OneShot
05-31-2005, 08:32 AM
Again, this was taken from an old Review of mine made on the Battlefront.com forum in this thread : My Review on DW (Part III) (http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=41;t=000160#000000)
Well, this time I was better prepared, not only did I play the MH-60R which is similar in some things, but I continued my studies of the manual. Along with some "cheating" I got my Sub Kill, but lets not get to far ahead.
I selected an easy Mission called SOSUS Handover where the goal is to find and destroy one (actually two) AKULA-I Improved subs who have been detected by one of two SOSUS tripwires. During the mission briefing you are told that there might be two subs instead of just one. Once in the game you receive a transmission where your HQ tells you where and when the sub was last seen(heard), it can be either one of two SOSUS tripwires around 100miles apart.
You will get the tripwire and direction where the sub last headed.
Since I'm quite inexperienced I "cheated" a bit and turned on thruth for a moment to get an accurate fix on the Akula before turning it off again and deciding on how to place my sonobuoys. You have four types of Sonobuoys and two depths to place them(exception is the BT buoy). The types are DICASS, DIFAR and VLAD and BT, the depths are S = 90ft and D = 400ft.
With a good idea of where the Akula is, I put down my waypoints for the autopilot, turned on ESM and Radar and started to mark the Waypoints for dropping my buoys. Quick Note, you can "automate" a lot by placing specfic waypoints down to what sonobuoy at what depth and even weapon release points, if you did it right, all you have to do is sit back and enjoy - sort of.
Something very important to note here, unlike the FFG and the Subs you don't have a TMA station available, but you manually create a Track on the Nav map, and you can use your buoys to triangulate the position of the contact. Not as neat and perfect as a TMA solution but it does the job. Still it's more difficult to get it right. One thing to keep in mind, while with the chopper oyu can hover over a certain place and take a minute to think things through, with the Orion you are flying at 150mph+, so you better get aquainted with the Waypoint system fast.
Anyway - I havent used all of the options at my fingertips, for example the MAD or the Camera station. While mentioning that, the P3C offers the following stations : Pilot, Accoustic, MAD/ESM, Navigation, TACCO (2 Screens for both Weapons and Sonobuoys), Camera. You will spend most of the time between the Nav, Accoustic and TACCO station, setting waypoints, listening to your buoys and so on. With the added difficulty of sitting in a constantly moving plane the game gets exciting, especially when you have nailed down a contact.
The actual mission goes down like this, you imagine a point where the sub hopefully might be and drop one or two VLAD sonobuoys. This hopefully gives you an indication if there is something. If you are lucky, you get a return, which means that as a next step you put down some DIFAR sonobuoy along the line of advance of the Akula. That should give you a bearing on the contact. Now you have to fly to a good point to start of your triangulation with just another sonobuoy, this again be a DIFAR. With two buoys you got a pretty good picture, but to complete it you need a third one, if you are really sure of your job and you have a good idea on the location of the Sub, drop a DICASS. Once all of them give you nice returns, you can switch the DICASS to active to get the final range on the sub and close in for the kill. If you havent done so allready, make a contact on the Nav screen to assign a weapon and then launch the weapon of your choice. If you did everything right, well then you will hear a loud BOOM - soon.
That about concludes my Review on the P3C - I might add more stuff on it later tho. One personal thing, even tho it's difficult to handle I think I'm going to concetrate on mastering the Orion once I checked out the other plattforms.
Well, this time I was better prepared, not only did I play the MH-60R which is similar in some things, but I continued my studies of the manual. Along with some "cheating" I got my Sub Kill, but lets not get to far ahead.
I selected an easy Mission called SOSUS Handover where the goal is to find and destroy one (actually two) AKULA-I Improved subs who have been detected by one of two SOSUS tripwires. During the mission briefing you are told that there might be two subs instead of just one. Once in the game you receive a transmission where your HQ tells you where and when the sub was last seen(heard), it can be either one of two SOSUS tripwires around 100miles apart.
You will get the tripwire and direction where the sub last headed.
Since I'm quite inexperienced I "cheated" a bit and turned on thruth for a moment to get an accurate fix on the Akula before turning it off again and deciding on how to place my sonobuoys. You have four types of Sonobuoys and two depths to place them(exception is the BT buoy). The types are DICASS, DIFAR and VLAD and BT, the depths are S = 90ft and D = 400ft.
With a good idea of where the Akula is, I put down my waypoints for the autopilot, turned on ESM and Radar and started to mark the Waypoints for dropping my buoys. Quick Note, you can "automate" a lot by placing specfic waypoints down to what sonobuoy at what depth and even weapon release points, if you did it right, all you have to do is sit back and enjoy - sort of.
Something very important to note here, unlike the FFG and the Subs you don't have a TMA station available, but you manually create a Track on the Nav map, and you can use your buoys to triangulate the position of the contact. Not as neat and perfect as a TMA solution but it does the job. Still it's more difficult to get it right. One thing to keep in mind, while with the chopper oyu can hover over a certain place and take a minute to think things through, with the Orion you are flying at 150mph+, so you better get aquainted with the Waypoint system fast.
Anyway - I havent used all of the options at my fingertips, for example the MAD or the Camera station. While mentioning that, the P3C offers the following stations : Pilot, Accoustic, MAD/ESM, Navigation, TACCO (2 Screens for both Weapons and Sonobuoys), Camera. You will spend most of the time between the Nav, Accoustic and TACCO station, setting waypoints, listening to your buoys and so on. With the added difficulty of sitting in a constantly moving plane the game gets exciting, especially when you have nailed down a contact.
The actual mission goes down like this, you imagine a point where the sub hopefully might be and drop one or two VLAD sonobuoys. This hopefully gives you an indication if there is something. If you are lucky, you get a return, which means that as a next step you put down some DIFAR sonobuoy along the line of advance of the Akula. That should give you a bearing on the contact. Now you have to fly to a good point to start of your triangulation with just another sonobuoy, this again be a DIFAR. With two buoys you got a pretty good picture, but to complete it you need a third one, if you are really sure of your job and you have a good idea on the location of the Sub, drop a DICASS. Once all of them give you nice returns, you can switch the DICASS to active to get the final range on the sub and close in for the kill. If you havent done so allready, make a contact on the Nav screen to assign a weapon and then launch the weapon of your choice. If you did everything right, well then you will hear a loud BOOM - soon.
That about concludes my Review on the P3C - I might add more stuff on it later tho. One personal thing, even tho it's difficult to handle I think I'm going to concetrate on mastering the Orion once I checked out the other plattforms.