shadragon

I would go for Super Hornets and Growlers. Proven package and available today. The F-35 has stealth advantages, but short legs and much more expensive (F/A-18 E/F $60M per unit versus $89 - 200M estimated price for the F-35). Given previous US procurement programs the cost will only go up. Hey, if it is good enough for the Aussies, it should be good enough for the UK.

Appreciatte the comments. The Reds do have the initial advantage, but the two Blue carrier groups offset that after the initial onslaught. There are not many SU's. Yes, there are twenty years of platforms. When scraping the bottom of the barrel you are forced to use all sorts of things. I thought of doing it with top of the line A/C initially, but UK does not have Phoenix missiles to offset the Foxbat's long reach. I like balance on both sides. Besides if the Sovs did grind NATO down and make it to the channel I doubt they would have that much top of the line stuff left. Repeat air attack comment noted. I did have several set for continuous attacks, but you may have killed those aircraft. Will re-examine. VC's may have been entered incorrectly. The interface is a bit confusing. Will look at it. Marine unit formation ranges were fluffed out a bit to make ASW a little more wide ranging. Will see if I can get it out of the Skagerrak a little more and look at the ranges. I never got (or saw) an option for optional start positions. As I remember it used to come up when establishing the initial position, but that was 10+ years ago. Thanks!

It can also be argued that western air forces would have the edge with their modular designs and training. During the Gulf War our regular maintenance checks were greatly abbreviated and reduced to a shadow of what they were in peacetime. We did things you would never see in peacetime. When a plane hit the deck (F-18) it was swarmed by techs and ready in 15-20 minutes fully fueled, loaded and ready to go. If something was wrong that could not be fixed in a reasonable time period it was carted off for another group to work on it and a backup plane was put in its place. Cannot say we ever did a couple of dozen sorties a day, but we did have aircraft operating 24/7 spending 6-8 hours in the air with in-flight refueling and crew change-outs. It might be an idea to use base damage value as a modifier for A/C readiness. If a base is 90% damaged then it will take longer to get fuel, weapons and people to/from the airfield. Dead fuel bowsers, debris on the airfield, hangers on fire, etc. Plus, casualties slow things down as well. However, having said that, I have no issues with the load-out times being equitable on both sides. It would even out in a conflict. Air field repair is something that might make sense too. We always had engineers on standby to fix bomb damage up. As far as the OP, hammering out the other bugs / errors would be my priority. As a gamer I would hate to get an alert that says "6 of the 8 aircraft you are trying to launch require scheduled engine replacement and inspection. They will be unavailable for 18 hours". That's a little too detailed for me. Cheers.

Then there is a bug. Had a 4 plane group of Flankers take off from a carrier, flew 25 NM away, blew their missiles off and when I hit F6 to return an airbase 435 NM away was the default. Had to manually reselect the carrier for landing when I found them flying east. I am running the latest patched version of HCE available and have seen a few things broken that people said were fixed in earlier versions. Details on that once I get time to document properly. However, the carrier thing should be easy to reproduce. NACV battleset.

Thanks all. Found a couple of bases that were off the map and some other errors I missed. Here you go. Battle of Britain V1.00 BATTOFUK.zip

Bearing only missile attack 1) I see the Hawkeye clearly over top of the carrier group, but I have no contact with any surface vessels with my Bear / Badger / Backfire group which is well out of range of defending air defenses. 2) Along comes my Backfires. I lob a half dozen ASuW missiles down a bearing toward the Hawkeye turning on the radar seeker heads almost immediately. Gives the defenders something they see immediately and cannot ignore. 3) Hawkeye ESM / Radar detects incoming missiles. Ship AAW defences require radar so they flip on their air and surface radars. 4) My Bear detects multiple surface radar signatures and the rest of my Backfire ASuW missles head toward the Carrier group with firm locks on their positions. Carnage ensues. Mu-hahahahaha... Harpoon 97 would let you fire along a bearing (designated by crosshairs and a point on the map) without an actual target being seen or even in range. Firing missiles blind ahead of you is a good way to get the defending fighters to waste their missiles so they cannot use them on your bombers too! Attack range should include weapon range as well I have an airplane with a range of 500 nm. It is loaded with missiles that have 50 nm attack range. If I try to launch on a target 525nm away, I get an error message saying "aircraft do not have range to reach target" even though it is possible to attack that target if you run the mission manually. Given that scenario I should be able to attack a target up to 550 nm away! Returning aircraft should default to the originating base when commanded to land If you have an aircraft you want to return home you use F6 to recall them. However, they will try to land at the closest airfield which may or may not be the one they came from. If you don't catch that, over time you lose aircraft to other bases where they sit unused until ferried or given new orders.

Hi Tarawa (and everyone else), I saw your post last week and actually built a Battle of Britain scenario on EC2003 using Norwegian, French and Holland Red bases. However, while I can load and edit everything without issue, when I try to run it in HCE I get a game crash almost instantly. I looked for guidance on the board but don't see anything on what causes crashes. Can anyone provide fault finding steps to find what is wrong? Cheers