General

TACTICS 101: NAVAL FORMATIONS - PART 1: THE FUNDAMENTALS Although far more detailed than is necessary for the purposes of Harpoon Commander's Edition (HCE), Part 1 of this discussion about naval formations will help to establish the fundamentals and could be useful for other versions of Harpoon (principally Harpoon 4.1 paper rules) and other naval wargaming efforts. Part 2 will focus on the step by side assembly of a naval formation within HCE. Part 3, in turn, will deal with adding fixed wing aircraft and helicopters to a naval formation. So what is a naval formation? A naval formation is an ordered arrangement of two or more ships. Naval formations s…

Has there been much thought to creating a number of extremely introductory scenarios to give new players, or recently-returned "strangers" an opportunity to step through various naval warfare disciplines? They could be created in a form that would step up in complexity much akin to how TacOps has a number of similar scenarios where your forces remain the same but the enemy's gear gets enhances while time limits are shortened or the building block scenarios from the H4 Quick Start Rules. Topics could be things as ASW, take in somewhat restricted waters, a 1990's Perry and conduct ASW seaches against a noisy D/E sub, then progressively better equipped opposing subs. …

Firstly, is there an area where questions like this about specific scenarios have been asked? Been playing GIUK 2.0 Small NATO ASW Sortie for most of the day. I'm slowly getting better results, but my surface groups keep losing ships before even detecting the sub. First warning i'm getting is that torpedos are incoming in most cases. I am managing to sink around 2 enemy subs per game, but am either running of of time or red is meeting their victory condtions. I have my ships in a very wide formation. It appears that only the only towed arrays on the OHP and the Type 23 FFG are of any use in this arena. I have generous ASW helo patrols, 2 from the American group a…

Hi All, Playing the first scenario of GIUK 2.0, where I have to escort 2 merchants to Narvik. A flight of 6 floggers comes in...presumably intending to attempt to kill my ships. However the first thing they did was shoot down all 4 of my ASW helos. While this makes good sense I'd foolishly figured they wouldn't waste time trying to shoot down helicopters while in range of ship based SAMs... Regardless of my stupidity on this point...how does one defend against this? Land all your ASW helos as soon as you suspect an enemy flight is coming in? This is very crafty as the very thought of a fighter attack would force me to land all my helos, which is going to put…

Not sure how I missed this one. Good review! (yes, I'm biased ) Link

How does the climb rate value for an aircraft work? Also, I noticed that the climb rates for some aircraft are markedly more than the others. i.e. F-22, Eurofighter, Cheetah C. Is this a mistake?

I have bought HCE recently and I have some questions about this game. How do ATA and DATA works? Is it Loadout DATA something you should add to Plane DATA to get a final modifier or is it the maximun DATA that any plane can reach when it is loading this type of Loadout? Where are airbone cannons? How can I edit them?

Hello all, I have been playing Harpoon since Harpoon Classic 97 came out. I just got Harpoon Commander's Edition, and have been messing with the scenario editor. I have built a couple of scenarios, but I can't seem to get it to run when I load it on the game. I am not very experiened with modifying files or things like that, so I have not had the nerve to poke around the game files and possibly screw something up. I need help knowing exactly what to do from saving my scenario to getting it to run normally on the game. When I have tried to load my scenario in the past, it either came up with an error or came up with the map with no units in it. I like building giant ba…

Searching for data, I finded a interesting link of a personal study of North Korean warships: http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthrea...aval+Power+2007

File Name: HDS9 - HDS III GIUK Orders File Submitter: TonyE File Submitted: 9 Nov 2008 File Category: Tools/Mods/Docs Authors: TonyE ZIP file containing MS Word and PDF versions of the orders for the battleset. The table of contents links work in the Word document, they do not work in the PDF. Click here to download this file

Hi al i'm new to this forum but have been a long time player of this game. glad to see they revived the original design as i didnt care to much for the other versions that came out. playing with the commanders edition and was wondering if there was now a way to invade and take over an enemy base, other than just destroying it. Have noticed that you have combat troops and the like as loadouts for transport helos and planes but what good are they if you cant land them at an enemy base or installation after you have knocked their defenses down

I used various versions some years ago, finishing on Classic and W98. One of the problems was non re-sizable windows; ridiculously small on a large screen (1600x1200, or better). (Current hardware is twin core Athlon running XP.) So far as I can tell the main difference between the two versions is single user v multi-user. I expect mainly single user, but for the small price difference multi-user would be nice if there were no penalties or 'gotchas'. Is there any compelling reason to choose one or the other? Can old battlesets and scenarios be updated for use with either version?; or does one merely download new versions? Am I right in thinking that there…

Hi all - After a 15 year hiatus, I've decided to get back to Harpoon - one of my all-time favorites. I have a couple of questions................ As I read several of the posts here at this forum, it seems that HCE is perhaps more bug-free compared to ANW. Is that a fair conclusion? Also, it sounds like one of the first things I should do upon purchase, is download the Players DB. Is this a fairly intuitive process? Can anybody think of anything else that would be helpful to a noob? Finally, let me say how much I've enjoyed this forum. I look forward to playing the latest permutation of Harpoon and this forum has certainly added to my sense of …

Impressive personal studio of present and future aircraft carriers: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=144822

Back in 1998 I started war-gaming by playing Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader, and I still have my original rule book, game boards with 5 expansions, and 2,000 plus game counters carefully stored in two large fishing tackle boxes that I protect with my life. I currently play TacOps4, and I like to have as many details as possible for weapon systems and tactics as I can. I was extremely excited when TacOps4 came bundled with 167 different US Military Field, Technical, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Manuals in pdf format (with searchable text). I have only played land warfare up until now. I discovered Harpoon just a month ago when I was reading an analogy that TacOps was…

Tony or Brad: Are there specific instructions on how to utilize the battleset builder program. Via trial and error I've figured out part of it but I can't get my test battleset to be read by the scenario editor. It created a HCBS file but that appears to be incorrect. I'm trying to create a Hawaii battleset with an embedded database as a test. I got the map to work under the "my battleset" and the scenario editor sees that battleset. However, the battleset I'm trying to create, "test 1" with a Hawaii map (rsr file ?) and with an embedded database. Something was saved as a HCBS file, but it is not read or accessed by the scenario editor. 1. When embedding da…

Matrix has released 2008.044 as a non-beta patch. Read about it and grab it from http://www.matrixgames.com/news/534/Larry....tion.Is.Updated If you already have the 2008.044 beta there is no need to re-download as you already have the proper files. As usual we're already hard at work on the next patch. Some of the highlights of the 2008.044 patch are: 2008.025 to 2008.044 Changes: New Features: • BattleSet Builder - Databases may now be embedded in user BattleSets, to distribute a map, scenarios, and database in one package the user need only distribute two files. • Split most sounds for the game into individual wav files enabling the user to customiz…

Screenshot of what went on in beta testing land today

I downloaded and updated my game engine to the 2008.0047 release and noticed something interesting... Flankers are impervious to missiles! 6 Flankers coming out of Norway (NACV Battleset) were confronted by 12 Phamtom's and 4 Tornado's with a total of 64 LR Air-to-air Missiles... and within 15 nm of the targets and all I was able to get for 64 launches was one kill! So when did we change vendors for the Skyflash/Sparrow Missiles?..

I noticed this in HC2002, and now in HCE (which I have recently purchased)- TLAM missiles are listed as being for SURF targets, yet they are unable to target ships. There is a separate weapon for each of TASM and Tactical Tomahawk, but neither of these are implemented in most of the USA VLS platforms. This seems to neuter the CG-47/DDG-51/SSGN-726 as ASuW platforms, as well as limiting the capabilities of the SSN-688/21/774.