Chains of War - Salvo (Spoilers)

[trevor999]

Greetings all

I've been at this scenario for some time, I think I've tried it over a dozen times, slowly refining my strategy. Some may say my strategy is amateurish or simplistic, it probably is. But it's the only one that's so far been able to generate a positive score.

The scoring: 3500 points for a win. You get 100 points for damaged runways, hardened a/c shelters and destroyed satellites. You get 10 points for damaged access points, destroyed open structures, reveted structures, large and vl hangers and lrg weather shelters. 1000 points for destroying the Ronald Reagan. You lose 50 pts for each a/c lost, 100 pts for each facility destroyed.

Special Activities:
Disrupt Guam THAAD 200 pts
Disrupt Korea THAAD 200 pts
Disrupt Naval Comms 500 pts
Disrupt US Sat Comms 500 pts
Find the Ronald Reagan 750 pts
Order land based AEW to RTB 100 pts

Forget the Ronald Reagan. It costs 750 points to locate the thing, and it's escorted by 2 Arleigh Burkes and 2 Ticonderogas. Not to mention and Arleigh Burke and a Kongo class DDG's lurking in the Sea of Japan, and they all have BMD capabilities. It doesn't cost you anything to take a shot at it, but don't waste the points to locate it unless you're way out front in scoring.

You get no points for shooting down US/SK/Japanese a/c, even an E-3 or Wedgetail. Nor are there any points for destroying or damaging their radar facilities. No pints for damaging or destroying and THAAD, Patriot, or other SAM sites.

The first thing you should is set your ASAT sites to weapons free. But shooting down a satellite is rare. I've only seen it happen once. Don't count on that to generate points. The 3 sites have 2 missiles each, and they will both fire at a satellite. Maximum points is 300.

Don't think you can sit back and let the scenario run and attack in the last 2 hours. At some point in the first hour there will be a trigger that messages that the US considers China hostile. Soon after it will trigger a US counterattack, even if you haven't attacked yet.

Get you CAP's up along the coast. Targets of interest for the AI seem to be the OTH radar sites and the 2 bomber bases attacked with Tomahawks. Launch your AEW to patrol along the coast.

You are confronting:
2 x Los Angeles class SSNs each with 20 Tomahawk's, 1 Virginia class SSN with 24 and a CVBG with 112 of the things. Yikes.
S Korea: Kunsan has 8 x F-16CM Blk 42's. There are 2 x 2 F-16C's flying CAP off the western coast. Gwangju has 4 x FA-50 Golden Eagles, Daegu has 2 x E-737 Wegdetails and 12 x F-15K. Cheongju has 6 x F-16CJ's. All these planes (except of course the E-737's) are loaded out for air intercept.
Japan: Tsuiki has 8 x F-2A FS-X, Hamamatsu has 6 x E-767 AEW, Nyutabaru has 8 x F-15J, Naha has 14 x F-15J (8 ready, 4 ready 30min, 2 ready 3hrs), MCAS Iwakuni has 8 x F-18D, Kadena has 16 x F-15C and 3 x E-3G.
No aircraft on any other air bases, including Anderson. As before, fighters are loaded for Air Intercept.
There is also a P-3 Orion off the Chinese coast.
Ronald Reagan: 2 x 2 F-18 Super Hornet CAP + 1 x E-2C on patrol. 12 x Super Hornet loaded for AA, 8 x Super Hornet loaded with GBU-10E's, 4 x EA-18G w/ offensive ECM and 3 x E-2C. Ronald Reagan also protected by land based Patriot and local SAM's.
ALL of the land bases are heavily protected by local production SAMs, I Hawks and Patriot PAC-2 GEM and PAC-3 MSE. THAAD located near Kusnan and on Guam.

About the only "Special Activity" I do is to order the land based AEW to RTB. It shouldn't take more than 30 mins or so for them to land. -100 pts...

My strategy is simple saturation. I usually go after Kunsan first with the 48 DF-10 GLCM's from W Bdg Bat 1 and 20 H-6M Badger's loaded with 6 x KD-20 ALCM's each from Anquing. Wait until the Badgers are an equal distance from Kunsan as the GLCM's (about 400km) and let loose. When the CM's are about 40km's away launch the SSM's. With any luck you can overwhelm the SAM defenses and the CAP. You only have one shot since the scenario is only 6 hours long. occanonally I've sent my PL-15 loaded fighters in with the cruise missiles to snip away at the CAP. It gives them something else to worry about. But beware, at 50 pts for a destroyed plane it will run your score down in a hurry.

Same goes in the south. I launch the 17 H-6K Badgers from Shaodong each with 6 x KD-20 ALCM's. When the get into position, usually from the south of Okinawa (about 390 km's) I launch them and the 48 GLCM's from V Bdg Bat 1 at Kadena. Again, when they get to within about 40 km's of Kadena I launch the SSM's. I have found Okinawa a far tougher nut to crack. Maybe because there's a far higher SAM concentration than Korea.

You also have 8 x JH-7A Flounder w/ KD-88 LACM's The missile range is a lot shorter that the CM's, so beware. Sometimes I'll send the in just behind the main CM attack to add to the laughs. I'll send the ARM armed a/c in as well to destroy any radar emitters I can then high tail it out of there. Sometimes I'll send the CM loaded Flounders south to attack the 3 radars around Okinawa just ahead of the man CM attack. Whatever floats your boat.

Soon after the attack you will see Tomahawks incoming from those pesky SSN's. And of course you have no ASW.

The best I've been able to do is 500 points, loosing no a/c or facilities. I've never been able to hit the Ronald Reagan, nor hit Anderson to any degree of damage.

Anyway. I hope this helps a bit. If you have any constructive criticism please feel free to comment. I would welcome any advice. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with this game. The learning curve is almost vertical. I get fed up for awhile but always come back to it. I fell in love with Harpoon many years ago and spent an uncountable number of hours playing that. But this makes Harpoon look like Pong. My hat is off to the creators of this truly remarkable game.

[Whicker]

If I remember correctly on that scen the key was one base had a ton of hardened a/c shelters - and at 100 points each it really added up.

Are you targeting the units yourself or just pressing F1 to attack them?
It was quite a while ago that I played that one, there was an AAR here about it that had good info - not sure if it was in this AAR section or in the general one.

You're not the only one with a complicated relationship with the game!