General

Back in the day, like many of you, I played Harpoon OnLine but I didn't have enough money to play the paid, just the pre-pre-release . Unfortunately my memory of the actual gameplay is foggy and my current coding efforts are running across some of the items that any multiplayer HC would face. So if you have the answers I'd most like to have my memory refreshed!

Hello folks, I just started playing this game, a long long time ago I used to play Harpoon Online on AOL. Was glad to see there is still a version out there and supported. I seem to be having some trouble defending my carrier groups against enemy subs. I read in one of the guides that the Perry class frigates have excellent sonar, and I see it is supposed to have a towed array. But according to the range circles, it appears their sonar has less range than the Spruance class destroyers (perhaps not suprising) and also the aegis cruisers. If you go into the unit display, it lists ranges for the main sonar, but the SQR-18 (I think this is the towed array) never shows t…

I think we must change in the submarine biological contact "Whale" the type from MISC(elaneous) to SS, if not, the human player has a clear advantage. When a submarine contact is detected at long range (SOSUS, KEYHOLE or similar) and the player read in the Unit Window "Unknown submarine contact. MISC", is a clear hint of the contact being a Whale, not a SS, and the human player has not to research that contact. Other idea about the Whales: the whale can't be detected by MAD, it need the titanium hull flag for that?

This is a little pedantic and more out of interest than anything: say you have a target comprising a single unit of three closely formed planes and you fire three missiles (eg heat seekers). Say you get three hits, now there is a likely hood (in reality) that two hits are on the same plane and so there is one survivor. This doesn't seem to be the case in Harpoon where the hits appear to be divided up evenly. Doesn't really cause a problem (in my mind) as both sides have the same situation and it isn't too far off, but an interesting case of minor deviation from reality. Don

Hello, I mean ... it is the same since several years. While the game engine, thanks to a great group of Harpoon lovers, was REALLY IMPROVED over the years, the scenario editor remained the same. I like to see some new useful things added to it ... for example: 1) the possibility to save a group of ships and to load it in a new scenario ... think to a carrier group ... now you need to add all the ships, the Air Wings, the helos, to define the formation of the group, etc ... every time you build a scenario you have to start all the process again! 2) when a base is added, because many of them are know as home of an Air group, the base should have all the aircraft…

I am a newbie in HCE. I am just trying to do a clean install of HCE on my laptop. I tried the following sequence of patches: 1. HarpoonCommandersEdition-SetupRelease-v2008-024 2. HarpoonCommandersEdition-UpdateInstaller-2008.024 = It's working 3. HCE-UpdateComprehensiveInstaller-2009.050 = Error: The specified file: '' could not be found. Do I have to install v2008.044 before install v2009.050? By the way in this link http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2477778 I saw about 2009.042, this make me confuse, what is the order to install the patch? (if 2009.042 is required, could you give me the download link please) thank you in advance

Hi Folks, Sometimes the details get a little murky. I gather that the new torpedo acquisition ranges are db dependent and that the improved sonar, ESM and ASW modeling are dependent on the game engine? Is this correct? Thanks

This question is rather multi-part, but still inter-related: When an air group consists of more than one member of only one aircraft type, how are unused fuel and weapons allocated among the individual members? That is, is each individual member tracked independently, or is there some sort of overall "formula" that determines the allocations? For example, if only one member of a group gets re-fueled, does that fuel remain associated with that one individual member, or does it effectively get distributed evenly among all the group members? Similarly, when an air group expends part of its total available weapons, do those weapons come equally from all members o…

It has been brought into question recently whether I properly understand the purposes and functions of some of the game settings and "special" key commands... and indeed, I have been operating under certain assumptions about several of these settings and commands in particular, because I never found much other than a cursory description of them. It is very possible that I am misunderstanding the purposes and/or effects in these cases. So, my question is, does complete documentation of the game settings and commands exist in one place somewhere - that fully describes the purpose, application, and effects of the various game settings and commands - along with any "side…

In earlier discussions, we've seen that relative altitudes affect detectability of target groups, as does separation distance and target size. I'm curious whether other factors such as target emissions, target speed, target or detector aspect, relative speed of target and detector, number of units in target (and/or detector) group, and absolute altitude, are figured into all this - and if so, how. We have seen demonstrated that AI targets having their radars on don't necessarily result in detection by player's forces, but we don't know whether the reverse is true. I have tried to set up some tests to see whether most of these other aspects have any effect, but…

Where do you put the files for user created scenarios? I downloaded the "Anteres" (Lybian scen, my brother was actually on the Kearsarge as an on-board engineer on an Osprey so I am interested in this scenario). I get three files ending in .SLo, .RDo, or something. There is no obvious place to put them, and no existing files with the same extensions to let me know where they belong. I can't find anything in the manual or on the forums about it either. Where do the files go?

Partly because of the way I position the various Windows on my display, I have run into some apparently inconsistent behavior relating to the Windows automatically switching focus, or auto-centering, or auto-panning, so I'm curious if there is a way to avoid these undesired aspects. First, regarding auto-focusing: To make my Group and Unit Windows as large as possible, I have overlayed ("tiled") those two Windows. Consequently, I've observed that when I have the Unit Window in front of the Group Window, and certain Staff Assistant dialogs or orders dialogs pop up that have a "Select" button on them, in some cases, clicking on "Select" will automatically bring the…

Problem is with seeing the orders when playing from a saved game. Situation: I started a user scenario, played for a while, then saved it. In this case in the Westpac battleset, the Duel_v2 scen. I come back later and load the save. I cannot call up the orders to review as HCE says it can't find them. Judging by the error message it appears to be trying to create the file name for the orders based on the *save file* name and not the original scenario. I've seen this behavior too in other scenarios, always a user scenario. Saves from a campaign scen do not seem to have this problem. Is there a fix or a work-around for this ?

Are there cases where a tanker or tankers are not supposed to break off after completing re-fueling? I'm curious because most times, after completion of re-fueling, a dialog will appear asking whether to separate the tankers from the group... but sometimes, this dialog does not occur, and the tanker(s) remain attached to the group. I'm wondering whether this is a normal occurance, due to some special circumstances, or if it may be a bug that I should attempt to capture? I've had this happen every so often, but I don't see any particular difference from the cases where the tanker-separation dialog does appear, so I'm curious what may be the reason for this. (Inci…

This probably is two separate questions, but they are sort of opposite sides of the same coin, so: I've noticed from time to time that when I have a strike group attacking a base or surface target that consists of multiple units, if one of the units gets destroyed, the attacking group will "lose" its target and go to loiter - instead of continuing to attack other surface/ground units in the target group. I must then re-initiate the attack. Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong? A recent example of this was that I wanted to pick off the helos in an AI carrier group - to prevent it from detecting and destroying my nearby SAG. So, I launched several separate…

I would like to keep this thread clean. No side topics, please. The early Hawkeye has several deficiencies compared to a modern AEW aircraft. However, it will not be present during the normal time frame of most Harpoon scenarios, and its opponents are much less capable than modern aircraft as well. One deficiency is the lack of ESM, so the E-2B does not detect radar emissions. The other deficiency is a "vertically-challenged" radar: without look-down, shoot-down (LDSD) capacity, radar ranges at most altitudes are halved. That is, the E-2B radar only works at full efficiency in its own altitude band and one level up. In particular, the E-2B can detect common enemy …

Playing HCE, GIUK scenario "Gatekeeper." Question has to do with Unit and Group screen differences. I have two single-sub units with sub in the center of the formation. One shows in the Group screen that it is the middle of Iceland and Norway, yet the Unit menu shows it running aground in Norway. The second is 269 nm from a red contact in the Group screen, yet in the Unit screen it is 10 nm away and able to attack. It's also moving at 22 degrees in one screen and 244 in the other.

I would like this thread to be very clean: please don't introduce any side issues. Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of discussion here about detection, and visual detection appears to relatively the least well understood component. What do we know about visual detection? 1) Joe has provided a lot of reports, some anecdotal, some well-referenced, of how his units can't see the broad side of a barn. He has also provided a lot of anecdotal reports that the AI easily detects his units for unknown reasons. We cannot at this point say that those were definitely visual detections. He has provided some well-referenced reports that the AI easily dete…

I'm sorry but I can't find the thread where this stuff was taking place, so I'm starting a dedicated thread for discussing/reporting this special testing I'm tasked with. All runs here were using the 050 Demo. Initial test-runs on one new(er) computer, of my earlier games-saves that demonstated the issue of inability of player's AA missiles to acheive hits in some scenarios, has been a complete bust so far. If anything, the player's AAMs have seemed to be almost too effective, achieving infallible 100% hits. This is adding more confusion to the situation then it is resolving. Last night, I also tried running the THB scenario on that machine, because of the s…

Just curious whether I can disable or degrade an AI group's ESM capability if I destroy its radar? Or does it have ESM regardless? Also, does the active/inactive state of the AI's radar affect its ESM capabilities? I'm speaking in terms of game action here, not RL. Thanks.