The Big One: Northern Fury #34 - The Longest Battle

[fitzpatv]

Yeah, every dog has its day and Ventose has just proved to be a case in point. I've been making similar use of Jean de Vienne at Socotra, where she's been pretty useful (though she would have been better if her 100mm gunners could only shoot straight).

I wonder how flexible the Russian subs are in Longest Battle?. In theory, I suppose you could clear all the Goblins away from a given convoy route first time through and it would then be safe for the rest of the game. Then again, more Soviets could arrive/spawn or the existing ones could move from one patrol zone to another as the game progresses. I rather suspect that the first case applies, though.

Thanks for the clarification on your use of the Editor, which seems absolutely fine. Looking forward to more reports.

[Gunner98]

I love those little Floreal class ships, you'll note Floreal herself is in the IO Fury scenarios - usually overwhelmed early in IOF #1 with two sisters in the Pacific and you should see at least one other in this scenario if memory serves.

Excellent AAR, thank you

[tylerblakebrandon]

Session 18

The Fury campaign series always makes an effort to show off under-used, under-appreciated and misunderstood platforms. I always think this is wonderful

I love to use such platforms or play with the small nations who don't get much attention. In fact, while I have some fairly big-ticket units in in DB request history (cough...Iowa Phase II...cough) I spend a lot of time on requests for quirky units (Cuban improvised torpedo raft anyone) and stuff from small nations. I enjoy the challenge of the low resource play, very different from a seal clubbing scenario. Scenarios featuring lower tier or older units are always an exciting prospect.

[FrangibleCover]

Yeah, every dog has its day and Ventose has just proved to be a case in point. I've been making similar use of Jean de Vienne at Socotra, where she's been pretty useful (though she would have been better if her 100mm gunners could only shoot straight).

I wonder how flexible the Russian subs are in Longest Battle?. In theory, I suppose you could clear all the Goblins away from a given convoy route first time through and it would then be safe for the rest of the game. Then again, more Soviets could arrive/spawn or the existing ones could move from one patrol zone to another as the game progresses. I rather suspect that the first case applies, though.

Thanks for the clarification on your use of the Editor, which seems absolutely fine. Looking forward to more reports.

Yes, when I wrote that whole heroic intro for Ventose she was still steaming inshore, and I have to say I was very worried I would have to delete it all when she whiffed her first salvo completely. Luckily, she got her eye in.

I couldn't speak to how the patrol zones are done, but that would certainly be the first thing that I think about when setting up a scenario like this. I actually sort of feel like for this case a gigantic single patrol zone covering almost the whole area of interest would produce acceptable results, as every time a submarine detects a convoy all other submarines will begin to gravitate towards it, slowly pulling them into the convoy lanes wherever they are set up. Not for every submarine, but certainly for a number of them providing a 'floating reserve'. As I've said, I'm excited to pull this scenario apart and see how it's done later.

I love those little Floreal class ships, you'll note Floreal herself is in the IO Fury scenarios - usually overwhelmed early in IOF #1 with two sisters in the Pacific and you should see at least one other in this scenario if memory serves.

Excellent AAR, thank you

The only French ship I'm still due is the escort frigate Aconit, which is a wonderful little escort. That being said, my reinforcement menu so far has been very accurate and I'm still expecting something to get swapped for a lower value unit just as I was depending on it to turn up. I have been eyeing the Maestrale and her "assuming things have quieted down in the Med" note suspiciously, but it's quite possible that Aconit will be required to go and circle Jan Mayen with the Foch group while I get an extra Floreal instead.

I love to use such platforms or play with the small nations who don't get much attention. In fact, while I have some fairly big-ticket units in in DB request history (cough...Iowa Phase II...cough) I spend a lot of time on requests for quirky units (Cuban improvised torpedo raft anyone) and stuff from small nations. I enjoy the challenge of the low resource play, very different from a seal clubbing scenario. Scenarios featuring lower tier or older units are always an exciting prospect.

I mean, you've seen my DB requests, I'm not dissimilar. I like the middleweights though, the nations and capabilities that are better than you feared but not as good as you hoped. The Angolan Civil War is really good for that, there's lots of cracking stuff going on (Helmet mounted sights! Fuel-Air Bombs!) while at the same time there's lots of stuff that you want missing (Any MRAAMs! Any jammers!) and it's all slathered in a thick layer of being a long war fought at the end of a pair of long, thin supply chains by countries that really can't replace equipment losses, so the actual conduct of the thing is more like "Two warmed-over Italian trailers scatter SNEBs into some poor sod's village, everyone goes home for the day".

I'm about 80% done on those requests, about 20% done on them being added, but I'm hoping to put together a scenario set as edutainment about the war and the foreign interventions. Much of the popular history has been left to... well, South African veterans. You can imagine what it's like.

[CaptBeefheart]

I wanted to let you know I just caught up with your AAR over the last two days. You've done a great job, and this has given me renewed interest in this title. The logistics aspect in your AAR adds a great dimension to it.

As a WITP-AE player, I'm all about logistics. If you're not into logistics, you might want to give the game a miss. I can usually knock out a campaign vs. the AI in a couple of months. I'll do two-day turns, pretty much let the IJ have its way in the beginning, handle things like pilot training once a month, etc. Between big invasion ops I can do a turn in about 5 minutes. Also, toward the end I'll ignore the combat report and just check ships sunk and aircraft losses, and then go to the combat report if unexpected losses have happened.

I'd guess you could reduce the time it takes to play WITP-AE by about 67% for only a 5-10% reduction in efficiency. In multi-player it would be tough to make those compromises, but you almost have to to retain sanity.

Cheers,
CB

[FrangibleCover]

Session 19

The massive fleet oiler Big Horn finally makes it through the Canal and joins up with the South American frigates. I really want to get her going, but just don’t trust the Peruvian Lupo on her own, and the two Leanders are that rubbish that she might as well be on her own. In the end, I decide to send the Banckert group across the top of Venezuela to pick them up and get them moving. The most critical area for the oilers right now is probably the South Atlantic, without being able to use bases in northern Brazil or in friendly African states, there’s a huge fuel desert that the Perrys and Knoxes really don’t like. The run across the Atlantic itself is well enough served, although the five knot progress of the JFK group is wrecking its fuel efficiency as I guessed it would. Grey Rover and Endurance will be able to meet up with TG Stump and the PdA group at Cape Verde, which I think will help out a lot. One could argue that I’d be in a better position if I’d just been brave and sent Big Horn around Cape Horn, but if I had she’d be in the wrong part of the vast South Atlantic to help me.

I don’t really have enough time for a second big strike on Venezuela today, so I satisfy myself with a couple of extra bombing runs against the largest pier at Puerto la Cruz. I believe only Very Large and above piers can handle submarines of the type I expect to be facing, so I’m less bothered about knocking out the smaller dock facilities. My Jags fluff a run with their special retarded-tail Mk.18s, which is a shame since they’re supposed to be the more accurate option. As dusk rolls in over the Caribbean the Buccaneers turn up again. The Buccaneer is near retirement in South African service, beyond its time really, and its pilots are all veterans. Most of them will have flown hundreds of sorties in the Border War, often toss-bombing from extremely low altitude using improvised IPs. The aircraft are marked as night capable and in the half-light of dusk against an ‘easy’ target like a pier that will turn up on the attack radar nicely, they’re perfectly capable of bombing. They’re so accurate, indeed, that when they attack in trail the lead aircraft takes out the target in the first run and the second aircraft nails the other port facilities on its first attempt. With no good tertiary targets, the Buccs just go home.

For all the work I’ve been doing, I’ve not actually scored or lost a point in nearly two days. I don’t think this is my indirect campaign against the subs working yet, I think this is mostly just that I’ve swept the lanes I have and the Soviets are either being slow to reposition or aren’t doing so. Just as I’m congratulating myself on how good I am at this, the commander of VP(R)-60, a reserve squadron who have just deployed out to Lajes, informs me that he can’t fly because there aren’t any Mk.46 Mod 2 torpedoes at the base. There appears to be a stock at CFB Greenwood though, so it’s over to the heroic efforts of my 747s again.

I use my roving EP-3 from Tenerife to have a prod around the Gulf of Guinea and Nigeria. There’s a Badger out here, probably one of the R or Ye recce models, but it’s not anywhere near my convoy lanes so it’s not achieving anything except to allow the Soviets to determine where I’m not. Perhaps the idea is that the threat of the surface raiders would drive me towards the shore and then I could be picked up and struck from Nigeria? I find a Nigerian MEKO offshore, which is fair enough, and then I get six Fox Fire radars lighting up over the Nigerian coast. Message received, lads, the Soviets are here and probably hiding under the Nigerian flag as they were doing in Venezuela. The difference is, the ‘Nigerians’ can only really hurt me if I let myself be hurt by them, as long as I don’t go anywhere near Nigeria I’m fine. The MEKO is running its radars, so my occasional ELINT flights will detect it long before it gets into Otomat range of my shipping, if it elects to do so. I can just head home in peace, as long as I turn my radar off as I go. The Foxbats circle confusedly as I slip away.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 20

After a week of intensive searching, I have absolutely nothing around Panama. I’d move the aircraft I have here out, but the OV-10s can’t reach anywhere and the AC-130s are really much too vulnerable to use anywhere they could possibly go. Surely there’s going to be some action in the Canal Zone, or else why do I have these assets?

A second EP-3 sortie from Ascension is organised. This one is a bit of a risk, but I want to see what markings the Badger in the Gulf of Guinea is carrying. If it’s theoretically Nigerian, that’s the ball game, but if it’s Soviet then I’ll try and work out a way of shooting it down. There’s not really any operational benefit to me doing this, but in a few weeks as we try to batter back into Norway I could see a lot of these dispersed assets being slipped back to the Motherland and fighting us somewhere useful. With the radar off, I chase after the emission from the Badger, well aware that its armed and I’m not. My EP-3 closes in on the emissions from the surface search set and the tail warning radar, trying to silhouette the Badger against the stars. Once the crew have her they roll the aircraft onto its side, exposing the little IR turret under the belly, and take a few critical photos. Despite being lit up by the tail warning radar for a moment, the EP-3 gets away clean and analysis shows the aircraft to be a Soviet Badger G Mod and therefore a valid target. This is surprising, it means the aircraft could be carrying long range anti ship missiles that significantly threaten ships anywhere near it. What a waste for it to be stuck over here, trying to pick up stray merchants that the raiders missed.

I’ve messed things up around the South Atlantic and the Spanish Perry Reina Sofia is going to have real difficulty making it to Puerto Rico without refuelling on the way. There are no friendly ports, so I have to get the South Americans moving to escort Big Horn to meet her on the journey. My plan is to rendezvous with the Banckert group somewhere north of Aruba, then meet up with the Reina Sofia and her charges in the Martinique Channel, which Trepang will pre-sweep.
At 10:00 Zulu, 4th March 1994, Convoy BA01 arrives at the Azores and I have completed my first transit of the Atlantic without significant event. I immediately begin to disperse the escorts into port and split the convoy into two onward groups for Brest and Gib. I’ve brought three different SM-2 shooters on this trip, because I need to be certain that I can deal with the SSGN that shot at my last inbound convoy from Brest. To my embarrassment, as I go around the convoy making checks on the correct ports of call for my ships and dividing them up, one of them responds that the next port of call on their manifest is New York, from Charleston. I make up something about the exigencies of war meaning that they are desperately needed to pick up crude in Europe due to damage to European refining capabilities. I reckon they buy it, and if I only send one ship to completely the wrong port in this war I think I’m doing well. In the end I have 71 ships for the Med, 86 for Northern Europe and one that’s going to Northern Europe anyway.

Of course, it’s possible that none of this is achieving anything anyway. I pore through the scoring log, but despite the Chesapeake-NY test run definitely having been static inside the New York harbour area for over three days (Some time on the 28th to some time on the 4th) I’ve had no messages or points for her. I’m going to manually track deliveries from now, and I’m also going to leave this ship in port to see if it ever awards points. It’s possible this is just an issue with the particular conditions of the ship. I’m happy to provide a save of this, it’d be really disappointing if after all this work the little point ticker thing fails.

To my utter astonishment, USS Supply reports into Norfolk successfully, having seen no ships at any point of her journey, nor encountered any submarines. For the most stressful and least demanding video game escort mission I have ever come across, I receive five points. Honestly, I’ll take just not losing the twenty points I was sure this task would result in. I suppose it's a fair exchange for that AO in the Western Sahara also still being afloat!

Next step: Revisit Manodez air base. Obviously the Venezuelans didn’t get the message from the raid with the stealth aircraft in CF4, so we’ll try and deliver it again. After that I feel like I might be done with useful counter-actions against Venezuela, I haven’t seen anything come up from Jacinto Lara so its probably worth having a prod around there, but with the F-16 and Mirage fleets wiped out and the Soviets known to be concentrated at Manodez I don’t really see what they’re going to have. CF-5s and Canberras at best, not exactly terrifying opposition.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 21

Massive numbers of aircraft begin to take off from Puerto Rico, heading for Manodez. I have eight F-16s escorting a package of 48 strikers plus support aircraft, probably the largest single strike package I’ll ever assemble in this scenario. To my surprise, as I launch, so does Manodez, with three aircraft heading south-east at low altitude. I don’t really know where they could be going, it could be very long range anti-ship strikes aimed at the PdA group over 2000 miles down their heading, or it could be some sort of intercept course on a spurious detection. I’m going to tentatively assume that they have detected the PdA group with a submarine and launched a very long range strike, just because that’s the most cautious approach. There’s not really much to be done though, the sonars are active, the patrol helicopters are airborne and the Harriers are on the deck ready to intercept upon detection. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that this is a Badger strike, the 500ft AGL altitude that the aircraft are sticking to is indicative of a very large, unwieldy aircraft being flown as low as the pilot dares to. I’ll want to launch my interceptors in about four hours, 15:30 Zulu.

My F-16s sweep in, but nobody comes up to meet me. Venezuelan AD capabilities are so degraded that I don’t think they know I’m here. I want to have the fight before we clutter the airspace with lots of valuable instructors in elderly A-4s, so I decide to press hard and possibly even do a low pass over Manodez to try and bait the Foxbats up. As I arrive, I see the three aircraft that had been sent towards the PdA returning quietly at the same altitude, and they can’t possibly have launched a missile a thousand miles so they must have lost whatever contact they had. I want to go and visually ID them to determine exactly what happened here, but as I pass by Manodez the Fox Fires start to light off and I’m drawn into a very close range dogfight right over the base. This is the sort of combat that the F-16 excels in and the MiG-25 struggles with, especially with the aircraft taking off right under my guns, and I dispatch six fighters without loss. I can then catch up with the aircraft at low altitude - sure enough, more Badger Gs. All three go down, despite the best efforts of one of my Viper jockeys, who decides that he’s going to be a cool dude who gets a guns kill and only narrowly avoids the fire from one of the Badger’s defensive turrets. If they had had their tail radars on, he’d probably have been toast.

The first of my aircraft begin hammering at the hangars around the base as a fourth Badger attempts to run and is swatted down by my fighters. Annoyingly, something has gone wrong with my strike set up, many of the assigned aircraft have gone bingo instead of refuelling from the four full tankers and a number of the aircraft that have arrived have bombed from 36000ft, which might as well be not bombing at all for how accurate it is. However, a Kfir manages a beautiful shot into the only ammo bunker at the base and we smash up some of the hangars pretty impressively. No points awarded again, not even for the Warsaw Pact Badgers. The 250 point deficit for a pre-emptive attack on Venezuela looks like a really bad deal, I think I’ve pretty much pulled their teeth, I’ve not gotten anywhere near 250 points back and I don’t think they could possibly have inflicted 250 points of damage on me in any surprise attack. I’m going to stand the air wing down for another three or four days and then consider where I want to re-commit it. I’m really running out of stuff I can usefully bomb. One could probably argue that almost nothing I’ve bombed so far has been useful anyway, the only seriously dangerous planes I’ve seen have all been killed in air combat and my only real air striking successes have been the threats around Gitmo and the Venezuelan PCFGs. My mood is further darkened by another loss to bugged refuelling, this time a Hornet.

I get a message that the Maestrale has been delayed by a week. More or less as expected, and I don’t much need her the way that my convoys are running. Valiant arrives okay though, and I send her out on an SSGN hunt to the north of the convoy route. She’s a bit old and extremely equipped with Tigerfish, but surely I can beat an Oscar, right?

As my patrols continue I’m noticing another huge advantage of the VLAD buoys. Not only do they detect submarines from further away, but the increased area of detection means they get dropped slower by the automated patrol routine, meaning that the American P-3s that have them are able to cover larger areas not only in space but in time. Mostly my European and Canadian P-3s are dropping all of their buoys in a couple of hours of patrol, running out and monitoring them until they expire, at which point they fly multiple hours of monitoring empty sea. I’ve been manually returning them to base when I spot that they’re doing this, but I can’t possibly monitor every patrol aircraft I have efficiently. It’s hard to say this is unfair, especially when buoys are free and I’m expending them at absolutely insane rates (about 66,000 and counting), but it’s another advantage for the American aircraft. The Atlantiques also seem to have good buoy coverage whenever I look up there, although I’m not really sure why.

The fuel woes in the South Atlantic continue, there’s absolutely no way that TG Stump is making it to Cape Verde. They’re just off Ascension, where I should be able to nip in and refuel, but there’s no port! I’m actually not sure if the Rodney M. Davis starts in fuel range of any port at escort speed, and I really don’t want to be charging her around at 20 knots. Worse still, two of my charges are also nearly out of fuel and probably can’t take fuel underway. For the sake of keeping things moving, I decide to give Ascension a port facility I can use and then shuffle my escorts and their charges through.

I finally realise that I got the unload points for the Chesapeake-NY ship, many hours after it happens. This could probably use a mention in the message log, and I’m also going to want to manually track the ships as they arrive because I can’t tell which port and which ship it is that’s finished. Oh dear.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 22

I’m going to bomb the hangars and weather shelters at Jacinto Lara and El Libertador in Venezuela with my Buccaneers, because I don’t see any particular reason not to. They have more than enough range to do it, I’ve moved plenty of bombs in for them to use and I’ve not seen any air activity from either of them. They’re probably pointless, but I’m starting to consider if I can transit ships around the Caribbean without escort and if I get caught in a CZ by a far-off sub and humiliated by Canberras I’ll be upset. The South Africans arrive at El Libertador in the middle of the night and immediately spot a load of aircraft under weather shelters, which is good going. I don’t know what I’m bombing, but at least I’m bombing something. I don’t spot anything at Jacinto Lara in the morning strikes with the RAF, but I’ll kill the hangars anyway.

Zuiderkreuz transfers to the JFK group as AB01 passes them. I keep Protecteur with the convoy and I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to be doing with Darnell. As an MSC ship, I’m guessing she’s acting as a transport rather than a replenishment vessel. While I’m thinking about the JFK group, I’ve been really pretty disappointed by them so far. I was expecting pairing one of my SURTASS ships with a giant wodge of S-3s to result in large numbers of long-range contacts that I could go and jump up and down upon, but it really hasn’t turned out that way. I’ve gotten nothing but a whale this entire time and the task group is a third of the way across the Atlantic. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been too clever by half, if avoiding the traditional Newfoundland-UK crossing has resulted in me avoiding the bulk of the Soviet submarines and doomed me to long periods of Awfully Slow Warfare without any opposition. It has now been about four days since I lost the little convoy heading for the Canaries in return for a Victor, my last contact of any sort with an enemy submarine.

The Soviets may have achieved a massive strategic success here, actually. In return for the loss of sixteen submarines, six of which were pretty elderly, they have forced all traffic north of the tropics into slow, inefficient convoys using vast amounts of fuel to get merchants to places they didn’t want to go. If my intelligence is wrong and the rest of the Northern Fleet submarines are busy slaughtering the fleet off Iceland, that’s one of the most successful deception operations of all time.

I’m ready to dispatch BA02, containing the ships from Panama and Texas, but I don’t have a replenishment ship to go with them. I think I can get around this though, by not including any of the Knox or Perry class escorts. They’re always the first to run out of fuel, and I can just about scrape up enough other escorts here to put together a credible force without them. BY01 also departs for New York, carrying some of the traffic from Panama. I’ve noticed something quite useful about my helicopter patrols while running these convoys: Appropriately equipped helicopters can listen to buoys laid by my MPAs, allowing me to listen to more buoys and be assured that the buoys ahead of my convoys are being listened to. This is more useful than the dipping sonars, honestly, I’m usually a huge dipping sonar fan but with full MPA support they’re not as useful.

Groton has spent long enough off the Plate, I’ve lost the Drummond and the MEKO. I start moving her north as well, she’s the best SSN I have and I can’t keep her here for targets I can’t see. If I need to sink these ships, I’ll do it with air power and the other three SSNs I have around the Falklands. Why won’t the bloody Argentinians attack me though? At this point, I just want to kill them to get the unit count down.

[fitzpatv]

As I suspect you do, I fear you might have broken the scenario and will struggle to get many more sub contacts unless you look elsewhere for them.

Personally, I hate dipping sonar. Too often, I find that a chopper can't go after a threatening submarine because it is too busy using the damned thing (and you can't use Doctrine to stop it). Give me an Orion any day.

[FrangibleCover]

Well, for anyone who wants to have a look, and for Gunner's interest in particular, here's where I'm up to at the end of Session 22. Obviously, don't tell me what's going on, but perhaps indicate if the scenario has broken in some way.

Incidentally, it turns out the South Africans have inexplicable FLIR turrets on their Buccs, which is why they can spot things so well.

[fitzpatv]

No updates to this for a while...

Are you waiting for some feedback from Bart or has this AAR died the death?

[Ilya78]

I love those little Floreal class ships, you'll note Floreal herself is in the IO Fury scenarios - usually overwhelmed early in IOF #1 with two sisters in the Pacific and you should see at least one other in this scenario if memory serves.

Excellent AAR, thank you

Ah, yes, the Floreal in IOF#2 (not #1). She caused the most dramatic moment of my gaming history (almost 40 years). I think I will remeber it in my entire life. For those who haven't played that scenario yet, the following part contains !!!SPOILERS!!!:





I lost the HMS Cardiff early on by a typical beginner's mistake. I just didn't get the idea that she should have helped the Floreal around Madagascar and then joined the British carrier group. I just let her go until she got sunk by a submarine. The carrier group itself turned left, towards Mozabique, because I wanted to shell that coastal airfield with naval guns. Actually, it was not necessary, but this simple maneuver had a serious consequence later. The Floreal finally got joined by the two French patrol boats from Mayotte, and they started to hunt down the enemy patrol boats around Madagascar. Suddenly, the alarm sirens on the Floreal started screaming. Vampires!!! Four missiles emerged from below the sea. There was an SSGN between Mozambique and Madagascar! It was clear that they were waiting for the carrier group, but they got a French surveillance frigate and two patrol boats instead. I thought each of them would be sunk in minutes, but, thankfully, the Floreal had 16 Mistral SAMs, and they shot down all four missiles (the last one was shot down at around 50 meters from the ship). And it was not over. Four more missiles appeared in the air, and the Floreal shot down all of them, although at the end she had only one SAM left. I marked the position where the missiles appeared and called for a P-3, which easily found the submarine (a Charlie-II) and sank it with two torpedoes. The Floreal defended herself and the two patrol boats from an SSGN, and helped destroying it, so don't call her weak or useless...

(This was an excerpt from an IOF#2 AAR, which I have never written.)

[Gunner98]

I lost the HMS Cardiff early on by a typical beginner's mistake. I just didn't get the idea that she should have helped the Floreal around Madagascar and then joined the British carrier group. I just let her go until she got sunk by a submarine. The carrier group itself turned left, towards Mozabique, because I wanted to shell that coastal airfield with naval guns. Actually, it was not necessary, but this simple maneuver had a serious consequence later. The Floreal finally got joined by the two French patrol boats from Mayotte, and they started to hunt down the enemy patrol boats around Madagascar. Suddenly, the alarm sirens on the Floreal started screaming. Vampires!!! Four missiles emerged from below the sea. There was an SSGN between Mozambique and Madagascar! It was clear that they were waiting for the carrier group, but they got a French surveillance frigate and two patrol boats instead. I thought each of them would be sunk in minutes, but, thankfully, the Floreal had 16 Mistral SAMs, and they shot down all four missiles (the last one was shot down at around 50 meters from the ship). And it was not over. Four more missiles appeared in the air, and the Floreal shot down all of them, although at the end she had only one SAM left. I marked the position where the missiles appeared and called for a P-3, which easily found the submarine (a Charlie-II) and sank it with two torpedoes. The Floreal defended herself and the two patrol boats from an SSGN, and helped destroying it, so don't call her weak or useless...

(This was an excerpt from an IOF#2 AAR, which I have never written.)

Great story! I bet the laundry was working overtime on board for the next day or so! Both Joel and I had similar moments with the Vaedderen (Danish OPV) off of Iceland and it is making it into the book I think. The little ship actions in a big war always seem to come alive (HMS Glowworm, charge of the Sammy B! etc).

Just noticed FrangibleCover asked me to check out the file. Have been away the past month or so and will take a look later today.

B

[FrangibleCover]

Not dead, just resting. I was running out of puff, had a holiday at an inconvenient time and I do want to get some feedback just to confirm that the scenario is working as intended and that I am going to have things to do for the next three weeks of game time. I think this scenario needs some serious AU culling going forward, it is just too big to play at any sort of speed, but I've said that I'll finish it and I bloody will.

Thanks for getting back to me Gunner, no rush on the turnaround for the file.

[FrangibleCover]

Just noticed FrangibleCover asked me to check out the file. Have been away the past month or so and will take a look later today.

B

Did you get around to a look at the file? Or did anyone else?

My key questions are whether there are still submarines with missions to tackle my convoy routes, and whether Argentina is going to do anything or if the thing they were supposed to do has failed to fire. If there's not a lot left to do I'm happy to stop, if there are a couple of quick fixes to triggers/missions that sets me up for another week of play time that would be nice and if I'm just being impatient and the worst is yet to come, tell me to keep playing.

[Gunner98]

Sorry - My bad once again.

Looking through your save file, there are about 25-30 subs left out there although it is pretty clear that you have cleansed your chosen route quite well. There are some that will move into that area (7-8) and some that you will probably never encounter.

Going through the events and all the big ones have already happened. There are one or two Sov reinforcements still to kick in as well as more NATO ships but that is about it.

You've gone for a very centralized convoy system which will not gain the maximum in points but will be easier to secure - which you have. I need to think on a couple more drivers which would tempt a player to scatter resources a little more, I think the shipping companies would be screaming bloody blue murder for delays and European countries would be doing the same. Need to chew on how to implant that into the game to make the player really consider the options. Also a smart Soviet player can now almost pinpoint the convoy routes, not sure I have the skill to make the AI capitalize on that but in a scenario this long, operational level commanders would be making assessments and adjusting their plans.

So in short - if you continue you may well encounter a few more submarines but that is about it. For the Argentena question see below.



SPOILER If you aren't FrangibleCover and don't want spoilers don't read below.





















Argentina was meant as a distraction and nothing more. It was never going to act up. If NATO goes hostile on it there are a couple AI missions which should activate to make things a bit interesting but nothing over the top. The Argies are not ready for war and are not at all eager for it after the trouncing the Brits gave them a decade earlier. If you are a Brit, then this is meant for you as I was amazed at the level of Argi-phobia that existed when I live there.

[FrangibleCover]

Sorry - My bad once again.

Looking through your save file, there are about 25-30 subs left out there although it is pretty clear that you have cleansed your chosen route quite well. There are some that will move into that area (7-8) and some that you will probably never encounter.

Going through the events and all the big ones have already happened. There are one or two Sov reinforcements still to kick in as well as more NATO ships but that is about it.

You've gone for a very centralized convoy system which will not gain the maximum in points but will be easier to secure - which you have. I need to think on a couple more drivers which would tempt a player to scatter resources a little more, I think the shipping companies would be screaming bloody blue murder for delays and European countries would be doing the same. Need to chew on how to implant that into the game to make the player really consider the options. Also a smart Soviet player can now almost pinpoint the convoy routes, not sure I have the skill to make the AI capitalize on that but in a scenario this long, operational level commanders would be making assessments and adjusting their plans.

So in short - if you continue you may well encounter a few more submarines but that is about it. For the Argentena question see below.

Thanks very much for doing this, and for a really good scenario. I think, with only 7-8 subs left and my command growing in power all the time, I'm going to call it here and write up a retrospective and my views on possible changes to the scenario (some of which I'd be happy to make myself, if you'd like). In addition, please feel free to put this DAR on your excellent website, I have a Google Doc with the full text and slightly better copy editing if that would help you.

I absolutely agree on your points about the highly centralised convoy system, it would be very easy for a player to exploit with wolfpack attacks. It also definitely slows me down, but I think judging the speed you need to be going at in this scenario is going to be extremely difficult. You don't really know what your transit times are going to be before you're two weeks into the scenario, at which point either you're going to finish a fourth trip or you aren't and you probably can't do a lot to fix that. I think the MSC ships could help here, if they were put on a hard schedule: You must be at Charleston on the 28th, you must be at Brest on the 2nd etc. that would fit with their fast sealift concept better and would force the player to split up the giant convoy blobs and take some risks.

SPOILER If you aren't FrangibleCover and don't want spoilers don't read below.





















Argentina was meant as a distraction and nothing more. It was never going to act up. If NATO goes hostile on it there are a couple AI missions which should activate to make things a bit interesting but nothing over the top. The Argies are not ready for war and are not at all eager for it after the trouncing the Brits gave them a decade earlier. If you are a Brit, then this is meant for you as I was amazed at the level of Argi-phobia that existed when I live there.

Fair enough, I am a Brit and you absolutely snookered me! Although honestly I'd put the anti-Argentinian sentiment in this country more on Maradona than Galtieri!

I was definitely seeing what I wanted to see with Argentina, and there's a lot of stuff in the scenario that pushed me towards that view.

• The presence of Argentina at all, because everyone knows that orange countries in Command scenarios only exist to go Red at an inconvenient moment, right?
• The existence of Venezuela and Nigeria as two more obvious distraction nations (I know, metagame, that I'm not due to fight Venezuela before CF5, and Nigeria really can't do much)
• The massive forces at my disposal in the South Atlantic pt.1 - The small forces at Mount Pleasant and the large forces at Ascension made it look like a classic low resource start into high resource endgame in the style of H-Hour and other similar scenarios early in the scenario set.
• The massive forces at my disposal pt.2 - I was permitted to get everything into the area! This was even more suspicious, because with full force in the area killing the entire Argentinian armed forces could be done without much trouble. Therefore, they must have been reinforced by the Soviets and I could expect a thousand Backfires any second! (The Soviets actually did supply SA-7s and some intelligence support to right-wing Argentina in 1982 out of sheer mischief.)
• Argentinian forces being much more active than I'd expect. I caught both Salta class subs operating inshore around the Falklands, three surface vessels surrounding the islands and there was a basically 24/7 presence from the recce Learjets. I definitely felt this to be a threatening posture, even if nothing was really much of a threat to me and the natural state of an SSK is to be running shallow on batteries somewhere it shouldn't be.
• The overall Northern Fury setting, which I think would be affecting in-universe decision makers as well. The 1991-93 Soviet charm offensive has been incredibly successful and all sorts of countries that have no hope of victory have thrown their lot in and gone for broke against NATO, presumably angling for concessions after a Soviet victory. Why should I not have to fight Argentina, I'm fighting Honduras, Eritrea and Mozambique?

Notably not on this list? Any indication, from the briefings or from observed operations, that Argentina was thinking about considering the idea of a plan for the liberation of the Malvinas. The signs were there if I'd chosen to read them.

Regardless, I'm not sure that Argentina, or really anything much south of Cape Verde, is good for gameplay. The scenario is really slow already and I found that Argentina was requiring a lot of micromanagement to effectively locate and shadow their forces without provoking or accidentally shooting them. They're also physically on the other side of the world, meaning that there's a visual split of attention where you have to abandon the theatre of the scenario to go and look at Argentina, then stop looking at Argentina and go back to looking at the convoys. It undoubtedly gave me something to do, I'm just not sure that what I was doing was enjoyable enough to justify it. This would have been even worse if the Venezuelan triggers hadn't broken somehow and caused them to attack me, I'd have had to manage tracking operations against two different non-foe foes. Cape Verde and Recife could be made into the receiving areas for ships heading south, the AMCs could be moved to operate from the Western Sahara and the whole scenario could have most of the same feeling but with a cut down area of regard to 'only' the whole North Atlantic.

[Gunner98]

Thanks very much for doing this, and for a really good scenario. I think, with only 7-8 subs left and my command growing in power all the time, I'm going to call it here and write up a retrospective and my views on possible changes to the scenario (some of which I'd be happy to make myself, if you'd like). In addition, please feel free to put this DAR on your excellent website, I have a Google Doc with the full text and slightly better copy editing if that would help you.

Roger that, thank you for the effort to date. Any suggestions would be most welcome and yes please on the Google Doc, updating the web page is on my long list of things to do and I can include it.

I absolutely agree on your points about the highly centralised convoy system, it would be very easy for a player to exploit with wolfpack attacks. It also definitely slows me down, but I think judging the speed you need to be going at in this scenario is going to be extremely difficult. You don't really know what your transit times are going to be before you're two weeks into the scenario, at which point either you're going to finish a fourth trip or you aren't and you probably can't do a lot to fix that. I think the MSC ships could help here, if they were put on a hard schedule: You must be at Charleston on the 28th, you must be at Brest on the 2nd etc. that would fit with their fast sealift concept better and would force the player to split up the giant convoy blobs and take some risks.

That's a good idea, I'll certainly put something like that in there.

SPOILER If you aren't FrangibleCover and don't want spoilers don't read below.

Fair enough, I am a Brit and you absolutely snookered me! Although honestly I'd put the anti-Argentinian sentiment in this country more on Maradona than Galtieri!

I was definitely seeing what I wanted to see with Argentina, and there's a lot of stuff in the scenario that pushed me towards that view.

• The presence of Argentina at all, because everyone knows that orange countries in Command scenarios only exist to go Red at an inconvenient moment, right?
• The existence of Venezuela and Nigeria as two more obvious distraction nations (I know, metagame, that I'm not due to fight Venezuela before CF5, and Nigeria really can't do much)
• The massive forces at my disposal in the South Atlantic pt.1 - The small forces at Mount Pleasant and the large forces at Ascension made it look like a classic low resource start into high resource endgame in the style of H-Hour and other similar scenarios early in the scenario set.
• The massive forces at my disposal pt.2 - I was permitted to get everything into the area! This was even more suspicious, because with full force in the area killing the entire Argentinian armed forces could be done without much trouble. Therefore, they must have been reinforced by the Soviets and I could expect a thousand Backfires any second! (The Soviets actually did supply SA-7s and some intelligence support to right-wing Argentina in 1982 out of sheer mischief.)
• Argentinian forces being much more active than I'd expect. I caught both Salta class subs operating inshore around the Falklands, three surface vessels surrounding the islands and there was a basically 24/7 presence from the recce Learjets. I definitely felt this to be a threatening posture, even if nothing was really much of a threat to me and the natural state of an SSK is to be running shallow on batteries somewhere it shouldn't be.
• The overall Northern Fury setting, which I think would be affecting in-universe decision makers as well. The 1991-93 Soviet charm offensive has been incredibly successful and all sorts of countries that have no hope of victory have thrown their lot in and gone for broke against NATO, presumably angling for concessions after a Soviet victory. Why should I not have to fight Argentina, I'm fighting Honduras, Eritrea and Mozambique?

Notably not on this list? Any indication, from the briefings or from observed operations, that Argentina was thinking about considering the idea of a plan for the liberation of the Malvinas. The signs were there if I'd chosen to read them.

Regardless, I'm not sure that Argentina, or really anything much south of Cape Verde, is good for gameplay. The scenario is really slow already and I found that Argentina was requiring a lot of micromanagement to effectively locate and shadow their forces without provoking or accidentally shooting them. They're also physically on the other side of the world, meaning that there's a visual split of attention where you have to abandon the theatre of the scenario to go and look at Argentina, then stop looking at Argentina and go back to looking at the convoys. It undoubtedly gave me something to do, I'm just not sure that what I was doing was enjoyable enough to justify it. This would have been even worse if the Venezuelan triggers hadn't broken somehow and caused them to attack me, I'd have had to manage tracking operations against two different non-foe foes. Cape Verde and Recife could be made into the receiving areas for ships heading south, the AMCs could be moved to operate from the Western Sahara and the whole scenario could have most of the same feeling but with a cut down area of regard to 'only' the whole North Atlantic.

Those are fair points and some of them are very deliberate. On your last point, I agree that the whole scenario could do without anything - probably below the equator. A couple reasons I included it (which doesn't mean I won't consider your suggestion):
1) D had asked for scenarios to test the game to its max, no-one was sure what that was at the time and I think the added hemisphere helped to do that.
2) I was wondering how to include the South Atlantic into my WW3 creation, without having another war down there but to complete the story.
3) there were a couple very eager South Africans on the forum back then who wanted see their country and some of their kit involved

I can achieve the second two with a quick mod to Mozambique Madness and I think the first point is well past being useful. So this suggestion is valid and I will consider it closely. Although I do like the idea of snookering the odd Brit

Thanks again, I know that this scenario is quite an effort to run and I appreciate your effort.

B

[FrangibleCover]

Those are fair points and some of them are very deliberate. On your last point, I agree that the whole scenario could do without anything - probably below the equator. A couple reasons I included it (which doesn't mean I won't consider your suggestion):
1) D had asked for scenarios to test the game to its max, no-one was sure what that was at the time and I think the added hemisphere helped to do that.
2) I was wondering how to include the South Atlantic into my WW3 creation, without having another war down there but to complete the story.
3) there were a couple very eager South Africans on the forum back then who wanted see their country and some of their kit involved

I can achieve the second two with a quick mod to Mozambique Madness and I think the first point is well past being useful. So this suggestion is valid and I will consider it closely. Although I do like the idea of snookering the odd Brit

Thanks again, I know that this scenario is quite an effort to run and I appreciate your effort.

B

Personally I really like the inclusion of the South Africans, they're in a key period 1994-1997 where they still have most of their interesting domestically developed or upgraded equipment, but are now not evil bastards. At least, not in terms of high level policy, I'm sure the actual SA(N)DF on the ground was basically the same guys with a couple more wrinkles and a couple more chips on their shoulders. I'd be keen to see them in Mozambique Madness, as well as contributing what they can to the other scenarios. Perhaps during their escape from the Olympic Village the Spetsnaz killed a South African olympian and therefore the nation is out for revenge. I'm sure they'd be useful in Tour de Force .

I've been thinking about whether the southern half of the scenario would stand alone, but I'm not sure if there's enough meat to it. Perhaps with the inclusion of some other Soviet-aligned African states down the coast, so you have to fight a low intensity war against them, while escorting the convoys, while also keeping sufficient force tucked behind your back to theoretically fend off the Argentinians if they do start something. That's a whole other scenario though, and it's not like the upcoming list is too short!