Matrix Games Forums

Having practiced the sub ops and air ops I am trying to get my head around ship combat in the game.

The USS Stockdale can deal with all threats except another ship. No dedicated standoff anti-ship weapons are on board.

Is this a training scenario limitation (fair enough), or am I missing something?

Yes I have 2 x helos but their pilots just love flying headlong at the soviet missile ship and keeping them alive and restocked with missiles is taxing.

I currently am being chased round the little training island by a burning leaking soviet missile boat because all I can hit him with are sea sparrows which just bounce off.
He has soaked up about 10 Hellfires so far.

I feel there's a gap in my weapons bag.....a Harpoon shaped hole maybe?

**wiki - searching tells me Harpoons aren't fitted nowadays** hmmm. In a Taliban / Insurgent facing force maybe, but against Russian warships, helos peppering hellfire's would be target practice.

***EDIT*** In the end, after 1 lap of Benny hill chasing with my hellfire's exhausted there was a loud "RIGHT" and I turned and began a 100 shell mixed gun salvo from 6nm. Luckily he has spent his wad of missiles and was taken down.

I'd be interested in reading a response to this, too.

30 rounds of 127mm sorted him out.

For this scenario, you are limited to the SM-2 and organic fires. Of course, if you can disable/damage his primary gun, you could also have fun and go slug it out using 2ndry and tertiary armament like the close-in guns or even ship self-defense .50s. [:D]

If you would like to have more long range punch, the devs accepted a database addition of the LRASM a week or so ago (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) and it's launchable via most of the common VLS systems. Simply make a copy of the tutorial file and edit to your heart's content and add LRASM to your tubes. That will *unbalance* the tutorial but hey if you're objective is simply to blow stuff up, have at it.

There are no SM2 in the VLS in this scenario so all you get is the Hellfire on the helo and your 5" gun. BTW. Does anyone knows if the AGM-119B Penguin is still operational within the U.S. Navy?

Point taken. There are only ESSMs loaded in the tutorial. But you can use the Scenario Editor to load some SM-2 Blk IIIAs instead. It's listed in the Weapons screen, there just aren't any embarked for the scenario.

As for Penguin; retired somewhere in 2007? Norman Friedman in Combat Fleets of the world noted it was not an acceptable missile - poor mission planning system and tended to detect targets very late in the engagement cycle after firing. Also, SH-60 (remember, Romeos and Sierras weren't in the Fleet yet) could only carry one missile because of cabin door configuration. Compare that to Armed Helo configuration where you could carry four Hellfires at a stretch, albeit at shorter range.

The truth is that with the demise of the Soviet Fleet in the 90s there wasn't a reason to have ASMs to match up against a Tier 1 opponent until the Chinese.

OK. but for a tutorial mission. I think you need to have it setup so a new user won't have to dig into the editor in order to have a easier time at it. Afterall the tutorial should be design to ease the new player into the game. That's why I also think that the Air tutorial is a bit too complicated for a new user or it should be split into AAW. AsuW, SEAD portions.

I think the tutorial helps players see the different roles their weapons can play or not play. Players won't learn as much from a couple of Harpoon salvos. I do agree though that the scenario is more difficult and probably a little more tedious without them.

Fair enough. I've replayed the tutorials a lot since beta as that's what new players will see first. As a relative newcomer to naval ops, I ask the dumb questions, (and invariably the sages answer patiently . I just hope to have bigger bang sticks in the 'real' scenarios.