New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

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Tomcat84
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New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by Tomcat84 »

[From Erik: Please enjoy this after action report from one of the Command testers, using a recent Beta build of Command]

Just played the Fighter Weapon School scenario by Primarchx, and found it very nice. And since I love air stuff I decided from the start to take screenshots so I could write an AAR.
If you dont want to be spoiled by what the enemy has in store in this scenario, or by what tactics may or may not work, dont read on! (Although I must admit, I dont know if Primarchx has perhaps put in any randomization, so you could face something else?)

The scenario setup is simple. It's 1977 and you have 8 Phantoms at Nellis AFB. 4 are loaded for air to air with 4 AIM-7s and 4 AIM-9s, the others are loaded for air to ground.

2 with GBU-10s and 2 with clusterbombs. These jets have 2 Sparrows each. The target area is to the northwest, 4 revetments, with a known SA-3 threat and an unknown amount of F-5s as red air. After the attack, at least one plane needs to proceed to the northwest area to finish the scenario.

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My basic gameplan will be to push with all jets, deal with the air picture as required, and then send in the cluster bomb two ship from the west, at low level, to hopefully surprise and take out the SA-3 site so that the other two can easily bomb with their LGBs without being harassed by SAMs.

I order all jets to takeoff and as my first air to air four ship takes off i split them into two pairs. Reno1-2 and Reno3-4. Their passive sensors soon pick up an emitter somewhere in the target area. I suspect it may be for AAA so I will have to take that into account later. The uncertainty volume is still pretty large but that should narrow down soon enough.

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The Renos loiter a bit while the ground attack flight takes off, and once they do I split these guys into pairs as well, Blackjack1-2 and 3-4. They start to proceed northwest and soon detect two unknown contacts in that direction.

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Two more are detected and I decide to send the Renos back southeast to open up some space, and commit the Blackjacks first. I want to use their missiles to the max so I can have my air to air fighters available later on when my attackers are busy bombing. My ROE is weapons free, my 8 are the only friendlies, so I do not want/need to VID and manually declare them hostile by pressing h with each contact selected. (in this screen only done on the first two yet)

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Blackjack 4 lags behind a bit for some reason, but nevertheless 4 Sparrows go downrange and all contacts up front are targeted. Meanwhile four more contacts are detected further northwest. The first missile has already missed its target at this point, 3 more are still inbound. Meanwhile, The Renos are opening up some range southeast flowing cold.

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The missiles start timing out. The first shot as said was a miss but Blackjack 1, 2 and 4 all end up killing their target. With the missiles timing out, the Renos turn hot, and the Blackjacks will turn cold when possible (3 and 4 are already in the turn, 1 and 2 waiting for the last shot to finish) As an aside, I got pretty lucky on this one with the outcome. As you can see the shots are getting a 35% PH, so getting 3 out of 4 was nice. This was the initial result. But I wanted to capture the screenshot with the little yellow explosion graphic, but that thing is only visible briefly. So I saved and reloaded a few times before I got the screenshot. The loaded game had the first two shots done (one miss one hit) and the last two about to timeout. Here's the results those two weapons gave each time:

First reload: both miss
Second reload: 1 kill
Third reload: 1 kill
Fourth reload: both miss
Fifth reload: both miss
Sixth reload: 1 kill
Seventh reload: 2 kills (and I finally got the screenie and carried on. The reloading explains why the message log isnt fully accurate anymore I think)

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End result of the first part is 3 out of 4 down, all Blackjacks running cold and the Renos committing on the singleton left, with 4 more further to the northwest. I have Reno 3 shoot 2 Sparrows at this guy to increase my chances of getting him, so I can hopefully immediately continue against the next 4 on this push.

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The first shot gets the job done and now it's on to the next group. The second two ship of enemies is trailing far enough to be hard to target but too close to be disregarded, so I elect to have every Reno shoot a Sparrow into the lead 2 ship, hopefully ensuring destruction, which will leave only the trailing pair.

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The plan works and both blowup. One right away and the other with the second missile. Now if I was feeling aggressive I could've pushed on with the split pairs to the merge but I elect to go cold once more and use Blackjacks' missiles, so as Reno turns SE, Blackjack commits on the remaining enemies. In this picture I have switched from Group view to unit view, showing everybody's radar field of view, and location. It can clutter, but also help, especially if you're splitting a grouped element up in a bracket or something.

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I have them take one shot each and the result is that one stays alive. Here again I could've been a bit more aggressive in the cleanup but I decide to send everyone cold. Now I remember the fact that I have no GCI or AWACS as I get no more updates on the hostile's location. So I quickly spin my outside most Renos back hot, find him, and clean him up.

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After all that, we have the following result on the initial picture:
8 kills with 13 missiles.

The Renos have all their heaters left, 1 and 2 have three sparrows, 3 and 4 have one and two respectively.
For the Blackjacks, 2 and 3 shot both Sparrows, 1 and 4 have one left.
We have no shots fired against us.

Then I send all jets inbound to the target area again, picking up another air contact. Meanwhile, the ESM contact location has narrowed down to near our target, which means the west ingress I had planned for Blackjack 3 and 4 is a bad idea if there's triple A there, so instead, I send them on their way to loop around from the northeast. Initially the enemy contact appears to be headed for them but he then turns southwest so I let 3 and 4 go on northbound and target 1 and 2 on the contact.

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Blackjack 1 fires his last AIM-7 but it is a miss, so they flow cold and Reno 1 and 2 come in to finish him. I probably should've shot two missiles here since I kind of want to make sure he dies now but I only fire one. In the screenshot you can see it has just been launched.

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The missile is defeated, this time I decide to be aggressive and press on towards him, firing another Sparrow (should've done that earlier!). This time it's a hit. At the same time, Reno 3 and 4 were also coming in from the side, ready to support in any merge. The Blackjacks are still setting up their encirclement and are dropping down low.

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Fast forward a little bit, and the Renos are covering the west and east side, Blackjack 3 and 4 are ingressing low level, and Blackjack 1 and 2 get to do the fun part: distract the SA-3...

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I fly them towards the SAM threat ring and split them up a little bit. They detect two shots coming in and turn around. It defeats the missiles when they run out of energy.

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Having dodged the first set, they turn back towards the SA-3 again and another pair of missiles comes up. This time no flowing away but notching to try and defeat the missile.

But the ruse works as 3 and 4 sneak up undetected and deliver their weapons. They even manage to sneak in a strafe run as well (beta bug thats being worked on), while the cluster bombs are descending down.

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Flames are the only thing left and contact with the SA-3s radar is lost. The missiles in the air go dumb and no more new ones come up either... Sweet! This allows 1 and 2 to head for the target to take it out!

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Now the way is clear for some target killing! I see if I can trick the game into having one jet bomb two of the different targets at the same time but it says [:-] nono, my targeting pod can only illuminate one target at the same time, very good :) One LGB inbound from each jet.

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Unfortunately one is a dud, the other blows up. I set up for the next attack on the other two shelters and have two good bombs.

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BDA is not immediately available, presumably due to smoke and debris etc, but as we flow off target it becomes clear that three out of four revetments have indeed been destroyed. We all push out to the northwest to the finish area and achieve a Major Victory.

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The results (this window looks a bit odd cause i photoshopped two screenshots together to make it, due to the scrolling down)

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All in all 9 F-5s taken out, an SA-3 site wasted, three out of four targets destroyed and all that without losses to air or ground threat. Fun scenario for sure!
My Scenarios and Tutorials for Command

(Scenarios focus on air-warfare :) )
Galahad78
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by Galahad78 »

Wow! Impressive work with the Sparrows, difficult to handle them properly.
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erichswafford
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by erichswafford »

The interface looks fantastic - I'm very impressed with what you guys have accomplished.

Will there be anything like the Missions you could create in H3? I always enjoyed playing and trying to use Missions only to even up things a bit vs the AI. I'd love something where I could either micro-manage, or just tell a strike package to get the job done the best they know how.
"It is right to learn, even from the enemy."
- Ovid
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JRyan
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by JRyan »

Fantastic After Action Report! Thanks!
But By Grace Go I.......
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robinsa
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by robinsa »

Great AAR. Would love to see videos like this in the future! ;)
mikmykWS
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by mikmykWS »

ORIGINAL: kondor999

The interface looks fantastic - I'm very impressed with what you guys have accomplished.

Will there be anything like the Missions you could create in H3? I always enjoyed playing and trying to use Missions only to even up things a bit vs the AI. I'd love something where I could either micro-manage, or just tell a strike package to get the job done the best they know how.

Yes you can give orders through missions as well.

M
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henri51
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by henri51 »

Robins a there are many videos of this game on Youtube, mostly by Bologan (or is it Bolagan?).Anyway the one of the first tutorial scenario is right up this alley. Do a search on Youtube for "Command air" and it should be one of the first to show up. It is amusing that the video starts off really badly where he loses 3 F4's right off the bat as soon as they take off...

Although I have the game, so far I have spent more time watching AARs than playing.
Phoenix100
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by Phoenix100 »

Extremely late coming to this....lol.....I'm trying to get back into CMANO, and starting with 'simple' stuff. So I've played this scenario twice now, with miserable results. This AAR looks v helpful, but I can't see the pictures in the first post. Is there a reason why they're down? How do I get them back? Or is it just too old to see the pics?

Tomcat84 seems to have micromangaed everything, from route, alt etc through to when and how many missiles to fire. This seems to have worked (though I guess it may be harder to achieve now, two years and many updates later....), but I wouldn't want to do it like that. I've been playing it just by planning misions. I have a simple question about that though, if anyone can help - is it not possible, when you plan a strike mission (land strike, on the SAM site, for example) to plan route and alt for your units from within the strike planner? And if not (I couldn't find a way) can I just later select ships asigned to the mission and, right click them and give them a manual route and they will continue with the mission, but along that route? I did try this, and it seemed to happen, to a point, but when I gave the a/c a manual route I couldn't get them to actually attack once they were over target.

Thanks.

Peter

PS: I will get round to reading the manual again - honest!
cns180784
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by cns180784 »

ORIGINAL: phoenix

Extremely late coming to this....lol.....I'm trying to get back into CMANO, and starting with 'simple' stuff. So I've played this scenario twice now, with miserable results. This AAR looks v helpful, but I can't see the pictures in the first post. Is there a reason why they're down? How do I get them back? Or is it just too old to see the pics?

Tomcat84 seems to have micromangaed everything, from route, alt etc through to when and how many missiles to fire. This seems to have worked (though I guess it may be harder to achieve now, two years and many updates later....), but I wouldn't want to do it like that. I've been playing it just by planning misions. I have a simple question about that though, if anyone can help - is it not possible, when you plan a strike mission (land strike, on the SAM site, for example) to plan route and alt for your units from within the strike planner? And if not (I couldn't find a way) can I just later select ships asigned to the mission and, right click them and give them a manual route and they will continue with the mission, but along that route? I did try this, and it seemed to happen, to a point, but when I gave the a/c a manual route I couldn't get them to actually attack once they were over target.

I did lose one fighter to an SA-3 missile and it was able to spot my a/c due to its TV camera passive sensor.

Thanks.

Peter

PS: I will get round to reading the manual again - honest!

Hi i just played this scenario and found the air battle too easy. The OPFOR ground and air units have no radars active, and the OPFOR F-5E's dont even have RWR's so my far better equipped and armed F-4's rip them apart except for one close call my one fighter had as they got into a turning fight but that got shot down after a short while by a heater. All 9 of their fighters shot down with no losses...but just played through the land strikes twice on the four a/c revetments and both times only managed to give heavy damage with medium fire to one of them. Also despite the mission having all four targets assigned, all four bombers (two with Rockeyes, two with GBU-10) all go for the same target rather than each a/c going for a different revetment. Pretty sure this has worked in previous missions where the planes in a strike mission will go after different targets rather than the same one.
The revetments have 300 damage points and are unarmoured and each GBU-10 delivers over 600 and three impacted on the one but only caused major damage with a medium fire, cant be right? though i did notice the CEP is 10m so not the most accurate of LGB's.

I did lose one fighter to an SA-3 missile which was able to see my a/c due to clear daylight weather conditions and it has a TV camera..used the fighters to fly straight over the SA-3 to distract it so they wouldnt fire at my bombers forcing them to go defensive on their ingress.
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ronmexico111
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RE: New Beta Preview AAR: Fighter Weapons School GAT-5/6

Post by ronmexico111 »

I hate to revive something this old but this is one of those scenarios I just don't quite get. Is the player just meant to see how high a score you can get without actually destroying all of the targets it lists in the briefing? In my experience this mission can be done with zero losses for the player. The first phase against the OPFOR F-5's is easy enough, as is taking out the SAM site near the 4 targets with the two F-4's carrying the Rockeyes (going in at 400 feet AGL from east to west and exiting at afterburner at the same altitude to the west after the drops). The last phase of the mission, taking out the 4 targets SHOULD be a cakewalk, just fly in at over 12,000 feet AGL where nothing can fire on you (I always set my altitude for the drops at 14,000 AGL), drop your Paveways, go home and have drink or three, but it doesn't work that way. I have not been able to cause more than heavy damage after dropping all my Paveways on just ONE of the targets. Am I doing something wrong, or is this how it's designed?
"Never get out of the boat" Apocalypse Now
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