|
Invisible unkillable dragons would actually be an interesting conundrum. Don't worry about coming down too hard on us when we do stupid things like start de facto wars with superpowers. Worse comes to worst, we pack everything in the back of the transport plane and fly off in the middle of the night. That said, I think the key to our long-term success here is flattening Lhasa. That intercept makes it sound like it's the last thing letting the Chinese keep ahold of the region, so taking it out both secures our air superiority and basically guarantees India gets their way in Tibet. I mean, India might no longer need our services at that point but I figure we can at least get another mission or two out of them against the dregs of the TLA and a nice fat end-of-contract payout. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Apr 9, 2017 |
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 02:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 08:44 |
|
|
You realizing BOMBING THE DE JURE CAPITAL OF THE DISPUTED REGION is a good way to get everybody gunning for us, right?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 02:26
|
|
|
Well, just the airfield... And the Indians love us while the other two already hate us anyways.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 02:27
|
|
|
As much as I love the Frogfeet, I gotta say no to the museum buy. The MiG23s are more trouble than their worth
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 03:04
|
|
|
Davin Valkri posted:You realizing BOMBING THE DE JURE CAPITAL OF THE DISPUTED REGION is a good way to get everybody gunning for us, right? Bomb the base...bomb the capital....bomb everything 
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 03:36
|
|
|
Davin Valkri posted:You realizing BOMBING THE DE JURE CAPITAL OF THE DISPUTED REGION is a good way to get everybody gunning for us, right? To hell with it anyways, we've already sunk a Chinese frigate. I don't think bombing their airbase is going to make it much worse for us.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 03:40
|
|
|
Voting no on the Russian museum pieces. We already have the drones
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 03:41
|
|
|
Davin Valkri posted:You realizing BOMBING THE DE JURE CAPITAL OF THE DISPUTED REGION is a good way to get everybody gunning for us, right? There's definitely a way to do go after the Lhasa airbase with an alpha strike. It's going to be challenging and require some pretty precise planning. But it's doable. Basically, I'd do this: 1. Send in the UAVs to recon the area -- focusing on finding enemy SAMs and AAA. 2. Fly in SEAD flight of two Gripens at low level with Mjolnir standoff munitions. They blow up as many radars, SAMs, and AA guns as possible. Cover them with a high CAP of Gripens with Meteors to deal with Chinese interceptors. 3. Then, send in a low-level strike package of Gripens and Phantoms to hit the base, focusing on killing aircraft on the ground. If we think we can sanitize their airspace, we give them bombs for max mayhem. If not, we give them Mavericks and Mjolrnirs. 4. If things are clear enough, we send in the RB 60s and the Frogfoots at low level loaded to the gills with ordnance to pound facilities. If we get the Ukrainian planes, we'd send them in with this wave to hit hangars, buildings, and fuel storage. It's a shame we lost those Durandal runway-killers in shipping... There are 17 countries that have some in stock, so it might be possible to beg, buy, bargain, or steal some. Let's hold off making a decision about the Ukrainians and the RB 60 sale until we know more about the potential target and how soon we can get the new birds delivered. If we're making an alpha strike, having lots of aircraft with lots of bombs is good. Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Apr 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:03
|
|
|
Kill the stealth aircraft on the ground its the only way to be sure. The terrain is pretty mountainous, how close can we get while masking ourselves from the SAMs?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:12
|
|
|
Yooper posted:I'm not going to make a scenario that requires us to fly against an unstoppable, undetectable, unkillable dragon. And here I was about to draft a plan involving using unarmed SK60s to draw them out so we could intercept them after they winchester. Best thing those SK60s would ever do  Getting artillery fire or some other first strike onto Lhasa airbase sounds like a good way to both take out the J20s and utterly gently caress international relations in the area so I am 100% behind that idea. e: vvvv this would count! If we buy the museum castoffs, are those available after the next mission like the last purchase was? power crystals fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Apr 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:17
|
|
|
Or you know, have your newly purchased Ground Troops do a raid...
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:19
|
|
|
I say yes to the museum pieces. If things stay as they are, we probably won't want to send them on any missions. But when we pay for our hubris and get smacked down for tangling with a full-sized military, we'll want whatever we can scramble together. I wouldn't mind having to run a few scrounging missions somewhere where those things might be usable. Or we just sell them off. I think it's a decent investment for the business.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:30
|
|
|
So just went through and read the whole thread after seeing it pop up. Two quick thoughts: sinking the ships cost a 37 million dollar fighter and induced the Chinese to deploy frontline assets into the theater. It may have been a good choice because there is a distinct lack of SEAD aircraft available, but it also introduced a new threat that there isn't an answer for. Maybe escalation isn't the right call every single time. On the other hand bombing PLA units would of most likely raised our threat level to a serious enough level that there would be something of this nature to worry about. Museum Deal: Hard pass. As we've seen over and over with the sk80s several generations ago hardware just doesn't get the job done and cost a lot to replace. The only way I could foresee this purchase working out is if we knew that the J-20s were going to be limited to deep inside PLA territory, but with the shoot down of the IAF planes that seems super unlikely. Save the 20 million for the replacement gripen. If we were going up against a dictator in Africa with a third rate Air Force maybe, but we're already too big and modern for those operations to make sense. We are honestly pretty much locked into super high end missions unless we just ground the high end part of the fleet.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:31
|
|
|
Can we do missions preemptively, or are we limited to the scenarios you outline, Yooper? A strike on the airfield at Lhasa ASAP might keep the Chinese at bay long enough for the Indians and Tibetans to win the ground war. And at that point I figure we'll have completed our contract and can get out.Phi230 posted:Or you know, have your newly purchased Ground Troops do a raid... This is also a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:33
|
|
|
Finally getting around to watching the mission. Thoughts as I come up with them. Oshit a webcam! Who's this handsome fellow? Our S 100 classified that Chinese frigate just by contact emissions! We've already got a pretty good ELINT platform, as long as we don't let her get shot down! Hah, that frigate didn't even have any AA weapons aside from guns. We could've completely ignored it. 16:50 If you wanted to, you can even specify the exact course a cruise missile takes! When manually allocating a missile (Shift-F1), there's a "Plot Course" button under the top-right panel. This is good for cruise missiles you want to make fly down a valley. 28:40 They might not have launched missiles on Ventura because it's a chase, so the missiles still didn't actually have the kinematic range. We probably should have had Whiskey Golf and Ventura allowed to drop external stores to try to dodge missiles. Ventura dodges his first missile! Final PH = 10%, so Ventura did a really good job at kinematically defeating the missile! This is the exact same type of missile that was sent at Whiskey Golf, but it had an 80% PH then because WG didn't see it and try to dodge. And LOL: "Sea-skimmer modifier." I've only seen that when trying to hit anti ship missiles. Good job, Ventura! As pointed out, would've been nice to try to conserve Meteors and only send one towards each target. 31:50 When planes are at really odd altitudes, check if you have them manually set to an altitude. I think Unicorn had "follow terrain AGL" too. I like to set planes to auto speed and altitude unless I'm sure I know what I'm doing better than the AI. Ventura dodges the second missile with PH 30%. Lucky guy! Wow, he manages to completely evade the seeker of the third missile! Really good piloting there. I have no idea why Unicorn is staying at low altitude even though you've manually set him to try to reach high altitude. But once you let him to auto he started climbing. Also, it's good that you left his speed on auto -- pilots will dogfight and try to stay on their target's 6 o'clock, but with manual speed they'll fly right past and into the enemy's gunsights! Your pilots have doctrine set to ignore plotted course when attacking. That's why Unicorn wasn't listening to you when you told him to open some distance! I think the tanker refuel % was set a too high. Stool Pidgeon should have gone offensive rather than bore straight for the tanker he just finished topping off at. Unicorn's first missile hit at a 30% chance. His luck's holding up! Uh oh, his second missile missed! Now it's 1v1 in the merge, with no missiles, and no wingman! (Stool Pidgeon!!!  )Lol, now Unicorn is glued to 36,000 ft and his target is on the deck! Please reset these planes to auto altitude more often! Okay, seriously, Stool Pidgeon is at 50% gas, and the tanker is right there! He does not need to fuel at higher priority than helping his wingman. It's really lucky that Unicorn kept that JF-17 scared and on the deck, otherwise that JF-17 could have gone on an unopposed murder spree and taken out our Big Pig and I-Spy. Heh. Once that JF-17 was RTB Bingo, he went back up to cruise altitude and flew right up into Unicorn's gunsights. If he had stayed at surface level, he would have been able to slip away unscathed. 52:00 Uh uh, MANPADS launch on our SK 60Bs! This is exactly what I was hoping to avoid in my Charlie plan by putting SEAD at high priority. We could have let Ventura use his LGBs before landing. Next time we can be more explicit that this is allowed. Yeah, as you discovered, Quick Turnaround has to be enabled before the planes launch. A bit of target prioritization and LGB rationing would have been nice, but people mentioned that already. 1:10:00 Sometimes you have to tell platforms to "Disengage all" and then manually prioritize (F1 or Shift-F1) to make sure that they'll go after a specific target first. If you just F1 target something, they'll just add it to the queue of targets to hit. (And then use all their munitions on the first target in the queue anyway.) Overall Thoughts The Paveway/CAP missions were patrolling directly overhead the enemy forces. In this case, with a very permissive AA environment, that worked out pretty well because it let them keep scanning the ground with their targeting pods. In the future we might want to make sure they don't stick around a dangerous environment. Considering we got two CAS sorties out without quick turnaround, we could potentially have gotten six sorties per plane. Combined with really smart targeting priority and autism-level micromanagement of weapons release, we could have potentially destroyed absolutely everything on the ground, to the point that the last few sorties would have had nothing left to bomb. Personally, I'm happy with the damage we did, even when the missions were done on mostly automatic settings. Getting out 6 sorties per CAS plane might have felt too gamey. Yooper, you might have to be careful about allowing quick turnaround in the future. As it was, I feel like there was a definite tradeoff between going for the secondary mission or not -- the 4 Gripens sent off to bomb freighters could have blown up a few extra platoons of tanks with Mavericks instead, but we chose not to do that. We got really lucky in the Indian Sea. (And that's despite losing Whiskey Golf after Mig-21s dodged 3 out of 4 missiles!) - I think Unicorn should have been left on auto altitude -- AI are usually smart enough to match their target's altitude when going A2A. - Stool Pidgeon went back to tanker at the worst time. Considering the IRIS-T had a 37% and 41% chance to hit, Unicorn had a 48% of being stuck in a 1v1, and a 37% chance of a 2v1 against him! If the coin flip had gone the other way, the JF-17's wingmate would have been free to shoot down Unicorn, Stool Pidgeon would have been an easy kill as he beelined for Big Pig with half-full gas tanks, and then Big Pig and I-Spy would have been sitting ducks. As it was, Unicorn did a really good job of spooking the remaining JF-17 until Bingo fuel, despite being ordered to stick to 36,000 ft. - We might have to be more explicit in the future that pilots are allowed to jettison external stores when dodging missiles. - Yooper is a pretty talented Radar analyst! I had been heavily advocating for sending Gripens with lots of fuel, minimal weight, and FLIR pods to positively ID the Chinese freighters, but you managed to get the right freighters just by their Radar track!. (This could have been borderline cheating, with Yooper remembering what the mission looked like when he created it! )A couple final mission production notes: Gripen pilots didn't keep trying to RTB Winchester after their A2G weapons were used. This looked like it worked out pretty well! Your voice audio and game audio balance was much better. (Probably why nobody commented on it!)
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:55
|
|
|
At the moment, somehow, the vote for the museum scrapheap is tied 15-15. Why we would want these things I don't know, they're not
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 04:59
|
|
|
Also could you upload the missions after the fact? It would be fun to play around with them. e: Buy the lovely planes
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 05:04
|
|
|
I vote No on that Ukrainian deal. Lets see if we can't possibly get better gear for the future. Could Jack see if the Canadian have anything locked away in the tundra we could borrow, or could maybe the Indians see about parting with a few of their jets? They have a pretty diverse and NATO friendly arsenal along with some fun Warsaw Pact era stuff since they had their dammed neutrality. Yooper, I love the LP, the production efforts here really make it something special, please keep up the awesome work!  Also we need to tell our pilots that if they have a turkey shoot, they can be thrifty with their laser guided bombs and slowly pick away at targets, no need to atomize infantry platoons that have already been splatted!
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 05:07
|
|
|
I vote a very strong NO on buying the Ukrainian crap. Nothing but useless piles of junk that will waste operating expenses and fuel and get good pilots killed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 05:35
|
|
|
Hey, Unicorns are lucky creatures, even if they only like [combat] virgins! [That's why I picked that callsign  ]
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 05:50
|
|
|
I also vote no on the Ukrainian purchase, though I'm tempted to advocate using them to sponge the first round of missile fire.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 06:08
|
|
|
Davin Valkri posted:Hey, Unicorns are lucky creatures, even if they only like [combat] virgins! [That's why I picked that callsign Well, your luck sure served you well in this mission! But before we send you back out we're going to have to play you a Sesame Street video about the difference between HIGH and LOW.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 06:15
|
|
|
I also have an analysis on planes we might want to try and acquire based on this mission, note they are more low key, but I feel are just as, if not more critical to our long term success as a PMC Logistics I think this most recent mission demonstrated that more than anything, we need some more logistical assets for our budding mercenary air force as quickly as possible. Currently we are just rocking one KC135, it took about three of these kinds of planes to make this mission over the Bay of Bengal possible and we only got those two refuels from India thanks to bribes/favors. We cannot rely on that for the future. We should, when we can, prioritize getting some more KC135's or even some KC-130's (basically a supped up Hercules or even an IL-78. Pretty much the more aviation fueling assets we can get our hands on, the more mission possibilities open up for us in the future, be it either more legitimate hunter killer missions like this one, or possible eco-pirate raids I know a bunch of us are eager to get into in the Bering Sea. If we do the later then having extra capabilities to refuel our craft over sea and air will be critical, or if we stick to more legitimate operations, having more extended range is key. Maritime Patrol I know I harped on it the last time I posted, but I do think we have a niche to fill here and we will want to fill it ASAP. Maritime patrol covered a wide array of areas when it comes to aviation missions, but suffice to say it includes attacking warships, attacking subs, striking and targets and doing advance recon with radar and other mission packages. In addition, almost all MPAs will mount internal bays that can carry a number of heavy anti-ship missiles or torpedoes to accomplish their mission. A P-3 for example can carry almost 20,000 lbs of ordinance. I bring this all up because if we find ourselves out to sea more with missions like the Bay of Bengal mission, having assets like the P-3 or other craft would be immensely helpful as they can perform recon and also sink other shipping targets. In short, we can possibly get a plane that performs similarly to our scout plane, while at the same time it can enagage targets. If we find them, the Breguet-Atlantic the P-3 Orion or the C-295 all fit the bill for stuff we'd want out of a dedicated martime patrol plane. If we could digging a Nimrod out of storage would also be nice, but most of those have been scrapped. Alternatively, if we need, and its more feasible for our small ops, finding a pair of S-3 Vikings would give us a scaled down MPA capability on a strike fighter package. Transportation This hasn't really come into play yet, but currently we are using only one CN-235. Its not a bad transportation plane, but with a maximum payload of only 12,100 lbs, we have a plane with only 1/4 the capacity of a Hercules. Yooper mentioned that these kinds of planes might or might not have some kind of interface with the other LP, so we might want to keep in mind our logistical line with these planes. That and who knows if we ever need to rapidly transport more Meteors or other assorted weaponry to the front having more cargo planes would be nice to have, that or if we get more humanitarian aid runs, having a small fleet would be nice. If we can, lets look into getting some surplus C-160's. They have a payload similar to a Hercules, and most have been maintained until recently with a lot of European countries ditching these for the latest gizmo dreamed up in the Airbus laboratories. Baring that, getting some AN-12's could work too, or getting additional CN-235's. Or we could just find some spare C-130's in some boneyard and fix them up. There are drat near 3000 of the drat things made, and nearly 2/3rds of the planet either operate them or operated them at one point or another.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 06:22
|
|
|
We could convert an old airliner into a tanker and end up with something like either the Iranian KC-707s, the Dutch KDC-10s or Omega Air's 707s.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 06:47
|
|
|
Voting Yes on Ukrainian aircraft purchase.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 06:53
|
|
|
No on the museum buy
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 06:57
|
|
|
Only buy the craptastic museum pieces if they can be converted into drones and then used as missiles and missile sponges.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:31
|
|
|
Everyone voting for the garbage planes should be forced to pilot them if we end up buying them
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:47
|
|
|
There are better, cheaper ways. The F-16 has the ADM-160, a pylon-mounted drone that can fly on a predetermined flight path and can have radar reflectors set up on it so it looks like an aircraft.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:47
|
|
|
Vando posted:Everyone voting for the garbage planes should be forced to pilot them if we end up buying them Not an emptyquote
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:50
|
|
|
Voting for No On the old stuff. As a non participant in the thread mind!
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:52
|
|
|
Switching from Yes to No on museum buy I want to save our cash for when we're out of theatre.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:54
|
|
|
One more thing on the museum jets: they've got engines that produce a ridiculous amount of smoke. If you want an example, check out what the Polish MiG-29s are like. This is a bit of a problem in a dogfight as you're leaving a big long black trail leading right up to you.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 08:59
|
|
|
Do not buy those planes. It hurts me to say this.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 09:11
|
|
|
simplefish posted:Voting no on the museum buy. I was expecting a couple of helicopters really. Inasmuch as I disagree with you on the museum buy (Fulcrums  ), I have to say everything else you say is true. Maybe we should hit up the Brits and see if they're satisfied enough with their F-35s that they'd be willing to part with the Eurofighters...
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 09:35
|
|
|
I agree with No to the museum pieces. Press photo of Hired Goons tactical aircraft captured during 
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 09:38
|
|
|
We wouldn't get Typhoons off the Brits, though, at least not the actually useful ones. We'd probably get Tornadoes if they haven't all been RTP'd by now. http://cmano-db.com/aircraft/3626/ The Typhoons we would get. Very specialised aircraft with zero A2G capability. Quinntan fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Apr 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 09:40
|
|
|
Yooper, on a forum filled with excellent (some may stretch the definition) LPs, I think you've really hit it out of the park with yours. Did you actually put down  for voice actors?Anyway I don't think anyone has signed up for the old standby Maverick yet, if it's been taken can I be Zandris? And a question for the planegoons, I know it's been mentioned this edition of CMANO doesn't do damage modelling, but in modern air combat, how likely is it for a fighter to survive a missile hit? Is any significant hit pretty much fatal or can fighters be reasonably expected to limp back missing wings/tails? Also is ejecting and SAR modelled in CMANO?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 09:59
|
|
|
Not very. Aircraft have always been relatively delicate, with some exceptions. Making the plane stronger by necessity makes it heavier, which has significant costs in terms of range and performance.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 10:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 08:44 |
|
|
No to crusty old garbage planes. Save our money.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2017 11:20
|
|
