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Command: Modern Operations
Asid:
Command: Modern Operations - The King is back
You thought lightning strikes just once? Think again! Command: Modern Operations, the sequel to 2013’s Wargame of The Year “Command - Modern Air/Naval Operations” is coming soon.
A dark UI for our dark times: Command’s user interface has been radically overhauled with a dark, sleek theme that emphasizes usability and style. In addition, Command can now be played either as a standard desktop windowed application or as a more traditional full-screen game.
Command in comfort: Hundreds of tweaks, changes and improvements on the user interface and gameplay experience directly based on player feedback. Minimaps? Check. Quickly load recent scenarios or saves? Yup. Real-time dynamic ORBATs of both friendly forces and known contacts? Yessir. Time-step sim execution to prevent “runaway sim”? Can do. Glorious victories or crushing defeats have never felt so easy to experience.
Treat your eyes while punishing your foes: Feast your vision on Command’s new smooth-flowing global map, complete with new high-resolution map layers that must be seen to be believed. More than half a terabyte's worth of imagery & terrain information at your fingertips to exploit in combat or just wander around. Optionally url up with Tacview* for real-time 3D visualization of the battlefield.
The war just got more ruthless: Don’t spend too long gawking at the pretty UI and maps, because the battlefield is even more alive and ready to crush you! Expanded ground ops let you take advantage of distinct terrain types (desert, forest, urban, swamps etc.) for mobility, weapon effects and visibility. Enhanced AI routines for dogfights and even more technical factors make your grip on air superiority more tenuous. The groundbreaking features of the “Chains Of War” campaign are now standard: Disrupt your enemy’s communications to isolate his units (but watch out for your own), perform scriptless amphibious, airdrop or pickup operations, watch as aircraft limber back shot almost to pieces and marvel at exotic new weaponry.
Jump quickly into battle, or build your own war: The new “Quick Battle Generator” lets you quickly get into the action without worrying about wider strategic or political complexities. Or use the scenario editor to put together your own dream battle just the way you want it. Enhanced scripting capabilities through the built-in Lua engine mean you can even create your own combat AIs. Think you can create your own WOPR/Joshua? Prove it!
Six years on and still the best: All the original Command official scenarios remastered from the ground up by professional scenario designer Rory Noonan (author of the “Silent Service” DLC), plus brand-new official and community scenarios to quench your mayhem appetite. Updated cold-war and modern-day databases with the latest in hardware and systems mean you’ll never run out of setups to try out. Seamlessly import and use your existing Command scenarios, saves, .inst files and more!
Command: Modern Operations. The king is back.
* Tacview not bundled with C: MO; separate purchase of Tacview Advanced Edition required.
MrsWargamer:
Probably TOO accurate for me :)
I want war to look more like a game. But that's my past speaking.
Asid:
--- Quote from: MrsWargamer on September 04, 2019, 02:09:26 PM ---Probably TOO accurate for me :)
I want war to look more like a game. But that's my past speaking.
--- End quote ---
Valid point. Others share that view also. Some games can go too far in the realism/accuracy direction for some players. To the point that they have difficulty fining the "game".
Me? I like the detail :book
Asid:
C:MO and Tacview working together!
Since we've got a lot of questions about Command: Modern Operations, here's a list to give you a better idea of what is C:MO about:
• C:MO is a new game with a new engine
• All CMANO scenarios can be loaded into CMO, so you will be able to play all your existing scenarios. The aim is to have CMO recognise your installed DLC for CMANO so all the content you already bought will just appear in CMO, assuming we can iron out all the technical wrinkles to make that happen!
• All base game scenarios from CMANO are being updated to add support for new features and generally improve them in CMO.
• All CMANO scenarios can be loaded into CMO, so you will play all your existing scenarios. The aim is to have CMO recognise your installed DLC for CMANO so all the content you already bought will just appear in CMO, assuming we can iron out all the technical wrinkles to make that happen!
• There will be a significant incentive for players who want to upgrade from CMANO to CMO, so you will not be paying the full price if you already own CMANO. Details TBD.
• All existing scenarios should work right out of the box, including purchased DLCs and community works.
• Tacview is supported for 3d models, ships, submarines and structures, and the 3d visualization is in real-time
Asid:
Command: Modern Operations Dev Interview Part I - Old and New Tools
9/23/2019
From Daniele Matrix/Slitherine
1) First of all, thanks a lot for this great opportunity and for answering some questions about your upcoming game Command: Modern Operations. May I start asking to introduce you and the rest of the team briefly for the few that might not know the “Man behind the Work”?
I am Dimitris, co-founder and head of development at WarfareSims. Apart from leading the development team, the job entails a lot of other things - pretty much anything that is not explicitly assigned to someone else on the team falls by default on my shoulders (yes, that means I also have to take care of the pizzas). It can definitely be a wild horse to ride, but the satisfaction can make it worth it.
The rest of the team is distributed literally around the world. We have members and contributors from pretty much the entire NATO and ex-SEATO spectrum. This makes coordination more challenging but does afford us some significant advantages in coverage, responsiveness and diversity.
2) CMANO has been for several years the most accurate, complex and realistic military simulator around. We know that its full potential has been understood by many Armed Forces around the World, for training and scenario analysis. Having said that, may I ask why and when you decided to move to C:MO and how the development of this title could impact the partnership with the military?
The rallying cry for CMO (or CMANO2 if you will, as it really is “Command 2” in all but name) during its development all these years has been “a better game first, a better simulation second”. Understanding this mindset takes a bit of elaboration.
As you know, we have steadily supported CMANO v1.x for six years now, with a series of major free updates. These updates provided a ton of simulation, mechanics & AI improvement, as well as content; it has been pointed out to us repeatedly that the changes/additions we’ve freely provided to CMANO easily compare to new full-price releases by other companies. However, you wouldn’t know this by comparing a screenshot from Command v1.0 to one from the current public version. Almost all the changes are “under the hood”, so to speak. With this in mind, improving the user interface and gameplay experience became a primary pillar in CMANO2’s development.
At the same time, our market audience composition has shifted. When we initially launched Command, there was only one version, and in that single version we had to pour everything we had in our minds and wanted to share with the world, both from a “game” perspective and a “serious simulation” one. This resulted in a wonderful but slightly bipolar product that sometimes couldn’t decide if it wanted to be above all a mainstream-friendly game or a professional-oriented tool. The branching-off of a dedicated pro-oriented series has liberated us from this conundrum and allowed each path to evolve optimized for its dedicated audience. While the underlying simulation core and various data are similar (and often identical), Command-PE is now firmly a sim-first product loaded to the brim with tools for the professional user, while CMANO and now CMO/CMANO2 are first are foremost (serious) games.
Once this design focus is absorbed, several priorities naturally emerge: The game must be easier on the eyes than before. It must be more visually appealing, without losing its serious foundations. It must be easier to learn, both on the user interface and also on the basic mechanics of modern warfare. It must hold the player's hand more in the beginning. It must avoid flooding the player with information. It must make it easier for the player to find the one specific bit of information (amongst the sea of data) that he's actually looking for. It must let the player put together a basic dust-up without too much consideration for geopolitical realism and diplomatic realities. In short, while remaining a top-notch simulation, it must also become a better game.
3) C:MO appears to be a major step forward from CMANO. A rewritten map engine, new UI, new capabilities, etc. One of the striking new element seems the ability to integrate tools from professional software. I’m talking about mainly the TacView and new map layers. Could you tell us more about them?
he new map layers is one of the features we are particularly proud of, as it has been one of the most persistent requests for years now. In summary, the layers are:
- BMNGv2, an improved version of NASA’s public “Blue Marble NG” global map
- Relief-90, a high resolution overlay optimized to show terrain features
- Stamen Terrain / Roads / Labels: This global map combines terrain, roads & cities and placenames down to a very high detail level (you can literally zoom down to house level). This map is kindly provided by the fine folks at Stamen (http://maps.stamen.com), whom we heartily recommend for any map-related project.
- Terrain land-cover. This is a new layer type, necessary for displaying the different land cover type (urban, forest, desert, snow etc.) at any location on the planet. This is tightly related to the improvements we have added to land operations.
- Sentinel-2 Cloudless: This is the same map that is browsable here: https://s2maps.eu/ . This allows us to provide global satellite imagery to a very good level of detail (it’s detailed enough that you can make out features at airbases, ports etc.), and thus serves as an excellent “baseline” layer for scenario authors to place their objects on, as well as a more immersive environment for players.
Tacview integration is another hotly-requested item for years now. We have been in close contact with Frantz Raia (creator of Tacview) over the years and he has made several additions to the software, upon our request, which have been very useful both to us and to his own professional work (such as the real-time streaming feature). We worked hard together with Frantz on finding a way to make the commercial version of CMANO work well with Tacview (the requirements, priorities and constraints are different than the pro implementation of this feature, which has been available for a while now).
So what we came up with is an optional ability to stream part of the simulation information to Tacview. Basically the player can select a “3D view” menu option, and if Tacview is installed, a new window pops up which contains the 3D visualization (this requires Tacview Advanced edition in order to work). This window behaves similar to all other secondary windows in Command, so it can be resized, placed anywhere atop the main map window, or parked on another monitor. The player can jump from one unit to another, rotate and plan the camera etc., just like when normally using Tacview as a standalone app. As I said this is an optional feature and Command can run just fine without it.
4) Any other software you think could be added in the future?
There are a number of different programs we have investigated for possible integration. Some of them are pure visualizers (or “image generators”, to use the defence industry lingo) similar to Tacview, while others are full-fledged simulation and analysis suites. Most of them are really more relevant to the defence industry rather than the commercial wargaming sector (unless there is a hidden untapped market on e.g. radio-frequency spectrum analysis!), but we are certainly open to pointers.
One suggestion that seems to bubble up fairly consistently is possible integration with either F4-BMS or DCS World, with Command acting as the operational/strategic “command and control” layer for these primarily tactical simulations. We haven’t really run the numbers yet to determine whether this would be a worthwhile investment (this would obviously depend on the work required to get things up and running), but it could be something worth considering at some point in the future.
PART II QUESTIONS: FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS - Tune on Wednesday 25th to check the second part of the Interview!
5) Speaking of new terrain types, we noticed that the announcement references improvements in ground operations. We also saw some screenshots with high-res maps with roads and similar infrastructures. Can you elaborate on what’s in store for digital grunts in CMO?
6) Let’s talk a bit about the naval component. What do you think is the most innovative feature that will be added, or the most significant improvement from CMANO?
7) Could you tell us a little more about what do you mean exactly by “realistic submarine comms”?
8) Beside naval, Air warfare has always been the other major focus in CMANO. Will C:MO players see differences in managing squadrons, targets, aircraft behavior and missions in general?
9) In the public Feature list, there is a mention on “Aircraft crew G-tolerance”. Could you elaborate this point a bit more?
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