Novice and old hands mission building support group (you're going to need it)

[Wee Neal 0414]

At the moment I am developing a scenario of a Redfor invasion of Cyprus, which has the bare bones of the above elements. I agree that the ground war should dictate the air strategy, and if we are successful it will feel dynamic and will require ‘on the hoof’ planning and execution. I will look at how we can do this in a sensible timing, as it would be daft to say have a 5 min turnaround for a CAS. This can be managed by setting the Redfor and bluefor as immortal for a period of time to allow planning to take place. Some initial thoughts:

Time 1 - Invasion begins - Requires anti ship strikes and CAS on beach heads for FW. RW proceed to drop troops as QRF and Apache tasking.
Time 2 - Front line established, Beach head established and reinforcements underway - Same as above in terms of FW. RW now dropping JTAC units for realtime calls. This will need some careful scripting to get the ‘right’ tempo.
Time 3 - Established lines Redfor in the East. This phase is probing Recce by both sides and some cap and CAS.

Not thought further than that really?

Neal

[0405 Andrew]

That sounds really cool.

[Wee Neal 0414]

Hi All

just been developing my idea on Cyprus invasion, very much welcome your thoughts:

Phase One - REDFOR build up with a carrier group meandering around the island of cyprus. This is the Recce phase of the campaign. I anticipate Red and Blue conducting probes:

Redfor - Testing the reaction speeds of the Bluefor units. This will be fast takeoff and shadowing of the units. This will also include heli insertion of commando troops at strategic locations. Generally this is a cat and mouse mission, the intention being with ROE weapons Hold.

Bluefor - Finding the carrier fleet and probing its defences; Find its weaknesses. Observe speed of QRF aircraft and generally understand what capabilities they have. RW to patrol and guard our strategic sites around the island. Respond to any reports of the Redfor.


Phase Two - Invasion. Redfor are invading cyprus. Bluefor are to try and counter the Redfor. This is intended to cover:

a. Beach insertion at multiple locations. Look at antiship ops, CAS on beachheads,
b. Commando raids - RW counter commando ops.
c. CAP - Aim to achieve air superiority.


Phase Three - Battle lines drawn and waiting game. The situation has developed and a front line established. The Redfor are consolidating their supply lines and reinforcing their positions . This is a little like a phoney war! The aim of this phase:

a. Redfor - Consolidation and reinforcing, aggressive aerial patrolling of their AO, no super aggressive actions in our AO. Lots of reinforcements going on.
b. Bluefor - Disrupting all of Redfor actions. RW insertion of JTACs and reinforcing strategic ops. FW to find and disrupt lines of communication. Attempt air superiority.

Phase Four - Start of the battle. The battle starts to hot up. The Redfor start aggressive patrolling and dsruption of our lines of communication and neutralising our strategic assets.

a. Redfor. Probing ops against our defences and front line. Commando raids against Bluefor strategic points and locations.
b. Bluefor - Counter all with FW CAS and Cap and RW QRF counter insertions.

Phase Five - Armageddon.

[0405 Andrew]

There's some really interesting scenarios in there. Cyprus is a great area of the Syrian map.

[Black-Witch]

Here is the "Story/Timeline" sheet I made, it helps me to ensure certain things happen at the "right time" and to the "right people".

The other aim for it is to simplify the workload and reduce the complication of multiple events occurring.

There are 4 rows across the top:
Zulu time, for the FRAG.
Map time, used when testing when things occur using fast forward etc.
Seconds, so I can quickly add this to the trigger profiles.
Flight Time, from Take Off, bear in mind this could be different for differently tasked Flights.

There are 11 other rows, these are for each "TASK" allocated to a Flight, for instance 3 Sqn might have a CAP flight and a SEAD Flight, they have a ro each where events are planned.

There are 3 Vertical lines, these first boxes from ?Server Start to Take off are shrunk so that each grid line is 10 minutes, after Take off the timeline is stretched for clarity.

There is a vertical line to show the Server START time, another Line 30 min's later to show when we go to our cockpits and the final line is the Take off Time, when Flight Time starts, and as I aid above the timeline stretches out for a bit more precision.

In each row I draw by hand when that Flight takes off, in Blue, and when it arrives at its TASK, say "On CAP" or "Time over Target" then its Flight time back to land after that task.
In that same row, in Red, I draw how I want the enemy to interact with them and work back to when that enemy unit STARTS.

I call meeting the enemy an "Event Point".

In this way I can clearly see how I've planned events to occur and see that for each Blue unit.

To test the enemies time to get to an "event point" I set them as the only unit on the map and time when they actually get to the "event Point" as the ME doesn't allow a realistic time for say 8 Su-25's to take off. I also write this time into the row, so if I have to change their start time I know how much to alter it by, say After getting a MIZ file back from a Sqn that's different to what I expected them to do I can then adjust the enemy to make sure they still meet at that event point.

Do ask questions if you have any and feel free to try it out and recommend any changes you'd like.

[0405 Andrew]

I like it, any chance of showing an example, maybe on the 5th.

[john (scooby)]

is there anyway to actually have troops running up a beach? or at least apcs etc??

[Duke]

Definitely have troops and apcs moving up a beach. Just make sure to use amphibious apcs and have them come ashore from somewhere then have some trigger circles where they slip down and triggers spawn in some troops around them to move up the beach

[Wee Neal 0414]

I like the timeline spreadsheet, I think I will look at developing one for land ops?