TonyE

Many scenarios are written that way but not all of them. It is up to the individual scenario author whether they give both sides courses and patrols (both formation and long range). Good move, another decision is whether to turn on your own radars before you get a contact. Generally the answer is no you shouldn't (except for AEW planes and MPA planes). My instinct would be to split off one of the frigates for a surface contact but if I detected a submarine I would attempt to prosecute it with helicopters-only. Yes, in some of the newer BattleSets you will find more shipborne helicopters with ASM loadouts for attacking ships. Yes, ASW is going to be a sore spot for you. Locating and sinking a submarine is a pretty manual affair. Keep making observations. I'm the programmer guy at the moment and unfortunately won't have much time to make changes for you immediately but if you stick around we'll keep picking away at them.

You may find it useful to review the keyboard commands at http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/files/file/416-keyboard-commands-by-type/ One Didier made good use of was rotating through groups by repeatedly hitting the spacebar. Definitely brainstorm what would help you.

Welcome, I have e-mailed Didier asking him to reply. Our last exchange at that e-mail however was in 2005 so it may not be monitored anymore. As for setting courses, courses in the game are tracked as a destination point, there is no real concept of heading. That means if we did get you an UI addition or change it would want you to enter both a heading and a distance which would give the destination/course leg that the game expects. Would that still be of value to you or are you really feeling the need to set a course and speed without defining a distance to travel?

Demo version 2015.024 has been uploaded.

HCE - 2015.024 - 2015-10-29 =========================== - Chg:I126 GE Changed ammunition counts for the mini report window to int from short (i.e. max 32767 to max 2 billion0 (thanks eeustice) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/tracker/issue-126-negatice-sams-and-aa-shells/ - Chg:I125 SE Scenario author can no longer add more than PlaneCap aircraft to a land unit. (thanks eeustice) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/tracker/issue-125-planes-allowed-on-units/ - Chg:0000 SE Scenario author can no longer add planes to carriers or land units after PlaneCap is reached. It was previously possible to add them one at a time by selecting qty 0.

HCE - 2015.023 - 2015-10-29 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE Removed 20kB limit when reading orders for the scenario. This was probably a hold-over from the days of very limited RAM. - Chg:0000 GE Scenario Orders are now saved with the saved game, giving the player an ability to pull up the orders even when loading a saved game. - Chg:0000 GE Incremented saved game version to support the changes in this build. - Chg:I123 GE Unit Full display will show weapon quantities again. It had stopped working when we went to 4096 items per annex. (thanks Tony & Enrique) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/tracker/issue-123-ship-missile-loadout-not-adjusting-in-unit-full-report/

In terms of effort, how can we help you Brad? I have the beginnings of a laundry-list of related tasks for myself: GESE - Add automatic scenario to DB matching so that a reasonable DB is chosen and loaded for each scenario GESEPE - Re-task unused fields and flags. Example in the 8-bit ECM field in the aircraft annex that can be used for up to 8 Codes/Flags or a single value 0-255. PE - Add fields for information Brad has available that could add fidelity to future simulations. Example is RCS numbers from multiple aspects, IR signature, ESM sensitivity/generation, ... GESE - Add a Media manager ala H3 to handle media other than tiny and difficult to link images SE - Add filters when adding platforms to restrict by: country, ship type, ?in service years?,...

I thought long and hard trying to come up with an argument to move the start date toward the early 1980s but came up short. In 91 we still have the F-14 in US Navy service, Iowa BBs, and perhaps most importantly game-wise is the prevalence in the US arsenal of the Sparrow missile. The character of air warfare imho changed significantly in the game with the introduction of AMRAAM. Including more media, while a pain, is a welcome sight. If we want or hope to attract new talent, some attention to the flashy aspects will go far. Our capabilities with ExportDLLs these days should really enable additional media. Brad, care to start a separate thread to discuss media? Overall, agreed with the main concepts and fresh organizational approach without the legacy baggage that originally made HCDB great but now limits growth and useability.

Hi Greg, at http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/tracker/project-2-hce/you should find a Start New Issue button. You can attach files there as well as enter your detailed description. What version of Access do you have on the Windows 8.1 machine? If you have Access 2013 or 2016 you will want to give the new beta a try as I brought the pfBuild2005.mdb and pfData2005.mdb files up to Access XP/2003 format from Access 97 format so that Access 2013 and 2016 can open them. http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/topic/2049-current-files/

What compelling reason(s) making losing the backwards compatibility worthwhile? Would this new database cover the globe over a certain time period? I'm with Enrique on wanting to understand the philosophy. Starting fresh might well be a good enough stimulus for me to finally implement some automatic database loading so newbies could fire up the game and have it automatically load the right database if present on the machine.

A little suggestion of proof

First I would suggest not bothering since those help files are even more horribly out of date than the PDF manuals. If one insists on making WinHelp work, here is what I did: 1. Downloaded the Windows 8.1 x64 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=47671 2. Moved the downloaded .msu file to a temporary location 3. Started a command prompt as Administrator 4. navigated to the temporary location via command prompt window 5. Created a HelpViewer directory and within that an Extract directory 6. Ran expand -F:* Windows8.1-KB917607-x64.msu C:\Temp\HelpViewer 7. Ran expand -F:* Windows8.1-KB917607-x64.cab C:\temp\HelpViewer\Extract 8. Now you have the contents of the installer extracted. 9. I fished out the winhlp32.exe file and winhlp32.exe.mui for my US English installation and copied them to C:\Temp 10. Went to http://www.komeil.com/blog/windows-help-program-winhelp-winhlp32-exeand downloaded the associated file. 11. Extracted install.cmd from the associated file in step 10. 12. Edited install.cmd, at the tail end of the settings section added: set WindowsVersion=7 goto :BypassVersionError 13. Ran install.cmd as Administrator and voila, WinHelp works in Windows 10 x64. 14. The install.cmd file also makes a couple of registry changes that allow opening the help files over a network connection. You could also trust the entire file from komeil.com, I chose to trust the files from Microsoft instead.

HCE - 2015.022 - 2015-10-20 =========================== - Chg:I121 SE Scenario Editor was sometimes not loading the flag that indicates where to find a unit name (DB vs. custom-entered-name) and as a result not saving it in the scenario. Remedied. (thanks Enrique) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/tracker/issue-121-scenarios-previously-in-development-dont-keep-ship-and-bases-names/

That is great news, welcome back to the current version!

Demo version 2015.021 has been uploaded.

That's no good, please post an issue report when you have time.

Right, I'm glad this gave you some joy!

Unfortunately none of that is showing helpful information in this case. I'll try to get a new demo build up tonight in hopes that magically cures whatever is ailing you.

That tiny drone, rifle from a helicopter, ram it with a Cessna,...? I doubt a jet fighter would have much of a chance against such a small and slow target.

Please provide some more detail: Did you make it through the installer? How far into the game do you make it? At what screen does it die? There is probably a file called GE.log in the game's directory, can you paste it into this thread? The demo should work on any XP machine.

HCE - 2015.021 - 2015-10-15 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE 4096 Items per annex now supported. - Chg:0000 SE 4096 Items per annex now supported. - Chg:0000 SE Platform display will no longer truncate the country+type+class text since we are in 32-bit land now. - Chg:I118 SE Splitting units from a group will no longer overflow, showing an error. The variable holding the text was widened and a more secure string copy is now used. (thanks Enrique) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/tracker/issue-118-errour-in-se-splitting-groups-in-build-2015017/ - Chg:0000 PE 4096 Items per annex now supported. - Chg:0000 PE Platform Editor will now warn the database author when all available IDs in an Annex have been used. - Chg:0000 PE Minimum MS Access version is now Access XP (aka 2002). This enables the PE to work in Access 2013 and 2016 (untested). Changes for correct operation in 64-bit versions of Office have not been made, please use the 32-bit version of Office.

Visit http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/topic/2049-current-files/ for a version that will run this scenario.

The current builds are looking pretty good in the limited testing they have received. GE, SE, and PE are all updated, crossing my fingers that no big issues are found today so I can put it up for everyone to consume.

Thanks Gary, I added you to the PM conversation and will remove your e-mail address from the post above. Also thanks to Wombat1417 for diving right into the alpha testing. He has been out of the loop but added good value already, pointing out a number of areas where the game as a whole needs clarity and updated documentation. The one 4096 bug found so far was by Eric and promptly fixed.

Either of the "Program Files" directories is a poor destination for Harpoon. Windows enforces interesting permissions on those folders that will at best make your experience challenging. You can uninstall the HCE-UpdateComprehensiveInstaller-2009.050.exe then install it into your actual HC location. Then move the entire HC location outside of "Program Files" and try running it from there. Uninstalling HC entirely and reinstalling outside of "Program Files" would be ideal, you can certainly make it work without doing so, depends on your skill(z) and tenacity .