Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

Primarchx, Fair criticism/point!

I struggled with this based on past design work, I could make the loadouts available immediately, say within an hour or so. Problem I see is I change this is if someone doesn't like the loadouts, and got B****ed about with "Arctic Tsunami," which is one reason why I set it up this way to allow the player to change them to their liking.

So let me ask you this, you have a lot of experience more with the game than I do, do the loadouts I set looks good for the mission at hand or would you suggest different loadouts? If I ready them earlier the worst that happens is someone not liking the loadouts can still change them and then wait the 3/6 hours (depending upon loadout) for the changes.

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Given that a player can change loadouts in 6hrs they could change to their preferred load anyway, while still using any author-provided loadout at the start.

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Also, the Dolphin-class sub is set to active radar due to global EMCON setting.

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Just downloaded it. At the risk of having any surprises spoiled, why exactly are their ground forces present?

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I'm looking at what looks like several hundred ground units that I'm told pretty much explicitly not to use (something about keeping units from advancing into weird territory). If they're merely to keep the AI honest, why not give said enemy a no navigation zone (for just ground units so air units can still attack if they want) so they don't attempt to do anything like that?

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Failing that, maybe grouping ground units. I can't make heads or tails of what is going on along the border and I'm only 3 seconds in. Looking at it in the editor I see sizable Syrian and Hezbollah ground elements, presumably to keep me from invading as well. Given the rather basic layout of the ground combat model in this game, am I expected to repel a push from the enemy and/or invade Syria with my ground forces? Neither of those are expressed in the intent in the briefing.

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And frankly neither seems fun with the units I have.

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Another alternative if you really want to keep them all there would be assign them to a separate IDF side allied with the player, and grouping them up. This will reduce the clutter, remove the temptation to march on Damascus, and make it easier to manage my own OOB.

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Naval side, from the editor. Looks like Syrian navy units have a massive loop of waypoints to follow near where they start, but aren't assigned to a mission. Perhaps get rid of the waypoints and give them a sea control mission so that if I attempt to move my own ships in they will engage them. Right now I'm pretty sure they'll circle ad-nauseum until they hit the last waypoint, and won't ever fire an offensive weapon. As for the Russian group, their waypoints have them go out to sea 65 nm and then just stop. Again, I think a mission, even if it's just a support one, will pay off in keeping them moving around. With a 7 day scenario they'll just sit still for about 6 days and 12 hours of it.

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As for the "I can't stop you from using nuclear weapons..." just go to the side doctrine in the editor for Israel and uncheck the box next to "Use nuclear weapons" and the player will no longer be able to grant themselves permission.

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Other OOB issues: I see that you've modeled basically the entire IDF Air force. This includes a lot of utility aircraft and trainers that I have no use for. In an already huge battle, these serve no purpose.

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You also don't use single unit airfields. If it is expected that these will fall under attack then this is fine, but if there is no AI coding to attack them you may consider replacing them with single unit airfields on the Israeli side to save on active unit count.

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There's also only one Iron Dome battery on the entire side, which is quite surprising given the presence of so many other IDF units plus the nature of the threat.

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Looking at the enemy side it doesn't look like there's a mission in place to trigger SSM/MLRS/IRBM attacks on Israel or Israeli forces. I don't believe the AI will do so on their own, and if they did I don't think it would be smart. You could have an IRBM attack on say an Israeli airfield with like a 4 day delay or something, for example.

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A bit more nitpicky, but as loadouts were discussed: They're kind of assigned haphazardly within squadrons. It would be nicer from a player perspective if you grouped jets with similar loadouts "next to each other" in a squadron. So of say 12 jets (2 down for maintanence) instead of 1, 3, 6 and 7 being equipped with GBU-XX and 2,4,5, and 8 having GBU-YY, have 1-4 use GBU-XX loadout and 5-8 use GBU-YY loadout. With the alphabet soup of military nomenclature and the large amount of units this will make management just a little bit easier. But that's something I can remedy myself without too much issue.
No I ran into that with my play test and came to the same conclusion!

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Please take all of this as constructive criticism. I love the concept of the scenario and it looks like a lot of fun, just needs some polishing.