EDIT [note: thank you, again, to the site admins for resolving posting issue; this review was completed 1 Sep]
Hi Apache85- i finally got a chance to do a second, more serious playthrough with this scenario; had to quit 3d 3h in. I took notes as I went through the gameplay - I will try to leave out things that have already been mentioned in this thread so as to not be redundant.
*Spoilers Below* -CoW version
1)Bugs
-I was thrown only one runtime error, "Cuba Airops Change 222359Z:87:expected near 'end'
-Every time I loaded a save game, I was given a "Warning! ...Mission Flight Size restriction" screen that had a lengthy list of effected missions..Don't know if that's important, but I did take a screenshot. I played the game in the mission editor, so as to use the console to interrogate certain key vars to get a better understanding of what was going on
2)Gameplay - non ai-behavior related
-Would be nice to be more aware of the current DefCon level, and how it affects gameplay other than getting nuke authorization at defcon 1. is/are defcon 4 thru 2 just cosmetic?
-Why would I want to investigate Russian PosSubs or ProbSubs? Especially if I'm repeatedly being told to not engage the Soviets, although they keep Splashing my fighters at a horrendous rate- and for the life of me I couldn't get them [the Soviets] to go hostile on me, or even get down to defcon 1 (more on that later)
-scoring, I lost so many fighters that I'm pretty embarrassed at my finally tally- although this brilliantly highlights the shortcomings of US fighter design during the era- fast as , corners like a freight train, no internal cannon, subpar missile armaments.. this makes for poor firing solutions when you get into a knife fight, so you try to stay BVR as much as you can, but the Soviets and thus the Cubans have so many nimble, maneuverable craft that they really cut you to pieces if you don't micromanage your interceptors and fighters when engaging---- so it would be nice to have more scoring opportunities for the US
-love the OOB, had a lot of fun checking out all the crazy and now-seemingly-absurd military tech of the day, as well as these things called cannons on ships- being used for shore bombardment or *even* AsuW! Had real cool ship to ship gun battles.
-Kept getting war warnings, of the "prepare yourself for Cuban hostilities, don't engage the Russians"-type special messages, quite often, once I got two indentical messages within five minutes of each other;
-the mongoose missions are somewhat tedious, and could use a little more explanation and meaning as well as success notifications with the gitmo mission, (which has been addressed above)- where am I supposed to sail those ships that appear at gitmo, where do I evac those personnel to?
-I tried to ratchet the tension up slowly, but found that there was a seemingly small leap from "Low" to "High". Once I got to "high " I thought that I might as well go nuts and activate everything I had and try to use those Mk41 25Mt monsters
3) Gameplay - AI
-with my tension level at 2000+ near the end of the third day, and doing everything I could to anger the Soviets into going hostile, I quit the playthrough.. I had to keep manually marking the soviets as hostile, they kept reverting back to unfriendly. I wanted to get to defcon 1 but was unable. Didn't want to make large exclusion zones bc of the (btw totally awesome, love the..) civilian aircraft, boats, and um.. the "fishies". I think i accidentally tried to torpedo a Whale, that should automatically get you fired as theater commander and exit the scenario
-soviet subs would just sometimes surface and turn on their radars, and be easily detected. Don't know if this is intentional
-The Cubans are super aggressive. This makes for good action and gives you a deep desire to exact revenge, But sometimes it feels like too much. Need more SAM or AAA systems for the US side, or even more non-pure interceptors for the US side?
-the Soviet behavior was sometimes odd. I conducted many recon overflights, found the MRBM sites, they would disappear after about an hour or so, I'd find them again, repeat, meanwhile I was focusing on taking out Cuban airbases to try to fix my fighter attrition problem. In the end, I leveled most of their bases and the Soviets still didn't go fully aggressive (every unit going "red") as the Cubans had about 10hr in; oddly, after about 12 hours, The soviets got really aggressive and sent nuclear- and conventionally- armed bombers into Florida and bombed some radar sites, only with conventional munitions. . That was the last time the soviets were aggressive with respect to bombing. They continued to harass me with their "unfriendly" fighters until almost the end
-"Turned Merchants"- these Soviet ships would sometimes just sit and stay put, although I did have a few that were aggressive and posed a minor threat to my fleet forces. Occasionally I would get a "SS-N-1 Styx has been fired" show up in the message log, but was never able to find the shooter or the target. And again, I always had to manually mark the soviets as hostile bc they would revert back to unfriendly
4)Conclusion
- This is a superbly built scenario, the tension mechanic is great, the escalation mechanic is great (it would be cool to give peace a chance) The OOB is fantastic, the scripting is phenomenal, the research and time and effort you've put into building this is incredible. Kudos, this is one of the sharpest scenarios I've ever played in Command.
That's just my two cents, thanks again for an excellent scenario!!
nickG
