Yankee Team, 1966 - v1.50 (CoW)/1.30 (non-CoW), now also on Steam Workshop

[CCIP-subsim]

Here is my latest and most ambitious project - a dynamic scenario where you command carrier air operations (though not the carriers themselves) on Yankee Station. It's dynamic in the sense that it will play a bit differently each time - your forces, targets, the enemy's air defenses and weather are all script-generated to some extent (but within intelligent parameters, so not totally randomly). For example, while you always have 3 carriers' worth of forces, they're picked from a roster of 10 total ships, each with their historical air groups. The scenario covers a full 24 hours, where each of the carriers will spend 12 hours on the strike line, and 12 off. At the start of the scenario, you'll get a target list, you'll have to arm your aircraft, conduct recon and identify threats,and then execute strikes. There is also a chance that you'll have to run a SAR mission or two during the day while all this is happening, along with other things.

As such, the scenario isn't specifically historical and doesn't depict any individual action - instead, it's just basically meant to depict the spirit of the actions in late '66. The AI should be pretty clever in this one, and you may find the air action pretty difficult once it gets going, especially if you rush in without recon. My initial inspiration for this mission was scenarios like Down Town - but I wanted a scenario where I could play it over and be surprised, have more choice and variety, and really run the whole operation myself rather than just one strike.

This is a pretty complex scenario and is really big (up to 225 aircraft in your force, of which 150-175 will be operational during the scenario), so be sure to read the briefings and instructions. You'll need to enable special message popups and let the scenario run for the first 10 seconds to run the series of scripts.

Any feedback is welcome! Let me know if you find bugs or broken features, and what you think of the scripting, AI behaviour, scoring etc.

Thanks [:)]

[fixed versions 1.31 (for CMANO 1.12 with no CoW) and 1.51 (for CoW,
with aircraft damage) uploaded]

[AlexGGGG]

Friendly ships not firing SAMs? More specifically, PIRAZ not firing its Talos?

[CCIP-subsim]

Thank you for the report! Ugh, I had that problem with them before - I believe I have it fixed now, by setting the PIRAZ mission as AAW patrol (instead of Sea Control) and slightly revising the postures. Hopefully everything works fine now without getting them involved in any big gunfights with NV coastal traffic. So far it all looked good in my tests (and they fired plenty of Talos missiles at MiGs, with very little result might I add [:)] ) The MiGs won't fly directly over PIRAZ ships and should only sometimes follow your planes into the outer SAM range, so there shouldn't be a lot of shooting happening there anyway.

v0.2 file uploaded.

[CCIP-subsim]

Revised to v0.3

-Culled quite a number of enemy fighters and spaced out their active times to reduce the "wall of MiGs" effect
-All air, land, and surface contacts in AO are now marked hostile by default, but penalties for attacking wrong targets remain - the player now needs to keep careful watch on what they let their units attack

[AlexGGGG]

You should probably remove nuclear variant of Talos from magazines of CG 11 (USS Chicago).

There is some reload priority issue, nuclear Taloses fill up all the launch rails, but they cannot be fired (no nuke authorization), the targeting does not occur.

[CCIP-subsim]

Oh, great, thank you for that tip! I actually had no idea about that - and not only that, but also that there were training rounds in the default loadout, probably doing the same thing. Much appreciated!

Updated to v0.4
-Fixed the Talos loadout issue
-Moved the carrier launch position about 30nm further into the Gulf of Tonkin - mainly to help F-8s deal with missions deep into the north

[AlexGGGG]

In 0.4, I'm getting everyone classified as hostile, immediately, including surveillance radars and SAMs. In previous versions, they were detected as unknown initially, then classified as unfriendly. Is that intended change, do you see it, or is it wrong?

[CCIP-subsim]

That was an intended change in 0.4 - mostly to make target ID more of an issue. I'd realized that there was almost no risk involved in units attacking targets like boats and vehicles over wide areas, because they'd have an instant positive ID. This change makes that a little trickier. If it proves too finicky, I'll gladly go back to the previous model!

[AlexGGGG]

You should return to the previous setup. This change broke all kinds of patrol/ROE/auto-targeting settings. That is, I'm no longer able to set up the patrol mission to only engage hostile targets. I have to do excessive micromanagement instead.

[CCIP-subsim]

Will do, thanks for the report! I wasn't really committed to it myself - but it was worth trying in any case. I'll add that once I have a chance to run a couple more tests on the scenario myself.

[CCIP-subsim]

Updated to v0.5, with a few changes:

-reverted back to old hostile vs. unfriendly ID
-increased overall number of static targets (higher probability of spawning)
-significantly increased density of AAA threats in built-up areas
-somewhat reduced coastal boat traffic
-reduced overall number of moving units inland
-removed civilian buildings (they were basically serving no purpose)
-small tweaks to scoring to increase difficulty
-further tweaks to MiG AI behaviour

[CCIP-subsim]

And another update, v0.6

-added some randomization for the MiG roster
-targets for the mission are now split into AM and PM briefing: you now get an initial set of targets, and a 2nd list of targets is added at 11:30am, which should help the pacing of the mission.

[Broncepulido]

Sounds great!

[CCIP-subsim]

Give it a look if you can, please [:)]

Meanwhile, one more new update from me, 0.7. One main change:
-Target assignment is now fully phased.

Instead of getting 1 or 2 big packs of random targets, you now get a smaller initial set of targets (which can be anywhere), followed by new sets of targets 1 hour before each major scheduled strike. Each of the new sets will be tied to a specific historical RP (route package), so for the morning you'll be getting assigned targets in RP2 and RP3, and in the afternoon you'll move up to the 'harder' areas in RP4 and RP6. Then in the evening, you get another 'random' set of targets throughout the theater to finish things off.

This should give the mission a bit more structure so that you have more to look forward to throughout the day, instead of just looking at the same shrinking target list for the entire 24 hours.

[CCIP-subsim]

Another day, another update

This one should be very close to the final version. Main changes:

-Revised the scoring significantly (the penalty for aircraft losses is much heavier now, and the score is based on 0 being the average. Don't expect to score a triumph or even a victory unless you can both hit the targets and avoid heavy losses!)
-More adjustment to MiG AI behaviour (they should be much more coordinated and more defensively-oriented now, and their skill is improved. Although there are now technically fewer MiGs in the scenario than ever before, they are much more dangerous)
-Various fixes and small revisions to scripts (e.g. weather tweaks, no more error popups for SAR, renamed and cleaned up list of events)

[AlexGGGG]

v 0.7 still has issues with ships not firing SAMs. I fixed that by clearing prosecution area for AAW mission on which ships are assigned. So they can engage everyone who is in range.

[CCIP-subsim]

Ahh alright, I see what you mean now - you're right, the prosecution area was a bit tight. I'd forgotten about the Talos range.

That said, I wanted to be careful not to cause an ahistorical "SAM slaughter" of MiGs by basically killing them off with the Talos battery. I did some digging, and while it does seem like the CLGs used the Talos against North Vietnamese MiGs in this period, it wasn't a common practice. In fact, during the whole war, the Talos shot down a total of only 4 MiGs - the longest-range kills being at about a 60-65nm range. So what I'll do for the next version is set the prosecution area out to 65nm of the PIRAZ station and revise the MiG missions slightly so they don't constantly fly into it. If that seems too restrictive, you're welcome to delete the prosecution area of course!

What's also interesting is that the RGM-8H ARM version of Talos was actually fired more commonly against SAM radars, but my digging around suggests that it wasn't used until 1971.

[AlexGGGG]

You may instead adjust WRA for PIRAZ side to limit Talos to only engage at whatever range you specify (Max automatic engagement range). Either this or prosecution area will work; WRA max range adjustment creates a perfect circle at no cost though. 60 NM sounds about right.

[CCIP-subsim]

Funny, I was just testing the scenario and thought of the exact same thing! Thanks again for the advice - already in.
I realized that the prosecution area wasn't a good solution anyway for this. I've also set the WRA to fire 1 missile per shot rather than two.

And another funny thing - while yesterday I was doing pretty good, today I really got my ass kicked by the scenario, with a lot of the losses coming from AAA during attack runs. I think it's a sign something is working right!

[CCIP-subsim]

And another update to 0.9 - nerfing the Talos without being unreasonable continues to be tricky. Even with a 60-mile zone, it was taking out something like 15 MiGs per day (versus 4 in the entire war in reality). I've kept the 60nm zone, but have now forced it to only attack targets that have a positive type ID. All bogeys now also default to 'unfriendly' instead of 'hostile' until positively ID'd to slightly reduce BVR in general.

Other changes
-Further tweaks to MiG doctrine and mission profiles
-Slightly reduced number of MiGs, slightly increased AAA presence