Some good news and some bad news regarding yesterday's training mission.
The good news is that all pilots got their harpoons off against both sets of targets and achieved hits. Some Harpoons did not track to WP4 after launch on the second set of targets (one of mine included) likely do to a switchology/setup error since we do not practice with Harpoons very often (so good to fly a periodic refresher as we did).
Main learning point from the Harpoon exercise:
- When attempting to do a HPTP launch, the harpoon will steer towards whatever waypoint is selected at the time "HPTP" is boxed on the DDI. I suspect a few of us still had WP3 selected as our nav point when we selected HPTP and then later selected WP4 as nav point prior to launch. Those missiles turned to search bearing at WP3 (or straight to target if physically past WP3 at the time of launch)
Harpoons will likely come into play in the upcoming campaign, so pilots with some time to kill in the ensuing weeks on the range are encouraged to practice a bit more both BOL and BOL with Turnpoint launches. Doesn't look like there were any issues with the R/BL launches against the first set of targets.
The bad news is that ACLS is a complete debacle in Multiplayer. Even given ample spacing between commencing aircraft, the comms menu and call system is not set up to accommodate flights of more than 1 aircraft (suspect each aircraft would need to be placed in it's on mission editor group - which would affect datalink and other mission trigger parameters). All sorts of shenanigans ensued between improper auto responses from the carrier to pilots making calls, disappearing comms menu trees, dropped ACLS locks, etc.
In short - lesson learned and major changes/improvements will need to be made by ED before it could be considered a useful tool for inclusion in widespread squadron Operations. Sill may be worth leaving enabled in missions, just in case a pilot occasionally needs to use it to get aboard, but the system as it is modelled now is not reliable enough to count on for getting aboard in bad weather for widespread squadron use/mission planning.