Before I go on, there are spoilers about the scenario in this, so yeah, avoid if you don't want to know before you play!
First, one of the special messages appeared again for a second time, first at about 9:30 AM Zulu, and again at about 10:10 AM Zulu:
Here is the message in question:
To: Commander Turkish Defence Forces
From: The Office of the Council of Ministers
Subject: Russian continued incursions into Turkish National Airspace
Russian forces have violated Turkish airspace once again! We must show them that this will not be tolerated. The Council of Ministers has authorized limited retaliation. The 10th Air Wing Merzifon and Diyarbakýr are hereby directed to engage Russian air forces in Northern Syria as a pre-emptive measure to maintain our security.
Limit casualties and prevent escalation, but show the Russians that we mean business!
Signed
Recep Tayyip Erdoðan
President of Turkey
Glad to finally get permission to engage, but it coming back over a half hour later unchanged seems a bit odd.
Also, glad to see this when I lost my submarine quite a ways into the scenario (and after I had engaged the Moskva and another ship):
Sir
Our Submarine the Preveze has stopped responding to our calls – it has probably been sunk! The Russians are the likely culprits! The Government considers this a hostile act and has declared that we should engage Russian targets at will!
But also another thing. Sometime after I got this message at 9:45 AM Zulu:
Sir
We’re getting a message from the Americans.
“Due to the outbreak of hostilities, US & Coalition strike packages will be clearing the airspace in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. However, Combat Air Patrols will be established to ensure the conflict remains contained.”
their aircraft engaged Russian aircraft without any real warning, first it was a flight of British Tornados, then a flight of American F-15Cs. I was glad to have the help, but no message ever came up saying that the US or Coalition is engaging. Seems odd to me.
Finally, I have one question. When I got the first message informing me of Ankara protesting the airspace incursion, I did not seem to see any violation by Russian Aircraft. There may have been a very brief crossing of the border, but that I can say only based off the border of an ambiguity zone that barely touched the border.
However, it made me think of those Kh-101 missiles launched from the North. Are those the airspace violations that set this off? As those missiles fly directly over Turkey, it makes sense to me, but I just wanted to ask. Also where are those missiles heading? Islamic State targets?
I was able to shoot down three of them near my bases, two with AMRAAMS and one with the guns from an F-4 returning from a strike mission.
Also, I still got a 'Major victory', but I lost at least half a dozen F-16s, 1 F-4, As well as my sub and Frigate, Coalition took losses too, and I was able to shoot down 1 Tu-214, 1 Il-20, I think one or two Flankers, a radar station and sink the Russian Spy Ship and the missile boat that is with the Moskva (I almost sank the Moskva with torpedoes from my sub though, but the damn things all missed). I did better than last time, but I still dispute this as a "Major" victory.
I am probably just nitpicking, but I just wanted to report.
Also one last thing, I wanted to retaliate against that S-400 site near Lakatia with SOM A missiles, but got stuck with downrange ambiguity, so I had to engage The Radar site next door instead. I killed it, but it seems to me that since that S-400 site is stationary, I should have a very good location on where exactly it is since it fired so many missiles by that point, at least an ambiguity within a half mile, the zone stretched up to 39nm.
Could someone explain this? It seems that this doesn't make a lot of sense to me for the location to be that vague at that point.