TonyE

Hehe Don, your day will come

Reprieve perhaps, 2002 may still work (the format is called 2002/2003).

Ah, I forgot XP/2002 entirely. Might be time to shove you forward.

I'm about to upgrade the PE format from Access 97 to Access 2003 (so that it can be opened with Access 2003-2016 instead of the current Access 97 - 2010). Does anyone have big complaints about this? For those hanging on to Office 97 and 2000 you should be able to install a newer MS Access runtime (*free).

Download information sent to the first responder and two others I chose to spam

I am looking for a few players to give a potentially GE and SE combination a workout. They support doubling from 2047/8 items per annex in the database to 4096 items per annex to give the database authors breathing room for a little while. If you are interested and can invest at least an hour in the next week exercising as many capabilities of the GE and SE as possible looking for crashes, please PM me your interest and e-mail address. Just to set expectations, in my limited testing the GE and SE are working well for existing scenarios, existing saved games, new saved games, and new scenarios. The PE (Platform Editor) changes have not even begun. Thank you

Totally agreed broncepulido.

Yes, you have to join a tanker to the group. To force the refueling once it is in the same group as the recipients give the Alt-r command.

You are probably running the wrong executable. Run Wscenedt32.exe for the new SE.

Methinks the writer may have read "The Art of Wargaming" like some of us here . One of the biggest challenges barely touched upon in the article is gaining buy-in. Those who would decide to go to war or trust war to the simulations have to believe the results of the game. The suggestion of the wider audience of participants increasing that buy-in is intriguing though extremely optimistic. Agreed though, good article that is approachable by a wider audience than most examinations of wargaming.

New version uploaded that sends all of the database information to the ExportDLL interface. One could now recreate the Platform Display (outside of the current sonar conditions).

HCE - 2015.017 - 2015-09-30 ========================== - Chg:0000 GE Made the code that gathers data for the AnnexData structure much more robust. This includes working around data corruption in the Original GIUK and Original USNI BattleSets.

If you can live with the dead trees variant of SitRep, E-Bay has a decent collection.

HCE - 2015.016 - 2015-09-25 ========================== - Chg:0000 GE Incremented DLL Interface version to 14 for the following... - Chg:0000 GE ExportDLL interface added BSStrings quasi-annex to the end of the AnnexData structure. Use this for things like side names, loadout names, country names, ship names, etc. - Chg:0000 GE ExportDLL interface added MAG_DISK_PTR_LIST to AnnexData. This consists of a parent linked-list where each list item also contains a linked list of the actual magazine contents. This rather ugly structure mimics how the data is laid out in the database itself so enables eventual replacement of the calls to the DB to be redirected to this in-memory list. - Chg:0000 GE ExportDLL interface added PLAT_DESC_LIST to AnnexData. This consists of an array of structures that have the TextIndex and the platform description itself. - Chg:0000 GE ExportDLL interface added NAME_DISK_PTR_LIST to AnnexData. This consists of a parent linked-list where - Chg:0000 GE Fixed bug in turn rates, it was rounding away any delay in turns to zero as a result of math being done as integers when it should have been floating point numbers. (thanks CV32)

Why be Harpoon specific? Hit up the more broad category of wargamers. What about the people who love naval warfare but have no idea Harpoon exists? We tend to focus on our small and generally apathetic audience when wider adoption may be entirely feasible. As always in marketing, it comes down to effort except when you have a flashy, Internet sensation, which we don't . A sampling of Harpoon-related: https://www.facebook.com/harpgamer/ https://www.facebook.com/AdmiraltyTrilogy https://www.facebook.com/matrixgamesltd

Fixed for 2015.016 (F-22 Raptor) 21 Sep 2015, 13:08:05 Group ACA 160 degree turn delayed 7 seconds; Group ATA=60, OldCourse=39, NewCourse=199

Do like broncepulido, updates, graphics, supports his DB Author, gives background information, posts to Facebook .

So you've created a game, update, database, utility, scenario, and would like the world to experience your great work-product... You post it to HarpGamer.com and wait for the accolades and glowing usage reports to come in but instead you hear absolutely nothing. Soon you would settle for a bit of harsh criticism but nothing appears. Welcome to the world of Harpoon! In many ways your initial work-product was the easy part since it was effort you enjoy. At this point it is time to don your latent "Marketing Genius" hat. My intent is to make a number of posts laying out potential ways to increase uptake of your work and maybe even grow a following that publicly participates and contributes to your efforts. Foundational concepts: 1. Make it multimedia. If you post a scenario, include a graphic to make the download page prettier. If you want uptake, any contribution should include at least one graphic or video. Did you create an add-on? Post a usage video on a video sharing site! 2. Tell the world about it. At a minimum you should be posting to HarpGamer, Matrix Games' Forum(s), and Facebook. There are many other haunts for Harpoon players, touch on them. 3. Keep it fresh. So you author a database with thousands of hours worth of effort, great. If you don't release periodic updates it will appear dead. The changes don't have to be many but there at least has to be an appearance of vitality. One release per year does not an appearance of vitality produce. That said, you could release once per year if you are active on the related support thread. Maybe you do a glossy 8.5x11" PDF every-other-week of a platform in the database, great, maybe even better than a database update. 4. Provide support. If a user goes to the trouble of posting feedback, acknowledge it and act on it. That doesn't mean you do everything asked but make the person feel valued. 5. Contribute elsewhere. Make a good name for yourself in the community or in a sister community. This could also be categorized as building your brand. A respected member of the TacOps community has an easy transition to be respected in the Harpoon community. You may be a scenario author but having a reputation as a good beta tester goes a long way.

The AI topic is so huge I always just freeze up and can't write anything at all so thanks for kicking it off Brad, I'll piggy-back. I feel air strikes is an area where the game has enough structure for the AI to do a much better job. Don has already written code to modify paths. He has the ability to tell the AI to put together multi-axis attacks without a scripted patrol point. Time on Target (ToT) also isn't easy but all of the information is there now that database access is available. With a good bit of work the AI could even set up its own refueling tracks for a package of strikers, not to mention get the SEAD birds on target before the heavy-hitters. Air operations are low-hanging fruit imho, big gain for modest effort. Multi-axis attacks by the AI without coordinated ToT might be a decent place to start. In the big picture the AI needs a strategy. The current potential inputs to that strategy are victory conditions and the AI's order of battle. The VC pillar is weak (VCs do not describe in enough detail the scenario goals). An entirely missing pillar is starting intelligence about the opposition. The AI needs quantifiable information about the expected threat, whether accurate or not, from the scenario author. Building the strategy engine would require coordination between Don and myself since it requires changing & adding many game structures. From the strategy all things would then flow. A quick example would be Operation Island Wind in WestPac. The North Korean AI would need to know its purpose is to hold off the technological superior forces from taking out the missile launchers before the missiles can be launched. It would look at its assets and decide that it has to put targets (planes, as ill equipped as they are) in the air to delay the attackers despite horrendous loss because launching the missiles is the most important thing in the scenario.

Thanks Don!

They probably have some bearing much like many factors go into a probability of hit but there is no direct link that is visible to any of us lowly folks, you'd have to ask Bond/Carlson/et al.

Allrighty, test scen, save, and instructions please .

Please start a new thread for this very involved topic.

Run the numbers and see, perhaps the turn isn't severe enough to be over 1 second? time = 3 x ((60 / ATA_Group) x HeadingChangeInDegrees/ 360) x 5 F-15C/D ATA = 40 time = 3 x ((60/40) x HeadingChangeInDegrees/360) x 5 time = 15 x ((1.5 x HeadingChangeInDegrees)/360) HeadingChangeInDegrees = 45 time = 15 x ((1.5 x 45)/360 time = 15 x (67.5/360) time = 15 x 0.1875 time = 2.81 seconds (I think this gets truncated to 2 seconds) If the game isn't matching then there is an issue somewhere.

Already did