Tutorial VI problems

[tpope]

For tracking I'm running the demo version, v3.9.1.0 on a Windows XP machine.
I have two monitors, a 1600x1200 main monitor and a 1024x768 smaller monitor off to the lower right. The game runs fine across both, with a few minor nits (below).

Tutorials 1-5 went well enough, with a few minor glitches. I noticed the following mini bugs related to my monitor setup.

Bug #1) When selecting weapon assignment or logistics, the un-resizeable dialog box stretches across 90% of the total window size. This is rather annoying since the top right bit is cut off (smaller monitor) and makes it very difficult to allocate or reload.

Tutorial 6 however, has been a complete disaster. I think I've done everything right, at least I followed the instructions to the best of my ability.

Bug #2) Right off the bat, things started going wrong. I can't get the E-3F to launch at all! I followed the instructions, saw the "O/T Launch" status hit continue and waited. ...and waited. When I went back to the airbase I saw that it was back to "Unassigned" again. No matter what I do I cannot launch the plane.

So I want along and started doing other things instead. The planes already in the air got their radars turned on, as did the carrier. The four F16s at the airbase got their loadouts changed and then began the long wait for that to get implented. Being impatient, butnot wanting to risk time compression (still the air unit unaccounted for, even with all of my air search radars blaring away) I launched all four carrier aircraft.

The first one to get assigned to a target was the F18 loaded with 500lb bombs. I plotted an intercept using the Air Ops button and it went jetting off towards the fuel depot. When it got there:

Bug #3) First off, the F18 on an intercept mission with the iron bombs just loitered over the target, not dropping anything, just flitting back and forth over the top. It refused to drop anything.

Bug #4) When I tried to manually assign an attack mission, it immediately stated that it was out of ammo (still bombs on the racks) and returned to the carrier.

While that was happening, I sent the Standoff (pair of Harpoons) package F18 against the Alligator that I'd finally spotted in a low flying run with one of my F16s. Again, I plotted an intercept usign Air Ops (since it has Harpoons and I KNOW they could have been used to kill the ship). It went off on its merry way to attack the ship and I ignored it for a little while as I checked on the helicopter I sent off to hunt subs (still no sign of the air contact anywhere).

Bug #5) I didn't see this directly, as I was dropping sonobuoys, but the F18 apparently never fired a harpoon. The contact was already identified by the previous plane, and marked hostile, it had an intercept plotted, but when I checked the log I saw lots and lots of firing from the Krimsky Kosmolets and not a single return shot. The plane was shot down well inside Harpoon range.

I've been keeping the game running in the background as I type this. I just spotted the air contact and plotted an intercept with the F14. That one seemed to work out. It identified the target as hostile and shot it down all by itself. As a side note, since nothing else worked I read ahead a bit and set the helicopter on an actual ASW mission, bounding the suspect area with reference points and occasionally checkign in to manually drop a buoy. I was pleased to note that after it was fiished refueling (I manually told it to go home and fill up the tank) it headed right back out to the mission zone again and restarted the search.

My Falcon with PGM pagckage #43 has now counted down to 0:00 in the ready column but also refuses to launch. One of the other three with an ATA package launched without me asking it, but that might have been user error.

That's about where I'm leaving things for the night. I'm not sure what if anything I've done wrong, but pretty much nothing has gone as planned in this mission.

[hermanhum]

ORIGINAL: tpope

Tutorial 6 however, has been a complete disaster. I think I've done everything right, at least I followed the instructions to the best of my ability.

Disaster is probably a pretty appropriate description. Sadly, most of these problems have already been reported several times. [:(]

noobie WEAPONS FREE and RANGE question
tm.asp?m=1780910

Tutorial 6
tm.asp?m=1710945

Can not seem to get KC135 to launch
tm.asp?m=1814471

Problem with tutorial 6
tm.asp?m=1625449

Tutorial 6 Stratotanker @ zero alt and speed?
tm.asp?m=1772818

Newbie Q - Tutorial 4
tm.asp?m=1753165

[tpope]

Thanks, that answers some of the issues, at least with the E-3 not launching and the bombing intercapt not coming off as planned.
 
What I'm still not certain about is the time when I manually tried to drop the bombs (bad terms above, I did a manual attack, selecting target and allocating bombs).  Nor does the "don't whoot at targets that can't hurt me" issue seem to really explain why the intercept against the surface ship failed to fire.
 
I also noted that the loading times for aircraft were in the multiple hours (1:30ish for most packages, 3:00ish for one of them) instead of the 30 minutes the manual stated.  I took that initially as just added realism (different loading times depending on how difficult it is to handle different kinds of ordnance) but maybe I'm wrong there.

[hermanhum]

ORIGINAL: tpope

What I'm still not certain about is the time when I manually tried to drop the bombs (bad terms above, I did a manual attack, selecting target and allocating bombs). Nor does the "don't whoot at targets that can't hurt me" issue seem to really explain why the intercept against the surface ship failed to fire.

I also noted that the loading times for aircraft were in the multiple hours (1:30ish for most packages, 3:00ish for one of them) instead of the 30 minutes the manual stated. I took that initially as just added realism (different loading times depending on how difficult it is to handle different kinds of ordnance) but maybe I'm wrong there.

The only "Bomb Bug" that I'm aware of was the one originally discovered when 3.9.0.0 was released. (fb.asp?m=1759202) It was fixed by 3.9.1.0. I just ran the demo Tutorial #6 and could not replicate your problem. I was able to successfully drop the bombs from the F-16 onto the fuel dump.

The failure of your Harpoon mission vs. the LST is due to the fact that the Air Ops button/function was changed. After you hit the Air Ops button to order the Hornet to intercept the LST, you need to hit the "Weapons Free" toggle ([tilde] ~ hotkey). This was never required in previous versions of the game. I certainly hope that they revert to the old behaviour instead of keeping the new ANW behaviour as it was more consistent with the other mission functions.

The Tutorials were written for Harpoon2; a time when all planes had a 30 min turn-around time and this was a fixed value. Now, the database has been changed to allow longer ready times, but the Tutorials were ignored and not amended. The Custom Ready Times feature is meant to reflect things like mission planning time, crew rest, regular (but critical) maintenance, etc. Each database editor uses different times in his interpretation of how many missions he believes an aircraft would normally fly in a 24hr period.

[tpope]

As I said, I was doing a lot of things at once.  All I know for certain is that when I went over to look at my plane that kept circling (or rather, jumping back and forth over the target) I ordered a traditional "double click on the target" attack and selected my bombs. Got an out of ammunition message and the plane immediately headed for home.
 
I'll see if I can't replicate it (or not) and then repost if it re-occurs when I'm paying better attention.  Oh, though for the record I was still waiting on the airbase F16 to launch, this was the preconfigured F18 off the carrier. 
 
The air intercept issue seems odd to me.  I already had weapons free as my standard order for the game, I think.  I'll try again with the tilde key.  Is there a way to see if a particular unit is in weapons free or weapons tight mode?
 
As for the ready times, that makes perfect sense (from a layman's perspective) though what was odd is that my planes were stuck for over 20 game minutes at 0:00 without ever actually making the transition to "ready."
 
I think for a lot of reasons I might want to reply that tutorial and see what happens the second time around. 
 
Thanks very much for the advice.
 
Tom

[hermanhum]

ORIGINAL: tpope

Oh, though for the record I was still waiting on the airbase F16 to launch, this was the preconfigured F18 off the carrier.

My mistake. I, too, meant the F-18 from the Carrier and not the F-16.

ORIGINAL: tpope

The air intercept issue seems odd to me. I already had weapons free as my standard order for the game, I think. I'll try again with the tilde key. Is there a way to see if a particular unit is in weapons free or weapons tight mode?

As for the ready times, that makes perfect sense (from a layman's perspective) though what was odd is that my planes were stuck for over 20 game minutes at 0:00 without ever actually making the transition to "ready."

I think for a lot of reasons I might want to reply that tutorial and see what happens the second time around.

There is no way to check the individual "Weapons-Free" status of specific units. As before, when a player went "Weapons Free" in previous versions, all units were supposed to do so at the same time, thus there was no need to have a function/display for individual units.

The plane that got stuck on "Ready 0:00" time may be related to this bug:

[*]Damage changes aircraft ready time instead of destroying them

Damage changes aircraft ready time instead of destroying them. Planes are given a ready time of 0:00 but they never become ready unless player uses F6 to change them to Ready status.

However, the planes being stuck at 0:00 time has also been noted previously, even if no damage was involved. It was originally thought to be due to changes within a database (i.e. loadouts being edited). I do not know if this matter was followed up or not.

[tpope]

Ok, I did a quick confirm of the bomb issue before moving on to the next tutorial.  I was mistaken.  What had happened before is that I dropped the bombs, but read the "6" in the report column as having 6 bombs still on the racks, rather than having the capacity for 6 bombs.
 
So I was wrong about that.  Manually bombing a target did work.
 
I do seem to have bad luck actually killing a ground target with bombs though.  Both here and in Tutorial 7 I never seemed to do much damage to the targets.
 
Thanks again for all of the help clarifying these issues.