Matrix Games Forums

First time with any version of Harpoon. Not a novice at wargames, but really struggling with the Harpoon interface. I am on my 6th hour of attempting the beginners tutorial, and I have finally managed to find the sub (yellow contact) with my surface fleet, which is stage 3 of the tutorial. Apparently I should have pressed an 'intercept' button when my staff assistant told me he had the contact - but I didn't, and there is no going back and I will not spend another 6 hours trying to locate this sub.

There must be some way of getting my fleet to attack this sub, but I cannot find out how. So far as I can tell the contact is from one of my ships.
Apparently (and this is the main thing I still cannot work out) I have no control over the individual units within the fleet (ships or helos) I can only give orders to the group. Choosing 'attack' gets me nowhere - Asroc on 1 ship are in range but they just miss - I assume I need to turn it from a yellow to a red contact. I would like to get some of my helos to go over to the sub and attack if I can or at least pin down the contact. There are 4 in the air patrolling.
The pdf manual and the help file are a little different in what buttons they say I should have available, presumably based on different versions. I can find no 'intercept' button. 'Launch' is greyed out. 'Ready air' shows 2 helos that I think are already being readied, with times of around 20 minutes, so I assume if I wait 20 minutes I may be able to launch them. Meanwhile I have 4 warships and 4 helos, all armed, all nearby, and I cannot seem to find a way to get any of them to go towards the sub. If I can't get the helos to chase it, then surely I could get a ship to chase it somehow.

Very frustrated, and close to asking for my money back.

Ok. Try this....

Click on the 'yellow' submarine ([:D]) in the main window and the 'intercept' button should appear at the top left of the screen. Assuming you have aircraft in the air, even if they are assign to the 'formation', and they have ASW weapons, you will be able to assign these aircraft to attack/search for the sub.

Personally I usually assign one at a time as they aircraft will repeat the identical search pattern on the unknown yellow sub diamond (hint for wishlist [:D]).

Alternatively, you could select the formation and then select 'split group' from the top menu. From there you can split ASW (or any) aircraft from your formation so you can control it directly.

Lastly I normally don't attack subs with surface vessels except as a last resort.

Hope this helps!

Ok, first off, you don't necessarily need a red contact, but you will only be launching a bearing only attack which is the reason the ASROC won't hit. The area of uncertainty will be far larger than the warheads acquistion range.

To make an 'intercept' of a unit, you need to click on it and make it the active unit. If it is interceptable, then you will have your normal toolbar replaced with one that simply has a button labeled intercept on it.

Alternatively you can manually launch your aircraft on an attack mission, they will move toward it and start trying to get a fix on it. Word of advice, you are better off to set the course of this aircraft manually after launch, and do not attack until you have a lock on the sub and are right over it. Torpedo's dropped from max range usually miss.

You can change your surface fleets course and attempt to lock onto the sub, this is very risky though, as the sub always has the advantage against a surface ship. Torpedo's cannot be intercepted with point defenses, if it locks on, the ship will almost always be hit, and it usually only takes 1 torpedo to sink a surface ship.

If you choose to use the launch and hunt method above with helo's, you can use the '.' key to manually drop sonobouys, or go to VLow and Hover to use your dipping sonar.

You might also want to use the first scenario in the WestPac battleset as your tutorial, it is more up to date and gets you to the action more quickly.