Home of Wargamers 2025: “Tides Of War” DLC announced – Project Hannibal (revised ground combat) early hints

September 26, 2025 · Posted in Command · Comment 

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More summer love: Community Scenario Pack #51 released

August 22, 2025 · Posted in Command · Comment 

Following the release of the v1.08 update for Command, which includes the new v512 databases, Kushan has now also updated the famous Community Scenario Pack (CSP), the Command community’s curated anthology of user-created scenarios. The new update refreshes 4 existing works and contains 13 new scenarios:

Aegean Hunting Party, 1968: It came as a bit of a surprise that the main Soviet target was not West Germany, but Turkey.  Following missile boat attacks that sank three NATO vessels in the Black Sea, the Soviets and their allies began a massive assault on Turkish air bases and air defenses.  At the same time, Soviet and Syrian forces struck Turkish and British vessels in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean.
It is now the second day of the war.  As Commander of NATO forces in the Eastern Mediterranean (COMEDEAST), you are responsible for naval operations in the waters surrounding Greece.  At the moment, your main concerns are to clear these waters of Soviet forces and to get to safety any merchant vessels trying to reach Greek ports.

Casamance 1 – Arrival, 1986: This is the first of a set of scenarios using the Casamance Conflict in West Africa as their background.
The ongoing Casamance Conflict started in the 1970s.  Members of certain ethnic groups living in the southern part of Senegal (the Casamance region) believe they are marginalized and oppressed and seek to create an independent state.  Fifty years later, they have not achieved this goal, but they have also not given up.

Casamance 2 – Reconnaissance, 1986: This is the second of a set of scenarios using the Casamance Conflict in West Africa as their background.

Chafarinas, 2029: The year 2028 was marked by a serious deterioration of relations between Spain and Morocco.  Morocco has escalated the conflict in the gray zone regarding the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla using the usual hybrid tools: migratory pressure, economic isolation, media and social media campaigns.
Spain has closed air and naval traffic in the Strait and the Alboran Sea, although there are still some civilian vessels in the area. The Spanish government must successfully resolve the crisis as soon as possible.

Charlie Deuce Takes the Lead, 1970: It is 1970.  Yesterday, the Cold War went hot. Winning the war against the Soviet Union will require NATO to protect vital sea lanes.
You have been ordered to find and destroy any Soviet submarines in the waters south of the Italian island of Sardinia, a choke point for both military and commercial shipping traffic moving through the Mediterranean.

Defending Northern Turkey, 1968: Even early in the morning it is warm, and it looks like it is going to be another scorching day here in Eskisehir.  Unfortunately, you are beginning to think it will not only be the weather that gets hot.
In recent weeks the Soviets have moved a lot of military hardware into the Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania. All this could simply mean the Warsaw Pact is preparing for a large military exercise.  Or they could be preparing to attack NATO. The Soviets have been getting away with a lot in recent years.  Do they think they could get away with attacking Turkey?  Will the other members of NATO fight to defend Turkey if it means war with the Soviet Union?

Invasion Re-Invasion, 2025: It’s early days of the Great South China Sea War and the PLA has finally made its move on Taiwan.  Most US and allied forces are tied up further north in that theater. Meanwhile, the Chinese Navy has snuck into Renai islands off Malaysia, a N-S diamond shaped island just outside their 9 (10) dash line near the south end of the SCS.  The island would be a key base over 400nm closer to the critical straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok than their nearest reef outpost.  They have caught us off guard… for the moment.

Khrushchev’s War, Day 3 – Duel Near Cape Verde, 1957: It is the third day of the Third World War. NATO, taken by surprise, is trying to blunt the Soviet advance and to organize counterattacks.
The Portuguese colony in Cape Verde would not seem to have much to attract the attention of the Soviets, but it does have an airport that facilitates air traffic between Europe and Latin America.  A Soviet surface group on its way back from the Caribbean (and believed to be bringing supplies to the rebels in Cuba) may be getting ready to attack that airport and other facilities on the Island of Sal.

Operation British Harpoon, 1968: It is the second day of the War. As Commander-in-Chief Western Fleet (CINC WF) of the Royal Navy, you also serve as the Commander-in-Chief of NATO’s Eastern Atlantic and Channel commands.  At the moment one of your most pressing concerns is to eliminate the threat of any Soviet submarines that may have sortied out of the Baltic Sea and into the waters surrounding the British Isles.
The next few days are going to be very busy.

Operation Rising Lion (Improved), 2025: The world holds its breath. After years of shadow wars and diplomatic failures, the crisis with Iran has reached its boiling point. Intelligence is unequivocal: Iran is on the cusp of developing a nuclear weapon, a threat the State of Israel cannot allow to materialize. The time for talk is over.
As commander of the Israeli Defense Forces, you are about to launch Operation Rising Lion, the most complex and audacious military operation in a generation. This is a single, decisive strike to dismantle Iran’s nuclear ambitions permanently.

Operation True Promise III, 2025: This is the fictional sister scenario to Operation Rising Lion, from the Iranian perspective.

The C-Team, 1968: 55 days ago, the conflict known by many as World War 3 started. Until now, the Caribbean has mostly remained quiet, except for a few Soviet submarines most of which were sunk while trying to enter the Caribbean through one of its many passages and channels.
This all changed 4 days ago when Castro delivered an hour-long speech denouncing the US and its allies, accusing the US of planning to invade Cuba, decrying the continued US ‘occupation’ of Guantánamo Bay and ordering all Cuban forces to be placed at the highest level of readiness.
In response, the US heavily reinforced its forces in the area and prepared to take action to remove the Cuban threat.

Turkish Warships Join the Fight, 1968: It is 1968 and World War III appears to have started. Earlier this morning, the Warsaw Pact began a series of massive attacks against NATO forces, primarily those in Turkey. While Soviet intentions are not fully known at this moment, it looks as if a major goal of the offensive is to seize control of the Turkish Straits.
As Commander Northeastern Mediterranean (COMEDNOREAST), you are responsible for NATO operations in Turkish waters.  It has already been a very bad day. You are looking forward to the opportunity to avenge the vessels lost earlier this morning.

The new community scenario pack is, as always, available for download at the Command Team site, and also on the Steam workshop.

The CSP now proudly counts 618 scenarios in its stable!

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Born on the fourth of July: Command v1.08 update now available

July 4, 2025 · Posted in Command · Comment 

Well, that took a bit longer than planned; but it happily coincided with the July 4th holiday, so a silver lining in every cloud. The long-awaited massive v1.08 update for Command is now officially released and available for download through Matrix Games and Steam. The full release notes are available HERE.

We have previously covered at length the new very substantial features of this update, so it is not necessary to re-iterate them here.

One thing that is definitely worth pointing out, is that included in this update are the radically overhauled scenarios of the “The Silent Service” DLC. As a reminder, we previously had to temporarily pause the sale of this DLC because of reported serious gameplay issues stemming from various simulation improvements (e.g. refinements in certain aspects of the sonar model). We stated at the time that we would renovate these scenarios when possible and make them available for free to existing owners, together with reinstating sale availability of this DLC. The time for this has now come; the refreshed scenarios are bundled with the v1.08 update (so anyone who already owns the DLC can freely play them), and once the player community confirms that all serious issues have been eliminated, we will be free to make the DLC available for sale again.

The v1.08 update, then, is cause for celebration for multiple reasons.

The Command dev team is already hard at work preparing the pro-oriented mirror counterpart of this update, the CPE v2.4.2 update, as well as preparing for the upcoming 12th Command-PE User Event in Brussels. No rest for the wicked indeed!

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Autonomous killing machines, comms jamming, 3D terrain view, shoddy anti-ship missiles, doctrine/ROE advances and more: Command v1.08 public-beta now available

April 29, 2025 · Posted in Command, Command PE · Comment 

It’s been only a few months since the releases of CMO v1.07 and CPE v2.4.1, and the Command dev team has been as frantically busy as ever. The next major update, CMO v1.08, has now been made available for a public-beta preview. The full release notes (and instructions on how to get it) are available HERE.

In addition to the previously covered side-enablers and GNSS disruption, the new update also packs a whole lot of new major features. Let’s take a look.

From cheap closely-tethered quads to fully-unleashed murderbots: Drone Autonomy Levels

We have a separate article dedicated to this new feature, as it’s a meaty one. Doing drones justice is table stakes in 2025, and properly demonstrating their comms vulnerability as well as their different degrees of autonomy is an essential part of this. Drones have different autonomy levels which dictate what they can and cannot do when they are comms-isolated (which is a common predicament in a comms-challenged peer-conflict battlespace). If you thought the flying hunter-killers in Terminator were a bit too sci-fi, prepare to be amazed.

Static on the radio: Comms jamming comes to commercial CMO

Ever since comms disruption and its effects were introduced in Command back in 2017, comms jamming as an attack vector was available only in Command-PE. While it was possible to simulate it in CMO as well (look at the “Bekaa Valley” scenario in the “Shifting Sands” campaign), this required some Lua scripting. Given that the main way to disrupt comms is through jamming, and the importance of this attack vector in disrupting drone communications (and thus highlighting their different autonomy levels) it now makes sense to bring script-less comms jamming also to the commercial version of Command.

If you need a refresher on the effects of having the command and control over your units abruptly cut off, have a look at our original coverage on this feature. Suffice to say, a number of things happen when your radios & datalinks are chocked with static, none of them good.

Grand vistas: 3D Terrain view and vertical scaling

This may be seen as the next evolutionary step for the map UI after the (enthusiastically received) “pin-cushion” view. In addition to showing aerospace units at their true altitudes, it is now possible to display the terrain itself in top-down stereoscopic 3D (users of Google Earth or other GIS apps should be familiar with this). This can be useful for both air and ground operations, in better appreciating vertical differences and understanding how the terrain geometry limits available operational options. Phil Gatcomb has already covered this new feature, check it out.

An army runs on doctrine and diesel: Doctrine & ROE UI/UX improvements

This has been a popular user request: While the various doctrine & ROE options are ridiculously powerful and flexible (and they explain why we don’t have to artificially nerf/OP hardware in order to recreate historical results), keeping track of them and being aware of possible conflicts between them or other issues can sometimes be a chore.

So, we set out to radically improve the UI and user experience on this vital aspect of Command:

Instead of having all baseline doctrine options crammed in a single panel, they are now logically divided by operational branch, in a pseudo-tabbed interface. This makes it faster to locate the options of interest and also allows more space for future additions.

Moreover, the population of options can be dynamically adjusted depending on the type of the selected platform (so for example, if you select a friendly submarine, options related to air operations are not shown). In this example, a single ship is selected, and only the doctrine settings that are relevant to surface ships are displayed:

We asked you if you still wanted/used the quick-access panel for the doctrine options on the right-hand column, and you overwhelmingly said no (and we agreed). So, we ripped that off and replaced it with something you will probably find more useful: An intelligent mechanism for detecting common doctrine-related problems or conflicts and (semi-automatically, with user consent) correcting them. Here is an example of a common issue (conflict between mission- and unit-level WRA setting) being detected and a notice presented to the player, who can then resolve this with just a single button click (click on animation to enlarge):

The system is deliberately extensible so that it can be further enriched in the future with other common issues encountered, as highlighted by community feedback. So, tell us what torments you on doctrine management, and we can try to encapsulate the solution there.

When men were men, and missiles slammed into hills: Early anti-ship missile overland restrictions

Here’s something you may not have realized until now: Early low-flying anti-ship missiles (from granddaddy P-15 Termit/SS-N-2 “Styx” up to and including the first versions of Exocet and Harpoon) had rather primitive systems to keep them flying safely above the sea waves. These early guidance systems (simple radar altimeters or even just gyroscopes) were designed primarily for sea-skimming flight, relying on a relatively flat sea surface to maintain a consistent altitude. They were therefore limited in their ability to follow flight paths that took them overland. When directed overland, the missiles encountered varied terrain such as hills, ridges, or buildings, which their rudimentary altimeters could not detect or adjust for. As a result, the missiles were unable to compensate for elevation changes and often crashed into the ground before reaching their targets.

Now if you are in the middle of the Atlantic or in the North Sea, shooting every Harpoon at hand against the incoming Soviet/Russian Northern Fleet, this doesn’t matter much. But if you are playing hide-and-seek in, say, the Norwegian fjords, the Swedish archipelago, the Aegean Sea or the strait of Malacca, it becomes a real constraining factor real fast.

Post-Cold War littoral operations emphasized this handicap even more, and as a result evolved guidance systems from the mid-90s onwards addressed this limitation. New systems like LRASM, NSM or Onyx/Yakhont (SS-N-26 Strobile), as well as evolved iterations of older classics like Exocet Block 3 or Harpoon Block 2 have no problem navigating themselves overland, even often using the terrain to their advantage in order to surprise a target ship near the coast.

Command now models this factor with a new opt-in realism option: “ASCM terrain-following restrictions” (disabled by default, to avoid disruption on existing scenarios). When this feature is active, early ASCMs who lack true TF capability cannot overfly land with elevation higher than their cruise altitude (unit is actively blocked from firing, both in auto-fire and also through the manual weapon allocation window). If the weapon is fired nevertheless (e.g. BOL shot) and encounters terrain higher than its cruise altitude, it smashes into it. (This means that is possible, but risky, to fire such missiles over very low-elevation land terrain such as atolls etc. – just like in real life.)

Non-TF ASCMs with waypoint capability (e.g. Harpoon Block 1C) can be fired with a plotted course around landmasses, to avoid the “land between shooter and target” restriction when this feature is active. On the manual weapon allocation window, if the selected salvo has a suitable complex course that avoids landmass, non-TF ASCMs show up as “green” (can fire).

Grinding like a chad: Chainsaw/Grinder patrol movement style

Another consistent request from the user community. The grinder or chainsaw patrol pattern is a naval air patrol tactic used to maintain continuous surveillance or presence over a specific area (typically over the sea) by a sequence of aircraft flying overlapping racetrack or circular routes.

In this pattern, multiple aircraft (such as maritime patrol planes, airborne early warning aircraft, or fighters) take turns flying long, looping tracks in a coordinated sequence, where one aircraft is always on station while others are en route to or from the patrol zone. As each aircraft nears the end of its time on station, the next aircraft arrives to take over, creating a seamless “grinding” or “sawing” motion of coverage. This graphic may better illustrate this:

(original credit: https://x.com/RSE_VB/status/1897710024937365913 )

The purpose of the grinder pattern is to provide persistent situational awareness, surveillance, or defensive coverage over critical areas like carrier strike groups, chokepoints, or potential enemy approaches. Its utility lies in efficiently managing limited air assets to ensure that a surveillance or combat-ready presence is maintained 24/7, while allowing for necessary rotations, refueling, and maintenance without leaving gaps in coverage.

While this patrol pattern was originally developed primarily for aircraft in an air-surveillance context, Command allows using it for any platform type in any kind of patrol mission (e.g. ships in an ASuW, ASW or sea-control patrol).

UPDATE: A late arrival: Depressed-trajectory ballistic missiles

This is a new feature introduced in Build 1662, during the v1.08 public beta. By default, most ballistic missiles use the lofted/”high” trajectory leg when fired at less-than-maximum range. (When the firing range is just a small fraction of the max range, this can result in absurdly high apogees; witness, for example, the recent North Korean missile tests.) 

Instead, missiles who have the “depressed trajectory” capability will use the “low” trajectory option in any less-than-maximum range shot. This has several advantages: A reduced flight time, a (much) lower apogee which means a reduced detection range & reaction time for enemy ground-based sensors, and spending a higher portion of the flight inside the atmosphere is very useful for systems that utilize maneuverable reentry vehicles (MaRVs).

(NOTE: This feature requires the v512+ databases. Also, initially only the Russian Iskander-M/E and its North Korean analog KN-23 are flagged as such in the database. If you have sources for other systems having the same capability, feel free to share them on the DB tracker: https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cmo-db-requests/)

Other bits of note

  • A whole lot of improvements and fixes related to airstrike-planning logics and refueling. If you’ve given up on a specific scenario (or historical raid) because you couldn’t get the AI to behave exactly as needed, give it another try now.
  • A longstanding problem with scenario performance degrading due to a ballooning message backlog has been fixed. If you have developed a habit of saving & reloading large scenarios every few hours to work around this, rejoice.
  • The “significant hiccup every 1 sim-minute if a lot of airstrikes are preparing to launch” problem has been fixed.
  • All the scenarios in the “The Silent Service” DLC have been overhauled, with all known issues fixed and various tweaks and improvements applied.
  • Numerous other scenarios have received various fixes and improvements, and the DB description files have been updated, courtesy of Steven Lohr and kgambit.
  • Contact datablocks now conform much closer to established NATO & APP-6 standards, discriminating between a contact’s track number and its classification/ID name. The amount of information shown on datablocks (just track & name? track & name and kinematics? everything?) is now also configurable, which can help A LOT in decluttering “busy” maps.
  • The Sentinel-2 map layer now uses per-zoom-level tile packing, which allows increased performance and also faster download and installation, particularly on external hard disks (if the bane of your CMO Steam installation is “stuck at 99% FOR HOURS”, this should be your salvation).
  • The unit-status thumbnail and the DB-viewer now use webp (instead of jpg) as the image format, which thanks to its greater efficiency both takes up less space and is much faster to download (You may temporarily have a shortage of shown images as these are repopulated from the server on-demand)
  • When running in interactive-GUI mode (not benchmark), the simulation thread gets set to “Lowest” priority. This reduces raw sim-engine performance, but has two UX benefits:
    (a) It reduces the impact of sim execution on UI responsiveness (map zoom/pan lag, general UI lag etc.) and
    (b) It reduces the impact of sim execution on the overall OS responsiveness (If you’ve ever observed your entire OS respond sluggishly while an epic missile-spam schlachtfest unfolds in Command, you know).
  • Plus numerous other additions, tweaks and fixes as laid out in detail in the release notes.

Given the “public beta” nature of this release, we are eagerly awaiting for the user community’s feedback. Don’t be shy, tell us what you like, what you hate, and what doesn’t work as designed (or as expected, which isn’t always the same thing). And above all, have fun!

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From commercial toy-quads to free-ranging hunter-killers: Drone-autonomy levels in Command

April 5, 2025 · Posted in Command, Command PE · Comment 

“True drone autonomy isn’t just about flying without a pilot—it’s about making real-time decisions in unpredictable environments, with limited data, constrained power, and no room for error”
– ChatGPT, reflecting on its siblings on the front line

Uncrewed combat & support platforms (aka “drones”) are all the rage these days in defence circles, and not without good reason. However, they suffer from a fundamental limitation compared to more “traditional” crewed platforms: When not under direct human control (ie. in a realistically comms-challenged environment in any non-lopsided conflict), their ability to autonomously carry out their intended mission is drastically curtailed. By how much? Well, contrary to men, not all drones are created equal – and hence one of the new major simulation features of Command: variable drone autonomy levels.

The question of how much autonomy we are willing to grant to conscious-less machines armed with lethal weaponry has long escaped the confines of legal & ethical theoretical discussions, and is already hammered in the front lines of Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, as well as the virtual battlefields of the major powers where doctrine, tactics and operational art are forged (see this excellent article by Bill Sweetman on the dilemmas of how best to employ CCAs in a future peer conflict).

Public western/NATO literature on the subject commonly refers to different degrees of “drone autonomy” and then assigns individual uncrewed systems to each of them, to distinguish their autonomous capability. The dev team’s chosen structure closely (though not precisely) follows this public nomenclature. Let us explore the different levels and what they actually mean in the field, when their comms are lost:

– Remotely Piloted: These are the cheap & cheerful quadcopters or small-sized wingcraft or UGVs/USVs you can buy at your local store and have up and flying / rolling / sailing within minutes. Due to their low cost and high numbers, they are very popular in battlefields where comms are not contested. They are remotely-piloted and entirely dependent on their human operator for control. If comms are disrupted, they will stick with their last-ordered course and speed until comms are re-established; if they are not, then they’ll run out of fuel/energy and halt in place (or crash if airborne). While offline, they are unable to take any initiative in order to further their mission.

– Self-Recovering: Things are slightly improving here; if the comms link is lost, these units will loiter/hold at their current location and try to rejoin the comms grid; if successful they will resume their mission, otherwise they will autonomously return to their deployment base/host. It doesn’t sound like much, but retrieving back effortlessly your comms-disrupted force rather than losing them to every comms-jammer out there really does make a difference.

– Changeable Mission: (A more accurate description here might be “Flexible in-mission behavior”, but we don’t get to choose the terminology). A pretty significant jump in autonomy here: The offline vehicle will actually move ahead and try to perform its assigned mission. The bad news: Because of the lack of human oversight, the platform will not perform any pre-emptive checks for own damage, bingo/joker fuel status or winchester/shotgun weapon status – checks that (under human supervision & positive control) would trigger an immediate abort & RTB. In other words, it will press on to its mission even if it is objectively incapable of actually pulling it off and surviving.

– Fault/Event Adaptive: Another major step forward in intelligent behavior here: The platform will actually perform pre-emptive checks for own damage, bingo/joker fuel status or winchester/shotgun weapon status, and thus will avoid needlessly kamikazeing itself into a hopeless situation.

– Multi-Vehicle Coordination: Drones can be quite more effective when they are used in big groups (aka “swarms”). This level of autonomy allows a drone to participate in such a group – but only strictly as a group member. It can perform independent maneuvers only if it is the group’s designated leader.

– Battlespace Cognizant: This is an absolutely huge leap forward, and allows an offline unit to finally evaluate targets and threats on its own, rather than sticking to pre-assigned targets only. It can also maneuvers independently even if its part of a swarm, it can intelligently change its desired home base (though only from available fixed bases, not mobile bases like aircraft carriers) and can evaluate UNREP or air-to-air-refueling opportunities.

– Fully Autonomous: Now we are stepping firmly into Cyberdyne Systems territory. Fully-autonomous drones treat comms isolation almost as a nuisance rather than a crippling handicap: In addition to freely evaluating the targets & threats within their predefined mission parameters, they are also free to evaluate and engage any targets of opportunity that are relevant to their available weaponry. They are also able to modify their mission course instead of sticking to their predefined one, as well as changing their home base destination, either fixed or mobile. Such a unit will most definitely ask you for your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle – and you’ll be wise to accede. If the thought of heavily-armed robots having this freedom of action doesn’t give you pause, you might had been an excellent Carmageddon player.

The autonomy level of a drone is displayed on the DB viewer:


It is also accessible (and editable) through the Lua API:

theU = ScenEdit_GetUnit({name='Anka-S UAV', guid='4FTZEE-0HNA5SMK3O9K4'})
theU.autonomylevel = 1500
print(theU.autonomylevel)

(Note: In DB3000 v510 and previous versions, most drones have their stock autonomy level set to “Undefined”. We therefore recommend using v511+  when using this feature)

One common characteristic of off-grid drones is that, when they get disconnected from their side network, their mission becomes “fixed” for them. In simulation terms, they obtain and use a “private snapshot” copy of their mission state as it was at the moment of disconnect, and use that as reference. Any changes on their original assigned mission are NOT reflected on their private snapshot; for example if the doctrine or ROE settings change, or the area of a patrol shifts around, the disconnected drone sticks to its “known” mission parameters; this is one of the key operational drawbacks of even the most advanced autonomous drones.

The Mission Editor has been adjusted to display such “snapshot” missions, if they are the selected ones (for example, if the player is in direct control of an isolated drone and selects its mission):

The ME window now also more clearly displays platforms who are assigned to a mission but are currently off-grid:

When a unit is off-grid, any attempts to transfer it to another mission or change its mission parameters will fail.

Variable drone autonomy levels is an opt-in scenario realism feature (disabled by default, to avoid disrupting existing scenarios). It is one of the biggest new simulation features of Command, and one of the key new additions on the new upcoming major update.

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