TonyE

Great resource Pete, similar to the CIA World Factbook but more military-focused. I checked out the UAE and found the mention of training with Iraq and other such tidbits interesting, they could be good triggers for scenarios.

The normal HarpGamer SH3 cruise... Brains hosts so that he gets the little detection meter, for some reason only the hosting party gets that great assist. Tony tears off towards the target group at way too high of a speed. Brad slides in towards the convoy, attracting no attention. Brains despite making little or no noise attracts all of the escorts, sinks half of them. Tony lets loose a few torps at the convoy, the other guys follow suit. Brains, despite making little or no noise attracts all of the escorts and any planes nearby, sinks/shoots down half of them. Tony gets sunk on the first depth charge run of any suitably poor escort such as an armed trawler. Brad slips away unharmed Brains manages to escape battered but unbelievably, and I mean unbelievably alive and kicking. End result: Brad or Tony with most merchant tonnage, Brains with escort tonnage and some merchant.

Okay class, see secondary entry... Main Entry: pleth·o·ra Pronunciation: 'ple-th&-r& Function: noun Etymology: Medieval Latin, from Greek plEthOra, literally, fullness, from plEthein to be full -- more at FULL 1 : a bodily condition characterized by an excess of blood and marked by turgescence and a florid complexion 2 : EXCESS, SUPERFLUITY; also : PROFUSION, ABUNDANCE - ple·tho·ric /pl&-'thor-ik, ple-, -'thär-; 'ple-th&-rik/ adjective Thank you Merriam-Webster for the assist

The evening's hunt was successful, 128,222 tons of shipping and 3,942 tons of warship. This was followed by starshell displays, poor driving (aka rammings) and some accidental deaths

There is also no direct mapping of H4.1 paper data into H3/ANW so while the database is based on the data, it may in the end be no closer to H4.1 than any of the other databases (which pretty much circulate around H4.1 results anyway...).

Nah, I think he is a graduate of Saddam Hussein's school of using the "West's" diplomatic process against itself. But will he come to the same end...

Thanks Rene , right on. We successfully married another Eischens this weekend (a 2nd cousin) out of cell phone and easy Internet range, sure was nice!

Edge of seat nearing...

I may be overly awed by the numbers involved in the Chinese military but it seems to me even an island protected by S-300/400 SAMs or Patriot+Arrow wouldn't stand a chance against the onset of hostilities with China. A warring party may be able to move armored reserves against a concentrated armor onslaught but missile warfare if executed half decently cannot be defended economically with current systems. You cannot shift anti-missile batteries even a hundred miles quickly enough to bring sufficient defense to an area facing concentrated missile attack and defended multiple areas against a greater than average threat will bleed any military dry. I've long had the similar concerns about the longevity of expensive ships at sea. Is Taiwan better off with 20 SM-I armed ships or 4 Aegis ships with SM-II? It takes only four torpedoes to sink the entire Aegis fleet, at least 20 for the 'lesser' SM-I ships. I think the topic ties in well with Pete's LCS gaming. He is showing (unintentionally I think) that a LCS group costing a similar amount to one DD-X (or even less!) is much more surivable and more flexible as well. The most notable comparison in my mind comes in F-15 vs F-16. The US would not buy all of the F-15s it wanted, the lower-end F-16 was built to round out the numbers. Granted the F-16 has been given many more upgrades that and capabilities than were planned but we haven't seen droves of F-16s being shot down as inferior instruments. Maybe Taiwan should figure out a way to lie low in the initial onset, stow the antennas when the first launches are detected, and don't put them back up until the initial, indefensible missile assault is thru... In rambling conclusion , there is a middle ground somewhere, the US has been incredibly poor at reaching the middle ground and I think Taiwan could be hamstringing itself by assuming that fewer high-cost platforms are really more valuable than swarms of low-cost platforms when the real missiles start flying.

Now that Iran suggests they'll let the inspectors in I think the US should follow suit and play the game for a while before condemning the process. Good move by Iran, poor response by the US in not letting Iran be forced into being uncooperative with the inspectors.

Good question Brad, good forum to put it in too . My short and to the point guess is that the UN process may reach minimal sanctions against Iran and that's it. Otherwise look to Israel and the USA for anything more dramatic. Final impact anywhere from nuclear weapons equipped Iran untouched by military forces, all the way to World War III as Israel actually gets wiped off the map with nuclear weapons and Iran with more than a few pockmarks itself.

Well, the Wild! are well into vacation time at warm locales, only mildly disappointed that they aren't still skating their hearts out in too warm arenas around North America. Outside of the finals, interest in pro hockey for me was over the last day of the regular season

You've got that right, and I'm hardly a baseball fan at all, still 2 wins out of 3 games impresses me!

Happy Easter everyone! The feast and celebration were great here. The deacon at church had a very sour look all mass, I'll assume he was tired from the Easter Vigil service... On a more secular topic, check out the Peeps contest from this area, the top finishers are being displayed at a very real museum on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus and I hope to make it there to see them. Peeps Story Some of the entries in the contest

Pete, I like seeing them all too so I set every forum to show all topics, we'll see how long it takes for the forum to bog down and re-evaluate then

Buddha put together a graphic explaining the location numbers of catapults and elevators as used by most aircraft carriers in HC. The data entry spot for locations is found by going into the PE, finding a carrier, looking at the mounts, double-clicking a mount or otherwise bringing up the full data for the mount at which point a location drop down is shown. The graphic equates these location numbers with the location shown in the platform display of the GE and SE. Thanks Buddha!

Calling MGellis... I finally snooped into what you were seeing with blank lines for ship entries in the SE with recent versions of the HCDB. The deal is that 16-bit list boxes (the scrolling list of units) can show a maximum of 8192 items (we can only have 2048 items so we don't hit that limit) or 65536 characters of information in the entire list box. It is the 65536 character limit we hit, when the SE gets there, the rest of the lines after 65536 characters are blank. Simple math shows that to fit the max possible number of entries from the game (2048), each entry in the list box for the Platform Display must be limited to 32 characters max. I have sent AGSI an e-mail about this but if you would file a formal bug report with them it would be appreciated.

Buddha, I haven't seen a comprehensive listing of the locations but you certainly have a workable approach by trying each location. We would love to see a largish graphic with each location noted so that we can post it on the HG website.

I played this scenario last night. It is short and will probably take multiple tries if you play the Blue side as I did, however I only played once and lost magnificently. The SA-5 SAMs trying to get my AEW bird were a masterful distraction. Rarely do I play scenarios over such a small geographical area so I didn't believe the messages saying I was in SAM range until I saw the missiles approaching! Thankfully I was able to get away unscathed. Unfortunately the refugee boat could not run far enough, fast enough. When it was sunk there were 9 ships within 5nm of each other, the refugee boat, four red warships and four blue warships. The difficulty was my orders from above suggesting I not start a war so I did not shoot. Red felt no need to do the same. I also like the arrangement and array of neutrals in the scenario, Drakens flying around were fun and another distraction despite their neutrality. Note, the scenario was built by Rene with his EuroDB database and as such that is the database you should use to play this scenario. Thanks Rene

I apologize in advance for not doing the legwork on my comments... Have you looked at Dash-1 classifying the target and radioing which blob is the Straight Flush to Dash-2 which then launches GBU-12D from Med Altitude (closer to 4nm range) and turns sufficiently post launch to keep weapon within 270 degree cone? Based on what you said on IRC this still isn't a good situation since Dash-2 becomes vulnerable to the SA-6b. So I'm thinking there may be a small window to launch in your setup, perhaps turn in the 1st movement phase on the engagement turn of GBU launch. What I don't like about that is that your attack run isn't then pointed at the target. Hmm

While I've played most Harpoon versions, I can't remember the last time I saw what you describe (but I believe it was in the DOS versions, lost during the hop to Windows aka Harpoon Classic) so I bet that was a piece of functionality that was lost quite a few versions ago.

Actually the problem isn't entirely in the installer (and at that it isn't a quirk but rather someone not creating the install file correctly). I helped gkm get his battleset path corrected last night and the problems are much deeper, the solution is easy though, as he says, check now and then by using the Battlesets button on the GE and SE (as the battleset path is stored separately for each) that you are pointing to the appropriate game location. Contrary to AGSI statements, the HCGold and HCCE setting have not been properly divorced so you need to check the battleset path when switching back and forth between HCCE and HCGold.

Herman, can you elaborate on the max range behavior you are seeing? My understanding is that the ranges listed for the weapon are launch ranges, not weapon ranges. The weapon range being determined by fall time or in the case of missiles engines and fuel. The Launch Range meaning only how far away the target can be when the weapon is launched, nothing to do with how far the weapon travels to get to the target. Thanks

Thank you for relaying Pete, good stuff! It will be interesting to hear what you do for the actual insertion of your team.

What an article. I'm saddened to read it as it shows to me the entire lack of resolve that not only the UN General Assembly has in executing the UN statutes but the inability of the security council to take any action whatsoever. Hmm, call me a callous American but taking some substantive action to see if the inspectors get thrown out would be a good indication me where Iran stands once we get past the political showboating. I don't even want to think about a member state of the UN (Iran) being allowed to remain in the UN when calling for the destruction of another UN state (Israel). Is there no backbone at all in the UN? If it were my organization, Iran would be booted out and not given good references or a severence package! Take a look back to the years between Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Over and over again the Saddam Hussein regime handicapped and in some cases (no fly zones) outright ignored the resolutions undertaken by the UN. Was any action taken, not really. The UN said thru lack of action that UN resolutions have no teeth. If I were president Bush and had September 11th not happened, perhaps I would have looked at the situation and said, if the UN won't act, the US will go in militarily and make sure the UN resolutions are upheld, anybody who joins us, fantastic. Well, after this rant I feel more connected with Teddy Roosevelt than ever. I'm all for an international body such as the UN, but countries must take up the charter and put teeth and meaning into the UN. Without that, globalization passes the UN by and we have a global economic framework on very unstable footings thanks to the UN not being able to effect political globalization. In conclusion, the world community in my humble opionion must yield with nearly one voice: a political framework producing resolutions (this the UN does succed at to a large extent), money (a world wellfare system of sorts, already partially fulfilled by the UN and organizations like the Red Cross)(also as a body to enact economic sanctions), and guns to enforce the political resolutions and to make sure the money policy works. Interesting how this triad (structure, money, guns) matches up with the idea of a 1,000 ship Navy global maritime force http://www.military.com/forums/0,15240,81652,00.html. The Naval Institute Proceedings magazine just had replies to that article by various admirals in the world's Navies. Most were in support of the idea and already see it happening, wouldn't it be great if the UN could get some gumption and lead such a force? Some of the more superb replies touched upon the triad of policy in using and distributing the force, finding the money to make it work, and the easy part for the admirals, providing the ships and men.