quote:

ORIGINAL: Temple

I won it on the second try, or at least I satisfied the conditions as laid out in the side briefing.

On the first try it was very spooky that when the SS-N-7 missiles started coming in, about half went for my high value unit (HVU) target. It was so impressive that I went "behind the curtain" and looked at the scenario in the editor, expecting some clever mission editor action that targeted it. Nope, just a mission telling the red subs to patrol the area. That surprised me.

On the second try, I operated by reading the side briefing very closely rather than just plowing all three groups forward like I did in the first try. I put the two supporting groups forward of my HVU group, and switched the formation of the HVU group around so the HVU was behind the three other ships. I did this based not on gaming the scenario, but rather that I was facing one enemy unit that had anti-ship missiles, so I would rather have them go after the other ships.

Also, in the first try I had created an anti-sub patrol are that was very large and also static. In the second try I created a patrol area based on four rotating points, with my HCU as the target for the rotating bearings. I also put the close part of the ASW patrol area about five miles in front of the HVU group and the farthest border of the area about twenty miles away. This way the air assets only patrolled where an enemy with torpedoes would be an upcoming danger. If it was behind or way out to the sides I didn't care.

This left only the defense I had to maintain against the anti-ship missiles. I figured that from the briefing I knew the approximate axis of the approach of the missiles so I put my non-HVU ships where they would be able to either destroy or absorb the incoming missiles. And so that's what happened. I lost one ship but knocked down a couple of missiles and the rest missed all targets.

This is what I so like about CMANO and other games of this ilk; you learn things as you play. Very cool.