Some thoughts on Strike Group Molniya
I finished my first play through of the Strike Group Molniya campaign last night and I wanted to share a few comments.
To begin with I thought that overall the campaign was a lot of fun, I would like to see more campaigns of this nature. From a narrative perspective I thought that the various briefing documents and news reports added excellent flavour, context and information.
I felt that the feel of the missions changed dramatically during the campaign with the initial missions feeling as though NATO forces were taken by surprise and the Soviet forces having the initiative. The final two missions significantly reversed this dynamic with the NATO forces having the initiative and Soviet forces having to react to their actions. This helped make the story and campaign work.
I liked the fact that the Soviet ships were not necessarily optimal for all of the missions, this helped make it feel like this was a situation where they went to war with what was available as opposed to what they would ideally have.
I didn’t really feel much air power pressure from NATO forces until mission 4 and really mission 5 when it became quite intense. It may be that it is difficult to balance air power in a campaign like this but having more presence during the 3rd mission might be good.
A significant element of the campaign was finding and identifying enemy contacts. I am uncertain if there is an randomness to the location and identity of contacts in the missions but if not this seems to limit replayability, is it possible to randomize locations or even just have a couple different map set ups for the units that get randomly used?
Finally wow the Yak 38 is quite the plane. I wouldn’t mind the relatively short range if it could carry a weapon with a bit of range. It seems like the Yak-38 had the payload to carry a R-23/AA-7 but never was equipped with it. Was it the lack of onboard radar that limits the Yak-38 to short range IR weapons?