I just started playing Harpoon again after many, many years. This scenario seems to be much harder than I remember. When I used to play it, I could reach 10 subs easily. Now I struggle to get 3. It seems like every time a sub is detected by SOSUS, by the time one of my picket planes get there it has disappeared. And my sub pickets never pick up anything even if I put them basically side by side in the gaps. What am I missing here? What is going on?

Simply put, submarines are more difficult to detect than they were previously.

Is there anyone who has beaten this scenario for NATO? If so, any tips?

Is there anyone who has beaten this scenario for NATO? If so, any tips?

 

 

Yep. You have plenty of fixed wing air in this scenario. It is the bane of Soviet submarines in the Gap, and should be exploited. Use both formation patrols and long range patrols (with manually created search patterns). Soak the Gap in air patrols, and wait for nibbles on your line.

I use British Nimrods and P-3's as a hunter killer group. I send the Nimrods out on a patrol and create a path for them to follow crisscrossing an area searching with their MAD detector. I place a P-3 in the middle of the area and after the Nimrod detects the contact I use the P-3 to kill the contact while the Nimrod keeps searching. I do the same thing with the S-3's and the P-3's. The S-3's and Nimrods are faster than the P-3's and can cover more ground. I can't remember if the Nimrod's are available to you in your scenario.

 

Diesel subs work too in the gaps. Place them in an area and set their speed to 0kts. They make a good listening post on batteries. Don't give away their position unless detected. The Scenario Editor is always fun to play with.

Simply put, submarines are more difficult to detect than they were previously.

I had more probs to DESTROY subs in the new version (HCE demo) then to detect them to be honest. I remember hunting down Alpha or Akula classes is a nightmare and you need plenty of fish. While in Harp Gold, sometimes even 2 or 3 torps were enough. Now you need 10 or more I would also like to know of long can a sub go on max speed in reality ? Say a Alpha class? Can they just speed the whole time at 40kn ? Yes, in game they can.... you need a torp very near or head on to catch a Alpha class on full speed, and it still will miss more than often. I wonder how Nato planned to cope with these subs in reality?

Yes, the Alfa theorically can do máximum speed all the way, up the limit of mechanical breakout (probably only time limited by metal fatigue of the steam generator pipes). But running at that speed probably she should sonar blind also all the way.

To deal with it was partly designed the at least 55 knots (in his early marks) Mk48 heavyweight torpedo, but of course not capable of be air launched ....

Another clear countermeasure were the nuclear depth bombs

 

Ed: another option was the wire guided Mk45 nuclear single-wire guided ASW torpedo, in service 1963-1976, with an estimated PK=2 (generating two kills, the probably targeted Soviet submarine, and the US firing submarine!!!)

I just started playing Harpoon again after many, many years. This scenario seems to be much harder than I remember. When I used to play it, I could reach 10 subs easily. Now I struggle to get 3. It seems like every time a sub is detected by SOSUS, by the time one of my picket planes get there it has disappeared. And my sub pickets never pick up anything even if I put them basically side by side in the gaps. What am I missing here? What is going on?

 

If you feel like subs are too hard to detect it is possible you have been hit by the stopping-submarines problem.

Here is a description of the symptoms and also a cure.

 

Due to some yet unidentified memory initialization issue submarines tend to stop and play dead after 20-30 minutes of game time.

This makes them very hard to detect (no flow noise) and more or less also kills the scenario, unfortunately the player rarely recognizes this as subs are by definition hidden.

 

Symptoms

All the player experiences is that submarines are

• very rare find
• damn hard to detect, usually your ships are tripping over one before they detect it
• worse, you only detect the incoming torpedoes.

Now these are also the symptoms of a good submarine adversary, so one can never be really sure, but if you feel like subs are much harder than they were *before*, there is a good chance you have been hit by a smooth criminal (ta-ta-tata).

 

Cure

The cure is more of a preventative, quit and start afresh HCE *before* starting a scenario (!! need to disable instant action for this). If you start playing it this way subs are working ok. You need to quit only before starting a new scenario, once you did that you can save, load savegames any way you like, subs will be ok in that scenario.

 

Medical checkup

You can actually check if the subs have stopped with the Show-All function (bless all who made this possible ) unfortunately this blows the scenario since all enemy subs (and assets) location is revealed to you. Still, if you want to be certain and have a save file from a scenario you finished you can check.

 

You can find detailed discussion of this problem under the Issue Tracker:

Stopping Submarines

Dead Fish

 

Simply put, submarines are more difficult to detect than they were previously.

I had more probs to DESTROY subs in the new version (HCE demo) then to detect them to be honest.

 

 

 

This is an older scenario that uses the old stock database. The torpedoes, for example, have very low DP values. This is the way it has always been in this battleset, and HCE hasn't changed it. If anything, submarines are easier to kill now than they were before (e.g. the forced surfacing due to damage), assuming of course that you can detect them and hit them.

Ran this scenario again for giggles. Achieved minimum victory (10 Red subs sunk) with 3:11:00 to go.

 

The following hour was very productive. Found and killed four more.

Ran this scenario again for giggles. Achieved minimum victory (10 Red subs sunk) with 3:11:00 to go.

 

The following hour was very productive. Found and killed four more.

I'm getting ready to run this old scenario with the help of the Toolbox's auto search patterns, and the 'cover' command. Should save me some micromanagement...

I'm getting ready to run this old scenario with the help of the Toolbox's auto search patterns, and the 'cover' command. Should save me some micromanagement...

Excellent. Let us know how it works out.