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NEW MAJOR FEATURE: Real-time multiplayer!
* Up to two players, PvP (head to head) or PvE (coop)
* Players can join a lobby, view available game sessions and create a new one or join an existing ongoing session
* In-game chat available
* Players can arbitrarily leave or re-join a running game
* Connections use GameFabric servers as relays
* Can use any existing scenario with at least two playable sides
* Several standalone scenarios have been revised/optimized for MP play (Duelists - Invincible vs Kiev, 1989 (previously known as Duelists, 1989), North Pacific Shootout, 1989, Shamal, 1991 (Coop), The Tiger and the Dragon, 2019)
NOTE: Tacview real-time streaming not currently supported in MP mode.
ADDED: New map icon option: Full APP-6 (top-level category only)
ADDED:New dedicated naval formation editor: Select any naval group and press Shift+F4:
The new naval formation allows easier placement of escorts around a HVU, as well as new standard formation templates:
ADDED: New map/UI feature: Vector OSM maps (Top menu bar --> View --> OSM Vector Map).
This map layer is different from the other existing ones: Instead of fetching and caching locally pre-rendered raster tiles, it fetches the actual .pbf-format OSM vector tiles that contain all the information used to generate OSM maps, and uses that information to dynamically render raster tiles on the map. This affords a near-infinite flexibility on what information is shown (or hidden), depending on the applied style.
You can change the desired style on Game Options --> Map Display --> OSM Layer Style. These styles are simple JSON files, stored in \GIS\OSM_Vector\layers, so you can edit them or add more of your own.
The selected vector style is persisted as part of the map-profile settings and will be re-applied on the next session if the style file is in place.
ADDED: Improved relief + bathymetry layer, enhanced in detail by EMODNet European coastal bathymetry data (https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/bathymetry) and re-shaded for more finegrained detail up to 600m (maximum depth for the vast majority of submersibles).
ADDED: New realism feature: Limited Sonobuoy Stocks. (Off by default). When enabled, sonobuoys are no longer treated as an infinite resource (like e.g. external fuel tanks or unguided weapons) and become a finite aircraft store like guided weapons (ie. bases and aircraft-carrying ships can run out of them). They can also be stored & transferred as cargo, like other aircraft payloads. This feature is auto-disabled when the "Unlimited base magazines" feature is enabled.
ADDED: New doctrine setting: Sonobuoy Use. Available settings:
- Automatic for search and localization (default): Sonobuoys are freely and aggressively used by AI-controlled aircraft for initial submarine search (often "carpeting" entire patrol/search areas). CAUTION: If this is used together with the "limited sonobuoys" realism setting, the force can very quickly run out of sonobuoys!
- Automatic for localization: Sonobuoys are not used for the initial search, but are dropped for firming up an already made contact or prior to attack.
- Manual (player order) only: Sonobuoys are not dropped by the AI at all. (Useful if you're low on them or want to handle this hands-on)
ADDED: AI sonobuoy choice is determined by sonar EMCON (if EMCON-sonar is "Passive", drop passive sonobuoys; if it is "Active", drop active ones instead)
ADDED: New doctrine option: "AAW Rearward Fire". This can apply to aircraft and missile targets or just aircraft or just missiles, depending on the option chosen. 'Rearward' is based on the heading of the target; if the target is heading away from the firing platform then it is 'to the rear' (ie. receding target). if this setting is applied, then the firing platform will drop the target.
ADDED: New doctrine option: "AAW WRA Qty". This counts AAW WRA (weapon quantity fired) either by each separate available weapon (legacy behavior) or alternatively by total allocated (new behavior). This addresses the problem where e.g. multiple ships in a group under attack have SAMs, each of the SAM types has a "3 per engagement" weapon quantity set for a given target type, but because a suitable incoming target is within range of two ships concurrently, the ships end up firing 3 + 3 = 6 missiles total. When the new behavior is active, in this example the ships will fire 3 missiles (whichever are immediately available), correctly "tally up" their joint salvo count, and hold.
ADDED: New doctrine option: "AAW Guidance". If this is set to 'drop guidance', the firing platform will drop guidance when it becomes impossible for the guided missile to intercept the target. This
can allow a following weapon to make the intercept, or the firing platform to fire another shot, as it frees up the guidance system.
ADDED: New doctrine option: "Only specific targets" setting for strikes. Strike mission units (with the possible exception of Aircraft on a FP) with doctrine set to 'only mission specific targets' will not target anything that is not in their strike mission specific target list. Strike mission units won't target contacts for which they have no suitable weapons.
ADDED: Significant improvements to modeling of high-energy lasers:
- Major improvements in modeling of power-at-impact and absorption at different layers of the atmosphere (this is very important when the shooter and target are at significantly different altitudes, incl. space)
- Far more realistic modeling of laser kill probability against different weapon-type targets. Weapons are now graded for durability/fragility levels. Examples:
* Small/Medium OWA-UAV => very fragile
* Glide bomb (JSOW etc.) => fragile
* Non-glide bomb (GBU, JDAM) => medium
* Iron bomb, rocket (guided and unguided) => tough
* Subsonic cruise missile => fragile
* Supersonic missile => tough
* Mach-3 and above weapon => medium
This grading is combined with the calculated power-at-impact to evaluate if a kill is made or the target is hit but survives.
ADDED (Re-added, more properly): Impact angle / crossing-target as a factor in guided weapon endgame calculations. This has been significantly improved since the original flawed implementation, and takes into account factors such as the target's LOS bearing-rate toward the shooter, the agility & seeker cross-tracking features of the interceptor, the closing rate etc. So for example under the same difficult circumstances (high LOS rate or high closing speed) the modern ESSM suffers much less degradation than the older Sea Sparrow.
ADDED: Submarines can perform cargo operations, just like surface ships and land transports.
ADDED: [Lua] Added "CustomUI" message type and related ScenEdit_CustomUI Lua method. Scen authors can use this method to present custom UI elements to the player even if the "Special Message" type has the "raise pop up" setting disabled.
ADDED: [Lua] Added new FPinsertWP methods
- insertWaypointAfter
- insertWaypointBefore
- return a table of index and wp_wrapper
ADDED: Range-ring colors added as "notches" on the weapons panel, to at-a-glance indicate the target suitability of each weapon
ADDED: Simple hover-over (tooltip) on unit/group weapons listed on side panel
ADDED: "Create side" dialog is automatically opened when you perform an action that requires a side (e.g. add a unit)
ADDED: Recovery from incorrect tanker queue state
ADDED: [Lua] Added schedule fire time to SE_AttackContact()
ADDED: Sensor roles with passive minehunting
ADDED: [Lua] side:contactsBy
Includes updated versions of all official scenarios.
Includes the v516-519 releases of the DB3000 & CWDB databases.
DB3000 v516 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/DB3K_ ... ngelog.txt
CWDB v516 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/CWDB_ ... ngelog.txt
DB3000 v517 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/DB3K_ ... ngelog.txt
CWDB v517 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/CWDB_ ... ngelog.txt
DB3000 v518 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/DB3K_ ... ngelog.txt
CWDB v518 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/CWDB_ ... ngelog.txt
DB3000 v519 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/DB3K_ ... ngelog.txt
CWDB v519 additions: http://warfaresims.slitherine.com/CWDB_ ... ngelog.txt
Includes an updated version of Tides Of War #1 (ASEX-25):
- Fixed Special Action: Radio Warning failing.
- Fixed scoring penalty after being allowed to exit the exercise area to attend to the distressed civilian vessel.
- Adjusted points loss for violations of the exercise area. Every 60 minutes you will lose 10 points for each PAFMM ship that is inside the exercise area. Every 5 minutes you will lose 2 points for each ASEAN ship outside the exercise area (until the distressed ship event fires, then you can leave at will).
- Successful boarding actions now reward 10 points. Failed boarding actions will lose you 10 points.
- Added description of seaplane mechanics to scenario briefing.
- Points loss at start is now -250 (was -500).
- Fixed Aircraft and RHIBs being able to ram PAFMM vessels.
- Updated radio warning description to tell players it works for aircraft and ships.
- Adjusted the number of PAFMM vessels that spawn from a max of 18 to 15, per wave.
- Added a pop-up message to clarify the change in ROE when the PAFMM vessels stop responding to player radio warnings.
MAJOR SIM TWEAK: A ground-up rework of platform component damage and related evaluations. Bottom line: You should now observe a greater number of components damaged/destroyed as a platform sustains damage. Incidents like "Hull/fuselase completely shot off but only a couple components affected" should be rare or non-existent now.
TWEAK: #17232: "Place - Heading" command in formation window
TWEAK: An endgame report will be created every time reattack is triggered, instead of creating a final one with data from all intercept attempts
TWEAK: Double-hull construction on submarines reduces the armor penetration by 20% and effective blast damage suffered by 20%
TWEAK: Cargo Improved ship/sub delivery behavior near shore
TWEAK: More graceful handling when the UI fails to load a webp unit image because the webp codec is not present (This doesn't fundamentally solve the problem, but drops the severity from "Command hard-crashes to desktop" to "Unit images don't show")
TWEAK: The map raster layers are now rendered in finer detail (removed the "pixelation" effect) at med/high altitudes
TWEAK: When detecting OWA-UAVs (e.g. Shahed-136), classify them as "air" contacts, not "weapon". This reverts the change introduced in v1.09 (See related discussion: https://forums.matrixgames.com/viewtopic.php?p=5269019)
TWEAK: OWA-UAVs (e.g. Shahed-136) are now more likely to be easily classified through NCTR (thus being immediately designated as hostile), and are also properly WRA-classified as aircraft-UAS
TWEAK: Added a "scaling factor" on the shock-factor damage logic. Smaller ships (up to corvette) receive more damage from underwater shock, while larger vessels (battleships, carriers, large commercials) receive proportionally less
TWEAK: Revamped usage of pathfinder generated plotted course to reach tanker
TWEAK: Refactor of Smart RP Placement keybindings, now working with ALT + Q
TWEAK: Refueling Queue drawn along with datalinks (different color)
TWEAK: Cargo PAX required for 'personnel' ground units equals crew count
TWEAK: Ignore automatic refuel scheduling attempts when in "RTB Manual" status unless really necessary
TWEAK: Added "enough fuel to reach tanker?" to criteria that tankers use to consider a client "on fumes"
TWEAK: Aircraft sensor pods or external fuel tanks can now have individual signature values (they override the stand-in assumption)
TWEAK: [Lua] SetScenarioMessageLogpath now also supports relative paths (The base folder towards with the relative path is resolved is the \Logs folder. If the full generated path does not exist, the call will attempt to create it and throw a Lua error if it is unable to.)
TWEAK: Various tweaks to the way AAW missile drag coefficient is calculated, to match public figure of 5 secs boost-duration for AIM-9L/M
TWEAK: Tweak mine detection for a non-sonar sensor
TWEAK: Tweak on gun-attack message log
TWEAK: [Lua] Standardized course object to allow all waypoint properties
TWEAK: Right column weapon hyperlink limited to name text
TWEAK: Temporary PL-17 Burnout weight calculation fix
TWEAK: Various map/UI performance tweaks
TWEAK: Various sim-engine performance improvements
TWEAK: Set 'prioritize' on load if strike w targets inherits 'op scrambling'
TWEAK: All windows now have dark-themed top bar and sharp corners
TWEAK: The Lua Console now has a built-in rate limiter (CMO-Civ only). This limits the use of the console to three "prompts" at a time, with new prompts becoming available every thirty seconds. When all prompts are on cooldown, the button grays out temporarily.
TWEAK: Class-1 drones fuel logic is overriden (based on endurance value). Class-1 drones utilize their endurance value as internal fuel max quantity instead of the database provided fuel values. In this case the remaining fuel is shown as minutes (if no other time is shown for fuel)
TWEAK: Lift-induced drag is now included in the calculated drag for boost-coast AAW weapons. This fixes the "weapons gliding near-indefinitely at constant altitude at high altitude" realism flaw.
TWEAK: When an aerospace target has a speed under half of the weapon's max-target-speed value, it becomes easier-than-nominal to hit (PH boosted by 10%). If the target is even slower (less then 1/4th of max target speed), the bonus becomes 20%. (This makes slow air targets like most drones a bit easier to engage once detected)
TWEAK: Tweaks to the "JAM" map indicator to make it more visible
TWEAK: Added caps on thermocline sonar degradation to prevent 100% absorption cases
TWEAK: Added safety checks for scenario event causing UI refresh when Command is minimized
TWEAK: Added recovery from tanker dirty state; stuck in "Offloading Fuel" status without clients
Various sim speed tweaks
NOTE: The electronic manual has also been updated: https://command.matrixgames.com/manual/