VictorInThePacific

I have been looking at the WestPac Middleweights scenario. I can't say for sure, but I think the computer (N or S Korea) gets Rafales. We have lots of good AEW planes, and lots of planes with 40 nm AMRAAMs, but the Rafale is hard to detect AND it has 54 nm AA missiles. Any suggestions on how to deal with this menace? And how in the heck did either Korea get Rafales anyway?

In real life, you're supposed to drive ships with random zig-zags added to the course. Does this have any advantage in Harpoon? If not, it would be really tedious to put them in, given that the scale of a leg relative to the overall travel distances is quite small.

The AD units in question are cycling their radars on and off. When you have a solid lock red icon, the radar is on and your HARMs can track. When the icon goes yellow and your lock goes fuzzy, it's usually because you were only holding the lock by ESM, not hard detection, and the AD unit has just shut off its radar, leaving nothing for your HARMs to track. Only launching with the exact fix is the right thing to do, because that's probably the only time your chosen target is actually radiating. Your understanding of how HARMs work is correct, I think where you are having trouble is your assumption that the AD units are continuously radiating. They aren't. The nearby search radars are generally always on, but the AD units themselves only radiate intermittently, to make SEAD harder. Since the AD units themselves are so small, they are virtually impossible to detect directly at more than 5 or 6 miles. Almost all detections at more than that range will be by ESM ONLY. So, no, your understanding of HARMs is correct, and as long as they have a radiating target they do fairly well, but unless you've got that solid red icon with no uncertainty, you don't have a radiating target, which is why your HARMs miss. What really sucks is if you launch the ARM with a red fix and THEN the fix goes yellow. Wasted missile!

There is a reason why I keep saying "read/study my AAR" 1) no further comment is warranted at this time 2) I quote: "After using 16 Sparrows and 12 SideWinders, we only have 3 kills. This is a rather pathetic start." I quote: "Our fighters completely outclass the opposition. Our Phantoms carry 8 missiles, all of which outrange anything the enemy fighters carry. Even some of our attack aircraft can do a job on the enemy fighters. The Vietnamese have MiG-17Fs, which only have guns, MiG-19s, and MiG-21MFs. Their maximum missile range is 4 nm. Each Phantom should be able to safely shoot down 2 (maybe 3) enemy fighters," The first quote describes an anomaly. If you can't get the results from the second quote, then Thou Art Doing It Wrong! Fire at 10-15 nm with Sparrows (radar must be on) and 5-7 nm with Sidewinders. 3) read my AAR 4) True. There's no particular reason to the Stratofortresses in this scenario.

The only way for the American planes to get 2x outside the Vietnamese radar range is to fly SE from the carrier! Just look at this screen shot: http://i703.photobucket.com/albums/ww33/Vi...ridge/brdgA.png I was referring to 2x the radius of the AI bases' range circles. In the game I played, I distinctly recall that I placed a stationary Hawkeye between the carrier group and the AI bases, as well as patrolling Hawkeyes, one about 150 nm directly North of the carrier group, and the radar range circles for the Hawkeyes did not reach the radar range circles for the bases, and thus my "territory" seemed to be at least 2x the radius of the AI bases' range circles. I also placed RA-5Cs near the Hawkeyes, to augment the recon, as well as to triangulate any detected AI units. The AI regularly vectored MiGs to attack the RA-5Cs, and sometimes the Hawkeyes, in these locations. My assumptions were: 1. The AI should not be able to "fix" these groups due to the distance involved. 2. The MiGs should not be able to track these groups due to their distance away from the AI's ground radars (at least not without revealing themselves). 3. Radar or ESM detection should trump visual detection. 4. The Hawkeyes ought to be able to detect the MiGs via radar and/or other sensors. 5. Short-range visual detection by each side should be at least in the same ballpark. Apparently, none of these assumptions were valid... but I remain puzzled about why. Which makes me wonder how they were so adept at finding and attacking my air groups, under the circumstances. There definitely appears to be some misconceptions here. Joe, I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions and I want them answered immediately! 1) What is the distance from the Kitty Hawk to the nearest Vietnamese airbase? 2) What is the range of the Vietnamese base radar? Regarding your assumptions: 1) incorrect 2) incorrect 3) correct if radars are on; otherwise incorrect 4) correct if they are close enough 5) correct but irrelevant (question of luck) All Vietnames planes are guided primarily by ground radar.

Low approach: almost always; VLow, almost never (because it's suicidal for most planes). If you claim that the non-stealth enemy planes are closing within 50 nm of any AEW plane, let me plainly state that I don't believe you. If you can provide evidence to the contrary, please do so. As far as your picket ships and planes go, you should probably look at the actual maximum detection ranges (available in the manual). They are much smaller than you probably imagine. I have to admit, if you put your picket planes up high, this will not apply, but if you're doing this, I'm guessing that your picket fighters are being picked off. Picket ships without active radars don't see much. Picket ships with active radars get picked off. Whenever I've tried it, I just get the "We are out of range" message. It's not completely trivial; took me a while to find one that worked before I wrote that comment. Here's one: WestPac-Pirates. Start by putting an Apache in your base formation. A few seconds after scenario start, an enemy ship is detected. Select that group, and intercept away! (Militarily speaking, this is a poor choice, but we are only demonstrating the process here.) All of this picket stuff doesn't work. Whatever you do to give the picket a decent chance to locate enemy units will result in the rapid demise of the picket unit. If the picket unit acts for self-preservation (radar silent, low altitude), it won't be seeing much. The exception is if you're looking for subs. Then the picket is fairly safe. The whole point of a picket ship is to draw enemy fire. The group gets warning of an attack, but it's hard on the picket! Incidentally, one of the reasons the Americans did so well in the (WW II) Battle of Midway was that they had radar on their ships and were able to detect incoming enemy planes early enough to prepare. The Japanese were typically unaware of attacking planes until they started their attack runs. I dunno: Although the Hawkeyes and RA-5Cs and such may stick out like neon signs, it seems to me that some AI unit or base still would have to be close enough to see those "signs"... and as far as I can tell, they are well out of range. On the other hand, the AI units remain undetectable by any means (air- or ship-borne radar, ESM, visuals) even when player's units are virtually tripping over them. But the thing that's particularly puzzling are the cases where a detected AI group is on course to engage a particular player's group that is well beyond any AI radar range. I see them coming 100-200 nm out, so I turn off the target's radar, drop it to Low or even VLow altitude, then send it on an evasion course. Meanwhile, I'm watching the AI's group via other nearby player's groups, and can track it when it's radar is active. It is always able to track its target, despite the target going Low and quiet and taking an evasive course. This really seems inconsistent considering that my units can't track the AI unit unless it is using its radars, even when they are quite close to each other. And in many cases, the player's groups presumably have superior radar and sensors. It's all very puzzling. Joe, the bottom line is, based on what you have said so far that I have understood in detail, that for this last comment, I feel that I don't need to understand it in detail to know that you're either doing the measurement wrong, misunderstanding it, or misreporting it. As far as I know, and one of the experts can confirm this, if your Hawkeye has its radar on, the enemy base will detect it well outside the base radar range. As a rule of thumb, if the Hawkeye radar circle touches the base radar circle, the Hawkeye is detected. So there is nowhere in the scenario to hide the Hawkeye if it is actually doing its job. Same for the Vigilante. On the flip side, the Hawkeye sees planes only within a certain distance and the Vigilante sees planes almost never.

Detectable, yes. Always detected or always detectable at a safe distance, no. OK, but what circumstances would cause them to remain undetected consistently until they get within their gun range? No, surface search radars will not detect airborne targets unless they (the targets) are flying at Very low (Vlow) altitude. ... I thought the thesis in this case was that the MiGs were not detected by the Phantoms and Hawkeyes because the MiGs were approaching at Low or VLow, which I assumed would mean that the RA-5Cs S-S radar would be able to detect them? In any case, the bottom line is the question of how they can regularly fly by ships, Phantoms (at various altitudes) and a Hawkeye or three, and yet still track and approach an RA-5C totally undetected by any of those player's platforms. It just doesn't seem plausible. Let me be perfectly plain. I don't believe they're doing this. Not when I play the game. Not when anyone plays the game. If you think you're observing these effects, then I say plainly that you're probably doing the measurement wrong. We are speaking specifically about the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario. I have said that the MiG-17Fs behaved as though they had the Romulan cloaking device. Now obviously, this is an allegory. I have also offered an explanation. Without repeating myself again, I will point out that proper positioning of the American assets in the air superiority phase of the scenario has the Phantoms about 40 nm in front of the Hawkeyes along reasonable bearings. The Phantoms are low and radar silent. The Hawkeyes are high and actively radiating. The Vietnamese fighters move towards the Hawkeyes. If they have radars, they will typically activate those as soon as they believe that they are observed. Then they become visible, and usually this is well away from the Phantoms, which then get easy kills. Of course, the Phantoms need to activate their radars to use the Sparrows, and what happens then, class? But the MiG-17Fs don't have radars to activate, so they quite frequently are detected by "stumbling over" a Phantom. The surprise may be mutual, but as long as the Phantom doesn't try to dogfight, it will win the encounter. Please don't imagine that a Phantom has any significant capacity to detect radar-silent enemy planes. It just ain't so. Confusion may arise due to a lack of appreciation of the game scale. Those tiny icons, and the small screen, represent miles and miles of empty space. As far as Hawkeyes go, the E-2B is the least capable of the lot. Brad has very usefully given us a whole swack of actual and theoretical detection numbers. Maybe your Hawkeye fails to detect a whole bunch of enemy aircraft. Be certain, it's doing the best it can, and actually, it's doing a very good job for the time period in question. You can be fairly certain that none of the Vietnamese planes was ever at VLow. That would be suicidal for them. To summarize, the Vietnamese fighters are regularly flying by Phantoms and Vigilantes simply because these planes, operated properly, have to rely on visual detection. The Vietnamese fighters never come close to an American ship because they never knew it was there in the first place, and if they did, they don't have the range to get there.

ALT-3 allows you to launch your nukes without authorization, Captain Ramsey. O doesn't appear to do anything in most scenarios. It only applies if the victory conditions require you to keep units "on station" somewhere. Try it in one of those scenarios (eg. WestPac 11 Oubliette). I, ALT-I do exactly the same thing. Don't ask me why, I just work here. There are several of these multiple-choice commands.

Most of the radars and their platforms are fairly intuitive ... Fighters generally have air search radars, with many modern types also having surface search modes Reconnaissance and strike aircraft generally have surface search radars Airborne early warning aircraft generally have both ... but if you need a lot of detail, then look to the Platform Editor or maybe Google. It's the ambiguity that's the problem: fairly ... generally ... many Detection is arguably the most important aspect of the game. When you're reviewing your assets at the beginning of a scenario and formualting a plan, or in general at any time, you need to know what they can do. Radar range is,of course, crucial. But the third dimension is also crucial. Now most of the people reading this are experts in the military systems in question and/or the game. You know this stuff inside out. But there are other people as well, noobs you might call them, and people like me who are somewhere in the middle. And I think you are trying to reach these people as well. Yes, in principle, we could go research all the units to figure out what they can do. But it is not reasonable to expect us to do so. We are talking about a crucial piece of information here, not a minor detail. This information needs to be available in-game, with just a few mouse clicks. It's a question of playability. And here's the rub: it used to be available. Every radar used to have AS, SS, or something more complicated written beside its name in the platform display. At some point, someone decided to remove it. I think that this was a mistake.

As we're talking about the Thanh Hoa scenario in Vietnam, the US side used 'red crown' called radar equipped cruisers to pick up enemy air activity. For a more complete coverage of the subject, see PIRAZ article on wikipedia. Whlen I added those ships to my Vietnam scenarios, the balance of air to air combat ultimately shifted to the US favour. I'd say that's a special case. A SAM cruiser with plenty of fighter support and no realistic airborne enemies isn't what I think of as a picket ship. A picket ship is small, poorly armed, and alone. If it turns its radar on in the presence of Oscars, Backfires, Bears, Badgers, or the like, it is toast.

You can open the Platform Display at any time and look at aircraft features, including radar type and range. You don't need to launch aircraft to do so. The key piece of information I need is whether radars are air search or surface search. I just went through all the battlesets and it turns out that all of them give me this information via Platform Display, except the 4 EC'03 Battlesets and Westpac. There, that information has been removed, and because i cannot possibly remember it for all the units or even a small fraction of them, my only recourse is to load a scenario, launch all the planes, look at their range circles, write it all down, and reload the scenario. (Actually, I had raised this issue previously, maybe a year ago.)

Based on the discussions we have been having here over the past several days, and speaking specifically about the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario, I can confidently make the following statements: 1) I humbly state that I am an expert on that scenario. 2) The Americans should be able to win that scenario and lose nothing at all, except perhaps a maximum of 2 ground attack planes. 3) I describe the scenario in gory detail in my AAR. (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2104380) 4) Harpoon functions exactly as intended. 5) There are certain difficulties in that scenario, none of which is insurmountable. 6) Joe, all of the effects that you have described that suggest to you that there is something wrong with Harpoon or the way Harpoon works on your computer merely show that Harpoon is working correctly, and (don't take this the wrong way) that you are either misinterpreting some game information or using your assets in risky and inappropriate ways. If you don't believe me, study my AAR, and using it as a walkthrough, try to duplicate what I did. If you cannot duplicate my results, then either take some screenshots or save some games and send them over for us to analyze. But I am confident that you will get the same results as me.

All discussed in my AAR. There is a reason why I keep saying this. That AAR can be used as a basic manual on how to conduct an air assault against a static defence. I said: The air search radar covers all altitudes low and above (iirc). If the AEW unit also has a surface search radar, that covers VL and surface targets. One AEW does it all, assuming it has those radars. The only additional hiding the AI planes do is to travel at low altitudes to benefit from horizon effects. The horizon effect affects all planes. The lower you are, the less you can see & A-B line of sight = B-A LoS. The computer does it all the time. You can do it too. Select an enemy group. Order an intercept. If your base formation planes have the range and weapons to do the job, they will volunteer. Picket ships out in front with radar energized are not long for this world. Ditto for picket fighters. Are you doing this with your fighters? If the picket fighters are trying to hide, they won't see much. Which one are you doing? I think that's just wrong. The Vietnamese radars extend well out into the Gulf of Tonkin. And a Vigilante is quite large. The Hawkeyes, with radar energized most certainly are seen. There is no inconsistency. The Hawkeyes are the least stealthy units in the scenario. The MiG-17s are the most stealthy. The only way for the American planes to get 2x outside the Vietnamese radar range is to fly SE from the carrier! Just look at this screen shot: http://i703.photobucket.com/albums/ww33/Vi...ridge/brdgA.png Mig-17Fs have no radar whatsoever.

Let's look at the MiG-17. MiG-17F Fresco C: RCS 135 Versus E-2B Hawkeye: max possible detection range: 82.7 nm The AEW plane in question in the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario is the E-2B. It can't pick up MiG-17s outside of 238 nm x 1/3 = 82.7 (VSmall). What I actually saw was this: "The first solid contacts on enemy aircraft start occurring at about 40 nm from the Hawkeye." (quote from my AAR) Actually, those statements are not inconsistent. The plane comes in, the AEW starts trying to detect it, gets some sort of blip, and eventually it gets a full contact. ESPECIALLY if the enemy plane decides to turn on its radar! Then the AEW plane gets an immediate full contact. BUT The MiG-17F has no missiles! So it never turns its radar on! So if you get unlucky, you don't see it UNTIL it's right on top of your fighter BECAUSE your fighters need to be quite far in front of the Hawkeye. To make the point, I say that the MiG-17 has a cloaking device. This does not make the MiG invincible! Did I mention that it has no missiles? Just don't try dogfighting it with a Phantom! Anyway, I discuss all this in my AAR (I keep saying that).

(limbers up his fingers) How am I supposed to cope with the information flow? I go away for a couple of hours, and now all this?

Very funny. Try the east coast of the U.S. As the Greenland ice melts, the massive amounts of extra cold water cause the Gulf Stream flow rate to diminish. Hence warmer E coast of N America. All details omitted. Or look up "drunken trees". Half of Canada is turning into mud as the permafrost melts. Oh, and by the way, this releases massive amounts of methane, a very effective GHG. Positive feedback.

I just had a look at Middleweights. The Japanese get a whole bunch of pretty good planes - AEW, ASW, fighters, attack, and more. No recon planes, whatever they are. They also get a few ships. The mission is to defend a piece of real estate. The enemy is one or both Koreas. There are rumours of Rafales around - that terror weapon! WE don't have them, so presumably THEY do. This means that our AEWs could easily just fall out of the sky for no apparent reason. There is no particular reason to attack enemy bases. They get a whole bunch of them, so it's not a matter of killing one base and crippling the enemy. We do get ARMs, but only Mavericks for ground attack (and bombs, of course). Anti-ship weapons are much better; we get lots and lots of Harpoons. My initial assessment tells me that any Japanese commander who went after the Korean airfields and thereby took casualties would be not only relieved of command, but would be court-martialled. That's not the mission, and we haven'tbeen given the assets to do that job. One complaint I have with this scenario (or is it the whole database ?) is that there is no real way to find out what kind of radars the planes have without actually launching them.

One more comment, and please refer again to Brad's questions above. When you are first informed of a detection, you are specifically told by what mechanism the detection occurred.

Sounds about right, but I would like to add: 1) Actually locating those units in the unit window could be non-trivial. 2) If those base-formation planes decide to intercept you, they get their own group window icon, which you may or may not see, because they probably go low and silent and do their damnedest to bushwhack you.

Joe, if you took any casualties in that scenario, you should definitely read my AAR mentioned above. I work it out in all the gory details, from overall strategic plan down to individual weapons fired. I should think that the results would be highly repeatable. Warhorse gave an excellent AAR on The Backyard 2 here: http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?showtopic=12712 He inflicted better than 10-1 casualties and was commended for his tactical brilliance, etc. I've never played the scary big Westpac scenarios. I will have a preliminary look at Middleweights today. I may refuse to play it. But I think it's only the USNI scenarios that are insanely hard. Unnecessary, and impractical. The air search radar covers all altitudes low and above (iirc). If the AEW unit also has a surface search radar, that covers VL and surface targets. One AEW does it all, assuming it has those radars. Of course, if it gets unlucky, it gets no hits. So stacking a bunch of them in the same place dramatically increases the detection rate. But how many do you have, anyway? One? Two? Zero? They have to be spread out in space and time. Generally, the computer's interceptor planes come form a base i.e. a point in space. However, they often tend to come from the base's patrollers, which can spread them out over quite a large area. Of course, they always come straight in without course deviations except those determined by the pursuit routines. Stealthiness in Harpoon is modeled through the RCS (study Brad's numbers above). The only additional hiding the AI planes do is to travel at low altitudes to benefit from horizon effects. I discuss this in detail in my AAR. I think you are exposing your Vigilantes too soon. Yes, you are dealing with cloaked enemy fighters. Your Hawkeyes cannot possibly get close enough to help sufficiently. A fighter without missiles has no need to turn its radar on. And you can bet your bottom dollar that your Vigilantes were seen by Vietnamese ground-based radar, as were your Hawkeyes, especially when their radars were on. Look at the size of the radar circles in the screen shots; you will see what I'm talking about. RA-5Cs aren't going to be detecting enemy planes unless they're lucky. Speaking about the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario, I can tell you definitely: 1) All American planes (or close to it) in the combat zone are seen by the Vietnamese ground radar. 2) The AI will attack all detected American planes. 3) It is hard to extremely hard to detect the Vietnamese planes. And I quote: "The first solid contacts on enemy aircraft start occurring at about 40 nm from the Hawkeye." 4) The MiG-17s mount the Romulan cloaking device. So I have to say that the behaviour you're reporting is about right.

(after wiping the drool off the keyboard) So it looks like all units (except the stealthiest ones) are detected by the AWACS (except the E-2B) at decent ranges. And you should not be trying to detect ground units this way. E-2B doesn't do very well at all! Thanks, Brad, for doing all this work! (In addition to your other work.) If I understand this correctly, you calculated the theoretical maximum range of detection, and then let a unit move towards the AWACS in the game until the alarms went off. Of course, a fast attacker can close more than a slow one from the first possible detection range.

Totally off topic: The all-seeing eye of Sauron failed to see the most important thing - the location of the Ringbearer!

I wonder if someone can give a definite answer to this question. Probably it has already been answered, and it may well have been asked by me before, because it's the sort of thing I would ask, but I don't remember. When a weapon is launched, does it head for where the target IS, or where the target IS GOING TO BE? Ditto for when the weapon is moving. May depend on the type of weapon.

Joe, I make you this offer: Name a scenario in which the ground defences are wasting you. I or someone else will analyze it. That way, we will finally be talking about exactly the same thing. Of course, I can only make the offer for myself, but someone else may want to get in on it. Second, as you are apparently only running the demo, and apparently only have access to the USNI and Westpac scenarios (if I recall correctly), I'm guessing that you're primarily talking about USNI scenarios, which are HEAVILY unbalanced and NOT the same from the other side. IIRC, AWACS tend to be in very short supply. As Blue, I don't think you get ANY. And note that the Hawkeye is NOT a Sentry - its radars are a lot worse. I don't remeember what RED gets that passes for AWACS, but their equipment is generally not up to American standards in this area. So it may well be that enemy aircraft can reasonably sneak up on you. That also we can maybe test. As far as picket aircraft or ships go, even with radars on intermittently, especially picket fighters, I don't think you can ever count on these to detect incoming aircraft. You know, once in a blue moon you might get a hit. How good is visual detection? Almost useless in Harpoon, I would say. This is not a tactical fighter simulation. Space is big. Planes are small. The enemy aircraft almost certainly come in as low as possible because of radar horizon issues. And you can't even be sure that they came in from where you think they did.

sucks to be you, dinnit? One thing you could do is rerun the scenario from the other side. You should get a partial answer to your question. You will also find that YOU do not get that many planes. YOU might get 100! Again, sucks to be you, dinnit? I discuss this issue in my USNI 1 AAR. (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1997503) The other thing you could do is to "show all" with CTRL-ALT-s.