TeTeT

Is the xml format subject of discussion? I find that json and/or yaml are a bit easier to manipulate, especially to debug, but your mileage may vary. Using json might be quite nice for the scenario section of the website, as the scenario core information might easily be extracted from javascript itself. But I guess there are xml libs for javascript out there too...

Turned out that even a 130mm AAA unit engages only low flying targets, setting the planes to 2000k feet had them shot out of the sky.

I'm struggling getting some AAA batteries to engage air targets. I placed some AAA for 'bad guys' on Cyprus, assigned them an AAW mission and created a hostile 'good guys' flight from a nearby carrier. I changed doctrine a bit so I hope they would engage, but to no avail. Scenario is attached if anyone wants to take a look.

Yes, you can run a 32 Bit Windows XP in a virtual machine provided by vmware on Windows 8. Note that you need an XP install medium (CD) and the install key.

Several options exist, my preference would be VirtualBox by Oracle, https://www.virtualbox.org/ I think the 'professional' line of Windows also has some virtualization platform built in. For VirtualBox and Windows XP, there is a tutorial here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-1853121/setting-virtual-windows-machine-virtualbox.html

Anyone else here playing that game? I picked it up during the Christmas sale at Matrix and played Guadalcanal with a friend. When I counter-invaded Guadalcanal, sunk two carriers and captured Port Moresby as Japanese, he surrendered... Anyone up for a PBEM with this? Smaller scenario and Japanese side preferred.

I played the original Flashpoint game some years ago and was even on the beta tester team for the never released middle-east sequel. Now reading Red Army again, so that game might just fit with the book

Yes, that would be a possibility. For PBEM the other informal way would be to share the session password (if any) and any but the last player saves the turn and send it fwd. The last player would then process the orders.

I liked the original Combat Mission WEGO system for PBEM quite a bit, which I think was like this: First player enters orders, second player enters orders, first player calculates outcome on his rig, records playback, enters orders for next turn, second player enters orders, jump to 3 Due to the tactical nature, each turn was 60 seconds and playback was in real time by default. Since then the CM engine was tuned for real time, not sure if the original PBEM sequence is still possible with it. Not entirely sure if this method can be applied directly to your approach. What I liked about it is that one could replay the last turn several times from different viewpoints and get a better understanding of what's going on before entering the next set of orders. As finding players for a scenario is at times a bit tough via forums or chat or email, the slitherine guys have setup a very good system for their multiplayer games: Any player can setup a 'challenge' which will be published through an in game browser. Any player can accept the challenge and a multiplayer game starts were the turns are exchanged via a server by slitherine (I guess). For settting up private matches, a password can be tied to the challenge, so only the player knowing the password can accept that challenge.

Is this the former 'red pill' game from a few years back? Has anyone here actually played it? Would be nice to know how far it compares against Harpoon and if the gameplay lives up to the polished graphics.

If you don't mind focusing on land based aircraft, I believe this scenario has a lot of air combat in it: http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/files/file/571-iran-israel-2010-survival-of-israel/

Would there be a chance to utilize a second device like laptop or tablet as well? I'm aware that there are some solutions like iDisplay that stretch a desktop to those devices. I wonder if something like that can be built-in. Maybe more appropriate for the wishlist thread

I've played this through over the last few days. The Soviet / Indian carrier group never saw much action, but for an attack by a improved LA class submarine, that damaged a support vessel. The air base at Trivandium at the southern tip of India was used for destroying Diego Garcia, as well as the US carrier strike group. There were 54 bombers with standoff missiles with a range of 250 miles (AS-6 Kitten or so?), which overwhelmed any defense the western forces could muster. Even the destruction of the carrier's F-14 force was easier than I thought with the MiG-31s from Trivandium. Overall a nice scenario, probably a bit easy to beat though.

I played Harpoon last year for a while under Wine, but I found that it was a rather sluggish experience. Somehow everything seems to move more slowly than under native Windows. On the graphics glitches, I don't remember having fixed anything ... An alternative might be to use some old copy of Windows XP in a virtual machine under Linux. I haven't tested that though, but I found that a XP machine with VirtualBox under Windows7 performs very well for running the scenario editor and doing some testing.

It really depends on how popular Harpoon for commando style raids is as a platform. I personally think the game fits better to the grand-tactical / operational scope, than the hunt for individual terrorists. E.g. using a base named 'Terror Camp 1' is for me as good as a new unit called 'Bin Laden's successor'. Just my 2 euro-cent.

I've created a few missions late last year and uploaded them here at harpgamer, scenarios, custom. Pushover and milkrun are small scale actions to get into the right mood and experiment with the weapons available. Knight is a Rolling Thunder themed operation, covering multiple small tasks. Cam Pha portrays an attack on the important coal harbour in North Vietnam. All of them use the Indochina battleset. There's of course also the Thanh Hoa bridge scenario in the Pacific battleset, the gulf of Tonkin incident, and Linebacker. When writing the scenarios I found it hard to portray the weapon systems of the time. AAA are best dealt with guided ammo in Harpoon and not iron bombs or cluster bombs or rockets. This is a bit contrary to my reading and gaming of the times weapon deployment, where fighters / bombers with ARM, cluster bombs and rockets would go for AAA and the high value guided ammo would be reserved for main targets. There was also a list of resources in the military history section on battlegroup composition. Should be worth checking out.

In such a scenario, what about the Lega Nord's influence, the people that want to separate Northern from Southern Italy in any case. Would such a disaster, after a short period of strengthening the national influence, not further erode this? I imagine that a lot of money would have to flow from the rich North to the poor South in your scenario.

I've seen this lately modeled in Dan Verssen Games 'Hornet Leader - Carrier Air Operations'. Some weapons in this card based game are rated 'independent', which means one can engage different targets with it per round. Non-independent weapons can only hit one target. While this cannot be translated directly to Harpoon, I guess it could use a similar model where a weapon system either locks on one or multiple targets. Maybe an wish list item

If you need to mass-convert a couple dozen or hundreds of images, I'd recommend taking a look at ImageMagick. Not sure how to use it on Windows though. On Linux I often use short scripts like $ for image in *.bmp > do > new=$( echo $image | awk -F. '{ print $1F}' > convert $image ${new}.jpg > done This example converts all the bmp images in the current directory to jpg files, saving a ton of space.

Found this via SimHQ: Libya from pilots point of view

Guess it's about time, the last step of Perestroika!

I'm not sure I buy in. Isn't the 'micro management' of strike packages part of the core enjoyment of the game? If all I had to do was to select a 'strike target X with planes/missiles from bases a, b, c' and then sit back and watch the show unfold, not sure if there would be much satisfaction in it. For sure I'm not following a scientific approach to my strike planning, so the moments when the anti radar missiles arrive seconds in front of the attack missiles, followed by guided bombs and the finishing done by iron bombs are rare. But when it happens I think Admiral TeTeT has executed a job rather well, and hence motivates me to spend more time with the game. Not sure how others see that aspect of game play.

Thanks for the wealth of information. Anyone has a good article on speculations on the strategy being used? To me it seems Gaddafis plan to just sit it out is tough to counter without a full invasion.

Reminds me that I still have two unbuilt Voodoo and Thunderchief models in the basement - time to move to our new home end of April and having a hobby room