VictorInThePacific

Yes, safely locating certain of the attached enemy units is the only issue that I have trouble with (and possibly that detectability problem is related to the "selective" detection issues that I run into with air and missile groups, who knows - point being, that perhaps it's an anomaly that affects only my installation of the game and therefore is irrelevent beyond that scope). In any case, I'd love to hear the techniques of keeping my attacking air groups alive! (I'm sure those pilots would be particularly interested, because I'm starting to see signs of mutiny when I order attacks on defended bases! ) Joe, one thing you could try doing is running through the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario along the lines of my AAR: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2104380 If you do the same things I did, then you should get close to the same results. As I stated repeatedly in that report, my main priority was keeping my guys alive.

Regarding: b] If you want groups to notify you the instant they reach the end of their orders, I can't help you with that. (However, it has been my experience that such groups will, before very long, automatically call in for new orders. Perhaps it takes them longer than in Harpoon Classic; I haven't analyzed this. But they do call in, 100% of the time. Incidentally, there is a staff option "ignore no movement orders". I presume that you have NOT selected this?) But if you want groups to loiter when they run out of orders, that is easy to set up. While you are assigning a course, just before you close that menu, and presumably when the last waypoint is selected, bring up the "speed" menu and select "loiter". This is the default when you launch to patrol, but not otherwise. Works like a charm. Is it possible that the current default is that RTB after firing only happens when the platform in question has exhausted 100% of its firepower? Otherwise it loiters or continues the attack run. The game gives you several prompts to RTB with units that are "low" on fuel. However, after you have refused all of them, or if you have accepted any of them, I believe that unit will issue no more prompts. Or maybe it's simply a question of being at 5% bingo? Pilot to senior officer: Sir, I'm low on fuel. Returning to base at cruise. Senior officer to pilot: Use full afterburner! We need you back here ASAP! Pilot: Sir, I don't have enough fuel for that ... Senior officer: Use full afterburner, dammit! Pilot: Sir! Yes, Sir! c) See http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2165704 for an example of some of the detailed calculations that you may need to make for refueling. Bear in mind that real pilots have to do this sort of thing, and much more, all the time. To have manual control over when refueling happens, recognize that the automatic refueling is triggered when a tanker is in a group with a unit that is "low" on fuel. You can manually control the grouping aspect. In Harpoon, it is possible to get your fuel on the fly, as it were, but that is hardly realistic. In real life, both planes need to be real close to each other over an extended period of time, and that's a pretty tricky maneuver. The Harpoon process already glosses over much of this. f) Assuming you have that staff option set, you will always be informed of new "threats". If your plane cannot defend itself, assume that it will be ambushed, and provide a contingency.

Another discussion of Harpoon tanking limitations is here: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2165704 Basically, if the tanker has a "short" range, then it will "dump" its "tanking" fuel well before you might expect.

In addition to what Don posted ... Within the game itself, there is a Help menu. Before you load the game, there is a manual option (not sure if this comes with the demo).

After almost 2 months with no reply, let me take a stab at this. If I am wrong, someone can correct me. ROF 6 should mean 6 things come out every 30 s. But I think I recall being told that it doesn't apply to guns. So your gun fires once every 30 s, but there are 3 tubes, so 3 things come out. And the rest of your explanation is correct, except 3 x 18 = 54. I know nothing about point defense.

Um... did I miss something here? What analysis? What's the Show All for? What are hotkey sheet downloads? Yeah, that's what's bothering me... My SOP for all non-recon/AEW air patrols is to send them out at Low altitude, and remain at Low when loitering (which requires manual alteration of each course after launch), leave their sensors off (although I've also tried using intermittant in an attempt to get an early warning on the attackers), and whenever possible I keep them within the umbrella of an AWACs, or at least a P-3 or similar, as available... or within the coverage of a surface group or base... or within the coverage of some other (radiating) air patrol in certain cases. And I make every attempt to stay well clear of any AI platform whenever practical. So, I thought that I was taking every available precaution... yet the AI often knows where to find my groups, and zeros in for the kill - without either the attacking aircraft nor their AA missiles ever showing up! In earlier versions of the game, these precautions would have been entirely adequate against older-generation a/c types (although perhaps not against the more stealthy and lower-flying Eurofighters or Rafales), but in recent times, I frequently have cases of "spontaneously destructing" a/c groups... even sometimes the AWACs themselves! On the other side of the coin, I am totally unable to sneak up on the AI's groups - even when they have no radar on and no AEW around - even with F-22s, flying at lowest possible altitudes, etc. Of course, without radar, I'm unable to get a fix on the target groups, and if my a/c are using radar-guided missiles, I have to turn on my radars in order to fire - which allows the AI groups to shoot back... bottom line is that it's almost impossible to be undetected by the AI. I have noticed that certain scenarios (or perhaps just game sessions - not sure) seem to have a lot more liklihood of this detectability situation than others, but in general it is more frequent overall than in earlier versions. Is this to be expected? If so, what's the reason? Thanks! Joe, it seems to me that you are doing just about everything right, and yet your units are blowing up all the time! This is not sarcasm, because your description above of how you deploy your planes is fundamentally the way they should be deployed. But perhaps there are some things you are not considering. First, "show all" (CTRL-ALT-s, no mouse equivalent) is a "tester's" function. It does exactly what it says. The next time one of your units has been wiped out by an invisible enemy, while that message is still active, and pausing the game, hit PRINT SCREEN and paste the clipboard into MS Paint. Edit as appropriate. Then, back in Harpoon, clear the message, "show all", pause, and take another screen capture. etc. Use that information in your further analysis. Keyboard commands have been compiled and stored, for example, in the "beta tester - help" forum. I think you will find that your units were being detected by enemy AEW planes or something (btw, a P3 does not qualify; no AS radar, and radar range too short anyway). The question is, why were you not aware of the enemy detector? I suggest that it may have something to do with electronics. Mostly, I am just guessing, but I know that the EW module is substantially new for HCE. If the plane that detected you had good ECM protection, it may well be that its radar saw you, but you didn't see it! And then, you can kiss your "silent" units good-bye. As far as "old" enemy fighters potting your "new" ones, consider that their radar is so poor that they never turned it on, that perhaps they came in low and silent, that visual detection doesn't work very well, and that their short-range missiles reach you so quickly that you never get a detection chance, which only happens once every 30 s.

Some of Joe's points are valid, but some are not. a) Running aground - outside my experience. b] My experience has been that aircraft have a tendency to RTB well before they are "low" on fuel. You should get several requests from such groups. I actually had one situation where the plane left the action without permission, although on reflection, it must have been that I gave the RTB order without being aware of it. Planes do NOT drive off into the sunset and crash for lack of fuel - unless you ignore all the RTB requests and personally send them on a suicide mission. This includes cranking up the throttle after they have been sent back to base. The exception is with mixed groups. If you group units with different fuel consumption rates, you are asking for trouble. c) The automatic refueling routines are quite robust. Fundamentally, you need a group containing an aircraft "low" on fuel and capable of IFR, and a tanker with fuel, and the game takes care of the rest. The problems that most people report are that the tankers deliver fuel before it is wanted. There are certain other tanking problems, and I have reported on some, but for most purposes, the procedure works automatically, and is much simplified from real life. d) To attack a ground unit, first locate the unit (solid lock), then creep your plane into range (because, most likely, you outrange it by a short distance only), then blast it. The ground unit may be part of a ground group, so you have to know its "name" before you can shoot it. Study my AAR report "Thanh Hoa Bridge" in the Matrix forum. Oh, you're attacking with iron bombs? Ave Caesar, moriture te salutant. e) There are several aspects to evasive action by aircraft. Some of this has already been factored into the hit probabilities, and you can't control it. Large-scale maneuvering is entirely up to the player. The specific sub-points Joe raises are correct; the game does that intentionally. They are all generally suicidal options, and could have been better chosen. But presumably the game designers decided to not put any resources into these aspects of the game, because the player would be controlling those things anyway. Harpoon is a TINY game. And it does an awful lot of important stuff for a minimal computing cost. The downside is that you are strictly limited in the size of playable scenarios (some people will disagree). f) Recon groups do not flee from threats. Correct. That's your responsibility. g) Land units. Ah yes, land units. My only experience with land-land battles is the WestPac introductory scenario. The instructions tell you to take your M1s and close on some ground units and destroy them. Seems to me, the M1s should win. Problem is, every time I tried it, I lost. Solution: Attack enemy land units with airplanes. Harpoon is not a game of ground combat, and should not be thought of as such.

These are all valid points, and indeed could be considered valid criticisms of Harpoon. But perhaps there is some misunderstanding of what the game is intended to do, and what the player is supposed to do. In any case, the player should figure out what the game will do, and take that into account. a) When you assign orders to a group, certain parameters such as altitude and speed must be considered. Direction alone is not enough. And even these 3 basic parameters are hardly sufficient. Probably, it "used to be" the case that the GE would choose parameters that would be reasonably good in most cases. But with the present version of the game, it looks like the game will simply not set many of the parameters, and it may choose ones that you don't like. However, if we are aware of this, then the solution is pretty simple (at least for some of the parameters). The idea is that, when you assign a group course, you should also assign more detailed orders for each waypoint AT THAT TIME. The most important one will be the final waypoint. And you really should check your groups after launch to ensure that the parameters are what you want. After some experience, you will know which groups you can safely ignore. What should your group do when it has no more orders? The present default seems to be that the group will simply continue its last order. After a while, it will request further orders. It may be that that "a while" is longer than it used to be. But it still happens (I think). Of course, you could assign "loiter" orders to the final waypoint ... It needs to be recognized that units with "attack" orders will almost certainly do something suicidal or risky after delivering at least part of their ordnance. So the player really does need to manually control each attack group before and after the terminal phase. But is it really the case that they should automatically RTB? Most likely, for most purposes, and most players, this would be the "best" option. But there are a number of situations where this would not be the case. Since the player needs to manually control a great deal of the game, this limits the size of playable scenarios to what you can effectively control. But I haven't really noticed that there is a problem, because I was always controlling all of the critical functions myself anyway.

Somewhere during this thread, Joe mentioned difficulty in pausing the game. For example, if a message pops up, you can't access the game menus. Between messages, you may not have time to move the mouse. First of all, bear in mind that, whenever ANY window, other than the 5 main ones, is open, the game IS paused. But aside from the fact that there apparently now is a real "pause" function, that allows you to actually do stuff when the clock is stopped, may I recommend learning how to use the keyboard commands? One such possibility is to use CTRL-t, which immediately brings up the time compression menu. To be VERY specific, suppose the game is motoring along at any high time compression when YOU GET AMBUSHED !!! The first indication will be a message like "Group xxx has been AMBUSHED !!!" The thing to do is to do nothing at first. Meditate for a few minutes if necessary. Flex your fingers to prepare them for the upcoming task. Read the message carefully. Understand the message. Press down the left CTRL button with your right thumb. Place a convenient finger from your right hand over the t key. Place a convenient finger from your left hand over the ESC key. Now, in rapid sequence, press ESC, then t. Unfortunately (from my perspective), Harpoon is not a turn-based wargame, because I prefer to think my moves through in detail. It often functions like a RTS game. APM can be a real issue. Some scenario designers deliberately overload you. So I don't play monster scenarios. But I will never be able to play even a fraction of the available scenarios anyway.

Warhorse has provided a good general description in this thread of how to attack ground defences. Brad has given a brief description in this thread. If you want to read a highly detailed description of the procedure, read my "Thanh Hoa Bridge" AAR in the Matrix forum. Bear in mind that, in that scenario, even though the US has limited stand-off weapons, they can outrange the enemy units in almost all cases. Regarding range and altitude: First, you should locate the air defences. There are techniques that keep your aircraft alive. Then you should analyze the defences. Then you should pick off whatever you can safely. Proper iteration of this sequence may allow you to wipe out the whole structure safely. And although nobody ever thinks of (jet) airplanes as creeping, I am going to say it like this: creep your airplanes in as slowly as necessary. Some air defences have altitude limitations. Exploit them!

Regarding "invincible" air groups: I have seen something like this in a number of cases. That is to say, I have seen it frequently, but with limited numbers of planes involved. But first off, If I recall correctly, it was with the original version of Harpoon, so perhaps it is not particularly relevant. My experience with modern Harpoon is not that extensive, but I don't believe I've seen such behaviour in that case. It seems to be related to what Rainman posted. Specifically, there have been situations where enemy aircraft (typically a pair) move into MY airspace, so I naturally send interceptors to cleanse MY airspace. I fire normal numbers of AA missiles (the medium-range radar-guided ones, Sparrow and/or Sky Flash). "Normal" means 4 per fighter or so. After firing several volleys, all missing, I start wondering what's going on. Having had a lifetime history of bad luck in wargames, I'm not too upset at this point. Maybe a bit annoyed. If I recall correctly, I have noticed that the enemy planes are moving at VL. So I surmised that my missiles simply can't track at that altitude when they reach the target, and perhaps I shouldn't have fired. So then I wait for these planes to fly into tall waves. It happens sometimes, but not often enough to satisfy me. So then I close to Sidewinder range. Needs must. And the Sidewinders do the job. As Rainman points out, this may be part of the explanation, but it is unlikely that it would provide enough explanation to cover all of Joe's experience.

That would have to be considered a game bug. If you knew about this behaviour, you could avoid it, but if you didn't know that the normal warnings were incorrectly suppressed, you could wind up losing units, losing the game, getting angry, etc.

Senior officer to tanker pilot: Refuel that Orion! Tanker pilot to senior officer: Sir! The Orion does not have a refueling probe! Senior officer: Refuel that Orion! Tanker pilot: Sir! Yes, sir! And the environmentalists were not pleased.

This is the only "easily" available method: Try to launch a plane beyond its normal range. If it is not capable of IFR refueling, you will be informed (message: too far; can't IFR). If it is capable of IFR refueling, you will also be informed (message: too far). The specific response may depend on the version of Harpoon?

What you actually want is "show on-station areas", keyboard "o", no mouse equivalent.

This is my first Harpoon activity since mid-September. Perhaps I was burned out. (Naval/air warfare isn't my main area of interest.) And I certainly was putting my time elsewhere. So when I got back, I went back and checked the forums on Matrix (hardly any activity; at least, nothing that I felt the need to respond to) and here (plenty of activity, and I think that I can contribute something to this thread). Joe had raised certain issues almost a year ago. At the time, I think I could have explained probably most of them, but I was probably not participating at Harpgamer then, and when I did start here, this thread had been dormant for some time, so I didn't pick up on it. I did spend a fair bit of time with USNI 1, as well as with several WestPac scenarios. These are the only 2 Battlesets that come with the demo. My assessment is that at least some of the WestPac scenarios are reasonably easy and/or straightforward, and that all the USNI scenarios look insanely hard. The rest of this post is mostly about USNI 1. I would rate USNI 1 as impossible, playing as NATO, and virtually impossible as the USSR. Brad mentioned my AAR in the Matrix forum. I have put a lot of detail into that, and a fair bit of that detail is relevant to this thread. For starters, regardless of which side you play, you can expect to be heavily outnumbered. I do not include surface forces in this statement, because you need to dominate the air before you can do anything else. You cannot avoid this rule when the enemy dominates the air. If you play as NATO, you get from 16-24 airplanes, while the USSR gets 90. Even though the Soviet planes are mostly low quality, you don't have a chance. I have explained this in some detail in the AAR. I suppose it's barely possible that you could set things up in such a way that the AI will suicide its planes, but I haven't tried. If you play as the USSR, you get from 20-44 planes, and NATO gets from 32-56. However, many of the Soviet planes are not very useful, so you can consider their maximum useful force to be 24. When I played the scenario (as the USSR), I was very lucky to get the maximum useful force, while the AI got less than average. I eventually massacred the AI, but much of the battle was sort of like an unarmored guy with a rapier trying to beat a guy in full plate and a broadsword. Of course, after I established air superiority, the enemy ships just died. Playing against a human opponent, the force imbalance would be too severe. The next point that needs to be considered is that neither side has any AEW aircraft. This means that, while there are many things that you can do that will expose your forces (which is usually suicidal), you will often have great difficulty in locating the enemy forces. For example, if you pretend that any of your aircraft are AEW aircraft and use them like that, most likely they will locate nothing (inadequate radars), but the enemy will see them. And soon thereafter, invisible enemy units will wipe out your pretend-AEW aircraft. Another common example is that, at some point, you will need to move your aircraft to where enemy base radars will detect them. Again, all you will see is the base, but invisible enemy aircraft will be potting your planes. This is a serious problem (for either side) in this scenario, and needs to be dealt with. The third point that needs to be considered is EW. I don't understand this well enough to give a complete explanation, but I do have some empirical results that should be useful. Neither side has any proper EW aircraft in this scenario. I believe that both sides have at least one capable ECM ship, so if your aircraft are close to the AI ships, the ships will turn their radars on, which means they see your planes, but you don't see them. This is true whether your planes have their radars on or not. Before your planes get close enough to penetrate the jamming, they have most likely been shot down. Of course, if your planes are far from the AI ships, the ships are invisible, but your planes may still be seen. Bear in mind that the EW stuff is very or completely different compared to earlier versions of Harpoon. All of the above is Harpoon acting correctly. If you expose your forces in certain ways, you should expect them to be be wiped out by invisible enemies. There is also an artifact of Harpoon that is likely relevant. Harpoon only does detection checks at 30 s intervals. If a missile is in flight for less than 30 s, you will never know about it. If an enemy plane spends only a short time in your detection range, and you fail one or more detection checks, that plane is "invisible" i.e. it caught you napping. Not strictly relevant to this thread, but I have posted a number of AARs in the Matrix forum. In WestPac 2, Pirate War, you should pwn the pirates. In WestPac 3, Philippines, you have several F-35B Lightning IIs, and that is a beautiful aircraft, and you should pwn the AI. WestPac 7, Thanh Hoa Bridge, among other things, shows how to defeat ground defences (under certain conditions).

Note that the layout is designed for 5x7 paper, which is approximately half of regular letter paper. If anyone wants the editable source documents, you will have to pester Tony for them. BS_Builder_Manual_rev2.pdf

I guess the main thing is, I want to be able to plan my actions. Therefore, I need to know what the units do. In principle, I could make up a test scenario for a situation where I want to know something and just determine what the game does. So if an Aegis cruiser in Harpoon can pump out 15 SAMs per VLS every 30 s, and each missile is going for a separate target, then I can accept that that's the way it is. But I really should be able to find out that the cruiser can do this by accessing the information that comes with the game. The only number that may be relevant to this is the "target" number in the unit display. For the unit in question, I am told that 6 targets can be tracked per VLS. The online Help file tells me that "The number following the "/" is the number of Targets that the director can track concurrently." The "target" number seems to have no relevance to what the units do. The "help" file seems to contain meaningless statements (this is only one example). I don't know what is correct. All I can do is point out the inconsistency. Now, I'm pretty committed, so a certain amount of inconsistency isn't going to annoy me. But what if it's somebody who is a new player that wants to know these things? Such a person may not stick around very long if he has to put in too much effort. ______________________ Related question: The CG being discussed is being attacked by 40 missiles. The SAM unmodified hit number is 70%. About 56 SAMs will need to be used. The SAMs can be launched 2 or 3 times. Why were 24 launched in the first wave and 30 in the second wave? Does the computer think 24 + 30 SAMs + point defense = I'm safe? Or perhaps, on the first round, only 24 of the missiles were detected?

In a previous discussion I was part of (Matrix Harpoon forum, Feb 18/09), I was given to understand that an Aegis cruiser was assigned a ROF of 20 and a control limit of 20 by Harpoon, that is, the ship is able to control 20 SAMs at a time, and can replenish them at the rate of 20 every 30 s. (In addition, I thought that the ship would normally fire 2 SAMs per target.) More recently (Harpgamer forum, July 28/09), I was informed that this Aegis cruiser can fire up to 30 SAMs per 60 s. There may be a typo here, or the rules may have changed in half a year, so I'm not going to worry about this discrepancy too much. What does concern me at this time is that the actual fire rate seems to be rather higher. I have provided a test scenario (see armtest.zip, attached). I have arranged to shoot some (40) Kh-31P Krypton ARMs at a Bunker Hill (CM) Aegis cruiser from 33 nm away. The ARMs travel at about 2000 kn = 2000/60 = 100 nm / 3 min, so the maximum flight time is just under 60 s. Depending on when exactly you shoot the ARMs (the cruiser can only detect them on the minute and half-minute), the ARMs will be closer when the first SAMs are launched. The SAM launchers should be able to fire twice. In one test firing, the ARMs are 23 nm (42 s) away when the first batch of SAMs is fired. Since the SAMs travel at the same speed, the time and distance are split 50-50: the first batch of SAMs hits when the ARMs are 11 nm (20 s) from the ship. The message log tells me that there were 24 SAMs in that batch. When the ARMs are 6 nm (11 s) from the ship, the SAMs fire again. Again, the time and distance are split 50-50: the second batch of SAMs hits when the ARMs are 4 nm (6 s) from the ship. The message log tells me that there were 30 SAMs in that batch. Now I would expect the Phalanx CIWS to have a go, but actually the 5" guns are the only point defense to fire. And then the ship gets hit. So there do appear to be some discrepancies. 1) What is the ROF of this ship? It appears to be at least 30 SAMs per 30 s. 2) Why were less SAMs fired in the first batch? These results seem to be infinitely repeatable (except for the number of hits). P.S. "Surface SAM fire rate" is set to "normal". armtest.zip

Warning: More hardcore calculations It can be seen from the graph in the previous post that, for a plane traveling straight out from its base at a constant (cruise) speed, 1) The relationship between the distance to the base and the percent above bingo is almost linear; 2) The relationship between the fuel remaining and the percent above bingo is almost linear; 3) The sum of the fuel used and the fuel remaining is almost linear, but not constant. I won't be considering point 3 immediately. I do have a possible explanation for it, relating to the physics of flight, although it would be good if someone who actually knows why this is happening just says so. One of the curves is redundant, so I will discuss only point 1 here, and only in part. I will ignore the non-linearity for now. We know that, whenever you launch a plane, there is a quantity, which I will call Q, which is always equal to 1 at that time. It is stated as "100% bingo". We know that Q is equal to 0 (stated as "0% bingo") when the plane has reached a certain distance from its base, and that distance can be any value between zero and some maximum value. We know that Q depends both on the distance to the base d and on the fuel available F. There often is a clear relationship between F and d, but this is not required. When the plane is at bingo fuel (Q = 0) and tries to return to base, its remaining fuel is always more than the distance to the base. I don't know how this difference is calculated, but I am assuming that it is a fixed value for that plane. It may be something like the fuel required to loiter for half an hour. I am calling it the "bingo reserve" (BR). There are 2 simple ways of constructing functions that meet the above requirements. One is a product of 2 terms, one linear in F, the other linear in d. The other is shown below. Definitions d: distance to base F: fuel available Fo: maximum fuel BR: bingo reserve Q = (F - d - BR) / (Fo - BR) If Q is less than zero, it is set to zero. The reason I am doing all this is that I want to know what the meaning of the "percent bingo" term is. Of course, it would be good if someone who actually knows just says so.

Warning: This gets into some hardcore calculations In the course of dealing with a refueling issue, I did some measurements I would not normally have done. I obtained some results that may or may not make sense. I sent an F/A-18D tanker cruising out from its base. Every time its "bingo" status dropped by 10%, I checked its distance to base (F6 in the group window) and fuel range remaining (F in the unit window). I expected that the distance traveled plus distance remaining would add up to a constant (1050 nm, the initial basic range of the plane). What I found was that the two numbers added up to an increasing total, so that the plane was able to travel significantly further than 1050 nm total. There is a certain amount of round-off error to these results, for several reasons. First, because the mouse must be moved around to get the information needed, my reaction time has an effect. Second, the game may not do the calculations continuously. There may be other reasons. I used a land base to ensure that the base was in the center of the formation. the measurements: % above bingo distance to base fuel remaining total range 90 85 nm 983 nm 1068 nm 80 159 nm 927 nm 1086 nm 70 227 nm 875 nm 1102 nm 60 289 nm 829 nm 1118 nm 50 340 nm 790 nm 1130 nm 40 388 nm 754 nm 1142 nm 30 428 nm 724 nm 1152 nm 20 467 nm 694 nm 1161 nm 10 505 nm 666 nm 1171 nm 0 536 nm 642 nm 1178 nm Since it is pretty simple to subtract the distance to base from the listed plane range, and the game is not doing that, there must be something else going on. I have a guess, but it would be better for someone who knows what's going on to say so, rather than me making guesses. a graphical representation

Further research indicates that the behaviour is different in the demo simply because it is an earlier version of Harpoon. More details in the issue tracker. Now that I know that the behaviour was changed from a previous version, and I know what the previous behaviour was, and I know that someone else has observed the current behaviour, I am going to proceed under the assumption that the change was deliberate and done to fix a problem (i.e. not a mistake, although perhaps not the optimum solution). I do have an explanation for why the current behaviour could be appropriate, although I don't know if my explanation is correct. More details in an upcoming Matrix forum new thread.

Could someone please make a comment about the issue that I have reported here: http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=122 Something to the effect of a) This is intentional, or b] I have seen this before, but can't explain it. I would like to know if I am dealing with a bug or a complex process. It may be that people only look for recent posts, and the issue tracker is hidden. I have tried to reproduce this with the demo but it works differently there. In the demo, I have found a definite mistake in the way tankers are handled, but I see no reason to report that because the demo is an older version of the game.

Thanks, Brad and Tony, for clarifying the point on "extra" fuel transfer. But never fear, I will raise other issues. I have a really weird refueling issue that I will soon be posting in the "defects" section.

One more bit of data. Refueling a recon Tornado (fuel range 1700 nm). At the time of refueling, its fuel status goes from 462 nm to 2081 nm. The automatic refueling routine worked (didn't use ALT-r). The tanker was a VC-10 transport. Again, we see the common result that, when all of a tanker's fuel is given to one plane, it loads up to its limit, but that limit is larger than what the plane can physically carry. This has been observed across a variety of units, scenarios, game versions, and so forth. Should this at some point be reported as a game defect?