kmart494

I suspended working on upgrades for SimPlot and SimPlot Viewer in favor of an overall rewrite of the program that would include both single and multiplayer modes. I have been experimenting with a language called Xojo so I could create PC, Mac, and Linux versions without having to maintain multiple programs. The experiment did not go well at first, but as I learned to cope with Xojo's way of doing things, and the differences between Mac and PC, I am at a point of increased confidence in Xojo. So, I have created a display test of what I would like SimPlot 2 to look like. Functionality at this point is limited, but at least you will get to see the future of SimPlot. The units and the map are currently built in, but you can add new units or modify existing ones. The existing units lack some unit info, so just fill in the blanks as you see fit. I hope the new unit interfaces are intuitive enough. You can also modify the "Text Tags" that appear next to the unit on the map. The map and icon colors are taken from an official US Navy document on the subject of war fighting displays. Presently, I have NTDS style symbols but I hope to include the Common Warfighting Symbology (CWS) set in the future. They look weird so I will put that task last. Here are the mouse and key commands: C-center map on selected unit, map cursor, or 0,0 if none else. +, -, mouse wheel up/down to change map zoom levels. If a unit is selected, or the map cursor is present, then it will zoom on them. Mouse Click-select unit or set map cursor to display the game x,y coordinates. Select a unit, then hold Shift key while clicking on map will show the map cursor x,y and bearing/distance from the unit to the cursor. ESC-clear selected unit or map cursor. F1 with selected unit to modify the unit. F9 will bring up the Customize Display window. The symbol sizes are proportional within each symbol scale. The different scales are for use with larger displays (consistent with CWS--not sure if it helps so let me know). You don't have to close this window, just set it aside or minimize it and F9 brings it up again. The Units menu can be used to create some new units. Click the map where you want the new unit, menu select which type of unit and the position will transfer to the unit window. The Unit Types are a CWS thing, so you can just use the generic "Aircraft", "Helicopter","Warship" if you like. Later, those types will display different CWS icons. Some of these windows are just thrown together for now. The polish comes later. I am just concerned with getting the look and feel of it right for a Harpoon game. I hope you enjoy it. Note: I am posting the PC 32 bit version now, with the Mac version to come maybe tomorrow. I did not compile it tonight. The PC version works well with Win 7 & 10. Let me know what you think. EDIT: Mac OS X version is now ready. Some of the window controls have not been optimized for the Mac yet. SimPlot 2 Win.zip SimPlot2 OS X.zip

I will keep a running commentary on SimPlot Viewer changes here. A new version of the program will not be uploaded until the majority of the desired changes are made. I fixed the range circle problem. Not only can you have more than one range circle of the same range, but you can now select which range circles are displayed at any time. So, you can create circles for air weapons, surface weapons, radars, sonars, and select just those circles you need at the moment. You will not have to remake the unused circles later. I am working on range circle categories now. It's a nice idea but I am not sure how to implement it. Maybe I will create a Range Circle menu for it.

Work on upgrading SimPlot Viewer has been delayed but I am expecting to resume work on it shortly. Here is a list of things I will do: Fix range circle problems that may not have been visible to players, such as having multiple circles of the same radius even for different units. Creating a new circle like that would sometimes be rejected. I will add a "Visible" checkbox to the range circle form so a player can create range circles but have the option to turn them off until that specific circle is needed (instead of deleting and re-creating it later). As an option, I may also create range circle categories such as radar, sonar, air weapons, surface weapons, and subsurface weapons. A player could then select one or more types to display for all units, instead of selecting each unit and each range circle. Individual circles could still be turned on and off, but this idea may offer a quicker way to declutter the game map. Fix the overlapping ESM labels. Fix the game's coordinate system to better conform to a correct cartesian system. Presently, the Y axis increases in positive value as you go down the screen. That was to conform to screen graphics X,Y values which made calculating new unit drawing locations easier relative to screen panning and scale zooming. As a result, my calculations for bearings became very complex and sometimes inaccurate since I could not so easily use radian-based trig functions that are consistent with compass headings. I am also contemplating using an optional "north pole" coordinate for maps that are very high in latitude. Since 000 deg would not longer be just "up", this would enable an accurate bearing/heading based on your relative position to the north pole. I am not sure if it really matters, but the Kola Peninsula maps got me thinking about it. I am soliciting feedback from recent players on the GUI. I am contemplating making SimPlot and Viewer one product based on the current Viewer GUI. I would like to know: Do you like the way the GUI looks? Some of the color choices were inspired by H3 ANW. Would a plain Windows color scheme work better for you? Did you find the icon size selection buttons helpful? Do you need different icon sizes? I thought at a very zoomed-out scale the smaller icons helped. The display and icon buttons/colors were an idea from another programming project. I could use checkboxes, radio buttons, or menu items instead. What do you think? Thanks for your help. Kevin

I made a mistake by mis-interpreting Larry's last email. The final draft is out on Friday, the final changes are due Monday, with a hopeful release on Tuesday.

The smooth draft is out. Larry is shooting for a Friday release.

The draft for #52 is out. Deadline for changes is Monday.

It's not my article they are waiting for. I finished that back in February.

I will spend the rest of this month putting together my article for SITREP, and getting a basic replay function working for SimPlot Viewer. After that, I would like to experiment with a "micro scenario". It would be one sided (maybe with multiple players) that have one mission. Let's say, attack a Sovremenny destroyer using weapon director rules and a handful of aircraft.

I wonder if "pure SARH" would still apply to things such as I/SARH or I/M/TSARH. Based on an email conversation with Larry Bond regarding the SA-N-7, he has decided to reclassify the SA-N-7 as I/M/TSARH for the H4.2 update. Here is a snippet:

The greater speed of the Sunburn missiles would definitely make shooting them down harder, so perhaps the greater missile points are a way of compensating for that. I disagree on the damage, though (45 vs. 60). Maybe the problem is trying to generalize everything down to points rather than using individual and unique weapon characteristics. Something has to get sacrificed.

I could never figure out why a Sovremenny has 8 missile points (and carries 8 actual missiles) but US ships with 8 Harpoon missiles only get 4 missile points.

I might have been thinking of 6.4.1.10. If a missile was due in a given turn to hit the Sov, but missed, then it still has to finish its movement. The short distance between the Sov and the Krivak may prevent you from firing on it since it's still in the same turn it was due to arrive at the Sov. I hope I am not using too fine a comb.

The players have posted detailed AARs so I will just concentrate on my objectives as the referee and SimPlot creator. The Scenario The objective of this game was to test SimPlot's ability to track and display units on a map, and over a larger area than had been previously attempted. The background map was the entire Persian Gulf, and we used maybe a quarter of that area for the battle. Several cities and bases were placed on the map for reference. The Soviet convoy started near Bahrain and the Iranian task force started near Bushehr. This placed them very far apart, and that meant a protracted search phase. Well, not for the Iranians, as you will see later. This scenario was a modified version of the Divide and Conquer scenario from SITREP #48. The original Iranian forces were very poor, IMHO. Also, I wanted a little more excitement for the Soviets, so I allowed both sides a choice of forces (with some restrictions). I was hoping to create a more balanced scenario, but things didn't work as planned. Blue Side Blue team decided on a strategy of running for the west side of the Gulf, as far away from Iran as they could get. I was pleased to see the game map was in fact useful in their decision making. I think that meant a more realistic H4 experience since geography affects so many real world naval decisions. I thought their reaction to Iranian threats was very good, although the position of the Krivak could have presented a weapon danger space problem. By positioning between the Sov and merchants, along the same axis as the threat, I think the distance between these elements was too close to allow missile fire at sea-skimming "leakers." I would have liked to see more distance between the Sov and the Krivak, but time was running out and they did the best they could with the time they did have. Red Side I gave Red team better search assets to help compensate for the strength of the Soviet formation. This worked well, as it gave Red team more time to set up a detailed plan of attack. If the teams had started just outside detection range (as most H4 scenarios do), then the creation of a good battle plan would have been very difficult. I enjoyed the search phase, partly because it tested one of my objectives, but also this is not something normally seen during a PBEM game (unless it lasts for a really long time). Although Red team orders changed many times during the pre-battle phase, I think that proves SimPlot was instrumental in facilitating a realistic decision making process by accurately presenting sensor information. Unfortunately for Red team, it was the referee (me) that was the weak link in their battle plan. During the tactical discussions on both sides, I began to have trouble distinguishing the intentions of the players from orders I could actually execute in SimPlot. This caused me to miss critical changes that cost Red side a potential chance at victory. Instead of a combined Harpoon and F-4 attack, the attacks took place just far enough apart in time that the Sov could easily deal with them. SimPlot I think SimPlot and SimPlot Viewer worked very well for this scenario. There were a few bugs I discovered along the way, but a new version of both programs will be released soon to address the issues. Some players had expressed a "disconnect" in the presentation of the turns. It is understandable, since a miniatures game does not appear to have the same problem. During the development of SimPlot, I had a hard time with the difference between the turn time and the location time. For example, at the 0900 tactical turn plotting phase the units are in the 0900 location. At the conclusion of the 0900 movement phase, the units are repositioned to reflect 3 minutes of movement. That would actually put them at the 0903 "location time." It is still the 0900 turn, but to invoke engagement turns means starting the next one at 0903.0 because movement for the current turn had already taken place. For now, there is no nice way to make that work better. I do have some thoughts about that, but I need to talk to Larry Bond some more before I can work on it. Conclusion Overall this was a very enjoyable game. I am glad the players had a good time, too. I hope all will consider playing again in the near future with myself or someone else as referee. If others are interested in refereeing a game, I would be more than happy to act as a tech support guy for the ref. Some lessons learned: Specifically state which rules or adaptations are in use. For example, some players thought the optional weapon director arc limits were in force, but that was not so. Because of this, the Sov became more powerful than it might be in real life. This no doubt affected player decisions. Provide ship data for all the players. Larry Bond has given permission to disseminate data annex info for player use since he doesn't expect players to have all the supplements. An exception has to be made if force composition is not known to all players at the start. Sometimes I was a little too excited to get to the next turn such that I occasionally missed changes in detections. I caught myself and reissued a new turn file before anyone noticed, but this is still a lesson for me. This game, and the others before it, will be used in an article Larry Bond asked me to write for the upcoming SITREP #52. This is a followup to the original SimPlot article that appeared in SITREP #50. The subject is lessons learned using SimiPlot for PBEM H4 games. I am planning to give thanks all the players from my PBEM games, so if you would like your real name to be used drop me a PM. Otherwise, just the HarpGamer username will be used.

I can, but once missiles/aircraft/other weapons are used or destroyed they are deleted from the scenario. I am putting thought into how everything that is added or deleted can be preserved and the action can be replayed by players. One problem is that units are added or deleted during the various turn phases, so how do I show the units as a turn? I might need to implement turn phases, but for that I need to converse with Larry Bond.

Modern Naval Battles card game from DVG Games. http://www.mcssl.com/store/danverssengames/vassal/pdf-games/1-players/modern-naval-battles---global-warfare

Me too.

They should also explore the closing of the South China Sea.

Hmmm, except I don't know your names!

I will include lessons learned from the three games that I have run. I will also include some black and white screen shots. I am willing to give a "shout out" to all the players of these games if you guys have no objection. I will use your screen names.

Anyone that followed along with the Divide and Conquer scenario can post their thoughts about the game, players, tactics, and SImPlot here.

The rules do not actually account for weapon director locations, although I think there was a SITREP article on the subject. Still, it appeared to me that all targets were within the proper weapon mount arcs.

Tony has informed me the player forums are now unlocked.

Sitrep #50 actually has an article on SimPlot that I wrote. Larry Bond has asked me to do a follow up article for Sitrep #52 on using SimPlot for PBEM games.

Red Players, please post your thoughts about the scenario to include AAR, the PBEM process, and using SimPlot Viewer to facilitate an H4 game. final_red.txt final_red_intl.txt

Red player had conceded the game.