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My newest beta...

It's 1968 and the Soviets have opened the war with an attack on northern Turkey. Their goal is to cripple Turkish air power in the Black Sea region in advance of a land invasion. Their goal appears to be to seize control of the Turkish Straits (they are also trying to seize parts of eastern Turkey to gain a clear land route to their allies in the Middle East, but that will not be important in this scenario).

You are in command of several Turkish air bases and more than 100 combat aircraft. Can you destroy the Soviet bombers and attack aircraft before they destroy your air bases and Turkish radar and SAM systems?

This is a big one. Nearly five hundred aircraft are in the scenario and there are more than twenty separate strike missions set up for the Soviets. This is probably one of the largest and most complex scenarios I've ever written. I've tried to make it very challenging.

As always, please let me know what you think. Gameplay, units chosen, the way missions are set up, clarity of the scenario description and the briefing, other historical details, tactics employed by the Soviets and their allies, scoring, how Events work, etc. What needs to be fixed or improved? What can I do to make the scenario more interesting, more challenging, and more fun?

Thanks in advance!

[Version 2 uploaded 12:50 PM CST 6/10/2025]

I've taken a crack at this, despite the difficulty/complexity rating. I normally steer clear of scenarios with ratings that high, but I normally try your betas so I took a dive.

After the first wave of attacks settled down, it was a massively bloody battle. Both sides took heavy losses.

The Turkish AF lost a total of 76 aircraft of all types

The WP lost a total of 108 aircraft, 22 of which were bombers.

I don't know if I personally can do a proper playthrough of this due to my limited skill on scenarios this large, but perhaps scoring could be configured to account for anticipated high own-side losses. This seems to be a sort of surprise war, so we can expect a sort of Turkish Pearl Harbor.

HalfLifeExpert wrote: Sun Jun 08, 2025 8:56 pm I've taken a crack at this, despite the difficulty/complexity rating. I normally steer clear of scenarios with ratings that high, but I normally try your betas so I took a dive.

After the first wave of attacks settled down, it was a massively bloody battle. Both sides took heavy losses.

The Turkish AF lost a total of 76 aircraft of all types

The WP lost a total of 108 aircraft, 22 of which were bombers.

I don't know if I personally can do a proper playthrough of this due to my limited skill on scenarios this large, but perhaps scoring could be configured to account for anticipated high own-side losses. This seems to be a sort of surprise war, so we can expect a sort of Turkish Pearl Harbor.

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, it is a surprise attack. This is the beginning of the 1968 war. To be honest, I'm probably cheating a little assuming 50% of the Turkish aircraft are ready to take off and the other 50% are in the middle of being armed (2 hours instead of 3 hours) because I wonder if that many aircraft would be ready that quickly, but I didn't want players to be totally slaughtered. As you probably noticed, a big wave of bombers comes in around 3 hours into the scenario, so having the second half of your fighters ready before then gives you an opportunity to hit a lot of them before they get to your bases.

The scoring is based on the number of aircraft you kill, the number of aircraft you lose, and the ground targets you lose, but they're not all equal. You also get more points for some of the aircraft you kill--take out the AEW aircraft on the Soviet side and you get a bunch of extra points. The Tu-16s and the Tu-22s are all worth extra points, too, but not as much. Of course, they do have escorts. The SAM sites and the radar sites are worth a lot of points to your side, so losing them means your score will go way down (maybe protecting them should be emphasized more in the briefing?) and some of the targets in the air bases (the radar, the AAA system, etc. are worth -20 points instead of the -10 points for most facilities).

Do you remember what your score was?

Thanks again. Please let me know if you have any other thoughts about this one.

(The next scenarios in this "campaign"--I'm using the word loosely--will probably be quite a bit smaller, but I'm glad I finally tried my hand at something this big and complex. You learn a lot by writing scenarios like this, although it is quite a bit of work compared to the smaller ones.)

When I called an end to my playthrough, I think my score was down to -950 or -1000ish.

I didn't get about 3 hours in because I had taken such high losses. I had about 1.5 hours of game time.

I don't want to say that there should be zero penalty for losing aircraft, but at the same time I think that since losses are going to be high regardless, the scoring should be rethought so that it's more plausible to have an "average" outcome.

I'll tweak the point values a bit and then upload version 2.

I'm also going to add an extra airfield with more fighter squadrons to even the odds a bit. Of course, you have to be careful not to lose those aircraft.

Just uploaded version 2. Points have been tweaked and other minor changes (revised orders, squadron names, etc.) have been made.

One major change is the addition of a fifth Turkish air base with two extra squadrons, which should make it a bit easier to fight off the Soviets and their allies.

As always, please let me know what you think.

Thanks!

I tried it briefly last night and got nailed when a single Scud took out an entire Nike Hercules battery right at the start. That felt like behavior I'd expect to see of the nuclear variant of the missile, not the conventional one. It's not strictly your fault - the Nike battery has 0 Damage Points - but I think that might warrant changing the targeting at least temporarily.

I put in a DB update request to address the issue, at https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/6198.

Thanks for the feedback. One of the changes I made to the second version was to remove the Scuds. I thought it would be an interesting addition to have them, and I was curious to see how effective they would be, but I think they make it too hard to defend the Nike Hercules sites (and it's already pretty hard...I think the way people will "win" this scenario will be to soak up pretty horrible losses in the beginning but keep going and make the Soviets pay for it by killing all their bombers, preferably before they get to the air bases, and also their tankers, OECM aircraft, etc. Eventually, you earn back enough points to get a victory.) In any event, I think the new version is more balanced.

Fido81 wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 10:07 pm I tried it briefly last night and got nailed when a single Scud took out an entire Nike Hercules battery right at the start. That felt like behavior I'd expect to see of the nuclear variant of the missile, not the conventional one. It's not strictly your fault - the Nike battery has 0 Damage Points - but I think that might warrant changing the targeting at least temporarily.

I put in a DB update request to address the issue, at https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/6198.

Any other thoughts on this scenario? Did the revisions handle the issues people have reported or are more changes needed before I submit it to the Community Scenario Pack? Thanks in advance.