Promises kept: Command-PE v2.4.1 and the new sim manual now available

December 11, 2024 · Posted in Command PE · Comment

Last September, at the most recent (and most awesome) Command User Event held at Quantico, we showed off the then-imminent-to-release v2.4 major release to Command PE. We also stated that a “hotfix” update was scheduled for release by the end of the year, and that the much-anticipated CPE Simulation Manual would also be made available to current PE license holders in the same timeframe, even in early draft form.

As the year is now drawing to a close, we are happy to fulfill our promises:

* Command-PE v2.4.1 is now available for download to all current users of CPE. Intended originally as merely a hotfix release containing all the tweaks and fixes since the original 2.4 release, it has morphed into a substantial update in its own right.
Its biggest new features are the new “pin-cushion view” option for displaying aerospace units at their true altitudes (this got a lot of attention also at I/ITSEC last week), the tabular & machine-parsible “butchers bill” (list of losses & expenditures) and the option for repeatable-loop movement style on mining missions (ie. you can now define in advance the specific pattern to follow when laying mines, as well as related settings such as interval).
The new update also contains a whole slew of improvements and tweaks to the simulation engine, as well as the latest v509 release of the DB3000 and CWDB databases.

* The first version of the CPE Sim Manual that we deem share-worthy is now available. This document acts as the central point of reference for the overall design and internal simulation mechanics of CPE (and CMO) both for the Command dev team as well as professional customers (this is distinct and separate from the existing CPE & CMO user manuals, which deliberately focus on the user interface and gameplay options).
The sim manual is still in very early draft form, with numerous placeholders, unfilled or unfinished sections; even so, every single user who has glimpsed at it so far has found it extremely eye-opening, useful and illuminating. So we believe the same will hold true for any of our customers who wish to gain a deeper understanding of how Command’s simulation engine works. The sim manual is not generally available for download, but can be provided to active CPE license holders upon request.

The CPE dev team is already hard at work, developing a new set of features (and especially a pair of big whammies) that will define the next milestone of CPE some time within 2025. Stay tuned!

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Command wins the 2024 TIGA award for “Educational, Serious or Simulation Game”

November 29, 2024 · Posted in Command, Command PE · Comment

The complete winners list: https://tiga.org/awards/2024-winners

As a reminder, CMO previously won the 2019 Charles S. Roberts award for “Best Modern Era Computer Wargame”, and CMANO before it was “Wargame Of The Year 2013” and MS&T Magazine 2017 Finalist.

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No regrets: Command v1.07 now available

October 24, 2024 · Posted in Command · Comment

Well, this certainly took a while.

Following the gargantuan releases of “Tiny”/”War Planner”/v1.05 and the more recent “Number of the beast”/v1.06, we had a lot of technical debt to own to and a lot of catching up to do. It was not unexpected that the rapid introduction of so many new groundbreaking features would bring about a bunch of new problems and issues, which needed to be addressed. There was simply too much baggage to keep hauling with us on the way forward.

The new major CMO release, version 1.07, is therefore very much a “service pack” (raise your hand if you recognize the term without googling it). The primary emphasis has been on identifying and fixing the various issues accumulated over the last couple of years, ideally in order of severity/priority. Performance, particularly on the simulation engine, has also been substantially improved. If you are a Command long-timer, you should notice (most if not all of) your past pain-points gone; and many scenarios whose scale/complexity previously placed them out of your hardware’s reach should now be perfectly playable. If you are a more recent player (welcome!), you get a nicer experience out of the box.

This is not to say the new release is bereft of new mechanics to explore and simulated toys to play with, though. A quick summary of the new additions:

* A new map mode of showing aerospace units at their true altitude (instead of only as ground-tracks on the planet surface), sometimes called “pin-cushion view” (disabled by default). This mode makes it easier to visualize the vertical placement of aerospace units, and can be particularly helpful when vertical positions play a crucial role in sensor & weapon interactions – think satellites, ballistic missiles and ABMs, even the altitude differences in air-to-air or surface-to-air engagements. Phil Gatcomb has already made a sneak-peek video for this, check it out.

* A new HTML-rendering backend, using Microsoft’s new WebView2 rendering engine. You should notice improved HTML rendering on the DB-viewer and other UI elements that use HTML sources. This also allows richer custom UI elements at the beginning of a scenario (e.g. to define custom options for the scenario, difficulty settings etc.)

* A new wrinkle on air-to-air refueling: Aircraft fuel on-load rate restrictions (requires v508+ DBs). When large tankers such as KC-135s or KC-46s refuel tactical aircraft, the bottleneck on fuel transfer is usually not the tanker’s offload capacity (which is huge; these booms are designed to fill-up B-52s and other monsters), but the intake rate of the receiver aircraft. This is now properly modelled.

* Indicators for aircraft contrails and ship/submarine wakes can now be displayed on the map, under a unit’s datablock. This makes it easier for the player to be more aware that his units may be visually detected at significantly longer ranges because of these factors. These indicators can be disabled on the “Map Settings” menu if they clutter the map unacceptably.
(Clarification: Contrails and wakes have been part of the simulation engine since Command’s original 2013 release. This change adds visual indicators for them.)

* Various “quality of life” improvements across the UI and particularly on the mission editor and various strike-planner windows.

* The latest releases of the DB3000 and CWDB databases, with the completion of a major year-long milestone: The China national review (see this overview for more details). The Command database is now arguably one of the most comprehensive open-source compilations of information on modern Chinese military platforms.

The full release notes are available HERE.

We want to thank both our internal beta testers who helped make this a solid release, as well as our public user community who contributed feedback on the public beta. You are part of this.

As always, there is no rest for the wicked and certainly not for the Command dev team. CPE v2.4, a big update to the Command-PE series has also been released this week, and CMO itself is already tweaked and improved for the next public update. Stay tuned as the dev team assembles and prepares some new amazing features for 2025 that will undoubtedly take the Command series to the next level in modern-era wargaming.

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“This is truly awesome!”*: Command PE v2.4 now available

October 22, 2024 · Posted in Command PE · Comment

* Actual quote from early-bird pro user

It has taken a while, but the wait is most definitely worth it. CPE v2.4, the next major update for Command Professional Edition, is now available for download to all professional users.

The headline feature of the new release is most definitely the addition of Real-Time Multiplayer (RTMP), a brand-new capability to Command. (As a reminder, CPE has offered WEGO-style multiplayer since version 1.15). The new system offers several key features and advantages:

– Real-time execution and UI update means participating players can view progress updates and issue orders dynamically as the scenario unfolds, instead of having to wait for the next “checkpoint in time” as in WEGO.

– Up to 16 players can participate in a single MP session.

– Multiple players can play under the same or opposing side. The importance of this feature (which is not available in WEGO) is hard to overstate: One of the challenges of CPE is that, for any non-trivial scenario, the single payer may wear “too many hats” (from theater commander all the way down to mission planner & weaponeer). RTMP allows players to organize their assets to players, effectively demolishing this limitation.

– Multiple umpires and observers. Umpires have unlimited hand-of-God powers (can edit the scenario at any point in time) and can witness the action from any side’s point-of-view, in addition to being able to see everything (no fog-of-war). Observers have the umpire’s omniscience but none of the editing abilities.

– Time progression is either real-time or accelerated.

– The scenario state can be rewound/reverted to any previous point in time, and resume from there.

– Players can arbitrarily leave and rejoin an ongoing session at any point.

The RTMP feature was until now available only to select early-bird customers in a dedicated development branch based on CPE 2.0, and was demonstrated at the recent CUE. Now, it uses the baseline development path and is available as a license option.
(Contact Matrix Pro Sims for pricing information on a RTMP license)

CPE v2.4 also benefits from the massive “get well” development work over the last year, like its commercial counterpart CMO v1.07. Other significant features of the new release include:

Significant improvements in stability and performance, in addition to a large and diverse array of gameplay and simulation fixes.
Further progress on the ATO compliance process. As part of this, various security vulnerabilities have been identified and removed or mitigated. CPE is now included on the USAF Evaluated Products List (EPL), which clears it for deployment on USAF protected systems and networks.
Significant improvements to UI for heterogenous/mixed groups, greatly facilitating Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) operations.
A new non-lethal weapon type: Laser Dazzlers. Although subject to the same atmospheric-absorption effects, these are distinct from high-energy laser (HEL) weapons and have different effects.
A new HTML-rendering backend, using Microsoft’s new WebView2 rendering engine. You should notice improved HTML rendering on the DB-viewer and other UI elements that use HTML sources. This also allows richer custom UI elements at the beginning of a scenario (e.g. to define custom options for the scenario, difficulty settings etc.)
A new wrinkle on air-to-air refueling: Aircraft fuel on-load rate restriction (requires v508+ DBs). When large tankers such as KC-135s or KC-46s refuel tactical aircraft, the bottleneck on fuel transfer is usually not the tanker’s offload capacity, but the intake rate of the receiver aircraft. This is now properly modelled.
Indicators for aircraft contrails and ship/submarine wakes can now be displayed on the map, under unit datablocks. This makes it easier for the player to be more aware that his units may be visually detected at significantly longer ranges because of these factors. These indicators can be disabled on the “Map Settings” menu if they clutter the map unacceptably.
(Clarification: Contrails and wakes have been part of the simulation engine since Command’s original 2013 release. This change adds visual indicators for them.)
Various “quality of life” improvements across the UI and particularly on the mission editor and various strike-planner windows.
The latest releases of the DB3000 and CWDB databases, with the completion of a major year-long milestone: The China national review (see this overview for more details). The Command database is now arguably one of the most comprehensive open-source compilations of information on modern Chinese military platforms.

The CPE dev team is already busy assembling the first hotfix update for this momentous release, as well as preparing for a new set of features that will define the next milestone of CPE some time within 2025. Stay tuned!

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Quantico three-timers: The 2024 CPE User Event

September 20, 2024 · Posted in Command PE · Comment

It was, like the previous two times there, a blast.

The Command-PE User Event (CUE) was hosted this year again at X-Corp’s facility at Stafford, Quantico VA as it has been in two previous years (2021 and 2022) and it is already being assessed as the most successful CUE yet. We had representatives from national militaries, corporations active in the defence sector, and academics travel from around the globe to attend CUE in Quantico, Virginia. It was a tremendous showing and we were thrilled at how many users arrived to attend tutorials and network.

Day-to-day coverage of this year’s event was provided through Matrix Pro Sims’ LinkedIn account:

To hit on a a few key points…

– New users got hands-on tutorials directly from our development team.

– Veteran users got advanced tutorials from our dev team on a separate track. CUE is for everyone, novice and expert users alike.

– Future features and a roadmap were laid out to our clients with Real Time Multiplayer, ATO compliance, and massive expansions of the unit database on the way. Further out in the future, a massive expansion to ground operations and a wholly-revised comms model were both greeted with intense excitement and anticipation.

– Guest speakers shared some of the ways they use Command. Onboarding and training new recruits, using A.I. to play thousands of scenarios to generate data, and planning strike packages with novel approaches are just a few of the ways we have heard how our clients use Command.

– Networking between our users. At multiple points during the conference there were collaborations between users, sharing their expertise on how to get the most out of Command.

– Presentations by the Command dev team, including Project Lead Dimitris Dranidis and Matrix Pro Sims CEO Iain McNeil.

We would especially like to thank our guest speakers – Lieutenant Colonel Scotty Black, Flt Lt. Leo Banks, Lt. Kaleb Neil, Lt. Maximilian Koch, Luis E. Velazquez, Tim Barrick, Ryan McKendrick, Ritam Guha, Kalyanmoy Deb, Bradley Feest, and Thomas Antonacci. Their presentations on topics ranging from A.I. integration to Command’s use as a training tool for recruits highlighted the diverse capabilities Command Professional Edition has for defence organizations.

Finally, we would like to thank the Marine Corps University for hosting CUE at an evening gala dinner at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The hospitality of the Museum with both the dinner and tour of it’s facilities was a great addition to the conference.

We are looking forward to CUE 2025 next year, and hope to see many old and new faces.

– The Command Development Team