General

At Grumble's sugerence, I start this new topic. Today Tony has do a lot of changes in the HCE 2009-82 Game Engine, with a very impressive list of recovered features http://harpgamer.com...e-notes/page-11 The neutrals no detecting more enemy units for the player's side also speeds up the gameplay a lot! (as in WWII scenarios the neutral merchants reporting one and other time previously detected enemy units). Testing the drone scenario I see the gameplay is very improved, now the game runs very smooth, perhaps not slowed because the neutral detecting enemy units. The air-to-ground guns are effective now! I hope to test ASuW weapons against submarines latest, and other …

What is the latest HCE build. Where do I get it?

Hello all, I'm something like an old noob. I've played with Harpoon (classic only) on and off since 1994. Mostly off, truth be told, but I always think that someday I should get back to Harpoon since it's really challenging and fun. I found a HC97 manual when I moved my computer workstation the other day and this started me Googling. I was thinking that HCE sounds pretty good. But... Although there are still links and pages for various sellers, it seems that HCE is no longer sold, but the "ultimate" package (HUCE) is available for ~$60 for a huge download. That version includes HCE, and there is a recently validated, time-limited demo version of HCE. Is all that corr…

Greeting all, I just upgraded our home PC to a WIN8, 32-Bit desktop platform. Before I reinstall HUCE, will it run and can I design scenarios on this new platform?

I had a funny run in with Stealth, first I looked it as a case for the Issue Tracker but after some thought this rather gives a good insight into the game's radar model and perhaps a lesson to share with fellow Ninja Pooners. This is HDS3 2.0 the The Libyan Bomb (game video: blindchasehigh.mp4) 8 x F-22 Raptors (AVA) were escorting 20 x F-117A (AKA) along the Libyan costs for a joyride. The Nighthawks have done a good job and are returning home, the Raptors are escorting them, they are happily supercruising on high alt, boldly trusting stealth to cover them and tracking red a/cs around with ESM. Suddenly the ride turns sour when group WHA, 4 x Mig-23, breaks for…

Hi I recently upgraded from Win XP to Win 7. I got the scenario editor working in the virtual XP machine and everything seems to be working OK. However, in the game the small Strategic map is missing. I have resized and moved all the other windows and clicked on the strategic map in the pull down menu. I don't use it much, but on occasion it is handy. Any ideas? I am using Build 2009.036. Thx, Smitty

Someone want to take a crack at creating a new Battleset (using the Battleset Builder utility) for the Caucasus region? Ideally I think it would include the Caspian Sea on the east (right hand) side, and the eastern portions of the Black and Mediterranean Seas on the left. Maybe centred on Tbilisi, Georgia. It might be nice to be able to include a good portion of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well, but the resulting map might be a bit too large. Messing around with the BSB will tell for sure.

I just purchase HUCE from Matrix Games. There are a ton of options and I've seen many different database options out there. What's the most commonly supported and used database? I see that there's a Players Database which is self-branded as the most functional database. Is the self-branding of that database for real or is it just for marketing? I see that the official database on this site has a ton of downloads and was just updated on the 3rd of June 2013. Thoughts?

Is it just me or did the forum's flash editor loose a feature recently, like since April? I'm pretty certain that earlier in reply posts I was able to split quoted text into separate paragraphs just by hitting enter on an empty row inside the quote. E.g. Now all I can do (if I want to reply in a nice formatted way) is copy the entire quote as many times as many comments I want to inject and delete the surplus parts of the quote from each segment. Squawk 7700 !

I am trying to bring my database date, but I am having trouble finding the append button on the editor. thank you. -tanthier

I much like it that the GE logs the missile hit calculation probabilities in the Message Log and I feel like I almost understand it ... but lets face it, I don't. So what is FPh, Ph, DPh? Ok, DPh must be the defending missile's hit probability from the Database. How does the other two work? [[At this point writing the post I got a strong feeling that this question must have been asked already and lo and behold http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/topic/17720-noob-question/?p=36209]] There are still some questions after reading Tony's explanation. Here are two missile engagements from HDS1 10.0, I colored the bits I\'ve questions on: To Go 0:23:41:20 3…

I still play HC Gold and most of you will know this version, but maybe the funny things arent in the newest versions........... a) Sir, if we continue on this course we will run aground! Damn you, we have orders to stay on this course and so we will But....... No further discussion of orders from highest commands 10 Mins later..... BOOOOOOM Sir, we have run aground Yes? 20% damage..... Oh thats ok only 1 month in the dockyard... Damn, those SU27 are shooting missiles at us, lets run away asap afterburner on and runs away from missiles Whow that was close but we evaded them.... Well we can go back to normal cruise speed then, cause our fuel is quite …

There are some aspects of the games AI that make certain tasks almost ridiculously easy, and I wonder how it might be changed to make it more challenging. For instance, your mission is to knock back the opposition of a heavily guarded base and destroy it. Send out an AEW plane, put some fighters with AMRAAMs out 30 or 40 miles ahead (between the base and your AEW bait), and make these recurring patrols so you always gave some fresh fighters with their AAMs. The enemy fighter patrols will, without exception, head straight for your AEW plane and right into your missile range. You can empty out their base of fighter defenses without ever doing anything more than refre…

For bases that have large center formation zones (60 miles across is common), the aircraft assigned to the center zone will almost always cluster at the northern edge of the zone. So unless there are patrols set in the formation's southern zones, the best approach to attack the base is from dead straight south. Typically, I fire a pretty large volley of ARM missile at the base and the SAMs around it, and I try to NEVER fire at the planes in the formation around the base. Firing the ARMs will draw the missile fire of the defending fighters as well as the SAMs, and if the volley is big enough and/or the number of defenders is small enough, you might entirely clean the…

I recall reading that these two missiles have onboard radar for mid and late course correction, but I never read any suggestion the firing plane doesn't need its own radar for target selection and initial guidance. Yet here, the various fighters using them can leave off their radar, still fire, and have the enormous advantage of never giving their position away by emitting signals. Still more oddly, I am prompted to turn on my radar when a plane comes within range, but I can choose not to, and the missile performance doesn't seem any the worse for not having the plane's radar on.

I've restarted work on Part 4 of the Tactics 101: ASW effort, which will focus on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) as it is modeled in HCE. Obviously there will be ship vs sub, sub vs sub, and air vs sub. But what kinds of specific match up's would you like to see covered?

What's your ideal weapons system to perform which task? How do you do it best while keeping your own weapons out of harm's way? I'll start with ASW. After running through I don't know how many plane and copter loads of torpedoes in vain attempts to sink modern subs (particularly Oscars and Sierras, which seem to be the armored tanks of subs), I gave up on letting the AI run the attacks and started micro-managing them. And I also started looking more closely for the best weapons and platforms to deliver them. Here's what I've found about ASW Ops from the Blue perspective. The AI ASWcwill attack from 2 miles away, which is using up about a third of the total r…

I thought I would try the WWII battleset built by Mavgaz, and I downloaded it. When I tried to copy it into the HUCE directory, I was told I would be overwriting other files. The two file names are hdsu.res and hdsu.rsr. AFAIK, I do not already have a WWII battleset installed, and certainly one doesn't show up among the listed battlesets I can select from when I start the game. What would I be overwriting if I put in these new download files? And in what seems to be a related question -- the Battleset builder. It prompts for, among other things, two files with .res and .rsr extensions. And I decided to throw in the hdsu. files (the ones I already had, not the one…

Hello, I noted that the SAMs in Harp 2002 Gold have a very high fire rate also seems unlimited rounds (?). Is there a way to correct this ? In my case I mean European bases (Ger,NL, DK, Belgium.... mainly) and the sam in question are Hawk + Patriot. Seems the eastern bases (means GDR,Poland, Russia) dont have this terrible ROF with their mainly SA2s. But I found no way to correct this in the scen editor cause you cannot tweak bases there at all ? Thanks. Frank (I was building a Cold War scen in middle Europe and during testing it showed you need a unrealistic high amount of missiles to hit these bases imo - I cannot imagine that in reality the sites can fire so…

I have Ultimate Edition with all the stock battlesets. I see that in numerous battlesets, fighter planes that I would expect to have internal cannon -- don't seem to. I concluded this buy loading at least one stock scenario from each battleset and launching a fighter that I would expect to have a gun (typically F14s or F15s when available), and look at the unit window after selecting the plane I've just launched. If there is a message at the bottom of the box that says "Gun ammo available", then I assume it has a gun. If there is no such message, then I assume there is not a gun. If there is not a gun available in the first scenario I try in a battleset, I open at l…