General

In a previous discussion I was part of (Matrix Harpoon forum, Feb 18/09), I was given to understand that an Aegis cruiser was assigned a ROF of 20 and a control limit of 20 by Harpoon, that is, the ship is able to control 20 SAMs at a time, and can replenish them at the rate of 20 every 30 s. (In addition, I thought that the ship would normally fire 2 SAMs per target.) More recently (Harpgamer forum, July 28/09), I was informed that this Aegis cruiser can fire up to 30 SAMs per 60 s. There may be a typo here, or the rules may have changed in half a year, so I'm not going to worry about this discrepancy too much. What does concern me at this time is that the ac…

Due date August 2009 HCE 20th Anniversary items CV32/TonyE - In game links to the gallery, probably from platform display Everyone - BattleSet of 'all time best' scenarios AGSI/TonyE - Spiffed up splash screens to be provided by AGSI, 800x600 BMP or PSD format, we currently rotate randomly between four splash screens. TonyE - Links to and/or embedding of nostalgia interviews (Bond/Carlson creation of Harpoon, Gilman the ups and downs of Harpoon, etc.) AGSI is going to put together a unique compilation of the games for the 20th Anniversary of the computer games, we've agreed to be a part of that and this evening reached a list of work that should …

Warning: This gets into some hardcore calculations In the course of dealing with a refueling issue, I did some measurements I would not normally have done. I obtained some results that may or may not make sense. I sent an F/A-18D tanker cruising out from its base. Every time its "bingo" status dropped by 10%, I checked its distance to base (F6 in the group window) and fuel range remaining (F in the unit window). I expected that the distance traveled plus distance remaining would add up to a constant (1050 nm, the initial basic range of the plane). What I found was that the two numbers added up to an increasing total, so that the plane was able to travel sign…

Could someone please make a comment about the issue that I have reported here: http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=122 Something to the effect of a) This is intentional, or b] I have seen this before, but can't explain it. I would like to know if I am dealing with a bug or a complex process. It may be that people only look for recent posts, and the issue tracker is hidden. I have tried to reproduce this with the demo but it works differently there. In the demo, I have found a definite mistake in the way tankers are handled, but I see no reason to report that because the demo is an older version of the game.

I am still working on this post - needed to store the data somewhere, but I need to interrupt the process. new data Anecdote about a refueling problem. Strictly speaking, this does not belong in this thread, because it is not a refueling issue, although it arises as a consequence of a refueling situation. In EC2000 Battle for the Norwegian Sea 1 (Big Fish), you need to fly some EH 101 Merlin helicopters from Kinloss, Scotland to some friendly ships just S of Iceland, refuel there, and then assault some US ships NW of Iceland. The Merlins have a range of 500 nm, so they can just barely make it to the refueling point. However, all the target ships are mor…

HCE - 2009.029 ============== - Chg:0000 GE ASMs/SSMs with the Snap Up/Down flag can now be shot at by point defense weapons. (thanks Miller7219) - Chg:0000 GE Fixed wacky characters in the "Please turn on your radar" messages. (thanks Miller7219)

I'll start releasing them again once the existing untested release notes items are resolved so please take care of them, only a couple of them require much thought and effort.

Seems that all the network problems I've been dealing with are worked out for now. I hope to actually be able to do some HCE testing this weekend. Yay!

Here are some bugs that I came across while doing experiments with tankers. Not really bugs as in the game doing something wrong and unintented when a player does something normal and appropriate, but rather me doing something abnormal that the game was not designed to do, and getting away with it. One of them may not have been seen before. I am posting it in this location because the hardcore testers might derive some amusement from it, but it might give the wrong impression to a more general audience. If you order a plane to "patrol" to a location that it doesn't have the fuel to reach, the game will not allow the plane to be launched. If the plane cannot be ref…

HCE - 2009.036 ============== - Chg:0000 GE Code changes to make sure the -g command line switch time compression is only applied for the first scenario loaded. - Chg:0000 GE The game should only prompt for game options once instead of the double prompting we've been tolerating for years. You should be able to them both but I'll be satisfied if you test the second.

HCE - 2009.035 ============== - Chg:0000 GE A couple of tweaks to possibly increase responsiveness under heavy processing load. When at high time compression this should make the 1:1 time hotkeys more responsive. - Chg:0000 GE Show the proper side's Staff Assistant when enemy land units are destroyed. (thanks StalinTC) Thanks to StalinTC on that second and thanks to him also for the attached saved game, play as Blue, after about 10 seconds of game time you should be prompted to fire Brimstone at some Red MLUs, do 12 on target one, six on each of the others and you should get one or two kills. The staff assist…

HCE - 2009.027 ============== - Chg:0106 GE Implementing a new eff115 (Autonomous Sensor Intelligence) that determines when the AI should turn on active sensors and when to prompt the player to do the same. Added a new log type option to the command line for this, emcon_ai . Also added a new command line option to switch back to a fixed version of the old eff115 that will properly notice if a group's radars are already on. The option is -e i.e. c:\games\HCE\Winharp32.exe -e would revert to the fixed old eff115 that is much more apt …

HCE - 2009.028 ============== - Chg:0000 GE Similar changes to eff115 except for sonar this time. There will be no suggestion to turn on active sonars until an approaching torp/sub/ship is detected within active sonar range. For incoming torps, the range is always the max active sonar range, for ships and subs there is a random factor. (thanks Brad) - Chg:B109 GE Removed BOL ASM/SSM PH modifiers since the related data fields are also used for other purposes. We also have no idea in more recent battlesets (since EC2000) whether the Red side is …

HCE - 2009.032 ============== - Chg:0000 GE EMCON messages for sonar weren't always appearing as a result of a utility function returning 0 as the active sonar range when active sonar wasn't on. Wrote a new function to give theoretical active sonar range if it were on. (thanks Akula) see http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?showtopic=4166 for test scen. The Akula is nasty though, he likes to launch ASROC style weapons that the LA never sees. I found using Show All to give the Akula a path at Cruise, below the layer did wonders, especially if the LA creeps towards the Akula.

HCE - 2009.031 ============== - Chg:0000 GE Changed formatting of new detection messages a bit so there are fewer missing spaces (i.e. no more lack of space before the "Method Radar" part of the message and such. - Chg:0000 GE Minor performance tweak to eff115. - Chg:0000 GE Fixed formatting issue of command line switch reporting in the log file. - Chg:0000 BS Stripped photos/graphics from EC2000 battlesets while restoring the correct strategic maps for said battlesets. All that needs checking here is the Strategic Maps for EC2000 which you can do right from the Battleset selector dialog.

HCE - 2009.030 ============== - Chg:B111 GE Radar, ESM, and many other detections weren't happening at the right ranges since 2009.026, fixed up the problems leading to that situation. This may reinforce the performance penalty alluded to in 2009.027. (thanks Reckall) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=111 - Chg:0000 GE Fixed the wacky/absent explanation in the "Please turn on your sonar" messages. If you get a message in your message log that looks like... DEBUG eff115 Group ACC, Unit Nimitz SecondsToCPA=72 Please zip and post your save game to thi…

Love the ability to zoom out further with the unit window! Looks like the new unit window is essentially identical to the group window, just it shows individual units within formation. Very handy, but is anyone else noticing the "choppy" movement of units/missles when you zoom into 16x or smaller? Seems that once you get 16x or smaller the unit window become almost unusable. Is there anything that can be done to smooth out unit/missile movement in the smaller zooms of the new unit window?

I know some of you don't watch the Issue Tracker so here's your prompt to check out and comment on an important aspect of sensor intelligence (specifically when should the AI light off radars on its own accord). Reply in the issue please, check out Issue 44 for more detail and background. http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=106

Hi Everyone, We had a really good run of testing a little while back and I'm hoping you can all gear up and make a push to verify open release notes items so that we can wrap things up and toss out a patch. There are still some bugs I want to fix but I think we're pretty close feature-wise. Thank you.

HCE - 2009.026 ============== - Chg:0000 GE A 'bonus' increment to the number of SAMs to fire at incoming targets was supposed to be applied if the target is moving at > 1300 kts. Unfortunately the code was using a speed not in kts so the bonus was always applied. That has now been fixed and the units match. - Chg:B044 GE In the case where a platform only has surface search radars yet also has SAMs, allow the platform to fire non IR guided SAMs if the platform has surface search radars turned on. (thanks to Reckall for a scen that demonstrated t…