[RELEASED] Play the Fool, 2016

[poaw]

"A ship's a fool to fight a fort" -Horatio Nelson

This is a USN playable scenario that pits you against the defenses; sea, air, and land; of the PLAN as you attempt to escort an amphibious assault force on a mission to attack Woody Island in the South China Sea (in 2016).

You'll have to manage multiple task groups with carriers, amphibs, submarines and even a surface action group. AU count is sub-500, with plenty of room for the player to decide how to approach the situation and 56 hours long.

As always, any feedback at all is appreciated.

EDIT1 (4-18-14): Made adjustments based on feedback by Flankerk and added information to briefing which was unintentionally omitted along with fixing typos. (44)
EDIT2 (4-29-14): Performance improved. Scenario finished.

[Flankerk]

I'm quite a way in to the scenario, but not yet completed. Majority going well, and definitely good fun. Quite a tricky scenario in a number of places, which is I suspect intended from the title of course.

The only items I've encountered so far:-

The weather hasn't been implemendted so suspect that is somehting planned to be added later. It tends to make some of the sub conflicts relatively easier.

One of the land units at the far western side of the island group is set to mobile. I found as a result in my play through it was cruising around a small atoll trying to intercept my ships. I suspect it needs to be set to fixed?

The Far North Eastern SAG lost its way and basically went to zero speed. Not sure why this occurred. They won;'t have had much of a link to my ships if on a strike mission, but perhaps need a plotted course to fall back on?

So far the various stand-off missiles have accounted for the ships, relatively easily, SLAMER in particular. The bases themselves were hit by TLAM, with follow up strikes.

I was having problems in the air to air. Thought i'd be clever and use the F35 which mostly worked, however they still do lose some. Not losing any is pretty difficult, so the scoring is relatively hard.

One that particulalrly amused me, as I swapped back the F35 to strike (they'd run low on AMRAAM) and readied the F-18 E and F (who'd run low on strike munitions) to be AAW, for a brief moment I had no air cover. At that precise moment a Chinese Bomber strike came in which was nice.

Will let you know how the remainder goes.

[Coiler12]

Small issue: Should there be more PLAN small surface units? There's plenty of subs, aircraft, and the larger ships, but no small assets.

[poaw]

OK Flankerk I fixed the issues you mentioned, the non-moving SAG that should be moving and moving mobile unit that shouldn't.

Coiler12: For most of the small assets they don't have the range to be in position to contribute unless someone is going waaay out of the way. The Type 056 Corvette does though, but I decided to keep that in my back pocket in case I needed to increase the difficulty later.

[Flankerk]

OK finished, its possible the scoring needs looking at?
I managed an average after the Seawolf sank the majority of the main CVBG including the carrier. However at game end it went to a minor defeat once I'd got the amphibious landing to trigger. Not so sure why as I didn't lose anything since. Its possible one of those successes scores against me in effect.

Seawolf did the damage to most subs and the CVBG, the island itself took a pounding from all available SSM types. The enemy subs worked well, on a couple they were loitering as I crossed a ridge line so at shallow water.

You do run out of ammo, the Lightnings in particular not having sufficient Amraam, that is probably fair enough though and I perhaps shouldn't have gone air to air with them.

The odd remaining thoughts I had.....

The Lianing formation I suspect needs some thought, its massively spread out so the ships don't support each other well, more importantly you can easily get in with a sub. I didn't detect any helicopters trying to pinpoint my sub either so if some are available for strike missions that might be handy?

They do probably need to be closer in though, I found I could attack with relative impunity on this particular group.

I did at one stage consider a strike on the mainland, but its all single unit airfields. Can't recall if the orders mention that you can't attack the mainland, so that might already be covered.

The CV group did behave slightly oddly, in essence it steamed south at speed, got to the group of island then reversed course, it then kept repeating that. It might need a closer patrol area as it didn't really threaten me as such.

The main threat tended to be the obsolete subs, one got an LCS and several successfully got in annoying SSM strikes. There's probably a bomber strike forming up at game end, but the VC triggers before it sets off mind. By then I'd luckily won the air war, although that's a long struggle. I thought the patrols tended to work, especially those coming to the East of the island group itself.

Although there are various adjustments that I think would make it slightly harder for the player side, the vast majority of this looked to be working.

[poaw]

SPOILERS

You may have damaged the runway itself, I somehow forgot to include that part in the briefing or my notes but you are supposed to leave the airfield in a usable state, the airfields on Hainan Island are fair game though. Just to be sure I rechecked my scoring actions and all of them still share the same scoring action and it's firing fine for me.

I've tightened up the Liaoning's formation significantly. It should be considerably more difficult to slip through them, along with other adjustments to make it more challenging to attack them with your submarines. It's behavior as far as not threatening the landing itself is meant to represent a degree of passivity on their part in employing it. This is a temporary solution. I intend to revisit this scenario when a couple more event triggers are added (I'm actually waiting on one in particular) to make their actions a bit more dynamic in that regard, but for the most part I wanted the Liaoning to avoid delivering itself on a silver platter and I never expected someone to sneak their submarine into their formation and sink it, let alone sink multiple escorts as well. For now just imagine that the Chinese are more willing to lose the island than the CV and are only making a token effort at assisting with it's air wing.

Thanks for the feedback though, I really needed someone who would approach it differently than I did.

[Flankerk]

That'll be it then, agreed definitely hit the runway, and possibly destroyed it close to the end. Not an issue if its in the orders, which I may well have missed actually!

[poaw]

Improved performance based on recommendations by Sunburn.

Scenario finished, please enjoy.

[kgambit]

Great scenario. I'm about 7 hours in and things are going really well. But I think I might have hit a bug.
Are the Type 022 Hubei's and the SSM C-802 batteries supposed to score points or not.
I just finished taking out the PCFGs and got no points for any of them. Nor for the SSM battery I destroyed after that.
Up until now, I've gotten points for any Chinese unit that got destroyed. Just checking.

Edit: This was the version from scen pack 21b under build 624.

Wasn't sure where to put this so I figured this was as good a place as any.

[poaw]

The lack of points for the FACs was intended with the caveat that I'd revisit it in the future. For now though it's a feature not a bug.

[magi]

I. Like this scenario a lot......

[kgambit]

ORIGINAL: poaw

The lack of points for the FACs was intended with the caveat that I'd revisit it in the future. For now though it's a feature not a bug.

Thanks poaw. Just wanted to check.

I'm really enjoying this one so far.

[George Patton]

Is the scenario playable for both sides?

[mikkey]

No, only USN/USMC side.

[solidgeoff]

This is one of my favorite scenarios yet. Non-stop action from beginning to end. I love that there's always something to do and plan ahead for with lots of variety in unit choices and loadouts. I think the chinese put up a good fight in the air, but I was able to defeat them without any significant casualties based on BVG combat. Also, I took advantage of their combat range to try to take them out as they were BINGO, with some success. It was pretty intense with the first wave of fighter/bombers, and I really had to pull out all the stops to get them all in time. I used the P-8s (the planes from the SW airbase. I think they were P-8s) to knock out the first group of sea units, then planes with harpoons to take out the second pair orbiting the island. Then, my sub took out all three sea units to the east easily.

I took out the island defenses with HARMs (or similar) and other standoff ammunition, then finished it off with zumwalt's naval guns.

I would have mentioned more clearly in the briefing what craft precisely need to be brought to the island landing zone, but it wasn't a big deal.

-spoilers below-


The sub warfare felt overwhelming at times, and I didn't even know there was such a thing as biological stuff (the groups of tuna). I definitely overreacted at times. However, I will say that I felt that most subs were fairly ineffective against my ships. I'm a big novice on anti-sub warfare, and there were a few times that I felt like the AI went easy on me. I did get attacked with some C-802s, but was able to take them out with amraams by nearby planes.

I took out the carrier group with the p-8s again mixed with f-18s with AGM-154s and EF-18s. I needed 12 of these munitions to ensure a mission kill on the carrier (3 or 4 hit, and flooding was its demise). The jammers were a big help.

The only thing I wasn't a fan of were the df-21d launched late in the game. i would have appreciated more warning in the briefing or something indicating these were involved in the game. I understand the surprise factor and the need to keep your carrier hidden, but I felt that it contradicted the feel of the scenario. Most of the scenario I felt that I really had to plan and execute everything correctly, and the df-21ds were just punishing for the sake of it.

Regardless, I had a ton of fun matching arms between two superpowers and I loved the non-stop action from all directions. This was 10/10 for me.

[RoccoNZ]

I really enjoyed playing this scenario. I've worked through it a couple of times and found it fairly addictive.

The biologics add an interesting dimension to the scenario. I'd like to see further development of the scenario to include some more 'atmospherics,' like civilian shipping and air movement. At the moment anything that is a surface or air contact is a target.

I also think some of the triggers in the scenario could do with some tweaking, especially around when the PLAN determines hostilities have started. I'm not sure that a MPA on patrol (a routine peacetime event) or a nav radar would be enough to declare hostilities. I also think reconnaissance should be rewarded, and there should be some emissions to 'sniff' to understand enemy disposition before shooting starts. I'd also like to see the airfields modelled in detail, so I've got options on how to deal with the enemy. At the moment it feels like cheating attacking single-unit airfields after all other targets are dealt with.

The ballistic missiles addd an interesting dimension and I've found dealing with refuelling challenges frustratingly enjoyable.

[magi]

^^^ what rocco says.... i might play it again now....