mack

You get something out of it, I don't. I barely read them as I don't like reading giant walls of allcaps (the acronyms not annoying for me). Subsequently I don't know or care about the mission as much, and often don't play them.

Yes. In the context of anything. There is a reason that ALLCAPS has been frowned upon from practically the start of the internet age. I'd also suggest fully spelling out things which are abbreviated, example "airrcnsqn" and "onsta" to make it more readable. Unless there is some character constraint I'm missing. Compare: Z 042005ZAPR98 SSSSSSSSSSSSSS FROM: CINCCISBANNORFLT TO: COMSHIPSQN 31.22 (ZZS) COMSHIPSQN 33.65 (ZYS) COMSUBSQN 39.13 (ZXU) INFO: COMNAVBASE SEVEROMORSK COMAIRRCNSQN 323.28 (ZWb) BT SECRET// XJ332N SUBJ: COMMENCEMENT HOSTILITIES OPERATION FIREBRAND 1. AT 1230Z 4 APR US AMPHIB UNITS CONDUCTING OPS IN THE SVALBARD ISLANDS WERE ENGAGED BY UNITS OF AIRREG 311. THIS FOLLOWS A CONTINUED INCREASE OF CIS MILITARY ACTIVITY INCLUDING RAMMING OF US FF IN MED SEA AND POSITIONING OF SSBN UNITS. KREMLIN HAS ISSUED DEFCON 1 REPEAT DEFCON 1 ALERT STATUS. 2. SHIP SQUADRON 31.22, FLAG KALININ, IS ORDERED TO MAKE NORWEGIAN COAST AND ENGAGE REMAINING UNITS OF US AMPHIB GROUP. ESSENTIAL ALL HOSTILE AMPHIB UNITS ELIMINATED. ENSURE BCGN IN PORT SEVEROMORSK PRIOR 82 HOURS POST COMMENCEMENT OF OPERATION. 3. SHIP SQUADRON 33.65 ORDERED U/W SEVEROMORSK POST-HASTE. INTERCEPT HOSTILE AMPHIB GROUP ASSUMED MAKING SOUTH FOR SAFE NATO PORT. 4. SUBSQN 39.13 TO OPPOSE TRANSIT HOSTILE UNITS. REMAIN ONSTA. 5. AIRRCNSQN 323.2 TO PROVIDE RECON FOR LOCATION HOSTILE UNITS NORWEGIAN SEA. 6. CURRENT ENEMY FORCE INTEL ESTIMATES: NATO TG STANAVFORLANT CONDUCTING OPS IN NORWEGIAN SEA, MINIMAL AIRCRAFT ACTIVITY. 7. BEST ESTIMATE HOSTILE INTENTIONS ARE TO ENSURE AMPHIB UNITS ESCAPE ARCTIC. ESSENTIAL INITIAL ACTIVITIES CIS BANNER NORFLT SUCCESSFUL. 8. SPECIAL WEAPON RELEASE NOT EXPECTED. INTEND WESTERN NATIONS UNDERSTAND CIS HAS NO INTENTION USING HIGH YIELD WEAPONS OR OF INVOLVING NON-US FORCES UNLESS THOSE FORCES ARE IN COMPANY WITH US UNITS. 9. ROE WARNING LEVEL RED, WEAPONS FREE -- ENGAGE ALL HOSTILES ENCOUNTERED. PROTECT BCGN AT ALL COSTS. DWNGRD/DECL/OADR// BT Z 042005ZAPR98 SSSSSSSSSSSSSS To: From: CIC CIS Banner Northern Fleet To: Commander Ship Squadron 31.22 (zzs) Commander Ship Squadron 33.65 (zys) Commander Sub Squadron 39.13 (zxu) Info: Commander Naval Base Severomorsk Commander Air Recon Squadron 323.28 (zwb) Secret // xj332n SUBJ: Commencement Hostilities Operation Firebrand. 1. At 1230z US Amphibious units conducting operations in the Svalbard Islands were engaged by units of Air Regiment 311. This follows a continued increase of CIS military activity including ramming of US FFG in Mediterranean Sea and positioning of SSBN units. Kremlin has issued DEFCON 1 repeat DEFCON 1 alert status. 2. Ship Squadron 31.22, Flag Kalinin, is ordered to make Norwegian coast and engage remaining units of US Amphibious group. Essential all hostile Amphibious units eliminated. Ensure BCGN in port Severomorsk prior 82 hours post commencement of operation. 3. Ship Squadron 33.65 ordered underway Severomorsk post-haste. Intercept hostile Amphibious group assumed making South for safe NATO port. 4. Submarine Squadron 39.13 to oppose transit hostile units. Remain on-station. 5. Air Recon Squadron 323.2 to provide recon for location hostile units Norwegian sea. 6. Current enemy force Intel estimates: NATO Task Group Standing Naval Forces Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT) conducting ops in Norwegian sea, minimal aircraft activity. 7. Best estimate hostile intentions are to ensure Amphibious units escape the Arctic Circle. Essential initial activities CIS Banner Northern Fleet successful. 8. Special weapon release not expected. Intend Western nations understand CIS has no intention using high yield weapons or of involving non-US forces unless those forces are in company with US units. 9. ROE warning level red, weapons free -- Engage all hostiles encountered. Protect BCGN at all costs. dwngrd/decl/oadr// bt z 042005zapr98 ssssssssssssss In-game it's even worse, as you only get huge walls of text. For example the first "point" takes up a block of 4 lines within the in-game briefing.

5th edit.

From my understanding, active jamming is not to "protect" a group but to weaken the enemies systems. I've always used them on their own (maybe with a tanker as usually their range is limited) to degrade the performance of planes moving towards my groups.

Why are you putting prowlers into SAM range? They really should be used the loadout with the most fuel and jammers (ie no weapons) and in stand-off mode. If there is a SAM site that has enough range to hit a prowler loitering at stand-off jamming range, then generally you would need to use strikers at very low using long range ARM's to kill it.

I get this randomly. I've had F-22's, F-15's, Raptors, C-130's, P-3's all end up on the flight deck of carriers at one stage or another.

Sorry, I meant previously, when they closed in with no weapons. Good work that this is fixed. Will make certain scenarios much tougher.

I still don't understand how a flight of (for example) backfires would be able to attack at all once they expend their missiles?

Great. Funnily enough, the green group moved into gun range and sunk about 3 ships later on in the scenario, and heavily damaged the 2 carriers. The red fleet just stood there and took it. Made my job alot easier.

Just playing a user scenario, and saw a flanker being shot down by a green pakistani ship. I saved it, and then the 2nd plane gets shot down as well. The game tells me I've shot down the plane. It seems logical enough that green has shot down the red plane, but my question is this supposed to happen? And would the green ships attack my planes? Should I sink green ships that threaten my forces? I remember one scenario which has a green ship which looks like a merchant cargo ship, but has a nuclear weapon in it's loadout. pakiflanker.zip

I much prefer a bit of fiddling about with a waypoint, as I would only ever use one waypoint when in "close attack" mode in the high zoom, usually took a few tries to get the right direction. I found a work around was to simply click the end waypoint much further than you want, because the further away the click was, the more accurate the direction would be. This is, to me better than what I have to do now which is put the unit square over the group window, and then guess where I should put the waypoints to avoid certain defences or to be in range of certain units. Once I had the right direction, I used 1:1 time until weapon release, allocated weapons and then deleted the waypoint and turned the planes around or moved them to the next target. This was basically essential for me when doing very short range bomb missions, especially against ships or bases with active short range sam or AA defense, as I needed to overfly them accurately, often on afterburner and attack without needing to re-attack and expose the planes to more fire than necessary. The zoom was also useful in making sure I launched aerial torpedoes within close proximity to a contact, instead of relying on the AI to attack which often lead to a launch from near maximum range. I guess I see it as a pointless removal for the sake of a coders idea of "neatness". If neatness means I can't actually interact with my units whilst being able to see exactly where each actual single ship, plane or submarine is AND to be able to order my own subs/ships/planes directly onto where I want it, I don't want neatness. I guess I'm hoping enough people request it that it gets put back in as a hidden toggle or something. Push a ctrl-key and the unit view zooms in with full ordering control. If people don't want to use it, they never have to. It's not a zero sum game to me at least.

If you want to attack a capital ship, just keep moving the attackers towards the group, and then once you are in range, manually allocate your weapons onto the main target. It was much easier in the older days, when you could zoom into the group window till it showed a "unit" type display, but where you could still order your planes around. No you have to do it on the main group window, and guess if you are flying around AA batteries or if you are getting in between the gap between 2 AA escorts. Much more fiddly, and much more likely to cause losses. It's easily my least favourite "feature" and the reasons given for it's removal are daft in this day and age of multi-core processors. I used to be able to make pin-point attacks even with short range LGB's simply because I was able to move planes in the "true" location in the zoomed in group/unit window, and able to avoid ships and weapon systems that were a threat. Now I have to guess if I'm moving between defences and hope I've not strayed into a SAM envelope.

I think I push ctrl-A or ctrl-D and hold it down.

Defect Name: Suicidal ASW Attacks Build: Basic HCE installation. Repeatable: Y Operating System: XP DB used: Not Sure (Westpac from HCE install?) Scenario used: Backyard Long Description: AI sends May ASW aircraft to attack the carrier group. Sequence to reproduce: 1. Load Savegame. 2. Watch as May ASW planes try to attack the carrier formation. Expected behaviour: Not sending ASW planes with very short range weapons to attack a fully stocked carrier group. Observed behaviour: The May ASW planes try to attack the group (no subs in the group either). My guess is the "Sea" rating on the ASW-LR loadout's weapon "USET-95" (range 7.0) is causing the AI to decide to attack the carrier group with them. It would probably take 150 of them attacking like a WW2 torpedo bomber formation before they got a shot off. suicidalmay.zip

Actually, I think it's more making a new unit than making a blank unit (as the units are moving from the old unit to the new unit). I could have sworn I've done this (moving all of a group to the other side) before and not had a crash. The reason it was being done is there is a problem with refueling that I believe has a work-around of splitting the unit into a new one. fake edit: I just reloaded the save, and chose group BIA (again, 1 Prowler and 1 Intruder Refuel). That group will split both planes into a new unit with no problem, but then if I move across to group BKA and do it to that group, the game crashes. So it seems that there is something about this group causing the crash.

Defect Name: Crash After Splitting Build: Basic HCE installation. Repeatable: Y Operating System: XP DB used: Not Sure (Westpac from HCE install?) Scenario used: Saved game: Game crashes after splitting group. Long Description: After splitting a group (to hopefully enable it to refuel) the game crashes. Sequence to reproduce: 1. Load Savegame. 2. Choose group BKA (EA-6B Prowler and KA-6D Intruder Refuel, at top of window, slightly to the right above the carrier group.) 3. Ctrl-8 to split the group. Move both to the right side. Continue. 4. Game Crashes. Expected behaviour: Game asks for a new course. Observed behaviour: Game crashes. crash.zip

From the next scenario in that group (as it's a "story" type thing): I played that mission you were talking about, annihilated everything in the area with Walleye's, EXCEPT the the Suffren, which I think I hit with a stray HARM, at which I was thinking, wow, they were unlucky.

could be out today according to mr erik.

I'm interested in clarifying what "Definition" means.

The war with Iran starts because the Iranians tried their kidnapping hijinks on land instead of on the water (note the British kidnapping and attempt on Australian troops)? Suicide boats ranging out into the blue water to attack and damage 3 ships in a carrier group? Iran has the majority of it's air, naval and land bases as well as much infrastructure destroyed by "overwhelming" American forces but still manages to take down a Carrier? Why would Iran be wasting missiles on Israel when they are fighting the US? Hezbollah already fire rockets at Israel. Israel already bombs parts of Lebanon and Syria. Snipers already attack US Forces in Iraq. None of those have yet caused a massive conflagration. Rioters in Baghdad because their best mates the Iranians are being attacked? Thousands of Shi'ites attack Saudi Arabian oilfields? Why? A couple of ship attacks by the Iranians cause the US economy to collapse and thus make the US government offer a cease fire, which is then rejected by the Iranians? Iran orchestrates the complete and utter breakdown of the Afghani, Bahrani, Lebanese and Pakistani governments turning them all into Islamic nations. China and Russia ignore the growing threat of Iran, Iraq, Afhghanistan, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan all joining together into an Islamic "Super Nation", or the possibility of Israeli nuclear weapons being used and decide not to force the Iranians to come to the table and negotiate a cease fire. Some suicide attacks in a number of cities causes "panic". The answer of course, is to use a anti-personnel nuclear weapon on a conventionally destroyed Iranian nuclear facility. Yet another Pakistani revolution causes the Indians to (presumably, because the "story" is not explicit on what the Indians use) nuke Pakistan nuclear facilities. This causes Pakistan to nuke New Delhi. Apparently this means World War 3 has started. You would think that unless Pakistan and India attack other countries, that they would limit their war to each other. At worst you could see Israel defending itself against this new Islamic superstate. The more likely option is the US heads into another era of Isolationism perhaps continuing to protect staunch allies like the UK, Japan and Australia. I've read some "what ifs" in my time, but this is bad.

Fourth edit. New post to show people who may have already seen the originals that there is new posts.

Do you not life Australia or something? Nearly every screenshot you show has Aussie ships being blown apart.

First Post 1. Long Range ASW patrols to be improved, say by setting an area and the ASW plane flies around dropping bouys. It is slightly annoying to fly a plane out to a long contact by sosus or something like that, and have the still viable contact drop off, leaving you to either manually search with dropping sonobouys, or have to just route the plane around the area hoping to pick up a MAD contact. Perhaps add a new order, after you use it will have the plane automatically drop sono-bouys for the rest of the plotted course. 2. Add an "intercept" option for tankers, to intercept a friendly group and refuel. 3. Single ship/sub formations automatically centre over the single ship. Annoying to (for example), intercept a ship with a sub, and then find the sub is actually in the upper right quadrant/zone and is still miles away from the target. 4. More info how much much fuel a tanker has. Second edit 5. Formation Editor - Add an option to "hide" ships from the selection boxes. Hell, make an option to filter it by ship, sub, plane, and then type, like ASW loadouts, ASuW loadouts, EW, AEW, Intercept/A2A loads etc. 6. Allow the Formation Editor box to be resized. Enable the user to select (maybe in the staff options) how fast ships repositioned in a formation move to their new position. 7. A function to "remember" how the windows are sized. 8. Ability to change the boxes back to a default setting in a small resolution. I was unable to play my current copy of harpoon for months because I switched from 1600x1200 to a widescreen 1680x1050 and the patrol box among other things was hidden. I had to hack the registry to fix it. Third edit 9. Add a "Return To Base" or "Land At" option for "Sir, Air Group XXX does not have enough fuel to intercept enemy Group XXX" Staff Message Box. Edit the Fourth 10. Allow tankers set inside formations (ie as part of a Carrier Battle Group or Airbase, to refuel units which have not used any expendables during their air patrol (ie if you have 2 Tomcats setup as a CAP around your CVGB, if you have no threats the tanker will refuel them to allow them to remain on station for longer). 5th edit 11. Remove ALL CAPS from any mission briefing that still contains them. 6th edit 12. Add various "tags" or checkboxes or simply just saying that a unit has a specific piece of equipment/flag to the Platform display eg: Air - Has "VLOW Capabale" flag. Has MAD rig. Has Dipping Sonar. Sub/Ship - Has Towed Array This edit is right out 13. Intergrated 3rd party scenario support. I don't need no steeenking edit 14. Some sort of in-built scenario and database manager. The reason is that you can, at a glance, see if the planes you have selected will crash into the ground at VLOW or have a dipping sonar etc etc.

Matrix also advertised for a manual editor. I found that somewhat ironic.