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God of War help - 8/21/2018 7:43:20 PM   
PhyseterCatodon

 

Posts: 16
Joined: 7/15/2018
Status: offline 		Hey everyone,

Just as I thought I was getting the hang of things, I tried my hand at the God of War scenario and after a long time of planning I got my ass handed to me within a couple of minutes. So here I am, frustrated and back at the drawing board.

I briefly want to lay out what I had in mind for the scenario, how it turned out and hopefully the more experienced players on this forum can give me some tips about where it all went wrong.

In the planning phase I initially wanted to attack all airbases at once, not giving the Vietnamese a chance to get airborne (this was sort of hinted at in the description). Upon further inspection this seemed too ambitious and I narrowed my focus on Kep and Bai Thuong (the two northernmost bases) with smaller strikes to Da Nang and Pang Rhang. I wanted to lead with a SEAD strike to punch a hole in the Vietnamese air defenses and follow it up with cruise missiles coming from my strategic aircraft. Meanwhile the plan was to fly CAP around northern Vietnam and keep my stealth fighters handy to intercept any Su-30s that flew in from the south. I assumed I would be able to destroy the northern airbases before anything could get airborne.

During the execution of my plan I found two S300 systems in the north of Vietnam, pretty much as expected. I let my ELINT aircraft patrol down the Vietnamese coast at a safe distance to map any hidden air defenses they might have. Everything looked to be going to plan as my first strikes went airborne. However, soon things started to turn for the worst. The Vietnamese radars probably picked up my missile launches, since a few minutes after my Badgers had launched their cruise missiles, fighters started to get airborne. The dreaded Su-30s, which I had not expected so early. In addition, their missiles had a much bigger range than I thought. Despite this, I chose to go forward with the plan and soon my SEAD aircraft were within range of the S300 and started unloading their missiles. My stealth fighters had done a good job staying hidden as they flew into the S300 range, however they did not drop their long-range bombs and flew in too close to the enemy radar and air defenses. Not exactly sure why they did this, but they were the first casualties of the war, getting absolutely swamped with anti-air missiles. Meanwhile, to my horror, I noticed that most of my missiles were being shot down by the anti-air defenses. After redirecting some of my SEAD aircraft to put all they had into the S300, I managed to destroy one of the two S300 systems. Along with one or two of the older anti-air systems, these were the only results of my first strike, which were supposed to cripple the northern Vietnamese bases. At this point I basically gave up. Casualties on my side were mounting and there was very little to show for it.

So, for my personal observations about this disaster:
1. Trying to launch strikes at 4 airbases simultaneously was too ambitious.
2. Destroying the airbases before they get anything airborne was an unrealistic expectation.
3. I need to have my stealth fighters in position to combat the Su-30s from the beginning.

Other than that, I am not quite sure what went wrong. Perhaps my weapon allocation? Against the air defense network I planned to use the ARMs, extended range bombs and the short ranged cruise missiles on my own Su-30s (Kazoo, or something). Against the runways I planned to use cruise missiles from my Badgers and ground batteries. All of this I wanted to follow up later (after all air defenses were down) with a huge strike of my MiG-21s and my other Badgers (which had ASMs by default) outfitted with 250kg bombs to destroy the planes that were stuck on the ground. Perhaps a better plan would've been to use all my cruise missiles to saturate and drain the enemy air defenses and quickly follow up with a SEAD strike? I really don't know.

Thanks for reading all this, and I hope you guys have some tips for me.

_____________________________

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." - Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
Post #: 1
RE: God of War help - 8/22/2018 9:49:10 PM   
Schr75


Posts: 803
Joined: 7/18/2014
From: Denmark
Status: offline 		Hi PhyseterCatodon

First of all. I´m writing this from memory, as it has been a while since I have played this scen, so please bear with me if I remember incorrectly.

Attacking modern SAM systems like the SA-20 is not easy. You have to overwhelm them in order to actually hit them. To do this you have to hit them with lots of ARMs, stand-off bombs/missiles and jamming at the same time, while reducing the response time to a minimum.

If you can hit some of the long range surveillance radars before you attack the SAMs, this will make your attack a lot easier.

You also have good jammers available. Use them. Just remember not to get too close as this is a great way to lose your jammers quickly. Also, jammers work best when pointed at the target and in line with the planes/weapons they are trying to mask, so planing your jammers tracks are very important.

Your weapons have shorter range than the Vietnamese radar and weapon range, so you have to fly low to approach the targets undetected. Use the terrain to mask your approach and don´t pop up until you are in range, and then make sure all weapons arrive at the same time on target. This way you will overwhelm the target. If you time your attack so that the SAM battery will start shooting at your glide bombs first, and then fire your ARMs from low altitude right behind them, or time them to arrive a few seconds later if you can fire them from long range, you should be able to hit the SAM site. You only need one or two ARM hits to disable a SAM site. You don´t have to completely destroy it.
Against an SA-20, I would use at least 16 ARMs combined with other weapons/distractions and jammers.

As to why your J-20s didn´t drop their weapons it´s hard to say with certainty without a save file, but my gut feeling is that the targets ambiguity zone was to big. If the target contact is too old, the weapon can´t use the coordinates to launch at, or the launch altitude was wrong.

One last thing.
Don´t forget that stealth planes are not invisible. They will be detected if they fly too close to a radar or IR sensor, and if it´s daylight, a mk1 eyeball.

Hope this helped and good luck.

Søren


< Message edited by Schr75 -- 8/22/2018 9:54:01 PM >

(in reply to PhyseterCatodon)
Post #: 2
RE: God of War help - 8/23/2018 8:21:57 AM   
PhyseterCatodon

 

Posts: 16
Joined: 7/15/2018
Status: offline 		Thanks a lot for your reply!

In my next attempt I will certainly put a lot more focus on destroying the S-300 systems, however this left me with a question:
Last time I played, I noticed that with a single ELINT aircraft I could not get a definitive position of the S-300 systems (I could get close, but no "firing solution"). Will it help if I deploy two aircraft in order to triangulate their position to get it precise enough to launch ordnance? Last time I only could launch ARMs.

Another question that came to my mind was about jammers;
On my JD-16 Flying Sharks I have the "Generic Comms Jammer [Advanced]". I understand this jams communications, but how can I expect this to affect the combat/strikes?


< Message edited by PhyseterCatodon -- 8/23/2018 8:22:32 AM >

_____________________________

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." - Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

(in reply to Schr75)
Post #: 3
RE: God of War help - 8/23/2018 4:22:30 PM   
Whicker

 

Posts: 664
Joined: 6/20/2018
Status: offline 		I played this last night and scored a minor victory fairly easily.

The Kryptons are your friend.

Few things I did that may have helped:
- moved my good SAM units closer to the border
- moved the 2 ships with good SAMs off the coast of where I would be attacking - one was off the base in the middle (DaNang?) the other was further north off the lone base to the south a bit. They provided nice AA support.
- took out as many surface radars as possible before doing much else
- didn't attack with much else besides kryptons until I had done a fair amount of damage
- wasn't in a hurry, didn't try to do too much too fast

The jammers seemed to work really well - make sure they are on, and then I try to get them just in front of the kryptons carriers and have everyone at min altitude or maybe 1k. The jammers allowed the kryptons to get into position, and it seemed that about 20 kryptons would do the trick.

I didn't loose much, but I also didn't destroy as much as I should have so it was only a minor victory. I'll try it again and see if I can do better.

It is worthwhile to setup a simple scenario with an S-400/300 and some radars and then try to see how close you can get with various units. This clearly shows the value of the jammers. They don't make anything invisible but they do mask you pretty well. It also shows that you need to be close to them, and that altitude matters.

< Message edited by Whicker -- 8/23/2018 4:24:02 PM >

(in reply to PhyseterCatodon)
Post #: 4
RE: God of War help - 8/23/2018 4:27:00 PM   
Whicker

 

Posts: 664
Joined: 6/20/2018
Status: offline 		I think I was getting info on where things were from an awacs to the north, the DDG to the south, the large jammers off the coast(cubs?), elint off the coast and some of the CAP planes I think. Also once I was going in things would start to solidify.

(in reply to Whicker)
Post #: 5
RE: God of War help - 8/23/2018 4:55:56 PM   
Schr75


Posts: 803
Joined: 7/18/2014
From: Denmark
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: PhyseterCatodon

Another question that came to my mind was about jammers;
On my JD-16 Flying Sharks I have the "Generic Comms Jammer [Advanced]". I understand this jams communications, but how can I expect this to affect the combat/strikes?



Comms jamming will not have an effect, as this is a feature only enabled in the Pro version.
However. If Comms disruption is enabled in the scenario features tab, any unit having their comms systems disabled will lose comms and drop out of player control (it´s not enabled in this scen).

Another thing I forgot to mention in the last post.
Be patient. You have 36 hours, so no need to rush things. Don´t attack until all your assets are ready, and then only attack as many targets as you can reliably destroy/disable. A common mistake, and I do it regularly, is to be too ambitious and try to hit all targets at once with too few resources. The result is often that no targets get hit at all. Better to concentrate your resources on a few targets so to ensure they get destroyed, and then hit the other targets when you are ready to strike again.

quote:

Last time I played, I noticed that with a single ELINT aircraft I could not get a definitive position of the S-300 systems (I could get close, but no "firing solution"). Will it help if I deploy two aircraft in order to triangulate their position to get it precise enough to launch ordnance? Last time I only could launch ARMs.


Using more ELINT A/C will definitely help triangulating the SAM sites, but you probably won´t get an exact location. But an approximate position might be good enough to plan an ingress leg for your attack and it will also give you a location to BOL fire decoys/glide bombs etc at to provoke a response from the SAM site.

Hope this is useful and please let me know how it goes.
Happy hunting.

Søren



< Message edited by Schr75 -- 8/23/2018 4:59:40 PM >

(in reply to PhyseterCatodon)
Post #: 6
RE: God of War help - 8/23/2018 6:01:36 PM   
PhyseterCatodon

 

Posts: 16
Joined: 7/15/2018
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Schr75



Using more ELINT A/C will definitely help triangulating the SAM sites, but you probably won´t get an exact location.



I was afraid of this. Does this outright stop an initial attack with cruise missiles? My new plan was to use all my cruise missiles (and perhaps some of my ARMs) to overwhelm the S-300, follow up with my ARMs to destroy the radar and AA-sites and then use my LGBs to start destroying runways. However, if I cannot get an accurate enough fix with my ELINT to allow for a cruise missile strike that plan would be off the table...

Also, thanks for the clarification on the OECM part!

_____________________________

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." - Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

(in reply to Schr75)
Post #: 7
RE: God of War help - 8/23/2018 7:11:46 PM   
Schr75


Posts: 803
Joined: 7/18/2014
From: Denmark
Status: offline 		Unless you can get a precise fix on the S-300, cruise missiles are out.
Besides, they are not the optimal weapon for attacking a SAM site.

AFAIR I used my J-20s with their IR systems to discretely get a fix on as many surveillance radars as possible and then killing them with cruise missiles.
When they were out of the way, my main strike with ARMs hit the S-300s and then I started to pummel the airbases.

Cruise missiles are more than adequate to kill undefended surveillance radars, and ARMs are better used killing SAM sites that are defending them selves.

I took a look at the scen, and the entire Vietnamese AD network are active, so you can launch ARMs at them even without an exact location.
So the key is to get as close as possible without getting detected, and then launch all your ARMs. This will overwhelm the S-300.

Save your bombs and anti surface cruise missiles for the primary targets. And remember that you don´t have to destroy the entire airbase.
Crater the runway so no planes can take off, and then hit the tarmac spaces and hangar facilities to kill the planes on the ground. Don´t waste ammo on fuel facilities, control towers and the like.

Søren

< Message edited by Schr75 -- 8/23/2018 7:14:21 PM >

(in reply to PhyseterCatodon)
Post #: 8
RE: God of War help - 9/1/2018 7:43:53 PM   
PhyseterCatodon

 

Posts: 16
Joined: 7/15/2018
Status: offline 		Thanks a bunch for the advice!

Yesterday I gave the scenario another shot and today I finished it with a triumph (when you reach 90 points, the scenario concludes).
Losses were pretty limited. A single J-10 and two drones. The drones were mostly due to negligence.

This is by far the most complex scenario I've played so far, but it was a lot easier than I initially thought. None the less I learned a ton about the game.
I basically followed you guys' advice. After my initial SEAD strike on the S-300s I let my ground-based AA and PL-15s (long-range AA missiles) pick off the scary aircraft as they got airborne. When the Su-30s around the northern bases were whittled down it was basically a matter of patiently dismantling what was left of their anti-air system. The Vietnamese fleet was no threat at all, and I managed to find 4 of the 5 Vietnamese submarines hiding in a bay somewhere, but with their radar on. That was somewhat silly.

In the end I never touched the southern most airbase. Really makes me wonder whether it's possible to entirely demolish the Vietnamese air force and navy. I realized I made some pretty silly errors in picking my load outs for the second wave of strikes and also forgot that degraded AA-systems no longer radiate, thus are harder to target with ARMs, leading to a lot of inefficiency in the load outs I picked. Also air-to-air refueling was pretty new to me leading to some strikes that had to return home because I hadn't set up their flight plan correctly.

Anyways, this was by far my favorite scenario so far and I wanted to share that with you guys. Peace!

< Message edited by PhyseterCatodon -- 9/1/2018 7:44:32 PM >

_____________________________

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." - Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

(in reply to Schr75)
Post #: 9
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