Play Through of Northern Fury #1: H Hour

[rmeckman]

I just finished the first of the Northern Fury scenarios---H Hour--- and am really impressed with all the work than went into developing the OoB and missions. The Norwegian fighter squadrons can be wiped out pretty quickly if they stay too far forward. I did come across some issues that other players might encounter (based on Scenario Pack #48 and CMO 1328.14):

• At the game start, there is a Soviet fighter formation called Su-27 Sweep already airborne. It plays a significant role as one of the first formations to cross into Norway. Su-27 Sweep starts at 40000 ft ASL but immediately dives down to 1000 ft AGL for the rest of its existence as it moves to its patrol zone in northern Norway. I don't think the intention is to conduct an AAW sweep at 1000 ft. As seen below, the formation is part of a mission called Mig Sweep that has all three mission altitudes set to 1000 ft. Strangely, all the other aircraft in this mission (Mig-23s and Mig-29s) climb to 36000 ft after they become airborne. (I've seen this issue in other scenarios where the AAW mission settings show 1000 ft altitudes but the aircraft ignore this and climb to 36000 ft anyway.) The image also shows that Su-27 Sweep has its altitude manually overridden to 1000 ft AGL, which may explain why it behaves differently from other flights in the same mission.
• Shooting down Soviet support aircraft (recon, ELINT, etc) triggers two events, Soviet A/C Destroyed (+2 points) and Soviet Support A/C destroyed (+5 points). This may be WAD, but it is also possible that the original intention was for the destruction of these aircraft to trigger just one event scoring 5 points rather than 2+5 = 7 points. Destroying certain other aircraft and ships also triggers two events.
• The 737 aircraft at the Kirkenes Lufthavn cannot take off because the runway is too short.

These are relatively minor issues as far as the scenario's playability goes.