Pole Positions 27/6/17

[fitzpatv]

Situation

To say the least, this is an unusual one!. It covers a US ‘cloak and dagger’ operation against a Russian ASW project in the Arctic Ocean. In summary, Russia is installing a modernised version of SOSUS, called SHELF, to help locate US and other unfriendly submarines in the region. America is nervous about this and has hatched a frankly reckless and probably ineffective scheme to delay the project. It can be played as either side, but the US is the default.

SHELF consists of an underwater nuclear generator, which provides power for a number of Cluster Lance sensor arrays. Four Autonomous Transmission Stations on Wrangel, Kotelny, Komsomolets and Alexandra islands receive the data from the arrays, though the plan is to upgrade to using satellites down the line.

The arrays can only be installed to a depth of 1,000m and have a detection range of 40nm which, given the amount of deep water in the Arctic, effectively limits them to Russia’s continental shelf and other shallow(ish) waters (hence the name?). The system could not actually find American SSBNs (at least not the two in the scenario) which can stay well out of its range. It rather seems intended to protect the Russian littoral and maybe add some weight to Moscow’s claims to own the Arctic.

Six American SSNs/SSGNs have been assigned to the mission. The Illinois, Mississippi and Seawolf are ordered to patrol three boxes in the Spitzbergen, Lomonosov Ridge and Northwind Escarpment regions of the ocean and try to positively identify three Russian SSNs or SSGNs which are working at installing the SHELF system.

Meanwhile, the SSN Jimmy Carter is to approach the ATGU undersea nuclear plant and learn what she can about its functionality.

The dirty work is to be done by the SSN Dallas and the SSGN Ohio. The former carries a SEAL SDV underwater vehicle, which is to deliver special forces to the vicinity of one of the four Autonomous Transmission Stations. Proceeding from the beach on foot, the SEALs are to hack into the installation and introduce a computer virus, which is expected to crash the system. They are then to return to shore and escape in a RHIB (which is faster than the SDV, which will presumably have returned to the sub).

While Russian techs can be expected to restore the system, this will take time. During this interval, Ohio should dart inside the detection range of a disabled array and then use an Echo Voyager underwater vehicle to destroy it.

Goodness knows what is expected to happen then, but the Russians will surely get rid of the virus and the loss of one array (about a dozen are in place) would be no more than a temporary setback, but there it is…

In truth, however misguided, the American plan is no more nefarious than the (probable) Russian operations against undersea pipelines and cables in reality, but I started the scenario with a degree of incredulity.

The impression given is that all of the US subs should remain undetected throughout or there would be serious consequences. Each of the Russian subs engaged in installation work is believed to be accompanied by a Severodvinsk or Akula escort SSN and the presence of Russian subs elsewhere can’t be ruled-out. There are several air bases in the region and the Russians have Bears which could search for intruders.

NORAD and the Canadians have not been informed of the plan and the US subs are advised to avoid being spotted by their Aurora/Orions and Coastguard vessels. In truth, you shouldn’t be near anywhere this could happen.

A red herring is the inclusion of environmental groups with small ships and aircraft, who are concerned about Russian oil, gas and minerals exploitation in the Arctic and are monitoring same. Again, the US subs should avoid detection by these but, as they have no means of spotting a submerged sub, it’s a non-issue.

Finally, there are two American (locations are known) and two Russian SSBNs (hidden) under the ice and the player should try to avoid drawing attention to or going near the former or threatening the latter in any way.

Assessment

There are no Russian surface or ground units.

Any Bears will have a lot of ocean to cover and their sonobuoys can’t be used where there is ice cover (marked), so your subs are pretty safe while under ice.

There are no Convergence Zones, improving chances of staying hidden and the Layer only exists in peripheral parts of the region.

It is easily possible to steer around the existing Cluster Lance arrays.

The US subs have better sonar than their counterparts (100nm towed array as opposed to 70nm), so they have a theoretical chance of tracking Russian subs outside their detection range. I say ‘theoretical’…

Russian Starfish and Stallion weapons won’t work under ice cover, as they require an air launch. Hopefully, it won’t come to that, anyway…

It will take a considerable amount of time to get all of the subs into position and Ohio, which starts S of the Bering Straits and is quite slow, will need to be near her chosen Cluster Lance before Dallas can make her move.

All subs should be set to AutoEvade=No to facilitate rapid escape if required.

It is advisable to avoid the areas of Franz Josef Land and the region N of Central Alaska (the Canada Basin) as this is where the Russian SSBNs are reported to be. This presents no problem for the mission.

There was a little doubt about the status of ice cover near Wrangel Island, where the most convenient Autonomous Transmission Station is. For some reason, there is a tongue of ice which juts out from the mainland to the island.

Day 1 (to 19:59Z 28/617)

28/6/17 00:00Z: Illinois reached the edge of the Spitzbergen patrol zone, went to Creep and began searching. Starting at the Greenland end of the box helped to keep her well away from the SSBN West Virginia. Chances were that the Russians were working at the far end of the box, near Alexandra Island, but the skipper reckoned he had plenty of time and could afford to go carefully.

07:00Z: Mississippi reached the edge of the Lomonosov box, again well away from the Russian clusters. She began to Creep cautiously in their direction.

09:00Z: Seawolf reached the edge of the Northwind box, fairly close to the Russian arrays. An inactive pair seemed likely locations for the Russians to be at work, so she crept towards them.

Day 2 (to 19:59Z 29/6/17)

29/6/17 05:00Z: Circling around Wrangel towards the target beach, Dallas met a whale, which alerted me to the fact that she was cavitating in shallow waters. She slowed to Creep. Her SDV had an endurance of 5-6 hours and the RHIB 2-4 at a much better speed. Particularly given the likely reaction to the virus, it seemed best to get as close as possible to the beach before launching the SDV. So far, no Bears had been in evidence, but there was an air base on Wrangel and that could be expected to change.

13:00Z: Jimmy Carter was now within her sonar range of the ATGU, so long as she kept to 15 knots or less to allow the towed array to work. Problem was that I had no idea what she was now expected to do in order to gather intel about the power plant, the Briefing being of no help. Was keeping within sonar range enough, or did I have to move right inside a small set of reference points around the ATGU (there were similar zones around all Active Russian Cluster Lances)?. As the ATGU was itself marked as a Cluster Lance, it could theoretically detect me within 40nm, which could potentially cost me the game. So I had to choose between this risk or that of failing Carter’s mission (which requires four DAYS on-site to achieve, the scenario lasting seven). I chose the lesser risk and stopped dead where I was.

Day 3 (to 19:59Z 30/6/17)

30/6/17 04:00Z: It was bound to happen!. Despite proceeding at Creep in deep water with best possible sonar coverage, Mississippi only detected a Severodvinsk-class SSN when it was less than 7nm away (likewise moving at Creep). So much for sonar range advantage!. There was nothing I could do beyond advancing, stopping or trying to open the distance and doing the latter would worsen my sonar profile by exposing my beam. I opted to slow and stop. The Russian could hardly have failed to detect me, but it nevertheless turned away and was lost to our sensors. I suffered no VP penalty, so it either didn’t matter or it miraculously failed to spot me. Mississippi continued forward at Creep, hoping to find the Oscar installation sub Belgorod nearby.

10:00Z: By now, Dallas was more-or-less in position, but Ohio was still about nine hours away from the outer detection range of her chosen Cluster Lance. This was one of a pair, but the further of the two from where Seawolf was nearing the far end of the Northwind box and expecting company soon.

19:00Z: Ohio was now in position. Her Echo Voyager could do 11 knots and had decent endurance, but it was still advisable to get the sub nearer before launching it to save time once the virus went active.

The three patrol subs had, by now, all reached sonar detection range of the far end of their respective boxes. The Mississippi-Severodvinsk incident apart, they had found nothing. Not trusting my luck, I felt it best to forfeit any VP from this source and safeguard the three SSNs when the balloon went up, so I had them all pull-out, running deep at Cruise.

Day 4 (to 19:59Z 1/7/17)

22:00Z: Dallas got close to shore and launched the SDV – but I’d guessed wrong about where the ice cover was and found that the vehicle couldn’t move. Returned her to the sub and headed back to the edge of the ice to try again.

1/7/17 01:00Z: Dallas got beyond the ice cover and launched the SDV again before slipping back under the ice. The submersible made the short run to the ice edge...then nothing happened!. It carried no Cargo and whatever Lua trigger was meant to unload the SEAL team didn’t work, nor could the SDV proceed any further. This made the whole mission non-viable and I saw no point in playing further.

Conclusion

This wasn’t great, with lots of waiting around and a total damp squib at the crucial moment. I’ve still got the save file and, if anyone can tell me if there’s anything I haven’t realised, I’ll play on. Otherwise, it’s on to the next scenario.

[Nikel]

This is an official scenario.

If there is a bug, I would post the save in the tech support forum.

[fitzpatv]

I just tried. I know how to attach the log file, but the Development Team require the Save file zipped and I simply can't work-out how to do this. In general, it is too hard (for me, anyway) to raise bug reports for this game, which is one of the reasons I normally don't do it. The difference with Northern Fury is that I trust Bart to look at problems I raise and fix them (when he has time) without the overheads involved with official scenarios.

[Nikel]

You cannot zip a save or an scen file?

An alternative way to do it is change the format from .save or .scen to .zip.


This is how you see the extension if it is not displayed in your computer





And to change the extension.

Z.gif (59.66 KiB) Viewed 409 times

Then attach this zip file to the post, commenting that the file has not to be extracted, but the extension changed to .scen or .save

[fitzpatv]

Thanks for that. I would honestly never have thought of doing it that way.

I've done my best with the bug report. Let's see what the developers make of it.

[fitzpatv]

Another Try

After raising a bug report, I was shown that I needed to sail Dallas right up to the marked Beach area in order to land the SEALs. I did so and it worked, with the SEAL unit spawning a little way inland. There was no need to launch the SDV, which was a total and confusing red herring.

I sent the SEALs to the Autonomous Transmission Station, which was presumably unmanned, as they were able to set about their work without interference. Two hours later, I was informed that the virus was in place.

I now had to get the SEALs to a marked Embark area, whereupon the Dallas could recover them by RHIB from the adjacent Pickup area, so I set this in motion.

Meanwhile, Ohio headed into the marked area around the chosen Cluster Lance at Full.

The SEALs reached the Embark area, but although Dallas was in the Pickup area, nothing happened. Launching the RHIB was useless because, like the SDV, it couldn’t travel over the ice. So I went back to a recently-take save file and repeated the process, this time only moving the sub into the Pickup area after the SEALs had arrived at the Embark area. This didn’t work, either. I moved the SEALs to the edge of the Pickup area, as far as being restricted to land would allow. Again, this did no good.

Ohio reached the Cluster Lance. Nothing happened. She launched the Echo Voyager. Nothing happened. I moved the Echo Voyager right on top of the Cluster Lance. Nothing happened.

I tried sending the SEALs back to the Embark area, while exiting Dallas from the Pickup area and then returning her between the two Western reference points thereof, instead of the two Northern ones. This, too, made no difference.

There might be a devious way of getting these things to work but, quite frankly, I am past caring.

[Nikel]

There are 4 beaches and you choose the one under the ice

But I have tried with another one, free of ice, and still it is not working.

In this pic, Navy SEALs in embark 4. RHIB in pickup 4 and the event will not fire.

E4.png (4.32 KiB) Viewed 341 times

if you try to pickup manually, this message appears in the log.

M.png (12.49 KiB) Viewed 341 times

If you look at the cargo window, it seems that the SEALs do not fit in the room available in the RHIB, area and PAX are not enough.

C.png (22.36 KiB) Viewed 341 times

The cluster disabling by the Echo Voyager seems to work. It needs time.

EV.png (21.51 KiB) Viewed 338 times

[fitzpatv]

Thanks for your efforts on this, Nikel.

I did wonder whether it was a matter of waiting where the Cluster Lance was concerned. However, there was a message at each stage of the SEAL operation and none at all where Ohio and the array were concerned, so it didn't seem hopeful.

I also notice that, once one Cluster Lance is disabled, the player is expected to go on and disable more, which is not the impression given by the initial Briefing.

Yeah, I know I picked the beach with the ice, but it is easily the closest one to the Dallas's starting position and has clearly-marked Beach, Embark and Pickup Zones, so why would I have sanely done otherwise?.

I think you'll agree that this scenario could have done with some clearer and more explicit directions for the player, either in the Briefing or stage-by-stage. The lack of clarity on where to station the Jimmy Carter is another example. It is also far from clear how far you can get away with being detected - that Severodvinsk surely couldn't have failed to spot the Mississippi at a range of about 3nm, could it?

Regardless, I've suffered enough and will be moving on to other scenarios.

[Nikel]

This scenario was also designed by Gunner98.

Not sure he is still in charge of it or not.

In this post, I think the "under ice" is intentional to confuse the player?

https://forums.matrixgames.com/viewtopi ... 5#p4153615

[Kushan04]

I know I did an update that removed the scripted landings and recovering and replaced them with units that were dropped and recovered via the cargo menu. I also made a number of fixes. That's not the scenario I see in the installation folder though. I shall investigate when I have some time.

There are no Russian surface or ground units.

Most of the scenario is under the ice pack. Unless they were put on top of the objectives they wouldn't be of much use.

Any Bears will have a lot of ocean to cover and their sonobuoys can’t be used where there is ice cover (marked), so your subs are pretty safe while under ice.

Do you expect sonobuoys to work through ice?

The US subs have better sonar than their counterparts (100nm towed array as opposed to 70nm), so they have a theoretical chance of tracking Russian subs outside their detection range. I say ‘theoretical’…

It's always theoretical. The enemy gets a say as well. Also the icepack is loud! and adds terrible reverberation causing sonar propagation to go to shit. It's the least sonar friendly environment you can imagine.

...with lots of waiting around...

Such is the nature of submarine operations. 90% boredom, 10% pure terror.

I just tried. I know how to attach the log file, but the Development Team require the Save file zipped and I simply can't work-out how to do this. In general, it is too hard (for me, anyway) to raise bug reports for this game, which is one of the reasons I normally don't do it. The difference with Northern Fury is that I trust Bart to look at problems I raise and fix them (when he has time) without the overheads involved with official scenarios.

The functionality to zip and unzip is built into windows. Right click on the file(s) and select "Compress To..." -> Zip File.

[fitzpatv]

Thanks for the informative comments, Kushan. It goes to show a) how much functionality there is in this game and b) how much I don't know about certain aspects.

I certainly didn't expect sonobuoys to work through ice, hence my comment!.

Sounds as though your updated version would fix most, if not all of the issues. From what Nikel says, it seems as though the RHIB recovery fell foul of the cargo rule introduction and updates to the database.

In summary:
- Most of the problems with this scenario were not about strategy or tactics, but the game mechanics involved in using SDVs, RHIBs and the Echo Voyager. In reality, the US submariners would have known how to do all this seamlessly.

- They would also have known that the RHIB and SDV couldn't negotiate the offshore ice-pack at Wrangel, so it shouldn't have been offered as a target.

- I wasn't even sure at the outset where the icepack actually was and assumed that Dallas could stand-off, launch the SDV, which would sail up to the edge and then disgorge the SEALs, who could negotiate the frozen ice on foot, returning in similar fashion to be retrieved by the RHIB. As it happened, it wasn't necessary to launch the SDV at all, despite its misleading inclusion aboard the sub.

- Otherwise, there could usefully have been better messaging about what Jimmy Carter had to do to study the ATGU (I still don't know the answer to this one) and whether the thing was also a Cluster Lance which could detect her...and (like being detected by Russian subs) how serious this would be for the mission. I had to assume very.

- It would also have been helpful to have a confirmatory message following Ohio's deployment of the Echo Voyager at the Cluster Lance, giving an estimated time to get the job done (as with the virus deployment), rather than, once again, leaving the player in the dark.

- It was also a surprise to learn that I was expected to disable more than one Cluster Lance. At least it made the mission seem a little less futile. Having said this, the Russians might have put the loss of one installation down to system failure, but the sabotage of several would strongly indicate another power's involvement. Under the circumstances, would they suspect the States or the Chinese (or even the British)?.

- I note from Nikel's link that other players (before the bug with the RHIB pickup was introduced) had rather more success finding Russian subs than I did. I traversed the length of all three patrol zones at Creep with my towed array deployed, so what did I omit to do?. More likely it was just a matter of chance.

Hope these comments are seen as helpful, rather than unduly critical and provide a basis for improving the scenario, as and when it is ever updated.

[Kushan04]

It annoys me that I can't find the fixed scenario. I'll chalk it up to me not pushing it to the GitHub I maintain for the official scenarios... I'm pretty busy the next few weeks but I'll add refixing the scenario to my to do list. I'll take your feedback into account as well. Can't promise I'll make all of the changes but I'll consider them.

- I wasn't even sure at the outset where the icepack actually was...

It's the yellow border that runs around the northern part of the globe. Looks like the other borders and coastlines except it crosses water. The challenge with letting the sub sit at the edge of the icepack and sending RHIB and SDV in, is to make sure the RHIB and SDV don't run out of fuel. I've done that happen a few times. I'll usually try to get the sub in as close as I can on the theory the sub is stealthier then the RHIB and SDV.

- It was also a surprise to learn that I was expected to disable more than one Cluster Lance. At least it made the mission seem a little less futile. Having said this, the Russians might have put the loss of one installation down to system failure, but the sabotage of several would strongly indicate another power's involvement. Under the circumstances, would they suspect the States or the Chinese (or even the British)?.

I think to a certain extent, with most scenarios you have to suspend belief a little bit. That being said, I see Pole Positions in the same light as Russian sabotage efforts in the Baltic. We know they're behind it and they know that we know and all that but it comes down to plausible deniability. It's what I really like about Pole Positions, it's not a go in all guns blazing scenario. I think if I was the one who made it, I might have had the US also try to tap Russian undersea cables or place their own surveillance systems on the sea floor to monitor Russian movements.

- I note from Nikel's link that other players (before the bug with the RHIB pickup was introduced) had rather more success finding Russian subs than I did. I traversed the length of all three patrol zones at Creep with my towed array deployed, so what did I omit to do?. More likely it was just a matter of chance.

There were some changes to sonar, that I think, came out after this scenario was released. That might also have played into the outcomes. The other thing is the position of all the submarines is randomized. I've seen both success and failures in my various play throughs. Sometimes it comes down to where the subs started and luck.

[Nikel]

- I wasn't even sure at the outset where the icepack actually was

When you update to the last version you will see the devs added this feature to the map settings.

You may now choose the color of the ice border, so that is different to the coastlines.

I.png (5.68 KiB) Viewed 204 times

This is beach 1 area with this color changed.

I2.png (6.75 KiB) Viewed 204 times

[fitzpatv]

Thanks, guys. This all sounds very positive.

While we're on map display colours, it would be good if we could have variable-colour text on-screen. I find it very frustrating being unable to read the main datablock (distance from selected units, depth, convergence zones, layer, etc) against the glaring white background of desert terrain. Being able to change it from white to black, blue etc would be most welcome. It can be hard to pick-out yellow-coloured Unidentified aircraft, too.