New HCE Scenario - Business As Usual (WestPac Battleset)

[Juramentado]

Hello Folks - back again after a year's hiatus. [8D] It's been too long...

I went through my notes and pulled together a new scenario centered around COIN and asymmetric warfare, and dialed into account the current state of various procurement programs. Hopefully this is a little bit challenging because none of the organic fires includes missiles. The reality of COIN wars is that you end up using relatively lower-tech weapon systems, and tactics that diverge greatly from the set-piece thinking driven by the Cold War.

One player relies on guile and the ability to strike and fade at will. The other will have to maximize use of sensors, a superior communications net and limited air. Note that the total area of operations is only a little over 400 square NM, so everything will look pretty clustered in the maps. Jump to 32x in the Group Window and you'll get a pretty good frame on all the action. Look forward to hearing people's feedback!

You can find the scenario here at Harpgamer.

[hermanhum]

As soon as I read, "Red Side is playable and can win, but you will have to sacrifice a LOT of assets and it's still not guaranteed for a minimum victory." in the ReadMe file, I knew what side I would have to play. [:)]



After looking at the initial dispositions for my forces, it was pretty easy to deduce where the Blue forces were planning to make their transit. To maximize the area covered by my units, I broke up all of my task groups into individual ships.



Not long after assigning the individual courses, the PG Leopold Regis was detected. I was praying earnestly that I had not been counter-detected as the pirate group scattered and ran for their lives. Soon, OPV Meteoro also detected in same group along with PG Tomas Batillo. The Philippine navy might be small, but it had far bigger guns than any of my little pirate skiffs and had to be avoided.



As I was combing the area in search of the American frigate and the landing ship, I came across a neutral luxury yacht, Taramber, and another merchant vessel. Both were left unmolested. Suddenly, a Pirate Launch detects Polnocny and Perry and sinks as soon as their position is reported. I now have a datum point and speed of travel. Unfortunately, the Philippine navy was heading towards the re-supply group and I was caught between the proverbial 'rock and a hard place'.



I stayed ahead of the Philippine group that was running at 21 knots and used the helo to maintain contact with the re-supply group. I gathered all the ships together for one massive attack. Manipulating all the ships was really awkward, but I managed to put them all in the general area before swarming the frigate. I sent the weakest ships in first to draw fire so that the ships with more firepower could hopefully close.

I decided to try and kill the frigate first. After unleashing a few salvoes and losing another ship, I scored significant damage on the McInerney. The damage display showed mount damage so I hoped that it was her gun out of action. Not long after, she was soon sinking and I could then concentrate on the Polnocny transport. It was really difficult to get the ships to close with her even though they were ordered to intercept. I had to resort to manual control to get them into gun range. It cost me another damaged ship, but I was able to wear her down and sink her before the arrival of the Philippine forces. Once she was sunk, my pirate ships scattered to the wind.

Even though both target ships were sunk, I did not receive any victory confirmation. Except for needing to pretty much hold my finger on the ESC button in order to cancel the incessant and really annoying 'B*tchin Betty' messages from the AI to turn on my radar (nothing that you, as the designer could control), this is a pretty neat scenario. Thanks for taking the time to write it and share with everyone.

[Juramentado]

Herman,

Thank you for playing the scenario! And you did better than the author playing Red Side.  The error is completely mine - I think I set minimum Victory Conditions for Red to drill down to Sub-Type but used AND instead of OR. Still getting used to the logic. I have fixed this and will reload the new file shortly. Many thanks!

-Armando (Juramentado)