bongotastic said:
What is the purpose of Linking platforms to countries (I just installed the PlayerDB). Is there a way to limit the choice of platforms in the scenario editor to a country and dates? Or is this information in the DB just as a guideline.
BTW, this PlayerDB is amazing, all that I was looking for!
Christisan
Glad that you found it useful. The credit goes to the main contibutors like HUD-II and the HCDB, edited by Darren Buckley and Brad Leyte, respectively.
Yes, it is possible. You limit the choice of platforms that you want available for your scenario by turning on the restriction boxes for the Scenario Editor on your Harpoon 3 Launcher that say:
X Class Restriction by Country
X Class Restriction by Time
Or, you can go directly into your Harpoon3.ini file and switch them from OFF to ON.
ClassRestrictionByCountry OFF
ClassRestrictionByTime OFF
Once this happens, only those aircraft, ships, and subs that could possibly have existed in your scenario's time period will appear when you select the Insert Unit function. However, there are a couple of caveats:
- It is not possible to insert fully constructed Installations. There is a bug in this feature so the PlayersDB has no pre-constructed Installations.
- This feature does not work for the insertion of Land Facilities. Although we have tried to index them for your convenience, there is another bug in the Scenario Editor (?) that scrambles the facilities. For example, if you activate the Country and Time Class Restrictions and try to insert a SAM unit for Belarus, you might end up with a Runway instead.
- The Class Restriction by Time / Country function only applies to units that you insert DIRECTLY into your scenario. For example, if your scenario is set in 1985 and Time / Country restrictions are activated, you can insert a carrier for that time period. Only the ships that are potentially available for that period will appear and only the specific ship names available for that time period will offered for your selection, too.
Now, unfortunately, when you go to add aircraft to your carrier, all restrictions are OFF. When you use the Edit Aircraft function, the Scenario Editor will offer to you any and all aircraft found within the PlayersDB, regardless of time period and country. For this reason, we have indexed all units twice. Once, through the Country Index and, again, within the individual platform's name. At the end of every platform name, the Country of use and Date of Availability is appended. i.e. USN 96
Another potential function of the Country Index is that it doesn't have to necessarily be restricted to geographic countries. You could go about and create a country called, "
Fifth Eskadra", "
Northern Banner Fleet", or "
Sixth Fleet" and only include those units that would appear for those organizations in their respective time periods. The categories are virtually limitless. (We currently have 85 countries entered and the upper limit on potential categories is 32767!)
If you have an interest in Database work, we are always happy to welcome you aboard. Some fellows love the research, others love writing up text descriptions for the weapons / ships / aircraft / sensors, another is going through his collection of Janes and completing / double-checking the Country Index dates of availability and ship names, while others just love to write scenarios. If you want to be involved, let us know how you would like to contribute. We aren't in the practice of saying, "No."