly). During NF, are they fighting Angola with Cuban support again, and just decided to join up with NATO to get that extra boost?

[Ferret69]

I've actually talked to Gunner about SA, I'd assume that due to the Cold War not ending that SA continued operations in Angola, maybe they would've co-operated with NATO to get political capital, possibly the removal of Resolution 418.

Yeah, there weren't many sadly, my father served in Angola for the SADF, so I naturally want more of their stuff included.

Ferret

[Gunner98]

Africa is not well plotted out in my storyline but you essentially have it:

Continued Soviet Proxy activity in Angola, Namibia and Mozambique. More 'Mugabe' problems in Zimbabwe. South Africa is just coming through the Apartheid era, and trying to re-join the western world because of increased regional isolation.

NATO is keen on having a friend in southern Africa and are promising to assist with military procurement and expedite removal of sanctions and restoring the economy. So South Africa joined the fray alongside NATO in a pragmatic gesture, but their military is not in great shape after a decade of sanctions and almost 20 years of arms embargo. The single most important benefit for NATO is secure basing rights. For South Africa its re-integration with the west.

B

[Gunner98]

The problem with the Impala II's is range. Same with the Mirage and the Cheetah. Perhaps a couple old Canberra's and critically the 707 conversions, tanker and EW/ELINT.

I'll take a look at getting some more stuff in the game.

Eventually when I get round to doing Indian Fury, the scrap in Africa will for showcased but that is a long way away, unfortunately.

B

[Ferret69]

I'd rather have more C-47s than the Canberra or Impala II, would I would like, with the Buccaneers out of the question, are those 707 conversions. They can do me quite well I reckon, the ELINT one in particular.

[Gunner98]

I think we can do something with that. I'll upload an import file tonight.

B

[Gunner98]

OK here is an import file which contains a few SAAF AC, included the 707s, 2 Canberra's and 4 Buc's just for fun - they've got a decent weapon choice.

Also put in a DB request to improve the replenishment ship SAS Outeniqua (A-302)

All you need to do is unzip the attached into your ImportExport folder (I would make a sub folder called Misc or something) and import it in the editor. Let me know if you have any issues.

[Excroat3]

I also had to delete the current Cape Town airport in order to load the new one that contains more aircraft.

[magi]

thank yous guys....

[magi]

got these messages.... had some others like this before....


5:00:00 PM - Event: 'Argentina Check' was triggered but did NOT fire (at least one condition failed).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'Weather Check' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Texas' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship South Carolina' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Ind O' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Rio' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship NYC' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Med' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Halifax' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Europe' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Chesapeake' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New Ship Cape Town' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).
5:00:00 PM - Event: 'New ship Panama' was triggered but did NOT fire (failed probability check).

[Gunner98]

Yeah, you'll get them every hour. There are a bunch of random probability based events that happen. The event trigger has a time check so: every 1 min etc - Unfortunately the longest interval is an hour. So I needed to set the checks for every hour with a low probability instead of every day with a higher success rate.

B

[magi]

well its ok with me.... i wouldn't have enough escorts anyhoo......

[AndrewJ]

Hello,

I just noticed that almost all of the Unload and Handoff triggers are set to use the Indian Ocean Handoff zone, instead of the individual zones for each region.

[AndrewJ]

Out of curiosity, how long does it take you to write one of these? Flipping through the different events and whatnot is giving me a better appreciation of how much goes into them.

[Gunner98]

Well I don't really keep track - but quite a bit. Someone asked me the same question a couple years ago and I think I said 20-25 hours - but that's probably low balling it somewhat. Don't think I want to keep track, it might discourage me [;)]

This one probably took the longest - it is a tad huge. Probably upwards of 60 hours, that's a guess.

The first part is coming up with the story and since these are all linked to the same thread, that's not too difficult. Most of the time went into that months and years ago, but it was a big effort.

Plotting out the units is the quickest and simplest part, I have the OOB in mind and largely researched in advance. Figuring out the opposing force is trickier, enough to be challenging but not overwhelming. Rely on you guys to keep me honest with that bit. I used to playtest them to death - probably played Northern Fury 1 & 8 a dozen times each. Now I play to make sure things work and hand it over to you guys as your much better players than I am.

I tend to spend quite a bit of time writing up the briefings. To me the story is the critical bit, so the briefings weave that story into the scenario. Also the story gets fed into in game messages which need to be synched up with both the current scenario and the other scenarios either preceding, following or running in parallel.

The events take some effort as well, but they are the real meat of the game so its worth it.

I truly enjoy building the scenarios more than playing them. Don't get me wrong, I love playing the game as well, but its the building that keeps me coming back to it.

Anyway - since I'm not on the road I should get my butt back into building 'Bump in the Night' the next NF edition.

Enjoy.

B

[AndrewJ]

Hoo boy, the waters are hot around the Azores...

The first missiles turned on their radars right between the two frigates screening the front of a 37 merchant convoy out of Gibraltar, prompting my ships to light up too. Those missiles missed (presumably fired at coarse CZ contacts), and I was able to shoot down the next few while everything that flew converged on the area and finally managed to pin down the Oscar some 35 miles out. Brown pants all round, but the Oscar was shooting based on poor targeting, and only got off about half its missiles, so no losses. Celebration!

The second Oscar a few minutes later was further out. It got off almost all its missiles before my frantic helicopters could close in and sink it. SAMs went flying everywhere, some missiles were shot down, some overflew or missed due to coarse targeting, but then I mostly ran out of SAMs. Those box launchers for Sea Sparrow and SeaWolf just don't have the capacity to handle a major engagement like this. One merchant and on British warship went down, frantically trying to reload. Losing ships is never good, but trading two lesser ships for two Soviet capital ships like Oscars is probably marginally in my favour.

I never saw the third Oscar. [:(] It launched everything. A radical convoy course change saved me from some of the missiles, but the remainder struck home and two more merchants and another three frigates went down, firing off their last few SAMs as they went. Now I've got to get 34 merchants across 3/4 of the ocean with 3 exhausted frigates for escorts. If there's another Oscar out there these guys are toast.

Tense times... What a difference an Aegis ship could have made...


Triggers: the triggers for the loss of most auxiliary and merchants are set to the WHEC type, instead of the appropriate class for each trigger. Most military ship loss triggers are set to FFL. SSN loss triggers are set to SS.

[Gunner98]

Thanks Andrew

The early days of cloning have struck. I notice that if I cloned a bunch of triggers (or teleport actions) they were all slaved to the last type selected until you physically exited the game and restarted it. I reported it back then but this one must have slipped through, I think its fixed now but I still don't trust cloning that often.

I'm happy to see that the Oscar trap worked [:D] but losing two of them is expensive. My thought was that this would be a major focus of one of the ASW hunter killer groups, maybe even the Kennedy CVBG. The Oscar situation would be something your N-2 world would be tracking:

Oscar II
K-148 Krasnodar
K-119 Voronezh
K-410 Smolensk
K-266 Severodvinsk (this one engaged off NY in NF 3, sunk in NF 10.1)
K-141 Kursk
K-173 Krasnoyarsk Pacific
K-132 Irkutsk Pacific
K-442 Chelyabinsk Pacific
K-456 Kasatka Pacific
K-198 Omsk Pacific

Oscar I
K-525 Arkhangelsk
K-206 Murmansk

One of them engaged the Ike off of Spain (NF 9.1) and would need to re-arm. One of them was operating off Iceland, where has that gone? So if you sank two, and were engaged by a third, than 2 are still out there somewhere.. perhaps... or maybe their doing something else[:D]

[AndrewJ]

I have to laugh, because I went Googling for Oscars to try and figure out exactly how many of these wretched things were out there, just like your chart. I remember the one off Iceland, and I bet (hope) it's still busy with the invasion and the carriers. I'm glad I sank that sub tender in the African bay (it finally burned out and went down), because the last thing I need is the third one coming back with reloads. At the moment it's just a quiet, powerful, exceptionally rugged nuclear attack sub with 650mm torpedoes and long range ASW missiles...

Since Kennedy's headed north, I hope the use of AWACS and CAP and some better AA escorts will let me deal with SSGNs slightly more effectively in that area. The Panama to Europe convoy and the Texas to Europe convoy may not be so lucky.

[AndrewJ]

March 1 1994, 20:00 Zulu.

First merchant unloads! "War good as won" says Secretary of the Navy. "Mission accomplished" proclaims president. "One lone ship from Halifax to New York without any losses. A magnificent demonstration of naval power." [:D]

So maybe it's not quite that significant, but a good excuse for a sitrep nonetheless.

The fight against the Russians continues. After the Oscar attack I tried putting an ASW aircraft cordon between the probable location of the third Oscar and the African coast, in case it was headed for the location of the sunken sub tender, but nothing turned up. The damned thing could be anywhere. Hopefully they don't have any missiles tucked away in an African port somewhere. At the moment my forces are claiming 6 lesser SS (including that ugly Romeo conversion), 8 moderns SS (various Kilos, including the Cuban one), 7 SSN (including an ancient Hotel), and 3 SSGN (the third being a Charlie up north). Rather alarmingly, intel is also muttering about the Russians losing a Badger in theatre, although they won't tell me where. (It showed up unexpectedly on the losses chart.)

Westbound convoys in the north are closing in on the Grand Banks, passing the Eastbound convoys in the same area. A new convoy is leaving the Brest area, with 14 freighters and the repaired T-AKR (freshly patched in Portsmouth), mostly escorted by second-rate ships coming on station in the last few days. The convoy which tangled with the Oscars near the Azores continues on, gradually dropping a trail of damaged stragglers behind it. (I've got a tug coming out of Europe to bring home one mangled tanker with no engines left.) Near Bermuda I've got escorts dropping in to top off their tanks before heading back to their eastbound convoy. My Panama to Med convoy is getting a bit nervous as it watches some if its escorts heading back to the mainland for lack of fuel. Hopefully nothing too dangerous lurks in its path. The Asturias is bringing its eastward bound convoys across the equator now, but the westbound ones have branched off and are heading up the coast of South America (albeit ~ 250 miles out) without escort. Nobody's available to escort them, poor fellows. TG Stump, way down south, is in a bad way for fuel, and is hoping the oiler coming up from South Africa can save the situation. (I copied the A 14 from the Asturias group in order to replace the Unrep-less South African oiler.)

The situation with the lesser combatants is relatively calm. Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua are all quiet at the moment. I'm keeping an eye on Venezuela from a distance. Their one sonarless patrol boat which was in the strait my Panama convoy needed was sunk in the dead of night by a discrete Mk48. A set of three missile boats which were on a flank speed course for my convoy were engaged at dawn by A-4s coming out of the western darkness, and sunk before they could ID their attackers. Without firm intelligence on what happened, the Venezuelans have not launched further attacks, although I did have to pull my E-8 further north in response to their fighter sweeps. Down south the Argentines and I continue to patrol and keep an eye on each other. More Tornados have flown in, and the Perry is on station, but no hostilities so far. I haven't sent everything down to the Falklands, and I'm retaining some units at Ascension in case of Nigerian troubles.


Lessons Learned

Fuel is Important! Those Perrys have short legs. At this scale oilers and bases become so much more important. (Suddenly the lumbering old Protecteur is one of my most valuable assets.) This is especially true at the inefficient convoy speeds I need to travel at in order to get any decent sonar performance, and to stay with slow-moving tankers. A Perry can go 4200 nm on a single tank of gas - at it's fuel efficient cruise speed of 20 kts. Of course it can't hear as much at that speed, and it would leave its convoy far behind. If I'm travelling at 12 kts, like a cruising tanker, my range is only 2700 nm. That's a single crossing in a narrow spot.

Sprint and Drift eats fuel! You're essentially trying to cross the Atlantic at fuel-inefficient low speed, and fuel-inefficient high speed. You probably won't get there. It may work nicely for a couple of days in a restricted zone, but not so much on the grand scale of this scenario (unless you have enough oilers).



Miscellaneous Bits

(I'm still playing 1.2, so sorry if these bits have been fixed since then.)

Alacrity and Sirius have Mk46s in their helicopter magazines, but actually need Stingrays.

Sirius stays on the Biological side after it teleports.

It might be useful to have a "Squadron Ready" message when the groups of P-3s become active at the inland airbases. It's easy to miss them otherwise.

I went and added some more docking facilities at a number if islands. Google Earth shows ships of ~ 120 m + docked with plenty of spare space in the Azores, Tenerife, Madiera, Mindelo, so there should be plenty of room for frigates. I think there are bunkering facilities for most of them (not sure about Mindelo). (See what a good teaching tool this sim is? I'd never have investigated the geography of these islands for any other reason.)

[AndrewJ]

Lessons Learned - continued

Not all oilers carry all fuels! Gas Fuel is not Oil Fuel is not Diesel Fuel!!

I, naturally, have cleverly made sure my task groups need all three types of fuel at once, while only half my oilers can provide it, and two thirds of those are down in the southern hemisphere. Now I really respect the Protecteur!