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AndrewJ -> RE: New Scenario for testing - Mediterranean Fury 5, Serbia-right! (8/17/2019 2:00:40 PM)
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I let the game run another hour or so, but nothing else special happened, so I wrapped it up. Many assorted observations follow. (I should learn to be more concise.)
OVERALL. This is an interesting scenario, particularly the transition from the little parochial concerns (smugglers and the like) to the overwhelming scale of the massive attacks of a total war. The ominous news updates of things gradually going wrong in the Balkans worked nicely to elevate tension as the opening stages of the scenario progressed. The 'double-ended' attack worked well, and although I managed to hold the line in the north, I was caught somewhat off-balance in the south, and couldn't bring in northern resources to help, so Sarajevo was bombed several times before I got fully on top of the situation. Having to look in both places at once is an interesting challenge.
INITIAL BRIEFING. I have to admit, at the start of the scenario I hadn't even considered the UNPROFOR or IFOR bases and forces as something specific to be taken into account of during the fighting. My focus was entirely on Italy, and Split harbour. It was only after the enemy strikes started coming in that I realised there were other allied facilities (other than empty airbases) that I should defend across the Adriatic, or that there might be evacuation flights that I should protect. Perhaps a line or two could be added to the briefing, describing the main bases, and mentioning the evacuation, just to put it in the player's mind that those places exist? An intelligence report on the Serbian navy OOB, and the air-forces of Serbia and Romania might also be helpful.
SMUGGLERS. The smugglers were an interesting touch. At first, I thought they might be a serious concern, then when I saw the scope of the attack I thought they would be utterly insignificant in the greater scheme of things and wouldn’t show up at all, and then they really did appear. A nice back-and-forth. AN-2s are always cool, and the SA-7 on the boats (which I had assumed would be defenceless) was a nice surprise too. I think you may have given us too much warning about the boats. Getting an immediate message about every one the moment it hits the water seems optimistic. Maybe one reminder warning in the evening, an hour or so in advance, would suffice for all of them? (“Sir, agents report smugglers have been given go codes”, etc.) That way it’s up to the player to be alert and monitor their coastal traffic. A few ‘new contacts’ that are actually fishing boats, not smugglers, might be fun confusion too. I suspect the smuggler boats wouldn’t have their radars on, since that’s a perfect way to say ‘here I am’, and they would probably operate with radars off.
UNPROFOR FLIGHTS. Currently, the UNPROFOR evacuation flights are under AI control, and the ferry mission will launch the vulnerable cargo planes despite the presence of swarms of MiG-29s overhead, which can be suicidal. Having them come cruising into an active air combat zone is a recipe for death. It seems very unlikely that they would launch under such circumstances, particularly as NATO AWACS flights would give ample warning of the enemy warplanes. Perhaps those flights would be better handled from the player side, allowing the player to make the tradeoffs to run the evacuation, provide escorts, etc.? Or, if they are to be kept on the allied side, then maybe changing the flights to low altitude and high speed might give them a better chance to avoid interception? (Personally, I switched sides and turned the missions off until the air situation improved.)
HANSA CARRIER AND TUG. Was there supposed to be some event (other than scoring) associated with the tug's arrival at the Hansa Carrier? (Engine repair, or the like?) There's a lot of emphasis on landing Carabinieri on the ship itself, and on the adjacent islands, and then getting the tug there, but nothing seems to happen after that. The trigger zone around the ship is also very small, and players could send the tug to a point nearby that seems close enough, without realizing they have actually missed.
SCORING. Is the scoring complete for this version of the scenario? Currently, the scoring seems to be out of step with the activities the player is performing. The player is awarded 100 points for parking a tug beside a damaged freighter (which has almost no war benefit), 25 points for each freighter landed at Split, and 5 points for destroying a smuggler/agent. However, despite their orders to attack airbases and naval bases, they are awarded no points for successfully achieving these war objectives, and no points for destroying hundreds of attacking enemy aircraft and a dozen or more ships and subs. The scoring thresholds are very high in relation to the available pool of points ('average' starts at 750, for example), and it is not be possible to achieve any of the victory levels.
MIG-25 WILD WEASEL. The MiG-25 Wild Weasels are coming in with their distinctive radars on, which is an immediate giveaway about their role. The radars wouldn’t help them in their task, and if the radars were off the player may confuse the planes with other recce Foxbats and ignore them. (Or if they were set to ‘normal’ high altitude, like most other planes, then they would just be one more jet contact.) As it was, I was able to recognize them immediately and took special steps to intercept them before they could reach launch range.
HOW THE HECK… did I manage to not get overwhelmed by the massive air raids? The one and only reason is that in this scenario I finally figured out how to use OECM. In the past, I have usually flown my OECM planes to their loiter points, turned on the jammers, and left them alone. Having them in the background cuts down the range at which the enemy can use SARH missiles, which is helpful. It gives me a few more miles in which I can shoot while the enemy cannot. However, eventually the enemy gets close enough to burn through the jamming, and then the engagement proceeds as normal.
It turns out what I should have been doing is keeping the jammers off, and letting the enemy fire at normal range. Then immediately turn the jammers on, dropping the range at which the enemy can illuminate the target to less than the current range. The missiles go blind, and five seconds later they self destruct. Then turn the jammers off again. Now the enemy can illuminate once more, and they will fire again. Turn the jammers back on, the second set of missiles goes blind, and 5 seconds later they self destruct. Repeat as necessary… You have to be careful to keep your distance while doing this, and it helps to drop your RCS by turning tail when you’re illuminated, and raise your RCS by turning broadside when you’re not, but if you can pull it off it’s a very reliable way of defeating SARH missiles.
This alone would not have been enough to defeat the enemy, if they had been able to press in and attack with their excellent AA-11s. However, if their WRA is set for BVR attacks only, then they will turn away and RTB once their long-range missiles are gone. That’s what was happening here, as I was able to repeatedly send home enemy fighters by using up their BVR missiles, particularly MiG-29s, which only have two AA-10s. Once the fighters turned away I could attack them from behind as they retired, and I had a much better chance against the undefended attack planes they left behind.
This sort of jam-listen-jam procedure is real, and is applied both in communications jamming and countermeasures jamming. Apparently, always-on barrage jamming isn't always the best tactic, and it is often better to jam only when there is something specific to jam. The trouble is, the AI can't recognise the tactic, and 'falls for it' every time. While human pilots might lose some missiles this way, they'd probably recognize what was happening and hold fire until they could burn through at closer range. The AI can't make that decision.
AI countermeasures to this could be changing the fighter WRA to allow them to take WVR shots (so they don't immediately fly home), or dropping the range at which they will fire to less than the burn-through range. The newer Russian fighters, carrying high-off-boresight AA-11s, are better than the NATO fighters at close range, so they would probably benefit from being in close. The MiG-29s, which have only two AA-10s, but four AA-11s, would definitely excel in this arena.
You might be able to execute this tactic against the player, sort of, by using Lua to flash your jammers on and off at 15 second intervals. You'd probably need to have your jammers closer in behind a raid to do this, and I'm not sure if it could be coordinated effectively purely using missions.
In a way, I'm sorry I figured this tactic out. While it let me hold off the horde, it feels somewhat asymmetric. I think Andrea G's playthrough is probably a more realistic outcome than mine, and allowed for a lot of interesting play (clever use of mobile SAMs, etc.), which I missed out on.
F-104s I have to admit, the F-104s aren't as bad as I had feared. Although they are obsolescent, their extremely high-speed afterburner dash can make sudden intercepts, is superb for running down retiring foes, and gets a plane out of trouble too. They can take an Aspide shot, watch their foe dive to evade, and if (when...) they miss they point their nose up and hurtle into the stratosphere like a rocket, before the enemy can climb to catch them. Just don't get them in close to anything with an AA-11, or they're meat on the table.
GARIBALDI In my playthrough the Garibaldi group didn't make any contributions. I didn't use the Garibaldi in the previous scenario, so I used it here for storyline continuity, but it was so far away I had the naval situation under control before it got into the Adriatic, and I was reluctant to use its slow-moving Harriers to face off against the MiGs and SAMs. By the time the SAMs were dealt with Kotor was bombed anyway, so there was little to do.
WARSAW PACT
Eight of the Fencers at Debrecen, carrying AS-18 Kazoos, are not assigned to any mission. Those 60 nm range missiles would definitely have been a problem if they got deep enough into Slovenia to attack the Italian bases, although that might have been tough to do. They could easily have gotten to launch positions on IFOR HQ at Zagreb and probably the two UNPROFOR bases as well, coming in from the north where my defences were weakest.
The Su-24s carrying KAB-1500s at Debrecen have the range to get to Aviano, but they don't have a lot to spare, so if they are forced to low level to dodge missiles they may consume too much fuel and have to turn back. I saw a few drop out of the stream this way. Perhaps they could be based a little further forward?
I reran the Aviano attack and let it proceed unopposed, just to see how it all worked. The HAS strike did very well, and the Parking strike was okay, getting about half the aircraft in the parking line. The ammo strike got a lot of hits, but in the end only killed two bunkers despite numerous impacts. Those bunkers are tough! The runway strike did half damage to the taxiway and nothing to the runway.
The recce Su-17s at Kunmadaras have no mission.
By the end of my game there were 14 Su-27s in reserve at Zvolen, because the base had run out of AA-10-Cs. Is this an intentional missile limitation, like NATO's limited number of AMRAAMs?
There are 40 MiG-29s at Tokol with no mission! Good god. Even my dirtiest micromanager tricks would have been overwhelmed by that many more planes, by simple ammo exhaustion alone if nothing else.
The ECM and ELINT Su-24s at Limanskoye have no mission. Were they supposed to have been on jamming missions along the Romanian west border?
I never did spot the Kilo. My course towards the italian coast, to avoid provoking Albania, happened to take me too far away to encounter it.
The Pact considers UNPROFOR unfriendly, rather than hostile, so it won't engage transport flights. (Then again, there's no chance it will go after UNPROFOR bases by accident either.)
HUNGARY
Four recce MiG-21s at Taszar have no mission.
There are 40 Frogfoots at Buda West with no loadouts or missions. They're out of range of the Italian bases, although they could hit IFOR at Zagreb.
ALBANIA
Albanian subs will leave their patrol zones to investigate contacts half-way up the Adriatic.(Possibly intentional?)
Albanian sub S422 is not assigned to its mission.
SERBIA
The Serbian sub missions are duplicated. There is both an inactive Janak Ptl and an active Janak Ptl, and similarly an inactive and active Sava Ptl. The subs are each assigned to the inactive patrols, and as a result they do not move or attack. One patrol (Janak) will allow subs to leave the patrol area, the other will not.
Seven of the Serbian vessels at Kotor have activation times that are beyond the length of the scenario, and they are not assigned to a mission. I assume this intentionally represents ships at low readiness?
The spies on the island have no night vision gear, and thus cannot detect ships working the minefields or transiting the straits during the dark. As a result they probably did not see my line of merchants going through. (This may be quite realistic if they are supposed to be sympathetic civilians, rather than regular military units.)
The Serbs have no runway access points at Pristina / Slatina AB, which seems to be why my warships and minelayers were never attacked by the Serb Ship Strike mission (even though the spy at Split has spotted me). The planes are trying to take off, but are stuck continuously waiting. The planes at Sjenica and Usice-Ponikve, which are on the same mission, are not taking off either, even though they are closer, and do have runway access points. This is probably because the max number of flights is set at 6, and the stuck planes at Pristina are already filling that limit. I got away easy here - there were 32 attackers (plus escorts) that should have been headed my way.
I wonder if there's a Lua way to release escort planes from a mission if there are no longer enough attack planes to make it worthwhile? For example, there are 8 MiG-23 escorts ready at Kraljevo, but they cannot fight because they are waiting for the few surviving attackers on the Mig Ship Strike mission to be repaired. Similarly for the Romanian UNPROFOR Log Strike mission, etc.
ROMANIA
Romania considers UNPROFOR to be unfriendly, rather than hostile. It's planes on the UNPROFOR HQ (Land Strike) mission will arrive at Sarajevo and orbit overhead, but will not drop weapons as a result. Ditto for their other strike missions.
Five MiG-21Rs ar Bucharest have no mission.
Many of the EO-pod carrying recce MiG-21s are on escort duty for this and other strike missions, but they did not seem to press on to fly over the target when the mission is executed. I generally saw them form up early, recognizing them by their radars, but then they would stay at the rear of the pack, so I don't think they were providing effective target spotting, if that is what you had intended them to do. The MiG-25 RBS recce planes were acting the same way.
The Kog Intercept mission only has a range of 120 nm, which is barely enough to get to Bucharest. While the player is rather unlikely to be making attacks this far into Romania, it might be useful to cover the capital with good fighers.
Assorted Typos, etc.
Side briefing - campaign to sew unrest (sow)
Side briefing - should the Red Hord attack (horde)
Side briefing - Comd NTFA: Good day Geneal (General)
Side briefing - Forth, if the Serbian navy (Fourth)
Smuggling Brief - {role with it – you may not have asked but play along ;-)} (roll)
Smuggling Brief - Fuel is their Achilles Heal (heel)
Smuggling Brief - usually within 5-10 minuets (minutes)
Smuggling Brief - the real target is to sew political unrest (sow)
Side - "Hugary" (Hungary)
Event - "UNPRAFOR" casualties (UNPROFOR)
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