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Table of content

1. Basic concepts ........................................................................... 3

2. Understanding the chain of command ................................... 4

- Battalions ................................................................................ 4
- Brigades/Regiments ............................................................... 6
- Divisions and up ..................................................................... 8
- Detaching units ....................................................................... 8

3. Getting to grips with orders delay ........................................... 9

4. Your first steps ingame ........................................................... 11

- A movement order ................................................................ 12
- An attack order ..................................................................... 15
- A bombard order .................................................................. 21

5. Closing notes ........................................................................... 24

So you want to be a WW2 commander? Charging the bridges at Arnhem, making a desperate
stand at Bastogne and basically leading your men to epic victories. Yet it seems that your men
are just standing around, not following orders and generally holding you back from greatness.

This guide explains a few crucial concepts and aims to get you started playing Command
Ops 2 as quickly as possible. It will only cover the extreme basics of managing your forces.
So, let's get past that first hurdle shall we?

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 - Basic concepts -

If you plan to play Command Ops 2, you first have to understand two crucial concepts:

Chain of command:

Command Ops 2 places every unit in a realistic chain of command. A core building block of
this is the company. Most of the time if you see counters on the map, they’ll be companies.
Following military structure companies are grouped together and assigned to a headquarter
unit. These HQ’s are in their turn subordonate to higher headquarter units. Depending on the
complexity of the scenario these links can go four or five levels deep. So basically every unit
in the game is linked to an HQ. Except the top HQ ofcourse, which is basically you (and your
staff).

Why is this important to know? Short answer: it has huge impact on how you give orders.

Long answer: you can give orders to companies individually, but this is very tedious and not
really what this game is all about. Alternatively you can give orders to your HQ’s. They will
formulate a plan to best suit your order and let its subordonate units execute the order.
Depending on how far up the chain of command you go, this one order will result in setting in
motion dozens of companies.

Which brings me to the next concept...

Orders delay:

Every order you give to any of your units will take time to be processed. Ordering large
groups of soldiers about doesn’t happen in an instant. Even your building block, the company,
constitutes most of the time of about 100 to 120 men. So even if the company is represented
as one counter, in reality it is a group of soldiers led by a couple of officers.

Imagine giving an order to a company: basically you give orders to its commander. The
company commander will in turn brief his platoon leaders, who in their turn brief their
squadleaders until finally the soldiers get their orders and ultimately the order as a whole is
executed. This all obviously takes time and is modeled in Command Ops 2 as "Orders Delay“.
For companies this results in a typical orders delay for about 30 ingame minutes.

If you give orders to higher level HQ's this results in higher orders delay as more echelons
need to be passed through for the orders to reach the soldiers. Also the amount of coordination
between the subordonate forces is way higher and needs to be accounted for. A whole division
for example can take up to an hour or an hour and a half to fully process its orders.

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 - Understanding the chain of command -
Battalions:
In Command Ops 2 the lowest echelon HQ unit is at battalion level. Due to its flexibility and
ease of use most players tend to give orders at battalion level. So if the company is the
building block, the battalion is your trusty Swiss Army knife, compact and versatile. Let's look
into this a bit further shall we?

Battalions are considered to be quite small formations, but what kind of footprint do they have
on the battlefield? That depends on what orders you give them and what kind of terrain they
are in. Here are some examples of battalions on the ingame map:

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3rd Para Battalion

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Brigades/Regiments:
Next up the chain of command is the brigade (or regiment for some nations). The brigade HQ
typically commands a couple of battalions and will normally have a couple of support units of its
own. Taking earlier the battalion and adding its brigade this translates to the following order of
battle:

Brigades can already take up quite some space and are definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Orders can be given at brigade level. Though considering the amount of units that the HQ has
to coordinate, this is most of the times quite unwieldy and takes quite some time to set up.

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1st Para Brigade

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Divisions and up:
In Command Ops 2 higher level formations include divisions, corps and sometimes even armies. I
won’t go into detail in this guide, but suffice to say that giving direct orders to divisional HQ‘s and
up is not really useful.

1st Airborne Division in all of its glory

Detaching units:
Detaching and attaching units is a constant routine in Command Ops 2. If you give direct orders to
a company it will be detached from its battalion, if you give direct orders to a battalion it will be
detached from its brigade and so forth... The detached unit (be it a single company a battalion or
even a whole brigade) will operate independently until reattached to its superior HQ. Detaching
units will basically let you decide on the spot how much forces you need to get the job done.

So, why not let your units be constantly detached? Detached units get linked the highest HQ.
Although you are the one giving the orders, ingame this HQ will still technically be the one that
gives the orders. The command load of having lots of detached units linked to your highest HQ will
result in an overloaded, inefficient headquarter. This will also result in a higher than normal orders
delay.

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 - Getting to grips with orders delay -

By now you should have a vague understanding of the chain of command and how it is
implemented in Command Ops 2. This is important as it also ties in with how orders delay plays out
in the game. As a rule of thumb the amount of orders delay depends on how high the unit is in the
chain of command. Lower level HQ’s will have lower orders delay, whereas higher level HQ’s will
have higher orders delay.

Getting units in motion then takes time. The opposite is also true, but to a lesser extent. Once a unit
is executing its orders, it won’t immediately stop when you tell it to. It will take at least a couple of
ingame minutes for the units te recieve the orders and react accordingly. For example: if a battalion
is ordered to stop while it is already attacking the HQ unit will be the first one to recieve the order
and be the first one stop. Meanwhile its subordinate units will still be executing the original attack
order as it takes time to go through the chain of command. Only a couple of minutes afterward the
new orders will trickle down to the lower level units. At that time they will stop and will eventually
carry out their new orders.

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Orders delay is a two edged sword. You must keep in mind that time will pass before your units
move, but you must also be sure that your orders are given correctly as altering them mid-execution
will take even more time. Correct observations and careful planning are in order then, as a badly
thought out plan might easily result in catastrophe.

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 - Your first steps ingame -

Right, on to actually playing the game. Don't worry if you didn't understand every detail from the
previous sections it will become much clearer over time and while playing the game. For now it is
important that you have a notion about those concepts.

To start of with I'm going to select the St Vith scenario, which is the tutorial scenario for the game.
The scenario is not a tutorial in the usual sence though. It is more of a simple introductory scenario
with an interesting mix of units and an advantageous Allied starting point. Lots of tutorial video's
have been made using this scenario, so I'll stick to that one for now.

I'll keep all scenario settings as is

and choose the Allied side. Be sure
to keep the orders delay to
realistic. It adds a lot to the game,
as explained earlier.

For this quickstart guide I'm going

to mainly focus on the absolute
basics: moving your units across
the map and giving them basic
orders. Therefore I'm going to
forgo explaining the user interface,
map and other features in detail.
That will be explained later in
other guides.

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A movement order:

Glancing at how my forces are situated I decide to bring up an AA company from the back of my
lines to a strategic position on top of a hill. How do I do this in Command Ops 2?

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 First click on the unit. Notice it will light up and have a
brighter colour than usual. It will also show its footprint
as shown by the bracket beneath the counter and any
superior or subordinate units. Then press the "Cntl",
"Ord“ and "1TE“ buttons on the taskbar. It will pop up
the Control, Orders and Edit Task dialogs. Slide them
anywhere on the map.

Press the move order button or use the "M“ key and click on the hill. A move box with the footprint
of the company and a line between the current location of the unit and its destination should now be
shown on the map.

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For simplicity's sake we are not going to change anything to the move order. Though we can
already see on the Edit Task dialog that our company is expected to arrive at its destination at
06:54h by looking at the "End" time.

There we go, our AA company is now in position to start shelling the enemy. Easy enough wasn't it?

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An attack order:

Moving on to the attack order. My forces are poised to strike an important river crossing but
German troops are in the vicinity and they will surely impede my advance. I'm planning to go
straight through them and seize that bridge. Seeing that there is quite some opposition I'll be using a
battalion to do the fighting. Let's see how to order this assault.

It is important to understand that an attack order in Command Ops 2 optimally has two waypoints.
The first waypoint will be used to organize the units and is called the form up point. The second
waypoint is the actual target location.

First select the battalion HQ. Notice that the whole battalion lights up. Now pick the attack button
in the Orders dialog or merely press the "A“ key. Then keep pressing the shift key as it will allow
you to create waypoints. Finally click on a part of the map where your form up point will be and
click a second time on the map where your target is situated. The game will automatically assign the
first waypoint to a reorg order and the second one to a attack order.

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Now I can already hear you say: Why have two waypoints? Why not immediately charge ahead?
While it is possible to do so, this will result in the units charging off from their current positions.
With a single company this is not a problem, but with a battalion or anything higher level this is
very disadvantageous as it will result in an uncoordinated attack. But if your units are already in a
good position, and frankly they were in this example, you can save quite some time. So in a pinch,
you can pull it off.

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Congratulations commander! You have just captured your first objective.

Now keep in mind that the execution of this order can have many different outcomes. In this case
the battalion HQ sent C Company all the way to the northeast, leaving A and B Company to fend
for themselves. If you recreate this specific order this might not happen and another plan might
have been formulated by the HQ. It all depends on the actual situation on the battlefield.

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A bombard order

The last order I'll touch on is the bombard order. With our troops attacking that crucial bridge I want
to give them the proper support they need. I want to take one of the brigade's artillery batteries and
start pounding the enemy companies at the bridge.

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Setting up the order we'll first click on the bombard order button or just press the "B" button. Then
chose a position on the map. Notice that around the target there is also a yellow box. In the previous
orders this indicated the footprint of the unit at the end of the order. In this case it is the area where
the artillery will drops its shells.

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In this instance I'm not going to change anything to the order. Notice that the Edit Task dialog lets
you change the duration of the order. Standard duration of a bombardement is 11 minutes, which is
ok for me in this example. Let's look at this in action, shall we?

Done! We've bombed the enemy to smithereens and turned the landscape to a barren wasteland.
Well..., while artillery definitely causes casualties, it is best used to demoralise dug in enemies so
they start to flee or to dissuade enemies from taking certain routes. But that is for another time...

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 - Closing notes -

This Quickstart guide to Command Ops 2 is herby at an end. I know it is not really that "quick", or
rather not as quick as I had hoped, but this is the bare bare minimum you need to start playing the
game. If you want a deeper guide, consider checking out my Basic Guide to Command Ops 2.

To close off, here are some useful links:

Command Ops 2 introduction walkthrough - This video shows the basics of the game. It also
includes the developer's opening moves in the Return to St Vith scenario.

TortugaPower's Let's play of the Return to St Vith scenario - An excellent playthrough of the St Vith
scenario. Well explained and can basically be considered an in depth guide to the game.

The Command Ops 2 manual[forums.lnlpublishing.com] - All details concerning the game can be
found in the manual. It is a hefty tome, but it explains just about everything of the game.

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