ScooterJock

Oh no, you did nothing to apologize for, we want to know how many people are interested in each item and get as much community input as possible. I provided the links to help keep your thoughts moving and progressing, not to squelch you one bit. No problem, no worries--I didn't feel squelched! :-D Oh, and add wish #3: SLAMMERS FOR MY BUGS! haha that's really a DB wish, isn't it?

old Navy saying: "You can always tell a Navy pilot, but don't expect to tell him much." Finished the Retreat scenario and apparently ran afoul of the Victory Conditions--I was south of the Bay of Biscay with most of the kiddies and the game was still declared a draw. Probably needed to be more to the West... You might find the O hotkey useful,. Yeah, that does help. Replayed the scenario, guess I'm still trainable--total victory, Blue losses one sub and 3 jets. Red losses included all their surface ships, 388 airplanes, 10 subs. Took a poke at one of the Red airbases but had waited too long and didn't have the range for more than one SEAD strike and all my TLAMs, eked out 35% damage. Too much fun!

Apologies for not having caught up on existing or old suggestions... Ones from me (the ones I care most about) are: 1. "Bingo alert," for want of a better term, for not-loiter power settings. 2. Advisement of current loadout when selecting an air unit (reword of Seadog's wish).

Stealing, er, reinforcing a couple of Seadog's wishes: 2. An ability to land helicopters anywhere on land eg to wait for a refuelling craft. Too right, opens up possibilities for a CSR (Combat Search & Rescue) scenario, for example, if the helo can take on passengers whilst landed. 3. resupply land and sea units with eg truck convoy, unrep ships.Yep, strategizing resupply ops (to include vulnerability while unrepping for example, or the strategic value of protecting the unrep group) while keeping magazines full enough to do the necessary for the scenario could really up the pucker factor, especially for scanerios where you start with partial loadouts and must resupply to finish out. 4. in game and SE, an indication of refuelible aircraftAnd buddy stores! 5. Completed intercept box include 'orders' option.(I think that was the case in the old DOS game) 6. 'Attack' have an option to approach and concentrate attack on specific unit(s). 8. when dispatching a patrol have the speed and sensor setting boxes come up for setting same at the patrol point. Can't do this with HCE? Sure seems like I could with Harpoon Gold... 10. When selecting aircraft units in the air intercept window I'd like to see their current armament, I hate sending off guys who are on their way home having used up all useful ammo (and I'm sure they hate me worse!).Oh yeah. Definitely need this one. 11. When using the launcher for testing game engine there is an option for iterative (not overwriting) saves of the game at regular intervals. My wish is that the saves can be done at user control by a keybooard shortcut. It would be nice to be able to define the folder and saved game file name. And one of mine--I'd like to receive a warning if an air group is about to go below Bingo fuel state if other than loitering on station. It's sure enough something the aircraft systems inform the pilot about. A nice adder to that would be the ability to tell an air group to "get thee homeward" as quickly as possible--some sort of message to te game engine to set speed at military until Bingo state is reached, then cruise the rest of the way. Jeff

I snagged the Excel, will take a look at it this weekend. Fair warning: I intend to add my since-forever pet peeve--not being warned if an air group on afterburner is going below Bingo. I mean, come on--even us dumb stick actuators know enough to pull back on the loud lever when the Bingo light comes on... Jeff

Depend on it--old Navy saying: "You can always tell a Navy pilot, but don't expect to tell him much." I am forced to admit that I cherish each of my 13 arrested landings... and still miss the flying, 17 years later. Oh well, got to grow up some day. Interestingly enough, nice Harpoon connection, my destroyer (USS CHANDLER DDG-996) was the OpEval ship for Harpoon Block C. Finished the Retreat scenario and apparently ran afoul of the Victory Conditions--I was south of the Bay of Biscay with most of the kiddies and the game was still declared a draw. Probably needed to be more to the West... Final score: Blue losses: 3 ships (Belknap, Deyo, and Manchester, sucks to be threat-side of the formation!), 8 aircraft (6 Hornets, 2 Toms), and 2 helos. Red losses: 1 carrier, 8 ships total, 8 subs, 386 aircraft (woot!), and 14 helos. Jeff

Keep in mind that like a bullet, a missile once fired has no friends. You have some options with radar missiles, at least those which do not have an active terminal phase (active terminal phase pretty much means you are hosed). Most semi-active missiles are designed to self-destruct if they lose rear reference (e.g. if the firing platform shuts off its radar), but again, if the bird has an active mode and it loses illumination or midcourse guidance, it is designed to go active (the design intent is that even if the launcher is killed, the missile may still complete its task). Passive missiles will chase whatever they detect. It is possible for an IR (heat-seeker) missile to be decoyed off with a flare or maneuver, fly past it, then pick up "something else" (it might be the sun, a cloud, or you). Oh well.

As long as folks are aware that they can, and thus avail themselves of new scenarios. I can play the old Harpoon Gold "Retreat" scenario and usually achieve total victory without losing a single unit, aircraft included. However, comma, the demo version is a bit more "interesting"! Short form, I'm a Boat School grad who washed out of flight school at Advanced Jet (A-4 carqual did me in), then spent 4 years in a "Dead Admiral" class DDG in PacFlt. While still in the flying biz I spent 6 months assigned to Top Gun, and drank generously of the kool-aid while there. So I might suggest I'm a bit nontypical of the usual 'Pooner. Stream of consciousness while playing Demo Retreat went something like this: "Holy $#@%!" Okay, obviously I need to keep the Hornets out in front of the Tomcats, use Phoenix to knock down the Flankers to allow the Hornets into the bombers. Then it's just timing to cycle back tp the boat and rearm. Damn! FOUR regiments of Backfires/Blackjacks/Badgers to start off? Yikes! Lessee, knock out those AGIs double-quick. Easy done. Don't get so focused on the "Battle in the Barents" that you forget to clean up those AGIs down by Iceland... Ouch... hate those Soviet SAGs with those long-range SSMs. This is gonna be interesting. Remeber to offset the raids inbound so the Bad Guys can't get you by firing SSMs back down the bearing... "Hey, waitaminnit! Flankers get some sort of PFM missile with 70 mile range and my Hornets are restricted to AIM-7???? What the hey? I want Slammers for my Bugs! Waah!" Hmmm. Yeah, 4-2-2 is about all I'd get in Real Life for my Tomcats... though 6-0-2 is a lot more fun! (and would really change the tone of this scenario) What the? No buddy stores? No tanker cap at all? Grumble mutter snarl. Now that my Intruders have taken out the AGIs, time to arm up SEAD and go play with the SAG to the NE. Four Vikings... Hmmmm. I can see how this is going to go. Interesting... so a flight of Backfires can launch on my CVBG from BEYOND the range circle, with no sensor detect (still had not radiated anything from the BG, nor had a Search platform gotten even close to radar range, & this was still 6 or 7 hours prior to the first sub attacks), and still get missiles into the Main Body area? Lucky I had just launched a flight of Turkeys. Ouch. So the AI will now sacrifice a flight of 3 on a past-Bingo profile to get a Hawkeye? Have to remember that. The Flankers splashed without having been attacked, I can only assume dry tanks, mere minutes after knocking down my Hummer. Damn. And so on. I'm still playing, with 3 days left to go and have lost 2 ships to torpedoes. After about the first 30 hours I have the Red air assets knocked back to ASM and fighter flights of two and what I think was a recon flight of Mails? Mails? Spared enough Hornets from backup Intercept duty to arm them up SEAD and go play hell with the SAG (that "short range HARM" for the Hornet SEAD loadout is a low blow, BTW!). Four SEAD-only missions let me get clsoe enough with an all-Harpoon loadout of A-6s and F-18s to wipe out the SAG. Grand slam with Bulldog! High time it became possible to fly nap-of-the-earth with Intruders and Hornets! Hooah! On the good side, the score stands Blue air-to-air kills 325, Blue air losses 6. Film at 11! Great job with the improvements, guys, I haven't seen the game since Harpoon Gold. Obviously I need to save up my allowance.