fitzpatv
Posts: 178
Joined: 3/20/2019
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I've had a couple of attempts at this scenario without any success. The first time, I steered to the E end of the patrol zone on the basis that I could probably get there safely by keeping to international waters, then only have to do the sweep in one direction, ending close to the safe zone off Norway. Did this at Cruise, just under the layer and got there without incident. Taking a look above the layer, I detected several obvious Soviet patrol craft in a line to the S. The spacing made it clear that there was no safe channel and everything was within 15nm sonar range of at least one Soviet ship. Granted that not all of them have 15nm sonar, but it isn't easy to tell them apart and you can't take that chance.
The only approach seemed to be to sneak through at Creep, below the layer. Doing this, I weaved past two or three SO1, Poti and Grisha patrol craft but, at some point, I must have been spotted and ID'd as an SSN, losing 100VP (only found out later by checking the scoreboard). Soon, sonobuoys starting appearing, but fortunately some distance away. Try as I might, I couldn't get clear of nearby patrol craft and never dared going to periscope depth to check for emissions. I gradually edged closer to the coast over 5-6 hours, hoping for some breathing space in which to go shallow. No sooner had I crossed the 12 mile territorial limit than a Grisha blew me out of the water with multiple Smerch rocket salvoes. My depth meant that I only detected it when it was too close to evade. There didn't seem to be any penalty to the second and subsequent salvoes from the noise and interference caused by the earlier ones, but I think they hit first-time, anyway (hard not to with 12 shots per salvo).
After this, I read this post and tried-out the suggested strategy of moving as deep as possible in one-hour bursts at Cruise, then going shallower briefly to take a look around. It just didn't work. Again, the patrol net is too tight for a sub to slip through and moving at that speed and depth means that you sometimes only detect enemy contacts when they're right on top of you. First, a surface ship came within 2.46nm of me before I saw it. I steered away and managed to avoid detection, heading NE, then E to try to find a way round. Doing so, I bumped into a November-class SSN at 2.22nm and was identified. The only sane thing to do was to retreat and accept a -100VP Disaster.
Having to record multiple sites' emissions makes this scenario even harder - getting one is tough enough.
Incidentally, I couldn't find the 'draw circle tool' referred-to above. Was it removed in the switch from CMANO to CMO?.
Consistently in this game, submarines are extremely vulnerable platforms and easy to kill. They are only effective when their weapons outrange the enemy's (and by enough that you can draw the quicker ships well into the 'kill zone' so that they can't outrun your torpedoes). They are probably best in their modern role as cruise- or ballistic missile launchers. Does the game make subs too easy to detect and ASW weapons too accurate?. One thought I had today is that, whereas late 60s sonar might not be the best, this is maybe being offset by the frequency with which it checks for contacts. If checks are made per second, even very low chances are going to come-up within a minute or so.
Another observation is that there is probably an optimum size for a CMO scenario. Here, you have one sub, all your eggs are in one basket and one mistake or misfortune is fatal most of the time. You also have limited tactical choice (especially in this scenario where you can't even sanely fire back). The better scenarios I've played have a good number of units and a mix of ships, planes, subs and missiles (Duellists and Canary's Cage are examples that readily spring to mind). I've not yet played any really big scenarios like the Northern Fury series and will have to reserve judgement on these until I do, but any player is going to be taxed by situations where they have to deal with multiple combats simultaneously and will probably have to delegate a lot to the AI via the use of Missions, thinking more strategically instead of jumping into dogfights and accepting a higher rate of losses.
Any thoughts?.
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