Stalintc

Yes, I did get an annex error, but only because I had HCDA (stupidly) loaded into HCE at the time But once I loaded HCDB all was well. Check to make sure you have not got HCDA as your database, see if that is the problem. Brad - Thanks for the suggestion, looks like the next stop after I finish playing Sixth Battle

Hi Nef, Is the update file on the downloads section the right one? only I have opened it up and there appear to be no changes to the scenario setup? I noted that despite the zip files being named differently, the scenario files have the same modified date and time on them. Just thought I would ask Cheers

Scenario: Lets go to war Author: Brad Leyte (CV32) Battleset: Westpac Database: HCDB Skill level: Advanced\Expert Involved units: Full (Land\Sea\Air operations) Where can I get it? Here (Harpgamer) Review: First impressions: On first opening the scenario I am greeted with an enormous order of battle and a very wide area of operations. Before engaging the clock it was of the utmost importance that I got dug in to the OOB and the scenario orders. Processing that and setting up my combat units and orders took me in the region of 1 and half to 2 hours. I had never opened a monster scenario, so this was my first taste of such a beast, I was determined to beat it at any cost. I found the range of units at my disposal to be impressive ranging from carrier groups outfitted with the F-18 super hornet to bombers like the B1 Lancer. I felt very much from the outtake that I had the kit to get the job done. However these more advanced units were a long way from the front and I could see striaght away that some tactical ferry operations were going to have to be well planned to get the right coverage. (This was permitted in the scenario orders for certain units. Take heed of the units you are "allowed" to transfer to get the best out of the scenario) At the very front in the Japenese\Taiwanese\Korean and Vietnam sectors the air units available were basic and appeared to have been placed to give you a tough start to the scenario and get you thinking how their strengths and weaknesses can be combined to hold out till the real hardcore hardware gets into battle. The RED side had been given a huge number of units that one would expect from a joint Chinese\Russian effort, that sent complete shivers of terror all over, especially when I noticed there were long range missile installations present for the Chinese... I was not prepared for the coming chaos that ensued. Gameplay: Straight from the word go, the Chinese were unleashing hell on my forces, the long range fearsome D-21 missiles did not take long to get into play and were stretching my air defences to the limit. I swear I have never sweat so much playing a HCE as I have playing this one. All the way through the game the combined RED airforces were completely un-relenting, requiring everything I had mentally to keep the situation stable and keep one step ahead of the RED side. Various considerations when forming my CAP's and inner defences had to take into account, catching missile salvos and aircraft. Halfway through I had practically lost the Japenese set of airbases due to overwhleming attacks from the Russian controlled units of RED and I was forced to evacuate one airfield of its assets in order to preserve their availability later in the scenario. I did not wish those assets to suffer the same fate as those at the airbase of Chitose, which were annihalated in a combination of air and TBM attacks. I found keeping my naval assets a secret very stressful and on many occasions the position of a key carrier group was nearly compromised by snooping TU-95's and other naval recon aircraft. Despite the chaos, I kept the air to air kill ratio steady and limited losses as much as possible. Taipei was the key airbase where most of the air action was taking place, I came close on several occasions to getting overwhelmed by the highly numerous air power of the local Chinese air forces. However the turn in the tide came when I had brought the allowed aircraft to the front and began to engage them in the air war which kept the kill ratio at a steady 1 loss for 10 kills. The heavy naval incursion around Taiwan meant that the need to back off my heavily fatigued battle group stationed there a neccesity leaving Taipei all alone with its compliment of aircraft. Gradually the RED naval assets began to succumb to my well placed multi vector attacks leaving many of the remaining vessels crippled and running for home. Seat of your pants action or what?! Conclusion: Again, another Brad Leyte scenario worthy of an award if there were ever such a thing. The amount of effort this must have taken to make the AI so durable, flexible and aggressive must have been incredible and I take my hat off to the man who put together something as extravegant and exciting as this. I did not want to AAR this scenario, because there are so many things designed to catch you out and keep you gripped that it would be sacriledge to expose it to the those who have not yet had the priviledge. For those lovers of the monster scenario, this would be high on my recommendations list, this is only the first I have played, but it has left me not only exhausted, by gasping for more. One small thing I had picked up on however is that the time fram which the scenario takes place 72 hours, seems a little too long to me for the time it took me to claim a total victory. But none the less it leaves things open for a varied range of play styles to accustom. Im off to go pick my jaw up from the floor.... The Score 96%

ahhem! Tornado

Scenario Feedback Positive: - Consistant resitance and threat from the Venezualan navy, I loved the fact that the way you had placed the ships and their routes formed a nice tight coast guard and actually forced an encounter with them. - The submarines were very dangerous and seemed to be placed quite realistically for their type, being diesel boats they are meant for coastal defence, so the relevance of these was spot on! - Your formation patrols and missions you had setup for the AI showed the Venezualans dislike for the Roosevelts presence in the waters quite clearly and it looks like they expected the Roosevelts appearance in their waters. - The Arleigh Burke is (as im sure you knew) a VERY powerful destroyer even when on its own and I actually think the force balance you put into the scenario was on the mark. It is amazing to see the Burke in action on its own. It proved capable of fending off about 34 incoming Otomat missiles with a certain degree of ease, only having to shot down the last one or two of each wave with CIWS. However of course the SM-2 supply was gone by the end of the engagement. Both Brad and Tony watched the missile engagement in IRC, using Tony's little DLL which outputs game data to IRC for testing. Very impressive. - There was room there to get the Burkes main gun involved in the action, which I think is fun in any scenario to get the deck guns involved. Especially when it came to shelling the SAM on the coastline to allow the choppers to roll in to the rescue. - Good time allocation, I felt that I had enough time to do what was needed and to be flexible in my approach to the coast. While still maintaining the urgency to get there in time. Negative: (with constructive comments) - The fact that there were so many enemy ships to contend with enroute to the coast made it very nearly impossible to get there, the only reason being is that the Burke currently cannot use its SM-2 mount against surface platforms because of a game limitation. This meant that the ship engagements had to take place with the main gun, which I didnt neccesarily mind, but it made things very awkward, especially since the harpoons from the P3 were virtually impossible to get through the highly effective aspide defences of some of the surface vessels. Of course this is good in some ways, because I love a challenge, but it did make things very close to the wire being that I had a pinch of luck. Suggestion - might be worth replacing the helos on the Burke with a variant which is capable of carrying ASUW weapons (also with ASW) to bolster the ASUW capability in this scenario. Or perhaps adding a handful of ASUW capable attack planes at the BLUE airbase. - At about 20hrs to go on the clock I had downed about 1/4 of RED's airforce, but the other 3/4 did not launch to get involved in the action. They still had about 68 planes on the ground which were fighters and 10 attack. Of course this can be good in some ways because this could indicate RED's refusal to launch more planes do to the hopeless situation for them in the air against the Eagles. I did not see any action from the F-16's or the Mirage50's at the airbases. Suggestion - Add some more attack\patrol missions spaced out throughout the scenario, also bolster the formation patrols with some of the other fighters that are available. I noted through looking in the scen editor after play that the F-16's had no formation patrol orders, nor the Mirage50's. Remember that the GE will only launch the fighter make\model that you have specified in the scenario editor for the formation patrols. It will not use the other fighters when it runs out of them. Further Notes: During the scenario I ran out of shells for the main gun and no reload was initiated. This had came about because there are currently a few ships in HCDA without any entries for thier magazine (The Arleigh Burke being one of them). This was paticularly dangerous for the integrity of the scenario, since the gun was heavily used in the surface to surface action. In order to finish the scenario I was given a helping hand by Tony and Brad to get some extra rounds to use to finish the scenario (because I wanted to make sure that the viConds worked...) However Brad has quite kindly updated the magazines for the ships involved in the scenario so that this cannot happen, so as Brad has mentioned in the previous post all users that want to play the scenario to its fullest MUST make sure they have the latest version of the HCDA database which is available now from the downloads area. Also thank you for submitting the scenario Nef, I had a great time playing it and I hope others will too. I hope to see more of this work from you in the near future Cheers Terry "Stalintc" Courtney

Item 22 added to list

Item 21 added to list

I am playing through the scenario as I speak, i'll post some feedback up when im done I play in realtime pretty much exclusivley so it might be a little while!

Scenario: Iron Wolf Author: Brad Leyte (CV32) Battleset: EC2003 GIUK Database: HCDB Skill level: Intermediate Involved units: Full (Land\Sea\Air operations) Where can I get it? Here (Harpgamer) Review: First impressions: As I have come to expect from a Brad Leyte scenario, this one requires some good interpretation of the orders by the player and the ability of the player to devise their own plan, rather than working to already outlined goals. This I find to be quite enjoyable and most certainley a method of scenario creation which is very much like Brad's signature on the scenarios he writes. When I first opened the scenario I was presented with control over almost the whole Western side of the Baltic's and several bases on the Eastern side in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, it was quite clear from the orders that these three places on the Eastern side must not fall to RED attacks (Russia). I had a large number of air assets available to me from these bases, including some Russian made aircraft based in Poland. When I noticed I had these Russian made aircraft in my arsenal, I found myself intrigued to continue and experiment with mixing these aircraft with NATO ones to see what kind of impact they had. This point I thought to be impressive, since there are not many scenarios out there which give you the chance to experiment with combining aircraft which were produced by opposing nations in essence to combat each other, insted in this scenario, being used to complement each other. I had a handful of sea based assets at my disposal of mixed types, but mainly frigate sized vessels, with limited but present ship to ship capabilities. Also I couldnt help but notice each of the airbases on my side had some armoured units in the form of Self Propelled Artillery, external structures were present for the bases and some moderate IADS were installed. Gameplay: The Russians have been given a very powerful airforce in this scenario and it requires that a player be quite familiar with the use of effective combat air patrols and AEW coverage. The Russians pose a formidable threat, the AI driving them uses them to great effect, thanks to some excellent and well crafted little extras added by Brad, which shows his excellent understanding of the workings of the scenario editor. At no point during the scenario did I feel at ease or in a state of being idle, the threat from RED was constant and un-relenting. There are many surprises along the way which have been installed and are designed to catch the player and force some quick thinking. I feel the urge to divuldge the details of several events that occur during the scenario which had me on my toes, but I must resist the temptation because these events are all part of keeping the player on the toes and I highly respect Brad's intent with these features. The action during the scenario I found, meant I spent much of my time with the air operations side of things, but there was plenty here during the scenario to keep me working the land and sea situation too and was well balanced in accordance with the scenario orders. Conclusion This scenario is a true masterpiece in every respect, surprise, suspence and utilisation of the players ability to think freely were all present and very welcomed. On further investigation after completing the scenario I also noted that enough variables had been put in place to allow for a good chance of replayability. It is also a good scenario to investigate, even if on a small scale the effectiveness of both Russian and NATO air power when combined, which was a real eye opener. Thank you for the time and effort that went into building the scenario, I hope others will enjoy it as much as I have. The Score 98%

How about: CHASE - Computer . Harpoon . Advanced . Strategic . Edition (Thanks Brains) CHASW - Computer . Harpoon . Advanced . Strategic . Warfare CHGNW - Computer . Harpoon . Global . Naval . Warfare CHS31 - Computer . Harpoon . Strategic 3.1 CHGE - Computer . Harpoon . Generals . Edition Just some ideas... (Must admit I missed this thread... sorry for late input...)

Congratulations on the release of your first scenario, lets hope it is the first of many! Thank you for sharing with us!

If I can assist you with anything Brad give me a shout. Not that you need it of course, but if needed some extra manpower, im here.

I can confirm that this version does eliminate the issue of the RED staff assistant appearing for the blue player when ground mobiles are destroyed. The BLUE staff assistant appears as expected.