rookie question concerning attacking

[Arno]

Hi guys,

I'm relatively new to Harpoon and while playing my first scenarios some questions came up, I hope you guys can help me:

a) attacking subs: On my last mission I detected and identified an enemy sub. I must have been not too stealthy since the sub immediately launched two torpedos against my own sub. What I dont understand is, why I get the message that I am out of range to attack?! Do attack ranges differ so much between different types of sub? Why does it seem that even though my sub is almost touching the other guy, I still am "out of range"??? I am aware that I offer very little hard information for you guys to go on, but I didnt save the game and dont really remember that much about it... ;(

b) rebasing aircraft: in the mission: "airlane raiders" I am ordered to transfer my a/c to another base. Somehow my planes just don't take off... I dont know what to do! I tried giving them transit missions, ferry missions and even launched them manually, but everytime they just keep sitting around :(( any thoughts what I am doing wrong???

c) attacking surface ships: I played attack on Zion yesterday and everything went well to a certain point. I detected and identified two of the terrorist ships and launched several Harpoon missiles on each of them (about 2 per ship)..
my question concerns the hit propability of missiles: is there any way to tell how the chances are of hitting and maybe the chance of destroying it??

one of my missiles hit but made NO damage (I had an a/c flying overhead to observe) the others just disappeared... (since I am new to the game I just dont know if this is to be expected or if I am doing something wrong... )

I tried again and fired some more missiles... I kept contact with one of them and it got really close to the enemy ship, but suddenly it totally changed course, took off to the north and sunk a russian cruiser :upset:
so much for the future of israel :OHNO:

I hope you can give me some suggestions what I could do differently in that situation...

I'd appreciate any advice you can give me,
Cheers
Arno

[Herman Hum]

Well, first off, Welcome aboard, shipmate! :cool:

Hi guys,

I'm relatively new to Harpoon and while playing my first scenarios some questions came up, I hope you guys can help me:

a) attacking subs: On my last mission I detected and identified an enemy sub. I must have been not too stealthy since the sub immediately launched two torpedos against my own sub. What I dont understand is, why I get the message that I am out of range to attack?! Do attack ranges differ so much between different types of sub? Why does it seem that even though my sub is almost touching the other guy, I still am "out of range"??? I am aware that I offer very little hard information for you guys to go on, but I didnt save the game and dont really remember that much about it... ;(

A number of factors come into play when deciding on when/whether or not you are allowed to fire a torpedo. The game makes a quick calculation about things like your speed, target speed, angle of approach, etc. to derive a firing range. The AI wants to give you the best chance of hitting your target so it waits to fire until the target is in the "No Escape Envelope". This is a theoretical range at which the target should not be able to escape.

If the target is coming towards you at a high rate, the envelope is larger. However, if you are chasing the target, then it is smaller because your torpedoes must travel a longer distance to catch him. It isn't precise, but it does help immeasurably.

However, since you are the human player, you can always 'force' the computer to fire. Most torpedoes will accept the Bearing-Only-Launch command. In short, this means that you are firing a 'shot in the dark' or general direction of the enemy. Try Cntl+F1 to do this. Since most torpedoes are wire-guided, you can take control of the after they leave the tubes.

b) rebasing aircraft: in the mission: "airlane raiders" I am ordered to transfer my a/c to another base. Somehow my planes just don't take off... I dont know what to do! I tried giving them transit missions, ferry missions and even launched them manually, but everytime they just keep sitting around :(( any thoughts what I am doing wrong???

Are you certain that they are in range to travel to the other base? Does the other base have room for them? If you are certain of this, can you state which bases you are discussing? I'll take a look with you. :)

c) attacking surface ships: I played attack on Zion yesterday and everything went well to a certain point. I detected and identified two of the terrorist ships and launched several Harpoon missiles on each of them (about 2 per ship)..
my question concerns the hit propability of missiles: is there any way to tell how the chances are of hitting and maybe the chance of destroying it??

one of my missiles hit but made NO damage (I had an a/c flying overhead to observe) the others just disappeared... (since I am new to the game I just dont know if this is to be expected or if I am doing something wrong... )

I tried again and fired some more missiles... I kept contact with one of them and it got really close to the enemy ship, but suddenly it totally changed course, took off to the north and sunk a russian cruiser :upset:
so much for the future of israel :OHNO:

I hope you can give me some suggestions what I could do differently in that situation...
Okay, your Harpoon missiles are true 'fire-and-forget' weapons. Once they leave the tube, you lose track of them unless you have an observer or radar fix on them. That's a risk you take when firing around friendlies or neutrals. :smoke:

Did you have a localized fix on the targets? Or were they inside an 'area of uncertainty'? (That's the polygon that sometimes appears when you are not sure where that contact is.)

The appearance of a missile hitting may be mis-leading. I *think* that the flash can also indicate that the missile was either hit by a point-defense weapon or a decoy. Was your aircraft close enough to give you visual confirmation? Or was she just in the general vicinity?

If you have any questions, you can always post your game file up here on SZO. Just zip it up and make it an attachment so we can all see how you are doing it. :D

[Herman Hum]

b) rebasing aircraft: in the mission: "airlane raiders" I am ordered to transfer my a/c to another base. Somehow my planes just don't take off... I dont know what to do! I tried giving them transit missions, ferry missions and even launched them manually, but everytime they just keep sitting around :(( any thoughts what I am doing wrong???

I just ran the scenario in question and find that the planes can take off from Eniwetok and land in Guam with no problem. The manual way of doing it is to:

1) Select a plane from the Aircraft menu [F6]
2) Order it to launch
3) After it is in the air, select the plane.
4) Hit [F6] once
5) Either Drag select Guam base or else double click on it. The plane should now say, 'Returning to Base' with a plotted path to Guam.

If you want to do it via a Mission,

1) Select the base of destination (Guam)
2) Select Mission Editor and Create Mission
3) Select Ferry Mission as type and edit it.
4) Add the Starlifter that you want to launch to the new base under the Add Aircraft button.

The mission should take off and land all by itself, now. Good luck to you.

[Arno]

Hi Herman,

thank you very much for the welcome and the very helpful suggestions!
I ran the rebasing mission again and now it worked, thank you!

As for the torpedo thing, is it possible that I was going to fast or that my course was in the wrong direction??? Does depth (especially depth difference between the two subs) influence the range???

In any case I will keep your suggestions in mind for the next sub battle...

regarding the harpoon missiles: I had the enemy ship located exactly, no area of uncertainty, nothing... I understand that there's the chance of losing contact with the missiles or missing the target, I was just wondering if it is likely that so many missiles miss their target when I have a seemingly clear target...

Thanks for the hint of posting my game files, I'll do that with the next problems I encounter (you won't have to wait long, I'm afraid)

Thanks again for the help,

Arno

:)

[danrh]

Hi Herman,

thank you very much for the welcome and the very helpful suggestions!
I ran the rebasing mission again and now it worked, thank you!

As for the torpedo thing, is it possible that I was going to fast or that my course was in the wrong direction??? Does depth (especially depth difference between the two subs) influence the range???

Stictly speaking no. This is a bit of a foible of the game, its possible for a low flying aircraft to make a guns attack on a high flying one for instance. However if your aircraft flying at an altitude outside the launch parameters of the particular weapon then you will get the our of range message. Now to be honest I don't recall what the typical launch depths constraints of the torps in the ODB are but I would not have though they were less than the diving depths of the subs. Still that may be the case here. One place you can check out such limitations without having to empoy the db editor and wade through the db itself is at the Database Encyclopedia (http://harpoondb.brinkster.net/Index.aspx). Now this is only for the Third party databases hosted on the HHQ (http://www.harpoonhq.com/) pages but it will help with understanding the way the databases work etc. Its a handy reference while using those db's as well.

[Herman Hum]

As for the torpedo thing, is it possible that I was going to fast or that my course was in the wrong direction??? Does depth (especially depth difference between the two subs) influence the range???

In any case I will keep your suggestions in mind for the next sub battle...

regarding the harpoon missiles: I had the enemy ship located exactly, no area of uncertainty, nothing... I understand that there's the chance of losing contact with the missiles or missing the target, I was just wondering if it is likely that so many missiles miss their target when I have a seemingly clear target...
Yes, the altitude mis-match is a quirk. Even the Alfa when she is at Very Deep depth can get killed by ASW mortar bombs. Oh, well. It's not the end of the world. :D

Different Databases model the behaviour differently. Some have the sensor activate at a distance and others have it activate a bit closer so that there is less chance of a blue-on-blue engagement. Try them all. Different DB editors arrive at different values for Probability of Kill [PoK]. One might think that a weapon has an 80% chance PoK while another thinks it is only 60% chance. All part of the flavour of the game.

[Arno]

ok I continued playing attack on zion and threw some more missiles onto them... missiles got lost again and one found another promising target instead of the terrorist boat: a nice big russian commercial vessel :mad:

after feeling a little :nuts: for a few minutes I closed in with my surface vessels and suddenly it turned out I won the scenario... it seems that one of the first missiles I launched already destroyed the ship and it remained just as a ghost on my screen :angry:

no wonder my harpoons were looking for other targets :D

so with the threat eliminated and russia now at war with israel I finally feel like I have achieved something :laugh:

thanks for the help,
Arno

[jpkoester1]

after feeling a little :nuts: for a few minutes I closed in with my surface vessels and suddenly it turned out I won the scenario... it seems that one of the first missiles I launched already destroyed the ship and it remained just as a ghost on my screen :angry:

thanks for the help,
Arno

The game will always display the latest information you have on a platform. That means if you don't see a ship sink the game engine will still show it even though it might not actually be there any more. When you get visual confirmation on the sinking state of the enemy ship that information will be displayed.

Cheers,
JP