davidh304

Thanks for all the great tips and help! I pushed out my CAP about 100-150 miles further out from my carrier battlegroup and turned off most of my radars. The results were amazing! I felt like a rock star. I didn't use any AAW patrols from the formation editor. I would usually send out 6-12 F-14 Tomcats and the same amount of F-18 Hornets with AMRAAM's manually and it was very effective! I ended up losing 6 aircraft and taking out over 250 enemy planes, a few ships and the odd sub here and there. I was astonished at how much the above stuff worked. Thanks so much to everyone here!

"Try to find the minimum required size for your AAW patrols and keep good handful of fighters in Ready 5. It's embarrassing to sink with 24 refueling Tomcats on board." Totally been there. Had to restart from a save spot out of embarrassment. Thanks for all the tips and tricks. I'm definitely going to try some of this stuff out tonight. Maybe try a patrol of AAW planes with half up and set as a continus patrol.

Thanks I did have my Carrier Group's Radar on which is probably a big no-no. I'll check the above links too, thank you for your help!

Thanks for the help, will try this tonight!

When I play Blue (U.S.) forces I get a bunch of Kingfish missles in the face. When I play red, F-14 Pheonix down all my planes? What can I do? I'm usually playing a GUIK scenario (in Harpoon Ultimate Commanders Edition I think) that tends to have U.S. carriers. I recently played a scenario (don't have the name with me) that gives me 2 U.S. Carriers steaming east towards the Kola Pennisula. Auto formation air patrols are decent but not great. I usually take half the number of AAW airplanes I have and put them on patrol via the formation editor. Am I correct in doing this? ie does this mean that there will be continous coverage? Half the aircraft in the air and when they land the other half replaces them? If also tend to take F-18s and put them in the air to air mode to get extra planes in the air. I tend to get owned by massive Russian missle strikes. The other strategy I use is to leave a few planes on CAP then put up a mass of fighters 12-24 about 200 miles ahead of my carrier battlegroup. I manually fly this group. I think this tends to work best. I tried playing the same scenario as Red. And F-14's are just demolishing me. Any tips and tricks for a blue carrier group?

This is kind of a dumb question but I'm gonna go with it... How do I get new scenarios and battlesets? I am pretty sure I have Harpoon Ultimate Commander's Edition (from Matrix games). I saw that there are different databases and that you can install different scenarios and battlesets. I also saw that there were download links on these forums. I'm just not sure how I go about doing that. Do the new Battlesets require a new database? I was interested especially in the new battlesets (USNI, Carribean, South Atlantic, etc.)