mavfin

Seems to me the recon aircraft are the key to this as Blue or Red. If you're the Graf Spee and you let the Exeter get in first visual detection range (usually doesn't detect till about 6 nm) you'll get smothered before you can fire the big guns more than once or twice, because the CLs are right behind the Exeter, and all the cruisers have a much higher rate of fire. If you use the spotter airplane, you can keep the cruisers at arm's length, and even use your own six-inchers if you work it right. Just keep your distance and work them over with the big guns where they don't have a visual on you. Just have to be patient. The 11-inchers don't fire but once a minute, but if you get hits, they hurt the thin-skinned cruisers. As Blue, you want to use your aircraft to pinpoint the Graf Spee, so you can get all 3 cruisers in range at once, and smother him before he can hurt you too much. Again, w/o the aircraft, if you attack singly, you'll get nailed by the big guns at close range before you can do much damage. Not that the GE simulates it anyway, but at 6nm, the 6-inchers penetrate Graf Spee's armored belt fairly well. Not sure if the secondary batteries could, though. Hmm, looks like 5"/38 AP (better than Brit 4") can't penetrate 3" belt at that range. So, the GE not simulating armor really hurts at that range. TL;DR: if Red, keep Blue at arms length and use your superior guns. If Blue, pinpoint with spotters, attack together, and smother the Spee with your higher RoF. Was fun experimenting with it.

Some further thoughts, more brainstorming than anything: Who would be plausible enemies in South America? Argentina would be an obvious one, if the Russians promised them the Falklands, and gave them some decent equipment to take them with. Maybe one more subverted enemy that's not on the Caribbean coast? Let Brazil do most of the heavy lifting with some US technological support? (AEW, jamming, etc) Even some Air National Guard units if Brazil needs more help. Could have Cuba make some trouble in the Caribbean, perhaps as a sub base, or sneak in some strike aircraft to attack the Gulf Coast shipyards or naval bases in range. Perhaps Nicaragua or even Panama could cause some trouble. Venezuela as well for the Caribbean. Raising a ruckus in the Caribbean keeps Eagles at home and not fighting the Russians elsewhere after all. In the Pacific, the Russians could attack Sakhalin, causing stuff along the lines of some recent monster scenarios, but w/o the stealth equipment. Perhaps Indonesia could be co-opted into the Soviet cause, and attack Australia, and put pressure on Singapore and the Straits? North Korea could be part of the Russian plans to draw off US forces, and China could just decide to take advantage of the chaos and go after Taiwan while everyone else is looking the other way, completely independent of the Russian moves. Perhaps South Africa could be invaded by their neighbors using Soviet equipment, in a Sixth Battle-ish way, w/o all the Red Navy support. I mean, if they were preparing to go to war, there'd be tons of 2nd-line gear to ship to other places, after all. South Africa could still be hard-pressed by T-62s and Floggers if US/NATO help wasn't available. Add a small Soviet SAG or two, and a French SAG or even a French CV trapped Madagascar by the war start for some naval fun. Anyway, I have food to eat, so I'll leave this here for now. Edit: Found a couple interesting things on a backup drive today. Found PDFs of the booklets for the Harpoon Designer Series I, and II/III, that I remember having with my original Harpoon Classic that I got in ~1995. I may have gotten the PDFs from someone here, but I'm not sure.

I was bored tonight, so I went through the HDS3 battleset orders, looking at the dates on the orders. Not sure if it's of any value to anyone else, but, here's what I found if you wanted to play these in chronological order by date. This might be an interesting WWIII set to convert to HCDB and newer GE. At least one, maybe two of the scenarios would have to be basically made up from the orders, because they load copies of other scenarios, rather than what is supposed to be there. I know 'Three Days at Mannar" in HDSC is like this. Might also be interesting to think up a matching set of events for the parts of the world HCE couldn't cover back then, like South Africa, South America, and Westpac, Maybe even the Caribbean. I think this battleset is always fun for those who love to play with US CVBGs vs swarms of russian heavy missiles and Backfires. I think some of the scenarios would lend themselves well to being tough nuts to crack, too, with the HCDB way of uncoupling defenses from the bases and just the general updating of the DB and GE, particularly if written in two versions: play as Red or play as Blue. Also, subs would tend to be a greater threat than they were of old. Anyway, my mind keeps coming back to this stuff, but, as you well know, I haven't really produced anything yet, either. Only time will tell. HDS3 Battleset Chronology GIUK (HDS9) 1: 8/2 2: 8/3 3: 8/6 4: 8/9 5: 8/9 6: 8/15 7: 8/31 8: 9/5 9: 9/9 10: 9/11 11: 9/12 12: 9/13 NACV (HDSA) 1: 8/2 2: 8/5 3: 8/14 4: 8/20 5: 8/25 6: 8/26 7: 8/27 8: 9/3 9: 9/2 10: 9/7 11: 9/13 12: 9/14? (no date on orders, but after the nuclear exchange on 9/13 in all battlesets) MEDC (HDSB) 1: 8/2 2: 8/3 3: 8/5 4: 8/7 5: 8/6 6: 8/29 7: 9/2 8: 9/3 9: 9/7 10: 9/8 11: 9/12 12: 9/13 IOPG (HDSC) 1: 8/1 2: 8/2 3: 8/3 4: 8/5 5: 8/6 6: 8/14 7: 8/25 8: 8/28 9: 9/6 10: 9/9 11: 9/12 12: 9/13

I'm at least thinking about recreating a WWII carrier battle and/or raid or two, perhaps starting with something like the Battle of Eastern Solomons, or perhaps doing a surface battle like Savo if the Long Lances and CA/CL/DD gunnery are working properly. Something like the Turkey Shoot could also be interesting. A huge air battle with no OTH missiles, just fighter and ship guns, biggest ordnance being 5"/38s on the BBs? I remember in the Issue Tracker, there being some issues with air and surface gunnery in WWIi type scenarios. Since the Issue Tracker seems to not have the older issues since the site revamp, did those issues get fixed, or can someone remind me of the nature of them if they're not fixed? Any info would be welcome, or steerage to Issue Tracker archives.

Rest assured, we've seen it. I imagine some people are thinking and/or checking about feasibility of it, etc. I imagine it was taken out at some point in the past because it can 'take advantage' of the AI, but I don't really think that's a huge issue anymore. If people really want to cheat themselves, there's always Show All. However only one person can really comment on feasibility of coding such a thing at this point.

After some further poking around, I have realized that the HUD4 DB is locked and can't be fiddled with. Sorry, but that means I won't be using it for anything. Of all the things you could have done, that was probably the worst one. Good luck, and thanks for you doing *your* part to further the cancer on H3. If you want more info on why I feel this way, I'll happily reply by PM, but I won't put it here out of respect for Tony/Brad/etc. (Don't expect replies from me. I've had my say, and promised Brad I'd not post any more here. I've already said what I had to say about the encrypted DB. Good luck with all your endeavors, Gunny. )

Sorry, misread something. Will find a better place for this. Still think what I wrote, but didn't realize I was necro-ing a thread.

I was using the 3.10.1.0 release version. I guess I'll check the 3.11 and see from there, when I have time. Problem is, the banned project doesn't have the crashes. Good luck to you.

I've got too much HUCE backlog to start up with the incredibly fragmented H2/3 world again. Not to mention the "We're better!", "No, we're better!" BS that has gone on with this game for years. What you guys don't realize is that while you all may have your causes and I'm sure you're in the right...regardless, it just drives people away. Scenarios are fragmented so badly, and, frankly, with HUD-3 or 4 I *still* get a lot of CTDs. Enough of them that I just shrug and go back to HCE. At least there I know Tony's around, and will eventually fix reproducible bugs if they're important. Nothing personal against anyone here on the H3 side, but it's just a morass these days. (Keep in mind I paid for the Ultimate package, knowing I wouldn't use H3 much, so I am trying to support things.)

1. There is a version of Harpoon 3 for Mac but it is no longer officially distributed. That was back in version 3.6.2/3, about a decade old now. Your only other alternative on Mac is by running Windows in a virtual machine and running Harpoon on that. I do that using HC with great success but haven't tried the recent H3 versions though they will certainly work given the right settings and a happy virtual machine (HC only uses Windows GDI graphics calls so it isn't nearly as picky about systems as H3). 2. The smaller scenarios I'll spend 2-3 hours playing. I would say I'm an average pace player. In most small scenarios I'll be from 5x to 30x time compression. That said I usually play larger scenarios over multiple gaming sessions (often I'll luck into an 8 hour session, save, then continue in 2-3 hour sessions after that, often multitasking during play). Just a note, the H3 versions play just fine on my Mac using Virtualbox and an XP VM that I imported from VMWare when I didn't want to pay for VMWare anymore. (Vbox is free.) HCE of course works great.

As long as you sanity check if screen changes (as the person above who sometimes had 2nd monitor on laptop, sometimes didn't) I'd love to keep it the way I had it laid out.

Virtualbox is free, so you can run an XP VM under it easily on a Win 7 64 machine, if you have the license for XP. (I do all my Harpoon that way on my Mac. I have a Win 7 64 partition, but, Harpoon doesn't need that much power. The VM is fine.)

The Storm in IOPG has lots of air combat, albeit a bit one-sided in quality of aircraft.

Note that Dawn Patrol is no longer included in the battlesets, but you can download it here.

Yeah, I have VMWare Fusion, and I just run Harpoon in an XP VM under that. I have a Win 7 Bootcamp Partition, too, but that's 64-bit, so the old XP VM is better for Harpoon. Works great. The old Mac Harpoon doesn't work for me, crashes pretty fast. The even older Mac Harpoon Classic doesn't work under Lion, because all PPC support (Rosetta) is gone, too. And, BTW, Spore may be the old PPC code, so it won't work on Lion, either. What I did for some older games like that was set up a 10.6 version system on my 2nd hard drive to boot into when I needed one of those. Lion is where they made the break completely with the old PPC code.

I don't play the demo, so I would never run into that version...

GIUK (original) F/A 18 Hornet afaik this one is NOT vlow capable in GIUK AV-8 Harrier II SU-24 A-6E MEDC (original) I tried the A-6 and F-18 here, crashed NACV (original) F.3 Tornado GR.1 Jaguar GR.1 Tornado F/A 18 Hornet IOPG (original) A-6E TRAM GR.1 Tornado F-111 F-15E I think everything that *is* capable in GIUK is capable in later battlesets, but I'm not sure about MEDC. I'd have to recheck the F-18s, I'm not sure about them or the Jaguar. My memory is that the -18s crash. F-18 is vlow-capable in GIUK. How did that escape me all this time?

I believe in the original DB that the F-111 couldn't. From original GIUK on, here's a short list of known NoE-capable a/c: Harriers, Tornado attack variants, (not F.3, afaik), A-6E, Su-24. By IOPG at least (maybe before, but not sure), the F-111 and F-15E are also on that list. I'm not real sure, but I think the Forgers (VTOL off the Kiev) are also Vlow capable, which means later the -141 probably is, too. Anything else, I either know won't do it, or I have to test with the save & test method. Nothing else leaps to mind as 'definitely known Vlow capable' anyway. A bunch exist that I *know* don't work.

While that would be great, Brad, it's not the ones in the CDB/editable DBs that I would like to see labeled. I can check PE for those. It's the ones in the old DBs that I'd like to see statused for NoE.

Sounds like we're all getting much better hit ratios, are they looking OK from reality perspective, I've no idea what we should expect (though someone put up some info about low success for air dropped LWTs). It is much better from the game point of view, it doesn't seem like an utter waste of time and frustration builder. Exactly. Last time, I was able to get a hit before I ran out of helos, even though half the torps ran off into nowhere. Before, I could dump 6 torps (3 helos worth, usually 1 readying unavailable) on a contact, with a solid fix, and get usually 6 torps that either didn't acquire, or the one that did, would get outmaneuvered, which made it more frustrating than worth bothering with. Half the time, I'd hear the sub within 3 miles of the Perry, and could shoot over the side at him, too, and still get nothing on a solid contact. So yeah, the current settings feel better. Not invincible, still requires some work to get a good fix before you drop, but you're not coming up empty time after time after doing said work.

Bring me my *brown* pants!

I think they're committing enough to test those high-priced combat systems of different kinds they've bought, but don't want to support the whole bunch of them.

Well, this becomes a case of not everyone wants the same thing. I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for the above, but making the radar/visual model better by adding the 4 aspects at different values would be welcomed by me. Is it vital? No. Do I think it would add more to the sim than some graphic of the carrier deck? Yes. Maybe this should end up in wishlist, but if I could have my choice of two additions to HCE, they would be: 1) the ability to jam/target particular emitters, and have it actually mean something; i.e. be able to jam the Top Dome, or target it specifically with a HARM, and have it mean that it shortens Grumble range for-real. 2) The ability to know, w/o having to use the PE, whether an a/c has NOE, and/or if a missile system is sea-skimmer capable. And I would like to be able to see this with the old DBs, too. I'm sure your list is different. I also have no interest in HCE multiplayer. I have plenty of multiplayer games. However, a lot of people seem to want it, so I'm fine with that. to TonyE: don't take these as demands on my part. I'm happy to take whatever improvements you and Brad and whoever have time to make. I understand the situation you're in.

When I was starting to play the game a lot in the 1995-1997 time, I used to have some times I wondered some of the same things as Joe does now. However, once I looked deeper, it could almost always be explained by: 1) engagement cycles; i.e. speed of incoming and altitude of incoming dictating how many times I got to shoot at it. 2) point defenses (Kirov has a lot more point defenses than even the older Ticos w/o ESSM, for example) 3) engagement geometry; i.e. a ship on the outside of the formation getting hit, and the protecting missile ship was having to do a crossing engagement to protect it, or aircraft tail-chasing missiles. 'winders do fairly well from the front on high-speed Russian missiles, but can't even catch Sunburns from behind. Usually, once I looked at those factors, any other difference was small enough to be just luck in PK, bad or good. I didn't play anything newer than the 1.63 Mac version until 2009, when I got this computer, and VMWare, so I could run Windows XP in a VM. The new engine still runs engagements about the same way, and this time actually pays attention to horizons, so it's more even than before. Before, if I remember correctly, Soviet missile ships would start firing Grumbles at Harpoons from 60 miles out, because the AEW helo could see them. (Maybe I remember wrong. I know you couldn't loiter at Vlow at 30 miles in the old days!) Now they don't fire on Vlow targets till a lot further in (~23nm?), while Shipwrecks come in high, but you don't get many engagement cycles anyway, because they're so fast, and Sunburns...well, there's a reason they call those Aegis-killers. When you can't fire till ~23 nm, and they're coming in at Mach 2, you don't get to fire but one or two batches of missiles from the vertical launchers, let alone a Mk 26.

Give us some test scenarios to prove you can duplicate what none of us have seen in the game. If you can't do that because you're still playing the demo, then, maybe you should invest in the game a little, or maybe think about where the real issues are. Document what happens, compare the classes that are firing said ordnance, and go from there; i.e. a VLS Tico is going to fire more missiles than a Perry, and a Kirov can manage more than a Kiev. Posting paragraphs like the quoted one above does *nothing* to help anyone, least of all you.