What is the HCDA?

What is the HCDA?

The HCDA is an acronym for the Harpoon Commander's Edition Database 'Americas', a new custom database designed to cover the North, South and Central America theaters, and to be used in conjunction with the upcoming BattleSet Builder.

Until the advent of the BattleSet Builder, HCE (and Harpoon Classic) players have been limited to the North Atlantic, GIUK Gap, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and (the most recently added) Western Pacific theaters. The BattleSet Builder utility, however, will permit HCE players to create new battlesets (i.e. new maps) for virtually any area of the globe.

The HCDA contains a wealth of new aircraft, ships, submarines and installations for the 'Americas' theater, as well as retaining and/or adapting many platforms from the official database of the HCE simulation, the HCDB. This allows the fullest range of scenarios to be created with the BattleSet Builder tool, from Soviet/Cuban interventions in Central America and the Caribbean basin, to the 1982 Falklands conflict between Great Britain and Argentina, to an action by the People's Republic of China to protect its 'investment' in the Panama Canal, to a Second Civil War between the States.

The HCDA is available for download from the Downloads section of this website. Extract the zip file into your main HCE directory. It will overwrite your current 'commondb.res' file. To maintain multiple databases, be sure to rename your existing 'commondb.res' file. A *.txt file is also included in the zip which details the latest update.

The design philosophy of the HCDA is to maintain, wherever feasible, backwards compatibility with scenarios created with the database. The platforms (ships, submarines, aircraft, installations, and weapon systems) contained in the HCDA cover (generally speaking) the 1980-2015 era, but this is not a hard and fast rule, and there are some exceptions.

Please note that copyright to HCDA database content is held by Brad Leyte (aka CV32). HCDA database content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and transmit the HCDA and all or parts of its content, but not derivative works based on it without the express written permission of the author Brad Leyte. You may also adapt the HCDA database to your own needs under the terms of fair use. By doing so, you agree to fully attribute Brad Leyte as the author of the HCDA database. The HCDA database may not be used for any commercial purpose whatsoever without the express written permission of Brad Leyte.

A common sense explanation of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License is found here.

The legal code of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License can be found here.

Like any database, the HCDA is always a "work in progress". Requests for new platforms are always welcome, and stand a good chance of inclusion if (1) they adhere to the design philosophy described above, and/or (2) they are required for upcoming new scenarios.

(This FAQ will be further developed as time goes on in order to keep everyone abreast of design or philosophy changes in the HCDA).