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AndrewJ -> RE: Hunter-Killer Duel in the Celtic Sea, 1987 -- new beta for testing (11/2/2017 1:41:38 AM)
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I tried out Version 3. A few assorted observations below.
There is a special action to add the Ocelot, but the Ocelot is already on the map at the start of the game. Are you intended to be able to have two of them?
The Soviets spent a lot of time flinging nukes (4 of them!) at fish, and in the process managed to sink their Oscar.
A couple of the Soviet subs went to quite shallow depths (2m, and 11m), allowing the shallower of the two to be detected by Nimrod radar.
The lead ship of the convoy arrives at its final waypoint with 1 day 18 hours to go, and then the convoy remains motionless, spread half-way across the English Channel for the remainder of the game. Perhaps they could be given some dock facilities, and be given an RTB order when they reach the final destination? Or simply deleted and the player given a message to the effect that the convoy is dispersing to dock? Since it seems to be the story-line focus they may also wonder "now what?" when it reaches its destination and there's still plenty of game to go.
Given the importance of the convoy in the briefing, the player will probably expect some points for its safe arrival, rather than just trying to avoid points loss for it being sunk.
Why such a big spread on the convoy? It's 25 nm long from front to back, meaning the escorting frigates can't effectively cover it all with ASROC or their sonar. (Unless this is an anti-nuke posture?)
The Brits are definitely on the technological back foot in this one. They're up against a foe using nuclear and conventional stand-off weapons, who also has effective anti-sub torps with a 12nm @ 50 kt performance on their better subs and 8 nm @ 45 kt on their worst. The Brits have the pathetic Tigerfish (7 nm @ 35 kt). Catching a running Victor with one of those means closing to within 1 nm. Catch a running Sierra? Well, it's as fast as your torps... As far as sonar goes, the Soviets actually have better sonars than the British on 4 of their 6 subs. So it's probably going to be a tough time for the British player.
Edit: forgot to mention the 'collision' incident (Event Violet). While this sort of thing may happen from time to time in real life, in this case it seems to serve no particular story-line purpose. If engineering casualties were happening to both sides as part of regular game-play that would be reasonable (albeit aggravating), but to my grumpy mind it seemed more like pain arbitrarily inflicted on one side without any situational justification.
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