“Assault on Zion,” from the HUD3 GC1 battleset

 

AAR by Mark Gellis

 

Taking the Israeli side…looking for PLO boats…must sink them before they do bad things…

 

This scenario was prepared for the HUD-4 (v1.1 b10) simply by opening it in the scenario editor and rebuilding all platforms; the revised scenario was then saved.

Scenario seems to load properly. I made a point of keeping an eye out for database errors. In this scenario, I saw no problems with weapons firing, ships not having any fuel, or any other database errors. I may have missed something, but nothing that was vital to the scenario.

 

I did notice in the rebuilt scenario in the scenario editor that there were some odd behaviors, such as the air base disappearing whenever I switched to “display groups,” but showing up fine as its separate elements and with group and elements listed properly in the Order of Battle window. It did not seem to affect gameplay in any way, though. I am sure there is an interesting technical reason for this odd behavior, but as it did not affect playing the game I’m not going to worry about it.

 

6:00…scenario starts

 

I have three Saar 4 missile boats and four aircraft—a Hawkeye and 3 A-4s at Haifa. I’m putting up my Hawkeye and 2 A-4s up from Haifa. I’m leaving one A-4 in reserve. I’m sending the Hawkeye a little northwest of the Reshev…going active…wow, lots of contacts…I’m looking for the ones that seem to be heading towards Israeli ships…and I will send A-4s to look at them…

 

6:14. Swinging the Hawkeye by two ships nearest to my missile boats, worth the risk here…they are both Neutral. There are two fast-moving contacts to the north, so I’m sending an A-4 to check them out.

 

6:21. First contact is a dhow, neutral, going after second contact to the north. I have spotted another fast-moving contact to the West and am sending another A-4 to check it out.

 

6:23. The second northern contact is hostile and my A-4 takes him out without even waiting for me to give him orders—weapons free and all that. The A-4 is ordered to return to base because it has fired off all its weapons. I try to send it to do a little more scouting (it has plenty of fuel left) but it ignores my orders and goes home. I am not sure if this counts as "bug" or not, and I have no idea if it is caused by something in the database or in the game engine.

 

6:39. The contact to the West turns out to be hostile and the second A-4 sinks it and goes home.

 

6:40. I start searching the region with the Hawkeye, checking out as many contacts as I can. This continues until 7:13, when the third hostile contact identifies itself as hostile by shooting the Hawkeye down. Ack!

 

7:15. Harpoon missiles from the Yafo sink the third hostile contact.

 

8:14. Victory conditions achieved 8:14. I sank all three jihad ships and Haifa did not suffer any attacks.

 

On examining the scenario in the editor later on, it is interesting that the jihad had Osa II missile boats (who was stupid enough to sell these things to terrorists!?) and that both Syria and Egypt also had their own Osa II missile boats in the region. Doubtless, this is a trap being set for players; if one sees the terrorists have Osa II boats but simply starts to shoot at anyone who has an Osa II, you would end up hitting neutral ships and getting in trouble for it.

 

To sum things up, I would say this was a fun scenario, but perhaps not challenging enough. With three A-4s, it is too easy to find and sink all three jihad ships before they can get a shot on either Israeli missile boats or targets in Israel. I lost my Hawkeye, but that was just stupidity on my part. I should have kept the Hawkeye at a distance and used the A-4s to check out any specific suspicious contacts.

 

Thoughts? Observations?

Sorry...forgot to mention, for people unfamiliar with the scenario editor for Harpoon 3 ANW, this is a very simple process. You just use Edit --> Scenario Rebuild --> Rebuild All Units. So it's just one command. It's designed to make updating a scenario from one version of a database to a newer version of the same database simple.