Plum Blossoms Do Not Fall Lightly, 2025 - new beta for testing

[Mgellis]

This is an early version of a scenario I'm working on. It is focused on a Japanese squadron defending part of the main islands from a Chinese attack. (The scenario name comes from what I understand is the nickname for the squadron, "Plum Blossoms.")

I think I have most of the important elements done, but I feel like I may be missing a few things. (You win if you keep the Chinese from blowing up too much stuff...you win big if you do this and shoot down a lot of their planes.) I'd be grateful for any feedback, comments, suggestions on how to make it a better, more interesting, more challenging scenario. Thanks.

Version 4 uploaded 9:20 PM EST March 2 2019

[Excroat3]

Gave it a quick shot without really any planning, here is my report:

The J-20s are insanely frustrating to play against, I could only detect them through the F-35s IRST, and vector my F-15s to help that way. My F-15s couldn't detect the J-20s with their radars on from as close as 5 miles away.
The Kongo is very helpful, it took down all but one of the DF-21s, and shot down 5-6 J-20s as well. However, now it's out of missiles, and sailing around aimlessly.
After the initial J-20 push, I was able to surge some F-15s and shoot down a bunch of Chinese AWACS and Tankers, but was pushed back by more invisible fighters.


It seems like the best approach to this might to be to stick over the Japanese homeland and defend the radar sites from missiles, not even bothering with the J-20s. If you do need to fight them, I would recommend pairing 1x F-35 with 2-4 F-15s, so the F-35 can spot the J-20s and vector F-15s on target. The F-15s alone have no chance. No bugs or issues with the scenario itself as far as I can tell, other than maybe giving the Kongo a place to RTB once it runs out of missiles.

[Ancalagon451]

Give it a pair of tries, been utterly trounced by the chinese. The combo J-20/PL-15 is absolutely murderous and even the PL-12 armed ones are very hard to tackle.

I wasn't totally convinced of the vaunted superiority of the 5th gen fighters but this scenario is changing my thought fast.

On the technical side, the Kongo has the "investigate contacs out of the patrol area" checked and is going all the way to the chinese coast at full speed in pursuit of their AWACS (which cannnot engage because by the time she arrives to their station she has run out of missiles).

Also the southern Patriot has it's radar pointing east, directly away from the enemy axis of attack.

Nothing else at this moment, will try againg tomorrow.

Ancalagon

[tk208]

I stuck pretty close to the Kongo with my F-35's and F-15's with a jammer to the rear on pretty much the same axis.

Seems to work well, the PL-12's seem to loose lock pretty easily.

So far 7 J-20's down for the loss of 1 F-35..

[ultradave]

Is it correct that I can't control the Kongo but only the aircraft? Or is something wrong with my installation?

[Ancalagon451]

That's correct, the ship is her own side, allied with yours (appears under the epigraphe "friendly" in the briefing).

It's a nice little wrench on your wheels (or at least I think that's the intention), since her radar is perhaps the best anti-stealth asset you have; but you cannot control her route nor optimize her SAM employment.

Ancalagon

[ultradave]

Yeah, optimizing the SAM employment is what I was hoping for. Ok, onward.

[ultradave]

This is interesting. So far I'm "Average" I've lost 5 F-15's and 1 F-35 and taken down 2 J-20s and a Badger. Those J-20s are hard to keep hold of to attack. They keep disappearing and reappearing. Continuing on. I'm trying to keep 1 F-35 paired up with 2 F-15s. The F-15s though are much more vulnerable so they are suffering losses.

[Mgellis]

Just uploaded version 2. Tweaked a few things, like the settings for the Kongo. Also added satellites...I don't know what effect they will have, but I thought it was worth trying out.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

[Mgellis]

Any other thoughts on this one? Anything missing, etc.?

Thanks.

[KungPao]

Maybe you can increase the difficulty, by assigning a couple of J-11B patrol around KJ-2000 and H-6U? and add Su-30MKK to escort the H-6? [:D]

[Ancalagon451]

Are you serious?

I've been utterly unable to beat this one!!

Ancalagon

[Mgellis]

Uploaded version 3. I think this is just about ready to be submitted to the Community Scenario Pack. Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix, add, etc. Thanks!

[Mgellis]

Any more thoughts on this one? Any errors that need to be fixed? Anything that needs to be changed or added? Or is it ready to go to the Community Scenario Pack? Thanks.

[Ancalagon451]

Chinese AEW mission is set to passive radar EMCON.

Satellites had near zero effect for my side, the only info they gave me was the presence of Badgers in the Tarmacs on the Mainland, several hours after I've been shoot at by them .

Don't know if the Chienese ones did something for them but at least the Japanese ones should go away to improve performance in Low-end PCs.

The Kai SAMs are a God's send, they saved me more times than I can count, but they are not 100% effective, and the limited number of missiles makes so you can't leave all the work to them so, from the scenario design perspective, you hit the Jackpot with them.

Balistic missiles are making the score to basically depend from RNG and little else.

If you put them for flavor, cut the number in half. If not, you need to give the player something under his control which CAN shoot them, Patriots can't. They scored an embarrasing 0 of 6 in the several attemps I made.

On top of that, several times the MRBMs targeted radars not covered by Patriot envelope, so the only salvation was the scattering of the missile making it fail, and that only happens one-in-four times or less.

Finally, I know that some (most?) players have no issue with this but currently, it's unwinnable without heavy micromanagement of your fighters.

The J-20 have too many advantages over the (barely) modernized Eagles. So I have to say that Plum Blossoms DO indeed fall lighly when confronted by the Mighty Dragons [:D].

Ancalagon

[Mgellis]

Just uploaded version 4. Thanks to Ancalagon451 for feedback. I made some changes to forces involved...Japan now has a 12/12 split of F-35s and F-15s, China has fewer J-20s (and they're on strike and escort missions now) and J-11s in the CAP role now, and I've set up what I hope will be a few more surprises for the player. A lot more of the action now involves stopping cruise missiles (and bombers) rather than waiting to see if the destroyer can stop the incoming ballistic missiles (but there are still a few ballistic missiles in play).

Please let me know what you thinks. I hope it is still challenging enough for people. Thanks!

[Mgellis]

Any thoughts on version 4? Anything else needed or is it ready for the Community Scenario Pack? Thanks!

[Ancalagon451]

The only little technical issue that remains is that some HQ-9 bateries in the mainland are manually set to full speed and are running in circles trying to maintain station.

The balistic missiles issue is solved (they are still unstoppable but numbers and scoring reduction makes it compensable with the the rest of the scoring), and the scenario as a whole it's now much easier then before.

So if the micromanagers don't found it too easy I would give it the go ahead.

Ancalagon

[Dysta]

Can somebody review the game again with v1.15 update? IR is nerfed as well as improved BVRAAM mechanics for western jets. I am sure Japanese jets will be vastly beneficial with those.

[magi]

ORIGINAL: Dysta

Can somebody review the game again with v1.15 update? IR is nerfed as well as improved BVRAAM mechanics for western jets. I am sure Japanese jets will be vastly beneficial with those.

well this is interesting.... i felt that missile performance seemed a little under performing....