SeaQueen, advice please

[XabbaRus]

I have started a new scenario for the FFG.

It is based in the Straits of Hormuz and you are doing shipping patrol, basically tooling around keeping tabs on what shipping is up to, keeping an eye on the Iranians.

Now taking heed of what you said about putting in a political situation wher it could be war or not I am trying to think about what triggers I want to put in it.

Afterall I don't want a scenario where the player for x number of hours and does nothing by the end.

I suppose with the FG it would be a detection problem to be solved.

Thing is would the Iranians have Kilos plugging about in the Straits and if yes why?

I would expect the Iranians to have more surface patrol vessels tootling about on their side of the Straits but I am trying to figure a credible way of them doing their patrols.

I don't want too many triggers especially ones that depend on another to be fired.

So any pearls of wisdom. I am trying to use random locations etc but this is where I start to fall down.

There is a CVGB in the Gulf itself. Using randomly generated groups I was wondering if it would be a good idea to have US aircraft flying patrol patterns in the gulf with maybe one or two of them having a flightpath that would take it into Iranian airspace resulting in a confrontation that would then present the player with the decision of whether to attack Iranian vessels or not? I don't want it to be too scripted and this seems like a step down that road though maybe a necessary one.

[SeaQueen]

Thing is would the Iranians have Kilos plugging about in the Straits and if yes why?


They'd at least be training. If you can check on nautical chart of the Straits. I suspect the Iranian government would have some annotation on it, about where the submarines train or at least where you might guess they would train, in the interest of them not getting plowed under by a supertanker while they're at periscope depth.
:D


I would expect the Iranians to have more surface patrol vessels tootling about on their side of the Straits but I am trying to figure a credible way of them doing their patrols.


Lately my fascinatination has been with small boat swarms. There's an article in the Spring 2006 issue of Surface Warfare magazine called, "Tactics in the Littoral" that describes a small boat attack. You might be able to find it at a good library in a navy town, but you can also find it at:

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/cno/n86

Lately their site hasn't been working so good, though. It'll be up eventually. You just have to keep trying. The scenario in the article uses LCS instead of FFG, but if we substitute in FFG it works just the same.

I'm actually working on a scenario based directly on that article. That's why I was having the suicide boat problem. :-) It's very present day, "Global War on Terrorism," oriented. It's basically a 21st century Tanker Wars scenario.

There was also a book that had some good stuff in it, regarding Persian Gulf sorts of things. It was called, Strike from the Sea. It had some good stuff in there from Operation Praying Mantis, and the tanker wars. You might also be able to deduce some stuff from Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat about missile boats. Do you disperse them or concentrate them? It's more theoretical in that book, though.

I hope that helps. It guess it's sort of answering your question without really answering your question.


So any pearls of wisdom. I am trying to use random locations etc but this is where I start to fall down.


What are you trying to do?

I've found that using nested dynamic groups is often an easier way to randomly locate groups of warships. Single units, I use dynamic locations or random start boxes.


There is a CVGB in the Gulf itself. Using randomly generated groups I was wondering if it would be a good idea to have US aircraft flying patrol patterns in the gulf with maybe one or two of them having a flightpath that would take it into Iranian airspace resulting in a confrontation that would then present the player with the decision of whether to attack Iranian vessels or not? I don't want it to be too scripted and this seems like a step down that road though maybe a necessary one.

Yeah... I think that if in the briefing it's clear that there's some uncertainty in the intentions of the opposing forces, it will drive the point home a lot more effectively than having a bunch of things going on around you that leave you thinking, "what the heck is going on there?" My experience is that it's difficult to read the minds of the AIs, and they often don't do exactly what they're told to do anyhow. Unless you plan on the whole battlegroup letting fly (i.e. the whole war starting) they're probably extraneous. I don't think it's a good idea to have AIs in a scenario solely to act out a plot, because when that part of the plot is done, they're still there, and they often do unanticipated things.

If a US fighter straying over Iranian airspace IS the point of contention, though, you should tell them that, but you don't need to say how long ago it was. It could have been last week, for all the players care, the point is that the Iranians are really hacked off about it and now they're harassing you with small groups of warships. I might not even put the CVBG on the map. With a striking range of hundreds of miles, they don't need to be in the Gulf necessarily.

You need to really emphasize the rules of engagement. Other than that, so long as you can find a way to get the opposing forces to approach and track the players, without necessarily opening fire, I think that will be okay.