Finished scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Never Was)

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Finished scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Nev... - 2/10/2014 1:37:44 AM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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Here's installment #2 of the series based upon the book The War That Never Was.

This takes place in the Indian Ocean (obviously) where Soviet forces were meant to be a speedbump that tied down NATO forces as long as possible. NATO has a clear advantage in both quality and quantity, so the scoring is set very much in the Soviet's favor.

Currently only playable from NATO, but I am working on making USSR playable. (It takes a while to script all NATO's units.)

I haven't play tested this as much as I would like, but I think it has a lot of potential. Please let me know what stupid thing I have overlooked. (I am sure I have missed something...)

Update: The scenario is finished. Enjoy!

Yokes

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by Yokes -- 2/16/2014 3:52:19 AM >

Post #: 1

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/10/2014 8:36:06 AM

Vici Supreme

Posts: 558
Joined: 12/4/2013
From: Southern Germany
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Sounds cool! Downloading...

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 2

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/10/2014 10:59:43 PM

tommo8993

Posts: 116
Joined: 7/10/2013
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Great scenario, just like the last one. I'm really looking forward to the next one you make

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Post #: 3

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/11/2014 2:45:01 AM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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I updated the scenario so the Soviets are now playable.

Please let me know what you think.

Yokes

(in reply to tommo8993)

Post #: 4

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/11/2014 7:11:46 PM

Flankerk

Posts: 417
Joined: 6/21/2006
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Tried as Soviet side. All seems to work well overall. The area and set up is good.
Did wonder if it wouldn't be worth naming the ships as such as opposed to class name which I think it was. For example I might have two subs each called Kilo if you follow?

Soviet side the victory triggers too early at a guess, I hit the one SAG repeatedly, scored hits on three ships, all sank but that gave me a triumph. To be frank I wanted the game to continue!

Is it worth changing it so that you have to locate and sink the CVN? Not sure.

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 5

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/11/2014 8:18:01 PM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Flankerk

Tried as Soviet side. All seems to work well overall. The area and set up is good.
Did wonder if it wouldn't be worth naming the ships as such as opposed to class name which I think it was. For example I might have two subs each called Kilo if you follow?

Soviet side the victory triggers too early at a guess, I hit the one SAG repeatedly, scored hits on three ships, all sank but that gave me a triumph. To be frank I wanted the game to continue!

Is it worth changing it so that you have to locate and sink the CVN? Not sure.

Thanks for the feedback, Flankerk. You have become my unofficial Soviet tester.

I changed the scoring so you will now have a harder time getting the win as the Soviets. Also, I added an additional wrinkle that should make your task much more difficult.

I hope you can try out the new version.

Yokes

(in reply to Flankerk)

Post #: 6

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/11/2014 8:27:04 PM

Jorm

Posts: 545
Joined: 6/25/2002
From: Melbourne
Status: offline

nice work !!

tried it twice as NATO, lost terribly both times due to lucky torp hits from the nasty subs.

Looking forward to another palythrough afterwork, ill get that Slaval yet !! ;-)

some notes

[spoilers]

the backfires from up north dont do any thing they sit at a point north of my carriier group and just mill about.

perhaps move the foxtrot slightly further away from the SAG, i lost the tico in that group both playthroughs very early to torp hits from it with not much chance to do any thing either time. Still its a very nice surprise as the foxtrot is VERY hard to detect in he shallow waters there.

is the Siadi AF Supposed to be playable , they dont do anything that ive seen ?

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 7

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/11/2014 9:43:44 PM

Yokes

Posts: 298
Joined: 3/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Jorm

nice work !!

tried it twice as NATO, lost terribly both times due to lucky torp hits from the nasty subs.

Looking forward to another palythrough afterwork, ill get that Slaval yet !! ;-)

some notes

Thanks for trying it out! Please download the current version (in the original post) since I fixed a number of bugs.

quote:

[spoilers]

the backfires from up north dont do any thing they sit at a point north of my carriier group and just mill about.

perhaps move the foxtrot slightly further away from the SAG, i lost the tico in that group both playthroughs very early to torp hits from it with not much chance to do any thing either time. Still its a very nice surprise as the foxtrot is VERY hard to detect in he shallow waters there.

is the Siadi AF Supposed to be playable , they dont do anything that ive seen ?

The Backfires were bugged, and I fixed it, but I am still having issues due to the lack of human-level AI. I can get the Backfires in a position to launch their missiles, but they don't because they don't have the carrier ID'd. A human is smart enough to figure it out from previous information, but that's fairly difficult to program. (DARPA hard...) I have thought about making the Nimitz auto-detectable to help out the AI, but then that would be weird to play as a human player. I will experiment some more with this.

The Saudis are there to punish humans playing as the Soviets and getting sloppy in their targeting (killing a neutral).

Yokes

(in reply to Jorm)

Post #: 8

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/11/2014 10:31:29 PM

tommo8993

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The TU-16's from the backfire base ran out of fuel just as the got over the ocean. It may be me running them too fast but I think the would of had some tankers. Other than that another superb scenario

< Message edited by tommo8993 -- 2/11/2014 11:31:55 PM >

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 9

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/12/2014 11:30:08 AM

Flankerk

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Am now part way through as NATO, but will give it a retry with the changed scn later thanks.
No problems found so far.

(in reply to tommo8993)

Post #: 10

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/14/2014 11:03:51 AM

Flankerk

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Lost as NATO, somewhat shockingly.
Did wonder if the conditions for NATO side were slightly harsh?
Lost I think seven aircraft total, of which three were B52's hit at the start before I could do anything about them :)
Lost I think two ships, but these were the difficult to defend tankers.

Other than thinking it was a difficult one to win without taking some losses, all seemed good to me.
Only one I did wonder about was again a personal preference to perhaps name everything, so even the tankers.
I also wondered on the aircraft availability. It might be worth making a third under maintenance, that could help slow the air war down too?

(in reply to Flankerk)

Post #: 11

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/14/2014 3:06:10 PM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Flankerk

Lost as NATO, somewhat shockingly.
Did wonder if the conditions for NATO side were slightly harsh?
Lost I think seven aircraft total, of which three were B52's hit at the start before I could do anything about them :)
Lost I think two ships, but these were the difficult to defend tankers.

Other than thinking it was a difficult one to win without taking some losses, all seemed good to me.
Only one I did wonder about was again a personal preference to perhaps name everything, so even the tankers.
I also wondered on the aircraft availability. It might be worth making a third under maintenance, that could help slow the air war down too?

Flankerk,

Thanks for the feedback. Do you remember your final score? There is a pretty hefty penalty for losing ships and subs, and some of them are pretty difficult to defend (on purpose). But just two tankers and 7 aircraft should only drop you 34 points.

Regarding ship names, I am fairly motivated to name the major warships, but I quickly lose patience naming 10 patrol boats or merchants. Google and Wikipedia make finding names of major warships pretty easy, but those other ships not so much. Would simply adding a number to the name be an improvement? (Tanker 1, Tanker 2, etc.)

On aircraft availability, I confess to being slightly lazy on this point, and justifying it by "it's the beginning of the war". It would be more realistic to put some aircraft down for maintenance, especially the hanger queens (I'm looking at you, F-14s). I have a few other things to clean up for the final version and I'll add this to the list.

Thanks again for the great feedback!

Yokes

(in reply to Flankerk)

Post #: 12

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/14/2014 6:51:44 PM

Flankerk

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Joined: 6/21/2006
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Possibly lost other tankers then, I can't redo the score as I've overwritten it with a test on USSR side again.
Noticeably harder though think I should still be able to manufacture a win as USSR. The only very slight anomaly I've noticed is that the B52's hit Baku, but that's a single unit airbase. The strikes on RKS were extremely effective. I now have no airbase and frankly no air support. ( I currently have a Foxtrot on airborne early warning reporting, and a Bear hiding behind some SA-10 sites trying to get a fix on a SAG)

On names to be fair that's up to the author. I personally quite like the effect when instead of Tanker its really quite big gets hit with a torpedo, instead its "Maersk Explorer gets hit " or some variation on that. I think Rudd posted a set of mercantile reporting where you could log the merchants that are actually in the zone with some real time reporting. Possibly a quick way to generate valid names?

I think the only conclusion I cam too overall, is it might be handy if the scenario complexity could vary by sides, as USSR its hard but a good challenge.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/

Must admit, looking at that I kind of wish I could import names locations directions etc as an inst file. Am currently plotting some for routes and directions but its taking a while, different area too sadly.

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 13

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/14/2014 7:39:15 PM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Flankerk

Possibly lost other tankers then, I can't redo the score as I've overwritten it with a test on USSR side again.
Noticeably harder though think I should still be able to manufacture a win as USSR. The only very slight anomaly I've noticed is that the B52's hit Baku, but that's a single unit airbase.

They hit Baku!?

That wasn't scripted. Maybe the AI is craftier than I thought...

quote:

The strikes on RKS were extremely effective. I now have no airbase and frankly no air support. ( I currently have a Foxtrot on airborne early warning reporting, and a Bear hiding behind some SA-10 sites trying to get a fix on a SAG)

That is pure awesomeness!

quote:

On names to be fair that's up to the author. I personally quite like the effect when instead of Tanker its really quite big gets hit with a torpedo, instead its "Maersk Explorer gets hit " or some variation on that. I think Rudd posted a set of mercantile reporting where you could log the merchants that are actually in the zone with some real time reporting. Possibly a quick way to generate valid names?

Thanks for the tip! I'll try to be less lazy...

quote:

I think the only conclusion I cam too overall, is it might be handy if the scenario complexity could vary by sides, as USSR its hard but a good challenge.

Agree completely. I have thought about making side-specific versions of the same scenario to help with that, and because there are some tricks I can use that would make the AI more effective, but would make it too easy on a human.

quote:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/

Must admit, looking at that I kind of wish I could import names locations directions etc as an inst file. Am currently plotting some for routes and directions but its taking a while, different area too sadly.

It would be a nice option to have random air and surface traffic generated at the start of the simulation. For example, the scenario designer imports the desired civil seaports and airports and then sets some level of traffic. The scenario would then load with ships and aircraft placed at random points in the paths and would traverse back and forth. Doing this manually for each scenario is a bit tedious.

Yokes

(in reply to Flankerk)

Post #: 14

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/15/2014 2:07:08 PM

Flankerk

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Managed to get a minor victory as USSR, 65 points or thereabouts.
Never tracked down the carrier, and the SAG without the aircraft I never got to hit it enough to overwhelm.
Its a fairly tense claustrophobic scn as USSR side as you now rapidly lose the air war.

Looks done to me, the only slight issue is the SAG tended to loiter along very close to shore and tended to move very slowly. Thats not a major concern as its primarily intended to be NATO playable.
It may have been targeting my SAG which was running away as fast as possible!

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 15

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/16/2014 11:55:01 PM

mikeCK

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I was a little confused after (playing as NATO) a squadron of Su-24 flankers hit Diego Garcia. I can't imagine where they would have come from since I had an Orion airborne with radar on and they came out of no where....

But anyway, I thought there were some F-15's stations at Diego for air defense? Am I wrong? I could do nothing as my hawk launcher burned through its eight missiles with 2 hits and changing the magazine apparently takes forever. So I sat there watching them repeatedly Bomb my base and destroy 6 b-52s along with other installations.

Edit: ok, I looked at the units stationed there at Diego and there are no fighters...presumBly because Su-24 fencers can't get there undetected and without refuelers. I am dying to find out how they got there but don't want to ruin it!

< Message edited by mikeCK -- 2/17/2014 1:05:38 AM >

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Post #: 16

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/17/2014 3:42:12 AM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: mikeCK

I was a little confused after (playing as NATO) a squadron of Su-24 flankers hit Diego Garcia. I can't imagine where they would have come from since I had an Orion airborne with radar on and they came out of no where....

But anyway, I thought there were some F-15's stations at Diego for air defense? Am I wrong? I could do nothing as my hawk launcher burned through its eight missiles with 2 hits and changing the magazine apparently takes forever. So I sat there watching them repeatedly Bomb my base and destroy 6 b-52s along with other installations.

Edit: ok, I looked at the units stationed there at Diego and there are no fighters...presumBly because Su-24 fencers can't get there undetected and without refuelers. I am dying to find out how they got there but don't want to ruin it!

Just like the Doolittle raid: they took off from Shangri-La!

< Message edited by Yokes -- 2/17/2014 4:42:42 AM >

(in reply to mikeCK)

Post #: 17

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/17/2014 9:42:25 PM

mikeCK

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Bastards!

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 18

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/26/2014 1:06:09 AM

AndrewJ

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Hi Yokes,

I'm playing this from the Russian side now, and noticed that down in Socotra where the Su-24s are you not only have a whole bunch of AS-13 Kingbolts in the bunkers (as expected, since that's their primary loadout) but also some AS-12 Keglers. However, you don't have the elint pods that go with the Keglers to use them as a loadout. Had you intended to have the Keglers available (in which case I'll edit in a few pods and ready a mission or two) or were you thinking Kingbolts only?

I was also thinking of throwing in some iron bombs and other unguided ordnance for them, since it seems strange that they would have a large airbase without such basic munitions. Or had you intended to simulate the SU-24s only being available for one or two very specific anti-shipping missions, and busy with other missions/maintenance the rest of the time?

Curious what your intentions for balance were.

Enjoying the scenario so far, thanks for writing it.

(in reply to mikeCK)

Post #: 19

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 2/26/2014 3:31:51 PM

Yokes

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Joined: 3/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: AndrewJ

Hi Yokes,

I'm playing this from the Russian side now, and noticed that down in Socotra where the Su-24s are you not only have a whole bunch of AS-13 Kingbolts in the bunkers (as expected, since that's their primary loadout) but also some AS-12 Keglers. However, you don't have the elint pods that go with the Keglers to use them as a loadout. Had you intended to have the Keglers available (in which case I'll edit in a few pods and ready a mission or two) or were you thinking Kingbolts only?

I was also thinking of throwing in some iron bombs and other unguided ordnance for them, since it seems strange that they would have a large airbase without such basic munitions. Or had you intended to simulate the SU-24s only being available for one or two very specific anti-shipping missions, and busy with other missions/maintenance the rest of the time?

Curious what your intentions for balance were.

Enjoying the scenario so far, thanks for writing it.

Andrew,

This is an oversight on my part. I should have included the ELINT pods. I also should have put some dumb bombs and other options, but I was getting lazy. It's time consuming spreading the ordinance around the various bunkers. (Did I mention I'm lazy?)

I often base my munition loadouts based upon what the AI can use best, not on what a human would like. I am trying to add more flexibility for humans in my newer scenarios. It's a learning process.

Thanks for the kind words.

Yokes

(in reply to AndrewJ)

Post #: 20

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 3/8/2014 11:30:06 AM

AndrewJ

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Joined: 1/5/2014
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I just finished this up and put an AAR in the AAR forum, so as not to put too many spoilers here.

(in reply to Yokes)

Post #: 21

RE: New scenario: Indian Ocean Brawl (The War That Neve... - 3/11/2014 5:13:29 AM

CommanderNimitz

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Joined: 2/22/2014
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Great scenario, Yokes. I just got my butt kicked.

I wasn't really expecting it, since "Battle of the First Salvo" was a cakewalk, but I made a couple bad mistakes that forced me to restart. So, I had a strike package of eight A-6s and eight F/A-18As bearing down on the airbase near Somalia, escorted by two Prowlers, eight F/A-18Cs and four F-14s. The Backfires showed their ugly faces up north, so I diverted the Toms to deal with them, and the Backfire raid backfired rather quickly.

Meanwhile, I started to get some ambiguous air contacts between my strike package and the SAG, but didn't think much of them until I realized that they were closing in on my planes. At about that time, a Flanker appeared out of nowhere mere miles from one of my Hornet-C flights, and murdered all four of them before getting shot down by about two billion Sparrows from the other group. Then came the others. A desperately-jamming Prowler died first, followed by the second group of escorting Hornets. I killed a total of three Flankers. The angry Soviets then turned their attention to my derpy Intruders, so, in a desperate move to save them, I vectored my strike Hornets onto the Flankers. They killed four of the Hornets, but most of them died as well, with a lone fighter running for dear life from a flight of four Hornets I had dispatched once I realized how screwed I was. It got away.

Even after that disaster, I decided to push on, see if I could beat the scenario with a weakened air force. Then the Tico in the SAG ate some invisible missiles and blew up, because I forgot to turn the radars on. Dangit.

Anyway, I'll be trying again tomorrow. Keep up the good work, Yokes!

Nimitz

(in reply to AndrewJ)

Post #: 22

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