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As I bask in the glory of all these IL-2 scenarios that sprung up while I wasn’t paying attention, it occurred to me that I also have not been paying attention to CMANO. I have been, more or less, keeping up to date with the engine but I’ve not really given a thought to the user-mods package. Clearly I had to have missed a few iterations and this seemed like a good time to check up on that.

I am on some shaky ground when it comes to my CMANO installations. I explained earlier how, shortly after my original purchase, I managed to get two different versions installed, causing me much anguish. This issue was finally resolved when I got my bearings and figured out how to do all the installations manually. Even in doing so I despaired that I’d forget how things worked by the time I had to do it all again. That was almost four years ago now and its been about three years since I’ve even played the game.

Boy, has a lot happened.

Let me, momentarily, ignore the elephant in the room and start from where I did. As I said, what I was after was an update to the user-developed package. This consists primarily of a set of “Community” scenarios covering, naturally, a much wider variety of situations than the official offering. I was happy to discover that new scenarios continue to be developed and, in fact, that there was one particularly relevant to my current interests.

The title of this post refers to an Alpha Strike, a term which denotes a mission using the full capacity of an aircraft carrier to engage a target. In Vietnam, the subset of missions assigned to the U.S. Navy were typically launched from carrier decks. An especially large mission, such as the April 3rd targeting of the Thanh Hóa Bridge, might include multiple carriers as well as aircraft from land-based airfields. Within the world of CMANO, this type of mission is explored by a scenario that I had not previously noticed, Yankee Team, 1966.

This user-made scenario was not included in the last Community package that I had, although it has been under developed since well before that time. Its design is that the player has 3 aircraft carriers with which to conduct 24 hours of Rolling Thunder missions. Targets are chosen by the player who also has control over load-outs, timings, etc. Scripting is used to shake up the starting conditions so that replaying the scenario should produce a different experience each time. Despite the the identification of the scenario as occurring on a particular time and date in 1966, it could be seen to function as a Rolling Thunder sandbox – a means to try various strategies against the North Vietnamese defenses to see what works and what doesn’t. Although it isn’t necessarily designed this way, the resulting player experience would have some parallels to those in charge of the actual air war – the strengths and weaknesses of the North Vietnamese infrastructure can be explored, learned, and overcome – albeit the hard way.

This was very exciting to me and so I eagerly downloaded the latest Community files. I had predicted that things would go wrong and surely they did. I got everything installed, went to run Yankee Team and – splat – an error message warned me of missing files on my system. I figured the problem was that my software version, despite the updater’s assurances to the contrary, was not up to the version used to create the scenario. In trying to fix this I managed to stumble across a beta release, associated with one of the DLCs, and thought that might get me where I needed to go. It didn’t. That didn’t fix Yankee Team and broke even the older scenarios that were working just fine. After much blundering about, I finally saw that elephant of which I spoke. I had been getting my links, not from the CMANO program that I own, but from a newer version that I don’t. That new version had come out during my “down time” and the support infrastructure had been reworked to pretty much make CMANO go away in favor of its replacement.

Now, I can’t say this totally took me by surprise as I did see various press releases along the way. Not actively playing the game, though, I didn’t pay it all too much attention nor try to figure out how it impacted me. In fact, if you readers take any kind of an interest in this game, you are probably far more up on what’s happened than I am. Nevertheless, I’ll share what I now know. Because it’s my page!

You see, an upgrade to the game, called Command: Modern Operations, was released in November of 2019. In many ways, this was a long time coming. The original Command release was in 2013 and six years is a pretty decent time for a piece of game software to receive continued support. That said, the new version is, in many ways, a facelift for the original rather than a new direction for the product. This was pretty much inevitable; the beauty of the Command system is that it covered the entire globe and the history of naval air power. There really isn’t a new frontier into which to expand so, at some point, the developer has to ask for you to purchase an upgrade just to keep playing.

Or maybe not. From 2015, Command began selling DLCs consisting of scenarios focused on a given era or subject. For example the first, Northern Inferno, depicts a NATO v. Warsaw Pact war circa 1975 by offering a complete scenario package including tutorials and a campaign, of sorts. The DLC business model offers additional value that is worth paying for, particularly because the entry price hasn’t been all that steep (especially if you bought through a Christmas sale or the like).

I’ll say that I was probably intending to buy one or more the DLC packages. I was still stuck in Vietnam when I was last playing around with CMANO and, with that focus, somehow passed over their Arab-Israel War DLC when it would have been relevant; much as two ships might pass in the night. Basically, I haven’t played CMANO since 2018 and just haven’t thought about it much. My (decidedly hands-off) impression was that DLCs seemed like an effective way to voluntarily extract more money from existing customers.

I guess it wasn’t, quite.

When Europa Universalis became EU2, I felt a sense of betrayal*. Despite the many extra years of support that backed the original CMANO release, the release of CMO in many ways feels like the same game sans version interoperability. Yes, the new version looks better and has a few shiny new features but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that it is a new game. If nothing else, the fact that you can load and play any CMANO scenarios tells you something.

Marketing material tantalizes the unengaged with pitches for the “professional version.” This is a business model that predated the rerelease of CMO but is obviously enhanced by the new version. The idea is to provide a better, more accessible, and adaptable simulation for military organizations. Some of the features of this professional version are truly features that wouldn’t appeal to the hobbyist – statistical analysis capabilities and interconnection with other military systems are two that spring to mind. In other cases, it appears that the professional version simply offers a one-up on what the gamers’ product has. A new feature provides a “tactical” display – a 3D version of the action. In the demo reels, this is used to illustrates air combat, wherein altitude is a critical component of combat tactics. In at least one blurb I was looking at (honestly, I forget where) a “better” 3D display was shown that was described as part of the professional version. As I said, it feels like a bit of teasing when I can’t tell if the really fine looking video I’m watching is what I will get or part of an unavailable (to me) military-focused CMO.

Let me admit, as an aside, that writing a “review” of a piece of software based entirely on the marketing material (plus a few reviews/on-line comments from people who actually do have the game) is a bit suspect. That I’m confused about what features are part of the roughly $80 purchase price of the new game (versus what gets included in add-ons and extras) says more about my lack of trying than anything else. You’ve got to grant me, though, that it can be confusing. That 3D visualization feature, for example, isn’t part of the basic package. It must be downloaded separately and paid for as an additional license – maybe. This software, called Tacview, has a demoware/crippleware version for nothing, a $30 version, and also a $70 version (assuming US based purchases and price stability). This is separate from the commercial/governmental licensing which appears to offer additional features beyond even the higher-priced “advanced” gamer version. Going all-in for the hobbyist runs some $320+ in purchase price and, for someone like me who is not paying too close attention, it is difficult to tell how much of that is stuff I really want, how much I don’t need, and how much is going to be left on the table because I got mixed up from watching a video from the “professional” version.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say that the “upgrade” gets you nothing. One of the more substantial changes, to my mind, is contained in the title itself. The new version, absent the “Air” and “Naval” designators, promises to be a simulator of all the forces on the battlefield. That is, CMO features improvements to land-based combat. I am also assuming that the package will continue to well supported, given that strong support has been my experience with this game from its inception. In fact, the creating of a “professional” class of license should only enhance user satisfaction across the board. The software team will be getting a regular supply of money to chase down issues – some of which are going to be issues with the commercial version of the game as well.

Now, similar to what Paradox did when they came back to ask their EU customers for another payment, Matrix Games acknowledged that the existing CMANO player base might feel a little put out. The release announcement was accompanied by a FAQ which asked, essentially, what if I already paid for the game? The answer is that holders of CMANO licenses could get a 50% discount off the new version. These days I can’t remember – I may have even seen that offer at the time. If so, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to pay even $40 for a new version of a game that I wasn’t currently playing. Or maybe the whole thing slipped by me unnoticed. But here’s the rub. That offer was good for a few months only. If you hadn’t claimed your discount by January 2020, you were back to full price.

I pissed and moaned quite extensively about a similar experience with HPS, John Tiller Software, and the aged Squad Battles series. While I can understand the business motivation for putting a time limit on a special offer, doesn’t such a short window upset rather than mollify many of your existing customers? I would think so. However (and more importantly), I guess the question is whether it will anger your existing customers enough so that they don’t continue on being a future customer. That is less clear. Although I haven’t paid John Tiller Software recently and am now even less likely to do so, I did keep on paying Paradox. Likewise, I’ll be surprised if I don’t eventually turn over a large amount of money to Matrix, Slitherine, and developer Warfare Sims. That doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it.

There is a second downside. So CMANO has been pulled from the virtual store – you can no longer buy the old version from Slitherine/Matrix or from the Steam Store. That is reasonable enough, given that they’ve pulled support for the program. You can also continue to play the game on Steam if you bought the license before the CMO release. You can still get the final patch for the game – in my case, I got it through my registered purchase on the Slitherine site. It appears, as well, that if you buy the DLC campaign/scenario packs that were made for CMANO, you get both CMO and CMANO -compatible versions. I say “apparently” because its not clear to me exactly which DLCs support both games and if and when support for both will be dropped.

My biggest disappointment, however, comes in the area of user-supported content. It only makes sense that the developers back off in their support. The last patch is the last patch and making that available is about the best that they can do. For the user-made content, however, it looks like when development shifted to the new version, CMO-based updates entirely replaced the existing downloads. So while the CMANO version of the Community Scenarios (for example) was available for a time for CMO (and worked!), once the CMO-specific work started, the old versions disappeared. Again, nobody wants to deal with complaints and bug-fix demands over multiple versions but I, for one, did not have myself up to date when the shift occurred. Clearly, I’ve missed at least two Community updates that came in before the CMO release.

I’ll end on a positive note – a bit of hope. I said at the outset that (until I rectified the problem) I had two different installations on my machine. However, I actually own three different versions of CMANO. I made my original purchase and then received the first upgrade through the Matrix (or maybe Slitherine – same thing, really) site. The current policy is that purchasing any game directly from the publisher also gets you a Steam key. It doesn’t work the other way around, though. If you buy a Slitherine/Matrix game through Steam, you don’t get gratis download from the website. Point being, I also have a license (so far uninstalled) through Steam as well.

Here’s the good news. On Steam, the “workshop” files are actually frozen in time to back when the support shifted from one version to another. There is the Community package – hopefully a version newer than the last one I had. There is also a version of Yankee Team, 1966. This scenario had been under development for years before the release of CMO and there were versions released purely for CMANO. In fact, there were even two CMANO versions – one for if you had a particular DLC and one if you didn’t. My theory (not attempted yet) is that if I install the Steam version of CMANO, the user-made downloads will show up in Steam labyrinthine file tree – for use either in Steam or in my direct download version. It won’t be perfect – it looks like a lot of work (read, bug fixing) went in under the new engine and I’ll have access to none of that.

What this does do is let me sample that one scenario (and maybe a couple more I don’t know about) without having to commit some $360 in purchases. Baby steps.

Photo by Sander Brwrs on Pexels.com

*I was sure I whined about this in a previous post but I can’t find it. So I’ll do it now. I was an early adopter of Europa Universalis and thus struggled with the game as they worked out the kinks. Having paid the full price up front I felt that I was entitled to the updates that fixed any ongoing bugs. While those same patches also improved on features, this seemed to me a reasonable exchange for my custom and subsequent patience. A good chunk of that goodwill got trampled when Paradox said, more or less, that the next “patch” was going to be called a new product and required repurchasing. Obviously the loss of goodwill wasn’t too severe – I’ve paid for all four of the EU releases over the years (although I did wait for a substantial discount before buying III and IV). The situation with CMANO is obviously different… but it resurrects those old feelings.