A Cold Cat Question

[Festive Palpy]

So I was playing the Straights of Malacca campaign mission, when one of my prowlers taking off called in Cold Cat and it was flying at an almost 60 degree angle not gaining any speed, crashing into the waves. I assume this was a launch failure. But I am seriously wondering how common this is and was it my fault.

[(MAL) CSS 7217]

Not your fault, but it is common

[Festive Palpy]

Well that is pretty sad. I completed that mission but there were a lot of blunders sort of like that one. An F-14 trying to evade a missile but flying into the ocean while doing so and one of my Hawkeye's just disappearing at some point.

[Hawk Eye]

I'd recommend that you disable "cold-cats" in the options menu. Not only is the chance of a cold-cat way too frequent, there is a good chance that a cold cat can bug the aircraft carrier so aircraft cannot take-off or land for the rest of the scenario/mission.
Edit:
Your F-14 may have been too low in altitude. That doesn't happen very often.
As for the loss of your E-2: aircraft have a chance of system/engine(etc.) failures so can spontaneously die for no reason, like the "Cold cat". The pilot will give give an audible alert like they were hit in combat. There is a chance the pilot is able to eject. The event is recorded as a combat loss in the records

[delta]

Wait there's an option to disable cold-cats? How come I never came across this...

I remember reading some review for this game where the guy said that if the rate of cold-cats actually happened in real life, the carrier would run out of planes in just a few days.

[peterbyrnes1]

How do you disable cold cats? I see nothing in the options menu...

[emileb]

The way to avoid Cold Cats is to place your needed aircraft on Alert 5. This warms up the catapults and you will notice no more Cold Cat crashes which will of course minimise your losses and maximise your % of mission effectiveness.
I bought this game off the shelf approx. 20 years ago and have never left it. I had it on CD ROM and threw it out but since bought it online and am playing it again. Every few years I get the urge to play it. I recently learnt about Steam and how i can have a repository of games and play them (generally) without PC crashes etc.
Fleet Command was originally made by Janes who specialised in combat simulations. In my opinion Fleet Command is the best of all their games. They don't exist anymore which is a shame.
So understand that this game is very close to the real thing and so you must place aircraft (beforehand) on the Alert 5, 15 , 30 and progress them through. I will typically go from hangar to Alert 5, wait 5 mins then launch. Since employing that process, i have not had a cold cat. Good luck.

[delta]

Originally posted by emileb:

The way to avoid Cold Cats is to place your needed aircraft on Alert 5. This warms up the catapults and you will notice no more Cold Cat crashes which will of course minimise your losses and maximise your % of mission effectiveness.

...

So understand that this game is very close to the real thing and so you must place aircraft (beforehand) on the Alert 5, 15 , 30 and progress them through. I will typically go from hangar to Alert 5, wait 5 mins then launch. Since employing that process, i have not had a cold cat. Good luck.

Does this still work if you have the fast launch option turned on?

[socradeath]

I tried, but still there was Cold Cat. 2nd launched aircraft fall down by cold cat.

[(MAL) CSS 7217]

Originally posted by socradeath:

I tried, but still there was Cold Cat. 2nd launched aircraft fall down by cold cat.

another way, but a bit tricky

click the aircraft when it is launch and set the altitude to 8 or 9

this will avoid Cold Cat, but you must be really quick

[chillstreem]

You can disable cold cats by editing the Fleet Command.ini file inside the game's installation folder. Under the [Cheats] section there is an entry named .NoColdCat
Change No to Yes.