Amazing game. Unparalled in its realism and accuracy. No other game like it on the market.

CMANO is not for the faint of heart or someone who wants to play a quick easy game. If you want to learn about real world militaries and weapon systems (and don't mind putting in a little micromanagement work) this game is right up your alley.

I like this game because it makes you want to learn about military weapon systems. You can't simply play a scenario without knowing and understanding your OOB. There are plenty of resources on the web to help you thru the game, and you will need them. Don't expect the game to hold your hand.

There are several smaller scenarios that you can do before your graduate into micromanagement nirvana.

When you play the scenarios, and are managing your units, you will get a great sense of accomplishment when you take out enemies. You will also get an appreciation for just how difficult war is and the logistics that go into it.

After seriously playing this game you will know a lot more about war and weapons systems than before you played it.

If the price seems steep there is a easier path with Northern Inferno. This will give you the best intro to the game at a less expensive price.

Excellent well thought out game! Brilliant TRS game. (I have played many, many hours despite the indicated 4.9 hours played, for almost 2 years now 99% in Beta - Aparadox) and Kudos to the Devs who continuously strive to make
a better game!! No request in Beta was ever too small to be overlooked.
Well done and well worth the money!!

This is one of the best if not the best air and naval simulation out there. Very challenging and rewarding to learn

***WARNING! This is not a sit-down, left-click walk in the park. I highly recommend that you first go through the tutorials. The initial tutorials will explain almost everything you need to know. You'll need a good full day to learn the basic controls.

***NO MULTIPLAYER (yet)

***WHO MIGHT LIKE THIS
The type of people who purchase this game are highly military minded, geopolitical enthusiasts, and/or people who work for think-tanks in Washington, who want to play out simulated real-world scenarios of any size or scope imaginable. Surgical strikes in Saudi Arabia via US strikes against militants? You bet. A naval blockade by NATO forces of the Baltic Sea against Russia? Let's go. All out war between the US Pacific Fleet, including allies such as the Phillippines against the Chinese Navy? Bring it on.

***GOOGLE EARTH IS THE WHOLE MAP
Basically, they've taken Google Earth, and allowed you to have free reign to setup naval and air operations ANYWHERE on the map. And unlike Jane's Fleet Command that limited you to a certain section of the globe, the entire world is open on this game all the time. You could launch a B2 Spirit bomber from Colorado, and send it on a sorty to the Middle East (midflight refueling points setup as well) and all the way back. The game hosts 35 scenarios in total, with conflict dates ranging from the 1950s to modern day. But there are many more scenarios that users have uploaded

***JANE'S FLEET COMMAND
If you liked Jane's Fleet Command, you'll probably like this one too, however this game is MUCH more detailed and technical than Fleet Command ever was. Personally, I like that it's more detailed. Fleet Command meant you had to micro-manage all of your units, and this could get really hectic the more air assets you put into action. In Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, you're able to assign specific mission sets and other RoE factors for your squadrons before they ever take off and for your ships as well. Rather than micro-managing on the fly (which you can still do, if necessary) you do all of the preparation heavy at the beginning of any operation.

***VAST LIBRARY OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT, WEAPONS, EXPLANATIONS
ALSO, the game comes with an absolutely amazing library of every single military piece of equipment currently declassified. It not only lists the ships, and aircraft, but it goes down into the types of weaponry they possess and then what those weapons themselves are capable of, and what they're used for. This library alone is worth the price. Sure, a lot of this information may be on Google, but it hasn't been fact checked, nor is it as consilidated into one place like it is in this game.


Personally, I really love this game. It's allowed me to play out one fictional scenario I've written about in my geopolitical book, which was amazing. It's hard for me to have any cons with the game. It's very technical, but that's just the way it is and I'm okay with that.

is it worth $80? yes. heres why

>Conducting a covert intelligence-gathering Mission by electronic means(ELINT) operation off the coast of ukraine with an ohio class submarine in 2016.
>i recieve a radar ping from an unknown enemy contact(SKUNK)
>i immediatedly start sending out Sonar pings and radar emissions in a frantic state of panic
>russian sub nowhere to be found
>2 torpedos located headed straight for me
>hardcore manouver to borderline crush depth and evade torpedos
>get a SKUNK contact
>say to myself "♥♥♥♥ IT, I HAVE YOU KNOW YOU SLAV ♥♥♥♥♥♥"
>fire 6 torpedos from all tubes
>SKUNK contact dissapears as my torpedos impacted the target

>manouver to investigate to find out i killed a blue whale.......
>recieve 1 torpedo contact just before i get struck
>my submarine is now an artificial reef off the coast of Kiev.


10/10 would go whaling again.

It's a lot like a top down counter strike

worth every penny !!!

NOTE: When i indicate that i got this for free, i mean that i got the boxed matrix store version as a Christmas gift, and used my code from that to get a free steam code, which anyone can do. I was planning to save up and buy it anyway, so o just got lucky. This is also why i bought Northern Inferno without hesitation when it was released.

Warning: long review ahead, i won't touch on everything, as a lot of the steam reviews do a good job as well.

I would definitely have to recommend Command:Modern Air/Naval Operations, if you are up to the challenge and have enough interest and patience to enjoy it.

Yes, $80 USD is a lot of money for one game. But this is actually acceptable for a number of reasons:
-Steam Refunds make it a safer purchase if you are unsure.
-Command:Northern Inferno is a reasonably priced way of trying out the game without committing to the full price.
-What you get out of $80 USD in CMANO is completely worth it, ill go into this is more detail in a little bit.

And of course if you can get it on sale, that is definetly a bonus!

CMANO definitely requires, above all else, patience. You are not going to get the hang of this in one sitting. I highly recommend doing what i have done: Downloading the printer-friendly version of the manual, print it out, along with the various manual addendums on the website and buy a three ring binder to put it all in and have the manual available for reading in your spare time as well as during the game. I have only logged about 74 hours into this (plus probably an additional 3-4 hours when steam was in offline mode), and i am by no means confident enough to take on alot of the scenarios. But i am learning.

To put it bluntly, CMANO is a wargame/simulation of Naval and Aerial warfare all over the world from 1945 until the present day and the near future (i've seen scenarios going as far as the 2030s). That by itself inherently gives you a lot to work with. But that is a massive understatement.

"What do you get in CMANO?" You should really be asking: "What don't you get in CMANO?", well not a whole lot.

Well one thing you don't get is fancy graphics that you see in other naval wargames like Jane's Fleet Command or Naval War Arctic Circle. But to be honest, those don't really add alot to the games and are really just eye candy. I have never played any version of Harpoon, so i really cannot draw any comparisons there.

As of right now, CMANO contains i think around 40 standalone scenarios, plus seven or so tutorial scenarios. If you also get Northern Inferno that is an additional 14 scenarios, which can be played individually or as a campaign.

HOWEVER, there is the Community Scenario Pack, available on the developer's website, that contains close to 300 scenarios, most of which are made by the community. This is a free download, and every once in awhile it is updated as more players submit their creations. This is absolutely a must-have, think of it as free DLC, as the scenarios go through some peer review before being put in the pack.

Also the most recent patch (v1.10) added steam workshop support, just be mindful that as of this writing (March 11 2016) many of the scenarios on there are already in the Community Scenario pack, So if you already have the pack, just check that before downloading from the workshop so that you don't have unnecessary copies of the same scenario.

As the above clearly implies, you can very much create your own scenarios. The possibilities are massive, as you have the entire planet earth to work with, as the whole program uses a Google Earth style globe.

Basically, the meat of what CMANO contains is in the two databases. These contain all the units, buildings etc (referred to as platforms) and weapons and sensors in the entire program. All put together, there are literally thousands of entries in the database. There are so many that there are actually two separate databases:

-"Cold War Database" AKA CWDB (stuff from 1945/6 through 1979)
-"Database 3000 AKA DB3k (stuff from 1980 until the present day and near future)

Some players on the forum have admitted to spending more time just browsing through the databases than actually playing. It is that huge and extensive. Much of it is available to look at for free on Baloogan's Campaign Wiki, there should be a link in the steam community discussions.

One snag is that you cannot have stuff from both databases in a single scenario, you have to use one or the other.

The sheer size of the databases means that as long as you keep within the Post-WWII timeframe, your options are, for all practical purposes, unlimited. The information in the databases is also incredibly detailed, basically all of the military hardware is portrayed in the most accurate way possible using publically available information. Obviously some stuff has some guesses about the capabilities, as the much of the details about things like the F-22 Raptor or the Virginia class Submarine are classified. There are also quite a bit of speculative and prototype units, such as the planned but never built aircraft carrier version of the F-117 stealth fighter, i think even the long suspected "Aurora" spy plane is modelled, obviously in a guessing way. One update recently added anti-torpedo torpedoes.

You cannot, however, make your own units from scratch. I think this is fine for two reasons:

1. the Devs clearly put a lot of effort into modeling such a huge amount of units, weapons, and sensors, and i think it is not unreasonable for them to want people to enjoy all their hard work.

2. most of what you would need is already there, unless you are going for something totally science fiction, i think you will find just about anything you want within the game's timeframe.

You can however, make modifications to existing units, to use an example from the dev's website, you can put the modern advanced Aegis radar on an Iowa Class Battleship.

Perhaps the best part about all of this is the developer support. They give great help, as does the community, and their free updates add a lot. It is worth it to create an account on the forums.

CMANO is still very much being built. Each major patch usually adds new features for free, For example, the latest patch added the ability to give waypoint targeting to cruise missiles. In the next one they are improving mid air refueling and air strike planning.

Perhaps there is no better testament to the quality of CMANO than the fact that it is starting to have real world applications in the defense industry. Not that long ago the devs signed a deal with BAE Systems, the second largest defense contractor in the world, to use this program professionally. This wargame definitely has the potential to become one of the go to programs for Naval and Air Force academies around the world, especially since customers of the professional edition that you and me cannot buy have the freedom to add in more realistic information (classified stuff) for their own private purposes.


Bottom Line, if you are willing to put down the money (save up for a while if you want), have an interest in the subject matter, and enough patience to accept the learning curve, you will not regret purchasing CMANO. I swear it is worth every penny, in fact it is worth much more than $80 USD, you really are getting quite a deal given how much work went into this, and the fact that the devs keep on adding to it for free, save for the Northern Inferno addon.

This game – an excellent Sim really – is truly splendid, but it’s not for everyone.

Command is the best Naval/Air simulator for 1945 through the near term future that you’re going to see without a security clearance (And some of the secured Sims aren’t as good either). It’s long and fact and zero on trying to engage the user, which is as a good sim should be.

Thousands of hours and reams of accurate, expensive data have been accumulated here. The result is something you can use to accurately sandbox real-life events in the news, and see deeply into a situation you otherwise aren’t going to see without joining the military and ramping up into Staff School. Want to see the actual likely effects of the North Korean nuclear proliferation? Check out why Russia feels they needed to invade Sevastopol? See how a nuclear Iran would really look? This is one of the best places for civilians to see this. This sim can change your geopolitical awareness, if you use it well.

On the other hand, there are no dramatic first person graphics, no embedded plots, no immersive story lines. And if you need these, look elsewhere.

The learning curve is steep, but the community support is excellent. This game also continues to evolve, so you aren’t going to wind up with a white elephant that sits on your disk with no fixes, changes or upkeep.

Bottom line: If you enjoy sims of this nature, this is by far the best I’ve ever seen. And if you want something like WoW, you’re not going to find it here.