Hey,
thanks a lot for the review Nikel !
Glad to read that there were no nasty red error pop-up ^^
- Typos:
Description: transciption, perhaps is better adaptation?
Briefing: SPecial
Special Action: "Instant ready of all your aircraft." Readiness instead of ready?
--> Will fix. Lots of "faux-amis" and bad translation on my side.
- Expanded briefing, OOB tab: The helos text is just aircraft, no name, role.
--> Noted. I will add "ASW helo" or something in that line for the BSh and "AEW helo" for the Ts
- Message log: not clean when you load the scenario, switch side messages.
--> Easy fix. Will correct
- No points per NATO/USSR ACs losses.
--> It was a "designer's choice" as points are really easy to earn. In addition, I considered that sinking the motherships would be sufficient. If you feel, as a player, that it is frustrating or missing, I'll be happy to change that
--> Regarding the "No pts loss" for USSR units, I should indeed have it. I considered that losing them for the next missions would be the punition but it may be too shallow to be fun. Also considering that loosing the Varyag could make the next missions really hard.
- OoB : RoRo Merchant vessel with so many aircrafts, is not rare?
- Shaddocks very powerful and the American warships can do nothing to defend, and did not attack except to one of the Yaks.
- Scenario concluded with 20h 34 min to go, consider reducing the scenario time.
- Overall a very easy triumph.
--> Regrouping all of them for the following reason. The scenario description and briefing may not be clear enough on one point: the difficulty of the campaign should not only come from the adversaries but also from the need to manage ammunition (most importantly Shaddocks) as the Strike Group will be operating far away from its base and without resupply (at least not in between each scenario). This first scenario is also supposed to be happening just after the USSR declares war (leading to light escort).
So, that being said :
- each Shaddock used against "low threat" warships in this mission may be missing in subsequent missions
- I don't have any idea of the "realism" of 10 Yak-38 + 2 Ka-25 on such a ship. It is in the original Sea Power mission and I guessed (based on the CMO listed cargo capacity vs weight of the planes) that it wouls be ok. To the honest, I decided to adapt this mission in CMO because I find the idea of using this kind of ship (and the Yaks) so cool
.
- I also came to 10 planes (from the 8 in the Sea Power mission) during testing as a good compromise. As the "conservative" way to play this first mission is to use dumb munitions (and a few Kerrys), you need quite a lot of planes OR more time for your planes rotations (hence the current 24hrs long scenario).
- Regarding the passivity of the warships. Assuming the current American OOB is not the blend and that I keep it:
-- the Garcia stands no chance
-- I didn't know what would be the best use of the Knox and Brooke after the begining of the hostilities: should they stay with the convoy (what they are doing now) or should they divert towards the soviet fleet ? I am really open to suggestion on this one.
-- In addition, I considered helping the AI by auto-designating civilian as Friendlies and soviets as Hostiles via LUA (let's say that in that case, civilians would broadcast their position to NATO leaving only the soviets without IFF). This would also mimic what the player can do when deducing that a SKUNK can only be Hostile.
However, only way I found to do that was a near real time lua script (which I don't like for perf reasons). This would allow the Knox to fire her 4 (I know...) harpoons as soon as possible if the player gets close.
As we are in testing, there should not be any possibility to rearm before the end of scenario 3 and the NATO threats should grow each scenario (just to give a reference when I say that "each Shaddock fired counts").
I could anyway, at least, decrease both the complexity and the difficulty of the mission to 1 to reflect the very easy Triumph.
So, after this long explanation, here is my possible action plan :
1. Reduce the air wing
OR reduce the timer (I guess to 12hrs as the Yak are "Day-only" anyway)
2. Trying to help the AI with ID of the player's fleet (a bit gamey but...)
3. Revise the NATO OOB. Maybe add a more potent DDG with the convoy
4. Review the points for units loss (both sides)
5. Correct all the typos above, the log and improve the scenario description and briefing to reflect the choices to make : "spend ammo or save them for later"
What would be your take on the points 1 to 4 ?
Thanks again for your time and your inputs. Submiting a scenario to the public is quite a exercise when, previously, I only created them for myself
