Current Conflicts

[Lützow]

I understand that CMO devs don't want to portray the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war. But why no campaigns about China assaulting Taiwan in the near future, or Russia invading the Baltic states?

[thewood1]

1) There's only so many conflicts they can portray, especially real ones.
2) There are tons of scenarios for China/Taiwan, including official and unofficial ones.

[Mgellis]

If you're asking why the campaigns don't exist, I don't know. If I was going to guess, I'd say...

Limited profit compared to effort. They're probably busy with all kinds of other projects, including those related to the professional version of the game. An entire campaign of big, beautiful scenarios would certainly sell, but it would take a lot of time and effort...would they sell enough copies to make it profitable? They released a Pacific campaign a few years back and might be worried another one would not sell because people would think it was too much like the first one.

Or, maybe they are working on something, but it's not scheduled to be released for another year or so, so we just haven't heard about it yet.

[thewood1]

Campaigns also become fairly moot, as people like to describe "dynamic" campaigns, when you consider you can build an entire real-world campaign within one scenario. The attractiveness of a multi scenario campaign is going to be one of two things:

1) An historical comparison of tech and tactics across a very long multi year span. This is what a lot of CMO campaigns become. Just a bunch of scenarios along a similar theme.

2) A simple set of scenarios to show off tactics of technology. In the end, a loosely linked scenario pack.

As I stated above, you can, today, build a scenario with 100s of units, multiple countries, across months of time, have a focus on logistics, have reinforcement / production decisions, use special global or political events, and build an entire story line. But at that point, how many people would actually play it. Maybe a campaign could be taking a scenario like that and splitting it up to make it approachable by newer players or with less robust systems would be possible. But again, is there a real market for that? And the work needed to execute it is no small feat.

[HalfLifeExpert]

I understand that CMO devs don't want to portray the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war. But why no campaigns about China assaulting Taiwan in the near future, or Russia invading the Baltic states?

In terms of Official content, the Chains of War DLC includes operations against Taiwan.
Additionally, the LIVE DLC #2 You Brexit You Fix it does cover a Baltic War.

Command is partially fueled by Community made content which is exponentially more vast than the official content, and there's many scenarios centered around a Cross-Strait War and a Baltic War. There are even some scenarios that portray current conflicts like Ukraine.

"Campaigns" are on the rare side in Command, as many scenarios can cover the time and scope that a "campaign" would in most other games.

[Mgellis]

To this I might add a third approach, which is also a "theme." One could design a campaign built around a particular group of ships, aircraft, etc. So, for example, a fictional world war set in 1985, but instead of moving around to various theaters, it would stick with a particular battle group, SAG, air wing(s), etc. This would allow the player to follow a certain set of "characters," including issues like units being lost or damaged, ammunition or fuel running low, etc.

This comes with its own set of challenges. One of them is trying to guesstimate which units will be lost or damaged in each scenario (although I suppose you could use special actions to add ships back to the group).

I've tried a few of these with varying degrees of success, and I'll probably try again as it strikes me as a good way to organize a related group of scenarios.

The attractiveness of a multi scenario campaign is going to be one of two things:

1) An historical comparison of tech and tactics across a very long multi year span. This is what a lot of CMO campaigns become. Just a bunch of scenarios along a similar theme.

2) A simple set of scenarios to show off tactics of technology. In the end, a loosely linked scenario pack.

[Mark352]

To this I might add a third approach, which is also a "theme." One could design a campaign built around a particular group of ships, aircraft, etc. So, for example, a fictional world war set in 1985, but instead of moving around to various theaters, it would stick with a particular battle group, SAG, air wing(s), etc. This would allow the player to follow a certain set of "characters," including issues like units being lost or damaged, ammunition or fuel running low, etc.

That is an interesting idea. I can't recall seeing anything like that with CMO or historically with Harpoon.

[schweggy]

To this I might add a third approach, which is also a "theme." One could design a campaign built around a particular group of ships, aircraft, etc. So, for example, a fictional world war set in 1985, but instead of moving around to various theaters, it would stick with a particular battle group, SAG, air wing(s), etc. This would allow the player to follow a certain set of "characters," including issues like units being lost or damaged, ammunition or fuel running low, etc.

That is an interesting idea. I can't recall seeing anything like that with CMO or historically with Harpoon.

I think there would have to be some way to keep track of the losses and then carry that over to the next scenario. Presuming a multi-scenario approach is being used instead of a single, multi-day/week one. I'd guess it could be done with LUA. Personally I'd want a way to replace lost units, specifically aircraft. Maybe penalize the player with points for it. Lost ships or subs would be nearly irreplaceable.

I've read a couple posts about this in some of the campaigns offered as DLC or Community projects... noting that in "Scenario 1" X number of aircraft were lost, ship Y was sunk but all appear again in "Scenario 2."

[Mgellis]

That sounds like a "continuity error." The person writing the scenario should have gone back and checked what the "story" says got lost.

Just giving the player certain conditions is actually the easiest way to do it...the scenario writer just says in the opening notes that certain ships were lost, certain munitions were expended, etc. and then that's what the player has to deal with. It's not really that different from writing a scenario that starts in the middle of a war where damage has been taken and the player's units are now fighting back, etc. And, of course, then you have to make sure what the player gets matches what you said he's going to get.

As an example, the first scenario starts with an expeditionary group, ready to go, with full magazines and no losses.

The second might assume one helicopter got shot down and one of the escorts has been damaged...you could tweak all kinds of things like a particular piece of equipment being destroyed, lowering the quality level of a ship to model the captain having been injured and an inexperienced XO having to take over, etc.

The third scenario starts with no further damage to the ships, but a LOT more munitions are gone and the marines have taken some losses, the expeditionary group's commander (the player) is going to find it harder than expected to reach all the mission objectives at this point...but it has to be done! Fortunately, a destroyer has been diverted to join the group, but it will be several hours before it can actually join the group and provide additional air cover, etc.

Did I mention the Soviets don't approve of any of this and have a SAG on their way to the player's AO? They should be here in time for the fourth scenario. Their intentions are unknown.

And so on.

I think there would have to be some way to keep track of the losses and then carry that over to the next scenario. Presuming a multi-scenario approach is being used instead of a single, multi-day/week one. I'd guess it could be done with LUA. Personally I'd want a way to replace lost units, specifically aircraft. Maybe penalize the player with points for it. Lost ships or subs would be nearly irreplaceable.

I've read a couple posts about this in some of the campaigns offered as DLC or Community projects... noting that in "Scenario 1" X number of aircraft were lost, ship Y was sunk but all appear again in "Scenario 2."