File Name: block1.zip

File Submitter: Warhorse64

File Submitted: 6 Aug 2008

File Category: NACV

DB Used: HCDB-080712

Authors: Warhorse64

Battleset-NACV: .scn - EC2003 - EC2003

 

In the summer of 2019 Iran's nuclear weapons program was finally about to bear fruit. Israel used nukes to halt it. Outraged, the world imposed a complete embargo on Israel. The United States decided to break the embargo, by force if necessary.

 

Inspired by, but not quite based upon, a series of posts by Christopher Irvine on the HULL mailing list a few years back. Thanks, Chris!

 

 

Click here to download this file

[CV32: SPOILER ALERT!]

 

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I gave this scenario a run through and managed to win it with 6 hours to spare.

 

I liked the time limit. It doesn't give you much leeway. However, some of the submarines do look 'out of position'. If the player is going to be forced to take a direct route to the objective, I don't know if having submarines patrolling areas that the player simply has no time to reach is a good allocation of resources. The subs I'm thinking about are the ones on the southern edge of the map and the ones assigned to the Azores.

 

I saw three Trafalgar subs end up in the Great Lakes. I don't know if they simply ran out of plotted path or what. They were doing 30 kts, so I guess they were evading a torp.

 

The Cruise Missile attacks by Red were really impressive. I nearly soiled myself when I saw 300 ALCMs inbound on ConUS. Conversely, the JASSM is super strong and the weapon of choice for smashing down the red bases. As long as I took circuitous routes around the defenses and CAP, I could pretty much attack unmolested as AI just doesn't seem able to defend very well against these weapons.

 

The twelve tankers you included allowed me to always take the long way around on any target I chose. The ones in Russia were the toughest. I was always worried that the Tankers would get detected while the bombers did not.

 

The UK defenses were superbly laid out. I lost most of my bombers while striking UK targets. The fighters were often position right where the bombers' release points were.

 

The Bombers might be just a bit too strong as they left few targets for the CVBG wings.

 

There are Mi-17 Hip EW helicopters aboard the American ships. Is this intentional?

 

Regardless, it's a fun scen. Thanks for sharing it. I hope that these comments help and do not hurt.

Herman, thanks for the report. Don't worry, I find your comments helpful and not hurtful in the least! I have NO! IDEA! what those three Trafalgars were doing in the great lakes, it sure wasn't anything *I* told them to do ...

 

The other subs were placed where they were because we have different ideas about what constitutes a 'direct route', I think. My thought was that the departure and destination areas are at roughly the same latitude, and so the path would stay at roughly that latitude all the way across, which would take blue forces right through the middle of the Azores. You seem to have taken more of a great circle route, which in retrospect is perhaps more logical, but for some reason just never occurred to me. As a result, a lot of the subs would have been out of position for you. I'll fix that if I do a version 1.1.

 

I thought long and hard about whether to include the bombers, because I knew they would be very powerful. In the end, I left them in for several reasons. First, I was trying fairly hard to keep realistic OOBs, and by that criterion there should actually have been a bunch more of them. Second, there was a decent chance that the player wouldn't have them all that long, because their likely targets were well defended and there base was on the Red strike schedule. Last, the F-35Cs have JASSMs too, and with refueling have about double the range of most of what might come after the carriers. In the end, about the only bases not really vulnerable to carrier air were the ones in the Kola.

 

The Hip EW helos are there deliberately. I had originally used EH-60 Quick Fix birds instead, but since they don't have an on-board radar at the moment, they can't actually jam anything due to a game mechanic glitch. The idea was to give the LHDs an organic jamming capability, incase the Growlers were all busy or dead.

 

Once again, thanks for your comments, and I'm glad you enjoyed the scen.

The other subs were placed where they were because we have different ideas about what constitutes a 'direct route', I think. My thought was that the departure and destination areas are at roughly the same latitude, and so the path would stay at roughly that latitude all the way across, which would take blue forces right through the middle of the Azores. You seem to have taken more of a great circle route, which in retrospect is perhaps more logical, but for some reason just never occurred to me. As a result, a lot of the subs would have been out of position for you. I'll fix that if I do a version 1.1.

IIRC, I think that all I did was plot a single line path directly to Gibraltar from each task grouping. I don't think that the paths ever led anywhere near the Azores.

 

I wish Christopher much luck with his book so that we can have some sequels for some more scenarios.

Looking back, I think the reason for doing the way I did was that way back when the Harpoon Designers' Series battlesets were the latest and greatest thing, I had tried plotting a similar straight line course acoss the southern part of the NACV map for long range aircraft, and found that for some reason they would fly off the bottom of the map about halfway between Bermuda and the Azores. Ever since then I've been very leery of long straight-line courses in that part of that map ...

Still working my way through this one. I'll post some comments or an AAR eventually.

Still working my way through this one. I'll post some comments or an AAR eventually.

 

Looking forward to it. I took me a while to work through, too ...

[CV32: SPOILER ALERT!]

 

*

*

*

*

*

*

 

I gave this scenario a run through and managed to win it with 6 hours to spare.

 

I liked the time limit. It doesn't give you much leeway. However, some of the submarines do look 'out of position'. If the player is going to be forced to take a direct route to the objective, I don't know if having submarines patrolling areas that the player simply has no time to reach is a good allocation of resources. The subs I'm thinking about are the ones on the southern edge of the map and the ones assigned to the Azores.

 

I saw three Trafalgar subs end up in the Great Lakes. I don't know if they simply ran out of plotted path or what. They were doing 30 kts, so I guess they were evading a torp.

 

The Cruise Missile attacks by Red were really impressive. I nearly soiled myself when I saw 300 ALCMs inbound on ConUS. Conversely, the JASSM is super strong and the weapon of choice for smashing down the red bases. As long as I took circuitous routes around the defenses and CAP, I could pretty much attack unmolested as AI just doesn't seem able to defend very well against these weapons.

 

The twelve tankers you included allowed me to always take the long way around on any target I chose. The ones in Russia were the toughest. I was always worried that the Tankers would get detected while the bombers did not.

 

The UK defenses were superbly laid out. I lost most of my bombers while striking UK targets. The fighters were often position right where the bombers' release points were.

 

The Bombers might be just a bit too strong as they left few targets for the CVBG wings.

 

There are Mi-17 Hip EW helicopters aboard the American ships. Is this intentional?

 

Regardless, it's a fun scen. Thanks for sharing it. I hope that these comments help and do not hurt.

playing this one right now.12 bombers doesn't give you much long range strike capability