Scenario for Testing: Defending 31st Tactical Air Base, Poland

[SeaQueen]

I spend a lot of time philosophizing about what a good scenario looks like. This one is fairly basic for me, but I find it enjoyable and challenging. Defend your airbase in Poland. It's difficult. This scenario is intended to be played with, so different force laydowns might matter. Personally, in my next iteration I was going to swap out maybe the F-15s for either some UK or Luftwaffe fighters.

There's a lot of LUA in there, which handles things like randomizing which aircraft are mission capable and which ones are in maintenance. I'd appreciate feedback on that. I'm also curious about your thoughts on how I handle scoring. Since this one is a defensive scenario, it starts at 100 and grades downward as you fail to defend stuff.

There's a lot of images and attachments that go with this scenario file. They shouldn't be necessary to run it, but I may need upload them separately to avoid things getting too huge. Send me a message privately if you'd like them. I'll put them up on Google drive or something.

It requires Chains of War. There's a laser weapons system in it.

If you look in the computer controlled side's scenario briefing there's some fairly extensive notes on what my thinking was. I can't guarantee it actually does that, but it should approximate it.

[Whicker]

getting this in the luahistory log - every couple minutes or so:

Function:ScenEdit_SetEMCON (0) Error:Unable to identify subject of EMCON change! Please verify the subject-type and subject-name/ID strings.

[Whicker]

that error is from the SAM blinking script, I think the 15th guid in the list of sam units is invalid.
the actual invalid guid is e5b867ae-cf53-48aa-90ad-02b446632314

I like the blink idea, seems like it would be more manageable if the unit name was used for the list in the setup and they were all uniquely named. The guids are rough. I found it by adding a print statement - print(s) before the if statement.

I played it all the way thru, but I think there are a few things not working:

- score never changed, stayed at 100 even though I lost several AC - I think scoring is only supposed to change if I lost stuff? I did get one sa-21 but that didn't change the score either. The event for Nato Tactical AC destroyed did fire.
- the Iskanders never fired (or any other land attack missiles), not sure if they were supposed to
- there was no attack on the Polish base
- all I had were F-35A's and F-16s, not sure if that was part of the random setup or that was all there was supposed to be
- there are loads of bombers on the enemy side but none of them have a mission.

I made a bad call and attacked the stuff in southern Belarus, which of course had an exclusion zone around it, so the GBUs couldn't reach anything. Whoops.

In editor mode I see all the stuff way up north, and a major CAP up there, but I was never going to get even close to it with the limited time and resources.

I still have a lot to learn, not being able to drop on things cause of the low clouds causes a lot of problems, I get excited that I am right over something but then can't attack it.
I do like those SDBs. Would have liked to see more of them in there.

[SeaQueen]

Ooops! I uploaded the wrong one! I sent a subsequent scenario based on the one I wanted to upload that's in the process of being reworked. Sorry. Did I upload the SEAD one? It should have been the DCA one. I deleted the original attachment so that it wouldn't be confusing people.

Do over.

I use guids so that people can change the names of stuff to suit their own fiendish purposes. You're right, though, it's not obvious how to associate a guid with a unit on the map. Maybe that's less of a problem on the computer controlled side?

*attachment deleted to avoid confusing people with old versions of the scenario*

[Whicker]

I kinda figured it was the wrong version.

This looks correct, much more going on.

I'll try it later today.

[Whicker]

Same error on the sam emcon change - same 15th radar I believe.

There is a condition for Too many strategic lift Assets that is missing an equals sign for the false part.

Getting an error:
Exception: [string "TAB 31 Has Lost Too Many Strategic Lift Asset..."]:3: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'n0StratLift' (a nil value)

Which I think I have back tracked to that not being set in the setup, so I added the following to the scen setup list:
["n0StratLift"] = 1,

Fixed those up and going in.

[Whicker]

Minor Defeat: 18 points, and that was just due to evac I think. A little over whelming, to say the least. I would move the action up quite a bit.

When you do the SAM Emcon change you need to check if the unit exists - or else when I kill one then the errors start again. This would also help if the guid is incorrect.

I like your idea of score keeping, I have been thinking about that a lot. Killing enemy units helps accomplish the mission, so giving points seems weird. I do like losing points for losing your own units, and either starting with points or getting points for successfully accomplishing something, which maybe is to destroy a particular enemy unit - like sa-10 or something.

You could put the images into the zip with the scen, I was curious what they were. It looked like they were just referencing their location in the scen folder so they may have loaded?
I didn't have any problem with which AC were available.

Was there anything I could have done with the laser? it worked really well on its own, just curious if there were any ways to use it differently than just letting it do its thing.

[SeaQueen]

I'm pretty consistently getting "Average" to "Minor victory." Some of it is luck (e.g. I might get more functional aircraft on one session versus another). I've never gotten a "Major Victory" or "Triumph." Like I said, this is intended to be challenging to me.

With any of the ground defenses (laser or otherwise), the big thing to do is mess with the WRA. What are you targeting? How much to shoot? How far away? Shooting closer in tends to improve your Pk, so that can compensate for shooting fewer missiles (e.g. 1 per v. 2 per). It also has the down side of minimizing your opportunities to re-engage and if you come in too close then your Pk is adversely effected by a bad crossing angle. I've got my set of decisions pretty nailed down, but other people might arrive at different ones. I'm always curious to hear what other people come up with that works.

The images are just Google Earth images of the airbase and the AEGIS Ashore sites, as well as a lot of the insignia for the units involved. It's kinda of big, though.

I like your idea of score keeping, I have been thinking about that a lot. Killing enemy units helps accomplish the mission, so giving points seems weird. I do like losing points for losing your own units, and either starting with points or getting points for successfully accomplishing something, which maybe is to destroy a particular enemy unit - like sa-10 or something.

Thank you, it's something I've been harping about for some time. I figured I'd put an example of it out there. I try to keep the victory conditions for scenarios more complex than just a tally of my losses versus the enemy's losses. That renders the score into basically just a weighted exchange ratio, and I'm not sure that's really interesting except in very small scenarios (basically few-on-few sorts of things). Instead, I try to make them reflective of a higher level commander's guidance, and the kinds of things they might be looking for. Obviously if they've committed the forces then they're willing to risk some of it, but don't lose too much of it either.

[SeaQueen]

Here are the images which aren't map overlays. They're really just to spruce things up some.

[Whicker]

that is a shame you can't package those up so it works easily with a relative url. My path was different than yours. I tried to find a way to get it to work with relative ../ url or something but no luck.

Your briefing/description has an alt tag that is really long and since the image doesn't show up it displays the really long alt tag instead which made the page super wide. Looks way better with the images in there.

[SeaQueen]

I'll be sure to remove the alt tag. Thanks for your feedback. I'm finding all the little things I didn't think to look for.

If you send me an e-mail address privately, I'll connect you to a Google drive with the attachments.

[SeaQueen]

Some of the problems fixed. I'm still working on some other suggestions, errors and bugs that have come in.

[SeaQueen]

I tried to follow up on some more of people's critiques. Please let me know if you enjoyed playing it. It should be challenging to most players:

*attachment deleted to avoid distributing old versions*

[SeaQueen]

Fixed some more bugs in the LUA. Added some EW aircraft, changed up the tactics some. Please let me know how it goes.

[stolypin]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

Fixed some more bugs in the LUA. Added some EW aircraft, changed up the tactics some. Please let me know how it goes.

This will be my long-weekend scenario!

[Whicker]

So at scen start are we at war? can I attack at will if I want?
I moved the cargo planes straight off, not sure what value they add.

there is still something wrong with the 15th guid in the list of sams I think - I get an error in the log file. I added some print statements to it and this is what I get in the log now - I think it is working fine for all the others, just doesn't like the 15th guid.

sam blink script start
i=1 s=ae3ace91-e062-4dc0-8aef-6db71c7db1cb
i=2 s=9b415a0f-222c-46d5-9099-0366dc611eae
i=3 s=e0d18614-ddf3-4e4a-afe6-d81ff64cc135
i=4 s=6b1368e8-5f91-4c01-b812-de6a66ca636d
i=5 s=cdbf409e-34b7-42ea-afcc-aea2a6780005
i=6 s=a213a2f8-7f37-451b-8697-be0ac1e25557
i=7 s=29c54d50-352b-43a2-9bb1-fe5f74ba51bc
i=8 s=7b798f31-e851-4beb-ba5f-014fa27fa18f
i=9 s=46a1ef26-3e16-45f8-b15c-99ffe510c0aa
i=10 s=2b7731ae-1ff4-4937-9d10-5c19e13e7926
i=11 s=309f41c3-32ca-4eab-8fb2-13c82f78c5ef
i=12 s=bddbe3b1-a8d7-41d4-b2c5-171b54ddb69f
i=13 s=e03c9872-3476-440f-890a-0e32829c18d6
i=14 s=7b54708b-6072-4679-8c7d-0a5e6324b07a
i=15 s=e5b867ae-cf53-48aa-90ad-02b446632314
...
Function:ScenEdit_GetUnit (0) Error:Need to define a Name or Guid to identify a unit. Preferably a Guid or Side & Name.
i=16 s=f8461685-0521-4855-96a7-b937908d0546

[SeaQueen]

Thanks for the feedback!

You are at war. Was that unclear in the briefing? You can attack whatever you'd like. There's some JASSMs and SDB on the base. I'd advise against being too offensive though. Mission success is determined by how well you defend the airbase. Attacking other things doesn't really buy you anything in that scenario, and might take resources away from what you're really trying to accomplish (defending your own airbase).

I'll look at that one guid. I might have removed a SAM site and not removed it from the list of blinkies.

[Whicker]

Kinda learned that last night, I took out some radars but that cost me in preparedness for sure.

The scen description was fairly clear that the russians had attacked, but the scen briefing was not too clear. They were hostile right off the bat so I guess that tells the player something.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me the way the AC are all at the one base. I get the transports and the F 16s being there, but it seems too far forward to me to have the AWACS and refuelers there, same thing more or less for the F35s and F15s. Once the barrage began I was trying to send them to another base as they ran out of ammo and that was a little difficult. I'd prefer to have some units spread out among the other bases, and to me that would be more realistic and would not really change the scenario goals too much. Also, the shear number of CMs seemed a little much for one base, I wonder how many CMs in total they would have? I think you could accomplish the same thing with half the number and then the bombers might play a more important role.

It is challenging to say the least, I got a 37 the first time but thought I had a cunning plan to use guns more, so I restarted from the beginning of the attack and set the global doctrine to allow strafing and I thought I was doing better - definitely took out a lot of missiles with just guns, but I ended with 17 so somehow went backwards. Basically I lose everything.

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: Whicker
The scen description was fairly clear that the russians had attacked, but the scen briefing was not too clear. They were hostile right off the bat so I guess that tells the player something.

The scenario is supposed to take place at an unspecified time past D-Day. I'll see if I can re-write the briefing a little bit to be more clear.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me the way the AC are all at the one base. I get the transports and the F 16s being there, but it seems too far forward to me to have the AWACS and refuelers there, same thing more or less for the F35s and F15s.

You're right, it's probably a little contrived (most war games are a little contrived, honestly). The thing that inspired me to make the scenario was that basically everything in Poland is in striking range of nearly everything in the Russian arsenal. Because of geography, they're in an awful position. Given that, what would it take to defend an airbase in Poland? I looked at the numbers, and there's no way Poland could defend itself. In order to make the scenario plausible, they needed help. So, as the scenario designer, I waved my hands and reinforced them with American 4th and 5th gen fighters. I also wanted to present the player with a ready-to-go integrated strike force with a wide variety of capabilities to use in combination.

The ostensible justification for the robust forward presence might be political; to reassure the Polish government and people of NATO's commitment to their defense at a period of heightened tensions. Is that a reasonable thing? Meh.. maybe? I'm sure it'd be bad optics for their NATO allies to flee Poland on CNN just before the balloon goes up.

When I play, one of the first things I do is pull the AWACS, cargo planes, and tankers back. It's a simple thing to do. There's plenty of time up front to rearrange things the way you'd like. Even that, though, isn't a done deal. If you're unlucky, you can end up with all the tankers or AWACS stuck on the ground, and then they're almost certain to get hit eventually.

My hope is that in a future database iteration, they'll include a loadouts for transporting munitions on cargo planes. That way you could throw some AMRAAMs and heaters in the back of the C-17s and C-130s and put them where you want. It'd definitely open up some flexibility in this scenario.

Once the barrage began I was trying to send them to another base as they ran out of ammo and that was a little difficult. I'd prefer to have some units spread out among the other bases, and to me that would be more realistic and would not really change the scenario goals too much.

I'm debating whether or not to scatter some more munitions around the theater.

Also, the shear number of CMs seemed a little much for one base, I wonder how many CMs in total they would have? I think you could accomplish the same thing with half the number and then the bombers might play a more important role.

Interesting question! When I was doing my research, I read somewhere on the internet that apparently Russia has ~11 Iskander brigades in the region. I used ~4 I think. I have no idea how good those numbers are. I probably went a little heavy on ALCMs, but there's more than enough Iskanders to make up the difference if I took them away. It's completely possible they'd save the ALCMs for Germany, or they could use them to take some of the slack off the Iskanders, and use them for other things. It all depends.

Also, if they're still following Soviet doctrine (or some development thereof?) the Russians are the kings of overkill. Furthermore, if you watch the laser system, it's a beast. It doesn't stop firing the whole time, and stops A TON of cruise missiles. It takes a few hundred to get past it and still hit the aimpoints you want, plus there's SAMs, plus the fighters, plus the guns... They wouldn't attack if they didn't think it was likely to succeed. My plan on the Russian side was to use the CMs and TBMs to kick down the door. The fighters and bombers come in behind them and strike what's left over.

It's also not that much of an overkill. One could argue they need more! Between all the opened parking spaces, hangers, and hardened shelters, assuming 2 per aimpoint, that's 4 (2 hangers) + 66 (33 hardened aircraft shelters) + 12 (6 revetments) + 52 (26 tarmac spaces) + 32 (16 weather shelters) = 166 missiles, and you haven't even added extra to account for the fact that some will get shot down. Attacking an airbase is a major investment of effort.

It is challenging to say the least, I got a 37 the first time but thought I had a cunning plan to use guns more, so I restarted from the beginning of the attack and set the global doctrine to allow strafing and I thought I was doing better - definitely took out a lot of missiles with just guns, but I ended with 17 so somehow went backwards. Basically I lose everything.

I hope you enjoyed it! I like it because I can keep experimenting with how everything works together and see what does better and worse. I've never gotten a major victory or triumph rating, but I've gotten minor victories. The hard part for me is preserving the TACAIR. I've never succeeded at that goal.