Tips for newbie? (Uncle Mark Tutorial 1)

[JoeCriminy]

Hi there -

I bought CMANO a while ago but kind of bounced off of it; decided to ease back in to it again this weekend. I started with Uncle Mark's Tutorial 1 figuring it would be a good starter scenario, but had a couple of questions after getting my ships sunk by a submarine in two different runs.

Thanks in advance for the help!

1. I'm assuming it's best practice to keep my 3 ships with sensors OFF and rely on my helicopters to find the submarine + enemy surface ships? Is there a good case where I'd want to sail around with all radars blasting away? The tutorial text recommends you set up an ASW Patrol mission but I assume the helicopter radar could also find surface ships.

2. In one run of the scenario, my ships got detected by I think an enemy helicopter and got attacked by a bunch of missiles from a direction they couldn't see. The helicopter wasn't quite in anti-air range. Fortunately my SAMs shot down all the enemy missiles, but I assume there isn't much I could have done here?

3. Once I think I've found an enemy sub, is there a best practice for attacking it? My helicopters on the ASW Patrol mission started going towards the contact and dropping torpedoes, but should I have set up an explicit ASW Strike mission? What about my surface ships -- they didn't seem to be automatically reacting to much. Should I have created an ASW Strike mission for the surface group and gotten the destroyers involved? In general I'm not clear yet when ships will manually do stuff on their own and when they have to be assigned to a mission to be effective.

thanks again

[Rory Noonan]

ORIGINAL: Chicanist

1. I'm assuming it's best practice to keep my 3 ships with sensors OFF and rely on my helicopters to find the submarine + enemy surface ships? Is there a good case where I'd want to sail around with all radars blasting away? The tutorial text recommends you set up an ASW Patrol mission but I assume the helicopter radar could also find surface ships.

Generally speaking you want to use the least amount of radiating (active) sensors necessary to achieve your goals. As you mentioned the helicopter is a good option for finding enemy surface vessels for two reasons; 1) The altitude of the helicopter means it has a longer range than the ship-borne radars which are limited by mast height--you can see this for yourself by turning the range rings on-- and 2) the emissions from the radar will probably be detected and localised by the enemy, better that they know where your helicopter is than your surface vessels.

There are some times when emission control (EMCON) doesn't matter so much; like when the enemy already know where you are, or when they dont have the means to detect and localise your emissions (which is pretty rare), also when the benefit of active emissions outweighs the risk of radiating; e.g. missiles incoming or a suspected submarine detected close to your surface vessels. In general though, it is best practice to keep your surface ships as quiet as possible and leave the active emissions to aircraft like helicopters and AWACS/AEW aircraft.

2. In one run of the scenario, my ships got detected by I think an enemy helicopter and got attacked by a bunch of missiles from a direction they couldn't see. The helicopter wasn't quite in anti-air range. Fortunately my SAMs shot down all the enemy missiles, but I assume there isn't much I could have done here?

Hard to know precisely, but depending on the design of the scenario the enemy helicopter detecting your ships with radar on its own may not be enough to trigger the AI to fire on you. In general the AI (depending on scenario designer) will want to ID your ships before firing, this means they need to see you commit a hostile act (shooting at the helo), visually ID or detect active emissions and classify the contacts that way.

With this in mind you may have been able to delay having your units ID'd by maintaining strict EMCON and keeping distance from the helo.

3. Once I think I've found an enemy sub, is there a best practice for attacking it? My helicopters on the ASW Patrol mission started going towards the contact and dropping torpedoes, but should I have set up an explicit ASW Strike mission? What about my surface ships -- they didn't seem to be automatically reacting to much. Should I have created an ASW Strike mission for the surface group and gotten the destroyers involved? In general I'm not clear yet when ships will manually do stuff on their own and when they have to be assigned to a mission to be effective.

'Best practice' in my book is keeping a helicopter on standby with an asw strike mission and a preset maximum range of around 50 miles. That means once a goblin is detected, the helo launches and prosecutes the contact as long as it is in 50nm of the host ship.

Without specifically assigning the ships to attack the sub, they will carry on doing their own thing (sailing their plotted course, doing whatever it was they were doing before the sub was detected). If they're assigned to an ASW or sea control patrol or an ASW strike, however they will automatically attack the submarine. Also, if a submarine is detected on torpedo launch within range of the ships ASW torpedos, they will usually fire off a torpedo on the return vector before evading.

Even so, surface units are not the best units to prosecute submarines with. They are usually at a disadvantage when facing subs, and are very vulnerable to counter attack. Aircraft are the best platforms to attack submarines with; they can do so with relative impunity and they cover a lot of ground very quickly. Failing that, friendly submarines are the next best bet. Faced with a submarine threat and no air or friendly subs available to counter it, I would seriously consider just trying to avoid enemy subs as the odds are heavily stacked against surface ships attacking submarines.

Hope all that helps. The CMANO manual and some of the sticky posts on this forum are great resources to develop your skills, as well as playing through the tutorials.

[JoeCriminy]

Thanks! I will replay this weekend, but this for sure helps a lot. I'm trying to figure out when to assign my ships to missions and just let the AI do its thing vs taking more control, but I guess that means I also have to decide how many details I want to drill down into to succeed.

[Rory Noonan]

Missions are great for larger scenarios and 'grunt work' like ASW patrols of large areas etc.

If it's a small scenario and you've got the time and inclination to manage your units 'manually', you'll nearly always get better results (provided you know what you're doing...)

Staring at a screen counting 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi' between key presses for sonobuoy drops from an Orion for three hours without finding anything isn't my idea of fun though [:D]