gkm

The 600 ton class ship design mentioned above - Is this the Streetfighter design concept? I remember seeing the Streetfighter in one of the Harpoon 3 alternate databases, and recently found an article on the Naval War College website that also covered it.

Replenishment at port - when a ship or surface unit is "docked", it is merged with the port or base unit. In the formation editor a surface unit (and for that matter missile barges) can be assigned to a base and serve as some picket or outer defense asset. For a ship to be truly "docked", maybe add another location to the formation editor besides the center of the formation (called docked?). While docked, the ship can be resupplied, maybe even repaired. Should the base be assigned a certain repair capacity (points per day?), or a number of docks? Size of docks (there has been some discussion about the Kitty Hawk going to India, however a limiting factor is the size of drydock available at Cochin)? In addition, should a docked ship be prohibited from firing weapons or using sensors? I don't think ir may be a good idea to have a SPY-1 running while in the drydock.

VertRep by helo - If that means setting up a bunch of ferry moves for the CH-46's, that might be getting into the micro-managing I think you are looking to avoid. Maybe being able to assign a VertRep profile to the helicopter platform? Item 1 keeps it simple. Item 3 makes sense. Keep it simple, IMHO.

If during the gameplay the DP of the land target is going to display, display it only if a recon bird passes sufficiently close - certain sensor types typically used on recon loadouts. Even better would be to use the detection probability of the sensor to introduce some uncertainty in the DP displayed. OK, that's something for the wishlist. Maybe the same for the BDA - make it contigient on the recon bird flyby. Let's make the recon birds do something useful besides playing chicken with the air defenses!

Thanks. Will have to go to a WiFi location for the download, I am still in dialup hell. 5 May 2008 - works with update.

I unzipped the hdsu.rsr and .res files into c:\Matrix Games\HCE I am running the latest version delivered by Matrix Games (Build Aug 12 2007) When starting game engine: NewPtr: Memory Allocation Failure on program start splash screen. I remove the files in question, program starts normally. When starting Scenario Editor: I can call up any of the battlesets, however the files in question show up as merely "t" on the battleset listing. I can access any of the other battlesets in the scenario editor program, however if I try to access "t", I get NewPtr: Memory Allocation Failure, and then crash. I have tried re-naming the files to hdsm.* in case the problem was non-consecutive naming of files, since the last battleset appears to be "hdsl.*".

Any advice on how to properly insert the .rsr file into the game directory? I assume that this is the battleset map for that region. I have been getting "memory allocation failures" when I have the HDSU.RSR and .RES files in the game directory. Goes for both Falklands and Carribean region files.

For my custom database I have been using some of the Harpoon 3 databases as a reference. The best way to simulate the old gun mounts is to model bursts instead of single rounds (of course this would mean modeling a slower rate of fire). Since Harpoon 3 models hit probability for single rounds (or in some cases single salvos, say from 4x1x6" casemate rifles of a battleship's secondary battery), this can be modeled where P1 = 1-(1-P2)^n where P1 is the hit probability of the burst (0 to 1.00) P2 is the hit probability of the individual shell (or salvo if a battery is modeled) (0 to 1.00) n is the number of shells or salvos in the burst. Damage points would be another matter. It would not be simply the number of damage points for a single round times the number of shells/salvos per burst - unless the gun was 100% accurate. So this is how I model the dp's DP1 = DP2*(n)^P2 where DP1 is the damage points for the burst DP2 is the damage points for a single round/salvo n is the number of shells/salvos in the burst P2 is the hit probability of the individual shell (or salvo if a battery is modeled) (0 to 1.00) Credit to the Harpoon HQ and the Yahoo group now minding the WW II database for Harpoon III The custom database I am using has some old platforms that survived WW II. This includes some WW I era DD's - Clemson and Wickes class (completely useless in today's naval warfare except to be torpedo or missile sponges).

1. Useable entire world map, including the ability to seemless move 'across the back of the Earth'. That would mean that I could hit Murmansk from Malmstrom, or F.E. Warren from some place in the Urals.

I suspect that the 255nm mile limit may have its origins from the earlier days of Harpoon, running in a DOS environment. 255 = (2^8)-1, i.e. 8 bit processor environment.

I thought they had this fixed

In earlier versions of Harpoon Classic, EW jamming was not implemented until January 2005. From what I had found it works effectively to degrade the contact that a ground based radar has on an attacking air group.

Mine is still in progress, however a certain refinery is still keeping me very busy. Any platform that survived WWII. Some of these got upgrades (call it a super-FRAM, Gearings fitted w/ 5"/54 lightweights and RIM-7's). Interesting Cleveland and Baltimore CG conversions. An even more interesting Sverdlov conversion. OK, Byron Audler would say it's a little too "blue sky", A good number of projected platforms. Keeping a lot of vintage aircraft, again many with service life extensions. Gorshkov and Kuznetsov actually found some areas of agreement..... Historical premise: Things did not end so nicely in 1945. While Stalin stopped for a while to consolidate his gains, he had ambitions to expand further west. And somehow lived a bit longer. The Evil Empire got more brutal.......

Major flaming datum point. But my guess is if the AIM-9X is used in this mode the helo is likely to be almost on top and about to drop a torpedo. From an armchair commander's point of view, if I had to fire one of these I'd be looking to get out of Dodge immediately.

Re-installed the new db editor, working now. I just need to get rid of the old pfbuilds and keep the pfdatas.

I have been having one heck of a time trying to import it into the Platform Editor. I am getting annex overwrite error messeges from the VB script, and the installation annex gets wiped out.

For those who are using public beta versions, important note for when you upgrade your game engine! BEFORE you upgrade, note the location of the commondb.res file that you are using. This is especially important if you use the databases from harpgamer or one of your own custom databases. After you install the upgrade, start the game engine and click on the Battlesets button. Re-map the path back to the commondb.res. It should be in the same directory as your game engine. It's a little quirk that is still in the installer system.

I just ran a test scenario. Red side was a T-72, Blue side was an LAV-25, plus an E-8 flying out of Valkenburgh for observation. Played the blue side. T-72 was programmed in the SE to proceed in the direction of the LAV-25. Once the T-72 apparently detected the LAV-25, it retreated. Sir Robin the Chicken Hearted still sets doctrine for AI land warfare.

"True, they won't run quite like that anymore." The previous game engine had the AI's land units using the Sir Robin doctrine of "run away" (even T-72's running away from a truck convoy). I am going to run a test to see if b09 has that eliminated.

I wasn't thinking in terms of editing the .csv, instead being able to stash them in subdirectories. It would be a workaround for the current problem of quantity of installations, where the limit of 2047 (2^11-1) has in fact been hit. An artifact of some of the legacy code in past versions (although I would think in the original versions that limit in the GE/SE would have been more like 255, or 2^8-1) It may be a variation on the download routine where first the Access database downloads into the .csv. Then move in the appropriate .csv, say in this case for the desired set of installations, then go from the .csv set to the .res. What I may be describing may involve a bit more for the end user, unless the end user has some decent computer skills (not programming level, but willing to follow some steps in the file management that is involved). Kick this around further via pm's?

I have resumed putting together a custom composite database using platforms of whatever survived WWII and moving forward. The ships are currently under construction. Some ships have been heavily modified (think Dale Hillier's ADB for H3). The only concern is when I get to the aircraft, and if I run into the records limit on the loadouts. Question for Tony Eischens: When the Database Editor downloads into the SE/GE, there is an intermediate step where CSV files are generated before loading into the RES file. Could there be a way to break into the intermediate step where the CSV file is saved? That may be a way around the current quantity of installations limit in the database, where several files of installation annexes (I'm using an H3 database term) can be set aside.

The F/A-22 as a replacement of the A-10 mission strikes me as being awful expensive. Also how would the F/A-22 hold up against small caliber AAA (up to 23mm) versus the A-10 - of course not as good. The A-10 is a slow ugly bird, yet will continue to have its place in supporting the groundpounders.

Ship to Ship torpedoes - not entirely fixed but almost there. I suspect the remaining problem lies in the coding of the dialog box for selecting missiles/guns/torpedoes. ECM - will now work if ECM pods are part of the loadout. Aircraft guns - Just for grinsies I tried out a custom aircraft platform built in the platform editor, with an ATA of 0 (meaning no guns) but a gun pod in the loadout. The intercept did work, the gun pods operated automatically when within range of the target aircraft (used a B-57 as the target aircraft). So this may mean that an enhancement to aircraft gun armament can be made to the database: 1. I assume, based on previous versions of Harpoon Classic, that when an ATA is specified, the aircraft has 4 gun bursts. 2. When a gun pod is specified (as in gun bursts) a higher quantity of bursts can be called out in the loadout. This is based on some of the "plagiarizing" done on Harpoon 3 databases to incorporate new platforms in my custom HC database. 3. What helps this further is that with the current HC database configuration, 8 weapon type entries can be specified in the loadout, up from the previous 4. Now the only drawback with this (and I need to test this) could be: After the attacking plane launches missiles/LGB's/what have you standoff weapons at a land/surface target, will the plane continue to close to attack the target w/ cannon fire?

I don't think that the fuel (kg) value is currently an active parameter in HC. It is in H3.

It looks like the data only has commercial airline locations. Don't bother with locations from your Harpoon databases such as Monchegorsk, Pechenga, Polyarnyy, Severomorsk, etc.