HCE Scenarios Ranked by Difficulty

[Newton]

Friends:
I am looking for a list of the HCE scenarios (as they were shipped with the game) ranked or listed in order of complexity or difficulty or number of units. Does anyone know of such a thing?
Thanks
Newton

[TonyE]

16 years playing the game and I haven't seen such a list yet.
 
I think you stumbled across a couple of reasons, and there are many but I don't think that should stop someone from trying...
 

• Very few people have played even a fraction of the scenarios so ranking them subjectively will be difficult.
• Some people find ASW difficult and ASuW hard, some find the opposite.
• Depending upon the scenario design I would say some scenarios with many units are easy but others are very difficult.

So, if someone wants to make a list, I've got at least one site to publish it on (harpoonpages.com or harpgamer.com).
 

[Warhorse64]

IIRC, the pamphlet containing the scenario notes for one of the Harpoon Designer Series releases had such a list for the approx. four dozen scenarios it included, but that's the only case I can think of. 

[SteveF2006]

That's an interesting question. Here is a VERY general rule for the 2003 battle set and West Pac. At least for the 2003 battle set, they are a continuation of an ongoing war that "culminates" in the final scenario which is usually the most complicated.
 
As Tony stated, there is no definitive list but this can give you an idea. If you go to Harpgamer.com, you will see a scenario in the West Pac battle set called WWIII, it is the largest and most complex scenario that I’ve ever seen available to the public. It is worth checking out. You need three things to play this scenario. A fast computer, patience and lots of time!
 
Steve
 

[Shark7]

Actually with WestPac, the scenarios are not connected nor in any particular order. The 2 scenarios I contributed, "Operation Island Wind" and "Operation Shield", are tied together in the order I have them here, but are in no way connected to the other ones.

The difficulty is also in no particular order, I actually consider Operation Shield the easier of my 2 scenarios, even though it is both a larger scenario and later chronilogically. Why do I consider OPIW harder? It's because you have such limited resources to complete the mission with.

I think you will find that many times the smaller scenarios will present you more of a challenge due to a lack of resources on the player's part, and the fact that the designer can really concentrate on building up the AI's abilities on a focused objective. That isn't to say small scenarios are always more difficult, because large scenarios can be very challenging. Basically it depends on the how the designer went about setting up his scenario.