rainman

Thanks for the idea, but the possibility of a Russian convoy clearing the Kattegat against even light opposition is zero. However, how about a Russian convoy to reinforce Kaliningrad from St Petersburg while NATO (with no USA) is distracted elsewhere? I could cook up something like that pretty soon.

Hello all. I would like to start the discussion about how we can together find a way to bring the HCDB2 up to date. I could provide a long list of platforms that need to be created or updated, but that's not a good use of space here right now. And players creating and sharing their own databases "willy nilly" will confuse the process and intimidate newer players. So I think one centrally administrated database remains the only solution. The big question is who would be willing to take this on? Brad, I cannot thank you enough for all the work you have put in over the years, and I understand that you probably won't want to do this. But as military technology advances, this game with the current database will start to become irrelevant for current events. And this brings on an even bigger question, how many people still want to play this game? Will it be worth the effort? So Brad, Tony, Don, Enrique, what's your advice? And to all of the newer players, and ones that don't post much, would you approve? Let's get talking.

Enrique, this is an idea that I have explored in some depth. The problem is that the current HCDB2 is badly out of date, and cannot accurately depict what would happen. I have made an updated one, but I think that 1) it is "not ready for prime time", and also incomplete, and 2) more importantly, for the game to continue coherently, there should only be one commonly used database. I am going to address this in a new thread under databases, and once we have had that discussion, it might be possible to proceed with this idea.

I'm easing into this one, having played it before I have a great respect for the red guys. Very glad you enjoyed it.

View File Black Sea 2 This is a (properly uploaded) adaptation of Don's "Black Sea 1", with his permission. Victory conditions and RED OOB are unchanged. BLUE loses all the F-35's, and gains 8 aircraft, 2 tankers, and the TGC Anadolu, with a motley air wing of helicopters and drones. Unfortunately, modern Turkish drones are unavailable in this database. Be careful, the other guy has better airplanes. Submitter rainman Submitted 02/03/2026 Category MEDC  

Turkey2.zip Here is a revisit of Don's excellent take on Turkey vs Russia. What if you had no F-35's? Victory conditions and order of battle are very much the same. You'll get a few more fighters, a small carrier, and two tankers. This might be hard. DUCK Patrick Howard

I really enjoyed this one, but what if (as happened) the sale of F-35's to Turkey were halted? I have gently modified this scenario to reflect that. Don, is it OK if I share it? I think it will be a little daunting....

View File Worst Case Scenario Can the EU repel a US invasion of Greenland? Let's see. EC 2003 NACV HCDB2 170909 Submitter rainman Submitted 01/23/2026 Category NACV  

AAR for this scenario, I hope it's in the right place. Thanks for this, it was very fun. I got Minvic with 60 A/C shot down, and 5 ships sunk. After that, it seemed like I was just making the rubble jump, so I moved on. What I found out is that the F-35 is almost invincible, even with the shorter range C7 AMRAAM.

This looks interesting. But I am having trouble fining any US/AUS assets that are nuclear capable. Am I missing something?

Blue side has no orders, so I'm not sure how that will go.

View File SC93 Sea Control 1993. You have some second line USN ships and a few Harriers. Let's control some sea. Harp Version 2023.11 HCDB2-17909 Submitter rainman Submitted 02/01/2025 Category IOPG  

This looks terrific, thanks! I'm feeling guilty about my poor output lately, I'll try to fix that.

It looks like Enrique is all over this. Julian, if there are any other things you'd like to see, let us know.

This looks to be pretty easy to make, and win as Blue. "Headbutt 1" is similar. Might be more sporting to send the Clemenceau and Ark Royal against the Russians. Want me to make one of those?

View File Coral Sea 25 Coral Sea 2025 Stop the Chinese advance with a scratch team. The title is "Coral Sea", however this may play out more like ADBA in February of 1942, which was a disaster for the Allies. Your results may vary. Uses Build 2023.11 or newer. Duck. Submitter rainman Submitted 07/13/2024 Category WestPac  

Played this one recently, nice job. (Spoilers) The two SA-21 batteries were what drove the first hour. I should have evacuated Malbork right away, but it's slow and fussy (launch one, fix altitude, hope you weren't detected, repeat...) so I lost ALL those aircraft to a very effective attack, mostly by the lowly SU-25. I had no idea that cannons could do so much damage to ground installations. In happier matters, none survived to land at Kaliningrad. Chastened by that bad choice, I was saved by the fact that US stealth aircraft are close to invincible. There is a small timing error in the following attack on Poznan-Krzesiny- the fighters arrived soon enough that I could knock them all down and recover before the attack aircraft arrived. None of them went home either. A little fussing with the timing of this attack could make this a game winner for that poor dumb AI. After that, it was routine- F-35's with SDB killed the SAM's, and the rest was easy, Iskanders located and killed, minvic at 19:00 to go, after that it's just pounding a defenceless base, so I bailed. Thank you for this one, please make us some more. Patrick

Were you able to do any editing, or did it crash as soon as you loaded it? Also, was it an original battleset scenario or a user created one?

Next time you are working on the HCDB2, could you look into the range figures of these aircraft? Or, conversely, reduce the range of the F/A 18 family so they correspond better. Thanks. View full record