Unable to delete an air station from a formation

[Chris21wen]

Cold War/Sea lane raiders playing the soviets. I have turned off Formations and Formation Air patrols in the Launcher. I had originally only turned them off in the game. I have now started three game, the second after my initial contact in the forum.

In the second game I set up three helio stations and two cap but I forgot how forgers where so I was now stuck with these cap stations or trying to delete them. Which I cannot do other than breaking up the entire formation and rebuilding it and then I had problems

I’ve been experimenting. I set up 1 cap and two helio and I’m trying to delete any of the aircraft stations.
• I can detach an air unit but that does not delete the station which I think is how it should work. Detaching a ship does delete a ship station.
• I can detach the parent ship (CVH in this case) which does not delete the air stations. Any assets of a similar type are simply launched from another ship which means there is no cap. Reattaching the CVH to the formation puts the situation back to square one. On reflection this is how it should work as the stations were set up for the TF not the ship unit.
• Detach everything which should break up the TF and does (*see separate problem below). Now I have no TF, I have no stations. I’ve tried three thing here:
1. If you just let the game run eventually the aircraft will land BUT sometime later you get aircraft taking off again? Let it run some more these will eventually land. It’s not until this point that the ships stop putting aircraft in the air.
2. If you recombine the ships back into the TF before the second lot of air units have launched then the game will recreate the air stations.
3. If you wait until after the second lot of air units have launched then the air stations are not recreated and the ships will no longer launch.

*Detaching everything leads to a separate issue in that dragging a box around everything , or even just two, and hitting the detach button results in the following message. ‘Can’t detach a non-unit’. You have to individually detach everything.

Fundamentally being unable to easily delete an air station is wrong and, I repeat, I’m sure that in the original Harpoon 2 you could. The other point is the code is broken as the second lot of aircraft should not be launched.

I’m also going to post these finding in the Harpoon 3 ANW Support section of the Forum as I believe this is a major bug.

I thank you in advance for any help you give.

[TimOusley]

Confirm that when you start your game, when you select your side and then your difficulty level, that you select 'Default'as your difficulty level? I believe this is the only way you can ensure that the AI will not set up formations for you at the start when you set it up that way using the launcher. If you're selecting, say, easy, that will override your launcher settings.
As far as your manual method of removing stations goes, looks like you are going to too much trouble. You don't have to wait for the planes to get to bingo fuel to land. Once you de-select the formation control option, just bring up the formation editor, select the aircraft you want to remove from this formation and click twice on the 'air ops' menu button (the one in the formation editor box, not the main screen). The aircraft will RTB right away and not re-launch.
Now sometimes, these aircraft will retain their 'plotted' mission designation in the main screen 'launch' window. If that happens, you can't send them on a mission, nor can you un-assign them from the plotted status while landed. As a workaround, you must launch them in the main screen launch window, unassign them using the U key, then either select a target and send them off or land them, as need be. That USUALLY works.
Good luck, you'll get there!
Tim O.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: TimOusley

Confirm that when you start your game, when you select your side and then your difficulty level, that you select 'Default'as your difficulty level? I believe this is the only way you can ensure that the AI will not set up formations for you at the start when you set it up that way using the launcher. If you're selecting, say, easy, that will override your launcher settings.
As far as your manual method of removing stations goes, looks like you are going to too much trouble. You don't have to wait for the planes to get to bingo fuel to land. Once you de-select the formation control option, just bring up the formation editor, select the aircraft you want to remove from this formation and click twice on the 'air ops' menu button (the one in the formation editor box, not the main screen). The aircraft will RTB right away and not re-launch.
Now sometimes, these aircraft will retain their 'plotted' mission designation in the main screen 'launch' window. If that happens, you can't send them on a mission, nor can you un-assign them from the plotted status while landed. As a workaround, you must launch them in the main screen launch window, unassign them using the U key, then either select a target and send them off or land them, as need be. That USUALLY works.
Good luck, you'll get there!
Tim O.

I know about the launcher.

I know you can land aircraft earlier. Makes no difference to the problem

That's part of the problem. The other part in not being able to delete stations.

I played Harpoon 2 extensively when it first came out, around mid 1990, and although it was buggy I do not remmeber a problem with unassigning aircraft from missions or deleting stations from a formation. I still have the original game on floppies but cannot install it as I do not have a floopy drive any longer otherwise I would test it.