Mgellis

Tracker MkII (aka Attacker class) patrol boat (I looked for this because I was not sure if it was already in the HUD-4 or not, but I could not find it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacker_class_patrol_boat http://www.worldwarships.com/class/tracker-mkii "The Attacker class (also referred to as the Tracker class) is a class of patrol boats. Formerly operated by the Royal Navy and the HM Customs, seven of the class are currently operated by the Lebanese Navy[1] and two by Lebanese Customs" --Wikipedia (Actually, it appears to be used by a number of other nations, including Gambia and Sierra Leone) ANW HUD-4

Aero L-159 Alca http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-159 "Aero L 159 ALCA (Advanced Light Combat Aircraft) is a Czech-built multi-role combat aircraft." --Wikipedia Only in use with a few countries, but looks like it will make up a fair chunk of Iraq's new air force, so it might be worth adding. ANW HUD-4 v1.11

Barentshav class offshore patrol vessel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barentshav_class_offshore_patrol_vessel "The Barentshav class of offshore patrol vessels will consist of three vessels powered by liquefied natural gas. Ordered for the Norwegian Coast Guard, their main tasks will be EEZ patrol, fishery inspection, search and rescue as well as tug readiness along the shore of Norway which is seeing increasing traffic from tankers." --Wikipedia ANW HUD 4 v1.11

Meko 200 for Algeria (not sure if this is different enough from the Valour to need its own listing...) Algeria orders two Meko frigates http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24773:algeria-orders-two-meko-frigates&catid=51:Sea&Itemid=106 http://www.shipsmonthly.com/news/news-archive/690-algeria-modernises http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEKO_200 ANW HUD 4 v1.11

I just tried this out. Really interesting. Some thoughts... Good idea to put so many fish contacts in the Persian Gulf. Made it harder to spot the submarines, although I got them all eventually. The Iranian missile boats were hapless sacrifices. They are hands down outclassed by the French forces (Rafaels with Exocets) and were simply picked off at a distance without having any real chance to fight. I wonder if there is a way to get better use out of them? The defensive posture of the bases made them a dangerous surprise. I thought they were going to be easy pickings but then when I sent Rafaels in to deal with some targets, I lost a bunch of them to the Iranian aircraft. I did not achieve ANY of the Victory conditions. But wasn't the first task force already on station? (I think the way the game engine works is you have to cross a boundary, so you cannot start the game on station, you have to REACH the station. That would just be a matter of putting the task force a little way off. I don't know if there is time to get the other ships to the other stations before the scenario ends, though, so perhaps add more time to the scenario? Or am I supposed to be going at Flank speed? I wonder if the scenario might be made more challenging by requiring some additional Victory conditions...along with getting the ships on station, which doesn't look like it will be too hard if there is enough time to do so, maybe add a Damage victory condition, requiring the destruction of a certain number of facilities, and perhaps one or more Protect victory conditions, so that you have to do all this AND not lose more than a certain number of aircraft, or ships, or submarines. Anyway, I liked it. I hope these comments are helpful. Mark

File Name: Black Moon Sailing (2014) File Submitter: Mgellis File Submitted: 06 Dec 2012 File Category: Scenarios Israeli forces must intercept a Turkish merchant vessel believed to be carrying weapons and other supplies for Hamas. Image: A port bow view of the Israeli Navy's guided missile patrol boat INS Hetz (Sa'ar 4.5). Source: http://www.defenseimagery.mil/ Author's Note: This scenario takes advantage of the feature in H3/ANW that allows one to board and take control of a vessel without sinking it--to win this scenario, you have to complete a boarding/takeover mission (among other things); simply sinking the merchant will not be enough. Click here to download this file

Sikorsky CH-53K Super Stallion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53K Is this different enough from the CH-53E to need its own entry? ANW HUD 4 v1.11

Are any of the following variants of the CH-47 Chinook different enough (engine, range, sensors, weapons, etc.) from the one already in the HUD-4 that they should have their own listings? MH-47D MH-47E CH-47F MH-47G CH-47J HH-47 HC-1 (UK Variant) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CH-47_Chinook ANW HUD-4 v1.11

Thanks, Gunny. I also noticed that the F-15I ("Thunder") cannot use AIM-120 or the Derby, only the AIM-7. Is that the way it is supposed to be or was that (those?) loadout(s) left off by accident? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/f15i.html http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Boeing_F-15I_Ra%27_am Thanks again, Gunny.

Thanks, Gunny. What's I've noticed is that it works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't. For example, I've sent a UH-60 after a merchant and SOMETIMES, the boarding is successful, and sometimes the UH-60 just hovers around and then gets to bingo fuel and flies back to its base, and sometimes it even ignores the bingo fuel warning and stays by the ship and the boarding is successful but the helicopter has to ditch on the way home. I also tried it with various patrol boats and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and with one ship I got a message that the ship could not intercept the merchant, even though it was a patrol boat (too small? no capacity for boarding in terms of necessary troops?). It sounds like this is just the way the AI determines the boarding mission outcome, rather than anything else. These things are not a guaranteed success, after all, so it makes sense, although it was frustrating when I was testing the scenario and did everything else right and could not get the boarding to work...but it sounds like that wasn't anything to do with the scenario design, just the game engine saying "sometimes you miss."

Quick (maybe) question... How can you tell if one ship, helicopter, etc. is sufficient to board another ship? I'm working on a scenario where I've got patrol boats and UH-60s and so on going after a tramp steamer, trying to board (connected to a Possess victory condition), and I can't get it to work. A lot of the time the ships will match course with the target but not try to attack, or they attack and nothing happens, etc. I don't know if this is a database error, a game engine error, or a correct calculation that the assault somehow failed. Anyone have any advice? Thanks.

Super Dvora Mk III class patrol boathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Dvora_Mk_III_class_patrol_boat "Super Dvora Mark III is the latest generation of the venerable Dvora family of fast patrol boats or fast attack crafts (FPB/FAC). Manufactured by IAI Ramta in 2004[1] these vessels are capable of speeding up to 50 knots (93 km/h) in littoral waters thanks to its state of the art thrust vectoring control Articulated Surface Drives (ASD) while holding various armaments up to 30 mm cannons in its armory." --Wikipedia Looks like it's different enough fromt he Mk II to need its own entry. Has Israel sold any of these to other countries? ANW HUD-4 v1.11

Quick question... The F-16I Soufa is supposed to be a block 52 F-16 variant, but I don't see loadouts for things like the Derby and AIM-120 missiles. Were the loadouts for one of the F-16A variants used by accident?

I nominate François Guérin, aka Gunny, for his work on the HUD-4 database.

Well, I finally got to play it through. Here are some observations... I used auto-datalinks setting (I’ve had to abandon full realism because it’s too full of “realistic” issues in the game engine) but I’m sticking with aircraft logistics. I’ve played this before so I have some idea what is coming and will probably do better than I did the first time around, but we’ll see if I can actually win this… (Observation...would the ships be arranged this way, with the carrier all by itself without escorts?) 17:01. Game start. A lot of targets are auto-detected (was this intentional?) and so I’m going use my T-hawks and hurt them, especially radar and SAMs. Also bringing my ships closer to shore to make it easier for the helicopter. (One observation...the generic all-in-one-facility airfields are easy to knock out. It’s harder to take out an airfield if you actually plan out the base with hangers, runways, etc.) 17.09. Missiles on their way. Wow...the Ohio SSGN has a lot of cruise missiles. Air patrols and strikes groups forming up. I’m putting up my heavy bombers with cruise missiles while I can. I’m putting up about a dozen Hornets of various loadouts, ready to start looking hard at ships and sink the ones who are hostile. Since I’ve got Weapons Free (is this deliberate?) I can just send them on their way and let them do their job. 17.14. Merchant detected and I’ve set up a mission Ship Strike/BoardingTakeover and will assign helicopters to it. But first, I’m going to take a look at and possible eliminate a Russian ship that is right in the way of any choppers going towards the merchant. Pesky Russian warship! 17.24. Incoming missile warning! I think these are heading towards the airbase but I’m not sure. (Observation...I would have added somewhere extra for the planes from the one base to land. Even if there is nothing else there, perhaps an airstrip in Greece or Italy to which any survivors of the base nuking can flee.) 17.38. Putting up a flight of six strike eagles. Tried to use the cruise missiles from the B-52s, but they would not fire. Database error or something else? (As it turns out, they fired eventually, but not until I was closer to the target. Was this an error on the missile range, or did the aircraft have to get close enough to get a "target lock" on the actual targets? Or something else?) 17.47. Lost a Lancer en route to Damascus. Many targets hit with T-hawks. Time for another round. 17.51. Lost the other Lancer. Still have problems with the cruise missiles on the B-52s. Odd. 18.26. I’m in the middle of a ferocious but rather one-sided battle with various ships being sited, identified as bad guys, and sunk with Harpoons, Mavericks, and anything else I can throw at them. Also dealing with some enemy aircraft, but now that I've zapped their airfields, they have nowhere to go and are just crashing as they run out of fuel. There’s a bit of real information overload at this point. Probably realistic but hard to keep track of everything I’m doing. By the end, I've sunk half-a-dozen enemy warships, including a Slava, without getting even a scratch on any of mine. 18.45. Firing cruise missiles, finally, from the B-52s. 20.23. With the impact of the B-52s cruise missiles, the northern group of targets is pretty much obliterated. But the air base in Turkey is under attack by missiles. I get most of them, but a few get through and they are nukes and the base is HISTORY. And so are a couple of squadrons of American aircraft! Ack! 22.46. Got the CH-53 chopper on station over Damascus. Did I do it in time? 0.59. Mission failure! According to the end-of-scenario report, where I was failed was to complete both parts of a two-part victory condition, stationing the helicopter and getting possession of the merchant ship. I'm not sure which one I failed. I did get the helicopter on station, but was it too late? And I did hover helicopters right near the merchant, and they had been assigned to a "strike/boardingtakover" mission (and so did not actually damage the ship with the marines onboard). So I don't know if these are game engine glitches or if I did something wrong. Overall, this was a very interesting scenario. Even though I did not win, I had fun. Thanks, Steven.

Unfortunately, no. I tried it out and the ASROCs (e.g., the Mk 112 on the Japanese ships) still won't fire. The RUM-139As do fire, though...I wonder if it would make sense to compare the two of them and see if the answer lies in what's different about the RUM-139s. It might be something that, in theory, shouldn't make a difference, but does anyway.

I switched to Auto Datalinks and that seems to have fixed the problem. Sounds like it is a game engine problem rather than a database issue. Just curious, do you know what causes that? I guess I'll have to stick with Auto Datalinks, at least for now. I was enjoying Full Realism...it grows on you...but I can see how it might lead to various game engine problems because so much more has to be accounted for.

File Name: Test Platforms File Submitter: Mgellis File Submitted: 28 Nov 2012 File Category: Scenarios This is simply a copy of the generic scenario I use for testing platforms. Please download it, modify it, use it as you like, etc. It is already set up with some units related to some of the bugs that have been reported recently, but feel free to change them, add new ones, etc. as you like. It also has a Victory condition related to Possession (rather than Destroy); feel free to change it if you don't need it. If you find ships, planes, weapons, etc. with problems, please let Gunny know here on Harpgamer. New versions will be uploaded periodically as new issues are reported. Thanks! Click here to download this file

When I launch AH-64s (and Longbows) in a test scenario, the game treats them as...well, I don't know what, but it is not treating them as my aircraft. It detects them, as if they were a bogie, and then I cannot navigate them, even though they are my aircraft and launched from my base. This does not happen with other helicopters that I have tested, so I wonder if there is a database flag somewhere that is telling the game to treat them as...missiles rather than aircraft? I figured I better report this. Thanks. Mark

That's what I figured. A question...could the existing ANW db now be used as a resource (source of data, ways of setting up certain kinds of weapons, etc.) for HUD-4? Gunny would want to get permission from Dale to do this, of course, but maybe it would help with certain entries in the HUD-4. Just a thought...

Thanks, Gunny. Sorry the bugs I've reported are turning out to be such a pain to track down.

I just tested the AIM-7C and AIM-7E. I could get the AIM-7C to fire, but not either kind of the AIM-7E. I kept on getting a message that I was out of range, even when I was close enough to use my Vulcan to attack the jets I was using as targets. Hmmm....

More information... According to http://www.seaforces.org/wpnsys/SURFACE/Mk-16-ASROC-launcher.htm and http://www.seaforces.org/wpnsys/SURFACE/RUR-5-ASROC.htm Mk-16 ASROC launcher RUR-5 ASROC anti-submarine rocket Used on: Leahy class CG California class DLGN / CGN Spruance class DD Charles F. Adams class DDG Decatur class DDG Mitscher class DDG Farragut (Coontz) class DDG Bronstein class DE / FF Garcia class DE / FF Knox class DE / FF Brooke class DEG / FFG