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[Fishbreath]

Hi, I'm Fishbreath. You may remember me from threads such as the Bay 12 Writers['] Guild or the Arsenal of Democracy LP at the top of the second page of this very sub-forum¹. Today I'm not here about either of those things: I'm here about Dangerous Waters.

These are dangerous waters.


This is Dangerous Waters, a modern-day naval simulation released in 2005 by the makers of the fabled 688(i) and Fleet Command:




A friend of mine (Frankie D. from the cooperative USA/England Arsenal of Democracy game I believe I mentioned in my other thread) is a bigger naval warfare buff than even me, so a while ago I convinced him to get Dangerous Waters. We've set up some times for a co-op mission, featuring the two platforms in the foreground of that final screenshot: the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate and its embarked MH-60R Seahawk helicopter. Our mission is set in an alternate history: the People's Republic of China, emboldened by geopolitical factors I did not feel compelled to describe in any detail when I was coming up with the mission, has launched a war to secure the raw materials and territory of Southeast Asia. Land-based missiles and secret construction projects made it possible for the People's Liberation Army Navy to inflict massive losses on the United States' carrier force, and as shipyards the world around spun up, the PLAN was able to force its advantage and advance all the way to the Solomon Islands, landing on Bougainville and attacking the American garrison there.

Desperately low on supplies and in need of reinforcement, the Bougainville garrison called for help. Military leaders quickly put together a convoy of four ships, two US Navy amphibious warfare ships carrying two battalions of Marines, an oiler, and an ammunition ship. Only one escort was available, the USS Vandegrift (FFG-48), and the only aircraft suitable for maritime patrol at Henderson Field was a single P-3C Orion. There was nothing to be done, though; the convoy had to go through or Bougainville would be lost. At 6am during a summer thunderstorm, Vandegrift and her charges leave Guadalcanal. The run up the Slot will take twelve hours, and no doubt the PLAN will deploy everything it can to stop it.

1. Which is presently looking like we're going to get curb-stomped, hence my reluctance to update. >.>

[Erkki]

This is one of the top 10 games I know. Sadly, for some reason it doesnt work on my either PC with an nVidia graphics card... There are missing textures and almost all fonts are messed up.

[Rilder]

This is one of those games with a massive learning curve and I wasn't able to get into, good luck, really want to see how it goes.

[ssfsx17]

Does your Oliver Hazard Perry-class mount any serious surface-to-surface weapons? If not, this is going to be a very short mission.

[Tarran]

Hm, I've never heard of this game before. Watching.

[Fishbreath]

Does your Oliver Hazard Perry-class mount any serious surface-to-surface weapons? If not, this is going to be a very short mission.

The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate as modeled in Dangerous Waters is armed with a Mk.13 single-arm missile launcher and a magazine of four AGM-84 Harpoons (plus 36 SM-2 missiles), a 76mm gun, a selection of torpedoes, a Phalanx CIWS, and a pair of .50 machine guns.

Fortunately, intelligence does not predict major surface assets in the area. Our problem is going to be submarines. Lots of submarines.

[Fishbreath]

Some more information:

1. Geography
The New Georgia Sound (sometimes known as the Slot, from its nickname during operations in 1942) runs approximately northwest to southeast, and is located southeast of New Guinea and north-northwest of Vanuatu. The islands of Bougainville and Guadalcanal define the northwest and southeast boundaries of the Sound. It is some 250nm in length and varies in width between about 20 and 50nm. It is very deep, averaging three to five thousand feet in the center, making it an ideal place for submarine warfare.

2. Intelligence
US Navy analysts expect somewhere between four and eight submarines to be present in the Slot, a mix between the Han class of nuclear submarines and the Song and Kilo classes of diesel submarines. We may expect them to be stationed to intercept traffic between Guadalcanal and Bougainville.

The PLAN is not expected to have large surface assets in the area. Satellite intelligence reveals that the PLAN's heavy surface units and aircraft carriers are moving to respond to the Allied counterattack on Japan. Minor surface units may be present.

The PLANAF and the PLAAF are not expected to have attack aircraft in the area. Maritime patrol aircraft may be present.

3. How this will go down
My friend and I will start the mission tonight. Screenshots will be taken, thoughts will be scribbled down. It will probably take another session or two to get to the end, which will probably end up taking place over the next week or two. I will write up my notes (and possibly his) and post them here when I can find the time. This may take more time than the actual game does.

[Erkki]

The water is very shallow in the area, right?

Perfect grounds to use your 2 helos offensively. Even the dumbest submarine captain knows where you sail, so to hunt them down you need to be aggressive... 

[Fishbreath]

The ship in the mission is Vandegrift (FFG-48), part of the Flight I series, and therefore she only carries the one helicopter. The water is also a few thousand feet deep along much of our route. >.>

[gamefreak1]

I think he meant your friends helo too. 

[Burnt Pies]

By my reading of the situation, one of them'll be the Helo Pilot, the other the Ship's Captain. Only one Escort, after all.

[Fishbreath]

By my reading of the situation, one of them'll be the Helo Pilot, the other the Ship's Captain. Only one Escort, after all.

Right. My friend is playing Vandegrift's single helo.

We were going to play tonight, but instead we spent three hours getting our games to work together. Also, there's no multiplayer saving, so this will be something of a one-shot. We plan to go all the way through it tomorrow night.

[warhammer651]

any chance of a livestream of it?

[Fishbreath]

Not this time. I've never done any sort of streaming before, we're starting in an hour and a half, and I still need to locate some sort of food before then.

There could well be a next time; if there is I'll see about getting a stream set up for that.

[Fishbreath]

We played, but I forgot to take screenshots, we were plagued by connection problems, there's no multiplayer time compression, and in the first half-hour of the mission three of our convoy ships were sunk.

In the interests of providing some story before our next attempt:

We departed Guadalcanal at 1800. Our first sonobuoy contact was us, but in what was to be a great piece of misfortune, an enemy submarine was patrolling very nearly on the same bearing as the convoy. We managed to triangulate its position by a bearing from my towed array, but the helicopter was ten miles away from the datum and couldn't get there before the submarine fired torpedoes, sinking nearly one billion dollars of US Navy hardware, several hundred million more of Marine equipment, and taking some four thousand lives.

Oops. >.>

I think I may have made the mission a little bit too hard. I'm probably going to give us a pre-deployed sonobuoy line to prevent things like that from happening. Ideally we'll be able to use the helicopter far afield, instead of having to keep it close for responses.

Actually ideally, we'd have a mission with a smaller time requirement, but we'll get there.