AAR MP: Matrix Siege

 

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This morning I played Matrix Siege against Rene Haar.

 

Matrix Siege is an old Harpoon Classic scene converted to ANW/PlayersDB by Herman Hum. It covers an exercise in the Kattegat between two US warships and about 15 European light frigates and fast attack craft.

 

Rene chose to play Europe and I played the US.

 

I launched my Cobra gunship to start recon took both ships out of the formation and moved them independently south at speeds I hoped would make them mistaken for neutrals.

 

Rene switched on the radars on his Norwegian patrol boats and although they were in Harpoon range, I decided to ignore them as I figured as I moved south I would never come in range of the Norwegian SSMs.

The Cobra worked south and found a pair of enemy FFLs. As I apprached to attack Cobra was shot down! Further Recon would need to be done by my ASW helo.

 

With a perfect solution on two FFLs I fired 6 harpoons and soon both ships were 'presumed sunk'

 

When the ASW helo started picking up over 10 new fast targets I realised I had wasted harpoons on ships without SSMs. From now on I used the harpoons only for the missile boats, igoring the Parchims and other light craft.

 

Out of harpoons I kept coming south and brought my ships back in formation for needed missile defence.

 

Rene must not have had a good solution, as my FFG got to 20nm and destroyed a Norwegian missile boat with SM-2s SAMs!

Then Rene fired 10 Exocets from his remaining two missile boats. All were shot down. Their launchers soon joint them in the deep - again using SM-2s.

 

Now I was in my assigned patrol zone and my 127mm gun made short work of the heavy but poorly armed Parchims. In the end I destroyed 9 ships, reached my objective and lost one helo.

Wow, yesterday was a really busy day on the server. Three separate sessions were played with three different people and we welcomed a new Harpoon ANW player to the MP battlefield, Tracy Vierra.

 

TracyV was eager to start and said that he had been playing for nearly a year so we opted to jump right in with the recently revised Matrix Siege, made with the Harpoon community's favourite database, the PlayersDB.

 

This is an exercise between NATO missile and a USN destroyer/frigate combination. I commanded the polyglot force for NATO.

 

I was hoping to execute a pincer attack from the north and the south at the same time. Unfortunately, Tracy's Super Cobra stumbled upon my northern gunboat screen and revealed my intentions.

 

 

It was shot down, but it also drew and immediate USN reaction. Harpoon missiles slammed into two of them and left them sinking in the Kattegat. Luckily for me, he sank the less useful gunboats and left me with my missile boat intact.

 

 

A second helo came snooping. This one very expertly flown and wisely kept out SAM range. Nicely done, Tracy.

 

 

It was simply maddening to watch this helo sitting outside the edge of SAM coverage while directing a second Harpoon volley. This time, I lost two valuable missile-firing Flyvefiskin missile boats. Arggh, and I didn't have a clue where his ships were!

 

 

Finally, "Radar Contact to the NW Bearing 351!" Even then, they were vague. At the rate I was losing missile boats, I decided to fire now instead of waiting for a simultaneous attack with my northern groups. 24 missiles streaked towards the DDG Burke. Only one, maybe two, got through the withering SAM fire, but it wasn't enough to sink him. My boats immediately turned to run for their lives.

 

 

Only minutes later, the northern group came into range and volleyed their 16 Exocet missile. Once again, the impressive SAM defences swatted them from the sky. However, they did get very close. If only they could have launched together, the groups would have swamped the defences. As it stood, all my SSMs were expended and there was no way a gunboat was going to be able to survive a gun duel with a destroyer.

 

With nothing to stop him, Tracy sailed his force past Laeso Island for victory. A nicely played game for a newbie. Tony Eischens was observing the game and taping it for a soon-to-be-released video. He was also impressed how you managed to kill most SSMs with a single SAM. Great shooting!

 

Welcome to the world of Harpoon MP. Thanks for the game, TracyV, and to HarpGamer for hosting it on their server.

 

Anyone looking for an MP game can drop a line here or look for us on HarpGamer pHp chat room or the HG mIRC chat room.