Surface Tutorial 1.5

[whraven]

Whoever designed this was a mean SOB. Victory conditions show you're probably going to suffer damage or even lose one of the FFG's. Stil, if you like challenges, this is the one for you. Now mind you, I played a nuber of games before I finally figured it out, but it was worth it. No losses or damage!!

First, I read the briefing, and did what any good commander would do. I ignored it did what I thought was best. First, the frigates. I didn't feel comfortable with the recommended formation, so I kept both in tight. 5 miles from the transport, and 5 from each other in a claw formation. During the missile attacks, they suppo0rted each other nicely. The helecopter with an ASW layout I put on patrol 20-25 miles ahead. This was just far enought away I could let it use active radar without giving out the exact ship positions, forcing them to use recon planes. Unfortunately, those never got close enough to eliminate except for two very late in the game.

The last helicopter with the Hellfires was the key. When the first missiles came after me, I sent it along their backcourse. Unfortunately, this was not from one of the Maluku sites, which seem to be more dangerous as they have more loads. If yoou want to pretend you have advance intelligence on their locations, and find them first, that's up to you. I didn't, so I followed the first set to their source, had hit it with hellfires.

I then went up to Maluku which was the source of the rest of the missiles. I found one, just in time for my frigates' tomahawks to be in range to kill it. Missiles still came -- there was another launcher.

During this time, I also found several surface groups, but they didn't seem to be the source of the missiles, so I left them to Tomahawks when they were in range, and I had the helicopter return, reload, and sent out again to search Maluka, and using active radar, keep an eye on any remaning surface contacts which were dealt with by Tomahawks. I found the last launcher, which succombed to a combination of Hellfires and Tomahawks.

The rest was just cruising. Some planes harassed my helicopter, but apparently were recon only, so no danger (which was good since I had finally run out of missiles). Got a top score at the end.

I was probably lucky, as, except for 3 or 4 missiles, all were taken out with one missile each. The destruction of the Maluka launchers kept me from using all of my missiles, although some did get close enough to succomb to chaff late in the game. If I hadn't been lucky, the Stuart might have been damaged or sunk, but in the end, all survived without any damage at all, which is more than I can say about the OPPFOR forces.