ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2
Don't take this to personal, as I said, the scenario has potential but needs to be modified in order to make it a bit more interesting to the average player who doesn't want to play a scenario actively for an hour and then sit staring at a screen for another few hours in which nothing more happens than seeing a CV TF steaming towards Denmark and beyond.
I haven't read the book but I think that trying to reproduce a fictional war accurately in a single scenario is very difficult as you can easily skip 15 hours in a story but not in this game.
Gunner98 solved this problem by splitting his book up into several separate scenarios, each limited in scope in order to optimize play speed but each with specific challenges, mission goals and assets. You could follow his example and do the same, create a scenario in which you need to destroy the bridges (only possible in your scenario if I you got VERY lucky and I always lost every single AC while trying to do so. I ended up just sending my army units forwards in order to blow it up), another scenario in which you will need to stop the armored assault and a last scenario in which you will have to cross the Denmark strait and resupply Gdansk. By limiting the scope of each of these scenarios, you can still offer a player the same tactical problems as in your book, but you can concentrate the challenges in a shorter time frame and the the game can also be run at much higher speeds.
If you really want, you can keep the scenario as it is now but you will need to make a few changes to keep it playable.
* Move the Northern TF's to a latitude roughly equal the southern tip of Norway to speed up the scenario.
* Remove the western CV. If the first carrier gets nuked, no player will wait for three hours real time simply to get this second CV into the same position where the first one got sunk.
* Remove the bases in France and the UK, they play no significant role in this scenario and only slow things down.
* Remove the Eurofighters from the game, they are way to overpowered for this scenario, simply replace them with Phantoms. 180 modern fighters with AWACS support and AMRAAM misses can easily hold their own against 25 F-15'/ F
16's and 20 Mig-29's so you really don't need the Eurofighters.
* Giving the Euro's 180 fighters and then keeping them on their side of the border is nonsensical, the euro's are willing to invade Poland with ground forces but wont send in fighters to destroy the Polish AF or cover their
ground forces? Move all the Polish AC to the Gdansk region and have them fight defensibly against fighter sweeps and bombing runs against their airfields (see the "Northern fury 5" scenario for inspiration).
Again, don't take this to personal but as the constructive criticism that it is. I would't have test played this scenario for four hours if it did not have potential.
Thanks for the input, Wild_Willie!
I do not take it personally - I asked for critique and you gave it to me. Sometimes it is a hard pill to swallow when you've worked on something for so long. Also, it is sometimes hard to convey a story in a scenario (although I think some other designers have had great success doing it). It is harder still when you are trying to give credence to the title on which it is based.
I will take your suggestions along with Magi's. I have no problem doing a total re-haul of the scenario. I have been working on it off and on now for over a year, so a little more time to make it right (for all players) is not too much to ask.
Excraot - I have thought about breaking it up into theaters. I tried a project like that with Red Storm Rising, but it fell apart on me because I did not know how to convey the loss of assets (or no loss) from one scenario to the next. I guess I could do it by making an asset part of one theater and not another.
Kushan has taken on this idea of multiple scenarios, so I think I will leave mine as is - just look into the suggested improvements - and leave the multi-scenario to his creation.
Ok...I am taking it back to the drawing board, but I would still appreciate any critiques and suggestions should someone try to play it in its current iteration. Also, please let me know if something seems broken.
