Showcase Queen Elizabeth Class 6/10/21

[fitzpatv]

Situation

This is a very big scenario which assumes that relations between China and the West (and the UK in particular) have deteriorated due to differences over Hong Kong, the Huawei affair and the supposed causes of the Covid pandemic. You can only play the UK/Coalition side.

The new carrier Queen Elizabeth is on a Freedom of Navigation cruise through the South China Sea, escorted by two destroyers (one a US Arleigh Burke), two frigates (one Dutch) and accompanied by two oilers. Quite what the scenario is supposed to ‘showcase’ is uncertain, but it does highlight how inferior the Queen Elizabeth is to her American counterparts. She has a smaller air group, no SAMs and the CVBG leans substantially on the non-British escorts.

Away to the South and screening the Chinese base on Woody Island is the USS Ronald Reagan, with a cruiser, destroyer and supply ship. Between Vietnam and North Borneo, you have the Vinson CVBG, consisting of the carrier, a cruiser and two destroyers. Both American CVNs have much more heavyweight air groups, but their initial state of readiness is low and most aircraft will need around six hours to prepare.

To the SW of the Queen Elizabeth, a mixed force of four Japanese, Canadian and New Zealand destroyers and frigates are escorting the helicopter carrier Ise on an ASW exercise which has left them dangerously close to Woody Island.

The British Type 45 destroyer Richmond is about to sail through the Taiwan Strait from the NE to demonstrate freedom of navigation. Alone and vulnerable, she has no ASW capabilities apart from a chopper that won’t be ready for four hours.

The British SSN Artful is off Southern Taiwan and could screen the Queen Elizabeth, but is stuck with Spearfish torpedoes, which are markedly inferior to the US Type 48s.

Some 175nm SW of Woody Island and 70nm E of Vietnam, you have the American littoral combat ship Gabrielle Giffords, which is supposed to be snooping on the aforesaid Chinese base.

The SSN Oklahoma City is S of Woody Island by 220nm and a similar distance N of Reagan, while the Ohio-class SSGN Georgia is patrolling 128nm E of Vinson.

Another British Type 45, the Diamond, is off the Malay peninsula, on her way to link-up with the distant Queen Elizabeth.

Malaysia and Singapore have various relatively weak frigates, corvettes and patrol craft at sea between Malaya and North Borneo, all of which are under AI control, as are the fairly numerous air assets of those nations.

Britain has some Typhoons, F-35s and tankers at Brunei, presumably to screen the Malaysian base at Swallow Reef, to the North.

On Okinawa, there are some strong US and Japanese squadrons. The Americans have F-15s, Sentries, tankers and Rivet Joints at Kadena, while the Japnese field F-15 fighters, Phantom-Kai attack planes and Orions at Naha.

At Guam, the Americans have some B-52s, which will take nearly ten hours to ready and a few tankers and Rivet Joints.

Some of the American aircraft carry experimental HAWC weapons. These have an impressive range and speed, but do almost no damage, leaving me wondering what on Earth they are for (improved ARMs at best). I removed them in all cases and re-armed with more useful weapons.

Taiwan is Neutral, but can call upon substantial numbers of Hsiung Ying fighters, Mirage MRCAs, F-16s and support aircraft, as well as a variety of destroyers, frigates, missile gunboats and at least one SSK. While the Malays and Singaporeans will share intel as allies, the Taiwanese will not.

For its part, China has the Shandong and Liaoning carrier groups at sea, as well as several SAGs with destroyers, frigates, corvettes and auxiliaries. They also have at least one Renhai-class cruiser, which is a very capable all-rounder with no real weaknesses. Numerous submarines are abroad, most of them armed with long-ranged missiles as well as torpedoes.

The Chinese air force has a full range of planes and choppers of all types (apart from stealth fighters), including Flying Shark carrier fighters with the PL-15 and in some cases, the even deadlier PL-21 A2A missile – the latter is better than anything you have, with an official range of over 200nm. Bombers include Badgers that can simply take-off and loose shoals of 500nm-ranged cruise missiles at your ships.

Worst of all, there are the DF-21 anti-shipping ballistic missiles. Two launchers are initially known to be located on Hainan and they can reach most of the theatre of operations from there. Chinese land bases are protected by SAMs including Growlers and Gargoyles but even more effectively by being in No Navigation Zones.

Assessment and Planning

At the start, you have no clear idea of what you are supposed to be doing, beyond inflicting losses and avoiding same as and when hostilities begin. Given your state of readiness, it makes sense to delay this inevitability as long as possible.
The locations of Chinese naval forces are unknown at the outset.

The DF-21s are the biggest threat and experience told me that the best defence against them is to remain hidden. I noted that the Chinese have no satellites, so it made sense to try to open the range, keep sensors off and avoid unnecessary combat, while culling enemy recon assets wherever possible.

HMS Richmond was frighteningly exposed and hadn’t a hope of getting through the Taiwan Strait, so I sent her NE at Flank, steering for the Kurils and the open Pacific beyond.

Queen Elizabeth’s position was insecure. The oiler Tidespring was shown as being proportionally low on fuel, but still had enough to get her through the scenario. USS The Sullivans (the main escort) had just 35 RIM-162As and RIM-116Cs and the carrier had none. The Dutch frigate Evertsen did, at least, have a few RIM-161 anti-ballistic SAMs. Even at Flank, it would take six hours for the group to even reach Luzon, so avoiding attack was unlikely. It was also unclear whether we could score points for keeping task groups in their initially-assigned patrol areas for unknown amount sof time, but I decided not to worry about this and steered a course N of Luzon for the Pacific beyond. HMS Artful sailed to protect the CVBG, as did the Ise group.

Gabrielle Giffords’ skipper concluded that he would be crazy to continue towards Woody Island and, instead, aimed to head SW around the coast of Vietnam, relying rather hopefully on his vessel’s supposed stealth qualities to stay hidden.

Reagan initially went E, intending to back-up Queen Elizabeth. Oklahoma City tried to cover her from afar.

The Vinson group had responsibility for the South China Sea and looking after the Malaysians and Singaporeans. In this, they were supported by USS Georgia and HMS Diamond was told to steer SE at first, making best speed given her lack of ASW, then swing NE to join them. Diamond’s chopper, incidentally, starts with a Martlet ATGM loadout, which can’t be changed for some buggy reason.

The Okinawa-based aircraft weren’t best positioned to protect Queen Elizabeth and their Orions would be very vulnerable should they start to search for enemy subs. It seemed best to use them to defend their bases and screen Richmond’s passage. What help we might get from the Taiwanese in this region remained to be seen.

Events

6/10/21 01:00Z (09:00L): Immediately, Taiwan attacked a set of five oil platforms off Guangzhou with surface-to-surface missiles, destroying one (which didn’t affect the default score of zero, which is Average). Because there are three Chinese factions (China, Oil Platforms and Coastguard) this did not lead to all-out hostilities between China and Taiwan!!

Hawkeyes soon detected Chinese carrier fighters S of Woody Island and a single Jiangkai II frigate 90nm SW of Swallow Reef. The carrier was then identified as the Liaoning and had at least two Luyang destroyers, another Jiangkai II and an oiler for company. Presently, we sighted two unknown but probably Chinese ships S of the Liaoning group and another group of three off the Southern bulge of Vietnam.

I decided to swing Reagan around SE to support Vinson and the SE Asians. Between them, the CVBGs could deal with the Chinese SAGs while keeping Liaoning at arm’s length, though we still faced a lengthy wait before our strike aircraft would be ready.

At 01:30, we were notified that there was a Taiwanese SSK in the Queen Elizabeth’s neighbourhood. On the positive side, the Taiwanese forces were largely between the QE and conventional attack from the Chinese mainland.

We were rather ambiguously ordered to ‘conduct overt ASW against sub-surface contacts’, but only to attack in self-defence, as well as performing AEW and scouting Chinese units, as we were already doing.

A Chinese ASW chopper was then detected NW of HMS Diamond, suggesting that there were more of their warships exiting the Gulf of Thailand and, sure enough, two more ships emerged from that direction.

It was increasingly evident that Giffords was in a tight spot, cut-off from help by the intervening Chinese SAGs. She hugged the coast and hoped.

02:00Z: The CG Shiloh, in the Reagan group, detected a sub to the SE and the CVBG turned away to the SW. The contact soon proved to be a Shang SSGN, which was charging towards us at 30 knots. The AI doesn’t ordinarily do this unless it intends to attack, so we sank it, scoring nothing.

With the gloves off, Vinson sent two Growlers to attack the Jiangkai near Swallow Reef before she could attack the Malaysians. The Chinese ship was apparently taken by surprise and sank like a stone as four AGM-88Es ripped into her, netting 25VP. Patrolling F/A-18s liquidated her Helix, but this scored nothing (as do all aircraft losses in this scenario).

A sighting of ASW choppers 140nm NE of the QE suggested that the Shandong carrier group was approaching from the open Pacific in that direction. The QE and Ise groups altered course down the W coast of Luzon to avoid them, aiming for the Visayas in the Central Philippines.

I considered a massive Tomahawk strike to eliminate the two DF-21 sites on Hainan, but this wasn’t allowed, as they were in a No Navigation Zone. This applied to all Chinese land bases, so our arsenal of TLAMs was effectively useless. I could understand the need to avoid escalation, but we really needed to remain undetected now…

Two Cub ASW planes approached the QE, thankfully at 1,000’, which reduced the range of their radar. A total farce ensued as it took all four of QE’s ready F-35 fighters and a SAM (17 missiles in all) to down these two slow, lumbering, unarmed and mindlessly persistent planes (God help us against Chinese fighters!). There’s no answer to the virtual dice sometimes (unless you want to restart from the last save)…

03:00Z: Unfortunately, this utter grossness allowed the Cubs to get close enough to report us, especially as the AI decided that their presence meant that QE was ‘under attack’ and turned the CVBG’s radars on. Something, probably a sub, loosed eight missiles at us (no CAP left, remember), but SAMs dealt with this threat.

With the game’s talent for simultaneity, a Yuan SSK waylaid the Vinson group far, far away, coming-in from the E. It was sunk with some difficulty, scoring 50VP (unlike the Shang) but had the chance to torpedo the DDG Chafee, which couldn’t get clear in time and was lost along with 75VP. Another sub then fired missiles at Vinson from the SW but these were all blocked by SAMs. Choppers hunted-down and sank what proved to be a Song SSK, scoring another 50VP. Meanwhile, the two Chinese surface ships to the NE opened-up with YJ-100 missiles (range 430nm), which were parried by SAMs and CAP, the cost in SAMs being mildly concerning despite my ‘one shot per missile’ Doctrine policy.

04:00Z: I sent two F-35s with Paveways from QE to attack some Houjian missile gunboats near the oil platforms, but was frustrated, again, by the vessels being in a No Navigation Zone and had to RTB. The Paveways were no use for anything else and I ditched them for AMRAAMs on RTB.

Giffords had, by now, found a sheltered Vietnamese bay in which to hole-up.

The Chinese finally woke-up to the fact that they were at war with Taiwan and fighting broke-out, with heavy losses of aircraft on both sides over the Strait. China lost a frigate for 25VP and the Taiwanese a couple of gunboats for nothing either way. I had limited visibility and no control over this. It did manage to clear away all Chinese recon assets from anywhere near the QE.

I had a real struggle turning my task forces’ radars off, even with Passive EMCON and ‘Ignore Under Attack=No’ set. Checking things at Unit level, I found that some escorts had their radars active on the Sensors window and the problem was only resolved by switching them off manually on this.

05:00Z: Covered by Taiwanese aircraft, six F-4s from Naha and three GBU-53 F-35s from QE struck at the Shandong group off SE Taiwan. Target identification issues meant that we didn’t initially locate the carrier, but the Brits sank a Luyang DDG for 50VP, while another fought-off the Japanese attack. GBU-53s don’t do much damage, but each plane can carry eight. Shandong otherwise had an AOE and two Jiangkais in-tow.

06:00Z: Taiwanese strike planes and ship-launched missiles sank the second Luyang and one of the Jiangkais, also hitting the ammo ship. Three Japanese Orions followed-up and scored a couple of hits on the carrier with ASM-1Cs, not helped by the Taiwanese fighters shooting down three of their twelve missiles and going Hostile on me (I am so tired of this sort of thing!). At least they left the Orions alone. Unless designers can prevent this type of bugginess, they should confine themselves to having just one faction per side. It inclined me to be careful around Taiwan and leave the Shandong to the locals.

07:00Z: Reagan and Vinson were finally ready to conduct strikes. The former sent a wave of six AGM-88E Hornets and Growlers against the Eastern pair of Chinese surface ships that had attacked Vinson. The AGM-88E has the big plus that you can fire it at non-radiating targets, as these were at first. Once they did begin to radiate, they proved very capable of defending themselves and fought-off the attack wave and another of the same size that followed it for damage to one vessel (a Luyang). A third wave of six planes (I was trying to save aircraft for other things) appeared to exhaust the SAMs and hit both ships, but neither sank.

08:00Z: The Shandong’s Fuyu ammo ship died of its wounds for 100VP.

Two Hornets attacked the two stubborn Chinese surface ships with Harpoons, but still couldn’t sink them.

Eight SEAD planes from Vinson struck at the central Chinese SAG off Vietnam but met similarly obdurate resistance and scored no hits. The Chinese didn’t buy the ruse of sending some MALD decoys overhead and ignored them.

Two F-35s from Vinson attacked the Western pair of Chinese ships with AGM-154s, hitting both and sinking a Jianghu V frigate for 25VP.

Reagan sent two Hornets with AGM-158Cs against the Eastern pair, the planes needing to do no more than launch, fire and RTB. One of the targets, a Renhai cruiser (explaining the ferocity of the resistance) died of its wounds while the missiles were in-flight, scoring 75VP. Remarkably, the damaged Luyang then thwarted the attack with gunfire.

09:00Z: A third AGM-158 Hornet finally got rid of the Luyang for 50VP, freeing Reagan to focus on covering the Liaoning group, which had been mercifully passive all this time, apparently charged with protecting Woody Island. Reagan was out of strikes for now. At +450, the score was still Average.

Vinson attacked the central SAG with four AGM-158 Hornets and two Growlers, managing to hit and severely damage a Luyang, which was accompanied by a Jiangkai and an oiler.

10:00Z: A third AGM-154 F-35 attacked the Jiangdao corvette in the West, which again succeeded in defending itself with HQ-10 SAMs. Annoyingly, our Malaysian and Singaporean allies were making no attempt to engage it or its ASW chopper.

The Japanese sent a second wave of six F-4s against Shandong at extreme range, not helped by having to give the Taiwanese a wide berth. Taiwanese ships were all around the carrier and its surviving frigate and had lost a gunboat to them, but were making no effort to finish them off beyond shooting down any fighters that got into range of their SAMs. A combination of HQ-10s, guns and a Flying Shark that scrambled at the wrong moment saved the Chinese carrier (maybe Taiwanese SAMs contributed), but the Jiangkai was sunk for another 25VP.

11:00Z: By now, we were out of strikes apart from sending two B-52s on a long flight from Guam to finish-off the Shandong. The carrier just kept coming, as they do and, given its remaining ASW choppers, HMS Artful still needed to keep out of its way. I sent the re-armed Orions out again on the basis that they’d probably get there before the B-52s.

At 11:30Z, some out-of-touch orders arrived, telling us that there was a third DF-21 site on Woody Island and that we were to suppress the local SAMs and fighters (to say nothing of the Liaoning group) and flatten the thing with TLAMs. Nobody seemed to have told HQ at Northwood, near London, about the small problem of the No Navigation Zones. In any event, there was no reason why the other two DF-21s on Hainan couldn’t attack us, too. Apparently, the Woody Island DF-21 would be active by 14:00Z and would have a firing solution on QE by 15:30Z. Essentially, this negated my strategy of staying undetected if, as the message implied, the DF-21 would be able to fire at me wherever I was and whatever I did unless I destroyed it first. I could accept that the targeting could have been done by the satellites that are not actively represented in the scenario, but being told more in advance would have helped. No Navigation Zones apart, there was the other issue of the American CVBGs being out of strikes because of my actions elsewhere. All-in-all, the player suffers from a serious dearth of information in this scenario without having played it before.

12:00Z: The Chinese began attacking the British Consulate in Hong Kong (absurdly with missiles instead of just walking through the door). Somehow, this or something else then caused the game’s timer to stop working. I could look at and issue orders to units, but the time just refused to advance. I tried reloading a couple of times, but it was a dead-end.
The only clue from the logs was a ‘Map received message to paint while painting’ entry at the end. Maybe this means something to somebody?

To be honest, the game was collapsing under accumulated bugs in any event, which was a shame, as it had been fairly entertaining up to this point. The DF-21s apart (all I could do here was pray under the circumstances), I was well on the way to winning, as I’d have sunk the Shandong and the remaining ships in the Southern SAGs.

I can only move on and hope that the other three Showcase scenarios are more viable.

[Nikel]

Do you have saves with all the problems you cite?

If nobody reports them in the tech support, they will remain.

[fitzpatv]

The problem here is that I omit most of the categories on the Message Log to improve game performance. I looked at the Exception Log, but there didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary apart from the entry about 'painting' that I cited above.

Most of the problems I encountered were basically design issues, i.e

- No Navigation Zones making it impossible to attack Woody Island as directed
- The Taiwanese attacking missiles aimed at the Chinese and going Hostile to the player
- Taiwan attacking the Chinese Oil Platform faction without China going Hostile to Taiwan (until they decided to do it anyway later)
- Lack of clear direction for the player regarding objectives. For instance, is there a need to keep task groups in the original patrol areas to score points?
- Minor issues like not being able to change the Diamond's chopper's loadout.

None of these require logs or saves to fix. Are you really going to ignore issues just because they've been raised in an AAR and not duplicated in the Technical Issues forum?

[Nikel]

They may be related with scenario design but still reportable, because this is an official scenario.

The devs have stated that the way is to create a thread per issue in the tech support forum. I guess several design problems in the same scenario can be reported in the same thread.

I would create a thread in the tech support forum with the list you just posted.

Regarding the attack on targets inside a no navigation zone, I just tried and is possible in B1892, I guess it should not. What build of CMO did you use to play the scenario?

[fitzpatv]

OK, I'm still on B1674, so perhaps that one has been fixed. Clearly, that calls some (at least) of my other points into question, too.

As for the inability to restart the timer, I wish I could have sent you a Save file so you could investigate it. Unfortunately, after I'd written the AAR, I resumed my saved Northern Fury 36 playthrough (I find it difficult to put problems down and had thought of a way I might win it), then accidentally saved it over the Queen Elizabeth file. Hopefully, that problem has gone away in B1892 as well, but I won't be checking it out.

I'll update to the latest version of CMO next chance I get, time-consuming and tricky though it always is.

Thanks as always.

[fitzpatv]

Seems B1674 is the most recent version available outside the US, according to both My Page and the Check for Updates process.

Any word on when anything more recent will be provided for UK/Europe users?

[Nikel]

Seems B1674 is the most recent version available outside the US, according to both My Page and the Check for Updates process.

Any word on when anything more recent will be provided for UK/Europe users?

This is the last official patch. In this case the ftp link was not provided.

https://forums.matrixgames.com/viewtopic.php?t=417635


It is in the store.

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/comman ... operations



Regarding the No-Nav Zone.

In B1892 you cannot auto engage a target inside, but you can do it manually.

Weapons, like a Tomahawk can fly in a NFZ air space to impact a target that is outside.

Do you think this is how it is supposed to work? Or a bug?

[blu3s]

Seems B1674 is the most recent version available outside the US, according to both My Page and the Check for Updates process.

Any word on when anything more recent will be provided for UK/Europe users?

There aren't versions base on location, the matrix update probably don't work but that's not on CMO. Always check the matrix page of CMO:

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/comman ... operations

[fitzpatv]

Thanks for the advice. The product page got me to B1825, so that will have to do for now.

[fitzpatv]

Seems from Nikel's last post that B1892 is a Beta, so I'll wait for the official release of this one.