Matrix Games Forums

So,sacked up and finally got the game.Addictive,I must say...

I have few questions to ask as I dont know if they are normal behiavour or buggish activities.
Sorry for the long and winding post!




In the scenaria Red sea escape (usn carrier group escaping red sea with russian planes and boats waiting) there is a lot
of sam sites present. The are the dark yellow colour,switching place,appearing and disapearing at will,Facility XXXs.
It takes a lot of time to pinpoint the locations so that they turn yellow. Even then it is impossible to do a fire mission on them as they disapear practically instantly as you try to do that.
The only way to pinpoint is to put in a planegroup or two,loiter in the area of the site and watch the groups disapear/get destroyed.
Even if you see that the Facility is using radar,the HARMs dont seem to do anything to them.
I managed to "identify visually" couple of the sam sites by sacrificing 5 A-6s so they turned red but it has not helped much with the targeting.
On top of that I lost about 10 hornets in three different incidents where they flew over a invisible sam site.Sudden alert of vampires combined with loss of aircraft. One set flew without radar/ecm,on with ecm,and one with radar/ecm. The sam site did not appear after the attack in any way.

So,is this normal behiavour of sam sites? Or is there some borked parameter?



How do you attack properly with HARMs? I have launched a lot of them,allocating to different radar bands (firecontrol,surface etc..) but they seem to do no damage.



How do you properly work ECM? It seems that the planes that utilize them get invariably shot down. Even if they would loiter outside the apparent zone of sams. Do they affect the performance of your own missiles,say you place a ECM plane between a ship and a flight group firing a volley of harpoons? Or do they only disturb the radar aquisition of the bad guys? Or even that.
Where can you see the estimated zone of influence of your ECM?


And lastly,why the hell cant you see the current loadout of the plane???
I mean,the game is 20 yrs old,so I would have thought that you can actually see somewhere if your platform has launched it´s weapons or not. In the Infobox it always shows what it has carried in the beginning of the mission. Even in the more detailed leaflet it shows that it has 2/2 Harpoons etc..
Only the subs/ships seem to update their allocation numbers,but planes not?



But thanks in advance for the pointers!

ORIGINAL: cakefart

In the scenaria Red sea escape (usn carrier group escaping red sea with russian planes and boats waiting) there is a lot
of sam sites present. The are the dark yellow colour,switching place,appearing and disapearing at will,Facility XXXs.
It takes a lot of time to pinpoint the locations so that they turn yellow. Even then it is impossible to do a fire mission on them as they disapear practically instantly as you try to do that.
The only way to pinpoint is to put in a planegroup or two,loiter in the area of the site and watch the groups disapear/get destroyed.
Even if you see that the Facility is using radar,the HARMs dont seem to do anything to them.

I managed to "identify visually" couple of the sam sites by sacrificing 5 A-6s so they turned red but it has not helped much with the targeting.

On top of that I lost about 10 hornets in three different incidents where they flew over a invisible sam site.Sudden alert of vampires combined with loss of aircraft. One set flew without radar/ecm,on with ecm,and one with radar/ecm. The sam site did not appear after the attack in any way.

So,is this normal behiavour of sam sites? Or is there some borked parameter?

It is important to always specify the scenario name and database used. For example, there can be many different versions of the Rescue.SCN scenario. One is known to exist for the OriginalDB, the PlayersDB, and any number of other databases. Each version operates a little differently from the others due to the peculiarities of the specific database employed.

The reason why the yellow SAM icons appear to jump around and appear/disappear is due to the uncertainty zone. When a unit is detected (usually by their active radar), sometimes the information is insufficient to provide you with pinpoint information. The icon appears in an Uncertainty Zone that can be very large. This is the computer's way of saying, "I think that it is somewhere within this area." It gives the impression of moving around as the AI is trying to help you localize it with new information as it is acquired.

You can try to localize a SAM unit by triangulation. Try to fly a few planes away from each other. The larger the separation, the more easily the SAM can be localized by geometry. If you fly at high altitude, you may get better reception. However, the SAM may be able to detect you more easily, too.

Your 10 Hornets may have flown over an undetected SAM site. Some databases have man-portable SAMs like Stingers set to be invisible while others give them a very low level of visibility. Without a saved game file, it is hard to ascertain what exactly happened to them. You might try running with the AALog.option activated so that you can see exactly has happened during your game.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

How do you attack properly with HARMs? I have launched a lot of them,allocating to different radar bands (firecontrol,surface etc..) but they seem to do no damage.

They may have been shot down by the SAMs, too. Also, if the uncertainty zone is very large, they may end up tracking to the wrong area.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

How do you properly work ECM? It seems that the planes that utilize them get invariably shot down. Even if they would loiter outside the apparent zone of sams. Do they affect the performance of your own missiles,say you place a ECM plane between a ship and a flight group firing a volley of harpoons? Or do they only disturb the radar aquisition of the bad guys? Or even that.

Where can you see the estimated zone of influence of your ECM?

The AI really hates ECM and, IMO, gives it very high priority for destruction. Thus, interceptors seem to concentrate on jammers above other targets. You may think that you are outside the range of some SAMs, but you may simply be wrong if you don't know their precise location. If you loiter at low speed, you will be more easily engaged.

ECM does not affect your own side as long as you are on the same communications net. Units that share a comm network with you will share information and thus not be affected by jammers on the same side. Placing a jammer between your ship and a flight of inbound Harpoon missiles will degrade the radar seeker head of the missile.

It is not currently possible to see the estimated zone of influence from your ECM emitter.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

And lastly,why the hell cant you see the current loadout of the plane???

I mean,the game is 20 yrs old,so I would have thought that you can actually see somewhere if your platform has launched it´s weapons or not. In the Infobox it always shows what it has carried in the beginning of the mission. Even in the more detailed leaflet it shows that it has 2/2 Harpoons etc..

Only the subs/ships seem to update their allocation numbers,but planes not?

You should be able to see the current loadout of individual planes. Unfortunately, there is no updated aggregate loadout for a group of planes. If you want to see the weapons remaining on an individual plane,

1) Select Unit Display (NumPad 9)
2) Select the plane you wish to check
3) Hit the Report button on the Unit Window

You should see something similar to the attached image.

Welcome aboard, shipmate. For the least number of problems, I recommend that you grab and install the Complete Harpoon ANW Library

It is important to always specify the scenario name and database used. For example, there can be many different versions of the Rescue.SCN scenario. One is known to exist for the OriginalDB, the PlayersDB, and any number of other databases. Each version operates a little differently from the others due to the peculiarities of the specific database employed.

Ok.Point duly taken.

The reason why the yellow SAM icons appear to jump around and appear/disappear is due to the uncertainty zone. When a unit is detected (usually by their active radar), sometimes the information is insufficient to provide you with pinpoint information. The icon appears in an Uncertainty Zone that can be very large. This is the computer's way of saying, "I think that it is somewhere within this area." It gives the impression of moving around as the AI is trying to help you localize it with new information as it is acquired.

I figured that,aeroplanes especially. The problem is that the SAM are active (radars are on) sites should be detected and pintpointed much more easily? Now you can circle around them or even fly over them (visual aquisition?) without them getting found and pinpointed.

You can try to localize a SAM unit by triangulation. Try to fly a few planes away from each other. The larger the separation, the more easily the SAM can be localized by geometry. If you fly at high altitude, you may get better reception. However, the SAM may be able to detect you more easily, too.

I had a total of 3 awacs and about 60 planes roaming around the area at different altitudes. And still there several sites were left totally unfound. One of the sites dropped 4 hornets within 1 second and the other destroyed about 15 harpoons,got up a "vampire" warning,saw one hostile missile graph and boom.
And the awacs that was about 20nm away didnt see nothing..

Your 10 Hornets may have flown over an undetected SAM site. Some databases have man-portable SAMs like Stingers set to be invisible while others give them a very low level of visibility. Without a saved game file, it is hard to ascertain what exactly happened to them. You might try running with the AALog.option activated so that you can see exactly has happened during your game.

Will try to do the aalog thing on the next run.The problem is that the 2 of the units were in high/V-high flight level and passive manpads should not reach that altitude? Or at least the planes should have a extremely good chance of outmanouvering/chaffing/ecming them. Unless there was a sam site that had it´s radar off,but it should have become visible when it would turn it on. And thus being put in the HARMs way..

They may have been shot down by the SAMs, too. Also, if the uncertainty zone is very large, they may end up tracking to the wrong area.

Hmm. You mean a volley of 10 harms would be shot down by sa-6s? I would understand if the site would shut down it´s radars when attacked by harm´s but in this case the sites wont even bother doing it. They stay on all the time. But dont get hit by the missiles.

The AI really hates ECM and, IMO, gives it very high priority for destruction. Thus, interceptors seem to concentrate on jammers above other targets. You may think that you are outside the range of some SAMs, but you may simply be wrong if you don't know their precise location. If you loiter at low speed, you will be more easily engaged.

ECM does not affect your own side as long as you are on the same communications net. Units that share a comm network with you will share information and thus not be affected by jammers on the same side. Placing a jammer between your ship and a flight of inbound Harpoon missiles will degrade the radar seeker head of the missile.

It is not currently possible to see the estimated zone of influence from your ECM emitter.

Ok. But to what effect does the ECMs affect the weapon systems? You could think that few prowlers running around the sam sites with full ECM suites on would bog them down totally,but it just seems that they just hit them more easily?!
Are they a viable vay to battle the enemy or are they borked and useless?

You should be able to see the current loadout of individual planes. Unfortunately, there is no updated aggregate loadout for a group of planes. If you want to see the weapons remaining on an individual plane,

1) Select Unit Display (NumPad 9)
2) Select the plane you wish to check
3) Hit the Report button on the Unit Window

You should see something similar to the attached image.

Yep,know that one! But the problem is that even the report window does show that the planes are loaded 2/2 with ,say,harpoons and the unit just launched them!

Welcome aboard, shipmate. For the least number of problems, I recommend that you grab and install the Complete Harpoon ANW Library

Thanks! I really appreciate your time and devotion,not only for the game but allso helping us noobs out...
And yea,I should have the complete harpoon anw library installed as well.

Sorry for the vague and dumbish questions.Just trying to map out what things are plain old user errors and wich ones are bugs/"features"...


Oh,as a PS. How do you unload/reload with different ammo your torpedo tubes in subs (LA class) ?
Possible?

ORIGINAL: cakefart

The reason why the yellow SAM icons appear to jump around and appear/disappear is due to the uncertainty zone. When a unit is detected (usually by their active radar), sometimes the information is insufficient to provide you with pinpoint information. The icon appears in an Uncertainty Zone that can be very large. This is the computer's way of saying, "I think that it is somewhere within this area." It gives the impression of moving around as the AI is trying to help you localize it with new information as it is acquired.

I figured that,aeroplanes especially. The problem is that the SAM are active (radars are on) sites should be detected and pintpointed much more easily? Now you can circle around them or even fly over them (visual aquisition?) without them getting found and pinpointed.

You seem to be encountering a problem that others have also commented on. The ESM/Uncertainty zones in ANW have been criticized by other users, too. In the previous version (Harpoon3), it was much easier to localize active radar via ESM detection. However, using the same database and scenario in ANW results in huge uncertainty zones. Although I do not like the new (less precise) behaviour in ANW, I am hesitant to call it a bug just because it is different from the previous behaviour.

One thing you might like to try is dropping the SAM contact with the NumPad 3 hotkey. When it is acquired, sometimes it is in a smaller Uncertainty Zone if you have better info on it.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

I had a total of 3 awacs and about 60 planes roaming around the area at different altitudes. And still there several sites were left totally unfound. One of the sites dropped 4 hornets within 1 second and the other destroyed about 15 harpoons,got up a "vampire" warning,saw one hostile missile graph and boom.
And the awacs that was about 20nm away didnt see nothing..

That does sound bad. A saved game file of the situation would help a great deal. That way, everyone can see what is happening. I know that some radar have low probability of detection, but maybe they should not be so low as to never be detected, either.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

Your 10 Hornets may have flown over an undetected SAM site. Some databases have man-portable SAMs like Stingers set to be invisible while others give them a very low level of visibility. Without a saved game file, it is hard to ascertain what exactly happened to them. You might try running with the AALog.option activated so that you can see exactly has happened during your game.

Will try to do the aalog thing on the next run.The problem is that the 2 of the units were in high/V-high flight level and passive manpads should not reach that altitude? Or at least the planes should have a extremely good chance of outmanouvering/chaffing/ecming them. Unless there was a sam site that had it´s radar off,but it should have become visible when it would turn it on. And thus being put in the HARMs way..

No, you are correct. The ManPADS should not be reaching you at High or VHigh altitude. Some scenarios do have the SAM sites start with Passive radar, but they usually activate very soon after the start of the game.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

They may have been shot down by the SAMs, too. Also, if the uncertainty zone is very large, they may end up tracking to the wrong area.

Hmm. You mean a volley of 10 harms would be shot down by sa-6s? I would understand if the site would shut down it´s radars when attacked by harm´s but in this case the sites wont even bother doing it. They stay on all the time. But dont get hit by the missiles.

SA-6s probably will not shoot down HARMs, but SA-10s have a very good chance of doing so. The AI is more inclined to turn on radar than turn it off. A human player might turn off his radar in hopes of allowing the ARM to miss, but this is no longer possible in ANW. The AI will turn on your radar whether you like it or not. (Another less than desirable new feature of ANW, IMO [:(])

ORIGINAL: cakefart

what effect does the ECMs affect the weapon systems? You could think that few prowlers running around the sam sites with full ECM suites on would bog them down totally,but it just seems that they just hit them more easily?!

Are they a viable vay to battle the enemy or are they borked and useless?

The effects of ECM in ANW are described in this thread Attention DB Designers: Important ECM Changes. If you don't think ECM is effective, just try playing a scenario without using any. [;)] In general, ECM knocks down radar effectiveness by about 75%. Some radar is less susceptible to it (i.e. AEgis).

ORIGINAL: cakefart

Yep,know that one! But the problem is that even the report window does show that the planes are loaded 2/2 with ,say,harpoons and the unit just launched them!

I believe that you may be in error. If the plane has launched some of its weapons, it would show "6/8 AMRAAM" or "0/2 Harpoon", for example. You might be looking at the wrong individual plane out of a group of planes. Check the other planes in the group and I think that you will see that weapons are reduced when you fire them. A saved game could clarify this quickly.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

How do you unload/reload with different ammo your torpedo tubes in subs (LA class)?

Yes, it is possible to change ammo for sub torpedo tubes. Take a look at the image attached. It is for an LA-class sub. Select the sub and hit the Magazine button (F5 hotkey twice).

The tubes are in the left window. Select one of the 533 Mk63 Torpedo Tube mounts.

The upper right-hand window shows the different weapons that this mount can load/fire. You can see that it is currently holding an Mk48 ADCAP Mod Torpedo. If you click on it, that torpedo is sent back into the magazine. The lower right-hand window will show that one is added to the magazine. Select a weapon from the magazine and it will load into the (now empty) torpedo tube.

If you would like to play this scenario in Multi-Player with me, it might help clarify things as we go through it step-by-step.

cheers!

and thanks for all the help!
have to say that this has been a long and rocky road. or short and rocky...
slowly getting clue to things,but playing the game on a mac laptop in a bootcamp with big problems with the hotkeys (read,not working proper...) slows down a bit.

oh, the version of the scenario is cccp-vs-us "red sea rescue" hud 3 & h2anw 3.9.0 and me running the 3.9.4.

but the shite fest continues...well... kind of...

-it seems the "lack of loadout info" is a non prevaling bug,but it occurs a lot with the f-18s. many times,especially after carrier take off
both boxes are blank under the Report library. And many times f14+f18 both have it after firing ordinance.

-difficulties/impossibilities of engaging a target,especially ground. ranges from trying to engage a target with aam´s (dont allow lock down,says "wanna get closer?") even if you are inside the range.
or having JDAMs (or IBs or GBUs..) and loitering on and around airfields (yellows or reds,doesnt matter) it does not allow engaging from point blanc. let alone plan firemissions from further away. says just XXX does not have a target or what ever..
let alone it does not show/allow greater stand off distances for certain gbus! you have to hanging on the top of the airfield to release the bomb.
damn,some gbus have a standoff distance of several miles!!! nope...roll in and let the gaskins-gains-and grumbles eat you alive.
even if you remember to put the weapon use to "Tight",the damn pilots blow the load all over the place and DONT ASK WHERE TO AIM IT!!!


now in that said scenario (yeah,i know,it starts to seem buggy...) the one airport starts feeding airoplanes up in the half way of the missinon. like it would have a event trigger. wich is nice,as i had about a dozen and a half of fighters doing their loitering in the area. now after 60 in play time,i have wasted about 14 planes.and they keep coming.
after I planted 32 tomahawks in that complex in the first minutes of the game.
after I planted about 20 harms around the perimeter.
after I have done about 6-7 multiplane bombing runs on it...and oh,it does not allow to use ANY frigginb bomb types on the runway!!!
tried 500/1000/2000lbs IBs,GBUs,JDAMs whatever. "You cant use that type of ordinance on the runway" or whatever it says.
Dudes!!! It does not matter if it is not a durandal,JDAM it still puts the runway out of use for couple of hours,let alone a 12 pack of GBUs...
But no...
Planes take off in few minute intervalls...

well...


Have to get back to the drawing board,test different scenarios and the new 3.10 beta. I am too old (or too young and frustrated) to bang my head against the wall unless it is worth it... [:D]

But thanks again!


ps.How do you get the "assing mission/engagement rules" for individual units/planes? I managed to get that visible for few seconds and lost it then. And oh,in the 3.9.4 startup menu the game manual and advanced manual links dont work...go figure why I am here asking stupid questions...

ORIGINAL: cakefart

-it seems the "lack of loadout info" is a non prevaling bug,but it occurs a lot with the f-18s. many times,especially after carrier take off
both boxes are blank under the Report library. And many times f14+f18 both have it after firing ordinance.

If you are seeing something like the attached image, you are using the Report button on a group of planes. The Report button only works on the individual planes.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

-difficulties/impossibilities of engaging a target,especially ground. ranges from trying to engage a target with aam´s (dont allow lock down,says "wanna get closer?") even if you are inside the range.
or having JDAMs (or IBs or GBUs..) and loitering on and around airfields (yellows or reds,doesnt matter) it does not allow engaging from point blanc. let alone plan firemissions from further away. says just XXX does not have a target or what ever..
let alone it does not show/allow greater stand off distances for certain gbus! you have to hanging on the top of the airfield to release the bomb.
damn,some gbus have a standoff distance of several miles!!! nope...roll in and let the gaskins-gains-and grumbles eat you alive.
even if you remember to put the weapon use to "Tight",the damn pilots blow the load all over the place and DONT ASK WHERE TO AIM IT!!!

This is why there are differences between the scenarios for various databases. For example, the HUD3 has different range and sensor sensitivity settings. Therefore, you may have different operational parameters than if you play the scenario made with the PlayersDB. You might want to check your release altitude, too. Some databases set a minimum altitude for GBU release i.e. 6000m.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

now in that said scenario (yeah,i know,it starts to seem buggy...) the one airport starts feeding airoplanes up in the half way of the missinon. like it would have a event trigger. wich is nice,as i had about a dozen and a half of fighters doing their loitering in the area. now after 60 in play time,i have wasted about 14 planes.and they keep coming.
after I planted 32 tomahawks in that complex in the first minutes of the game.
after I planted about 20 harms around the perimeter.
after I have done about 6-7 multiplane bombing runs on it...and oh,it does not allow to use ANY frigginb bomb types on the runway!!!
tried 500/1000/2000lbs IBs,GBUs,JDAMs whatever. "You cant use that type of ordinance on the runway" or whatever it says.
Dudes!!! It does not matter if it is not a durandal,JDAM it still puts the runway out of use for couple of hours,let alone a 12 pack of GBUs...

Your inability to use certain ordnance against the runways is something determined by the HUD3 database editor. Other databases have different settings. I am pretty sure that the PlayersDB allows use of such ordnance against runways. It is up to the database editor to decide.

The 'event trigger' you may be encountering is the AI on Air Intercept mission. When planes are set in this manner, the AI will not launch them until it has a verified hostile target. They sit on the ground until they know what they are intercepting. Sounds like they detected your strike and are sending them up.

ORIGINAL: cakefart

How do you get the "assing mission/engagement rules" for individual units/planes? I managed to get that visible for few seconds and lost it then.

I am not quite certain what you are asking about. If you are referring to the Mission Profiles introduced in the Beta 3.10, then you might want to check out the Wiki page tm.asp?m=2165481&mpage=1&key=%EF%BF%BD

If you are only looking for the Mission Editor window, it is under the Mission pull-down menu.