Operation Lion's Den

[Barleyman]

So CMO happened. Five+ years ago I had a question, does what the ship is doing affect gunnery at all, now with the new "realistic gunnery" option, I know that back then, no, I did not.

I decided to give this scenario a try for old times sake as its rather straightforward with few units to manage so getting reacquainted with the UI is easier. I ran into an oddity, thought.

It seems that the shore batteries are able to engage your ships at their maximum range at night rather easily with no active radar emitters around. 70s optical technology available to NVA would let them pinpoint ships at sea some dozen nm away at night like that? Are they using civilian ship radars or something?

To make it more annoying, the ships do not spot the firing artillery at all, so reconstructing the historical outcome is not possible. As far as I can tell the only way to spot shore batteries is to fly the A-7s at NoE so their radar sets can pick up the arty, the planes definitely can't eyeball the batteries at night.

Also the shore batteries appear remarkably accurate for no fire control radar available, as soon as they're in range you soak hits. I guess this could be remedied by editing the scenario for realistic gunnery.

[Barleyman]

Checking the scenario in the editor I can see "generic binoculars" have max range of 18nm, apparently they're not limited by darkness at all. I think I saw a mention elsewhere that counterbattery fire is not in so observing the gun flashes doesn't mean anything except you can see them on-map but won't have a target to shoot back at..

[madavid0]

Checking the scenario editor it looks like the NK radars is what is allowing the binocs to find the ships. When the radars turned off the binocs can't find the ships. I believe the game models optic search by greatly improving the chance to find contacts with optics if the operator is pointed in the right direction by other sensors.

The guns are pretty inaccurate but there are a lot of them. Even so given that the battle network is probably just guys on a radio you'd think they'd actually have no chance in hell in hitting a ship moving at 20 kts in a low light situation...

[Barleyman]

I mentioned no radar emitters, they had an accident [;)] Of course by that time the shore battery FCO would probably have been woken up by all the gunfire and explosions so should be looking at the right direction. I suppose the scenario is just not working that well as it is, shore batteries vs ship guns at night is a bit marginal of course. I wonder if the ships would spot the firing arty during daylight, easy enough to check.

That scenario is otherwise a bit wonky too, there are targets you can't engage automatically like the closest radar and at least one 122mm battery. If you manually allocate a Shrike to the non-targetable radar, it'll go ballistic, for gunnery they'll take it out eventually but you have to keep on "refilling" the fire mission if it doesn't "take".

[Barleyman]

Nope, firing artillery is not spotted in daylight either engine limitation I guess. Also WRT the un-targetable radar and batteries, they become targetable when you move them slightly in the editor.

[LodoloLuca]

Hi guys,
I've see on YouTube, searching "operation lion's den walkthrough", that all shore batteries are visible without entering in editor mode. Correct?

[Eboreg]

Speaking as the creator of that video, it's outdated. The "Reworked Scenarios update" video goes into more detail about scenarios that got updated in such a way as to change the tactics used.