I would like to propose that Harpoon CE create 2 programming/design teams:

 

The Harpoon Classic Team - Dedicated to preserving the heritage of the Harpoon legacy and furthing its development as it was intened, as a modern naval combat simulation. Modern naval combat is defined as the post 1955 era where missiles emerged and changed naval tactics forever. The focus is on the missile as the primary naval weapon, not gunnery.

 

The Harpoon Dreadnought Team - Dedication to re-working Harpoon as a World Wars naval combat simulation. World Wars naval combat is defined as pre-1955 where gunnery/torpedoes were the primary naval weapon, with naval air power emerging in the 1930's.

 

Each team has it's own programming person(s) to support it's own design team. Each team goes in it's own direction with it's starting code. I believe that continuing to support both types of naval combat concurrently within the same program is preventing Harpoon from evolving down it's original path, while at the same time providing a World Wars simulation that has very little degree in reality. I believe both camps can have thier "masterpieces", but that can't be realized within the same project/program.

 

I'm a modern naval enthusiast, but also an avid lover of traditional gunnery/torpedo duels of the World Wars era and dive bombers, etc. I think greatness to fulfill both lies within the Harpoon engine, just not together!

 

Opinions on this matter?

I admite the limitations of the "modern oriented" game engine (guns, armor, communications and formations, basically), but I enjoy HCE more than other accuratte simulations because his "moddable" platforms and operative play. And the level of abstraction of the platforms makes accesible to everybody design or modify historical platforms or scenarios (and the construction of hypotetical campaings or platforms, with a lot of amusing research guaranteed )

You probably know my opinions already but since you asked... My opinion is that the existing codebase is poorly suited to anything but bug fixing and very limited improvements. Making large changes to the existing codebase (especially the user interface) is very inefficient. I would rather use time equivalent to that inefficiency to use what we know and have to start over (yes, borring wholesale where possible to save effort).

 

With a reworked base game I think both divisions can be accomodated. Which all goes back to http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?showforum=49 . That forum demonstrates the lack of participation. With one single team nothing is happening there (I'm happy to take part, design, program,..., but as I've stated there, I don't want to drive it or be the only participant, someone(s) need to step up and make it happen).

 

That's my opinion, use our single team to create a 'new/used' base game then as many teams can form as there are different specialties to attack.

Let me be clear as to why I'm suggesting this. First, I'm a Harpoon traditionalist. I want nothing that is not Harpoon minutures-oriented in my Harpoon game! Now, I'm a team player and have accepted that over the years the code has passed through many, many companies and programmers that don't share my purist views. The reason I'm suggesting dual (amd seperate) projects is I'm quity frankly tired of reading about "kamikaze" code being broken on the forum of "Harpoon", while I'm staring at a picture at the top of the forum's window of a warship lobbing a Harpoon missile down range! Kamakaze whatever in the same breath of Harpon just just seems wrong to me and sacreligious (in a Harpoon-game kind of way of course!), sorry. I don't want to be a trouble-maker, but I suggest this only so we who want a pure Harpoon experience can get back to seriuos Harpoon classic de-bugging and development without offending the Harpoon "liberals" out there. That's exactly what I think has paralized the Harpoon communinty for so many years. We all think we got to play in the same sandbox. I think we can all have what we want, but it's just aint going to happen together in the same code and with the same people. There's a reason why the Democrats and Republicans don't hold their conventions in the same hall on the same day...

The reason I'm suggesting dual (amd seperate) projects is I'm quity frankly tired of reading about "kamikaze" code being broken on the forum of "Harpoon", while I'm staring at a picture at the top of the forum's window of a warship lobbing a Harpoon missile down range! Kamakaze whatever in the same breath of Harpon just just seems wrong to me and sacreligious (in a Harpoon-game kind of way of course!), sorry.

 

To be clear, the reference to a 'kamikaze' issue has to do with changes to permit aircraft to effectively engage with their guns, and really nothing to do with trying to model the 'kamikazes' of WWII. They are not the same.

I admite the limitations of the "modern oriented" game engine (guns, armor, communications and formations, basically), but I enjoy HCE more than other accuratte simulations because his "moddable" platforms and operative play. And the level of abstraction of the platforms makes accesible to everybody design or modify historical platforms or scenarios (and the construction of hypotetical campaings or platforms, with a lot of amusing research guaranteed )

 

Yeah, that's exactly why I prefer HCCE and not Harpoon ANW. I'm more intersted in modeling the Harpoon miniture paper game. I just want HCCE to finally work like it was intended. I'm not an advocate of adding new features when the simple basics (like point defense) need work. Nice GUI additions and new modeling (communications, ECM, etc) can wait until the basic parts are all covered as well as they were in the miniture game. Simple, but effective!

The reason I'm suggesting dual (amd seperate) projects is I'm quity frankly tired of reading about "kamikaze" code being broken on the forum of "Harpoon", while I'm staring at a picture at the top of the forum's window of a warship lobbing a Harpoon missile down range! Kamakaze whatever in the same breath of Harpon just just seems wrong to me and sacreligious (in a Harpoon-game kind of way of course!), sorry.

 

To be clear, the reference to a 'kamikaze' issue has to do with changes to permit aircraft to effectively engage with their guns, and really nothing to do with trying to model the 'kamikazes' of WWII. They are not the same.

 

I Understand, but wasn't code for kamikaze and "human guided" missiles added several patches ago? I would also think the changes to standard gunnery (that has effectivley broken point defense gunnery as is it was originally intened to be) was driven to a healthy degree by support for naval gun duels (unecessary for modern naval combat)? This discussion would be moot if we had out 2 seperate courses with Harpoon development. I;m just not happy that basic things are still broken or being broken by developement that is so far from the traditional roots of Harpoon. I'm all for a World Wars Harpoon, just not at the expense of Classic Harpoon!

I Understand, but wasn't code for kamikaze and "human guided" missiles added several patches ago? I would also think the changes to standard gunnery (that has effectivley broken point defense gunnery as is it was originally intened to be) was driven to a healthy degree by support for naval gun duels (unecessary for modern naval combat)? This discussion would be moot if we had out 2 seperate courses with Harpoon development. I;m just not happy that basic things are still broken or being broken by developement that is so far from the traditional roots of Harpoon. I'm all for a World Wars Harpoon, just not at the expense of Classic Harpoon!

 

I think we comprehend your argument. Just to clarify on point defense I don't see how any changes to surface gunnery have impacted point defense. The only crossover is if the mount is already too busy firing at surface targets, it won't re-task to intercept ASMs.

 

Changes made to PointDefense under my watch:

• Corrected crossing modifier to be true if a missile does a terminal dive (aka SNAP_UP_DOWN). The original crossing qualifier used the TermTraj field which is unused and hence useless.
  
• Added limiting of point defense guns to altitude limits listed in DB, previous the guns could engage target at any altitude.
  

 

As far as I can tell before me the next prior change was made in 1996 for Harpoon Classic 97.

I Understand, but wasn't code for kamikaze and "human guided" missiles added several patches ago? I would also think the changes to standard gunnery (that has effectivley broken point defense gunnery as is it was originally intened to be) was driven to a healthy degree by support for naval gun duels (unecessary for modern naval combat)? This discussion would be moot if we had out 2 seperate courses with Harpoon development. I;m just not happy that basic things are still broken or being broken by developement that is so far from the traditional roots of Harpoon. I'm all for a World Wars Harpoon, just not at the expense of Classic Harpoon!

 

I think we comprehend your argument. Just to clarify on point defense I don't see how any changes to surface gunnery have impacted point defense. The only crossover is if the mount is already too busy firing at surface targets, it won't re-task to intercept ASMs.

 

Changes made to PointDefense under my watch:

• Corrected crossing modifier to be true if a missile does a terminal dive (aka SNAP_UP_DOWN). The original crossing qualifier used the TermTraj field which is unused and hence useless.
  
• Added limiting of point defense guns to altitude limits listed in DB, previous the guns could engage target at any altitude.
  

 

As far as I can tell before me the next prior change was made in 1996 for Harpoon Classic 97.

 

Tony from what I've observed, whatever gunnery changes were made (I think in occurred in 2008.024) changed gunnery behavior a great deal. Prior to, guns engaged a surface target 1 time every 30 seconds regardless of the number of tubes in database. That is they fired 1 point of ammo per mount (not per tube). I'm not sure that if a mount had 2 barrells if it actually got 2 chances to hit target with the listed PH and DP values, all I can tell you is it only reduced ammo by 1 regardless of tubes listed in database. Now, it fires (at least reduces ammo) by number in tubes field. The ROF field is per minute, but you have to times it by the number of tubes. For example:

 

You want a mount with 2 tubes to fire every 30 seconds, you have to make the ROF 4. (60 sec / 30 sec = 2 x number of tubes (2) = 4.

 

You want a mount with 3 tubes to fire every 20 seconds , you have to make ROF 9. (60 sec / 20 sec = 3 x number of tubes (3) = 9.

 

At least all of the above seems to be true from all my tinkering! I actually like the formula described above, and I propose eo keep it. In my personal database I have all the ROF fields for gun mounts set to 2 x # of tubes....I like the guns engaging 1 time per 30 seconds, becuase the Harpoon Annexes PH and DP values for guns are based on a 30 second engagement. But, someone else may want to go more literal and set each mount to fire as it would in real life and adjust the PH and DP values in Harpoon Annexes proportioanlly. I think the current model gives a high degree of flexibilty and attention to user personal preference, which I know is something you and I have discussed is important. However, I think it broke point defense. Let's keep the "new" gunnery model, but fix point defense. I think the easy solution is to simpley hard code point defense gunnery to 1 pop per resolution, period. Ideally, though a new field could be added to database to allow the creator to tell the program how many pops per point defense resolution for the mount. Someone else raised the idea of multiple pops on other thread concerning point defense. We would just need a way to control how many in the database.

 

Can anyone else share thier findings of how gunnery (surface and point defense) worked vs. how now works? Ideas??

From my notes and tables about ordinary surface vs surface gunnery (after patch #24), with the game running with time compression = none (i.e. 1 second playing time = 1 second real time):

 

ROF number in DB

(field called "Burst

per turn" in the DB, but

not a directly applicable

valour) Shots per minute = A shot every # seconds

0 1 60

1 1 60

2 1 60

3 1.5 40

4 2 30

5 2.5 24

6 3 20

7 3.5 17

8 4 15

9 4.6 13

10 5 12

11 6 10

12 6 10

13 6.66 9

14 7.5 8

15 7.5 8

16 8.5 7

17 8.5 7

18 10 6

19 10 6

20 10 6

21 not tested not tested

22 12 5

23 12 5

24 12 5

25 15 4

26 not tested not tested

27 not tested not tested

28 not tested not tested

29 not tested not tested

30 15 4

31-33 not tested not tested

34 20 3

35 20 3

36-39 20 (not tested) 3 (not tested)

40 20 3

41 not tested not tested

42 30 2

43-59 30 (not tested) 2 (not tested)

60 30 2

61-124 not tested not tested

125 60 1

126-254 60 (not tested) 1 (not tested)

255 60 1

ufff, I see it's an impossible task to embed a table in the forum.

Some explanations:

 

Well, the left value is the ROF number, the field called in the DB editor "Bursts per turn". It's not a directly applicable value.

 

The center value is the number of "shots per minute" of the mount, per barrel (i.e. a twin barrelled mount shots two time X per minute).

 

The right value is the number of seconds between shots of the mount.

 

I hope these values will be of some valour ...