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Northern Fury debate - 4/1/2021 7:14:43 PM   
bladesinger79


Posts: 117
Joined: 1/14/2016
Status: offline 		When I played #1, I completely demolished the attacking Russian forces. Shot down 254 of their aircraft (including ALL of their Flankers and Fulcrums), sank 11 of their ships, and prevented Banak from falling into enemy hands by destroying all enemy ground forces who tried. I lost 18 aircraft (only 4 were from the Grim Reapers), a number of missile boats, and ground troops. Banak Air Station suffered minor damages. In losing, the Russians would have no safe access to the Atlantic seaways without being hounded by NATO air units.

So, if this was the case, how different would mission #5 be? Would Russia attempt an amphibious landing without close-range air support from a captured Banak airfield? Would they go all-out and try to level Banak first?

Does anyone care? Heheh.

Let the debate begin.

_____________________________

"No Sir, I don't think that's a good idea at all." -last words from unnamed NCO before falling into an enemy ambush.
Post #: 1
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 11:03:49 AM   
BeirutDude


Posts: 2625
Joined: 4/27/2013
From: Jacksonville, FL, USA
Status: offline 		Ah the scenario designers nightmare, you know what you would do but what will the player do????????

_____________________________

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem."
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, 1985

I was Navy, but Assigned TAD to the 24th MAU Hq in Beirut. By far the finest period of my service!

(in reply to bladesinger79)
Post #: 2
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 12:17:08 PM   
Gunner98

 

Posts: 5508
Joined: 4/29/2005
From: The Great White North!
Status: offline
quote:

the scenario designers nightmare,


You've got that right.

In the army the saying goes 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy', I found out long ago that the same holds true for scenario design only replace 'enemy' with 'player or play-tester'.

A couple tenants that I try and follow when building scenarios are:

-They are meant to support the story I have rattling around in my head, so that is the first priority but that goes mostly for setup.

-Players deserve options. Playing CMO is a bit of a commitment, to get good you have probably spent hours counted in hundreds or more, to play through Northern Fury is even more of a commitment. So I like to allow the player several (hard) choices to test what s/he has learned with all that effort. That normally means the scenarios get a little larger, but not always.

-There are no silver bullets. Relegate those to Hollywood. No single weapon system will solve your problem, so I try and show that a coordinated and integrated approach is better than riding in on your white stallion. You don't always win in the classic sence, if one side always won, there wouldn't be war and we wouldn't teach defence doctrine. So adjust what victory means for the player.

-Gaming should be an experience, so give as much depth and visceral feeling as you can. A lot of this is just what I call the wallpaper - messages, background in the brief etc. Some is in the play, try and set it up so the attack almost gets through, that bit takes testing and I don't always get it right the first time.

-Realism, I've got a bit of experience with decision makers at this level so I try and portray some of the dilemmas they face. Logistics, try and put something in every scenario, you can never escape it. Realism goes much deeper than the number of airframes available I think.

I certainly don't get all of this right in every scenario, sometimes I don't get any of it right.

To respond to the original question from bladesinger79

Firstly, well played. I have not heard of anyone else doing that well. Yours is an outcome that I wouldn't want in my story because it would pretty much end the story.

So what would the Soviets do? I don't think they would have continued. The Amphib op would be diverted into the Narvik area as it is a supporting operation and if the main operation was going awry this part would need to change. By quickly seizing Narvik they would be supporting a slower land push. The company sized force in Banak and other land elements north of Bardufoss are now a hinderance, the plan called for them to be swatted away but now they have warning and will need to be dug out with a spoon. There is an Army coming their way, it will take longer and will be bloody but they cannot hold.

Looking at the Soviet Objectives in Plan BOYAR (these are distilled a bit):

-Strategic - NATO dissolution and economic/political freedom
-Operational - On this front it is to threaten NATO SLOC and contribute to the strategic objective by knocking Norway out of the war
-Tactical - Get as far south as possible as quickly as possible to give NATO difficult tactical choices while supporting the objective of knocking Norway out of the war and securing the eastern flank of forces threatening the SLOCs

So a failure to capture Banak in the first few hours causes problems but it does not unhinge the plan.

Anyway those are my thoughts on it. Open to rebuttals

B

_____________________________

Check out our novel, Northern Fury: H-Hour!: http://northernfury.us/
And our blog: http://northernfury.us/blog/post2/
Twitter: @NorthernFury94 or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/northernfury/

(in reply to BeirutDude)
Post #: 3
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 12:20:38 PM   
Coiler12

 

Posts: 1203
Joined: 10/13/2013
Status: offline 		I'll let Gunner98 correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he's said that squash scenario results like that (or stuff like sinking ships that appear in a later scenario) are explained in-universe as just realistic casualty over-claiming.

_____________________________

Fuldapocalypse Fiction, my wargaming/review/history blog

(in reply to Gunner98)
Post #: 4
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 1:11:01 PM   
Gunner98

 

Posts: 5508
Joined: 4/29/2005
From: The Great White North!
Status: offline
quote:

realistic casualty over-claiming.


Very true.

Joel and I talk about it in a couple of Blogs

Story to Book, Part I: How does a story become a scenario?

Story to Book, Part II: How does a scenario become a scene in the book?

This is a bit of a tricky thing as every player will have different results, and those results matter in the scenario and in the player's mind and feeling. 'I sunk that last game!'

CMO doesn't have a Linked Campaign system and for my purposes, this is good. If you remember John Tiller's Campaign series, I designed two of those LCS 'The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada' in West Front and 'On to Berlin' in East Front. The difficulty is that you had to guess how well a player would do and set up the enemy to balance the game, the more scenarios into the campaign you get the more naturally unbalanced the games were.

So in CMO, the scenarios are linked by story and not by results. Generally it goes like this: I build them and test them, take some notes. Joel plays them and we take notes. You guys play them and we take notes. I come up with an average - not a mathematical one, but a general average, and start the next scenario from there.

An example of how things evolve. In NF #4 you'll come across a Danish Thetis class OPV the HDMS Vædderen. She is not a particularly well armed vessel and I put her their really to give international flavour, this is a small scenario and I just wanted to give the player something else to deal with. Well in my playthroughs I found that the Soviet AI tended to fixate on her which was good, and she generally survived. In Joel's run through she had an eventful experience you can read about here. So we said - we're keeping her, she may not make the books but we like her feistiness so she stays.

OK got onto a bit of a tangent but, summary - the story goes on despite the results of any one playthrough.


_____________________________

Check out our novel, Northern Fury: H-Hour!: http://northernfury.us/
And our blog: http://northernfury.us/blog/post2/
Twitter: @NorthernFury94 or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/northernfury/

(in reply to Coiler12)
Post #: 5
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 2:24:11 PM   
stww2

 

Posts: 219
Joined: 5/23/2017
Status: offline 		This does (kind of) segue into something I've been curious about...do the Soviet carriers canonically survive NF8 "Hold the Line?" My pilots and submariners claim to have sunk both of them and their escorts but I'm not sure I believe them...

(in reply to Gunner98)
Post #: 6
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 2:58:49 PM   
Gunner98

 

Posts: 5508
Joined: 4/29/2005
From: The Great White North!
Status: offline 		Sorry, won't say, but an indicator is in NF# 41.

The plotline here is that they were trying to 'pull a Bismarck' and get out into the sea lanes, however briefly, to cause havoc. The Big E, led by a couple you met in H-Hour Newt & Longhorn save the day by 'Holding the Line', it will form an hopefully epic section of Fire & Ice

But as that officious twat in the Norwegian MOD Dokken told young Kristen Hagan: "...Our pilots are claiming that they inflicted heavy losses against the first waves of Soviet jets, but who knows? You know how those fighter pilots can be.”



_____________________________

Check out our novel, Northern Fury: H-Hour!: http://northernfury.us/
And our blog: http://northernfury.us/blog/post2/
Twitter: @NorthernFury94 or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/northernfury/

(in reply to stww2)
Post #: 7
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 3:02:44 PM   
stww2

 

Posts: 219
Joined: 5/23/2017
Status: offline 		Mysterious...I look forward to finding out what happens!

(in reply to Gunner98)
Post #: 8
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 5:08:22 PM   
TempestII


Posts: 42
Joined: 10/10/2020
Status: offline 		It's an impressive feat, holding off the Red onslaught in any of the first few NF missions. I know that first time I played it, I got my arse handed to me. When your vaunted F-15Cs start falling to Foxbat and Flanker combo attacks, you know that you're in for a bad day. I had another go with a few extra toys courtesy of Dreamland and even then it was a pyrrhic victory at best. I held onto Banak but with so few ground forces remaining that holding it any longer would have been realistically impossible.



Another scenario that is sadistically enjoyable is NF 27 - Out on a Limb (Spoilers and apologies for the slight off topic deviation).

A lot of letters would have been sent home that day, only I don't think the anyone part of the Eisenhower group would have been alive to be sending them. Even if there were survivors from the sadistic amount of Soviet attacks, I can't imagine waiting for rescue in North Atlantic waters in February is good for your long term prospects.

What Out on a Limb is especially good for is testing the effectiveness of modern / futuristic weapons due to the amount of overkill present. On one subsequent play through, even with some newer toys, albeit placed about 100nm behind the Ike, every single contemporary vessel was sunk apart from the carrier itself which still took a couple of hits.
On my most recent play through, I brought the HVP Zumwalt, CG-21, Arleigh Burke Flt III and a Ford Class CVN closer to action and also put up a screen of 5th Gen fighters off the Norwegian coast with masses of various models of F-14As, Bs Ds and Es behind. Armed with AIM-54Cs and AIM-152As, they finally stopped the Soviet air onslaught in its tracks before they could fire 90% of their ASMs.
I learned the hard way on the previous play through that, even modern weapons struggled against the Soviet saturation attack if they're given chance to unleash their arsenal. Therefore, I aimed to shoot them down before they could get in range and, because of 5th Gens and the AIM-152As, it worked.
I think only the poor David Rey was sunk in that play though due to the sub launched ASMs.


To summarise - thanks for the hours of fun and enjoyment that you've provided Gunner!

(in reply to stww2)
Post #: 9
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 8:31:50 PM   
Gunner98

 

Posts: 5508
Joined: 4/29/2005
From: The Great White North!
Status: offline 		Thanks.

Out on a Limb is an interesting study. (Spoilers)

To win that one you need to avoid detection. Period. Where you normally want to kill the archers, in this one you want to kill the eyes. If you are detected you will die.

From a story point of view it is the result of friction between characters, on both sides. Should be an interesting counterpoint to the discussion earlier in the thread.

_____________________________

Check out our novel, Northern Fury: H-Hour!: http://northernfury.us/
And our blog: http://northernfury.us/blog/post2/
Twitter: @NorthernFury94 or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/northernfury/

(in reply to TempestII)
Post #: 10
RE: Northern Fury debate - 4/2/2021 10:08:15 PM   
bladesinger79


Posts: 117
Joined: 1/14/2016
Status: offline 		Ah, I thought this was going to stir up a beehive.

I wrote an AAR on my endeavors with NF #1. Despite the results, obtaining them was not easy at all. This current one, #5, will be a greater challenge due to the lack of AMRAAMs.

Knowing the Russians, they had a backup plan should the initial assault on Norway go astray. It's all good.
Too bad CMO does not have a linked, adaptable campaign system, but this is ok.

_____________________________

"No Sir, I don't think that's a good idea at all." -last words from unnamed NCO before falling into an enemy ambush.

(in reply to Gunner98)
Post #: 11
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