new Scenario for Testing NF 12.1 Somethings Fishy

[Gunner98]

Another small short sharp engagement. A bit different form most of the others:

This scenario is playable by the Soviets only:

With the entrance of the Trondheimsfjorden closed by the Norwegian guns at Fort Hysnes, the Soviet Navy has not been able to influence the situation within the massive fjord. The new commander of the 77the Motor Rifle Division (MRD) believes that he can correct the failings of his predecessor by improvising, as such – he has created his own navy! Although the Norwegians either sank or sailed away in many vessels in the numerous ports captured in the fjord, there is one type of boat that is so numerous in this area, that a clean sweep was not possible – fishing trawlers!

You are the commander of the 3rd Motor Rifle Regiment (MRR) of the 77th MRD and you have tasked you’re 2nd Battalion to conduct an amphibious assault on the south coast. As you inspect your troops before they embark on this adventure, you can barely hold back a retch at the stink emanating from one of these dilapidated old working boats.


As always - I look forward to your comments and critiques.

B

[Kitchens Sink]

"Ok, Battalion 3...time to board! Battalion 3? Where did they go?"

[Gunner98]

They're already on board - getting stinky [:D]

[Coiler12]

I played some of the scenario. A few comments.

First, I liked the concept enough to write a vignette about it. [:D]

Second, in the actual scenario, I tried moving a few boats towards the shore and they got splattered by artillery. My guess is that the Hinds need to do a lot of heavy lifting.

[Gunner98]

Thank you Coiler12

I enjoyed your vignette!

You are correct - The Hind's need to do some real work - but you also have that Hy Arty Bty which can range the whole area. Those 8" shells hurt, but your FOO Hind needs to get busy[;)]!

[Gunner98]

Bump - anything on this one guys?

[AndrewJ]

I played this one last weekend, and I think it went reasonably conventionally for me.

THE FIGHT (briefly)

My scout boats spread out, got shot at by arty, and the survivors ran away as best they could. Hinds went in after the arty that was revealed, and after that spent much of their time hunting around in the dark revealing enemy units which were engaged by my own arty in turn. The wretched RBS-70s proved to be a thorn in the side of my Hinds, accounting for two of them, but fortunately they tend to fire at max range, which greatly reduces their hit chance.

The enemy fort fell quickly to my 2S7, and my short ranged arty beat up on the NATO shipping. The Pauk's rapid fire gun was handy for the final sinking (after the Pauk did a flank speed dash to get in once the straits were cleared). Unloading proceeded, infantry slowly spread out, and the BTRs zoomed around to take revenge on the RBS-70s and let my few reloading Hinds get back into the area. I split my two tank platoons (mistake!), sending one south to Lundamo and one east to Vaernes. Nothing came from the Lundamo direction, but Vaernes sure took a pounding, and I lost almost everything in the area (the greater part of an Inf Battalion and all the armour in the area - yikes!). It took the last of my 8" arty, all my mortars, cargo Hips making gun runs, and an infantry company stripped from the landing beaches security detachment to rescue the situation and restore control of the area.

In the end, however, all objectives were in my (fishy-smelling) hands.


Arty ROE

The NATO arty's set to engage anything, which mean's they'll open fire at tactically insignificant units like RHIBs and pilot boats. When that happens (because of the standard arty graphics) you can trace the line of shellfire right back to the battery's exact location, even when the unit is hiding in a valley 16 miles away and hasn't been spotted yet. Once that happens it's in with the Hinds, and game over for the arty. If it hadn't been for that my landing forces would have been badly mauled.

I'm not sure there's a lot you can do about this. There's nothing you can do about these shellfire graphics (other than pretend you have simulated the worlds best counter artillery radar). If you set WRA to ignore Civilian ships of 0 to 500 tons then they shouldn't engage the rubber boats, but unfortunately they won't engage the tugs either. Maybe a strike mission limited to only specific boat targets, excluding the RHIBs and pilot boats, would work? But then they probably wouldn't engage the LUA-generated Russian ground forces. Hmmm...


Miscellaneous Items:

The WP SOF is available as a playable side.

Briefing typo: "nightly artillery duals"

The fort will immediately open fire and expend all its ammunition on the closest unit in the Orland Group. This can be fixed by tweaking the WRA. The fort dies very quickly (probably too quickly) under 2S7 fire, so it's probably not a major issue, since the fort will probably be extinct before any naval units have time to enter its field of fire.

The briefing suggests you should have the trawlers going in two at a time, but the Unit Remains in Area trigger doesn't act for each individual ship. It only checks for presence of any matching unit for the duration. So if you have two trawlers in the zone at once you'll only get one unload. Ditto for the Hips. If you send them all in as a flight you'll only get one payout.

If a player sends a slower ship deep into the south end of the offload zone (so it is nearest the presumed beach) then it doesn't have time to get out again before the offload trigger fires a second time.

Su-25s can't contribute much, given their lack of night vision and brief availability during the hours of darkness.

The West CMove group had routefinding difficulties, got tangled in the S end of the cul-de-sac SW of Trondheim, and did not make it to the fight.

No night-vision for the Russian SOF? They never spotted anything all game.

A 'helicopter unloaded' message might be useful to know when the Hips are ready to fly home again.

[Gunner98]

Thanks Andrew, I'll fix those points.

Not overly worried about the Arty issue, I fought with it for a while and came to the conclusion that it would be found - so I put a 2nd Regt in the scenario to give it some redundancy. I think I will put some point AD to protect the Btys however. Back in the cold war days we had a policy of either digging in the guns, dispersing a Bty over a full grid square or moving within 5-7 min of opening up - because the Sov's did have an excellent Hostile Battery Locating system (combo of radar, acoustic and observation). Agree that this is artificially easy in this scenario but it also makes it fun.

I think I'll add some bunkers to the fort. Might change up the Su-25s for MiG-27s.

It'll be a week yet before I can get to the changes so anyone else have anything?

B

Thanks

[Gunner98]

Ver 1.1

Several fixes to the points AndrewJ made.

Any Comment or critique welcome.

B

[Gunner98]

Anything on this one folks?

B

[Excroat3]

Nothing major, just a couple small points:

File name is NF "Something Smells Fishy" but scenario name is "Something's Fishy", which not only is a different name, but it puts it above the rest of the Northern Fury scenarios, rather than in sequence. Example: http://imgur.com/qfGz5Db (what it is now) vs http://imgur.com/fVutblS (renamed). Just looking at the list of scenarios overall, seems like you stopped putting the year after 11.7, but I don't think that's anything important, because anyone who gets to that point will most definitely know what year they are fighting in [:D].
Message board is not clear, just has a "God's eye enabled" and "God's eye disabled" on it

Everything else looks good to go!

[Gunner98]

Thank you. Fixed and uploaded to the community thread.

Cheers.

B

[AndrewJ]

I keep meaning to ask whether 'conventional' artillery units (as opposed to those with specific coastal duties) get trained to engage moving targets like ships? Would it have posed any difficulties, slowed down the rate of engagement, or would it have been just another target on the map?

[Gunner98]

Before Precision guided warheads, moving targets was a trick for field artillery - still is really. Two methods:

-anti tank drills - gun needs to see the target, the detachment commander takes over the shoot and its back to WW2 type anti tank gunnery - a gun will get the first round or two off but then it will die, so they need to be good.
-Moving target drills from the forward observer - the FOO does a time distance speed calculation and predicts when the target will be where his rounds will land - not an exact science by any means. Most likely result is that the fire mission will till some empty ground and the Bty will be exposed and short a few rounds, the bad guys will see the fire landing, chuckle, maneuver and start looking for the FOO.

There are several ways to use of artillery in this type of battle, which really isn't represented well in the game:

- Mark targets for the Airforce, White Phosphorus (WP) rounds are good for that, so is coloured smoke, but my favorite was a ground burst illumination round - that magnesium burns real bright
- Scaterable mines to plug gaps in minefields which will canalize the enemy armour
- Massed fire in front of a moving formation to force it to maneuver into slower ground and make it easier to the AT gunners and air force to hit it
- Once the infantry dismount, force it to ground and by doing that you separate the armour which will keep moving and the infantry which is adopting a cave dwelling lifestyle
- Technology dependent, if your optics are better then the bad guys - use some type of smoke to blind him. Standard smoke if you have IR based optics, IR smoke if you have TI based optics, WP is he has TI based optics and you don't etc

So you want to keep your guns masked unless they will do some good, and when you do unmask them they are going to start dying. So you need to make it count.

Firing at ships was usually not a good idea, its like the anti-tank drills --- but that's a big F..ing tank!

B

Edit: oops-- I didn't check which thread this question was in[:'(] That answer is more for the - Wrestling an Octopus scenario.

Shooting at patrol boats would work well in the AT role but massed fire would be fun but not overly effective I don't think.

b