Campaign for South Vietnam v.5.0

[larryfulkerson]

Curt Chambers has produced a new version of Campaign for South Vietnam, version 5.0, and Thomas Harvey and I decided to playtest
it. We needed a break from the Pacific At War we were playing. Maybe we'll do both of them at the same time. I'm playing the Allies
and Thomas is the NVA. We're using version 3.6.0.88 of the game engine so the AAA bug is fixed and so on.

Thomas has been busy blowing bridges and moving into the hinterland where I'll have to go to chase him down. We've got the
No Borders option turned on so he's having much success hiding from me. I find myself searching the same hexes over and over
again. A hex cleared of enemy hexes in one turn may not be cleared 5 turns later say. It's an ongoing operation.

This is the early game phase where the Marines land at Da Nang.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the reinforcements I'd like to receive first. I'm choosing the Marines because they are a pretty good force to confront the NVA
with near the DMZ. The NVA have been known to try to invade and capture Hue from time to time and the South Vietnam Army is
unreliable at best. They are in garrison mode much of the time and can't be counted on to be able to move and or attack. I'm asking
for some aircraft squadrons to provide some CS missions. I was planning on using the 13th Air Force to do a lot of INT missions. And
the Navy will man the AS missions. Yankee station is planned to be right off shore of southern North Vietnam for ready access to
targets. I'm going to put Dixie station is going to go right off shore near Saigon since the enemy is probably going to congregate
around the capital for a while yet. Tay Ninh is also an easy target. I'll have to dispatch some people to there most ricky tick.

[larryfulkerson]

The good news is that there's an airlift battalion near Saigon but the bad news is that it's down to it's last helicopter. That's good for
just about one ARVN airmobile unit to reposition to the field somewhere. So I'm seeing some potential but the airmobile troops may
have to wait for more lift before they do any search and destroy missions. Usually the VC hang out to the north of Saigon in the
forest / jungle or they loiter just outside the border in Cambodia. Near Tay Nihn. So I'll have to use some motorized units to patrol
near there.

[larryfulkerson]

I discovered that the HQ units have organic arty. So there's dedicated arty units and there's organic arty both. Cool. Just the way
I like it.

[larryfulkerson]

I really appreciate the news items that tell me where enemy activity is. And the mini-map has really come in handy because I don't
have all the provinces memorized yet and I don't know where some of them are. Luckily I have enough airlift to send some ARVN
rangers to the hot spot to investigate but I'm pretty sure the ARVN division near there is in garrison mode and of no use to us. I
can usually tell about where the enemy activity is happening but the news item tells me which province. In the early game phase
the VC and NVA usually run rampant and take over much of the country and the best the Allies can do is clear the part near the
coast and it's going to take more troops to clear the land from the coast to the foothills of the mountains. The NVA has been
pounding Hue with it's rocket units and before I ship any aircraft that far north I'll need to clear out the terrain around the airports
or risk losing some expensive planes. That's the job of the Marines.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's an image showing the hot spots. The NVA are massing along the northern border probably to get organized for the multi-unit
push south. VC have been blowing bridges and converting hexes. I'm not sure I have enough troops to investigate all the hot spots
simultaneously so I may have to prioritize the Saigon area first and then Hue and then everything else in that order. The Marines have
started showing up. First the HQ units and the arty and the mechanized followed by the foot-borne troops. I'm seeing an enemy unit
near my Saigon-area airfields and he needs to be chased away. I need to get my engineers moving to start repairing all the blown
bridges. And it might behove me to find some good spots for the dedicated arty to be placed. And some security for the tubes.

[larryfulkerson]

The VC have blown enough bridges and converted enough hexes to have cut off the tip of the country from any supply at all. There's
only one ARVN unit affected and I'll move him the next chance I get but there's no way I've got enough troops handy nearby to handle
the take-back of the territory. It'll have to wait until more troops are available.

[larryfulkerson]

The 2nd Air Force has arrived and here's a list of some of the aircraft squadrons available now. Some of these may have arrived early
and some squadrons have yet to arrive. I flew in the 16th SOS and I don't see that squadron listed so obviously it hasn't arrived yet.
A lot of these planes are F-100's and don't fly all that well in monsoon weather but a lot of the navy planes are (AW ) or all weather
and CAN fly in the monsoon. Although the mission results might suffer because of the weather. I think maybe I have about half of
the planes I'm going to need. The 13th Air Force can supply the missing half but I don't think I need the other half just yet. I'm
anxious to get the Marines installed near the DMZ because the cities north of Hue are threatened, not to mention Hue itself. It's easier
to prevent the enemy from capturing the city than it will be to root him out of there.

[larryfulkerson]

I dispatched a batallion of Marine engineers out to repair a blown bridge when the Bn ran into the VC's that blew the bridge. I've got
enough CS missions to help the Marines survive but there's no combat ready, available, fit to go, right-now infantry to fight the VC.
It's looking like I need to fly some ARVN rangers out to their rescue. Let me look around some more. There may be another way,
another unit somewhere that I can float into the nearby port and dispatch from there.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm the proud owner of a squadron of Marine Crusaiders and the only mission they can fly is AS and I can't disband the squadron but
I don't see any airfields in North Vietnam where I seem to remember one being before. Well, this IS a new version of the scenario and
I guess the airfield was moved somewhere else. Or removed entirely. Humm.......

[larryfulkerson]

I got to looking around the map some more and I found some Migs in Haiphong, or is it Hanoi. Anyway, I don't have to disband the
Marine Crusaiders any more and the question is should I attack them? I don't want to go in there outnumbered. Lemme look around
some more first.

[larryfulkerson]

I did an airstrike on one of the NVA mechanized units on the DMZ and here's the results. The results looks a bit skewed to me so I
took a look in the toaw_log file and sure enough the AA value is set way way too high. After the attacks are over I'll take a look at the
AA leatheality ( spell?) level and see if it can be lowered somewhat. Note to Curt: AA levels are too high.

EDIT: Wait a minute, I don't see any AA listed in the NVA equipment list so I'm thinking maybe there's something wrong with the
attrition divider instead. I'm not an expert can you tell?

[larryfulkerson]

Yeah, and this combat result is skewed also. Something is terribly wrong.

[larryfulkerson]

More proof

EDIT:: I just happened to notice that this is my 23,000th post. Well, well, well.

[larryfulkerson]

The ARVN rangers cleaned up that NVA rocket team that was bombarding Hue.

[larryfulkerson]

I looked up the values in the editor that the scenario is using and I would suggest changes thusly:

[larryfulkerson]

Okay..........Thomas and I did a re-start and it's turn 1 again. These are the theater options available and I'm going to chose the
first two of them. I want to play the strategic bombing by ear and use it only if I'm already losing. And I've chosen the last TO before
but I don't remember what the effects are.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the bad news......the VC have been active in the south blowing bridges and converting hexes. I'm almost out of supply down
there. Plus there's a VC unit knocking at the door of one of my Ruff/Puff units. I'm thinking of flying some ARVN rangers down there
to help out some.

[Raindem]

I really appreciate Larry and Harvey playtesting this, and especially Larry for the detailed AARs. A few observations on my part...

NVN airbases have been moved to the target cluster in in non-playable area. In previous versions I found that NVN MiGs influenced too many battles in the central highlands, where in reality they pretty much stayed over North Vietnam.

Changing the attrition divider would be a mistake and would unbalance the scenario. It affects a lot more than air losses. The EEV, casualty penalties, victory ratio, and a bunch of other things are going to be altered by a change in the divider. I've playtested this many many times and over the course of a whole game things do balance out.

I do agree with Larry that the air losses seem off. Here's a bit of background on my efforts to deal with that. When CSV was first released Opart was still being developed by Norm. I thought air losses were well balanced in that first version. However, I did notice that helo losses were nearly non-existant. Only if airmobile troops flew near North Vietnam with active MiGs on patrol did it ever take any transport losses. Eventually, Norm was convinced there was an AA bug and "fixed" it. That basically broke the Strategic Bombing component of the scenario so I had to develop a new version to work with the new Opart. Fast foward to Matrix TOAW III. The program's AA logic was once again tinkered with and so I had to do another update for the scenario that was released with the distribution disk. At that point I couldn't quite get losses correct for strategic bombing runs, but they seemed OK for regular combat. Ironically, through all the AA fixes, I still don't feel that either attack or transport helicopters losses were dealt with correctly. But that's another discussion. A year or two ago, when I heard about someone who was developing a seperate AA fix, I started working on TOAW again so that it would work with that version. No sooner did I get half-way through that update when Matrix (Ralph) started actively developing the official program again. So I tossed all the air combat changes I made for the other program and just started working on a general update. I figured I would be done about the same time as Ralph and would tie everything together at that point.

So that brings us up to date. The scenario that Larry is testing is 80% complete. It does not include Allied PO or air combat balancing. More importantly, it has not been tested or developed with any version currently under testing by Matrix. I will certainly do that before releasing it but since the game engine is still in flux I'm saving that for the last item.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Raindem
The scenario that Larry is testing ... has not been tested or developed with any version [ of the exe ] currently under testing by Matrix.

Curt has put in a lot of hard work and many hours on this scenario and it shows. The tiny problem with the AAA kill level should be
an easy fix so Thomas and I will just wait for a new version of the scenario from Curt and then do a re-start. Although all the testing
we will be doing will use 3.6.0.88.