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2019 has seen a bumper-crop of new scenarios so hopefully another won't introduce scenario fatigue in the community. Anyway, here's:

The V-Bombers

You are Commander in Chief, Bomber Command and responsible for the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent forces of Victor and Vulcan bombers and the American made PGM-17 Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM). For whatever reason, deterrence has failed and a full-scale nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union and its allies has begun.

The situation is actually the same war as depicted in my previous Deter, Detect, Defend 1962 and Wargasm 1962 but now you get to play as the RAF attacking the Soviet Union.

Features include variable missile readiness, diversion airfields, limited weapons and London getting nuked repeatedly. The player receives points for destroying Soviet cities but loses them for every British city destroyed plus more for the destruction of the Windscale nuclear site and the atomic weapons development centre at Aldermaston. There is no defence from the Soviet missiles and the Player should quickly find him/herself deep in a VP hole. Do you use your Thors to destroy the Soviet PVO so your bombers have a shot at the cities or expend your missiles to even the score?

The scenario should be complete and the events have been tested but of course there are always errors of commission or omission that creep in. Would really like feedback to calibrate the scoring and assess difficulty but identifying problems will be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any tests.

-C

Great scenario, as are Wargasm and Deter, Detect, Defend!

Just a few comments:

1. It is rather difficult to find the activated Thor missiles in between all of the neutral sites; this is compounded by the fact that the Thors are not named by their squadrons, but rather generically as units. Maybe labelling could be added for this purpose?

2. So far, all of the Thors have slowed significantly and detonated at about the midpoint of their flight, with none actually reaching their targets; I'm not sure if this is due to the scenario specifically, or the Thor as it is implemented in-game generally.

Thanks

Thanks for the test and welcome to the Forums.

Each Thor is named uniquely for its squadron/flight, for example 77-A = A-flight, 77 RAF and you are correct that locating the ready missiles can be difficult. I solved this by opening the OOB window (key "o") and selecting the particular missile when the ready message fires. This selects and centres on the missile to facilitate launching. Perhaps you can explain what you mean by labelling. Unfortunately centre and close is not an available option with Lua popup messages. To be honest, using Lua to change sides was just so much less work than teleporting or creating 59-new units via Lua scripts.

Real-life Thors were crap and even after they were relegated to satellite launching (Thor-Aginea) and research they had a significant failure rate. It is little solace to know that the Soviet SS-4/SS-5 suffer from failures as well. During testing, most that actually launched reached their targets although a good number malfunctioned or missed once there. If more data is developed and there is a consensus, rolling back the 75% ready event probability to 90 or 100% might be a fix.

-C

Nothing else?

-C

Hi Randomizer

I just started this scen last night, so I´m not that far in yet.
I´m a real sucker for these cold war scens and i really like what I see so far.

So far I have scrambled all ready bombers and been nuked a few times, but luckily SS-4 and SS-5 missiles really suck, so a lot of duds have saved several targets.
The Thors ready events seems to work fine. The first handful have been fired already and are enroute to their targets.
Their reliability remains to be seen [:)]

Will let you know what happens.

Søren

A few hours in and things are going as planned, if you can say that after getting nuked repeatedly[:)]
Will report back when done, but I think Zumwalt_446 is right about the Thors.

They slow to sub-sonic speed like 250 knots just before impact and that sounds a bit slow even for the old Mk2 RV.
I will do some testing and report the issue if relevant tomorrow.

Besides that. I love the attention to detail. Both of Cockcrofts follies got destroyed.
Nice detail[:D]

Søren

Thanks for the feedback, including Cockcroft's Follies proved irresistible since they made such fine aimpoints. I tested the scenario to confirm your reports and have posted a test scenario with instructions to reproduce the issue in the Tech Support forum.

No excuse for uploading the scenario with this issue. The only thing in my defence is that I never actually noticed the problems with Thor during testing since I never bothered to follow the outbound RAF missiles. It was enough that the ready events fired correctly and I was too busy trying to get the bombers through the Soviet air defences. D'oh.

-C

Hi guys working on the Thornton issue at the moment got them to hit the target but get alot of malfunctions as well, will look into deeper tomorrow

Nice scenario! (Though obv. not quite functional due to the missile bug). I tried replacing some of the Thor mounts on the sites with Jupiter missiles but those have the same problem, wonder if they're a bit of a copy-and-paste job.

There is also I think a data problem with the Valiant - I'd noticed messing around with them myself that they seemed a bit useless as tankers, and either they're missing a zero somewhere or they'd have made great airliners as a loaded Valiant, tanker or otherwise, carries about 5t of fuel vs 41t for the Victor and 34t for the Vulcan!

I was just about to mention the tanker issue. I think IJV is right.
A fuel load of 5t is not much to refuel a thirsty Vulcan, and it sounds a bit low, but I have been unable to find any sources on the fuel load on the Valiant.

Regarding the missile bug, you can still play without problems. Your missiles just take a bit longer to hit their targets[:D]
I´m getting some good hits in with the Thors.

I do think that I have found an issue though.
The soviet interceptors attack the Swedish CAP over Gotland. They got shot down for their trouble, but you might want to place a no-fly zone around Sweden for the Soviets.

Spoilers below.

On a historical note. I see you have ringed Moscow with SA-2 sites. At that time it was defended by SA-1 Guild sites.
I don´t think it will make a difference game-play wise, but I think they would be a great addition.
You don´t find them anywhere else besides North Korea[:D]

Back to playing. Second wave of bombers are approaching. I´m behind on points but as you point out, points don´t really make sense in an all out nuclear war.
I am cheating a bit, attacking at low level contrary to doctrine, but it works brilliantly. Only lost a single Victor from the first wave.

When I´m done, I´ll retry with correct high altitude attacks.

Søren

Thanks for the tests.

The Thors have been fixed, probably with the next update and I will upload the scenario again once this has been confirmed. I will also probably give the Player the correct Vulcan B.2 version as some are the post 1964 variant. That said the Red Beard loadouts hardly seem worth carrying and the W.177 are similar to the Mk-28 supplied by the Americans. Thoughts?

I did some tests with the Valiant tankers and they do not appear to have any buddy fuel. Will post on the Tech Support forum.

The CWDB does not include the SA-1 but the SA-2 was in widespread use at this time and presumably Moscow was first in line for protection. The web site Soviet Armed Forces 1945-1991 indicates most of the capitol defences were SA-2 so that's what I used.

-C

Hi Randomizer

The SA-1 was added some times ago, can´t remember when exactly.
It´s DB ID # 1901 and 412.[:)]

Søren

OK, the SA-1 facilities are batteries as opposed to battalions which is why I missed them in the DB. Looking at the stats, not sure what is to be gained from a game-play standpoint by replacing the single unit SA-2 battalions (18-launch rails) with three SA-1 batteries (6-launchers each) plus the associated radar and HQ. Seems like a lot of work (and adds to the AU count) but if there is a consensus that doing so would improve the scenario significantly I will certainly consider swapping out some Guidelines for Guilds.

-C

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

OK, the SA-1 facilities are batteries as opposed to battalions which is why I missed them in the DB. Looking at the stats, not sure what is to be gained from a game-play standpoint by replacing the single unit SA-2 battalions (18-launch rails) with three SA-1 batteries (6-launchers each) plus the associated radar and HQ. Seems like a lot of work (and adds to the AU count) but if there is a consensus that doing so would improve the scenario significantly I will certainly consider swapping out some Guidelines for Guilds.

-C

Hi Chris, I'll make the changes in the db in the mean time for the Sa-1 if you want I'll make an import file for the SA-1 Ring around Moscow if it helps I have the kmz file somewhere

Are there plans to finally switch the incorrect SARH guidance of both systems plus the SA-3, for the correct radio command guidance?

Now that the ilumination range have been detached from the detection range, it's probable that the difference in both systems have stopped being a trivial one like before.

Ancalagon

EDIT: SA-4 and SA-8 are also radio-command guided systems, and both are modelled as SARH ones

Hi Randomizer

As I said, swapping out the SA-2s with SA-1s will probably not make much of a difference, except for historical accuracy, so please don´t do it just because of me.
If Sirius can make an import file though, it shouldn´t be too much work and then I think it would be worth the trouble.

Either way i´m happy.
This is a great scen and i´m looking forward to try it again with the DB fixes Sirius have made.

Søren

Hi Paul. Would be happy to accept an import file for the Moscow air defences in this era. Thanks.

@ Ancalagon451, I my opinion and given the scale of CMANO am reasonably sure that SARH vs. radio command guidance is a distinction without a difference, at least until communications jamming is completely modelled and the intentionally incorporated into the scenario by the author.

-C

That's the official reason, and for a long time I agreed that is a reasonable placeholder, but right now SARH systems work with an ilumination range calculated separately from the acquisition one and that's not how a command guidance works; also we aren't really sure that DECM systems work the same against the modeled "false" missile seeker as they would working directly against the battery radar in ilumination mode, plus for a brief time command link jamming was a thing.

So it could very well be that the placeholder isn't good anymore. And guiven that the involucred sytems include some of the most widely deployed and employed in combat in all history, including THE most widely deployed and employed in combat ever, an incorrect modelling here it's not a trivial thing.

Of course it could also be that all those factors have been already taken in account and the SARH modeling is still a good enough aproximation. If so, much better, no changes needed means no need to squash bugs later.

But just in case, i'm giving a heads up here.

Ancalagon

The difference between SA-1 vs SA-2 on a per-missile basis does actually seem to be surprisingly large (out of curiosity, I tried throwing a big pile of bombers across a line of SA-1b sites from one side and a line of SA-2b sites from the other) at least against high-altitude attacks - hit probability per SA-1 is about 1/4 to 1/3 of an SA-2. The SA-1 seems to be more of a B-29 killer and has its max target speed set as 550kts which means high-altitude jet bombers are fast enough to really dumpster its hit chance.

OTOH the SA-1 sites are actually *much* larger than the SA-2 sites, not smaller - an SA-2 site has 6 ready and 12 reserve missiles on six launchers, an SA-1 site has 60 ready and 60 reserve as it's ten groups of six launchers per site.

Whether it's worth fiddling with might depend on whether the difficulty of attacking Moscow is thought to be right - could also be interesting to have the SA-1 sites exist but have their approximate locations known, with some SA-2 sites additional - do I then go toss my vaguely functional MRBMs at stuff as soon as they launch, do I hold onto a few to kick in the door to Moscow, does that get them blown up before I use them, does it even work in the end...

(Seriously, the sites are big - I went looking on GMaps and found several with no more effort than 'look for a ring of things around Moscow' - though amusingly they mostly seem to have been turned into bases for holiday cottages nowadays!)

The V-Bombers scenario has been removed by the author as the Thor missile bug and insufficient fuel issue for the Valiant tankers have not been fixed in the last CWDB updates.

-C