TonyE

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with HOL. When I look to other games like http://eu1.battlestar-galactica.bigpoint.com/ then I don't think that it will be good when all players on one side could handle all units with no asking. Inside of a good team it would work fine. But often inside of a team is one "selfish" player who jam the operations of his co-players. So from my point of view it shall be rather an option to handle all units than a standard. This is very good to keep in mind. However, there is only one programmer, me, and I have a full-time job. In addition to that I run my own company after hours and take part in sports and life in general. That means HC can't have every capability we want. The discussion is good though because then hopefully I can invest the time in making data structures that can handle something other than a free-for-all if programming time ever permits the usage of those structures. In every battle there must be at least one "regional" commander who care about low priority bases and familiar to this who care with prio about support, logistic and ferry missions. And why shall a multiplayer game be limited to 3 players on each side? The bigger the team then the bigger the fun effect. If on one side are 30 players and on the other side only 5; then the 5 players shall be supported by 25 smart (Tony like programmed) AI players with units. But first, let's please see a real through the internet playable multiplayer version with 1 vs. 1. Hmm, I don't remember off-hand what the current player limit is. We are limited to 8 sides (and obviously only have 3 useable right now). I used three just as an example. The plan is to start with an umpire entering orders for all sides and the players communicating those orders via some chat mechanism and seeing the game in a read-only fashion in an updated remote viewer. Kesmai produced HOL and it used a unix-based server product. Nobody has been able to find the source code to the game and it is doubtful anyone would release the server component to us either. Don Gilman has tried to fulfill our request on multiple occasions, even shipped me a damaged CD from which I recovered a bunch of interesting stuff but not the HOL code. For this has from my point of view today free multiplayer online game good approaches. On is, that the player define the behavior of the units when he is offline (which and how many a/c shall be ready for intercepting @ which range, ECON for each unit, how to act for ships when they are discovered or attacked (retread, or attack) and so on). By log out the AI finish the current orders of the units and then move the units to the predefined behavior till the player log in again (or all units are destroyed). An other approach is, that all player units retread when the player goes offline. And when the player goes online after a couple hours he start with his units from a safe place (or at least from the safest place) an has to ferry to the battle. An other approach is, that all player units are handed over to an other human player. If this player is overloaded with all units and don't hand the units over to an AI player, then a lot units loiter around or stay at the base till a new player goes online to whom the "surplus" units could handed over. If a new player log in to a running game, he shall be able to capture the role and units of an AI player. (My favorod solution, so a battle could go 3 to 7 real days and there it is then not necessary to stay the whole time online.) I expect the way this will happen is that other players will take over the groups the offline player was commanding. I don't see the ferrying to a safe place working for many reasons: writing code to decide where a safe area is sounds very challenging, teleporting ships sounds like a pretty big cheat, what about the opponent that was just about to strike those ships.

I'm sorry but we've found any support of the PlayersDB gets interpreted as approval of the tactics of those behind the PlayersDB and we will not take that risk. http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?showtopic=13583

Cool, thanks for the nice report!

Darren will be sorely missed. He was a Harpoon titan and yet so very human. A chat would often consist of 5 minutes of Harpoon talk and an hour of very interesting education on some aspect of warfare in general. He gave freely of his time, often too freely. Rest in peace Darren. Links: An obituary: http://tributes.heraldsun.com.au/obituarie...1&fhid=8258 Old Pooners Group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/143822619011193 (look for Ed's post 'Darren, You will missed greatly by us.') Harpoon bio from way back when: http://www.harpoonpages.com/Bios/bio090.htm Darren's Pooner award: http://www.harpoonpages.com/pooner1998.htm Some of Darren's HUD2 files just to show his openness... If you wanted to know how he derived values you would ask and he'd provide the spreadsheet or formulas. http://www.harpoonpages.com/harpoon2.htm H3/ANW databases (note that all but one is Darren's work or a derivative): http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...s&showcat=4 Frans' HUD3 area: http://www.taitennek.com/hud3-db/hud3-index.htm

LOL, that's a great commercial!

I love the discussion and hope you all keep exploring the ramifications of the wishes. This makes me want to undertake units carrying units as a major feature once multiplayer is in place. The game data structures and AI have no clue how to operate with mirved warheads, launch Marines from LCACs from ships but human players do. That makes this capability a big-benefit follow-on to multiplayer in my mind. So if you dare, explore how units carrying units would impact the SE, the AI, and the character of the game in general. Happy wishing!

What an impossible question to answer without asking more questions... My first thought is that the most heavily weighted capability changes depending upon the expected opponent. A F-16 doesn't need an AMRAAM if the expected opponent is a lightly skinned truck transporting ammunition to the front. That same AMRAAM however is golden if the opponent is a Mig-23. That all said if I had to choose one or the other I'd choose offensive ability as more important over the (plane, ship, submarine) platform categories where I agree with Warhorse that it is often first to get weapons on target who wins.

I grabbed mine used from an Amazon seller. Search for Harpoon Battlebook and right now it shows 20 sellers have it. I have to say I like the HC (by James DeGoey) better than the "Harpoon II: The Official Strategy Guide (Secrets of the Games) by Ed Dille and Tom Basham".

Hehe, I was all ready to nuke a spambot, then I saw "the missile". Congrats Harpoon you old SAM sponge.

Reminds me that I should check on that old Sverdlov and see if Blue managed to put it out of action or not over at MythWeavers.

Hilarious, sad,...

Have a look at your databases subdirectory and see if by chance you have two copies of HUD3. Mine looks like the attached. I kept the shipped 1.5.0 in HUD3 and put 1.6.1 in HUD3_161. That gives me the drop-down like the other screenshot, two HUDs, each a different version. You may have inadvertently ended up with two directories containing 1.6.1. You can delete the one you don't want, either one and it will not impact 1.6.1 scenarios in progress. Sorry for the long delay, haven't carved out much Harpoon time lately!

We can release the battleset sometime after the current advertising blitz so between late September and the end of the year we can release them for existing owners of the game. (plus the awesome extra scenarios the volunteers made!).

rgr, glad you are able to open and save!

Um, I thought the JMSDF was a military force, not a humanitarian assistance force. I don't think they were built for ferrying people from island to island when the bridge is destroyed by mother nature.

Agreed, thanks again to the scenario authors. I didn't think AGSI, Matrix, and USNI would ever get it into play. Oh, and if functionality is wonky, blame me since we took the daring decision to use a beta build for the package.

Hooray! Thank you for reporting back and probably saving someone in the future some pain. You wouldn't happen to have the parental controls installer so that I can give them a try? Also happy that your livelihood shall not collapse.

Yup http://wordpress.org/support/topic/problem...ce-this-weekend

You know I wouldn't be surprised if Alert 5 was hacked and the advertising code inserted. It is at the very bottom of the RSS feed and contains repeated links to prosoftwarestore. But it is hidden (so link farming hacking?).

You can but unfortunately there is some advertising in their feed that doesn't conform to the RSS specification so it can't be used at this time. In other words the forum here can't successfully read the feed.

ROFL http://www.blackholesurplus.com/A_BH_FISH.htm

Maybe we can buy some air defense fighters from Iran. Refurbishment: Replace AWG-9 with enlarged APG81 and 360 degree coverage Replace crappy engines with F110-GE-132 (32,500lb thrust vs TF30 @ 21,000lb thrust) F-14D or better FLIR/IRST and give me 360 degree coverage Integrate the 360 degree fun with F-35 shared software Helmet mounted display again steal from F-35 Maybe pull off a frontal RCS Maybe help RCS with Silent Eagle style conformal tanks, also netting more fuel and some internal weapons carriage? Loadout napkin checked for weight (anti-awacs barely makes it, carrier will groan!). See http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/387-1689.aspx for some of the interest (funny I was reading that this morning before the F-14 blog post) Anti-AWACs loadout: 2 x SM-6, 2 x AIM-120D, 2 x AIM-9X Fleet air defense loadout: 4 x ESSM, 2 x AIM-120D, 2 x AIM-9x Drone chewing: 12 x AIM-120C/D, 2 x AIM-9X (figure dual ejector rack in each Phoenix location) Air to Ground: Yah, you have fun with dat den

I vote for the second article with a budgetary nod towards the first. Maybe we could make some smaller, less capable, nuke SSNs. We have made and can make small nuclear powerplants, we haven't shown a willingness to make less costly submarines.

Quick answer from work where I don't have access to the H3 Launcher... It sounds like you are playing with quite a high realism level. Your sub turns blue because the rest of your units have lost contact with it and disappears after a longer period of time with no communications. Same deal with the missiles, you lose detection on them and eventually they disappear. The idea is you lose detection and/or communications with the platforms so the logically disappear. You may want to experiment with lower realism levels in the launcher that give you a continuous perfect communications network.

So I normally wouldn't talk up anything AOL related but they do have a defense news site that seems to have quite a bit of original content, some of it interesting. http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...DE=03&id=85