Updated: RevT for testing: Taiwan A2AD, 2022

[caohailiang]

Jun.27 new revision T:
main update for the US/Japan side:
1, several airbases in Japan home islands, lots of additional aircraft including JASDF
2, reduced number of B-1
3, all previously airborne reinforcements are landed instead
4, 3 separate carrier groups in distance instead of all ships massed together, positioned in southeast Philippine sea instead of near Iwo Jima
4, one less SSGN, an additional JMSDF SAG
main update for China side:
1, all satellites removed but enhanced recon missions
2, extended flank towards east china sea as well as south china sea (in response to change in US deployment)
3, sharpened naval strike mission with better escorts.


Havent got enough time to polish all the details, but all the big things are there. very thankful for all your advice.


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latest K version
Major update for US side:
1, extra 2*SSGN for US with 300 multi-mission tomahawk
2, upgrade all f/a-18 to latest version to carry agm-158c
3, additional airbase and aircrafts in Japan
Major update for China side:
1, additional airbase and aircrafts in east china
2, change some of the naval strike missiles to long range version (total number remains)
3, some optimization in tactics
another notice: there is some s/w bug with the ASBM weapon in CMO 1147.1 version, sometimes it will shoot but in the wrong direction. so USN cvbg will get detected but the ASBM wont hit (according to tech support, the fix is already underway)
//Jun.14
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stupid mistake, change a name in the game but not in the lua function. i think it should work now//Jun.8th
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sorry i have to take it down for now because i found an error with the code//Jun.7th
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inspired by recent military situation in west pacific such as B-1 exercising long range strike directly from continental USA.
i have tried to use some lua scripts to make the AI more resilient to strikes, also maybe better at conducting it
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Situation:
The PLA started military action against Taiwan about 24 hours ago. Massive ballistic missile attack and air raid destroyed majority of Taiwanese navy and airforce. US/Japan airbases in the region were also heavily bombarded, resulted in substantial loss of both airplanes and facilities. Kanena AB, Andersson AB and Iwo Jima AB are still operational but at a seriously reduced capacity. PLA has established air superiority in the theatre.
Our CVBG(with all the currently available flat-tops in west pacific) has adopted a defensive posture in the Philippine Sea. A sizeable reinforcement of B-1b and F35 is expected to arrive at the theatre in several hours.
Although our situation awareness capability is blocked towards the strait, intelligence indicated PLAN amphibious forces have left their ports in 3 large formations and landing operations off Taiwan west coast are expected to start in 8 hours.
Own Forces:
1, USS Ronald Regan, USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS America and their escorts.
2, Inbound B-1b units with anti-ship payload and some addtional F-35 units.
3, Land based tactical aircrafts including F-35 & F-22.
4, Several SSNs.
5, We also have operational control over the remains of Taiwanese air force.
Enemy Forces
1, PLAN CVBG is expected to enter the Philippine Sea through Bashi Channel soon if not already; There are also several SAGs in the vicinity of Taiwan.
2, Land based aircrast including J20, J11, J10 and H6, concerntrating in frontline airbases along south east coast of China.
3, Several DF-21 ASBM brigade are deployed in firing position.
4, Unknown submarine forces.
Mission:
Destroy PLA amphibious fleet before the cargo is unloaded.

[Parel803]

Nice

[KnightHawk75]

Sounds like a nice challenge to check out, glad you re-upped it.

[Selchu]

PLA has established air superiority in the theatre.

I started this scenario last night. Alot of work ahead but what I will say so far is that the statement above should not be taken lightly.

[caohailiang]

thanks for playing. i have uploaded the new version in case you want to try out. i think it should be more fun, and reasonable

[Selchu]

Cool. I'll download it and give it a shot. I found the opening very hard so far with so few aircraft available and the carrier so far away. Was wishing I had some Tomcats and long range missiles. But you have what you have. Thanks man

[KnightHawk75]

Oh a new version, my delay may have paid off. [:D]

[caohailiang]

ORIGINAL: Selchu

Cool. I'll download it and give it a shot. I found the opening very hard so far with so few aircraft available and the carrier so far away. Was wishing I had some Tomcats and long range missiles. But you have what you have. Thanks man

yes, the west pacific makes all the current fighters look short legged, you will have to make good use of the 40+ tankers. on the other hand, the long range strike missiles in a way compensate the problem.
wrt to the number of fighters, without giving away the other side, i will say only gen-5 a/c matters in the scenario, the others, no matter its gen-4 or gen-4.5, dont make much difference really
about the position of the carrier, that is really on purpose to avoid excessive exposure to missile strike threat. i am surprised in the end how much damage it still can do 1000 nm away

anyway, enjoy and let me know if you think the scenario makes sense - the goal of the design is to reflect reality in case such conflict breaks out

[Selchu]

Ok, currently working my way through this. The Chinese airfields are all single unit. This means I can't use my 2 Ohios/Tomahawks to take out the airfields.

It's a good scenario so far. I'm taking quite a few losses due to J-20s. I'll stick more up as I see it.

[KnightHawk75]

@selchu,
You can semi-cheat that, you can bearing-only launch lrasm's and 109-i's (ctrl-f1) and re-target (select all then f1) them after launch toward those single-unit airfields, the downside is you can't chose what targets they pick inside the airfield. Personally I see it as something that should be allowed (targeting single unit airfields) without this trick, but say cheat cause certain airfields aren't setup with defenses atm to counter it. Figured I'd mention it just in case you wanted to play around with it as a strategy. You'll need like 100 or something to fully take out a large single unit base using that method though (unless you get lucky) in my experience. The wisdom of spending the munitions that way I leave to the player.

[KnightHawk75]

Minor issue for those not playing inside editor.
us side doctrine - Land isn't checked to be able to be changed by player, I assume this remains from the bug that existed a couple versions back, so might want to check the box is checked for next revision.

[caohailiang]

in reality PLA will probably deploy the aircrafts across some 40 airports in the theatre instead of just the 5 as in the scenario, plus heavy air defense units as a counter measure to tomahawk strike. but i didnt design it that way for 2 reasons:
1, having dozens of non-single-unit airport in the scenario will drag it slow
2, For AI side, arranging so many AAR mission for a/c taking off from inland airports will further complicate things.
so what i did is to concentrate all a/c in a couple of single unit ab instead.
Does it give china side extra advantage? maybe, but similar thing is done with US side, you can see there are no long range land attack weapon at all with china side, and all US airfields are single unit.
but i definitely would love to hear more about whether this is reflecting the balance of power in reality.
thank you

[caohailiang]

thanks!

[KnightHawk75]

Speaking of balance, is there a reason China has like 40 satellites but the US has zero? Is this just to help compensate the AI (give them targeting advantage)?

[caohailiang]

no no no, this is my bad, just working my way towards that, should have done it already. for the time being, you may find the taiwanese aircrafts very handy if you need targeting info for pla fleets in the strait.

what about the number of 5th gen a/c? do you think that make sense in 2022 time frame

and also the number of carriers. i wonder if an action of such scale is about to break out, how early a warning can US get so she can start to maneuver navy fleets to the region.

[KnightHawk75]

I don't get into nit picking realism too much, unless an author is specifically striving for it.

But since you asked my opinion if certain things make sense aircraft # wise I'll give it. Nothing on the 5th gen aircraft side struck me as unreasonable. You didn't ask, but on the 36 b-1b's that's nearly every b-1b flyable\task-able at any given moment worldwide (and just over 1/2 the amount total in service), but again given the situation, and some presumed forewarning on the US side, not 'impossible', but on actual short notice though you'd probably be really lucky to have 24 coming from state side direction. On the other hand there would probably be 6-8 b-2's involved at some point so maybe it about evens out. On 3 carriers, well it's really 2 and 1/2, LHA is actually homeported in japan, as is the Reagan so no problem there. Another being in theater happens sometimes, so either lucky timing or that again the US had some warning ahead of time things might kick off and moved an extra one in theater. How long? Well depends where the other asset\carrier was, Pearl is a 5'ish day sail and the west coast a week (at flank the whole way). As for the kc-10's, about half the fleet are in this scenario, don't know how doable that is or not on short notice vs more 135r's (who sadly have smaller tanks). I'd leave it alone though, the kc-10s help keep unit count and tanker mgmt down. Again though none of the above bothers me, I'm enjoying the scenario pretty much as is, just observations since you asked.

[caohailiang]

hahaha, thanks for the input, seems not a too horrible job keeping it realistic on my part

[BeirutDude]

I have found it is usually the Major-huge airports that slow things down. Keeping them at 10-20 units is OK, 200 to 300 ouch!

One trick I use is I use the Single Units Airport to be the runways (especially if there are multiple runways) and then add some bunkers and Tarmacs, etc that can be attacked. Most people are going after the runway access points and tarmac/ammo bunkers anyway.

[KnightHawk75]

ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

I have found it is usually the Major-huge airports that slow things down. Keeping them at 10-20 units is OK, 200 to 300 ouch!

One trick I use is I use the Single Units Airport to be the runways (especially if there are multiple runways) and then add some bunkers and Tarmacs, etc that can be attacked. Most people are going after the runway access points and tarmac/ammo bunkers anyway.

Seen the same.
Though with that the player still can't usually target the runways in the Single unit one.

Another way is use the single unit, but if you want the opposition to be able to disable it, throw in x number of additional runways and access points, ammo like you said, and then in a script that runs like every 5 minutes you can check those for damage level on those marker units, if damaged\destroyed you can then script the disabling\damaging of the single unit's entities to effectively "shut it down" as well - or remove the thing entirely lol.

Equally if you don't want the airbase to have basically double the runways to start, you could just pre-disable the runways inside the single unit as destroyed, such that it can now only use the external ones you add into the 'Group'. You get the benefit of a huge airbase (when using say the 4x4k one) but only take up extra 10-20 'units' you want to actually represent the base as targets, but you also have allowed the player a way to target \ take-out the base from operating with normal munitions and without having to resort to my re-target trick (which only works for a couple of munitions in the game). I find the pre-disabling works well in most case and avoids having to add complexity with scripting the damage.

The downside to pre-disabling method is I've not found a way to script the 'destroyed' setting on the runways during (I can do heavy damage but not 'destroyed') the setup\creation script of a single unit airbase. So I've had to have those airbases as part of the scene itself instead of dynamically generated. There is probably a trick to get around that, just haven't found it yet.

[KnightHawk75]

line ~160 initparameters threw an error while playing, basically it tried to reference and nil entry, in this case it was called with thirdreserve being nil and bombed on

elseif (#ScenEdit_GetMission('China', thirdreserve).unitlist >=2)

Consider changing it to
--the first part is checked first, and if nil second part will not be evaluated
elseif ((thirdreserve ~=nil) and #ScenEdit_GetMission('China', thirdreserve).unitlist >=2)

The two if's before it should probably get the same treatment.