DDCS Overlord: the player guide

Start here

DDCS Overlord is a persistent war server for DCS World: one war that runs day and night, fought by players and AI on both sides. It is free to fly.

1. In DCS, open Multiplayer and search Overlord in the server list. The server is --==DDCS Overlord==--, and there is no password.
2. Pick a side carefully. The first side you join is yours for the whole war, so pick one that flies an aircraft you own, and the side your friends fly.
3. Take any aircraft you own at one of your side's bases, with a full loadout. Type -help in chat for the commands.
4. Land at a friendly base and park when you are done, rather than ditching. It keeps your standing up.
5. Join the Discord at https://discord.gg/agHcWfT3F9. You need it to sign in to the live map.
6. For the live map, sign in with Discord at https://ddcsoverlord.com, get your link code, and type -link CODE in DCS chat. Your side's map opens once you are linked.

Prices and numbers move as the war is tuned. When this page and the game disagree, the game is right. The quick reference at the end lists every command on one page in alphabetical order, each with what it does and its F10 twin, and draws the whole F10 radio menu out under it.

What this server is

An engine sits underneath DCS and keeps the war in a database: bases, supplies, vehicles, who owns what, who is inbound where. It keeps running when you log off, and a server restart loses nothing. The AI fights the war when nobody is on and steps back as players arrive.

Three habits from ordinary servers will catch you out.

Supply is physical. A base has missiles because somebody flew or drove them in. When it runs dry it stays dry until somebody does it again, and an offensive can stall because nobody ran cargo.

Aircraft are free, and always will be: any aircraft your side flies, full rack, at your side's bases (forward bases are for helicopters). The two sides fly different aircraft, so check what yours flies before you pick a side. If a field has been picked over, the premium weapons thin out first and you fly farther for what you want.

A base changes hands only when a person puts infantry on its headquarters. The AI can grind a garrison down to nothing and still not take the field.

Your first sortie

1. In DCS, open Multiplayer and search Overlord in the server list. There is no password.
2. Pick a side. The first side you join is yours for the whole campaign, not just this session.
3. Take any aircraft your side flies, at any of your side's bases, with a full loadout. The two sides fly different aircraft, and forward bases are for helicopters.
4. Type -help in chat for the command index, and -wallet for your money and standing. Both answer only to you.
5. Fly. Land at a friendly base afterwards and shut down, rather than ditching: bringing an aircraft home is what keeps your standing up.

That is enough to fly. Everything after this is how to be useful once you have.

Getting in

Can't get in?

DCS itself refuses a few kinds of connection before the server sees you. What the message means:

• "Pure client textures are required." The server does not accept modified textures. Remove texture mods, or run a DCS repair, and join again.
• A version mismatch. A server and a client on different DCS versions cannot connect. Update DCS. If you are already up to date, the server may be catching up after an update: try again shortly.
• "Trial-only clients are not allowed." An install whose only modules are trials cannot join.
• The server is full. It holds 70 pilots. Try again in a few minutes.

Discord and the app

Join the Discord at https://discord.gg/agHcWfT3F9. That is where the announcements and the community are, and you need to be a member to sign in to the app. Sign in at https://ddcsoverlord.com with your Discord account and link your DCS pilot, and you get your side's live war map for free. The map stays locked until you link. See "The app" below for what it does.

You do not need the app to play, and you do not need to link anything to fly. Linking joins your app login to your DCS pilot, so the two become one account with one wallet. To tie them together, open the app, get the short link code it shows you, join the server in DCS, and type this in chat:

-link <code>

The engine binds the two. If the code is wrong or expired, the reply says so and you get a fresh one in the app. One DCS account links to one Discord account at a time.

Linking also puts the player badge next to your name on the DDCS Discord, within a minute or so, so everyone there can see you fly on the server. It stays through every new campaign.

Everything the app's Commander tier does, you can do free from the cockpit, including choosing where an order goes, which base sends it, which way it faces, and building a custom group.

Flying from a different DCS login

If you start flying from a different DCS login than the one you linked, what you earn there does not show in the app, because the app follows the login you linked. The app's wallet panel shows which login that is and when it was last in the sim. If the server sees you join under the same name as your linked login, it also tells you on screen once you take a seat.

To move your link to the login you fly now, tap your wallet in the app, then Move link. The app shows a new code. Join the server from the login you fly and type it in chat:

-link <code>

That login takes over your link and your old login is retired. Any warbonds your old login earned above the starting grant come with you, and so do the units, deliveries and orders it owned. Both logins must be on the same side this war; if they are not, ask an admin to switch sides first.

Picking a side

The first coalition you join is the coalition you play for the whole campaign. The join click is what sets it, not the slot, so joining a side and backing out again still locks you. Picking a side in the app does the same, once your DCS account is linked. There is no command to switch yourself, and the other side's slots are shut to you after that: click one and you are refused, left in spectators, and told in chat which side you are locked to. If you clicked the wrong color by accident, or you want to fly with friends on the other side, an admin can move you. Ask in Discord.

Spawning

Every spawn on land is a dynamic spawn: pick a base, pick an airframe, pick a loadout, go. There are no static slots. What a base can offer is what is physically on its ramp and its shelf:

• Airframes. A base holds a count of each type. When you take one, the count goes down. When you land at any friendly base and park, the airframe is credited there, so flying a jet forward to a bare field stocks that field for the next pilot.
• Weapons. A full rack is always free. A base with a thin ammo shelf offers fewer of the premium stores and never runs to zero of anything; a starved field still flies, mostly with dumb bombs and a last handful of everything else. Bring unexpended rounds home and they go back on the shelf where you land.
• Stock DCS only. Every aircraft on either side is a stock DCS module. You need no mods to fly here, and a mod aircraft is never offered.
• The capital. Each side has at least one capital. It is unlimited, free, and cannot be captured. It is usually well back from the front, so a stripped front line costs a longer flight rather than an aircraft you cannot have.
• Carriers are the one exception: a deck cannot be a dynamic spawn, so carrier aircraft are ordinary client slots bound to the ship. A deck starts with a fixed air wing and is not resupplied type by type; the whole wing is put back only once every type on it is gone.

When you first appear in a fixed-wing aircraft, a small tag with your name goes on your side's F10 map at that spot for three minutes so you can find where you are. Helicopters get no tag. You get at most one tag every five minutes, so re-slotting straight away does not draw a second one.

Your radios come up on the module's own defaults; the mission cannot pre-tune a dynamic spawn. Put guard on a preset yourself, every sortie: VHF guard 121.5 AM, UHF guard 243.0 AM.

Every aircraft carries kneeboard pages baked into the mission: the chat commands, the FARP and FOB supply checklist, radios and the clock, and for helicopters their bays, fuel, and default fit. Flip to them in the cockpit.

Stewardship

Stewardship is a private score on your account for each side, 0 to 100. You start at 50. It measures sportsmanship, not skill: are you a good citizen of this server. It is not money and it buys nothing.

It goes up when you bring an aircraft home and park it, as long as you were airborne for at least five minutes. A circuit does not count. If you took damage on that flight and limped it home, it counts however short the flight was, and it counts the most. An aircraft that was already damaged when you took off gets no such pass: it needs the full five minutes like any other. Pulling a downed pilot out pays too.

It goes down when you throw an airframe away: crash it, ditch it, or leave it flying while you disconnect. Being shot down by the enemy costs a little, because combat is not waste. Shooting a teammate or ramming one costs a great deal, and repeat offenses cost more each time; the victim pays nothing. Losing a helicopter you launched from a main operating base costs nothing at all. Off a capital or a forward pad it is charged like anything else.

There is one consequence, and it is a transit rather than a refusal to fly. Below 10 your fixed wing comes from a capital wherever you meant to start, and the server tells you so in as many words: "You are now below 10 you can only spawn at your CAPITAL until it recovers (helicopters at any MOB stay open to you)." You can still fly anywhere and land anywhere.

Helicopters at a main operating base are exempt at any score, which is deliberate: the rotary war is the fastest way to climb back, so the airframe that earns it is not the one you are locked out of. Forward pads stay capital-only while you are under the floor, and so does every aeroplane. Pulling out the pilot of a loaded jet is worth about as much as throwing one away and is usually enough on its own; a helicopter crew is worth less than half that, so it can take two or three.

-wallet shows your stewardship beside your money.

Chat commands and the F10 menu

Two different things in DCS are called F10, and this guide needs both. The F10 map is the map you get by pressing F10 in the cockpit. The F10 radio menu is the last entry of the radio menu, "F10 Other", where this server puts its pages. Where it matters below, the guide says which.

Every action has two doors: a leaf in the radio menu, and a typed command in chat. They run the same code, so use whichever is easier in the moment. Type commands into all chat or your coalition's chat; a direct message to one player never reaches the engine, so a command typed there gets no answer at all. Typed commands start with a hyphen:

-help              the index, one line per section
-help fight        one section's card
-help move         everything about one command
-help all          the whole card

A typed command never appears in public chat; the engine swallows it and the reply comes back to you alone, on screen or in your chat tab. If nothing comes back at all, the reply could not find a door to reach you: get into a seat and ask again.

If your F10 menu is missing or looks wrong, type -refreshmenu from a seat. The leaf Support > Redraw menu is no help when the menu itself is the thing that is gone, and neither door answers a spectator.

There are two limits on commands in general, and neither ever charges you. The commands that buy things, -order, -resupply, -build, -repair and ordering a FOB, are paced five seconds apart per player, even when the answer is only a list or a quote. Everything else, readouts included, allows ten commands in ten seconds. A leaf clicked twice does not order twice: the second click is told the first is still being worked.

A few commands are typed only, because they are settings or need free text rather than acts in a sortie: -link, -jtacmsg, -admiral, the downed-pilot list -csar (though CSAR duty is on the menu), and -build farp for the jump FARP crate, which is the one build kind with no leaf of its own. Anything that needs a name or a number you choose, a FOB name, a frequency, a grid, also stays typed. Where an order goes, which base sends it and which way it faces are on the menu, under Order > Delivery and custom; only a typed grid or a group name of your own stays typed there.

Reading the map

The F10 map is the game's main screen. Everything on it is drawn by the engine.

Ownership

Every base is one simple shape. The shape says what the base is, the color says who holds it:

Blue fill is blue-held ground, red is red. FOBs and FARPs are drawn for their own side only; the enemy has to find them. Each side's front line is drawn where its ground faces the enemy's: one heavy stroke in that side's color, captioned with the side and how many bases it holds, like BLUE · 12 BASES. The ground between the two lines is what is contested, and it is deliberately left empty.

Most of the fields on a modern map are bare helicopter pads rather than airfields. Those start neutral, are taken by troops rather than supplied, and get no AI logistics at all. A neutral one is not drawn on the map at all. Once a side takes one it appears in that side's color wearing the same octagon a real airfield wears. A taken pad is the one exception to the shape table above: it wears an airfield's octagon without being one, and it does not count toward winning.

Fights

• A dotted ring on a base's headquarters, with a clock, means an assault is under way there. Everyone sees it, both sides, because a capture changes the map everyone flies on.
• A dashed ring in the defender's color reading BREACHED is shown to the attacking side only: the garrison is down and troops may commit.
• Strength figures, casualty counts, and the state of a casualty point are told to each side about its own fight only. That is intelligence the other side has to earn.

Contacts and fog

What you see of the enemy is what your side has actually seen: a JTAC's eyes, a fighter's radar, a ship, a unit in contact. Enemy sightings show as hostile diamonds where somebody looked, and they age out unless re-sighted. -contacts (or Command > Contacts) prints the same picture as a numbered list. The map never shows you something nobody on your side detected.

Other things you will see

• Shipment marks for your side's inbound deliveries.
• A FOB survey outline where somebody on your side has staked out a compound. The survey's flags and panels themselves are physical objects the enemy can find.
• Pointers: an amber ring 2 km in radius with your name and a ten-digit grid in the middle, dropped with -point to say look here to your side. Anyone can drop one, you get one at a time, and it lasts three minutes.
• Spawn tags: your name where you spawned, fixed wing only, for three minutes.

Downed pilots are never marked on the F10 map.

What a mark is

You can draw on the F10 map with DCS's own marker tool: click a point, type a label if you want. On this server your latest mark is where your commands act. Move a group to the mark, fire a battery at the mark, call CAS at the mark, point at the mark, send an order to the mark (Order > Delivery and custom > Deliver to > My F10 mark). Place one, then act. Your newest mark is the one that counts; delete it and the engine forgets it. The engine reads your latest mark from DCS's own map each time a command needs a point, so an engine restart does not lose it. If a command tells you to place a mark and one is plainly sitting there, the running mission is older than the engine's mark reader; it works after the next server restart. Until then the command answers:

Place an F10 map mark first, or type a grid (37TCK12345678), or say here.

The other two doors work now. Type a grid, or say here for your own position. When the mission update lands, the mark door opens with no change on your side.

A grid is an MGRS reference in one piece (37TCK12345678), or spaced the way DCS writes it (37T CK 1234 5678), or two decimals (43.1234 40.5678, latitude then longitude). The sim converts it, so the point is where the sim says it is.

The jobs

Each comes with a worked sortie you can copy the first time, except commanding ground forces, which has a chapter of its own further down. The information commands are written up under Fighter because that is where they come up most, but -awacs, -atis, -tanker and -admiral answer from any seat. If it is your first night, fly the transport one: it is the shortest way to change something on the map.

Fighter

Take any jet at any base with a full rack. A kill pays half of what the thing cost to buy, so two kills fund one replacement. An AI kill pays exactly what a human kill pays. The bands are under Money.

What you killed it with does not change the payout. The engine prices the target and pays half of it, whether you spent a missile or a burst of gun.

Bring the jet home. Parked means stopped on the ground at a friendly base for about fifteen seconds; you do not have to shut down or find a particular spot, but do not jump straight to spectator or it never counts. Landing and parking after a sortie of five minutes or more raises your stewardship more than losing one lowers it. Landing at a different friendly base than you left from puts the airframe on that base's shelf, which is how forward fields get jets.

Your side has one AWACS and its tankers on station; the enemy has its own. -awacs tells you where yours is and what to tune, and -gci tells you whether a human controller is on station and on what frequency (see Controller, below). -tanker slow or -tanker fast sets the boom tanker's orbit speed for your whole side (an A-10 wants a walking pace, an F-15 wants to be done and gone). -atis, or -atis <base>, reads the weather and runway in use. -admiral <question> puts one plain question to your side's staff officer, an AI that reads your side's own picture of the war. It answers with a short read of the situation and up to three places to go, each with a bearing and range from you. It is free, one question a minute, and it is advice only: it moves nothing and spends nothing. A server that is not running it says the admiral is not on station.

A worked sortie. Spawn a fighter at the MOB nearest the front, guard already on a preset. -awacs tells you where yours is orbiting and what to tune. Push toward the front, or toward the dotted ring on the map where a base is being assaulted, or toward whoever is calling. Land at the forward base rather than the capital and park: the airframe lands on that base's shelf, where the next person can take it. Then -wallet, which shows what the sortie paid and what parking it did for your standing.

Controller

A controller watches the air picture and talks fighters onto it. On this server you do it with the Control mode in the app and your own voice on the in-game radio.

Where to sit. The in-game radio only works from a cockpit, so join the server, take a jet at your capital and stay parked. Tune a radio to a frequency nobody else on your side is using; the app lists the ones your side's AWACS, tankers and JTACs already talk on. Keep the app open on a second screen or a tablet.

Going on station. Open Control from the map's left rail, or press G. Type your callsign and your frequency and press On station. Pick a callsign of your own: the app warns you if MAGIC, a tanker or a JTAC your side already hears is using it. Everyone on your side now sees you at the top of their map, and a pilot in a cockpit can type -gci to find out who is controlling and where. Nothing is said for you. Choose SUNRISE and read the line out so the side knows you are up. From the cockpit, -gci on FOCUS 262.0 does the same, and its reply gives you the SUNRISE words.

Reading a call. Tap one of your flights, then a hostile group, on the map or in the lists. A line joins them on the map with the bearing and range, and the panel writes the call the way it is said on the net:

HORNET 1-1, FOCUS, GROUP BRAA 2-1-0/28, THIRTY-EIGHT THOUSAND, HOT, HOSTILE, FLANKER.

Read it as written. The bearing goes digit by digit ("two one zero"), the range and altitude as plain numbers ("twenty-eight, thirty-eight thousand"). The buttons choose which call it writes:

• BRAA is where a group is from the flight you tapped, which way it is pointed and what it is.
• THREAT is the same call for a group close enough to matter. The panel marks a group inside 35 NM; whether it is a threat is your call.
• BULLSEYE is where a group is from bullseye. Use it when more than one flight is listening, and to answer a pilot who asks you to DECLARE something.
• FRIENDLY tells a flight where another of your flights is, for a rejoin.
• PICTURE says how many groups your side can see, and describes up to three that you put in it.
• ALPHA CHECK gives a pilot his own position from bullseye when he checks in.
• SUNRISE tells everyone you are on station and on what frequency.

Every pair you tap stays on the map under Pairs, so you can work several flights at once. On a keyboard the number keys pick a flight, the square brackets step through the groups, and Enter copies the call.

What the numbers are. Bearings are magnetic, which is what most cockpits show, and every bearing the server prints in chat is magnetic too. The Flaming Cliffs jets (Su-27, Su-33, J-11A, MiG-29A, MiG-29S, Su-25, F-15C) read true heading, and Russian-built cockpits read kilometers and meters, so calls to those flights switch to match. The chip beside the call says which it is using, and you can change it for any flight.

What it will not do. The app never talks on the radio or in chat, never picks a flight or a target for you, and never calls the sky clean. If nothing is on your side's picture it says that, and whether the sky is actually clean is yours to say. A group nobody on your side has seen for thirty seconds turns FADED, and its call becomes a FADED call from bullseye to the whole net; after a minute it stops giving you a position for it at all.

Your stats. Every air-to-air kill another player on your side scores while you are on station and in a cockpit is counted on your stats as a controlled air kill. It pays nothing.

Checking in with a controller. When a controller is on station, their callsign and frequency show at the top of the map. Tap it for the line to say, tune the frequency, and call:

FOCUS, VIPER 1-1, CHECKING IN, REQUEST ALPHA CHECK BULLSEYE.

When a controller gives you a call, answer with your callsign. Do not read the numbers back.

Going off station. Press Off station, or type -gci off. Leaving the server takes you off station as well.

Fulcrum datalink

This is for pilots of the MiG-29 Fulcrum, the full module. The Flaming Cliffs MiG-29A, S and G cannot use it: the truck does not talk to them, and they are not told a channel when they take a seat.

Each main base your side holds puts out one datalink post: an unarmed truck that drives out of that base's motor pool and sets up near the field. Dialled in, it steers you onto targets from the ground, with your own radar quiet until you are close. A post covers 200 km around itself, which is 108 nautical miles.

Each base has its own channel. When you take a Fulcrum seat you are told the nearest post that is on the air and its channel. Dial that channel on the GCI panel in the cockpit. To see every post your side has, type -gci datalink or press Support, then GCI, then Fulcrum datalink on F10. The F10 entry is on the menu of a side that flies the Fulcrum; a side that does not has no posts and no entry. The list is nearest first, and for each post on the air it gives the channel, the base, the range and bearing from you, and whether you are inside its sector:

Fulcrum datalink posts on the air. Dial the channel on the GCI panel.
Channel 4, Mozdok, 38 km from you, bearing 215. You are inside its 200 km sector.
Channel 7, Beslan, 96 km from you, bearing 140.

-gci datalink <base> reads out one base. When you fly out of one post's sector and into another's, you are told the new channel.

What the other lines mean. "Setting up" is a post whose truck is out and is not on the air: it may still be driving to its site, or be on it and not switched on yet. The line gives the channel it will use, and says "not on the air" beside it. "No post known to be out" is a base that is due a post, where the server knows of none that has left the motor pool; the list does not say when, or whether, one will. "Standing by" is a post that is resting because nobody on your side was in a Fulcrum; it wakes when a Fulcrum pilot takes a seat, so for the first minute after you spawn the list may show posts standing by. "On the air" means the truck is deployed and switched on with a radar in reach. The server cannot see your cockpit, so the lamps on your GCI panel are what tell you that you are linked.

It needs your radars. A post has no radar of its own. It passes on what your side's early-warning radars see, and it needs one within 250 km. When none is in reach, the list says the post may have no picture. Protect your early-warning radars and the datalink keeps its eyes.

It can be destroyed. The truck is a fair target and the enemy will hunt it. When one dies the Fulcrum pilots on your side are told, and the list shows it as down. Its base puts out another no sooner than ten minutes later, on the same channel, and the new truck still has to drive out and set up, so the list says "no replacement before" and never when it will be ready. A base with no standing motor pool cannot put one out. If the enemy takes one of your bases, the post standing there keeps serving your side until it is destroyed, and the list marks it "base lost, post still standing".

Transport and logistics

Huey, Mi-8, Mi-24, Chinook, Hercules. You haul crates and you haul troops. The FOB and FARP kits are crates too, and they have their own section under "Ordering and building".

Crates. Every building and every player-built air defense site comes as crates, and there are two ways they reach you. The jump FARP crate, the FOB kit crate, the mobile FARP crate and the artillery objects appear beside you, at the capital, MOB or FOB you are standing at, when you ask for them. Everything else, -build motorpool|barracks|aaa|shortSam|ewr, is an order: you are charged at once, with no refund if the crates are destroyed on the way, and the crates are delivered to where you stood, flown in or driven out of the nearest motor pool. Order them at a FOB and they come by road, which means anyone who spots that convoy can follow it home. Those ordered crates only go up within 3 km of a friendly base.

However they arrive, the crates do nothing on their own. Each one is a cargo container on the ground rigged for DCS's own sling hook, lifted one at a time. A build crate weighs 1,500 kg, a jump FARP kit 2,000, a FOB kit 2,500, a mortar pit 800, and each of the two howitzer objects 3,200, which wants an Mi-8 or CH-47 class hook. Heap them within 120 m of each other where you want the thing, land, and -emplace. A build crate is never absorbed into a base's shelf, so setting one down beside a FOB and waiting achieves nothing; it sits there until somebody emplaces it.

Hauling stock is a separate job and a paid one: a cargo pallet flown from one friendly base to another is absorbed into the destination's shelf a few minutes after you set it down, and pays well into a base that is short.

Troops. A squad is six men, except the MANPAD team, which is one man with a launcher. -load <kind> draws one from a friendly base's barracks, landed. In a helicopter you have to be on the barracks pad, the ring of white tires beside the barracks helicopter, within 50 m of its middle. A C-130 or a ground vehicle boards anywhere within 5 km of the base instead, since a Hercules cannot park on a tire ring. At a FOB a helicopter only has to be within 800 m. Put down in the wrong place and the refusal names the nearest pad, how far it is and which way. Blue loads infantry, mg, manpad, or jtac; red loads infantry, at, manpad, or jtac. A base with no standing barracks has nothing to give and says so: a base's own garrison never leaves it, so somebody has to build a barracks there before that field can stage troops. In a helicopter the men walk aboard one at a time, two seconds a man, so wait for the last one before you lift; a Hercules loads them on paper and goes. Lift early while they are boarding and the ones still on the ground go back into the barracks. Lift early while they are getting out and whoever has not stepped off is gone. How many squads you can carry:

-troops (or CSAR > Reintegrate > Manifest) is your manifest: every squad aboard with its callsign, the men, the weight, and your bay limit. -deploy puts them out where you are. Landed, they walk off two seconds a man and form up off your nose. Airborne, they go down the ropes instead, which needs a hover between 3 and 30 m AGL at under 5 m/s: about a second a man from the lowest hover, six seconds a man from the highest. Hold it within 30 m of where you started, because drifting or climbing out of that for four seconds loses the men still on the rope. At a friendly base -deploy returns them to the barracks instead, unless that base is under assault, when they join the defense. Three things refuse that hand-back, and all three name the same way out. The base has no barracks. Its barracks is already full. Or you are in the wrong place: at a MOB or a capital a helicopter has to be in the tire ring, a C-130 within 400 m of the field's center. A refusal never deletes the men. Move clear of the base center and the same command puts them on the ground instead, which takes 800 m at a FOB, 2.5 km at a MOB, and 3.5 km at a capital. -extract calls friendly squads within 2 km; they walk the whole way to your door, so land, stop, and wait.

A FOB in contact. Enemy ground within 2 km and the FOB issues nothing; every shipment not already moving halts. Clear the contact, or supply it by air yourself.

A worked sortie. Take an Mi-8 or a Chinook at a MOB. Look at the map for your side's forward FOB. -build aaa at the MOB and wait for the crate to arrive; the reply tells you what it cost and that there is no refund if it is destroyed on the way. Sling it, fly it forward, set it down inside the FOB and land beside it. -emplace, and the gun goes up. It is yours, and -recover landed beside it packs it back into its crate. Then -load infantry twice on the barracks pad, fly them to the same FOB, and -deploy. The FOB now has a gun and twelve more men than it had. Land at the FOB and park: the helicopter is credited there, so the next person can spawn one at the front.

JTAC

A JTAC is one light vehicle, a Humvee for blue or a UAZ for red, whose crew finds targets, lases them, and marks them for the aircraft. It generates no kills of its own.

There are two ways to get one out. The free way is to carry it: -load jtac at a barracks, landed, into an Mi-8, CH-47 or C-130 only. The menu calls it a JTAC team, and it takes one bay. Fly it forward, land or come to a low, slow hover, and -jtac: the vehicle is set down 25 m off your nose and goes to work. The paid way is the JTAC vehicle on the Support shelf (-order support), which is the same single vehicle driven to you by road and charged like any other order. Either way it sees out to about 10 km, lases automatically, and feeds contacts onto your side's map. Ten JTACs per side may stand at once.

Every team has its own laser code and its own FM frequency, printed when you deploy it and listed any time by -jtacs (or Troops > JTAC > Picture). Blue codes count down from 1688, red from 1686, and no code carries a 0 or a 9. Frequencies start at 40.0 MHz and step by 0.5. Change either from the cockpit:

-jtac radio 42.5 1675     set its FM (30.000 to 87.975, 25 kHz steps) and laser code
-jtac code 1675           the code alone (1111 to 1788, digits 1 to 8)
-jtac ir on               its IR pointer for NVG pilots; it is off until somebody asks
-jtac targets             what it sees, numbered
-jtac lase 2              put the beam on row 2
-jtac next                switch it to its next target
-jtac move                drive it to your F10 mark (or -jtac move 43.12 40.56)

With several teams out, name one by callsign (-jtac next Bravo) or the nearest to your mark answers. A team can be picked back up with -extract; it stays a JTAC with its code and comes back on station when you -jtac it again. Someone in a Combined Arms seat can drive it too.

JTAC traffic reaches you in a window at the top right of the screen by default. -jtacmsg tab moves it to the chat tab (VR pilots find the window huge), -jtacmsg off silences it.

A worked sortie. Mi-8 at a MOB, -load jtac on the pad, fly to a ridge overlooking the enemy's next base, land behind it, -jtac. Read the deploy reply for the code and frequency, and put both in Discord for the attack pilots. Fly home. Back in a fighter, tune the FM, -jtac targets, -jtac lase 1, and drop on the code. When the field is spent, -jtac next.

Artillery

Artillery on this server is real guns you build, not an explosion command. Blue builds a four-gun L118 howitzer battery, red a three-tube mortar pit, and any mobile artillery a human ordered answers the same commands.

Drawing the objects is free. At a capital, MOB, or FOB, -build firebase (blue) or -build mortars (red) puts one sling object beside you. The mortar pit is one object; the howitzer battery takes two of them, 3,200 kg each, heaped within 120 m, so two lifts. Set the heap down wherever you want the guns, land within 120 m of it and -emplace: the whole battery is charged there in warbonds, and it goes up facing the front. A crate dropped in the sea is a wasted flight, not a wasted battery. Blue may have two batteries standing and red ten mortar pits. Only the guns count: a battery is destroyed when its guns are, and the ammunition boxes beside them are dressing.

The fires net. A battery starts on AUTO: any target a JTAC on your side is lasing inside its range is fired on without anyone asking. A commander can take a battery instead and fire it by hand at a point; see "Commanding from the cockpit". The L118 reaches about 16.3 km and the mortar pit 6.7 km (the last five per cent of book range is held back, and the battery list prints the working figure); the enemy hears the rounds. Order a battery past its reach and it refuses before firing, naming how far out the target is and how far the guns actually reach. Runways and the landing pads of FOBs and FARPs are off limits, yours and the enemy's alike: a mission aimed onto one is refused before anything fires, the reply says how far off to aim, and the fires net passes over any target standing on one. Guns also run dry. A battery with nothing left answers "WINCHESTER" and names itself, on the fires net as well as to the commander holding it. Send an ammo truck to it, or pull it back to a base, and it can fire again.

Counter-battery. Firing is not free. Every mission from the same spot climbs a ladder in what the enemy is told: first "artillery incoming, origin unknown", then a bearing from their nearest base, then a 100 m box with a grid, then a pinpoint. Somebody has to be listening: an enemy unit within 25 km. Fifteen minutes of silence cools it a rung. Displacing more than 300 m resets it, and because the enemy shoots at your last known firing point, a crew that moves on the warning watches the answering rounds land on empty grass. You are warned in text when you are being ranged.

A worked sortie. Chinook at a MOB, -build firebase twice, two trips to a hill behind your side's forward FOB with each object on the hook. -emplace beside the heap, read the price it charged. Then -select the battery, -fires take, and it is yours; or leave it on AUTO and go drop a JTAC in front of it.

CSAR

When a player ejects he comes down alive, hides, and puts up a survival radio. His side hears a rough mayday: a bearing and distance band from bullseye and a frequency, never a grid, because a grid in the open would tell the enemy too. The enemy is told nothing about him by name or position; an unidentified beacon on the air is their only tip. He lives about an hour in the open. Then his side is told what became of him, by name.

Four airframes rescue: Huey, Mi-8, CH-47, Mi-24. Go on duty first, CSAR > On / off duty or -csar duty on; it lasts the sortie. Off duty you are traffic and the survivor will not answer.

-csar              the nearest friendly survivors, rough area and frequency
-beacons           every survival radio within 20 km: friends by name, enemies as UNIDENTIFIED
-smoke / -flare    ask him to mark himself; refused while the enemy is within 4 km
-pickup            land close, stop, and call him over; he runs, boards, and you feel the weight
-hoist             hover within 30 m, below 200 ft, under 5 m/s; 90 s a man; the only way out of water

Tune the ADF to his frequency and follow the needle for the last kilometers. Inside 4 km your radio reaches him; outside it every survivor command answers "No one is in range", which means fly closer rather than that nobody is there. How far he will run to you depends on how safe he is: 100 m if there is enemy ground within 4 km, 1 km if it is clear, 3 km if a friendly squad is standing with him. An enemy unit on top of him captures him. A friendly squad on top of an enemy survivor takes him prisoner and delivers him at your barracks for a reward.

Deliver him on a friendly barracks pad: the tire ring at a MOB, close to the compound at a FOB. Land, and when the engine asks, -deploy hands him over. The rescuer is paid half the value of the airframe that went in, plus one airframe's worth of stewardship priced on that airframe (a Huey crew about +4, a loaded fighter's pilot +10); the rescued pilot gets back about half of that.

Wounded troops are a separate job with the same aircraft. -casevac lifts them out of a casualty collection point you are landed at, their clock stops when you lift, and -casdrop hands them over on a barracks pad.

A worked sortie. Huey at a MOB, -csar duty on, -csar. Fly the bearing, tune the ADF, -beacons when the needle firms up. Circle wide and check the map for enemy ground. -smoke. Land 150 m off the smoke, stop, -pickup. Watch him run. Fly him to the nearest friendly barracks pad, land in the ring, -deploy.

Taking a base

This is the job that ends the campaign, and it is the only one the AI cannot finish for you. The AI will grind a garrison down to nothing and then sit there. A base changes hands when a person's infantry reaches the enemy headquarters, and at no other moment.

It happens in two parts.

Break the garrison first. The garrison is the defending vehicles holding ground within 2 km of the base. It is broken when it is down to two, or to two fifths of what it started with, whichever is the larger number. That is what CAS, artillery, a JTAC and your own ground groups are for. When it breaks, your side gets the dashed BREACHED ring on the map and the defender is told nothing.

Then put men on the headquarters. One of your soldiers within 4 km of it starts the clock, and the dotted ring goes up where both sides can see it. Your men walk in, and inside 100 m of the building they are counted rather than drawn. From the moment the first of them arrives you have fifteen minutes. Only men inside 100 m of the building are in the fight. Every squad of yours within 4 km is walked in automatically, unless a player is steering it; the rest are still walking.

The fight itself is a run of rounds, each a percentage roll on the ratio of your men to theirs, and the defender counts extra because it is his home: even numbers lose about two times in three, and it takes roughly three attackers for every two defenders to make it a coin flip. Numbers decide it, so send more than you think you need, and send them before the clock starts rather than after. A base that has just changed hands cannot be assaulted again for a minute while its new owners are counted.

A worked sortie. Pick a base your side is already fighting for, one with the BREACHED ring on it. -load infantry twice at a barracks pad, fly to the base, and land somewhere the garrison cannot shoot you. -deploy, and watch them walk. Go back for more while the clock runs: every squad you land into a counting assault pays, and the capture pays again if you are there when it turns. Capitals cannot be taken, so do not spend an evening on one.

The capital zone

Each side's capital sits in the middle of a 20 nm (37 km) zone that the other side's players may not send ground units into. The capital cannot be taken, and its stock never runs out, so there is nothing for your ground forces to win there.

Anything that would put your ground units inside the enemy capital's zone is refused, and the refusal says so: a move or attack order, a purchase delivered to a point, troops or a JTAC team set down, crates built, a FOB or a FARP. If one of your ground groups is already inside, its orders are cancelled and it drives itself out to the edge of the zone. It takes orders again once it is out, and you are told the next time you are in a seat.

Destroying the enemy's ground units or buildings inside their own capital's zone pays nothing, whatever you use: a tank, artillery or an aircraft. Shooting down aircraft there pays as normal, and so does defending your own capital from anybody who comes into its zone.

Commander from the cockpit

Every ground group on your side can be selected, moved, set, and sent at the enemy from any seat, and every battery can be taken and fired, free. See "Commanding from the cockpit".

Money

One currency: warbonds. A new player gets 2,000 per side. Warbonds buy ground units, air defence, buildings, FOBs, FARPs and artillery. They never buy an aircraft, a weapon or an air strike.

How you earn

A tank you ordered pays you for its kills while you are asleep; a Combined Arms driver in somebody else's vehicle is paid for the kills he makes.

Enemy ground units and buildings destroyed inside their own capital's 20 nm zone pay nothing, whatever killed them (see "The capital zone").

What things cost

Every order is paid when it is ordered. If the delivery is shot up on the road, or the FOB transport is shot down, the money is gone. -recall cancels an inbound shipment and gives you back the slot, never the money. Nothing is refunded once it is ordered.

Surge pricing. Cheap vehicles, any type priced at 400 or less for one, get more expensive the more of that type your side already has within 30 km of where they will land. The first six are flat price; every one after costs a quarter more than the last. Dearer vehicles are never surged, and neither are supply trucks such as the fuel and ammo trucks. Most tanks cost more than that, but a cheap one such as the T-55 or the Type 59 does surge, and so does a cheap vehicle that comes as part of a bigger site. A surged order asks you to confirm within 60 seconds and shows the normal price beside the surged one. -order surge explains it in a paragraph.

-wallet (or Support > Wallet) is your money, your stewardship, and your side's pooled stock in one readout.

The F10 Order leaves always show the flat price and never a surge price, even after -refreshmenu. Typing -order <shelf> shows the surged figure, and a surged order is never charged until you confirm it.

Ordering and building

The Order menu

F10 > Order is the catalog, one shelf per group, with the price on every leaf. The nine shelves are Tanks, Artillery & MLRS, IFVs, Radar SAM, AntiAir, Scout, Infrared SAM, Support, and EWR. Each leaf gives the item's name, how many vehicles arrive when it is more than one, and the least the order can cost. Several of the same vehicle read like M1 Abrams tanks x4; a site made of different vehicles says how many in words, like Patriot site, 13 vehicles, from 10,998 wb. Typed, it drills down one word at a time:

-order                            the shelves
-order tanks                      one shelf, numbered
-order tanks 3                    buy item 3, delivered to where you are
-order tanks 3 mark               the same, delivered to your latest F10 map mark
-order tanks 3 37T CK 1234 5678   the same, delivered to that grid
-order tanks 3 from 2             sent from base 2 on the -order bases list for that point
-order tanks 3 facing nw          parked facing north-west

Every order is charged in full when you place it: the listed price, plus haulage for the distance from the base that sends it, plus that base's vehicle points. It drives by road to the point you chose, and there is no refund if it is destroyed on the way. Air defence you buy stays off your side's warning network until you select it with -select and type -set iads on. A long-range site that shoots only one way, such as a Patriot or an SA-10, is set up facing the threat unless you choose a facing.

How much can stand in one place. There is a limit on how many units your side's players can have within 10 km of any one spot, counting what is already ordered there and on its way. It is not a fixed number: it starts at 40, rises while the server has frames to spare and people want more, and drops when the server is struggling, so every map finds its own level. No one kind of unit (air defence, armour and infantry, artillery, or support) may fill more than half of it, so air defence and armour spread out to cover more bases instead of piling up on one. A spot with none of a kind always takes one order of it, even a whole SAM site, as long as the limit itself has room. An order, a crate build, a kit unpack, a troop drop or a move that would take a spot past the limit is refused before anything is charged, and the reply says how many are already there and what the limit is right now. In the cockpit it goes to your chat log, and in the app it shows on the order or command card. Nothing you already own is ever taken away: a spot that is over the limit just takes no more until some of it moves, is sold back with -sell, is lost, or the limit rises. Sending troops or vehicles to take a base that is not yours, enemy or neutral, is an attack and is never refused. To check before you order, type -order limit (or -order limit mark, or a grid) or use F10 > Order > Delivery and custom > Area limit: it says how many are there of each kind, the limit right now, and how many more fit. The app shows the same on the order card before you confirm, for the kind you are ordering.

You can put those together, as in -order tanks 3 mark from 2 facing nw. The reply to an order says which base is sending it and where it is going, and the facing too if you chose one. A mobile FARP's reply names the base its trucks come from.

Your standing choices. A menu leaf cannot carry a grid or a base name, so the server keeps your choices for you, and every order uses them until you change them or the order line says otherwise. They live under Order > Delivery and custom:

• Deliver to: Where I am, which is the default, or My F10 mark.
• From base: List bases, Nearest by road, which is the default, or a number from the list.
• Facing: Face the enemy, which is the default, one of the eight compass points, or Where my nose points.
• Show my settings tells you what you have chosen, and Back to defaults puts it all back.

Typed, the same choices are -order set to mark, -order set from 2, -order set facing nw and -order set reset, and -order set on its own shows them. -order bases lists the bases that can send an order, nearest by road first, with the road distance and the vehicle points each one holds. The list is counted from where the order is going, so add the same point you will order to, as in -order bases mark. The numbers are worked out again when you order, and can change as you move; -order set from 2 keeps that base by name, and tells you which one before anything is bought. A base you chose is never swapped for another: if it cannot send the order, you are told why and nothing is charged. A FOB only sends light vehicles. Facing in degrees is magnetic, like every bearing the server gives you. A mobile FARP faces the way you chose, or into the wind if you leave it facing the enemy.

If an order to your mark tells you to place a mark while one is plainly on your map, the running mission is older than the engine's mark reader. Type a grid or say here until the next server restart.

Ground units come out of the nearest base that can drive them to you, unless you chose one. That is a capital or a MOB's motor pool, and for light vehicles and the JTAC a FOB's own small pool first. They drive on roads. Whichever base ends up sourcing it, each piece also draws vehicle points from that base's pool, priced by what it is worth: a main battle tank costs twenty points, a light vehicle a small fraction of that. Nobody can drive an order until it arrives. An order can also be refused before any warbonds move, and the refusal names the fix: no motor pool at the base it would come from, so build one there or order closer to a base that has one; not enough vehicle points left in that base's pool, so supply it first; no base in reach that can push the order out at all, so supply the chain first; or a point in the water, so order over dry land. The catalog price is a floor. Haulage is added from whichever base ends up sourcing the order, so a refusal for want of money can quote a bigger number than the shelf showed; it names that base and how long the haul is, and nothing is ordered and nothing is charged. An order whose convoy cannot finish its road is not written off. Your side is told the cargo was offloaded where the convoy stopped, and the vehicles are standing there to be collected. The Support shelf also sells the mobile FARP.

-resupply on its own lists what is inbound for your side; -resupply 1 to -resupply 4 sends that many of your side's main battle tanks (M-1 Abrams for blue, T-90 for red) to your position, charged when you order. Standing within 500 m of your side's mobile FARP, a bare -resupply does something else: it tells you which base would send that FARP four more trucks of helicopter stock, paid from that base's shelf and vehicle points, and sends them only when you say -resupply again within 60 seconds. Nothing is sent on the first ask. -recall cancels one of your inbound shipments (-recall alone lists them with numbers).

-sell beside a friendly base's motor pool, with a group you bought parked within 500 m, quotes what the garage pays; -sell go turns it in. Only what you bought, never a base's own defense.

Building your own group

You can build your own group of 3 to 6 vehicles from single tanks, APCs, IFVs, scouts, trucks and single-vehicle short-range air defence such as the Avenger, Tor, Osa or Pantsir. Sites, radars on their own, artillery and JTAC vehicles cannot go in one. On F10 go to Order > Delivery and custom > Custom group > Add a vehicle, and add the vehicles in the order they should drive. Then choose Order this group, or Save this group to keep it. You pay the price of the vehicles added together, plus the haul, and the group goes where your standing choices say.

-order custom                     your group so far, and your saved groups
-order custom add tanks 3         add item 3 of the Tanks shelf (add tanks 3 2 adds two)
-order custom undo                take the last vehicle off
-order custom clear               start over
-order custom go                  order it (add mark, a grid, from or facing as with any order)
-order custom save Tank screen    save it under a name
-order custom 2                   order saved group 2
-order custom delete 2            delete saved group 2

Nothing is bought until you order it. Groups you save show up in the app too, and groups you saved in the app show up here. The menu lists saved groups 1 to 9; groups 10 to 12 are typed.

What each item is

The name is the one the menu prints. Where more than one vehicle arrives, the leaf adds the count after the name. "From a FOB" means a FOB's own small pool can send it; everything else comes from a main base or a capital. Any artillery you order answers the -fires commands like a battery you built.

Radar SAM

Infrared SAM (no radar; the missiles aim at heat)

AntiAir (guns)

EWR (radars that cannot shoot)

Tanks (none of them can be driven by players; the last row is light tanks, not main battle tanks)

Scout

IFVs (fighting vehicles and armoured carriers)

Artillery & MLRS

Support

Building with crates

-build on its own lists what your side can build and what each costs, and charges nothing. -build <kind> gets the crates: some appear beside you at the base you are standing at, and the buildings and air defence are ordered and delivered to where you stand, charged when you order. Heap them within 120 m of each other and -emplace. Buildings and air defence go up only within 3 km of a friendly base; the FARP crates, the FOB kit and the artillery go up where you set them down. A refusal always leaves the crates standing, and it usually tells you what to do. Short of a crate, the reply counts what is there and gives the range and bearing to the next one: get all of them within 120 m of each other and say -emplace again. Crates too scattered, or nowhere near a base, and the reply says there is nothing to emplace within 500 m and repeats the two distances. A base that already has one of a building refuses when you order, before you fly anything: one of each building per base, and the engineers rebuild it if it is killed. A jump FARP set down on ground that will not take a pad is refused with a range and bearing to ground that will.

A building draws the base's construction points and an air defence site its vehicle points, on top of the warbonds, and the reply names the figure. An air defence site built from these crates belongs to whoever paid for the crates, like anything bought from the catalog: its kills pay him, -repair and -sell treat it as his, and it starts off your side's warning network until somebody selects it and types -set iads on. -recover, landed within 200 m of one, packs it back into its crates, but only for the player it belongs to: anyone else is told it is not theirs, and nothing is packed. The crates stay the buyer's, so emplacing them again gives the site back to him. Be careful where you say it: with no crate-built air defence site and none of your side's artillery within 200 m of you, -recover strikes your FARP instead, wherever it is (see FARPs below). -repair beside a bought SAM site quotes what is missing for free; -repair buy sends an engineer truck from the nearest MOB or capital to mend it where it stands. Mending costs 30% of what those pieces would cost to order new, so a damaged site is always cheaper to repair than to replace. Paid up front, and no refund if he dies on the way. The Logistics menu carries every one of these as a leaf.

FOBs

What it is. A walled compound with four helicopter pads, its own small shelf, and a garrison of two. It also puts a light picket out of its own vehicle stock, one vehicle every ten minutes up to four, air defense first. Everything heavier than that is what you bring. Remember the contact lock: enemy ground within 2 km and it issues nothing.

Stake it out first, for free. -fob survey <name> [heading] (Logistics > FOB > Survey here) puts thirteen physical flags and panels on the ground where you stand, facing the way you are looking, for thirty minutes. Fly around it and look at it before you spend anything. If you cannot type a name, from a copilot seat or a ground vehicle, Logistics > FOB > Name it orders the standing survey as Alpha through India, for the same 1,000 warbonds.

Order it, or fly the kit in yourself. -fob orders it for 1,000 warbonds, charged when you order: a transport, a C-130 for blue or an An-26 for red, flies the kit out and airdrops it on the flags, and about three minutes after the crate lands the compound goes up. That long exposed run is deliberate and it can be intercepted, and if the transport is shot down the 1,000 is lost. The other way costs no warbonds at all: -build fob (or Logistics > FOB > Get FOB kit crate) draws the 2,500 kg kit crate beside you for 60 construction points from the base you are standing on, and a capital pays nothing for it. It is refused while your side is at its FOB limit. A CH-47, C-130 or Mi-8 carries it. Set it down within 1 km of your survey's center, land, and -emplace <name>. The crew then builds for six minutes, twice the airdrop's clock, which is what you pay for skipping the transport.

Where one may go. Names are two to twenty plain characters and must be unique. Ten FOBs per side, each at least ten miles from every other base. Distance from your own bases is not the only rule: the engine draws the supply line from the site to your nearest MOB and refuses if an enemy MOB sits within ten miles of that line, naming the base, the miles and what to do about it, because the ferry flights down that lane would not survive. It is asked at the survey, so you learn it before the flight, and again when the kit goes up. A FARP has no supply line, so neither a jump FARP nor the mobile FARP is held to it.

How it ends. Only enemy troops can take a FOB, and a FOB taken by troops is blown rather than kept, because its whole value is being where nobody expects it. Bombing one wrecks what it hits and changes nothing: the pads, the trucks and the beacon cannot be destroyed, and the compound is rebuilt when nobody is around to watch it happen. Only the player who bought a FOB can -fob scuttle it, from within 3 km, which destroys it at once with everything stored in it; anyone else is told whose it is, and nothing happens. A game master can also remove one. -fob relocate with no FOB named does nothing, and says to use -fob scuttle if that is what you meant. -fob relocate <FOB> moves it into another friendly FOB, and anyone on your side can do it: from the moment it starts nobody can spawn there or deliver to it, its aircraft fly themselves out one at a time, then helicopters lift its stores, and the site comes down when the last load has gone. The whole move has an hour, and anything still there when the hour is up is lost with the site.

FARPs

A jump FARP is one pad you carry yourself. -build farp at a capital, MOB or FOB draws the 2,000 kg crate beside you for 100 warbonds plus vehicle points, charged when it appears. Sling it on an Mi-8 or Chinook, fly it anywhere, set it down, land within 500 m, and -emplace <name>; a name is required. It opens empty and holds only what you physically bring: land and park a helicopter on it and that airframe with its unexpended rack goes on its shelf, and warehouse cargo from a base's ground crew set down beside it goes onto the shelf about three minutes later. Building crates never do. No troops, no AI supply, no air defense. The tent is its life; lose the tent and the whole site goes up. Ten FARPs per side, jump and mobile together.

-recover with no crate-built air defence site and none of your side's artillery within 200 m of you has the ground crew strike your FARP, wherever it is on the map and wherever you are. It asks first: the reply names the FARP and what will be lost, and nothing happens until you say the same -recover again within 60 seconds, or press Logistics > Recover or strike FARP again. The strike takes about six minutes, whatever is stored there is lost, and nothing is refunded; your side may then put down another in its place. If you own more than one FARP, name the one to strike.

The mobile FARP is the stocked one the ground brings, one per side, and there are two ways to buy it. From the Support shelf (-order support), four trucks drive to where you stand, the site goes down where they stop, and its two pads open five minutes later. Or Logistics > FOB > Get mobile FARP crate (-build groundMobileFarp) draws its crate beside you for vehicle points: sling it out, land within 500 m, and -emplace <name>, which charges 500 warbonds and sends four trucks from the closest base within 50 km by road. The pads open five minutes after the trucks arrive, with one sortie of every helicopter store for each truck that made it. A bare -resupply within 500 m of it offers four more trucks from the nearest base that can send them, paid from that base's pool, and sends them when you say -resupply again within 60 seconds. Standing within 500 m of it with no air defence site selected, -kit pack packs it onto its trucks and -kit cancel stops the clock; -kit unpack with its trucks selected sets it up again where they stand. It is destroyed when its two ATZ-10 fuel trucks (red) or its two M1083 trucks (blue) are destroyed, and -recover strikes a mobile FARP you own just as it strikes a jump FARP.

Commanding from the cockpit

Everything the paid Commander tier of the app can do to a ground group, you can do from any seat, free, through the F10 Command and Fires pages and their typed twins. The mechanics are the same in both: a point and a selection. You do not need the Combined Arms module for any of it; every order works from an ordinary aircraft seat. The loop is three commands: -select lists your side's groups, -select 3 picks one, and -move road here drives it to where you are. The rest of this chapter is what else you can say to the group you picked.

Every leaf that aims at a mark reads your latest F10 mark from DCS's own map: Command > Move > Road, Off-road and Attack to mark, Command > Attack at mark, Command > Point at mark, Fires > Fire at mark, Troops > JTAC > Move to mark, and every order once Order > Delivery and custom > Deliver to > My F10 mark is chosen. If one answers "Place an F10 map mark first" with a mark plainly there, the running mission is older than the engine's mark reader and it works after the next server restart; until then type the command with a grid, or say here.

The point

Your latest F10 map mark, else a grid you type, else here. Every reply tells you which one it used and where.

The selection

The F10 menu is the same for everyone on a side, so a leaf cannot carry a live group name. Instead you keep a numbered, sticky selection.

-select

(or Command > List groups) prints your side's commandable groups numbered nearest your mark, else nearest you: what each is made of, its job, its range and bearing from you, and who has it: AI, yours, held by <name>, on <task>, or asleep. Then

-select 3
-select patriot

(or Command > Select > 3) makes that one your selection, remembered for the sortie. Every Command and Fires verb acts on it. Both doors number from the same list, so the number you read in chat is the leaf you click. A name fragment works if it matches exactly one group. Put your mark over an objective and its groups come to the top.

Commandable means your side's living ground and naval groups: its garrisons, bought vehicles, batteries, SAM sites. Never a static, never the engineer truck. Whether a particular order is allowed depends on what the group is doing: a delivery still on the road, a group on an AI task nobody has taken control of, or a site packing up will refuse, and the refusal says why. No verb ever guesses a group; with nothing selected it answers "No group selected. -select lists them, -select <n> picks one." A selection can also go stale under you: once the group is dead or has changed hands, the next order says the selection is gone and to -select again. A number past the end of the list is answered with what the list runs to, a name that matches several groups comes back with their numbers to pick from, and a side with nothing standing is told there is nothing commandable.

The Command page

Ten entries. DCS draws every submenu before every leaf, so the order on the page is:

Select > 1 to 9, Move > Road to mark / Off-road to mark / Attack to mark, Options > ROE / Alarm / Disperse / Targets / Range / Point defence / IADS, Control > Take / Give back, Point > Point at mark / Clear point, then the plain leaves List groups, Contacts, Halt, Resume, and Attack at mark.

The Command verbs

-contacts: enemy contacts your side has seen, numbered nearest your mark. Each row is what it looked like, who saw it, how old the sighting is, a confidence, and range and bearing. The numbers here are what -attack takes.

-move [road|offroad|attack] [creep|steady|flank] [mark|here|<grid>]: order the selection to the point. road (the default) drives the road network at any distance. offroad is a short bound in formation, two nautical miles at most. attack is that bound with the guns unlocked, weapons free, in a wedge. The pace is what the group was last set to unless you name one. The reply is the preview in words:

-move road flank
M1A2 Abrams x3 by road to your F10 mark: 12.4 km, about 18 min at flank.

A group that is asleep (culled while nobody was near) answers "queued" and rolls when it wakes. Never into water. A group with an anti-air shooter aboard goes alarm green before it drives, because a deployed launcher cannot move.

-halt [go]: stop the selection where it is with its route kept; -halt go (or Resume) continues the same route.

-set <dial> <value>: one of seven dials. roe free|return|hold; alarm auto|green|red; disperse off|short|medium|long; targets all|air|ground (gun air defense only); range 50|70|100 percent of book range and pointdef on|off (SAMs, gun air defense, and ships); iads on|off puts an air defense site on or off your side's early-warning net. A value the group cannot take is refused, never sent silently. The reply is a short line naming the dial and its new value, like "Alarm state RED." The iads dial answers whether the site is on the net instead.

-set alarm red
-set roe free

-control take|give|lock: take the selection off the AI director (it halts where it is and stays yours until you give it back), give it back (a group taken from a base's defence rejoins it; a group you bought stays where it stands until a base under threat drafts it), or lock a group you bought so the AI never touches it. Never the engineer.

-attack [n|mark|here|<grid>]: send the selection at contact n from -contacts, or at the contact nearest the point within 2 km. Weapons free at alarm red, inside 10 km, and only a group that can shoot; a truck cannot attack, a JTAC lases. The reply names what the sighting looked like, never the enemy group:

-attack 2
M1A2 Abrams x3 attacking T-72 near contact 2.

If the sim has not confirmed the task yet the reply says so, and a contact that cannot be attacked answers one neutral sentence whatever the reason.

-point [label|clear] [mark|here|<grid>]: drop your pointer, an amber ring with your name on your side's F10 map for three minutes, one at a time, with an optional caption of up to forty characters. -point clear takes it down.

-point armor staging
Pointed at your F10 mark. Your side sees it on the F10 map for 3 minutes.

The words mark, here, and a grid are point words, so they cannot be part of a caption.

The Fires page

Eight entries, submenus first: Discipline > Adjust, Effect, Barrage, Rounds > 1, 2, 4, 8, Salvos > 1, 2, 3, then Batteries, Take control, Give back, Fire at mark, Cease fire. The typed verb is one word with sub-words:

-fires                     your side's batteries, numbered nearest your mark, and who commands each
-fires take                the battery is yours; the net stands off
-fires give                back to the net; anyone on the side may do this
-fires fire [rounds]       a mission at the point (your mark, a grid, or here); holder only, range-gated
-fires cease               check fire
-fires adjust|effect|barrage   the discipline: one ranging round, the type's own salvo, or twice as many salvos of it
-fires rounds <n>          rounds per salvo, 1 to 40
-fires salvos <n>          salvos per mission, 1 to 10
-fires roe free|return|hold
-fires alarm auto|green|red

Everything but the bare list acts on your selection, which must be a battery; otherwise the reply is the numbered battery list so you can -select one. Taking is exclusive; a battery another player holds answers with their name. Giving is open to the whole side so nobody can strand a battery by logging off. A fire mission is announced to your side as a real call, with the grid, guns, rounds, and discipline, and the reply names the point it used:

-fires fire 4
Howitzer Battery at your F10 mark: FIRE MISSION ... SHOT, OVER.

Every mission from the same firing point climbs the counter-battery ladder. Move more than 300 m and it starts again.

Kits: -kit pack|unpack|cancel

An air defence site you bought that is made of several pieces, a gun pit or radar you built from crates, and the mobile FARP all pack onto trucks and unpack where the trucks stand, for free. -select the site and -kit pack, or -kit cancel to stop a pack or unpack under way. A gun pit or radar built from crates packs only for the player who bought it. With no air defence site selected, standing within 500 m of your side's mobile FARP, those two act on the FARP instead. To set a packed site up again, -select its trucks and -kit unpack. The leaves are Logistics > Kit >. Each takes time, and the reply says how long: "Ready in 10 min." The trucks are drivable and take a -move like anything else; a truck killed on the road is its piece lost. A system whose vehicles drive, such as a Tor, an Avenger or a Roland site, never packs: move it instead. Nothing packs while it is rolling.

JTAC from the cockpit

The -jtac sub-words (radio, code, ir, targets, lase, move, next) are in the JTAC chapter above; on the menu they are Troops > JTAC > Code (1688, 1687, 1686, 1685, 1511), then Deploy, Picture, Move to mark, Next target, IR on and IR off. The frequency stays typed.

You cannot buy air

There is no way to call in CAS, a CAP or a strike package. That went on 8 September 2026, because an AI flight on station is the most expensive thing anyone can put into the sim and the frames it ate came out of everybody's evening. It is gone from the app too.

The AI still flies. It puts CAS up with its own offensives to break a garrison, it flies CAP, and your side's AWACS and tankers are where they always were. What you cannot do is buy a flight of your own.

What you have instead costs nothing and is better aimed. A JTAC on the ground is what the AI's air works off, and the fires net puts real guns on a point you choose. Both are in this chapter.

The app

The DDCS Overlord app is the website, https://ddcsoverlord.com, in any browser on a computer, phone or tablet, and the website is always the newest version. It also runs on a TV. Any member of the Discord signs in free and, once their DCS pilot is linked, gets the live map with every layer, intel, chat, the wallet, the dashboard and stats, base pages, and taking control of the groups they bought (moving them from the app needs Commander; from the cockpit it is free). Chat crosses both ways, so you can talk to whoever is flying, but a command starting with a hyphen typed in the app's chat is refused. Commander is part of a DDCS Overlord account and is not sold in the iPhone, iPad or Android app. Commander adds doing things from outside the cockpit: moving groups with a route preview, setting their options, placing orders, working a JTAC or an artillery battery, taking control of groups that are not yours, and push alerts when your FOB may have been spotted or a convoy is inbound. Every one of those acts is free in the cockpit through the pages above. The tier is for the person who is not in a seat. That includes choosing where an order goes, which base sends it and which way it faces, and building a custom group: all of it is free from the cockpit under Order > Delivery and custom. The Control mode for controllers is free, because it only reads the picture (see Controller).

The pill at the bottom right of the map says who is on right now: a count per side, blue and red, and a grey count for anyone connected who has not picked a side yet. Tap it for the names. Your own side's rows say where each person is, the aircraft and whether it is airborne, spectating, or on the app. The other side's rows only say that the person is in the game or on the app, never what they are flying. Someone counts as on the app if it has heard from them in the last thirty minutes.

It runs on one device at a time. Signing in on your phone signs out the browser you left open on your desktop, and signing back in on the desktop takes the seat back from the phone. That is deliberate rather than a fault, so if you use two, expect the one you are not looking at to have been signed out when you return to it. The app says so when it happens.

Chat rules

Before you post in the app's chat for the first time, the app shows the community rules, and you tap I agree to post. Reading chat never needs it. The rules are short: no harassment, hate speech, threats or sexual content, no slurs, no spam, and no pretending to be another player. Ordinary swearing is fine. Abuse aimed at a person is not.

Tap ⋯ on any message to report it or block the sender. Blocking hides that player's messages on your device, they are not told, and the message is reported as well. You can undo a block under Blocked. Reports are reviewed within 24 hours, and players who break the rules are removed.

Deleting your account

You can delete your app account from your You tab: go to the account section and tap Delete my account. The app lists what goes and what stays before you confirm.

On that server it removes your callsign and settings, your warbonds and their history, your saved groups and controller details, the chat reports you sent, your push notifications, and your sign-in on every device. One small record stays, tied to your DCS ID: your stewardship for each side, your number of sportsmanship incidents, and the date you deleted. If you come back with that DCS ID, the record comes back with you. If you never linked a pilot, nothing is kept.

Units you ordered stay in the war and keep fighting for your side. Deleting does not change your Discord account or anything else held outside the game server. The privacy policy has the full list.

What you order shows on your You tab while it travels, above the units you already have. Each run names what is on it, where it is going, how far it still has to go and whether it is rolling, and it stays there until it lands. You will not see an arrival time, because there is no honest one to give you. The same load can take forty minutes or most of an afternoon depending on how far it has to come and what the roads are like, so the app tells you where the thing actually is and lets you judge for yourself. A run that has stopped has not been lost; the engine watches every delivery and sends it again if it stays put.

A SAM or radar delivery that reaches its drop point while the server is under heavy load waits there on its trucks and sets up by itself as soon as the load eases. Your side is told when the wait starts, and the order stays on your list until it sets up.

How the war ends and restarts

You win by taking the enemy's main operating bases, the octagons on the map. Capitals do not count and cannot be taken. FOBs and FARPs do not count either, because a war decided by construction would be a race to build. The default is all of them; a plan can set a fraction instead, and some plans give one side a defensive win when a set campaign length runs out. -timeleft (or `Support

Time left`) tells you how long is left and what kind of ending it is.

When a side wins, nothing changes on the map you are flying. The win is recorded and a thirty-minute countdown starts, with marks in game at 30, 20, 10, 9, 8 down to 1. At zero the server goes offline, the war is thrown away and a fresh one is forged from the plan, the mission is rebuilt, and the server comes back on the next war in the rotation.

The same thirty-minute countdown runs before every planned restart. An hour after civil dusk the server restarts, and the mission that comes back is opened an hour before civil dawn, so the clock runs at real speed through the day and the night is skipped rather than flown. Other restarts fall on a schedule through the day. Your money, your stewardship, every base, every shipment on the road and every downed pilot are in the database and come back as they were. Squads and wounded aboard an aircraft do not: the restart kills the sim under them, so -deploy them at a barracks or a casualty point before the countdown ends. If you are twenty minutes out from home when the countdown reaches ten, land somewhere friendly. A parked aircraft is credited; one in the air at zero is not.

When it does nothing

Every refusal on this server is a sentence, not a code, and it tells you what to do. These are the ones you are most likely to meet, by what you saw rather than by which system said it.

Nothing came back at all. The reply could not find a door to reach you. Get into a seat and ask again; a command typed from spectators, or as a direct message to one player, has nowhere to answer.

The F10 menu is missing, stale, or has the wrong things on it. Type -refreshmenu from a seat. The menu is drawn once when you take an aircraft, so it can go stale.

A leaf whose name ends "at mark" refuses with a mark plainly there. The running mission is older than the engine's mark reader; it works after the next server restart. Until then type the same command with a grid, or say here.

"Place an F10 map mark first, or type a grid (37TCK12345678), or say here." Same thing, from the typed door. It also appears if your mark is more than two hours old, or if the engine restarted since you placed it, in which case DCS is still drawing a mark the engine has forgotten. Place it again.

"No group selected. -select lists them, -select <n> picks one." Every Command and Fires verb acts on your selection, and you have not made one.

"Your selection is gone: dead, or no longer on your side." It died or changed hands. -select again.

"That group is asleep." Nobody is near it, so it has no body in the sim to take an order. A move order is queued and runs when it wakes. An attack, a halt and every dial but iads need a body in the sim, so get somebody closer. iads is a ledger entry rather than an order, and answers either way.

"That column is on a delivery." The supply chain owns it until it arrives. Wait, or pick another group.

"That group is on an AI assault. Take control first." -control take, then give your order. -control give hands it back when you are done.

"That is a paid repair engineer on an errand." Nobody can re-task him, including the person who paid. He comes back when the job is finished.

"Steady, calls are paced 5 seconds apart" or "too many commands". You are ahead of the rate limits. Nothing was charged. Wait and ask again.

You spawned and were put into spectators. Your stewardship is under 10, so fixed wing comes from a capital. A helicopter at any main operating base is still open to you.

An order took the money and nothing arrived. It was interdicted on the way. Orders are charged when placed and there is no refund if the convoy is destroyed; that is what makes cutting a supply line worth flying. A bare -resupply, away from a mobile FARP, shows what is still inbound for your side.

Quick reference

Every command

Every command in alphabetical order, with what it does and its F10 twin. Where one command has several forms, they sit together: the plain form first, then the others in alphabetical order. Grammar exactly as -help prints it: <required>, [optional], a|b one of. "Your selection" is the group you picked with -select. The F10 twin is the menu item that does the same thing; "typed" means there is none.

The F10 menu

Seven root pages. No page holds more than ten entries. DCS draws every submenu on a page before that page's own leaves, which is the order below.

Troops
  Load
    Load Rifle Squad, Load MG Troop (blue) or Load RPG Troop (red), Load MANPAD Team,
    Load JTAC team
  JTAC
    Code
      1688, 1687, 1686, 1685, 1511
    Deploy
    Picture
    Move to mark
    Next target
    IR on
    IR off
  Troop status
  Deploy Troops
  Extract Troops
  Load wounded
  Drop wounded
Logistics
  FOB
    Name it
      Order as Alpha, 1,000 wb ... Order as India, 1,000 wb
    Survey here
    Order FOB, 1,000 wb
    Get FOB kit crate, 60 construction points
    Get mobile FARP crate, 500 wb at emplace
    Clear survey
    Templates
  Supply
    Inbound
    Send 1 Abrams ... Send 4 Abrams (blue) or Send 1 T-90 ... Send 4 T-90 (red), each with its price
    Recall
  Build
    Motor pool, Barracks, ZU-23 gun pit, Avenger SAM, FPS-117 radar (sees, cannot shoot),
    Howitzer Battery (blue), Mortar Team (red), each with its price
  Sell
    Quote
    Sell
  Repair
    Quote
    Buy engineer, 30% of missing pieces
  Kit
    Pack up
    Unpack
    Cancel
  Emplace crates
  Recover or strike FARP
Command
  Select
    1 ... 9
  Move
    Road to mark
    Off-road to mark
    Attack to mark
  Options
    ROE: Free, Return, Hold
    Alarm: Auto, Green, Red
    Disperse: Off, Short, Medium, Long
    Targets: All, Air, Ground
    Range: 50, 70, 100
    Point defence: On, Off
    IADS: On, Off
  Control
    Take
    Give back
  Point
    Point at mark
    Clear point
  List groups
  Contacts
  Halt
  Resume
  Attack at mark
Fires
  Discipline
    Adjust, Effect, Barrage
  Rounds
    1, 2, 4, 8
  Salvos
    1, 2, 3
  Batteries
  Take control
  Give back
  Fire at mark
  Cease fire
Support
  Air support
    Tanker slow
    Tanker fast
  GCI
    Who is controlling
    Go on station
    Go off station
    Fulcrum datalink
  AWACS
  ATIS
  Wallet
  Time left
  Redraw menu
  Help
CSAR
  Locate
    Nearby beacons
    Smoke
    Flare
  Support
    Recruit SF
    Insert SF
    Extract SF
  Recover
    Extract
    Hoist
  Reintegrate
    Disembark
    Manifest
  On / off duty
Order (its place among the pages is set at run time)
  Tanks, Artillery & MLRS, IFVs, Radar SAM, AntiAir, Scout, Infrared SAM, Support, EWR
  Delivery and custom
    Deliver to (Where I am, My F10 mark)
    From base (List bases, Nearest by road, 1 to 8)
    Facing (Face the enemy, the eight compass points, Where my nose points)
    Custom group
      Add a vehicle (one page per shelf, split into numbered pages when a shelf is long)
      Saved groups (Show saved groups, 1 to 9)
      Show my group
      Remove last vehicle
      Start over
      Order this group
      Save this group
    Show my settings
    Back to defaults