TonyE

I took the Oct 22nd version of the scen for a spin yesterday. The Enterprise took a DF-21 hit in the first hour (40%) damage but I proceeded to bust up Red air killing well over 100 planes. However I couldn't break thru the SA-21 SAMs having squandered TLAMs in what I thought would be sufficient attacks to do the job, unfortunately I was wrong and my Hornets got slaughtered trying to finish the deal. I gave up the ghost before even reaching Sicily. Oh, and about those anti-sub death rays, there is a problem with the torp counter-fire. What you saw were surface guns managing to kill the sub underwater. While some of the mine hunting helos may have super-cavitating projectiles in this case it is a bug. I saw the same thing but did not write up a report on it so that is still an available task for someone to do

We did not add a specific IR sensor model, no.

HCE - 2009.046 - 2009/10/24 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE Allow aircraft to fire ASROC type weapons at submarines. (thanks Brad & Brains) - Chg:0000 GE If there are radars or sonars added to a plane's loadout they will now be used as sensors by the GE if there are open sensor slots available (a plane can currently have at most eight sensors). (thanks Brains)

NOTE, grab the most recent HCDB for use with this build. Brad has removed air to ground capability from many of the aircraft guns, bringing the AI back to having a little more sanity. http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=235 HCE - 2009.046 - 2009/10/24 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE Allow aircraft to fire ASROC type weapons at submarines. (thanks Brad & Brains) - Chg:0000 GE If there are radars or sonars added to a plane's loadout they will now be used as sensors by the GE if there are open sensor slots available (a plane can currently have at most eight sensors). (thanks Brains)

Brains, Brad, and I just threw around a bunch of ideas on IRC and came up with a work around for the unintended strafing runs. That workaround is to remove the air to ground capability from the majority of modern aircraft cannon. So for instance Brad will in HCDB remove air to ground capability of the Vulcan 20mm carried on the F-22. He also has the flexibility to leave air to ground fun capability on most WWII aircraft. It isn't in any way an ideal solution but it does return us to something better than parity with past builds. No doubt the AI needs to be smarter but this gets us to a more useable game again. Some of the ideas we discussed singly and in combination: 1. Only allowing strafing with certain loadout types, i.e. CAS. This isn't easy since the game internally only tracks 14 loadout types and none is specific enough to be classified as CAS (the CAS loadouts in the DB are understood by the game as UNGUIDED, a much more general category). 2. Looking at known target disposition, if AAW range is >= 2 x gun range, RTB instead of continuing the attack, same deal if new defenses are detected on the ingress, abort as the default behavior, only close when all appears safe. 3. Adding DB field to loadouts indicating if they can be used for strafing or not.

Hehe, thanks for the kind words guys. As you recognized, I don't, couldn't, and wouldn't do it alone. Now if someone would just provide me a smart, rich, attractive (real) woman to marry we could really build a nifty wargame. Planes heading north after a base is destroyed is somewhat of a philosophical topic for me. Perhaps part of the reason I've never done anything about it is my enjoyment of seeing the AI reel at the loss. You also state a partial answer. You'll note when they hit a low fuel state they look for the nearest base within range at which they can land and then RTB. A solution of sorts would be to add some housekeeping that rounds up all of the homeless aircraft every few game seconds and assigns a new home if one exists, otherwise let em fly North .

Keep talkin' folks, pretty much any solution is going to be a nightmare for me so you may as well get your 2 cents in. I do like the idea of trying to evaluate the defenses but it does indeed raise many questions about what you do if you don't have a perfect detection (to save the AI I suppose you'd say run away if you don't know for sure). Other approaches still welcome of course too. Brad put forth a suggestion of don't close to fire any weapon that deals

Yes, sadly the air to surface guns are giving aircraft enough reason to close on target, in modern battles that pretty much means wasting aircraft that could have repeatedly toted longer-ranged munitions. Brad made a test scen for me over lunch that proved it. Scenario attached, play as Red, use Show All to launch Hornets against the Red base, then watch bad things happen. ATTKTST.zip

Cool, thanks for taking a look Akula.

General comment on this one to Joe K, you might be better served not using the textured maps. Use the plain gray ones instead for the most accurate representation of coastlines (i.e. what those non-textured maps represent are the same data the GE is using to decide when something is aground).

Here is where the AI has one of its few advantages over you. It checks every game second to see if the weapons are in range, a human player rarely does the same. Engagements at such short ranges demand lots of attention in the current builds.

Nope, no relationship. I have a reputation for not 'holding hands' with the player, as far as my scenarios go. Hehe, and often Brad ties hands by starting the scenario with planes carrying useless loadouts, giving the opposition a chance to pressure the player early on. It can instill a bit of panic!

1. Without the platform editor or extensive knowledge of platforms, no. 2. The tanker probably thinks it it refueling itself, no I don't think it gets any fuel, I expect it just dumps it. 3. Brad said they aren't refuel capable. Having played the scenario a few times the P-3s can be useful and can make the difference in the scenario, being shot down proves to be much more of a concern than running out of fuel in my experience. This scenario (also made by Brad, like the DB) was made with and for HCE knowing full well the P-3s are not refuellable. 4. I see no great need, many things are practical, few actually see their way to fruition.

The grid lines were disabled since they are/were horribly inaccurate in most battlesets. Orienting yourself takes a mouse click on the map (well, two mouse clicks the first time) at which point the lat/lon is displayed in the status bar.

Okay, so I don't know the real implications but some things worry me and without adequate understanding I am vulnerable to fear mongering. I have one harmless genetic condition that precludes me from most private insurance programs. If it hadn't been detected at an early age it could have led to organ failure and all kinds of nightmares but it was detected early and is inexpensive to manage (the Doc drains a pint of blood from me once every 3 months). I have one other chronic condition (digestive system) that has meant a fair bit of expense in the past but doesn't really threaten heavy expenditure in the future. The combination of those two items means very high insurance premiums but I can see my doctor and he treats me as able. Universal coverage and all of the talk about results-based renumeration for doctors scares me. I have conditions that more than likely won't get better (not that they are bad). Can my doctor afford to keep me as a patient as a result? I'll most certainly drag down his scores despite him in my opinion being a practical, effective, and monetarily efficient doctor. So on the one hand universal coverage means all of these insurance companies wouldn't be able to turn me down like they can now. On the other hand, would I be left seeing only inexperienced doctors who stand a good chance of harming me instead of effectively managing chronic conditions like my current doctor? All of that said I have it easy. If you are a doctor that specializes in late stage cancer, do you stand a chance or are you squeezed out of your field of work? mini expose done , could have been better methinks.

Contrary to my esteemed colleagues here I do believe such weapons represent game changers for a carrier group. With range at least four times that of the closest manned competitor on the deck (E-2) not to mention higher speed the ability to gather information for precision targeting increases dramatically. Let's not even get started on loiter time! Presence and persistence are the two key capabilities such birds add to the mix. That isn't such a big deal with the Air Force around except perhaps on the presence front. If the carrier is already on station, time to target and information gathering is much shorter from the carrier than from the US or UK or wherever. When you add the weapons capabilities as Brains has so naturally done, even better, though in a higher intensity conflict I imagine my sensor platforms such as the UAVs would be more valuable as sensors than sticking necks out to take a pot shot at the bad guys, send in the Super Bugs for that. Where I really see value is when some near peer opponent decides to level the playing field by taking out comms sats and the US military comes to a screeching halt. Then the varied comms methods part of CEC and Brain's UAVs really come into their own and the Navy finds itself in a position of still being able to fight when the Air Force is almost entirely paralyzed. imho that is where the Brains solution comes thru and proves itself a game changer.

My reaction without pulling open any scenarios... I'm thinking the P-3s are not refuellable but the tankers are refuellable. The tanker(s) probably think they are refueling each other. The game just doesn't do checks all that deeply in some cases. It sees tankable assets in the group so lets the fuel fly. Same deal with the fuel range when tankers are included and probably not a situation where you would want to transit them together exactly for the reasons you've laid out.

We already have all of the versions we were looking for (including 1.0) and the package was made a couple of months back. Thank you for your participation!

I should also note, not every database is affected, the BlankDB I had posted didn't have the flaw but the StrikerFictDB did. Thanks for taking a look Rene.

Right on, what were they thinking?

Thank you Nilus for typing up your list. In regards to number 4, pressing Alt-t will rotate between the settings for showing paths.

You'll have to update your game to version 2009.042 or newer (at the moment you can get 2009.042 at http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?showtopic=2049) from 2008.044. I apparently made a change in those recent versions of the DLL that requires the newer GEs.

Brains found an inconsistency in the Aircraft short names battleset string. The data fix is applied by you database authors. Not fixing it doesn't really hurt anything, it could just be confusing to later editors. Instructions: 1. With your database loaded in the PE, go to the lPlatformSubTypes table. 2. Scroll down the list until you are at Annex 5 3. Unless you've already fixed it, where Annex = 5 and ID = 15 you'll see double quotes that were caused by a missing comma. 4. Delete those double-quotes, close the table, then export. 5. Data inconsistency solved, thank you for participating.

HCE - 2009.045 - 2009/10/08 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE eff115 (trigger AI sensor state and prompt user for sensor activation) modified to require that the target unit in question be detected. (thanks Brad) - Chg:0000 GE True air to surface guns can now be used against surface targets, both by the AI and the player. (thanks hoogelex & Brad) - Chg:0000 PE Changed end_edit.bat support contact information to HarpGamer.

HCE - 2009.045 - 2009/10/08 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE eff115 (trigger AI sensor state and prompt user for sensor activation) modified to require that the target unit in question be detected. (thanks Brad) - Chg:0000 GE True air to surface guns can now be used against surface targets, both by the AI and the player. (thanks hoogelex & Brad) - Chg:0000 PE Changed end_edit.bat support contact information to HarpGamer. Oops, I forgot to put the new end_edit.bat in the zip file, we'll get that another time. Probably the only thing you can test is the air to surface guns, see the attached save (which verifies AI aircraft in formation can attack player surface units), and the scenario which allows the player to attach ships and a base with air to surface gunfire. To make that happen a fundamental change was made to how groups are targeted so look for anomolies with other types of attacks. Also be on the lookout for aircraft screaming to their deaths because they think they need to use their surface attack guns before going home to base. GUNTEST.zip