At the start I immediately put all my forces on attacking enemy airbases, I wanted to gain air superiority as that's the only way to cleanly win a war. I first opened the OOB, choose DPRK airbases and started systematically target the ones with squadrons in them. BTW in real life terms, do commanders have this correct information what squadrons are located in what airbase, somehow to me it feels little bit as cheating, as you know even the numbers of aircraft's left in the squadron. Of course depending on a theater, it would be quite insane task to start taking out all the airbases.
Well it was somewhat task to get all the airbases out and there naturally was a lot of enemy aircraft's flying at that point. Finally the planes landed or were shot down. I did most of my OCA strikes (if not all) with F-16 50/52 squadrons as they are capable strike fighters with BLU-107's.
Now comes the first question; if plane takes off from airbase, then the airbase is destroyed, what happens to the plane in the air, can it still successfully land in 3D/2D or does it get destroyed too, or is the campaign engine so smart it will divert it to a working airbase? (edit: I actually asked this question and got few answers already in Destroyed runway, can in flight planes land? topic).
In AF it seems that sometimes the OOB page doesn't show real percentage of how the airbase has been repaired. Few times I witnessed completely destroyed 0% condition airbase, yet there were planes in 2D flying sorties from this base. I had to then blindly task OCA strikes to that base to shut it down again. I was wondering, is that a bug or realistic feature to show out dated reconnaissance information, like your last information from some source (overflying other package, or specific recon flight tasked to BDA etc for this base) from this objective shows 0% status, but in the mean time engineering units have repaired the runways... dunno, I doubt it but would be cool if that would be the case.
When I was tasking my AWACS/JSTARS stations, I tracked down some data about their time on station. I found out from Frugals forum that they should be capable of these station times:
AWACS station times before they run out of fuel:
E2C Hawkeye - 7 hrs
E3C Sentry - 12.5 hrs
E8C JSTARS - 19 hrs
Anyways in my campaign then the ground units from the right flank started to advance, it was quite strange because I didn't even put so much support in that area, there was nothing happening and I was focusing on the heavy front line on the left side. But yeah all of the sudden I noticed that my units are breaking through in the right flank towards Wonsan.
Then I started to hit the OPFOR with some CAS strikes to clear the path and it was very successful, there wasn't many units left so my forces proceeded to Wonsan and captured it.
They were red hot moving, so I let them proceed further north from Wonsan.
Sometime after this, I manually set the ground units to move through the front line in the left flank. They moved slowly and I made sure there is no OPFOR to engage them, a lot of CAS flights on the area.
There was some friendly reinforcements, its kind of stupid that there will be not much of notification that you got new squadrons to use, I just stumpled upon a B52 squadron which just suddenly appeared in the available squadron's list. We also got Carrier task force on the ocean, just east of Korea, whohoo! Tomcat's and Hornet's!
Then all hell break loose, CIS have pledged their support for DPRK. All of the sudden my right flank ground troops are surrounded by enemy T-80 battalions and a lot of other heavy ground troops. Damn.
That started one of the most heaviest CAS operations in the history of this campaign. I just heard in my head "Broken arrow, BROKEN ARROW!" echoing when I was tasking ALL of my CAS capable aircraft's into the area where my ground units were surrounded.
It was simply amazing to witness all the blue aircraft icons approaching the target area at the same time wishing that our ground units can hold on until they arrive. Well the planes arrived and then the killing started... one after another T-80 battalion icon disappeared when the friendly aircraft's were attacking anything that moved there, it was simply beautiful to watch.
Was also thinking about JSTARS, does it reveal all ground units from certain distance or how does it work? Is it recommended to task JSTARS or AWACS really close to the FLOT so they can pick up enemy targets at further away?
If I'm not tasking airlift missions, how does it effect the campaign? I believe I once had problems tasking AH1 and AH64 gunships, they got tasked OK and even the squadron supply said they have weapons and all... but they never took off from the base, then when I tasked airlift to this base... the gunships again took off. Coincidence or supply low situation? I have no idea.
For airlifts, I found this comment on frugals: "Airlifts help to replace lost airframes at a faster rate, and help keep your munitions available." and also other comment: "I previously was out of C-5 slammers in that squadron and they came into supply as soon as the airlifters landed." these comments being true or not, I have no idea but its something what sounds possible.
Airmobile information from frugals: "Move a battalion via plane: Doubleclick the battalion and adjust the travel destination to the place wanted after the airdrop. Right click on the battalion and move "Give back to HQ". Right click the battalion "Add Package". Make sure the start time is locked and the end time is not locked. "New". Select "C130 Hercules" (Other planes can't do this.), "Air Mobile" ("Air Lift" is for supplies only.), and "1" as size (bug: always suffices). "Target" is irrelevant. Move waypoint 4 to your drop-destination. Move waypoint 3 a few miles in front of waypoint 4. Move waypoint 5 a few miles after your waypoint 4. Change waypoint settings: Speed 370 on 3. Altitude 100 speed 200 on 4 (Lower value are not possible). (For air mobile via "UH-60L Black Hawk" or "CH-47 Chinnook": Speed 160 on 3. Speed 40 on 4. Speed 160 on 5.)".
However personally I never did any speed adjustments or moving waypoints 5 after waypoint 4, I just put the drop off waypoint where I wanted the troops to be dropped off that next waypoint was towards home base for the C130.
Neutralizing airbases; if I want to destroy the other buildings in an airbase, how do I task that sortie, a strike? What aircraft type would be best to this mission?
I tasked a B52 4 ship strike with cluster bombs to hit a airbases buildings, to me they looked to be way off from runways. Well when the strike was over, the runways were totally knocked out (with cluster bombs), that was weird and actually pissed me off as I did NOT want to shut down the runways.
One nice tactic is to let some of those airbases get repaired which only hosts unarmed flights or really poor aircraft's, for example AN-2 or Mig-17 etc. Then you task a AmbushCAP (I have no idea if this is suitable, it name suggests "ambush" but that's as far as I know) over the airbase and as soon as the enemy gets wheels up, they get blown up. Its been said that its better to destroy the aircraft's in the air, than to disable the airbase. Of course this is easier said than done when we talk about MiG-29 or SU-27's for example. I used to place F-15C's on DCA 4 ships on 1h 30min station time next to an enemy airbase between it and FLOT or my other forces they might want to strike. Planes took off and were shot down immediately by the eagles, it was quite nasty. With tactic like this, make sure the airbase don't have any air defenses or the loitering DCA planes get shot at for no reason (they don't have reason to loiter hours at end on top of enemy air defenses).
Other airbase disabling tactic is the ultimate one; capture them. This can be achieved by first SEAD striking the air defenses down, then CAS / Interdiction to suppress any ground units in the vicinity and finally airmobile in the ground troops. Usually good idea is to completely neutralize the OPFOR ground units and then just drop in Engineer battalion into the airbase, they will capture & repair it at one blow. When that's done, you can easily start to use the airbase for yourself if relocate squadron works properly or is allowed (never happened to me though), as well as ferry in more airlifts and troops there, not to mention the air threat has been totally neutralized. I do not know if the enemy squadrons will relocate to different airbase or are just "killed" from the campaign completely. Maybe I could use tacedit for the savegames to track down the destroyed airbases squadrons.
Below image is one of my airmobile airbase capture operations, F-15C eagles loitering above and C-130 ferrying a engineering unit into the airbase
Threat circles wont update in real time, if you have a ADA threat circle which then is knocked down by SEAD strike, the circle remains until you turn circles off and back on again. Remember to switch or turn off/on those threat circles often to keep the data updated. This is in AF, dunno about OF/RV.
For DCA flights, its apparent that in the Korean peninsula usually the law of the jungle is that if you spot a bogie inbound, its already too late. Or at least I had great difficulties intercepting incoming bogeys, either my interceptors were awfully late like the bogeys were already hit their target and were heading back, or the estimated shoot down location was totally off. I find it really difficult to task DCA flights when you have inbound bogeys. Usually this is fixed by keeping constant DCA sorties on the areas most likely enemy planes would attack/use. Of course that then again ties your assets quite much. I was also trying to make sure my AWACS is very close to the action, so they pick the bogeys up as far as possible.
Okay to get back to our campaign story... so the Wonsan was captured and my ground troops advanced due north from Wonsan. It was time to move from the front lines in left flank towards Pyongyang, so I manually moved the troops to attack it.
It was a long way and alot of ground troops to neutralize on the way. I started to task CAS and Interdiction packages to clear the path, it was nice that AH1 Cobra and AH64 Apache gunships had a range for this area so they got a lot of tasking for this operation. I used all the assets I had, but I got the feeling that the most fearsome plane in the air most definitely was the A10.
At day 4 in the morning the China entered the war to support DPRK. My ground troops were just miles away from north Korean capital city at that time.
Finally friendly forces arrived to Pyongyang, it was sort of a joke as the most advancing battalion was artillery battalion, hehe imagine that happening in real life hehe.
I just kept the pressure on, actually I was amazed that the campaign did not end there as I had the idea that it will end when capital city falls. So the war continued and I was hitting airbases, air defenses and ground units as much I could. Occasionally I tried to lure some enemy planes out of their bases to the waiting claws of F-15C's or other aircraft on ambush DCA positions. It was not totally successful as I felt that the enemy air forces somehow lost morale, I saw some pesky MiG-21 or IL-28 now and then, but nothing major. I guess few of the bases I did this trick was so badly damaged that they only tasked few flights between several hours, or perhaps I totally missed the shoot downs in the usual 16x time acceleration I used between tasking packages.
That was the last screenshot of the fighting before it all came to an end at 2055hrs on day 5.
Here is some statistics from the campaign.
Most striking thing about the campaign experience was that Korean campaign has tons and tons of ground units, I never would have think they had so much guys running around in the ground. Real eye opener for me, PMC campaigns need like twice as many ground units to reach this balance as seen in this campaign.
Anyways.
All in all it was great to play 2D add package commander, just absolutely awesome. So simple feature in F4 (AF) gives so much playability. Many times I was thinking Digital Integrations Tornado sim with its commander / planner feature when I was tasking packages. I can surely say that if FF/RV gets this feature, I have no use for any other Falcon version after that ...
It amazes me that how F4 (AF) can be played as "strategy game" like this in 2D, of course its just stupid icons moving around on the map, but hey this is as close to a strategy game I've been since playing some red alert or some "gamey" game years ago
Anyways, this topic is bunch of yapper about my lessons learnt (and questions raised) while playing the 2D campaign. It was great fun and thought me "a lot" about F4 campaign engine. Maybe next 2D command will be on some of the PMC theaters