A walk through the versions

[Silent Hunter UK]

Which turned out not to be the case. They were F-15s with no air-to-ground capability. So things started getting rather boring for a while...

 

I'm going to take a brief detour here to discuss the relative combat strengths of US and FSU/Russia ships. I think it's fair to say that there are very few vessels in the 'Red Star' inventory - or indeed much of their technology in general - that could, all other things being equal, win a stand-up one vs. one fight against their closest Western equivalent. While the Russians have the stand-off range in terms of their cruise missiles, since the arrival of the Aegis system and arguably before, they have needed serious superiority in numbers to stand a chance against an equivalent NATO group.

 

However, of course, you don't seek a fair fight in warfare. You seek a fight in which you have that overwhelming superiority and in which you dictate the terms of the engagement. The only time the Russians have used a carrier group in combat, they used it to drop bombs on an enemy that had no viable way to fight back against them... and even then they weren't very good. I struggle to see any real viable use for the earlier Yak-38 for example except as a distraction...

 

Anyway, back to the game... my frigate group was continuing to close on the US LPD group, but it was still too far away to engage. I realised that my transports were a) holding my Neustrashimyy back and were vulnerable against the American ships. So I split the group, sending the transports east and having the former heading into action against the Blue forces...

 

At this point, I would make an exception to my comment about relative combat strengths. The Oliver Hazard Perry class is one that I have long dubbed the 'Overhead Projector'. This vessel's primary weapons for surface warfare are single-arm launcher and a 76mm gun. Against a Neustrashimyy, it would probably stand no chance.

 

Which is indeed what happened in game. Both the US frigate and LPD were sunk by gunfire with no damage suffered by my ship. It was a victory of some form... but the tables were about to turn against me.

[Silent Hunter UK]

With the ships sunk, the frigate was sent back to rejoin the transports. Then I had a number of aircraft off Greenland appearing, going round in circles and disappearing without doing anything. Then they appeared again and I decided to divert the Neustrashimyy to go through the air that the aircraft were flying in to shoot them down.

 

More aircraft turned up and I diverted the more vulnerable transports to keep them away from any possible engagement. To cut a long story short, the Neustrashimyy got a HARM in the face, which did 10% damage, after which things went rather quiet.

 

Apart from the carrier group ships having frequent breakdowns. I suppose that happens a lot on real-life operations... especially for FSU ships (they don't simulate the heads packing up here though).

 

At 1734, the two cargo ships off Greenland got attacked, with Lama taking 27% damage and having its speed reduced to 11 knots. At that point it became a case of 'every ship for itself' as I split the group up into separate vessels. This did not stop the other ship from taking two hits from HARMs, with a damaged radar.

 

Things then went very quite until 0109, when one of my airfield got hit by 42 Tomahawks simultaneously resulting in its destruction. That was enough to trigger the American victory conditions and end the game.

 

Final stats

 

Blue losses:

2 ships

34 aircraft

13 helicopters

 

Red losses:

2 ships (damaged)

1 damaged submarine

55 aircraft

2 helicopters

2 bases.

 

There have been worse exchange ratios.

 

Anyway, now onto the final version of this six year plus long series - Harpoon CE. I will go for a short scenario to round this off. That is if I can get the thing to work - it's saying there is an issue with my serial number. I have sent an email with a screenshot to Matrix Games.

[TonyE]

Anyway, now onto the final version of this six year plus long series - Harpoon CE. I will go for a short scenario to round this off. That is if I can get the thing to work - it's saying there is an issue with my serial number. I have sent an email with a screenshot to Matrix Games.

If you aren't already, "Run as Administrator". Matrix made a poor decision with their serial number checker. For some reason it needs to write to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive and that requires administrator permissions. Holler if you don't get quick resolution and I'll help you through it.

[Silent Hunter UK]

That seems to work. Thanks.

[westmarch]

having recently reacquired Harpoon (and a discarded windows laptop from my son to run it!) this site and especially this thread have rekindled my enthusiasm for the series.

 

Hopefully I will learn from your experience (although I fear my learning curve will resemble my earlier one).

 

Many thanks

[Silent Hunter UK]

Welcome to the site!

[Silent Hunter UK]

I've finally completed my playthrough for Harpoon CE. Write up to follow!

[CV32]

On 10/23/2018 at 1:36 PM, Silent Hunter UK said:

I've finally completed my playthrough for Harpoon CE. Write up to follow!

Looking forward to that. 

[Silent Hunter UK]

Harpoon CE

I chose to go back to the Blue side for the final game in this series (which I started doing on 13 April 2017, BTW), choosing Surprise in the Snow from HDS  9. The scenario here was that Blue was observing Soviet exercises in the Norwegian Sea that were feared to be the cover for an attack... one of which duly followed.

There is a very pleasing new arrangement of windows in this version (you can tile them) that allows you to have all the key data easily visible without too much faffing around... although it still didn't save the date setting. CE has a lot of pleasing new sound effects and you certainly don't fall asleep in the opening moves over this.

Less than 15 minutes after the scenario started, Red stuck the first blow with an attack by MiG-23s that downed two of my F-16s, something that I duly did back to the attackers. I then had one of my submarines, Valiant, launch a Harpoon attack on a surface contact that soon turned out to be a Tarantul III with some holes in it. In the meantime, I launched a twenty plane attack in the Soviet airbase at Pechanga. Five minutes after that, a large group of incoming missiles turned off the coast of Norway. These turned out to be Sandboxes that destroyed Banak airbase, just after I'd had a 2-4 loss in a F-16 vs. Flogger-K fight.

A bunch of A-6s were launched from Keflavik airbase in Iceland against enemy ships, F-16s were attacking surface to surface missiles with Sidewinders, a Nanuchka was sunk by me and two of my airbases were flattened by further missile attack. My 1151 entry simply reads (if you can read my handwriting) "Load happening". I found 31 aircraft sitting around in Scotland, so sent them north on a ferry flight as further intense air combat continued. At 12:15, under an hour into the scenario start, I had bagged 42 air to air kills and learned F-16s are not the best thing to send against MiGs.

I set my surface contacts in the direction of Iceland as per my orders. I then found a helicopter over the sea. Six helicopters. A Krivak, an Udaloy, a Sovvie and a Kirov... then a carrier...

It was just over an hour into the game...

[Silent Hunter UK]

The problem you have when writing contemporaneous notes, as well as spelling "contemporaneous", is trying to understanding what precisely went on after the fact. It's the sort of thing that bedevils historians the world over and my notes for the next couple of pages are sometimes as clear as Brexit negotiations. So, this is some of what I have happening:

• 12:23 Missiles shot down
• 12:24 F-16 is leaving
• 12:26 F-16 gone, but have destroyed two Backfire. Now a Badger has shown up sending 10 F-16s to intercept
• 12:30 F-5s are having to return to base due to lack of fuel.

Anyway, I shot down the Tu-16 as Su-17s starting firing at Bardufloss. A group of F-16s fired 16 Penguin missiles at the carrier group, eight at a Krivak II and eight at an Udaloy. Precisely two struck home at the former as the Soviet SAM umbrella proved very effective. The USSR had better luck with their attacks, as Bardufloss went to 71% damage in a short period of time and then a MiG-21 decided to strafe the place...

[Silent Hunter UK]

I'm not sure what happened to the MiG-21, but a Su-24 that changed its luck near Bodo was shot down, along with two others. Meanwhile, HMS Conqueror discovered a new surface contact that, like Anna Kendrick sitting opposite you on the Tube, was too close for contact. While it is not acceptable, desirable or indeed feasible to fire a torpedo at that lady, this was not the case with the new surface contact, which turned out to be a Krivak II. The torpedo was Pitch Perfect and the frigate was sunk. However, it soon became Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as Conqueror was damaged. It started to retreat, came up to the surface and then detected another surface group containing two troop ships. It decided to do them the Simple Favor of sinking them, but got sunk itself and that's where I will end the Anna Kendrick jokes.

What didn't end was the overall firing of NATO weapons as another strike got into range of some Soviet surface contacts and started firing Harpoons at some Nanuchka corvettes. Before Taylor Swift could sing "Shake It Off", two of them were sunk and I was firing seven missiles at a large surface contact. This turned out to be an Udaloy and it was soon "End Game" for the destroyer. In the meantime, an aerial duel was taking place near the carrier group. I bagged two Flankers, a Flogger K elsewhere, then had four F-16s run out of fuel and crash.

(Couldn't these guys be a bit smarter?)

Three A-6s were shot down and I was now planning to get everything together for a mass strike at something. Probably the carrier group. I would need at least "Fifteen" aircraft to sink that and I'd better take a break before the Taylor Swift puns get old.

[TonyE]

Coming together nicely SHUK.  What version of the game are you running (shows up in title bar yyyy.bbb ?  Thanks for typing this up!  Another tool you have for AARs that are difficult to parse but could help is the MessageLog.txt file.  It is over-written per game session but captures everything that goes into the MessageLog window.

[Silent Hunter UK]

Where would I find the MessageLog.txt file?

[TonyE]

In the main directory of the game, which by default is C:\Matrix Games\HUCE so the default path and filename is C:\Matrix Games\HUCE\MessageLog.txt .  I don't use the default directory but you can see where I find mine in the attached image.

[Silent Hunter UK]

Mine isn't there.