Old Gamers Never Die: Two Roads Lead to Cold War's End in Cold Waters' North Atlantic 1984 Campaign

 

A "beauty shot" of a 688-class (Los Angeles-class) SSN in the North Atlantic. (Screenshot from Cold Waters. All game elements in the screenshots on this post are © 2017 Killerfish Games.)

Well, Dear Reader, I did it.

After nearly a week of playing through Cold Waters’ North Atlantic 1984 campaign, I fought the Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet (Severnyy flot) as a U.S. Navy fast attack boat skipper – and won.

This time around, I had a better success-to-failure ratio in the campaign, compared to my performance in the South China Sea 2000 scenario, even though I commanded Flight I Los Angeles-class SSNs (the best boats[1] in service in 1984) and didn’t benefit from the more advanced “flights” of the class or the larger, better armed Seawolf (SSN-21) submarine. Commander, Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet (COMSUBLANT) sent me on 15 or 16 missions (I don’t keep a detailed log when I play Cold Waters, and the game only lists completed missions on the Achievements to Date summary that greets players when they complete a war patrol.); I completed 12, including the insertion of a SEAL team near the naval base at Gremkha and the interception of two diesel-electric submarines which carried Spetsnaz teams (the Soviet counterparts to the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Special Forces).

A diesel-electric SSK fitted for Spetsnaz operations lies on the bottom of the Norwegian Sea.

I’m sure that my increasing familiarity with Cold Waters is one of the reasons for my improved performance. I don’t play Cold Waters every day, but I have tried most of the Single Battles and created enough Quick Missions in the nine months since I bought it on Steam, so I am now a seasoned veteran. I understand the basics of submarine warfare, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the boats, ships, aircraft, and weapons systems simulated in the game, even though I still have much to learn before I tackle the third campaign, North Atlantic 1968.

I also think I did better in North Atlantic 1984 than I did in South China Sea because the scenario bears a strong resemblance to the Red Storm Rising: World War III in the North Atlantic campaign in the eponymous 1988 submarine simulation by MicroProse Software. Both games are set in the same geographical region, and Cold Waters’ North Atlantic 1984 features the same American and Soviet sub classes present in Red Storm Rising’s 1984 timeline.[2] They even have the same mix of missions, although Cold Waters’ fictional scenario of a “Cold War turns hot” or backstory is rooted more in the actual history of the Reagan Administration.

The Strategic Transit Map from Cold Waters. 

The Strategic Transit Map from Red Storm Rising. © 1988 MicroProse Software and Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd.

Although I still lost several subs in this campaign, I finished the war in fewer simulated “days” than when I played the U.S. vs China war in South China Sea 2000 a few weeks ago. In that scenario, which seesawed wildly because my unfamiliarity with the geography of the Western Pacific/East Asia theater allowed the Chinese to take advantage of my low success-to-failure ratio re the number of missions I failed to accomplish. It took me 117 days – in-game time, not real-time – to reverse China’s goals and complete 27 missions.

This time around, I completed 12 missions in 38 simulated days aboard four[3]Los Angeles-class boats:

• USS Salt Lake City (SSN-716)
• USS Minneapolis-St. Paul (SSN-708)
• USS Portsmouth (SSN-707)
• USS Baton Rouge (SSN-689)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Sadly, I lost three of the four boats – and barely survived my last mission (an intercept of a Soviet SSBN near the Kola Peninsula) – but in exchange I sank:

• 0 capital ships
• 16 other surface warships (84,080 tons)
• 20 submarines (82,610 tons)
• 10 merchants, including oilers, a sub tender, and several amphibious warfare vessels (75,080 tons)
• Combined total tonnage: 241,690 tons

Like in Red Storm Rising – which Killerfish Games says is Cold Waters’ source of inspiration – there are at least four endings for North Atlantic 1984. Depending on a player’s performance in the campaign, World War III can end thusly:

·         A decisive NATO military victory if you have a good success-to-failure ratio when it comes to completing missions assigned by COMSUBLANT, including the interception and destruction of a Russian SSBN. In this ending, the Soviet Union collapses and the Cold War ends…for the moment

·         A less decisive NATO victory in which the Soviet ballistic missile sub survives but your efforts nonetheless are so successful that the Soviet Union still collapses

·         A technical draw in which NATO forces “win” but don’t get a decisive victory if you don’t sink the Soviet “boomer.” A peace is signed, but the Warsaw Pact still occupies territory it holds at the war’s end

·         A Soviet victory if your success-to-failure ratio is unfavorable and you don’t sink the Soviet boomer. NATO dissolves, and the U.S.-Soviet Cold War persists

I played the end game twice in 24 hours. Once, as the skipper of USS Dallas, then again as captain of USS Baton Rouge. So I actually completed the campaign twice. (Ah, the magic of video games and save files!)

A UGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile - a weapon of last resort - flies toward a Soviet destroyer just as another Harpoon hits a hapless enemy vessel (in the right side of the screenshot).

As I wrote yesterday in A Certain Point of View, Too:

Well, because I was busy evading enemy antisubmarine warfare (ASW) planes, recce satellites, and surface groups, I was too slow in getting Dallas to a good ambush point closer to the Soviet coast, so I had to take my sub into the icepack instead. I found the boomer – a Delta IV SSBN – all right, but ice floes made it hard for me to get at it with my torpedoes, and a Sierra-class SSN sank Dallas. One of my Mk-48s sank a Victor III attack sub by sheer luck, but the boomer and her other escort got away.

That’s when I learned that the game has several possible endings, based on how well (or how badly) a player performs against the AI Soviets. If you have more failed missions than successful ones, at the end of the war the Soviet Union wins. If you have a good war record but lose the last mission, the war ends in a draw, with the USSR getting some concessions – such as being able to occupy whatever NATO territory they hold at game’s end, and the Cold War continues.

That, Dear Reader, was the outcome of the Third World War per my results of last night’s final battle.

I went on to add:

I’ve never tried to do a do-over of a final mission in Cold Waters, but this morning I fired up the game, hit Load in the Saved Games page, and tried my luck with the final missions of the North Atlantic 1984 campaign.

Oddly, instead of being in command of USS Dallas, I found myself aboard the USS Baton Rouge (SSN-689), the second boat in the Los Angeles class and, in real life, one of the few unlucky ones.

Another surprise: the game sent me to intercept an at-sea replenishment group that consisted of an Ugra-class submarine tender and several escorts operating in the Barents Sea. So, I headed out to sea with Baton Rouge and went in harm’s way.

I’m not going to bore you with a blow-by-blow account of my last war patrol. Suffice it to say that before I found the replenishment group, I ran into another Soviet surface group operating near Norway. I got lucky and sank all three ships, even though COMSUBLANT sent me a semi-annoyed message letting me know that it was not my assigned target. It was a successful encounter, although it did make me use quite a few torpedoes in the process of sending the Soviet ships to the bottom of the sea.

After that, I went on to completing the SSBN intercept, only this time I used a different, more successful strategy and earned a decisive victory for NATO.

A massive Delta III SSBN of the Red Banner Northern Fleet attempts to flee (note the cavitation from her screws) from a Mk-48 ADCAP torpedo. Meanwhile, Baton Rouge is attempting to evade a Soviet torpedo which just astern of her. (See tactical mini-map on the lower left corner.) 

This is not, of course, the first time I finish a campaign in Cold Waters. It’s not even the first time I complete a NATO vs Soviets campaign; I played Red Storm Rising many times between 1990 and 1994 (the MS-DOS game didn’t run on any of my post-1994 PCs, and I’ve owned quite a few computers since 1994) and fought the campaign across the game’s four timelines. I won most times and lost a few times, but I played through Red Storm Rising: World War III in the North Atlantic frequently enough that I applied much of what I learned to my game playing on Cold Waters.

The final tally. 

But even if this isn’t an earthshaking accomplishment in my gaming career, I am still proud that I finished this campaign – with two different outcomes!

---

[1] In English-speaking navies, submarines are called “boats” instead of “ships,” perhaps because Royal Navy sailors referred to these submersible warships as “pig boats.” I find it wryly amusing, since it’s hard to imagine a watercraft that is 362 ft (110 m) long and has a displacement of 6,927 tons as a mere boat.

[2] Because Red Storm Rising is based on the submarine warfare sections of Tom Clancy’s 1986 novel (the late author’s second published work of fiction), it doesn’t depict other fictional wars. However, game designer Sid Meier (who went on to design the renowned “world history sim” Sid Meier’s Civilization) gave players different variants of the Red Storm Rising scenario, setting the war in four different timelines: 1984 (or shortly before the novel’s setting), 1988 (the book’s presumed year, considering that it was published in ’86 and portrayed an unspecified “near-future” setting), 1992, which introduced the “Kremlin” class aircraft carrier to the Soviet inventory and several proposed (but never fielded) weapons for U.S. subs, and 1996, which allowed players to command the Seawolf class, which in 1988 was being developed but was not yet in existence.

[3] Actually five since I tried the endgame section twice. The first time I finished the campaign, it was aboard USS Dallas (SSN-700) and it was the final mission of North Atlantic 1984, which is to find and sink a Soviet ballistic missile sub before it launches its SLBMs at the United States from a “boomer” bastion in the Arctic. The Soviets sank my boat – they ambushed Dallas in the icepack where the Delta IV SSBN was hiding and hit me with three torpedoes.