Features, Upgrades and Fixes
Features, Upgrades and Fixes
Features, Upgrades and Fixes
The release of Harpoon 3, Advanced Naval Warfare v 3.9.0 is the latest evolutionary change
from the legendary Harpoon naval simulation.
Input from players and professionals alike stretching back to the simulation’s beginning as a
miniature game in the 1980s are all taken into account. The result is an experience as close to
being in a naval CIC without actually being on board a warship.
Harpoon 3 Advanced Naval Warfare may be played either single-player against a sophisticated
AI, or multiplayer against live opponents across the Internet.
Here are some of the upgrades, features and fixes found in the exciting experience.
General Improvements
General improvements to the simulation include clamping uncertainty zones to map boundaries,
an added “exit” button for the Battleset selection dialog box, improved procedures for underway
replenishment and refinement to the navigation system when operating near coastlines.
For Mac users with PC emulation, Ctrl-B has been added as a hotkey substitute for BOL attacks,
since certain emulators disable the F1 key.
Scenario Realism
Improvements increase scenarios’ realism. For example, helicopters may now perform at VLow
altitude. ASW Patrol missions will now attack unidentified submarines in their area of interest
instead of merely observing them. Snorkeling submarines are louder and easier to detect.
Changes have been made upgrading ECM, Passive Sonar and land damage.
Facilities
Land Facilities no longer take cumulative damage, as do ships. The 4.1 Paper rules for structure
damage were implemented in part. If a land object (other than runways) takes 50% or more of its
damage rating in a 180-second period, it is at risk of destruction. The chance of destruction is
proportional to the percentage of its damage taken up to 100% chance of destruction at 100%
damage.
Instead of a percentage, land objects will be reported as "Operational" or "Hit". "Hit" indicates
the object has taken damage within the past 180 seconds and will be checked for destruction in
the near future. "Operational" means it is okay. Destroyed land objects go away immediately, so
there is no special status indicator for that status.
Runways
Runways only take critical damage that reduce their operational size. Exception: They are
destroyed if in the surface destruction radius of surface or airburst nuclear warheads. EMP, FAE,
Frag and Guns smaller than 80mm will not damage the runway, but will help rid it of any parked
aircraft (over-capacity bases put their extra planes on the runway for damage purposes). Other
damage may inflict cuts on the runway, reducing its effective size (usable length for takeoff and
landing) for supporting operations. Runway criticals for purposes of cuts and destroying parked
aircraft are one per 50DP of warhead (after armor effects, if any) rounded up. Note that FAE,
Cluster Weapons and Nukes will do much more damage to parked aircraft.
ECM Changes
As the user is aware, AGSI has been gradually shifting Harpoon 3 ANW over to be more
compliant with the Harpoon 4.1 (soon to be Harpoon5) Paper rules. This will lead to a
fundamental change in how databases operate.
Upon the release of v3.8.0.10, Harpoon5 paper rules have been applied to ECM in Harpoon 3
ANW. A noncooperative jammer within the radar horizon (defined as not being on the same
network as the detector) reduces detection range by 75% (25% for radars with the Phased-Array
flag set). Passive RD on radars is applied as a reduction of the range effect in percent (i.e.
Passive RD of 10 reduces ECM effect to 65% / 15% range reduction).
A “noncooperative jammer” is defined as any jammer on a side that is either neutral or hostile to
the side that the user is currently playing. H5 rules currently abstract ECM; the reasoning is
explained in section 6.7 of the H4 rules:
Therefore, all radars being jammed will have detection ranges reduced by 75% of their range.
Radars with the phased array flag activated will have this reduced to 25%. Furthermore, the DB
Designer will have the option of fine-tuning that by using the Passive RD field. The number
specified in the field will be a percentage increase in detection range.
Phased array radars should have the “Phased Array” flag set in the database.
Therefore:
SPS-49(v)5 2D Air Search Radar Peak Power: 360kW giving an Output of 552 Detection ranges
of: 338/213/159/68/20nm for an average input value of -2136.
If Passive RD is zero when the radar is jammed then the detection ranged will be reduced to 25%
of those numbers above. Any value above zero in the Passive RD will increase the detection
range by that value. So...
Passive RD=10 then detection range is reduced by 65%, 20 results in a detection reduction of
55% and so on.
Also, keep in mind the radar horizon. This significantly reduces shipboard jammers' capability
against low-flying aircraft and missiles because these platforms will be flying below the
jamming beam. On the other side of the coin, airborne jammers such as the EA-18 Growler will
be able to control the radius of their jamming by simply changing altitude. Please check the H3
ANW Platform Workbook for details on the radar horizon.
It is important to note that ECM affects the detection range only and not the cross section value
of the target being searched. Therefore, if radar would normally pick up a target at 100nm, then
under jammed conditions it would pick it up at 25nm. Phased arrays would pick up the target at
75nm and radar with an ECCM rating of 25% would pick up the target at 50nm (75%-25%=50%
range reduction). Either way, maximum jamming range is set by the radar horizon of the
jamming platform.
How effective ECM really is IRL is unknown. What is known is that high-power barrage
jammers (i.e., Side Globe on Slava-class cruisers) are rapidly becoming useless with the
development of Home-On-Jam and seekers with Frequency Agility. In addition, the CPUs
increasing power results in an exponential increase frequency scanning and power distribution
(one source states a tune rate of 25 GHz per microsecond across a total bandwidth of 4.5 GHz
with an accuracy of 2 MHz in 100 nanoseconds [clear as mud no?]).
Another indication of just how effective ECM can be is shown in the increasing number of new
weapons that have dual-mode (a radar seeker and some other kind of seeker like IIR or GPS) or
nonradar seekers. Norway's new NSM has an IIR seeker and SLAM-ER has an IIR seeker with a
man-in-the-loop to add an operator veto.
Ship-to-Ship fuel transfer is now functional in 3.9.0. For DB authors, this means that tankers will
now require correct fuel loads based on reference material. The number of ships that can be
refueled at once is dependant on data flags and can be set to up to four per side.
More and better tools are now available for those who create their own scenarios and databases.
Mission Delay timing values are visible and editable in the Edit Mission dialogue box.
Aircraft may now set their parent unit using a hot key combination or the menu. In addition,
launches may be scrubbed and the aircraft return to a ready, unassigned state.
The Sanity Check feature now looks for overfilled mounts and magazines.
Bug Fixes
Numerous annoying bugs have been tracked down an eliminated. For example, problems with
window sizing for scenario maps and Unit Status have been corrected; navigation issues no
longer prevent UNREP operations; ESM contacts reports now display the detected sensors.
Air Groups are now able to use air-to-air refueling. Another air fix is that aircraft are no longer
reported as being at “surface” altitude.
In addition, changes have been made improving and correcting aircraft rate of climb and dive.
In multiplayer games, resigning with an aircraft launch in progress no longer results in a server
crash. On-station victory conditions will now trigger end of scenario. In addition, a chat window
now automatically opens with the scenario.
Several crash problems have been resolved in the scenario editor and missing Comm flags have
been added to the database editor interface.
Even More
There are more features, fixes and upgrades too numerous to mention. The end result is the most
advanced, realistic naval simulation on the market today.
H3 ANW 3.9.0 is truly a team effort. Many very talented people put their time and effort into
creating this latest evolution of an already legendary naval simulation.
Credits:
Producer
Russell Sharp
Developers
Russell Sharp
Media Collection
Scott Boles
Anthony Eischens
Eric Grover
Brad Leyte
Norm Lunde
Technical Editor
Darren Buckley
Dale Hillier
Ralf Koelbach
Jeff Krump
Jan Masterson
Steve Mills
Craig Paffhausen
Steve Reynolds
A Special Thanks to our Professional customers whose support has provided the architectural
basis for the Media Widget and other changes now and in the future:
Australian Department of Defense - Defense Simulation Office - David Oliver & Mike
Price
Thanks to Darren Buckley and the rest of the HUD3 team. Grab the latest version of the HUD3
at http://hud3.harpoon5.com
FIXES
General
Some scenarios on load would have their scenario map display truncated
The Unit Status Window would not correctly resize when using a Window Scheme
The Database Display window incorrectly shoed the Near ATA value for weapons in both
the Near ATA and Far ATA locations
Crash when opening Sensor Settings dialog with multiple units drag-selected
Simulation
Under some conditions, Daylight Savings Time conditions would cause contact report
times to be displayed as one hour off the actual time
Contacts with ESM information would not display the detected sensors
Aircraft in Air Groups that were assigned to a mission would be unable to use air-to-air
refueling
Ships reduced to 0 speed would not be removed from their group, which would likely
never move again
Several instances of math overflow/underflow are now checked for and handled in a non-
fatal fashion
Contact speed information was being dropped, resulting in incorrect flagging of hostile
units as "Probable Kill"
Protect Station victory conditions would fail if the units to be kept out were destroyed
Specific Strike missions could cause neutral units to be incorrectly flagged as hostile
Weapons with midcourse guidance would home on the true target location instead of the
target location as known to the controlling unit
Aircraft Rate of Climb was incorrectly floored at 100m per simulation interval
Aircraft dive rate was not being correctly calculated (was equal to climb rate but should
have been double)
A unit hit in rapid succession by multiple weapons and destroyed could be counted
multiple times for victory conditions
Uncertainty zones that got to close to the North or South pole could cause a hang and
eventual crash
Ships with an uncertain location that had their centroid over land would be reported as
"Submerged"
The On-Station victory condition evaluation could crash under some circumstances
Missions would not always be notified to recompute intercepts when their target changed
course or speed
Corrected an error that would generate incorrect short ranges on identified passive sonar
contacts
Fixed a hang when pressing "Ok" on Weapon Reload dialog for an UNREP operation
Fixed a case where gunfire would be resolved after the firing unit had moved out of range
of the target (or vice versa) if the fire had been ordered while the units were in range
Multiplayer
Player-controlled sides would not be correctly flagged on the server, resulting in AO rules
being applied (most notably regarding communications difficulty settings)
Scenario Editor
Editing a landed aircraft record in such a way that it matched another landed aircraft
record present on the same parent unit could cause a crash
Communications links would not be correctly restored if the side flagship was deleted
Database Editor
Several Comm type flags were missing from the database editor interface
FEATURES
General
Added a runtime check for overfilled mounts and magazines (a situation which could
cause program errors in mount reloading and UNREP processes). Excess weapons are
chucked overboard and a message is displayed.
Simulation
Passive Sonar classification times and probabilities updated to match paper rules v4.1
ASW Patrol missions will now attack unidentified submarines in their area of interest
Facility-type units damage resolution changed to more closely match paper rules v4.1
Scenario Editor
Mission Delay timing values are now visible and editable in the Edit Mission dialog
Added handling for formerly out-of-range years. Years from 1900 to 2154 are now
supported.
Aircraft may now have their parent unit set using Ctrl-P or Edit|Units|Set Parent Unit,
then clicking on the new parent with the hand pointer
Edit Unit Aircraft no longer affects munitions on the parent unit when using Aircraft
Logistics
Database Editor