General

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 ?

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?

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…

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.

Good afternoon everyone. I have recently purchased the Matrix Games Harpoon Ultimate Commander's Edition as well as Harpoon 3 -3.9.4 after not playing Harpoon for ages. One of the things I have noticed is that UCE is more "user friendly" and easier for a relative Newbie like myself to get up and playing.. While Harpoon 3 appears to be more difficult. That being said, I guess I am frustrated with H3 even though I am perceiving it to be the more "accurate" simulation for playing against the computer AI, as opposed to UCE as being more of an "advanced video game" version of Harpoon. Is my own perception? or am I missing something. What I want to be ab…

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 …

It's been quite some time since I touched the Scenario Editor, and a question came up but I can't recall the answer: Is it possible to have an air strike in-progress or at least imminent at the start of a scenario... or do all air attacks have to be launched from a base? In other words, is it possible to set it up so that the player will be under attack as soon as he starts playing the scenario, or will there always be the time required for the AI to launch a strike from a base and travel to the attack position?

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…

In trying to get a handle on this relative detectability issue, I have a few hypothetical cases, and since I can't create test scenarios for them (yet), I'm hoping someone can shed light on what should happen in these situations: Case 1: A player's base and an AI base exist, say, 400 nm apart - or whatever distance places them beyond each other's air radar range. A MiG-21 is loitering directly above one base and an E-2C is loitering directly above the other base. Both planes are at high altitude, and neither have any radar active. Both bases have active radar. There are no other groups "in play". The questions are, who sees what? 1. Is the E-2C detected by the …

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.

Unzip the attached into your 2009.050 HC demo directory. HC2009.054DemoGE.zip HC2009.061DemoGE.zip

Here is a small piece form a ge.log, with radar logging operating. 104351 Search.c:860 - Radar Emitter=AF-18A/B Hornet Target=E-737 Wedgetail, TargetRange=124, Radar LOS = (BaseLOS x weather_mod + 128)/256 104351 Search.c:861 - Radar LOS of 327nm = (327nm x 256 + 128)/256 --> Radar LOS=107057/256 104351 Search.c:867 - A RCS=157 TName=E-737 Wedgetail AName=AF-18A/B Hornet Range=124 Die=31 aPD=65 104351 Search.c:940 - B RCS=157 ARng=130 Arng=160 SRng=130 Srng=160 104351 Search.c:944 - Target was previously tracked. 104351 Search.c:987 - Detected E-737 Wedgetail with Air-to-Air Radar of range 130 with PD 65, Roll=31 104351 Search.c:1024 - Type of target kno…

I run into this situation quite a bit, but fail to see why it is the way it is... so would someone please enlighten me? The situation is where an AI base that I wish to attack has had its radar knocked out, has no attached land AA/radar Units, and has no formation air patrols with active radar (as evidenced by the following: - The Report display for the Base says, "Other damage - Sensor" and Land Units: 0 - Friendly air groups having SEAD and AAM loadouts give the "No released weapons ... for Land attack" message when commanded to attack the base (thus implying that there are no active land-based radars and no formation air groups on the base). Yet, the Range Ci…

Given some folks' reports of their airborne early warning & control (AEW&C) or AWACS aircraft proving vulnerable to 'sneak attacks' or generally not being able to spot enemy targets, I'd thought I would run a few tests through HCE 2009.050 and HCDB-110304 and post the results. The premise being that AEW&C and AWACS are not the "all seeing eye of Sauron" that some might expect them to be, nor are all of their potential targets, foes and aggressors created equally. I chose four different AEW&C platforms (with some similar and some varying capabilities), and a variety of radar 'targets' (again, with some similarities and some differences between them)…

Two or three questions about refueling: 1. How is fuel allocated among differing a/c types in a common group during refueling? For example, if I have groups consisting of an EF-111 (Patrol) and some F-111s (GP), or an EA-6B (Patrol) and some A-6Es (Precis-2), or some other similar combinations where there is a member type that has a much shorter range than other type(s) in the group and the tanker that is re-fueling the group does not have enough fuel to top off all the members, then how is the fuel allocated among those group members? Do the shorter-ranged members get topped off, and the remaining fuel distributed among the others, or (preferrably) does the fuel g…