File - Battle of Damascus

[Steven]

File Name: Battle of Damascus

File Submitter: Steven

File Submitted: 15 Oct 2012

File Category: Scenarios

 

A joint service scenerio with USN, USAF and Turkish units tackling a heavily fortified Damascus. Blue side must react towards an aggressive regime by neutralizing WMD sites and a Russian air base while boarding a suspect arms ship and position a helo to recover US Special Forces in downtown Damascus. You must also hunt down the defunct leader of the country.

 

The Russians have sided with Damascus and have conveniently positioned the air base with bombers somewhere in eastern Syria that is moderately guarded with a wing of fighters. It is a distance from the US base in Turkey making in-flight refueling necessary of the F-15 and F-16 fighters patrolling the area for the base. It will not be easy to locate but if you track inbound and outbound aircraft, you may give yourself a general idea of its location. Just pay attention to the enemy air units leaving the area as they may be nuclear armed bombers enroute to your base. Destroying the base is a victory condition.

 

A WMD site is located north of Damascus, is heavy guarded and have several targets to be be neutralized in order to meet the games VC. Also to follow the story line, the ousted leader of Syria is holed up in a bunker inside Damascus and your search aircraft must fly low and slow in order to locate the target. This bunker is also a VC. A Russian arms ship is being escorted into Syria and must be boarded and yet again it is under heavy Russian escort. Boarding is also a VC. A predetermined location inside of Damascus has been labled in order to postion a CH-53E to recover special forces and the helo must be in postion hovering over the location no earlier than 1900Z or the VC will not be met. Just to add a bit of frustration their will be neutral units in the air as well as on the surface.

 

The scenrio has many targets and units and runs a bit slow yet it has a scenerio duration of 8 hours and can be played easily in an afternoon with a 15-30 second time compression. Thank you for considering playing this scenerio.

 

Click here to download this file

[CV32]

Thanks, Steven. Those of you playing ANW, please give some useful feedback here.

 

Nothing kills creativity in scenario building quite like 'dead air' after you release new scenarios.

[evaamo]

Hi Steven... I played your scenario last night and initially I didn't take it too seriously as I was playing it to kill some time... but boy did I pay a heavy price for my lack of commitment!!! I ended up playing it for 4+ hours to salvage the little honor I had left after such a beating!!!

 

I will give it a second try this weekend and I really hope to obtain a different result this time!!!

 

SPOILER ALERT... DON'T CONTINUE TO READ IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT:

 

My main problem was detecting the russian base to the north-east on a timely fashion... and I ended up with an incoming volley of nuclear Kent's that saturated the Turkish base AAD and basically destroyed it. I had most of the aircraft in the air at that moment, taking care of both syrian bases... some of them ended up ditching when they ran out of fuel since there wasn't a field to divert to, and some others casualties of Mig-31s.

 

The other problem I had was due to my underestimation of the Slava cruiser's offensive jamming activities... I spent a lot of time (and foolishly lost a few A/C) dealing with it, since it was disrupting my operations. Once the Slava was taken care of, the rest of the ships were easy. I wasn't planning to use many of my tomahawk missiles on the two land bases... but using the D variant was definitely a great aid for dealing with the S-200s. The rest was setting up a few SEAD raids using Growlers and JSOW-laden SuperHornets. In the end, losing the base in Turkey forced me to use the rest of the Tomahawks to wipe the land facilities. I had to use the stock of 109's from the CG, the DDG and the Ohio to accomplish the task.

 

In the end I ended up losing the scenario because I was unable to trigger the Victory Condition for the SEAL's rally point. I set the CH-53s to hover there for way more than the required 3 minutes... and I did that before 21:00, at 21:00 and after 21:00. No luck. Will try again and if I'm unable to make it, I will let you know.

 

Boarding the bulk cruiser was no problem (after dealing with the rest of the ships of course).

 

All in all this was a fun scenario, which I failed mostly due to my "informal" attitude towards it at the beginning. Making good decisions from the start is fundamental to winning it with minimum losses. Shall report back after my second round with it!!!

 

Thanks for sharing it.

 

cheers

-E

[Steven]

Hi Steven... I played your scenario last night and initially I didn't take it too seriously as I was playing it to kill some time... but boy did I pay a heavy price for my lack of commitment!!! I ended up playing it for 4+ hours to salvage the little honor I had left after such a beating!!!

 

I will give it a second try this weekend and I really hope to obtain a different result this time!!!

 

SPOILER ALERT... DON'T CONTINUE TO READ IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT:

 

My main problem was detecting the russian base to the north-east on a timely fashion... and I ended up with an incoming volley of nuclear Kent's that saturated the Turkish base AAD and basically destroyed it. I had most of the aircraft in the air at that moment, taking care of both syrian bases... some of them ended up ditching when they ran out of fuel since there wasn't a field to divert to, and some others casualties of Mig-31s.

 

The other problem I had was due to my underestimation of the Slava cruiser's offensive jamming activities... I spent a lot of time (and foolishly lost a few A/C) dealing with it, since it was disrupting my operations. Once the Slava was taken care of, the rest of the ships were easy. I wasn't planning to use many of my tomahawk missiles on the two land bases... but using the D variant was definitely a great aid for dealing with the S-200s. The rest was setting up a few SEAD raids using Growlers and JSOW-laden SuperHornets. In the end, losing the base in Turkey forced me to use the rest of the Tomahawks to wipe the land facilities. I had to use the stock of 109's from the CG, the DDG and the Ohio to accomplish the task.

 

In the end I ended up losing the scenario because I was unable to trigger the Victory Condition for the SEAL's rally point. I set the CH-53s to hover there for way more than the required 3 minutes... and I did that before 21:00, at 21:00 and after 21:00. No luck. Will try again and if I'm unable to make it, I will let you know.

 

Boarding the bulk cruiser was no problem (after dealing with the rest of the ships of course).

 

All in all this was a fun scenario, which I failed mostly due to my "informal" attitude towards it at the beginning. Making good decisions from the start is fundamental to winning it with minimum losses. Shall report back after my second round with it!!!

 

Thanks for sharing it.

 

cheers

-E

As I played the scenerio it had been difficult to complete the VC by hovering over the SEAL Rally Point and I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if was the altitude or if I had set the area to small and I wasn't directly over it but I had done it so let me know if you're having issues so I can change it out for another VC. On my end the Delta time was 5 minutes, not 3 minutes as you stated so I'm not sure if that was the reason or if you just mis-quoted.

That Russian base in the east was a doozie and I'm glad I put it in their. It will rip your heart out if you think you've got the game won and those bombers start let loose some nukes. Glad to hear to from you. Steve Raymond

[Steven]

 

In the end I ended up losing the scenario because I was unable to trigger the Victory Condition for the SEAL's rally point. I set the CH-53s to hover there for way more than the required 3 minutes... and I did that before 21:00, at 21:00 and after 21:00. No luck. Will try again and if I'm unable to make it, I will let you know.

 

 

cheers

-E

I've tried getting the victory conditions on the SEAL's Rally Point and I wasn't able to do it either. I'm thinking to possibly change the VC and making the rally point a red side which would allow the helo to board and takeover the rally point. I know I've done it once, stinks that it can't be done again. Thanks for your input. Such a fantastic game that allows scenerio design and then get feedback from players in return.

[Mgellis]

I'm working on something similar right now. One of the Victory Conditions will be hovering an aircraft over a CIV - Evacuees facility to simulate a rescue operation. The area that has to be reached is about one square mile; I figure this is big enough that if the aircraft is on "hover" it should be able to remain on station for the 20 minutes necessary.

 

If I can get it to work, I will let people know; if not, I will try something different and see if I can get that to work.

[Steven]

I'm working on something similar right now. One of the Victory Conditions will be hovering an aircraft over a CIV - Evacuees facility to simulate a rescue operation. The area that has to be reached is about one square mile; I figure this is big enough that if the aircraft is on "hover" it should be able to remain on station for the 20 minutes necessary.

 

If I can get it to work, I will let people know; if not, I will try something different and see if I can get that to work.

I tried that too but if their are hostiles to the CIV and they are within range, the hostiles will take them out.Possibly changing the VC to protect might be easier?

[Mgellis]

I got it to work.

 

What I did was this...

 

The three sides are US, Chile, and Neutrals. I set Chile's posture towards the Neutrals as Friendly (but hostile to the US) and the Neutrals posture towards everyone as Neutral. Chile does not automatically see where the Neutrals are or what the Neutrals see, but sees them as Friendly if he spots them, so he does not fire. Since I don't want Chile to blow up the civilians but simply to shoot down anyone trying to rescue them, this works for this scenario.

 

One of the Victory Conditions is that you have to hover an aircraft right over the CIV unit. It can be done. (You could cheat, in theory, by using another VSTOL aircraft or a helicopter like a Fire Scout to do this, but that's a limitation of the game and since people would know they were cheating...well...what's the point?)

 

I'll probably post it later tonight or tomorrow.

[Steven]

Nice job Mgellis. I'm going to attempt to set up my "Battle of Damascus" scenerio with that as a VC.

[Steven]

OK so here's what I did. US and Neutral, the postures I think are irrelevant for my example. Since I can't seem to get a CH-53E to posses and board a ground unit I had the helo hover overt the CIV target. The CV was for "On Station" at 2130hrs for 5 minutes and the time had to be set for "Relative" vs. "Absolute". The scenerio had to have a CH-53E already airborne and that unit had to be the one to hover over the CIV target. So in other words the player cannot launch their own helo and use that one to accomplish the CV. The hover helo had to be already marked as the helo in the VC before the game even starts. It was the only way I can get an "On Station" VC to work. It doesn't sound right to me but I'm working on it still.

[Steven]

Just confirmed that the helo must be already in air when the scenerio starts. I confirmed this by renaming the helo in the designer as "Rescue Helo 1" and setting that helo as the helo to meet the VC. The rescue helo satisfied the VC while any other helos launched would not complete the VC since the other helos were not named Rescue Helo 1. Not an ideal way to play the game but the option is their.

[Steven]

By setting the A/C type in the VC, any aircraft will satisfy the VC so now to find a way to get the CH-53E as the rescue helo. Also the VC can be setup for sub-type of A/C so you can specify TRANS (helo) or ATK (fighter). This would prevent a F-15 loitering in the poly zone and rescuing the hostages. Again those A/C have to be in the air during the scenerio design. And it seems that if you specify the sub-type of A/C, any one of them regardless if its launched or not will meet the VC. Also a specific base or carrier may be selected that the rescue A/C must be launch from. So my only problem is getting a specific A/C to be the rescue A/C that is not already in the air.

[Mgellis]

I could not get the VC to do more than specify "aircraft" (I wonder if this is a difference between 3.1 and the 3.11 beta or if I'm just doing something wrong) so in theory someone could "cheat" by having, say, a Fire Scout hover over the CIV unit in my scenario (Andes Wind). I figured the best I could do was tell people in the orders "use the MV-22." That way, they know they're cheating if they do something else, although I imagine in the case of the Fire Scout it would be pretty obvious.

[Steven]

That way, they know they're cheating if they do something else, although I imagine in the case of the Fire Scout it would be pretty obvious.

Exactly right. Why play the game to cheat so I've accepted the fact that their are going to be limitations to the game. Atleast the VC will accept a sub-type A/C and a fighter circling overhead for a CAP mission won't satisfy the VC. Good to bash brains with you towards a solution.

[evaamo]

Hey all... do you think the new version of the 3.11 beta would bring any improvements in this specific area?