However, when the scenario is larger, setting missions and letting the friendly AI manage them is a must. Smaller battles, involving just a few friendly units, are pretty easy to manage without having to build a lot of missions. If you don’t get your anti-air patrols right, your surface fleets might soon fall prey to flights of vampires (incoming missiles). In CMANO, as in real life, failing to plan is planning to fail. In the mission editor, the player plans various missions for his units. One of CMANO’s most powerful, and to my mind, interesting features is the mission editor. But that is all good, because likely players of this game are not looking for glorious explosions and a lot of flashy animation, but rather for intelligent and involving game play. The sound is as basic and generic as it can be, and it doesn’t really provide any useful information. Damage assessments are given in the message display. The only way a player may find out he has destroyed an enemy unit is a message stating that unit is no longer detected. It uses standard NATO symbols for the units, and weapon hits are shown by a four-point star around the hit unit. Also a strategic map would be good. An alternate method of selecting units, instead of simple drag-select would be nice, since there are situations where I wanted to select two units that had an intervening unit I did not want to select. Generally, the UI is very clean with only a few things that could be improved. First, a way to scroll the map by moving the mouse to the edge would be nice and would save a lot of clicking to move around the battle area. There are at least two ways to perform any actions and almost everything is a “left-click, then select†or a “right-click†dropdown menu selection, and then close the window to execute the move. This makes playing the game very easy for experienced Windows users. The game plays in a standard Microsoft Windows user interface (UI). (Personally, I like scenarios that focus on smaller powers so right now I’m building a battle between the Dutch and the Venezuelans over the island of Curacao in the Caribbean.) Want to fight a future battle between China and America in the Pacific? You can do that, too. United Nations) to a hypothetical India versus China conflict in 2019 (The Tiger And The Dragon 2019—Indian and Chinese Navy in the South China Sea). If that isn’t enough play value for you, then the scenario editor lets you accurately and quickly build any number of historical or hypothetical battles you want. Want to play out a battle from Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising? You can. The game (version 1.01) comes with 41 scenarios (including the 3 training scenarios) that range from a straight-up naval gunfight off of Korea in 1950 (Battle of Chumonchin Chan, 1950—North Korea vs. The scope of the game is impressive: it literarily (or littoral-ly) covers the whole world, from the post–World War II era to the near future of the 2020s. The massive, yet easy to use, database covers every ship, boat, plane, helicopter, sensor and weapons system in a more than 75-year time frame. In short, the guys behind CMANO are Harpoon geeks that set out to build an Air and Naval combat simulation at least as good, if not better, than Harpoon 3—and they accomplished that. Also, according to the Warfare Sims, LTD website, the design team of CMANO had worked on third party content, like databases, battle sets, scenarios etc. CMANO does this by allowing players to manage (or micro-manage) as many or as few of the simulation’s elements as they wish.Ĭomparisons of CMANO to the venerable Harpoon series of games (especially the last: Harpoon 3) are inevitable, since they both cover the same areas. Good games should engage the players’ minds without taxing them. Passed Inspection: High levels of realism, massive database, good AI, very high replay value.įailed Basic: Steep learning curve (playing the tutorials is a must), graphics and sound are basic, no human-factors engineering.Ĭommand: Modern Air/Naval Operations ( CMANO) is a sprawling and yet detailed tactical and operational level naval warfare simulation that is totally absorbing and compelling to play. ![]() Command: Modern Air-Naval Operations – PC Game Review By Patrick BakerĬommand: Modern Air/Naval Operations.
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