New Scenario for testing: Baltic Fury #1 Storm the Gates

[Gunner98]

Hay guys I think you'll find this one quite intense.


You are the commander NATO’s BALTAP (Baltic Approaches) Command. BALTAP is a joint force of land, sea and air forces arrayed specifically to keep hostile WP forces bottled up in the Baltic Sea. Your forces are primarily Danish and German but some NATO reinforcements can be expected. The restricted waters in the western Baltic funnel hostile forces directly to the island of Zeeland and Copenhagen itself. One thing is certain, there will be a lot of combat power deployed into a very small space.

Precautions over the past few hours have put a flight of F-16s forward on Bornholm Island, a few ships to sea and a NATO AWACs forward in the area of Kiel Germany. Other forces are preparing but so far there have been no hostilities.

All comments and critiques welcome.

Edit Ver 1.3 uploaded

[WW31987Blog]

The Baltics are a pretty popular topic lately [:)] I can't wait to try this one out tonight. I'll post tomorrow and let you know what I think!

[Excroat3]

I like the addition of the former East German squadron of Mig-29s. It would be a neat touch to make those guys aces, as they've probably scrimmaged against every fighter squadron NATO owns by now!

[Gunner98]

Good point, I read somewhere that those guys saw more flying time and A2A combat practice than anyone around.

Will do.

[AndrewJ]

A new Fury! The perfect excuse not to do all those things I need to do! [:D]

Is Vandel supposed to be empty? It's got missile stocks, but no aircraft.

[Gunner98]

Dispersal field [8D]

[AndrewJ]

So that's what Sepals are for...

I'd always dismissed them as the 'poor-man's' navy for choke points only. But they've got me in threat pretty much the moment I leave dock. I haven't even hit play yet and already I don't like the things, lurking smugly there in what is sure to be excellent SAM cover. And those are only the ones the Russians want me to see. An Aegis cruiser could shrug them off, but my little patrol boats sure can't.

[AndrewJ]

What are you carrying, Emden?? I wish there was a way to say 'Heave to, or else!'

Not that I really have an 'else' at the moment... I've got at least 140 inbound bogeys, so that's a whole heck of a lot more 'else' than I can deal with.

[WW31987Blog]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Good point, I read somewhere that those guys saw more flying time and A2A combat practice than anyone around.

Will do.

We did some ACM against German Fulcrums when I was stationed in England. They're like NATO's aggressor squadron, or at least they were back then. Good pilots, though the Fulcrum is a very beatable fighter as history has shown.

[WW31987Blog]

I'm three hours into the scenario and am enjoying it. Have to say, with Germany reunified in this timeline, the Soviet strategy for the Baltic Approaches suffers. If they still had the East German airbases available, they'd be able to put more pressure on Denmark far sooner.

I'll post again after I've played a few more hours.

[Maromak]

ORIGINAL: Excroat3

I like the addition of the former East German squadron of Mig-29s. It would be a neat touch to make those guys aces, as they've probably scrimmaged against every fighter squadron NATO owns by now!

Here's a great interview from one of the first pilots in the unit.

Interview with Robert Hierl on the MiG-29 Fulcrum

[mikkey]

Very interesting interview, thanks for sharing.

[Gunner98]

Great interview - thank you! Based on his points I'll make the following changes:

-Will bring the unit strength up to the full 24 (the DB doesn't have 2 seaters but no matter), with 6 on maint that will be a net increase of 4

-Will change up the pilot ratings, 8 Aces to represent the old hands (including Hierl), 6 Vets to represent the newer West German imports from Phantoms plus a couple superior East German types, 4 Regular to represent the left over East Germans who had not adapted yet.

He was mentioning that it was 94-95 before they really started making the rounds of NATO so the game is set just as they were starting that circuit.


I'll bring the Phantom Sqn up to that number but without the aces, I think the player will probably need them.


Thanks

B

[PN79]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98
...
-Will bring the unit strength up to the full 24 (the DB doesn't have 2 seaters but no matter), with 6 on maint that will be a net increase of 4
...

There are two-seaters MiG-29UB under the USSR.

[ZoroastroBR]

Hey Gunner. Really nice scenario but I had a few problems trying to beat it.

1st: was the lack of Patriot Missile Battery. One can defend that Mig-29 AB against anti-radiation missiles but that's it. The other basses can't really defend them selfs with the HAWKs. I lost most of the forwards HAWKs so they were unable to attack the barrage of planes and missiles. That leads to the second problem:

2nd: I lost both Gulfstreams while they were still in the ground. The Russians bombed the s*** out of that base.

3rd: Lack of IR SAMs. The Rolands are good against low flying AC, bu I feel that we need more of them to get a fighting chance. Even when I altered their firing sequence to single missile, enemy AC managed to get past them and bomb the MIG-29s. I lost half of the MIGs in the ground [:(]

I know it is supposed to be a loosing battle, but I lost too fast lol.

So was that because of my strat or maybe the Russians are a bit too OP? I could try and change the engagement rules of my HAWKs to fire only at AC that are 5-10 NM away, but that will only work for one salvo. By the time they start reloading enemy SEAD/DEAD AC will knock them out.


PS: I really liked the addition of the "ejection" message and the placement of downed pilots in the map. What kind of Helo can rescue them? Would be nice to get a message in the game simulating an officer telling me that I had [X] amount of hours to save them by using [Y] helicopter or [Z] boat. Also, when larger planes get shot down, you could add a chance of multiple crew surviving the crash instead of showing the ejection message. For example, an ASW plane going down and you get multiple survivors.

PSS: Would love to see the same thing with ships [:D]! Needing to send warships to rescue civilian shipwrecks and taking into account the size of the ship that sank and the ship that is saving the survivors.

[Gunner98]

PN79 - Good point on the MiG-29UBs, thanks.

ZorozstroBR. I'll take your points in order:

Patriots - I'm going with as historical OOBs as I can find and the Danes in particular didn't have Patriots. It’s an interesting dilemma of the 1994 setting, a real transition of technology: Phantoms vs Flankers when they were designed for to fight Foxbat’s and Floggers, AMRAAMs are on line but you still have Sparrows, Aim-9 all aspect when you have stocks of rear aspect.

Gulfstreams - I can adjust the timing on that. How close were they to taking off? When I tested it they were OK but then I shit-canned some Sov deep strikes and reinforced the strikes on the first echelon of ABs.

I'll dig around for some low level SAMs. The Germans had some more but the Danes were pretty thin on the ground.

The scenario may well be too overpowered. We'll see how several more folks do. I did OK in testing but then adjusted a bunch of stuff so may have tipped it over the edge.

The SAR script is great. The basic script was created by angster and it is really good but I messed it up and TyphoonFr helped me sort it out and added in the messages, which made it fantastic. I don't think you should know how long you have, it’s an uncontrolled situation and you need to react or lose the crew. Any helicopter or boat arriving very close to the marker at below 150knts will do the job. Ideally there would be a correlation between SAR equipped helicopters and others, as well as crew size. A Sea King in the SAR role for instance could pick up the entire crew from three ASW MPA aircraft, but an Alouette III- not so much. At this point that is well beyond my ability with Lua, perhaps someone could figure it out, but I just don't have the knowledge, skill or inclination. Its representative and pretty cool at that.

For ship rescue, that is very possible I suppose. If you like that sort of thing, go to Northern Fury #3 Dagger to the Heart, and see how it was done in the 'old days' before Lua. Lots of ship rescue work in that one.

Glad you liked it.

[TheOriginalOverlord]

How much of the DDR equipment was utilized by the new Germany? Several light naval forces of Russian design could face their counter parts..

Russian built SAMs?

See this..http://geimint.blogspot.com/2008/08/ddr-air-defense-cold-war-case-study.html?m=1

Maybe that will help.

[PN79]

GDR SAMs and other equipment not destined for use in Bundesweher was quicky sold or destroyed. Here is some information: http://www.bits.de/public/bicc95.htm
The SA-10 was returned to the USSR and other SAMs were quicky discarded. The ships were sold or discarded

[Vulcan607]

In the book no escape zone by Nick Richardson, an important part of the book is the sea Harrier pilots trying to counter Serbian mig 29s and practicing the techniques against German Fulcrums. What they tried to do was get ignored by the migs pulse Doppler radar by going straight up in the hopes that by having no forward airspeed they would disappear from the radar. Didn't work but the Germans were impressed

[Gunner98]

In the Northern Fury storyline, German unification ended with the same effect as historical - they didn't keep much. In most cases the whole philosophy of the system did not fit the West German structure, and certainly it was a logistics nightmare and an intelligence vulnerability.


Some of the detail is here: http://northernfury.bhgdesigns.com/nato/germany.php I now note an error or two that I'll have to fix.


The main difference from reality is what happened to the equipment. None, or very little was scrapped or destroyed. The Soviets snapped it up and redistributed it, you'll meet DDR MiGs in Algeria and Algerian castoff Migs in the Caribbean for instance.


Both are great links and I need to explore them. I've got some very miner first hand insights into the demobilization of the NVA, fascinating subject.


So the end result is no-WP SAMs for Germany, but there is some flexibility in where West Germany and US SAMS in Germany are placed - with III GE Corps moving forward to the Berlin area there will be some alterations of reality.


Appreciate the ideas