The Brits get a kill of their own, later in the morning, when a Nimrod suddenly gets a radar contact in the open waters between Iceland and Norway. Somebody's snorkelling! It turns out to be an old Whiskey, and she comes to a sudden end when the Stingray hits home. (This is the first snorkeller in six days - I had expected to see more.)
First, I'm really enjoying reading your playthrough. Thank you for sharing it!
Second, perhaps the reason you haven't encountered more is because you're running ASW missions with aircraft radars on? It is a C:MO doctrine setting to make subs dive if their ESM detects radar. While I don't presume to know how the Red Banner Northern Fleet's doctrine works in this universe, it's quite possible that that's an element of it.
Day 8 turns out to be uneventful, dominated by maintenance, replenishment, and ongoing patrolling. Soviet aircraft continue to avoid the theatre, and the Kirov is still playing Tirpitz up in Murmansk, and won't come out to fight. A few small raids kill some more hardened shelters and damaged air-defence units, but there is no significant fighting.
In logistical operations, Jeanne d'Arc arrives at Wolf Dance in the morning, and makes the first of her resupply runs. The freighters there are nearly done setting up the base, so she'll hang around for a day and escort them south tomorrow when their job is finished. Enterprise relieves Vinson in Patrol Zone Papa, and the Vinson heads south for refuelling and a fresh load of Sparrows. The Argus reaches Baby Ice (Jan Mayan) in the evening, and starts offloading some supplies.
HQ has requested mining operations in the channel leading to Narvik. I do have Quickstrike mines, but they're buried in the bottom of one of my munitions ships hanging around south-west of Jan Mayan. I suppose I could try and hustle over and rendezvous with a carrier, dig the mines out, and rope them over. Or I could just whistle up a B-52 and have them do it for me. The approval process is slow, but it beats doing it myself, and the mining should happen tomorrow.
DAY 9 (Mar 26 1994)
The operational tempo for Day 9 is much like Day 8, and the Soviets take no notable offensive action. The ships at Wolf Dance finish their base-building operation, and head for Reykjavik, escorted by the Jeanne d’Arc group. They will refuel there, before heading back to Newfoundland. The Groton is finally released from its under-ice guard position, having met nothing, and proceeds north to its intended patrol zone, now a week behind schedule. Vinson picks up its Sparrows and some fuel, and heads north again, leaving some of my tankers to head south to top up from the T-AOs south of PL Alpha. The B-52 finally shows up, makes its minelaying run, and flies back to England in time for tea.
One unusual combat tasking comes in, when we are asked to destroy an SS-21 unit in northern Norway, but with a very awkward and unwieldy weapon; a massive C-130-delivered Daisy Cutter. It seems that, in a fit of hysterical political over-reaction, the governments are frightened that the missiles might have nuclear or chemical warheads whose residue could be problematic, unless properly incinerated. Set aside the fact that we’ve been filling the oceans with wrecked nuclear reactors and broken tac-nukes, and littering the land with toxic compounds from ordnance and destroyed infrastructure… These missiles could be dangerous!
F-14 TARPs birds set out to find the missiles, and they turn out to be near where we destroyed an SA-12 a few days back, which explains why that missile system had been in an otherwise unremarkable place. The SA-12 may be gone, but there are a number of MANPADS and AAA units in the area, so F-18s come in with small LGBs to destroy them from safe altitude. Once everything’s secure, the C-130 makes its run and completes the destruction of the missiles.
DAY 10 (Mar 27 1994)
The operational slowdown continues into Day 10. Ongoing patrols and replenishment activity continue, but no major strikes or movements are currently planned. It looks like the pace on the ground will dictate the posture of the fleet, until new plans and priorities are established.
And that is that! I think this is the second-longest scenario I’ve played, only behind the trans-Atlantic convoy scenario NF 12.6. Thanks very much for writing such a long and complex scenario for us.
AndrewJ,
Thanks again for the daily play by plays, and to Gunner98 for the long running scenario, wish there were more of them that went beyond the usual day or two.
I'm still on late day 3, but I keep coming back to it, couple hours here couple hours there. What's interesting is I usually don't enjoy heavy logistic train scenarios, yet I'm really enjoying this one. IDK what it is exactly, maybe it's just a good mix\balance and so much to do that it's a challenge, but knowing I do have the time to do most or all of it so I don't feel as rushed as I might in others. Whatever the reason, it's been working.
I started to have a look through, but it's absolutely massive, so I haven't finished yet. Anyway, here's what I have so far.
General Impressions
This is a very interesting and involved scenario. I like big scenarios, and this one definitely qualifies! It's great to see large-scale movements of ships and forces over time, and fuel and supply status really start to change the equation at this scale. It takes a lot of planning to make it run well, and I'm not sure I ever had my refuelling priorities fully figured out, despite my attempts with extra spreadsheets and charts. My ASW planning needed some help too, and my attempts to set up effective MPA barrier patrols were constantly being ruined by the need to cover the isolated tankers which didn't have effective escorts. I don't think I'd describe the scenario as just maintaining pressure or doing economy-of-force actions. You're definitely engaged in a series of aggressive heavy assaults throughout the scenario.
It’s funny, that for all the work which we went to to set up those ASW stations, they never detected a single sub! I had been expecting a surge of old diesels and Echoes and Novembers to hunt down, but that never happened.
Munitions constraints were an issue in the early game, when low AAM stocks forced me to put many of my forward deployed fighters onto ferry missions, simply because they didn't have the missiles to allow full loadouts. (I used a lot of missiles to stop the Oscar strike, which put a strain on things.) The Enterprise had over a third of its F-14s and F-18s sitting idle for just this reason, and many of the others were on sub-optimal loadouts. The Roosevelt had the same problem, to a lesser degree. An escorted bomber strike at this pont could have been problematic. By day 3/4 I was better off, fat and happy with plenty of missiles and full loadouts. By day 5 I was nervous about HARMs again, after using so many against the Murmansk group, but doing an inventory showed the situation wasn't crippling. Vinson ran out of Sparrows on Day 7, after heavy air-to-air fighting in the Barents, but was able to resupply before it became an issue. I never did send any ships to Rota for SAMs. It was simply too far away, and since there didn't seem to be any bomber raids, and I hadn't used any against the Oscars, the need wasn't acute.
Lack of TLAMs certainly changed my tactics. No more airfield saturation attacks here! Instead, it was SEAD with HARMs, and a lot more low-level CBU and Snakeye work than I normally use, followed by LGBs on the runways. Even when my additional TLAMs arrived I held off using them (or the CALCMs), preferring to keep them in case I needed to mount a major attack on Russian airbases.
Fuel constraints weren't too bad, largely because most of my carrier-group movements were at a low-speed submarine-hunting creep. If I'd been cruising, then I'd have had to be off-station for fuel a lot more often. The American carriers were dominated by munitions requirements, so they got their fuel as a byproduct of munitions replenishment. The northern UK and French carriers cut it close, waiting until day 4/5/6 to refuel. My biggest refueling problem was the difficulty of finding relatively rare diesel fuel. Long live the Preserver! (Of course, if CMO eventually implements aviation fuel limits for ships, then the fuel constraint situation will get a lot more critical.)
Five American carrier groups have a tremendous amount of stomping power, even when they're somewhat fuel and munitions constrained. Once they were all on-station and resupplied, the power they could bring to bear was colossal. The player should be able to kick the doors in on any particular target - provided they've paid for tankers! Without them things get much much harder. If I hadn't had those 10 KC-135s, then it would have been a very different story. I had heavily loaded planes making trips of over 1100 miles each way to participate in the six-carrier strike which cracked the Murmansk group. Three VC-10s and a handful of S-3s could not have handled that! So, the player's tanker choices are crucial.
Balance was pretty good for most of the game, which I think is hard to predict in long scenarios. At the end the player eventually gains overwhelming advantage (in a way which probably couldn't happen in real life), so the last few days were essentially unopposed. As a micromanager, I probably had a little more than I needed, and players relying only on missions will find it more difficult than I did. I think the Phoenix restriction is really good, and it forced me to adopt different, and more interesting tactics. In particular, it made Su-27s and MiG-25s into much tougher targets, since I couldn't stand off outside the range of their pernicious long-ranged IR missiles. I think the player may actually have more air-launched anti-shipping missiles than they need. There are a lot of Harpoons and Exocets out there (plus SLAMs, although I was more frugal with those), and I never truly felt like I was running out until after the Murmansk group had been neutralized. A few less missiles might make it more likely for the Russians to survive long enough to bring the Kuznetsov and friends out to fight. (Of course if you lose a carrier or two, then so much for those Harpoons…)
I should really guard my harbours more carefully. I lost one T-AO to the Tango at Reykjavik, and nearly lost a chunk of TG Algonquin to the Kilo in the same place a day later. It was certainly a relief when the Spruances started arriving in that area. Fortunately there was nothing lurking in the approaches to Faslane or Portsmouth, and I spent a lot of MPA time checking for visitors there.
Murmansk
I think I got a bit of a free ride around Murmansk. The Russian fleet anchored there has no radar cover in the initial stages of the game, and no local fighter cover either (both the AWACS and the Bardufoss and Afrikanda MiG-31s having been defeated already, and Rogachevo being much too far away to interfere). I was able to repeatedly get within missile launch range with no hostile action taken against me. A couple of older long-ranged ground surveillance radars always active there would probably be a realistic precaution for such a valuable group of installations. This, coupled with an exclusion zone to designate any contact hostile, could help give the fleet valuable warning.
Despite the presence of the carrier at Murmansk, none of its fighters or AWACS were able to defend the fleet. This may be a plot point (air wing not ready yet, air-wing destroyed in earlier fighting & new air wing not on board yet, etc.), but if not, a couple of the Kuznetsov's fighters on a short-ranged intercept, and maybe the AEW helicopter already on patrol would significantly improve the defences. Or perhaps some land-based fighters at the local airbases would be on patrol or available for interceptions? Currently there are Flankers deployed at one of the three Severomorsk airbases, and presumably there were fighters there during the Cold War too. (There are the 16 Su-27s intended to guard Bardufoss, but they don't show up until Day 6, which leaves a gap.)
Rogachevo
Rogachevo could probably benefit from having an exclusion zone to help activate its fighters. I'm pretty sure that they had spotted me many times, but didn't engage simply because I was a yellow unknown. It might also be handy to have the MiGs coming up to fight at a greater rate. I was always able to count on facing two at a time, which meant I could send in four Tomcats and expect a comfortable advantage. But if they'd come up four at a time, I would have had to bring 8, which is not so easy to do, in terms of ready rates or tankers.
Looking at Google Earth, it seems like the SA-10 at Rogachevo is actually in the middle of a sort of roadless muskeg/swamp area, but more importantly, it is hidden from Rogachevo itself by a low rise a couple of miles to the west. That hillock is what allowed me to sneak in missiles without them being engaged. Moving the battery back onto this slight elevation would give it a much better view of the area, and put it on the only dry ground within miles. (They probably still had to move it in with heavy-lift helicopters, even in frozen winter, though.)
Missions
The transiting subs with Sea Control missions are currently unable to attack targets en-route. I tried running them directly under carrier groups, and even though they detect and ID the targets they will not shoot. They would need to have ‘outside the patrol area’ enabled in order to do this. This could theoretically let them go anywhere, unless you have a prosecution area defined. I tried making local prosecution zones for each sub, using fixed relative RPs, and that seems to keep things under control, although you then need a mission for each individual sub. In any case, it would be helpful to switch surface and submerged WRA to Weapons Free. Once the subs start to engage they often dive below the surface duct and into the very top of the layer, lose sonar performance, and only see the targets as yellows. Therefore, they will not shoot with weapons tight. They may not know exactly which CVN it is, but they should probably shoot anyway!
The Alfa on the Alfa Strike mission is cavitating at 20 knots at -30 m en-route to its zone. Had you wanted a more discrete transit? (Slower or deeper?)
Bear Jam and Bear Radar missions only have Badgers assigned, not Bears. And if that’s not trivial enough, try this: the NATO Patrol Zone Kilo mission has “Kilo” with only one capital letter. All other Patrol Zone missions have the letter name in all capitals! [:D]
The Bomber Strike mission is set to weapons tight, so it will not fire on yellow unknowns. Since the strike is designed to fire on identification of only the noisy CVN, it is probable that most of the rest of the task groups will be yellow unknowns on radar. Trials show the bombers will close on the enemy, getting well into fighter or SAM range, while they try to get a positive ID which is unlikely to happen on radar. Weapons Free would allow them to shoot sooner, using their missile range advantage, rather than closing in to get shot down.
B-143, the Foxtrot on the Jan Mayen Ptl actually starts under the ice, where SSs cannot normally go. It then travels north at high hypersonic speed, and 72 seconds later it is 750 miles away at the north pole, where it stays for the rest of the game. Clearly a Putin wonder-weapon!
Mainstay mission does not have th e1/3 rule checked, so all will be in the air at once.
MiG CAP has no aircraft assigned to it. Were the MiG-31s at Afrikanda intended for this? I assume this was meant to cover the bombers forming up. Currently they will have no cover. The prosecution zone is well suited for covering the forming-up bombers, but does not extend far enough west to cover them as they advance towards the carriers.
The Charlie is currently assigned to the Papa Patrol mission, but has a manually plotted route which takes it past the patrol zone and up to Murmansk. Was it supposed to be stopping to patrol? It has a manually set speed of creep, so it would take it 12 days to get to the patrol zone. Weirdly, in my case the Charlie plotted a dotted-line route over towards England, so it never went through the Greenland-Iceland gap, as you had plotted.
The SAG ASW mission has no helicopters assigned to it. I guess the 8 Helixes on the Kuznetsov were intended for this? Its patrol zone is a stationary square out in the middle of the Barents, where the SAG will eventually patrol on the Surface Strike mission, not a relative zone near the SAG itself.
The Oscar on Ship Strike 1 has its WRA set to ¼ of target’s missile defence value, while the other Oscar on Ship Strike 2 has its WRA set to 4 x target’s missile defence value. This is what caused one Oscar to unload everything, while the other only fired 2 missiles at a time. (In my case, they were firing at one destroyer which happened to make noise when it accelerated to high speed to maintain formation when its carrier turned a corner. They hadn’t actually spotted the rest of the carrier group.)
The Yankee Notch on Strike Ice and Strike Wolf both withdraw immediately when the game starts, since they believe themselves to be out of their primary attack weapon (normally the nuclear version of the SS-N-21). They also have WRA set to 1 round per target, instead of ‘use all weapons’, so they don’t launch a salvo.
The Svalbard North mission has the ferry behaviour on ‘random’, so eventually all the northbound An-26s will stop on Svalbard and not come back to Severomorsk. Vice versa for Svalbard South. If you had wanted to simulate regular cargo resupply throughout the scenario, then the ‘cycle’ setting will ensure they go back again.
The Vepr Hunt mission is an ASW patrol, which means that the Akula II will not engage any surface ships it finds. I tried running it under the British carrier group, and although it could clearly see them it didn’t fire a shot. It will engage subs, though, even out of zone, so that part works. Since it’s a heavy anti-shipping platform (650mm torps, baby!), maybe a sea control mission would work better?
Was there intended to be some sort of recce mission for the Tu-22MRs?
Events/Triggers/Actions
The Bombers Marshal action works normally, launching the bombers when the ‘CVN Detected’ trigger fires. When the ‘CVN Target Detected’ trigger fires, on class identification of the CVN, the Bombers Strike action happens, transferring the bombers over to the Bomber Strike mission. However, the action does not actually activate the Bombers Strike mission, so the bombers loiter and never attack.
I see that this was intended to have the bombers form up in their loiter pattern on initial detection, and then attack in a massive wave when the contact is refined. However, it is quite possible that a sub will get a refined class identification almost immediately after the initial type detection, causing the strike to activate before the formup is complete. Alternatively, a contact may never resolve to type, leaving the bombers loitering with a known CVN located out there, but just not able to tell whether it’s a Nimitz or an Enterprise. Would a timed trigger (X minutes after marshalling activates) be a good way around this difficulty?
Some of the BR message events have the wrong times in the text.
• The 192300Z message has a time of 191200Z in the text.
• The 202300Z message has a time of 201200Z in the text.
• The 212300Z message has a time of 211200Z in the text.
• The 222300Z message has a time of 221200Z in the text. It also has the same recce missions as the 212300Z mission from the day before.
• The 232300Z message has a time of 231200Z in the text.
• The 241200Z message has a time of 231200Z in the text
• The 242300Z message has a time of 241200Z in the text, and a recce mission which has expired.
• The 252300Z message has a time of 251200Z in the text, and a recce mission which has expired.
The last two reference points created by the Lua – Minefield coords are identical, so the player sees a narrow triangle instead of a rectangle.
The Combat Talon event has a ‘Msg – Cbt Talon’ which gives coordinates as ‘69*88’N 21*89’E’, but you can only have 60 minutes in a degree. Were these actually in decimal degrees? Converting them to deg/min/sec would match the readout the player has.
The Combat Talon 2 hr warning event fires at the same time as the first Combat Talon event. Its trigger fires on the 26th at 04:30, instead of the 27th at 02:30.
Although the Combat Talon Strike event fired for me, based on the unit enters area trigger, the Combat Talon SS-21 Destroyed event did not. It’s hard to tell why, since the Triggers don’t seem to be displaying properly.
The pilot pickup function is not working. This may be related to the error message that shows up whenever a plane crashes: “Lua script execution error: [string "Event - Load all Functions"]:175: attempt to index a nil value (local 'referencePointOne')”
The Random Wx weather event produces the same weather every time. “TEMPERATURE: 18 DEGREES CELSIUS, RAIN STATE: 2 CLOUD LEVEL: 0.0 AND SEA STATE: 4” The temperature which actually shows up in the game display is 8ºC, not 18ºC, but everything else matches.
Many of the Recon Tasks triggers are set for a 1 year and 2 hour duration, instead of just the 2 hours intended. You can rack up a sudden pile of points by overflying a bunch of your old trigger zones midway through the game.
There is no event for unloading the Marshfield's TLAMs and SAMs when it gets to Reykjavik. There is a Lua action already, just not the event to fire it.
Assorted stuff
The Stenka near Murmansk does not have a home base set. It currently has no mission, and a course set towards the Kola inlet and back. It gets there and runs out of fuel, and remains motionless there for the rest of the game.
The three small ships patrolling near Svalbard do not have bases set either, so they can run out of fuel too.
Some of the messages refer to the Svalbard resupply convoy as AZ-11, and others as AZ-14. Intentional sowing of confusion, or were there really supposed to be two convoys? It sure had me puzzled, looking for the other one. The convoy’s moving at a nice slow 5 knots, so there’s plenty of time to find it before it docks.
You currently have ‘Realistic Submarine Communications’ turned on. While this may be a useful limit for the player, it also means you will not be getting contact reports from many of your AI subs. Since their subs are the only means for the WP to find the NATO ships in the first half of the game, this is a serious reduction in the Pact’s ability to launch SSGN or bomber strikes. (I turned it off at the start of the scenario, so in my case the AI could get spotting reports.)
Quickstrike mines have a maximum depth of only 45 meters for the 500lb version, or 90 meters for the larger 2000lb version. Unfortunately, the Norwegian fjords are very steep sided and deep, so the sea-floor is below the mines' maximum operating depth, except in extremely narrow strips at the edges of the zone. As a result, you can't block this particular channel with these mines.
Markers for Orland, Leningrad, and Narvik might help illustrate some of the intel briefing plot points.
It might be nice for the player to get some points for arrival of the TLAM freighters. A reasonable amount of emphasis was put on them in the briefings, so I was a little surprised when they arrived and there was no score.
Points might also be nice for the late-game resupply missions to the two ASW bases, or perhaps a message on arrival indicating how long the ships should stay to unload? (Although how would you differentiate this from a ship which never left?)
Five hundred points for the loss of one of the T-AOs. That's hefty. You only get 250 for sinking a BCGN or a CV! I guess political pressure is at work again.
The recce markers are present in the game from the start, and they draw the players' attention to areas they might not otherwise look in, giving them warning that something's happening there, even before HQ sends out the reconnaissance request. Maybe the recce markers could be created by an event at the same time the recce request happens?
Five hundred points for the loss of one of the T-AOs. That's hefty. You only get 250 for sinking a BCGN or a CV! I guess political pressure is at work again.
Actually makes sense to me-the T-AOs are essential for the NATO fleet to keep operating, while the Soviet big toys are in many ways luxury items.
Probably an odd question but should we expect the Old Tu 126 Moss AEW aircraft to show up in the hands of client states same with the whisky canvas bags. For some reason I feel they are going to make an appearance in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Probably an odd question but should we expect the Old Tu 126 Moss AEW aircraft to show up in the hands of client states same with the whisky canvas bags. For some reason I feel they are going to make an appearance in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Pacific after the first few scenarios, being pulled out of reserve. Should be interesting to see how they do.
Hello. I looked around some more, and only noticed a few more items, some of which have been mentioned already, I think.
More Assorted stuff
The Side Briefing indicates that the patrol zone points are all intended to fire at 12 hour intervals, but the four triggers for PZ Delta are all set for 24 hours.
Two CVN detection triggers, one “CVN Target Detected’ with a zone, other ‘CVN detected’ without a zone. I don’t think the second one gets used at all, so it may not make a difference.
There are two triggers for NATO aircraft losses: ‘NATO Aircraft Loss’ and ‘NATO AC Destroyed’. Not sure if it matters here either.
My shot-down pilots all stayed until the end of the game. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to eventually expire after a time?
Action ‘Lua – Ryk window closed’ has a typo “have not made the widndow”
Action ‘Lua - USNS Northern Lights at Faslane’ has a typo “unloading supplies to the dockyart”
There are two actions which generate minefield RPs: ‘Lua – Minefield coords’ (which has the duplicate RPs) and ‘Lua – Target Minefield’ (which does not)
The ‘Rft 86 Msl Bde’ event, which adds extra SAMs around Bardufoss, happens at 8:30 on the first day of the scenario. Was this supposed to happen later in the game? The INTREP on Mar 21 at 1800Z indicates that the 86th Msl Bde “has or is moving” from Kola three days later. Having the SAMs present from the beginning does make things tougher, but it might also be interesting to catch the player unawares, here or elsewhere, with pop-up SAM replacements (or repairs) after they think they’ve cleared things out.
Pop-up runway repair might be fun too, although it would take a lot of Lua-ing, I expect. Currently the game takes forever to fix a runway, and in a game of this length they should be able to make some measurable progress. Maybe if runway = disabled, start timer. Four hours later, Lua in some trucks named ‘construction equipment’. If they’re in the zone for 2 days, then Lua the runway and a couple of access points to operational. Perhaps only at some of the bigger mainland bases (Bodo, Banak, Bardufoss)? Might make for an interesting surprise. (Although the problem might be that this could ignore the effect of restrikes.)
SAM reloads
I have to admit, I mostly forgot that the TLAM freighters at Reykjavik and Faslane had also brought SAMs, and I certainly made no effort to send any of my escorts there for restocking. I guess once I had decided that trips to Rota or Norfolk were out of the question, I put SAMs out of my mind. I wonder if a “Undertake SAM resupply” order from HQ, maybe a day before the ships are scheduled to arrive, and a minor points event for major SAM ships (Ticos, other CGs, Burkes) arriving at those bases would help make the player more attentive to this replenishing task?
Finding CVs?
I think the biggest difficulty for the Soviets is finding the American carriers, and, having found them, keeping the contact until the bombers can arrive. Submarine detection is a very unreliable method of finding the enemy, especially if they have slowed down to creep speed to do some ASW hunting of their own. You're only likely to get direct-path contacts, which means detection ranges will be ~ 15 miles at most.
I wonder if a dedicated armed reconnaissance mission would be the way to go, rather than hoping for sub detections? Perhaps the Tu-22MR recce planes, on independent support missions with lanes ~ 100 miles apart, with heavy fighter cover (a MiG-23 surge from Bardufoss /Tromso/Andoya, backed up by Su-27s/MiG-31s) against a background of jammers could do it? It would be costly, but if done on day 2-ish, before major reinforcements arrive, it might work to catch a carrier. And the cost may be justified - even spending 50 to 60 to fighters to kill a carrier group with 80+ aircraft and multiple ships is probably a net win.
It might also be worth a dedicated mission to hunt the Arc Royal and Clemenceau, coming in from over Svalbard to do it. (That assumes the Soviets actually know they're in the area. Would they have any indication of that in the scenario setting?)
(Of course, this is all spoken like a micro-managing human. Convincing the AI to do this might be completely impractical.)
Pop-up runway repair might be fun too, although it would take a lot of Lua-ing, I expect.
Some, but maybe less than you think, if you just want to deem it repaired at a particular time. The effort there will be more in managing which one\ones to repair and less the actual 'repair' - unless you want it staggered in increments, which yeah get more involved. The other challenge there is if the ammo depots are actually destroyed they're gone, so you only have what's on planes that are there and aren't blown up right or what lands. Course you can re-generate them but that seems unfair, and adding mags via scripts (without involving delta's) can't be done atm anyway. Though come to think of it this is the second request I've seen for faster repairs options, and while I don't mind the game is slow in repairing runways etc (I think it's rather a good default) I've always wished there was a setting per unit or per side to speed it up even if only slightly like (10-15%), I've always thought it should be maybe tied to proficiency. Maybe I'll work on something in the future that can address that in a reusable way, at least for airbases if not units in general.
Of course, this is all spoken like a micro-managing human
It's the only way to play this game most of the time frankly if you want to make the most of whatever advantages you have in a scene.
Convincing the AI to do this might be completely impractical.
Your mention of Runway repair reminded me of a interesting discussion I had late one beer soaked evening many years ago.
I had an acquaintance who commanded the Rapid Runway Repair unit (cannot remember its actual title) before we scrapped it. About 150 folks. He told me (beer involved so veracity uncertain) that his unit could repair holes in about 4 hours and have any runway damage fixed and the runway operational within 72hrs.
I cannot claim to have read the whole thing in detail (it looks like Engineer porn to me) but it seems that RRR is a 'thing'
Assuming you have a team (Canada had one- we have a lot of runways), the equipment and the supplies on hand there should indeed be a way of fixing runways quicker. Norway in March - I'm thinking within 48-72 hrs.
This capability shouldn't be universal and would depend on how many bombs of what type actually did the dirty work. I think this is where CBs vs Penetraters makes an interesting study - hundreds of small holes vs 1 really big crater.
Hmmm...
A simplistic fix would be on a 12hr repeating trigger - have a random chance and poof the runway is fixed (At my level of Lua skill - I like this)
A more complex fix would be for something on a shorter trigger (4hr?) where it dropped the damage on the runway by a certain percentage (10-15%) allowing smaller AC to operate quicker (this is better I think)
The next question is - how do you figure out how many teams and where they are?
If they are at the Air Base in question with the equipment - no problem. I do see another target at the base though - an undetected vehicle park or something within 20nm- which eliminates the option if its destroyed.
If they are not at the base - do they drive in (Target!)? They presumably cannot fly in unless there is a nearby runway... then why bother. Do they paradrop in - special kit, special training, transports available etc - yes but limited. Do you paradrop the people and use local equipment, doable but slower I think.
So how many? - One team per Wing or only one per numbered Air Force? For the Soviets one per Division or Corps? Smaller Air Forces get one or two maybe? Does that sound right?
So how? - For the player side assigning a RRR team to a base could be a Special Acton or maybe it needs to be flow in before or pre-positioned close or para-dropped. For the AI side it's easier I think.
This is more of a general discussion, but for this Scenario there is no real threat to the player and the Soviets would have one (at Air Corps) or three (at Air Div) and Bardufoss and Bodo are the obvious choices. A delay for driving to the other mainland bases but the island bases would be a non starter I think. The bases on the Kola would have an inherent capacity to do think I think.
Any thoughts on this? Gentlemen! I present you a 'can of worms'!
Looking through that document, it makes a lot of references to AIR FORCE PAMPHLET 10-219, VOLUME 4 1 APRIL 1997 RAPID RUNWAY REPAIR OPERATIONS. Fortunately, there is a pdf of it on-line HERE
This is a full-on 227 pages of how to assess damages and make repairs.
Pretty sure Eisenhower Moves North (don't remember which NF scenario number that is) involved an UNREP of a CVBG-that's a much smaller and more manageable scenario.
OK at long last the update for this monster is ready.
Some issues still to be worked on:
- Runway repair
- Triggering bomber strikes is still problematic
- A couple minor tweaks and fiddling
I'd really like to know how the scoring and pace is working now. The line crossing issue has been fixed so the scoring needs a good scrub. As far as pace, you will have things to do almost up to the final hour so that should be 240 game hours of activity - let me know if that is too much or still too little in the end game.
As always please pass on any and all points and thanks for testing.
