Can ground combat happen in Command

[JPFisher55]

I am playing the first scenario of the Northern Fury series set in Norway at the beginning of the 1994 Winter Olympics. I noticed in the losses and expenditures that the Warsaw Pact has lost some BMPs and some machine guns.
But my meager air force has only engaged the Warsaw Pact airplanes; not any ground targets. I have noticed flash messages about invasion by Soviet naval infantry, but I thought they were just for realism and not modelled in command.
I do have lots of ground units and lost many to air attack. I do know that some ground units can move. Is it possible that some Soviet ground units moved within the range of my infantry and were engaged? I thought that Command does not include any ground combat.
Does it?

[Primarchx]

There are indeed ground units in the game, and they do fight if put in the right circumstances. The ground model is pretty spare, though. LOS is blocked by terrain altitude, lighting and sensors, for example. Weapon engagement is pretty rudimentary, too. Still, if you accept it for what it is, you can have as much fun with it as you do with sea and air units. But usually ground units are not much more than defenders against air/sea attack thus far in Command.

[Dimitris]

http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=2920#411

What is the land warfare model like?

You can do a pretty nice ground battle as long as you stay within the limitations of the engine. Units engage each other, they are realistically handicapped by terrain slope (e.g. mech units on mountain ranges) and they do plot around non-passable terrain. Unguided weapons use CEP instead of just a PoK so weapon accuracy and target size actually matter, and near-misses or airbursts produce blast and frag (depending on warhead type) damage. Also fire-control of unguided weapons plays a critical role; the very same gun will have radically different accuracy if it’s aimed by a guy with bonoculars, a fire-control radar or laser designator – and problems in director operation (jammed, damaged/destroyed, blocked by weather etc.) also affect things. Aimpoint-type facilities & units means no more of the Harpoon-era “I’ll wipe that tank company with a single LGB” balooney. Plenty of ground-oriented warhead types like cluster munitions, FAEs, long-rod penetrator, HEAT etc. (browse the DB for a complete list). Faithful modelling of nuclear strengths and limitations on units in the field (e.g. if you expect to simply wipe out a massive armor assault with a tac nuke you may be disappointed). Arty units reasonably stand-off if they can, only few units types fire on the move, you can replenish units manually etc. etc. These things may sound bread-and-butter for anyone coming from a Steel Panthers / Armored Brigade / Armor TaskForce background but compared to anything else air/salt-focused out there it’s a quantum leap.

Still, there certain limits and issues. Warhead-vs-armor penetration & effects is simpler than in the rest of the game (because it gets squeezed at the very lowest end of the modelled range – remember, the upper end is battleship citadels, underground nuclear bunkers etc.). No non-scripted transport & amphib ops – YET (the emphasis is not coincidental). No cost-based pathfinding – again, yet. Units shoot at each other way too often because terrain cover (other than LOS) is not yet modeled. Units don’t do automatic replenishment shuttle runs back and forth from the line. And so on and so on. There is no single blocking item that outright forbids focusing on land warfare, but the “Air/Naval” title is there for a reason.

Baloogan had a few episodes featuring ground ops (most of them unsurprisingly focused on Ukraine) which demonstrated both the strengths and the limitations of ground ops in Command. These give a good sense of what one can do and what should be avoided. Implementation examples are plenty, as quite a few scenarios use ground units in one way or another. Is it SP or AB ? Not yet, but we do want to get there. One step at a time.

[JPFisher55]

Thanks for the reply. I am surprised by the infantry combat modelling, but it is kind of neat. I have attacked ground units with aircraft and seen them move. And yes, destroying them was not easy. IMO, this is a good model for Command. Kudos to the developers of a great game.

[Grondoval]

All that said im REALLY curious what the Devs have up their sleeves regarding ground ops [:)] . Of course more pressing issues and features need to be fixed and implemented first and im patient enough to just wait and enjoy the great game CMANO already is ..... but man, im so curious [:D].

When I brought CMANO in never thought it to have implemented ground ops on this already respectable scale. I first thought it has some placeholder ground units like generic tanks and such and I would be perfectly fine with that. And then I was stunned when I saw what was already implemented. And you say you are not done with ground ops yet ... omg [&o]

[Midcon113]

I too am excited to see ground ops further integrated into the game - that is going to take an already stellar simulator into a whole new level. My main interest in Command is the air side, and tactical air-to-ground ops is going to be spectacular. A realistic implementation of a flight of A-10s going after a column of T-80s, with the fog of war, terrain, anti-air assets, and other factors taken into consideration? It's almost there already, and it's only going to get better! Bring it on!![:D]

Mark

[ParachuteProne]

Expansion of ground ops : increased detail in the units armament/ unit losses, Larger battalion sized units amphib/airborne landings are number 1 on my wish list

[magi]

^^^^^ what the guys say…

JPfisher55

I just made a post earlier about gunners northern fury series in the AAR section… It really is amazing…

Quote me...
I loaded H Hour...... Again the number of units in the detail was amazing and I had to spend considerable time studying the map… Upon starting within minutes.. I had an actual sense of dread… It was almost cinema graphic… It was easy to assess that the only thing I could do…was fallback and preserve my forces to have some potential later effect…
I let them have Finnmark and the north… Rushed as many air assets to the north that I could… And establish a line with my fighters in the Troms region.. Where I have had success in stopping there strikes trying to penetrate to the south… I'm certain there will be other waves coming and I'll have to fallback again eventually.......
So… It is just a process blunting their momentum … Attack,, fall back.... attrit.. preserve… Attack… Etc. etc. until it's over…
At this point in the game… At this point in the scenario… fighters based in Great Britain are just starting to head north… But the pattern has been set of.. Delay..rear guard.. attrition warfare…
I think it might be interesting the script this into a video… It is certainly educational in a nonviolent way of seeing what high-intensity combat assaults are about.
It is really an intense scenario.....

[magi]

Delete

[JPFisher55]

I agree. It's a really good scenario. But I'm glad that it is fiction because the 1994 Winter Olympics was one of my favorites.

[batek688]

The problem with going too overboard on land combat is the amount of deconflicting of assets necessary for realistic behavior. In the air & salt sub-theaters you have a sparse population of assets in many cases, or semi-static targets when you consider airfields/IADs/etc. On the ground the various units have lanes of maneuver in order to prevent blue-on-blue because not every infantryman has a radio. The current setup is sufficient for hit & run types of operations and even initial amphib operations; however, I think trying to fully implement a ground campaign capability into the engine would quickly exceed things like memory / play-ability as large unit-count scenarios push that now.

I like it just as it is with the ground component supporting small direct action events secondary to the air and sea ops. Save the land-ops for the close combat series (which needs a bigger brother, IMO...where you command the battalion/regiment level and not just a company, but I digress).

-B

[Mgellis]

As an experiment, I put together a regiment-sized ground combat scenario. I just posted the beta (Operation Biwako, 1999). I'd be curious to see what people think of it, how well it works, if people think Command handles ground combat fairly well at this point, etc. Thanks and I hope people enjoy it.