Fiery Cross Island

[Suhiir]

Fiery Cross - South China Sea
Date: April 1, 2019

The International Court finally decided Fiery Cross Reef (now Island thanks to China) belongs jointly to both China and the the Phillipines. The island is to be demilitarized and each nation is to receive half of any and all revenues generated from fishing, oil, and anything else within it's waters.
Jubulant, the Phillipine government dispatched a team to the island to assert it's claim. Unfortunately they were met not with diplomats but with gunfire. China has refused to comply with the Internation Court ruling.
As an ally of the Phillipines the U.S.A. sent demands to China to immediately remove all weapons (which according to China were't there in the first place) from the Island. The deadline expired at midnight March 31st.

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Think of this as a beta test.

Amphibious operations are VERY hard to balance game wise.
Too many ATGMs and it's over before you hit the beach, and rarely will the attacking force be inadequate to the task so it's kind of an assured victory. The real question is what losses do you take in the process?

So ... questions ...
Scenario to long/short?
Chinese forces a challenge or is it a cakewalk?
Anything not included in the scenario you would have expected?

[lukerduker123]

Playing through it now! Only on turn five but things are turning out pretty swell! I'll post a full blow-by-blow once I'm finished.

[lukerduker123]

So, fifteen turns in, kind of sweeping the Chinese most everywhere. A few things to think about.

1. Ammo. I'm running seriously low on ammo for my Abrams tanks. Perhaps having an AAVP7 ammo carrier would help?

2. Air superiority. It is laughably easy to take out the Chinese SAM teams and establish air superiority. Perhaps add a few static SAMs? Even if they get KO'd by the SEAD they'd still pose a threat for a few turns. Maybe have them as reinforcements.

3. Why are all the ZTZ-99s KO'd from the start? I only encountered one that wasn't abandoned on the beach, and this was easily dispatched by a viper. Perhaps having three or four up and running rather than one would make the scenario more challenging.

4. Perhaps adding a few shelter bunkers and foxholes would make the landing more difficult without sinking the AAVPs before they can disgorge their infantry. Right now it feels far, far too easy to sweep the Chinese aside, and they feel rather sparse on the ground. There's no real point where I had to stop, pull back, and redress my line to launch another attack. I just keep pushing and pushing, using my venoms to draw out the enemies which I bash with either my Abrams, AAVPs, or vipers.

Overall I like the scenario so far! It's not all that difficult, but that's not exactly a bad thing. After that airport scenario of yours I'll take an easy smash over a hard, grueling series of attacks and counter-attacks any day.

[Suhiir]

Thanks for the input.

1. I'm sure an ammo carrier would help, pity you don't get one
2. I think it's safe to assume aircraft from carriers and the Philipines would make US air superiority a given, and eliminate any heavy (i.e. area SAM) air defenses.
3. Hard to hide a tank on a barren pile of sand, so like the heavy air defenses they're sorta toast ... guess they missed one tho.
4. The Chinese are all dug in, and most of the bunkers suffered the same fate as the air defenses and tanks. In fact there were several on the island, you may have noticed a number of piles of rubble.

As I said, balancing such a scenario is a pain. Your comments are certainly valid, but I hope you see the logic behind my responses. Between satellites and UAVs we probably know what they ate for breakfast and have certainly watched each and every bunker during it's construction. Were this someplace that didn't suffer such intense scrutiny I'm certain more of the fixed defenses would have survived.

But, I added a few more fixed fortifications and a non-radar guided SAM.

Thanks again.

P.S.
Glad you enjoyed the airfield scenario.

[lukerduker123]

I can understand all that! It's strategic level combat changing how the tactical level works. Still, those are my two cents. The scenario is excellent, especially the map. It's a classic I hope to see in the next update.

[shahadi]

A topical scenario given the USN had two warships,the destroyer Higgins and the cruiser Antietam engaged in "freedom of navigation operations" just a few days ago during the week of 27 May 2018 around the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by lukerduker123

I can understand all that! It's strategic level combat changing how the tactical level works. Still, those are my two cents. The scenario is excellent, especially the map. It's a classic I hope to see in the next update.

I didn't do the map.
A while back I had the idea for the scenario but map making isn't my thing so I asked if someone was interested in making one and Grant1pa was kind enough to do so.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by shahadi

A topical scenario given the USN had two warships,the destroyer Higgins and the cruiser Antietam engaged in "freedom of navigation operations" just a few days ago during the week of 27 May 2018 around the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

And this is exactly why I wanted to do the scenario.
China is betting no one is willing to risk all out war so they keep pushing and pushing. The trouble is, much like we saw in the 30's until someone stands up and says "No" they'll just keep pushing and eventually everyone will wake up one morning to a real disaster and say "How did that happen?"

[RetLT]

Fun scenario.

I had some OOB issues.

All of the support gunships and the LCMs did not have graphics.

Several of the company commanders (0 units) also did not have graphics. In addition they acted as vehicles (knocking down buildings) and played the sounds of horse drawn units.

I am not sure if the issue is my PC or an OOB issue. I have the latest patch.

As far as balance it was a bit of a cake walk. Slow steady advance using the helos to spot enemy units and direct fire to kill them worked for me. Without the helos it would have been more of a challenge.

[Suhiir]

I waited till the 2018 patch to release this as it uses some newly added units, but everything is from the default OOBs (tho sometimes edited a bit) so the lack of graphics is odd.

Hopefully the additional fortifications and SAM make it a bit less of a cakewalk.

I take it the lack of ammo resupply wasn't much of an issue for you?