Advice for a newbie please

[slarsson]

I'm playing the first of the stock scenarios (the one where the RFA ship has to cross the channel to the safe area off the UK coast, with an ASW escort because of the threat of red subs). I completed the Tutorials and used to paly Harpoon many years ago, so I have some idea how things work.
In this scenario, what do you experts do? Should I task Group 1 with a transit mission then head for the safe area at speed while groups 2 and 3 and the Nimrod and land based helos are tasked to an ASW mission? I see two issues with that - the group with the HVA pulls ahead of the ASW groups and is kind of on its own after a while, which can't be good, and I'm not sure how to task the helos in the HVA group to do useful ASW.
Or is it better to task everything (all 3 surface groups and all the air assets) to the same ASW mission and plot a course for the HVA group so it doesn't dawdle too much? Or plot parallel courses for all 3 groups?

And is there any way to stop wasting torpedoes on "Biological Tuna"!?

[kaburke61]

ORIGINAL: slarsson

I'm playing the first of the stock scenarios (the one where the RFA ship has to cross the channel to the safe area off the UK coast, with an ASW escort because of the threat of red subs). I completed the Tutorials and used to paly Harpoon many years ago, so I have some idea how things work.
In this scenario, what do you experts do? Should I task Group 1 with a transit mission then head for the safe area at speed while groups 2 and 3 and the Nimrod and land based helos are tasked to an ASW mission? I see two issues with that - the group with the HVA pulls ahead of the ASW groups and is kind of on its own after a while, which can't be good, and I'm not sure how to task the helos in the HVA group to do useful ASW.
Or is it better to task everything (all 3 surface groups and all the air assets) to the same ASW mission and plot a course for the HVA group so it doesn't dawdle too much? Or plot parallel courses for all 3 groups?

And is there any way to stop wasting torpedoes on "Biological Tuna"!?

I keep the surface groups fairly close together and silent (sometimes I will let the two other groups run their
sonar), use all the helos and Nimrod radars to search for "problems". Has worked well. As far as the "biologic"
problem, if I see the contact running at 1 kt, AND not maneuvering, I mark them friendly
(to keep the helos from swarming), and occasionally check on them to make sure nothing has changed
(especially if off-axis, hasn't bitten me yet, but of course it could).

[slarsson]

One issue is that there is only 6 hours to get the HVA to the destination, and it's 60NM, so going any slower than about 12Kn is a problem, especially if manoeuvring is needed because of attacks. And I seem to lost the most assets not to torps but to missile attacks from something to the northeast (presumably a sub) that my sonobuoys and Nimrod haven't detected.

[Sakai007]

hmmm, well my first thought is what your EMCON is set at. The missiles get their target from something seeing/hearing you long enough to get a targeting solution. I am extra careful when sending my helos on ASW missions since the default EMCON setting for those missions types has the radar active. If doing a close ASW screen that's just as good as turning on the ships radar IMO. It's been quite a while (pre-release beta, lol) since I played this mission and I am sure things are different now, but for these kinds of ops I run strictly passive until I detect something that threatens the HVU. If I know it's there and can slip by without going active, I do so at all costs.

Will go and run this one now and see if that tactic is still effective.