CMANO and Harpoon

[JPV511]

I've purchased my share of naval wargames and simulators but none have captured my interest like CMANO. I purchased Harpoon Deluxe way back when and I never even learned how to play it. With CMANO, I got into it right away and I'm on course to master its intricacies. Bitten by the modern naval warfare bug, I also decided to get Harpoon UCE (my old Deluxe CD is useless on my Win7 rig) thinking that with what I've been learning in CMANO I could get into the legendary Harpoon series. But unfortunately, I haven't!

I'm sure in time (which is a rare luxury for me) and with perseverance I will finally learn and enjoy Harpoon. I mean, at this point its reputation precedes it. But for the moment I just felt inclined to give props to the team that delivered CMANO. It has been a really fun and engrossing simulator!

P.S. I am looking forward to Silent Service!

[ultradave]

I played a lot of Harpoon back when, and really enjoyed several of the Battlesets, but I have to say, with C:MANO, I don't feel like I'm missing Harpoon at all. The mission planner itself makes CMANO a huge leap forward (not to mention the DB's, and scenario design tools).

The Battlesets in the CE (at least that's where I had them) had some really fun scenarios in them.

[HalfLifeExpert]

I've never played any version of Harpoon, but from what I have seen in some youtube videos, it looks very clunky to use compared to CMANO, also it's time period and theatre limitations are unfortunate in some respects.


That being said, I would really enjoy playing the classic Harpoon scenarios in CMANO, to experience the battles fought in that classic series. It would be a serious project, but probably worth it in the end i think.

[kevinkins]

There is historical info on the relationship between Harpoon and Command on the Warfare Sims site. The material makes for an interesting read re: war game development and why certain things are the way they are with Command today.

[HalfLifeExpert]

ORIGINAL: kevinkin

There is historical info on the relationship between Harpoon and Command on the Warfare Sims site. The material makes for an interesting read re: war game development and why certain things are the way they are with Command today.

Do you think you could link to those specific pages here?

[Gunner98]

Harpoon was the first game I got for my brand new 8086 computer back in the day. Played the hell out of it, crashed about once every 10 minutes but back then that was nothing worry about, it got better. Got new scenarios via a dial up modem to the Harpoon BBS in New York City, the long distance charges were a PITA!

Got Harpoon II the first day it was available - played the hell out of that too, loved it. It evolved but some of the history Kevinkin mentions turned me right off the whole thing. Some guys on the site went through it and can be touchy on the subject.

Command is a significant evolutionary step ahead - very significant. I have all the old game but there isn't a snowballs chance in He#$ I'd go back to them after playing command these past few years. Like stepping out of your Fararri into a Fiat 500.

Some of the old scenarios have been redone, many are there is spirit. Command gives a designer so much more to work with, the old scenarios don't really translate well beyond the idea and the orbat

For the OP - enjoy what you have. Its like some of the 'good old days' only sound good when you scratch the surface.

B

[kevinkins]

http://www.warfaresims.com/

Those interested can search "Harpoon" at the above site and read the background. After understanding a bit of the history, it's probably best to just look forward to more enhancements from Command.

[JPV511]

ORIGINAL: ultradave
I played a lot of Harpoon back when, and really enjoyed several of the Battlesets, but I have to say, with C:MANO, I don't feel like I'm missing Harpoon at all.

That's reassuring. I've just been learning the tutorials and messing around with the Korean Ground Game scenario from Chains of War, but I'm looking forward to getting into many, many other scenarios. I'd still like to get into the Harpoon Cold War scenarios though.

ORIGINAL: HalfLifeExpert
I've never played any version of Harpoon, but from what I have seen in some youtube videos, it looks very clunky to use compared to CMANO, also it's time period and theatre limitations are unfortunate in some respects.

That being said, I would really enjoy playing the classic Harpoon scenarios in CMANO, to experience the battles fought in that classic series. It would be a serious project, but probably worth it in the end i think.

Perhaps the clunkiness was what put me off to begin with. CMANO is very intuitive.

Since I'm not familiar with Harpoon scenarios the least bit, there's no way for me to know if some of them have been ported over to CMANO. If indeed they haven't, porting them over would be a great way of experiencing what I missed in Harpoon!

ORIGINAL: kevinkin
There is historical info on the relationship between Harpoon and Command on the Warfare Sims site. The material makes for an interesting read re: war game development and why certain things are the way they are with Command today.

Thanks for bringing this up. I read up on it and I'm fascinated by how CMANO came to be.

ORIGINAL: Gunner98
Harpoon was the first game I got for my brand new 8086 computer back in the day. Played the hell out of it...

Got Harpoon II the first day it was available - played the hell out of that too...

Command is a significant evolutionary step ahead - very significant. I have all the old game but there isn't a snowballs chance in He#$ I'd go back to them after playing command these past few years.
B

Looks like you go way back. I started gaming on a 486. My fixation with learning Harpoon is probably its collection of Cold War era scenarios (which I'm assuming it had plenty of).

[djoos5]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Harpoon was the first game I got for my brand new 8086 computer back in the day. Played the hell out of it, crashed about once every 10 minutes but back then that was nothing worry about, it got better. Got new scenarios via a dial up modem to the Harpoon BBS in New York City, the long distance charges were a PITA!

8086, That is awesome!

I was a fan of naval board games back then and owned the Victory games, as well as pen and paper harpoon. Clancy’s books were the rage and I was gobbling up all of his and Bond’s stories. I went into a computer store and saw the Harpoon software on the shelf and bought it - didn’t even have a computer!

So next, I went to one of the big electronic retailers at the time and spent a couple thousand dollars on my 286! It was expensive back then for the machines. My dad was saying, what do you need a computer for?

Anyway, it was a blast. Unfortunately, as systems improved I lost my ability to play these old games. That is how I found CMANO year back, by looking to see if someone, anywhere was rebooting the Harpoon 4 build. And man am I glad I found this game.

Do you guys remember Patriot? It was a bad attempt at a modern day ground warfare simulation made by Three Sixty.

[JPV511]

ORIGINAL: djoos5
...I went to one of the big electronic retailers at the time and spent a couple thousand dollars on my 286! It was expensive back then for the machines.

...as systems improved I lost my ability to play these old games. That is how I found CMANO year back, by looking to see if someone, anywhere was rebooting the Harpoon 4 build. And man am I glad I found this game.

Do you guys remember Patriot? It was a bad attempt at a modern day ground warfare simulation made by Three Sixty.

With kilobytes of RAM...kilobytes!

With subsequent hardware and OS upgrades my vast collection of games became unplayable as well. But the last few years my collection of games is starting to grow again, thanks to Matrix publishing fresh versions of classic titles or releasing "spiritual successors" of games I enjoyed in the past.

I didn't know Patriot even existed! I've been looking for a ground warfare counterpart to CMANO. Hopefully Warfare Sims will have a go at it?

[Gunner98]

spent a couple thousand dollars on my 286!

No kidding - when I got the 286, Harpoon crashes reduced to about once every half hour [:D] but I was in eastern Canada at the time and spent what you did and more!

Don't know 'Patriot' though.

I've been looking for a ground warfare counterpart to CMANO. Hopefully Warfare Sims will have a go at it?

You may want to take a look at 'The Operational Art of War IV', I've picked it up and it seems to be better than TOAW III but I haven't played with it enough to decide.

B

[JPV511]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98
You may want to take a look at 'The Operational Art of War IV', I've picked it up and it seems to be better than TOAW III but I haven't played with it enough to decide.

B

I'm still scratching the surface of TOAW III, actually. But it's a grander scale and not real time.

[stilesw]

Wow - Patriot. I had recently upgraded from a 286 to a 386 (speed demon at the time) and already loved Harpoon. So, when I saw Patriot I had to have it! What a disappointment - hard to use and rather "clunky" compared to Harpoon. The user community apparently agreed as it did not do well at all.

[stilesw]

JPV511,

You may be able to play some of those old games using DOSBox. Here are a couple of sites:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/ and
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/. I've used this one successfully with Windows 10.

-Wayne Stiles

[Randomizer]

Odd about Patriot, which I do not recall seeing before. The designer credit goes to Frank Chadwick, designer of some of Game Designers Workshop's (GDW) best board wargame titles like the very innovative Crimea, the outstanding Citadel (the entire 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu) and the multi-volume Assault series, perhaps the definitive hardcore tactical NATO vs. Warsaw Pact land warfare board game produced during the Cold War.

Crimea

Citadel

Assault

-C

[kevinkins]

Gee, I bought an 8087 since it had (dare I day) the math co-processor. "The purpose of the 8087 was to speed up computations for floating-point arithmetic, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root."

I was really a radical in those days.

Kevin

[Primarchx]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Odd about Patriot, which I do not recall seeing before. The designer credit goes to Frank Chadwick, designer of some of Game Designers Workshop's (GDW) best board wargame titles like the very innovative Crimea, the outstanding Citadel (the entire 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu) and the multi-volume Assault series, perhaps the definitive hardcore tactical NATO vs. Warsaw Pact land warfare board game produced during the Cold War.

Crimea

Citadel

Assault

-C

Frank also a key designer for the Command Decision I & II as well as Twilight 2000, both games I played the hell out of in the '90s.

[JPV511]

ORIGINAL: stilesw
You may be able to play some of those old games using DOSBox.

I already have DOSbox and installed a few games for it, but the small screen size is a turn off. Thanks for the suggestion, stilesw.

[stilesw]

Jeff,

There is (at least) one other possibility. You might check at www.gog.com. They often have older games that have been updated to run on more modern systems. I've found several there.

-Wayne

[nukkxx5058]

If I remember well, I think Patriot was totally buged at release and never maneged to get it work. And at the time, no internet, so no online updates. Had to wait for a floppy in a magazine ...