H3 ANW Stratotankers get stuck.

[harryhh]

Hi All,


In two scenarios now, my Statotankers have gotten stuck in place in the air and won't move. I believe this happens when you tell a unit to refuel at the tanker, and then interrupt the process either by then sending the unit someplace else, or by prematurely stopping the refueling process before it is finished. The first time this happened in an earlier scenario, the tanker became unstuck at some point after I had several units refuel form it. Maybe it became unstuck because at some point I had told a previously interrupted refueling to go back an refuel again. Thereby freeing the tanker to move again.


In the scenario I am currently playing, two tankers are stuck in place for some time now with several refuelings at each one. But, the tankers remain stuck.


How do I get them unstuck??


Thanks,
Harry

[Herman]

I think that the 'stuck' mechanism is the method by which the game handles re-fueling operations. Of course, the designers could always have forced the tankers to circle at loiter speed to allow the aircraft coming to refuel to catch the tankers, but the freeze/stuck is a close approximation of the rendezvous process.

The only thing I can think of to recommend, at this time, is just to try and re-plot new courses for the aircraft and possibly changing their speed/altitude.

If you have a saved game with the 'stuck tankers', please feel free to attach them. Often, a saved game file is the fastest and easiest way to run down problems. If SubSim is unable to accept a file as an attachment, you can always post them to the HarPlonkedHQ site forum.

http://www.harplonkhq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8

[harryhh]

Hello Herman,


I remember chatting with you in many posts back around 2009, I think.


I remember playing my new version of Harpoon, which must be this v3.7.0.0 that I'm playing now. I had some problems with the game, such as Harms wouldn't hit anything, and they were experimenting with having the ships and planes fire missiles automatically without the abillity for the player to control it. I really didn't like that since it didn't do anywhere near as good a job of it as I could.


I must have loaded some patches when I played it back then because now the v3.7.0.0 with no patches is working fairly well. Anyway, back then, there must have been a problem when I loaded the game on my computer, it played so, so, slow. Couldn't even turn it up to 5 seconds per second without it the game jittering severely. The game, with it's problems, didn't seem to be worth playing so, I didn't bother trying to fix the slow problem and just quit playing. Luckily, it's playing properly now.


At that time I had a notebook with tips and tricks to work around some of the bugs. Can't find it now. I don't remember if there even was a work around for the stuck stratotankers.


I don't see any way to attach a file here so, I'll take a look at that other site.


Thanks Herman.

[harryhh]

I'm the OP.


I did a little testing. I didn't yet find a way to get a stratotanker unstuck but, it looks like the thing to do is not to get it stuck in the first place.


Before you tell a plane to refuel at the stratotanker, make sure that the tanker has no waypoint to go to and is loitering. You may have to check its speed to set it to loiter.


When you tell a plane to refuel, do not interrupt it on the way to the tanker or stop the refueling early. Make sure the plane has completed refueling. The planes flight time should be counting down and, the stratotanker should be loitering in a circle constantly changing direction.


If you tell a plane or group to refuel and then accidentally interrupt its course to the tanker, tell it to refuel again or the tanker will become stuck.


I have tried telling a plane to refuel then hit the unassign key for the plane. The tanker will still become stuck in place. You must again tell the plane to refuel and let it complete the refueling. That should allow the tanker to move again.

[Herman]

Glad to see that you found your own work-around solution to the re-fueling quirk.

I had another suggestion you might wish to try to 'unstick' the tankers. You can try and order them to Return To Base. Once they turn around and start moving, you might be able to change their plotted path and order them to stay on station.

Be aware that one solution may work in a particular game version, but not be of help in other game versions.

[Herman]

Originally Posted by harryhh

I remember playing my new version of Harpoon, which must be this v3.7.0.0 that I'm playing now. I had some problems with the game, such as Harms wouldn't hit anything, and they were experimenting with having the ships and planes fire missiles automatically without the abillity for the player to control it. I really didn't like that since it didn't do anywhere near as good a job of it as I could.

I must have loaded some patches when I played it back then because now the v3.7.0.0 with no patches is working fairly well.

If you are playing v3.7.0.0, I think that it is the original ANW version released in 2006. If you have applied no patches, then it is the basic version. I disagree on the ability to set the Weapons Tight command. As far as I can remember, the command was broken as soon as the game v3.7.0.0 released in 2006 and was only finally fixed in the HUE version release v3.10.0 in 2011 or so. Of course, HUE v3.10.0 also introduced a whole lot of new problems at the same time.

FYI, the Weapons Tight command works in v3.6.3