NFZ Pacific 7/3/22

[fitzpatv]

The Abraham Lincoln CVG is tasked with preventing Russian naval units from breaking-out into the Pacific and neutralising bases in the Kurils, NE of Hokkaido, Japan. The Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese are all neutral, though the former are allowing the Americans to use their bases. The normal NFZ considerations apply, in that Russia has the use of satellites and the US doesn’t, the scenario starts before hostilities commence and Russia can win at any time by passing a VP threshold.

Lincoln is escorted by the Ticonderoga CG Mobile Bay and the Arleigh Burke DDGs Gridley, Sampson, Spruance and Fitzgerald. The CVG starts some 300nm SE of Tokyo and 900nm from the Kurils. Lincoln has a mixed air group including F-35s and F/A-18s, plus support types.

Elsewhere, there are three pairs of destroyers or frigates in the Sea of Japan, mounting varying numbers of TLAMs and SAMs. One pair includes the Australian FFG Arunta but all other ships are Arleigh Burkes. Also in the vicinity is the French Floreal-class frigate Vendemiaire, which is highly vulnerable and intent on clearing the area.

The SSGN Ohio, escorted by the SSN Jefferson City, lies deep over 1,000nm SE of the Kuril bases. Officially, you are limited to 72 of her 154 Tomahawks but it will, in any case, take time to get them into range.

The SSNs Missouri and Alexandria are positioned to the S of the Kurils, to the E of the Tohoku region of Northern Honshu. They are armed only with torpedoes and will take time to get anywhere useful.

On land, you have a fighter base at Misawa near the Northern tip of Honshu. Here, there are 22 operational F-16s, but they are armed with AMRAAM Cs and won’t be much use against Russian fighters. They can carry an assortment of HARMs and short-ranged munitions.

Near Tokyo is Atsugi air base, where there are four Poseidons, armed by default with the long-ranged version of the Mk54 torpedo. This is fired to 40nm range from 25k’ or more, which could entail flying low to acquire a contact, then climbing clumsily to that height in order to fire. Unbelievably, the weapon cannot be used at night(!) so I re-equipped the two unready aircraft with the old-fashioned 4nm ranged version…

At Kadena on Okinawa, you have a strong squadron of F-15s and some KC-135 tankers. There are more tankers (KC-46 Pegasus) on Guam. In the Aleutians, there is a squadron of F-22s plus a pair of tankers but these are only really any use for local defence. Finally, there is an SBX-1 ABM warning radar in the Ogasawara Islands, N of Guam.

Estimates of Russian strength are not encouraging. Two Oscars are at sea, with the larger Oscar III Irkutsk having been reported somewhere to the E of the Lincoln group 39 hours ago, making a heavy attack with Strobiles and Shipwrecks inevitable at some point, given enemy satellite recon. Reports suggest that an Akula and three Kilos are at sea, with two of the latter probably close to the Tsushima Straits and two of the DDG pairings.

On the mainland of the Russian Far East, there is a squadron of Backfires with Kinzhals and a large regiment of 24-26 Su-34 Fullbacks, which carry Kayak cruise missiles. A quick assessment showed that the Backfires could simply take-off from their base at Mongokhto and send up to 60 Kinzhals screaming at the Lincoln before landing again, taking no risks whatsoever. The Fullbacks constituted a serious menace to our Sea of Japan shipping. For defence, we had a number of RIM-161E and RIM-174 ABMs, which I took care to reserve for use against the Kinzhals. However, given past performance of ABMs, I couldn’t be confident.

Russia also had large numbers of Flankers and Foxhounds, some of the former being forward-deployed to the single Kuril air base at Iturup. They could be expected to use Adders, which were better than the Chinese PL-12 but ought to be manageable, given lots of AMRAAM Ds with effective ranges of 40nm or more and F-35s with stealth qualities…

There was reported to be a Russian SAG, consisting of a Sovremenny DDG and two Steregushchiy/Soobrazhitelny FFGs in port at Fokino, Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan. An Udaloy was at large somewhere in that area, while another Udaloy and two more frigates were in the neighbourhood of the Kurils, along with a Marshal Nedelin-class auxiliary. Another auxiliary (Vishnya-class AGI) was in-theatre but its location was unknown.

The briefing suggested that the Russians had maybe four SA-23 Gladiator/Giant and seven SA-22 Greyhound SAM battalions in the Kurils, along with about eight radars and some Stooge and Sennight SSM batteries. The latter lacked the range to be dangerous unless we did anything stupid.

Objectives were to take-out SAMs, ships, subs, recon planes, Iturup air base, SSMs and other units in that order.
Looking at this, I couldn’t muster much confidence. The Russians WERE going to detect us because of their satellites and the clear weather and there was nothing I could do but hope that my ABMs could stop the Kinzhals. Even then, there was the probable Oscar strike to worry about. The units in the Sea of Japan were vulnerable to massed Su-34 strikes and the Vendemiaire was a floating VP award for the enemy.

We had a lot of Tomahawks but the issue was getting them into range of Iturup. It would take Ohio 15 hours at Flank, travelling deep and, during this time, she would be vulnerable to ambush from any lurking Akula. The best bet seemed to be to have Jefferson City, 70nm ahead of the SSGN, scout in front of her at Cruise.

It was impossible to protect TG 70.2, off Northern Honshu on the Sea of Japan side with anything but their own SAMs and the F-16s at Misawa, so I didn’t bother moving them SW to rendezvous with the other pairs and, instead, sent them inshore at Creep. It seemed best to use their 60 Tomahawks once war broke-out, rather than lose them.

The other two pairs had time to move NE from the Tsushima Straits and use their 120 Tomahawks before the scenario finished. Even so, they would have to move quickly and rely on choppers and Poseidons to protect them from subs. A Poseidon was sent to cover them and another to be on-hand near Lincoln when the Oscars showed-up. It was stretching credibility that I would find them first in all that ocean. The F-15s at Kadena would mount CAP over the two Southern pairs and Vendemiaire with tanker support, while other tankers immediately began moving to stations off E Honshu to assist strikes. A Hawkeye was sent aloft from the carrier to give early warning of Oscar missile launches.

An annoyance was that EMCON Doctrine could still not be set for multiple aircraft at once, whereas it could be when I played Chains of War. This might be linked to other problems, which will be related shortly…

7/3/22 04:00Z: As Vendemiaire fled SW at Flank, she met the Udaloy Admiral Panteleyev coming the other way. Technically, we were still at peace so, as the French captain could neither run, fight nor hide, he sailed straight ahead, hoping to pass the Russian and get clear in time.

05:00Z: We were notified that the NFZ over Ukraine would be enacted in one hour and told to prepare our strikes. A minute later, all Russian units were marked Hostile. “Here we go again!”, I thought, recalling earlier scenarios in this set where the Russians treated us as Hostile from the outset. I wasn’t disappointed, as the Panteleyev launched four Silex rocket torpedoes at the hapless Floreal. Different scenario, same bug. Vendemiaire got her four Exocets away, but none hit and she never had a chance, so I lost 55VP and got the usual message about ‘a US ship sinking’ and how it was all my incompetent fault.

It was difficult to retaliate immediately, as my tankers were still in transit. Misawa put four F-16s on CAP over TG 70.2 and sent six SEAD Hornets against the Southern Kuril defences. These soon found an Udaloy and two frigates just W of Iturup, with the Nedelin auxiliary further N.

The SEAD strike hit four Russian radars, but this scored nothing and it soon became apparent that the Russians had more SAMs and radars than the briefing had estimated. Worse, most of these were switched-off and immune to SEAD attacks unaccompanied by other strike aircraft to force their hand. Misawa was stuck with Mavericks with an 8nm range. Instead, the Hornets attacked the nearest FFG and weren’t surprised to score no hits.

06:00Z: Six JSOW/BROACH Hornets from Lincoln went for the Panteleyev, only to sheer-off for a tanker when 83nm from the target. I overrode this, but the 60% refuelling threshold (which can’t be amended in Doctrine) is SO ANNOYING!!. Even the supporting Growler OECM plane bunked-off, despite having a lighter load. With this problem dealt-with, the strike succeeded (overkill, but experience makes me cautious) and Panteleyev sank for 50VP (5VP less than Vendemiaire due to the latter’s chopper).

By now, Flankers and Foxhounds were in evidence over the Sea of Japan, so the F-16s protecting TG 70.2 pulled back a little. As it happened, the Russians stayed on their side of the sea.

A recon Poseidon managed to locate the Vishnya AGI in mid-ocean some way E of Japan, so I sent a lone F-35 after it with a load of GBU-53s and a tanker in support.

07:00Z: War was officially declared.

08:00Z: My strike on the Kurils arrived. Sixteen MALD decoys led the way, with the carrying Hornets refuelling and then following-in as auxiliary fighters with two AMRAAM Ds each. Four F-35s (the only ones with fighter loadouts) aimed to deal with the four Flankers on CAP. Next came four SEAD Hornets and a couple of Growlers, while 56 of TG 70.2’s Tomahawks were routed to come-in off the sea and batter the airfield.

The Flankers were loaded for bear with 6 Adders each, plus Archers and cannon. They chewed through the MALDs and had plenty left for the F-35s and Hornets. The Adder’s effective range made for a degree of ducking and diving to avoid being hit. In this, I was initially successful but I gradually realised that, despite being fired at the 40nm range proven to be optimum in Chains of War, my AMRAAM D 31.4s were all petering-out before they reached their targets – at around 20nm, in fact. Something was badly wrong!. In short, I lost an F-35, auxiliary ex-MALD Hornet and a Growler in my efforts to engage and failed to destroy a single enemy fighter. Losses and Expenditures showed that the Su-35s had used 84 Adders, suggesting that 14 of them were engaged in total and this, along with Archers, cannon and over 50 Greyhounds and AA fire, sufficed to stop all of the Tomahawks. My second Growler did manage to do serious damage to one of the two Gladiator/Giant sites at the air base.

Checking the database, I was quoted a burn-time of just 16 seconds for the AMRAAM D 31.4 which, by my calculation, indicated that it would run out of fuel after some 11nm at altitude, which reflected what was happening. I later opened-up Hail Mary (Chains of War) and checked the same weapon, which was listed as having a burn-time of 58 seconds, which makes a huge difference, corresponding to its better performance in that scenario, where it was a decisive asset. The obvious conclusion was that the two scenarios were referencing DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE DATABASE!!!. Now, I have no idea which is the more accurate, but this is pretty appalling (and no fault of the scenario designer – I think). At this point, I recalled the inability to set EMCON Doctrine for multiple aircraft at once (which I could do in Hail Mary). My suspicion is that the Community Scenario Pack does not link to the most recent version of the database or even game settings. Maybe if I downloaded a later version, clunky though this is??.

Anyway, I had been totally ambushed and the strike had to retreat in disarray, refuel at a safe distance, re-group and reconsider.

While this was going on, I had to manage the strike on the Vishnya. Predictably, the F-35 bunked-off to a nearby tanker at the start of its attack run, even though it was one hour, 54 minutes from Bingo Fuel. I give up!. Having corrected this, I sank the auxiliary for 25VP… and the F-35 made it home without refuelling.

With typical bad timing, I was looking the other way when a Kilo took advantage of TG 70.3 moving at Flank (as it had to do to get into TLAM range) and torpedoed and sank the Australian FFG Arunta for -55VP. USS Momsen responded with her RUM-139 as soon as she got a bearing but the first attempt overshot the target. A better reading was followed-up with a second RUM-139 and a torpedo for good measure and this did the trick for 40VP.

Another sub contact manifested near TG 70.1 at much the same time but then disappeared as we tried to investigate by slowing-down and calling-in a Seahawk and Poseidon.

09:00Z: The score was -10 and a Major Defeat, so what could I do?. Clearly, engaging Russian fighters was not feasible given their numbers and the unfavourable database settings, so much would have to rest on a big TLAM strike near the end, once our assets were in range. Even then, we would need to use fighters and MALDs to distract and wear-out the Flankers. The only alternative approach was to restrict operations to hunting subs or going after the Vladivostok SAG as and when it sortied.

Despite their prodigious use of ammo and sorties, the Russians still had four Flankers over Iturup and these effectively prevented my four SEAD Hornets (which had bunked to tankers earlier) from attacking safely. Worse, as I fell back, they pursued and three of my planes fell victim to the side-effect of the refuelling threshold which causes the AI to impose a 480 knot speed limit, even with enemy fighters in pursuit. One Hornet was caught and killed but, while I was trying desperately to find a solution to this bug, much worse things happened.

A message arrived that the DDG Spruance had been sunk. Zooming-out, I found that both Oscars had manifested themselves and were attacking the Lincoln CVG with an avalanche of Strobiles and Shipwrecks. The subs were roughly where I’d expected and my Hawkeye was ideally placed to spot the missiles...but I hadn’t been looking and my timing, as ever, was lousy. I guess I could have had the Message Log raise a pop-up whenever enemy missiles were detected but this is such a pain normally that I don’t do it. In this case, it wouldn’t have made much difference, anyway. I scrambled the eight available Hornets with a heavy load of AMRAAMs and promptly had to stop them flashing to Afterburner and chasing the Strobiles that had flown-on past the task force. The fighters then did their best but there was no stopping that many missiles, so the cruiser Mobile Bay and the Lincoln were lost, ending the game with a final score of -1,375. Of course, the Russians still had their Backfire Kinzhal and Su-34 strikes in reserve…

So ends my report to the Board of Inquiry. When I’ve posted this, I’ll download the latest Community Pack and see if it makes any difference. Otherwise, I’ll leave it to Bart and other readers to assess what adjustments, if any, need to be made to play balance here. What happened might reflect the real-life position in the theatre (although the scenario omits US satellites and all Japanese and South Korean forces from the equation). Maybe I made some serious mistakes. Judge for yourselves.

[fitzpatv]

OK, so I've now downloaded V1.06, Build 1328.12 and CommunityScenarioPack048, with interesting results.

The AIM-120D AMRAAM P31.4 now works the same way in Hail Mary and NFZ Pacific, though it now has a burn time of 40 seconds!. That has it run out of fuel at 29.4nm at altitude, giving it an effective range of maybe 50-60nm, so it should still work fairly well at 40nm, as in my Hail Mary AAR.

The Chinese only used the Adder A in Hail Mary and the Adder B, loaded on Su-35s in NFZ Pacific, is a rather different animal, lofting to 80k' whereas its predecessor took a direct line to the target. Version B runs out of fuel at 13.2nm at altitude, so should work, more or less, out to 26-27nm by my rule of thumb...as opposed to 60-70nm with deadly accuracy (I was hit on a 79% chance at about 60nm) in my playthrough!

On this basis, a player should now have more of a chance attacking Iturup, though it remains highly doubtful that the Lincoln or other US ships could withstand the Oscar, Backfire Kinzhal and Su-34 strikes. You still have the other risk of running into submarine ambushes while travelling at speed unless you accept that you won't be able to use most of your Tomahawks.

While I'd like to go back and teach those Flankers a lesson, I'll hold-off playing this again until I see what kind of feedback the AAR gets.

It all goes to show that the game is in a state of flux right now, with parameters changing markedly from one build to the next. It would be great to have some stability and consistency. For now, players would be well-advised to check their A2A missile ranges carefully before playing. My rule is ((Speed at altitude band x burn time in seconds) / 3,600 seconds in an hour), roughly doubled for weapons which loft. This gives an absolute range and effectiveness increases with proximity to the target.

[fitzpatv]

I've further checked the situation with setting EMCON Doctrine for multiple aircraft at once. My perception from playing Hail Mary was a little inaccurate. Basically, you cannot INITIALLY select a group of aircraft on the base window and set their radars to Active (or Passive) in one easy operation, which is a total pain in the rear end and wastes a lot of time and effort for the player. HOWEVER, any group of aircraft which have PREVIOUSLY had their EMCON Doctrine amended CAN be amended in one go later on (which I was doing in Hail Mary). So, if you go through the pain at the start, plane by plane, you can then adjust the settings easily whenever you like thereafter. I doubt whether Alert Levels (or saying Yes to the annoying Apply EMCON Settings to All Units pop-up, which seems pointless) have any influence on this but if anyone can put me straight here, please do.

This is better than nothing but it still needs to be fixed (as does in-flight-refuelling, which is so buggy it is making the game almost unplayable at times).

[FrangibleCover]

Checking the database, I was quoted a burn-time of just 16 seconds for the AMRAAM D 31.4 which, by my calculation, indicated that it would run out of fuel after some 11nm at altitude, which reflected what was happening. I later opened-up Hail Mary (Chains of War) and checked the same weapon, which was listed as having a burn-time of 58 seconds, which makes a huge difference, corresponding to its better performance in that scenario, where it was a decisive asset. The obvious conclusion was that the two scenarios were referencing DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE DATABASE!!!. Now, I have no idea which is the more accurate, but this is pretty appalling (and no fault of the scenario designer – I think). At this point, I recalled the inability to set EMCON Doctrine for multiple aircraft at once (which I could do in Hail Mary). My suspicion is that the Community Scenario Pack does not link to the most recent version of the database or even game settings. Maybe if I downloaded a later version, clunky though this is??.

This is standard behaviour for Command, each scenario stays with the version of the database it was designed in to maintain backwards compatibility. This means that old database weirdnesses are all preserved perfectly to annoy you in the future, and it also means that when there's a big change like the missile overhaul, everything designed prior to that is using the old numbers with the new maths (AIUI?). The editor contains a tool to automatically update scenarios to the latest game version which works reasonably well, although it's a shame to have to do it. Beware that the autoupdate will reload all units fresh from the DB, so in instances where units start the game with a custom ammunition load, or damaged, or platform-edited like the armed merchants in Longest Battle and the Indian Ocean Fury scenarios, those will be overwritten.

[fitzpatv]

This all sounds very unsatisfactory and does nothing to inspire me with confidence in the game. It rather emphasises the need to check the performance of every weapon before you start playing.

Just to clarify, does this mean that the quoted 40-second burn-time for the AMRAAM D in the latest build applies in NFZ Pacific or not?

[tylerblakebrandon]

TBeware that the autoupdate will reload all units fresh from the DB, so in instances where units start the game with a custom ammunition load, or damaged, or platform-edited like the armed merchants in Longest Battle and the Indian Ocean Fury scenarios, those will be overwritten.

You have to make sure the scenario INI file is applied at update to preserve the author's unit changes. I've bumfuzzled that a few times.

[Gunner98]

TBeware that the autoupdate will reload all units fresh from the DB, so in instances where units start the game with a custom ammunition load, or damaged, or platform-edited like the armed merchants in Longest Battle and the Indian Ocean Fury scenarios, those will be overwritten.

You have to make sure the scenario INI file is applied at update to preserve the author's unit changes. I've bumfuzzled that a few times.

That is correct, that is why designers include the SDB INI file with the scenario. I thought that the scenarios were updated with each CSP release... need to check on that.

B

[DWReese]

I would like to try this scenario out. Could the most current version possibly be uploaded here?

[Gunner98]

I think it is in the CSP

B