OPCOM (Military AI Commander)

Capabilities

What it handles

Asymmetric

What each insurgent installation does

An Asymmetric commander works town by town. At the start, the Installations setting gives each town a chance of one IED factory, weapons depot, recruitment HQ, roadside IED site or roadblock. After the first two minutes it goes round its towns every 30 seconds or so and picks what to do next from how the town stands: where it is under pressure it terrorises (factory, sabotage, roadside IEDs, suicide bombers), where it is even it attacks (ambushes), and where civilians oppose it, it builds up (depot, roadblocks, recruitment HQ). Installation Types says which of these it may use.

IED factory (or drug lab)

A large building in the town, furnished with tables, tools and an IED that goes off if a player shoots it (drug labs carry no trap). While it stands, the first civilian recruited there walks to it, waits one to three minutes and comes out as a suicide bomber. With Drug Labs on it is a drug lab instead, and each lab speeds up recruitment at the town's HQ, up to twice as fast with four. While a player is within 2 km of a lab, a smuggler drives a pickup or open van loaded with sacks and bundles from it to the nearest town and back; stop him and that lab stops speeding up recruitment for 30 minutes. Disable it with the hold action (stand within 10 m; it takes longer the more furniture there is), destroy the building, or let friendly AI get within 150 m. Taking it out turns the town's civilians against the insurgents, and it can be built again later.

Weapons depot

A building furnished with ammo crates, with IEDs hidden among the props. Up to three local civilians collect weapons from it and join the insurgents. Disable it with the hold action, destroy it, or let friendly AI near it, as for the factory.

Recruitment HQ

A building that raises new insurgent groups from the town. Every 30 to 60 minutes (by default) it tries to recruit, and half the attempts succeed; each success puts an insurgent group in the town. Hearts and Minds slows it down, drug labs speed it up, and the recruitment settings set the pace. With Recruiters on, a recruiter and two guards appear while a player is within 800 m; killing or capturing him skips the town's next recruitment. Disable the HQ with the hold action or destroy it and recruiting stops.

Roadside IEDs

Nothing to see until a player comes within the town's size plus 250 m. Then IEDs are laid around the town, one for every 100 m of town size, plus one car bomb, and a local civilian arms himself and goes for the nearest enemy within 600 m. They are cleared away when the players leave. It needs a Military IED module in the mission. There is no hold action: disarm the IEDs one by one.

Suicide bombers

The first player to come within the town's size plus 250 m sets it off, once: a suicide bomber appears, waits up to a minute, then chases that player for up to 10 minutes and goes off within 8 m. Killed with his vest on, he still goes off 3 times in 10. A local civilian may also be turned into a bomber. It needs a Military IED module. Kill the bomber before he reaches you.

Sabotage

Nothing is built. The commander picks the tallest building in the town that can be destroyed and sends one of the town's own civilians to blow it up; nobody is brought in. He gets a suicide vest and charges, walks slowly to the building, plants three charges at spots inside over about a minute, then runs back the way he came. The charges go off once he is 50 m from the first one, and only if he is still alive: kill him before then and they never fire. There is no hold action.

It is only chosen where the town has civilians, and only once per town until the insurgents pull out. No task is made for it. Intel from a dead insurgent can show it: a Sabotage marker on the building they mean to blow up. The marker goes once the attempt is over, when the saboteur is killed or 15 minutes on with the building still standing. The Stop the Saboteur task is a separate C2ISTAR task with a saboteur of its own, not this one.

Ambushes

A road on the far side of town is held for 15 minutes: an insurgent section takes position on it, one or two IEDs are laid there when a player comes near, and a local civilian arms himself and goes for the nearest enemy. It clears itself after the 15 minutes, or when you kill the section.

Roadblocks

A checkpoint on the roads at the edge of town, about one for every 200 m of town size, with guards and a car half the time, built from the dominant faction's pieces. It also needs Roadblocks set to Yes. Disable it with the hold action (within 8 m, 15 seconds), which removes it.

How to use it

Getting started

1. Place an AI Commander and a Virtual AI System moduleDrop a Military AI Commander (OPCOM) module plus an ALiVE Virtual AI System module. OPCOM finds the Virtual AI System by itself, so you don't need a sync line between them.
2. Place and sync at least one Placement moduleAdd a Military Placement (Mil. Obj.) or Military Placement (Cust. Obj.) module for the side you want to test and sync it to OPCOM, so the commander has troops and objectives to work with.
3. Choose a Control TypeIn OPCOM's settings, set Control Type to Invasion (the default: captures objectives and pushes the front), Occupation (holds ground with static defences and patrols), Asymmetric (an insurgency with recruitment, weapons depots, IED factories and hit-and-run attacks), Dug In (a last stand: it holds what it has, parks its vehicles and sends nobody out) or Assault (waves) (one objective at a time, a fresh wave every Wave Interval minutes until it falls).
4. Set up an Assault commander (optional)With Control Type on Assault (waves), set Wave Interval (min) (15) and Groups Per Wave (4, or 0 for every free group). Leave Assault Targets empty and it goes for the objective with the highest Objective priority first, or type marker or object names, separated by commas, for the places to take in order. Set Assault Order to Pocket to take the objectives within Pocket Radius (m) (1500) of each target first.
5. Hold the war until players are ready (optional)Set Hold Until Go to Yes. In game, an admin picks Start the war in the C2ISTAR menu, or presses it on the tablet's Commander's Picture page when that's on. Each holding commander radios "All units, the war has started" and starts giving orders.
6. Pick the factions this commander controlsUse the Factions multi-select list (Ctrl+click to add, Shift+click for a range) to tick one or more factions. The Additional Factions (by name) field below it takes typed classnames for mods that aren't loaded right now; anything typed there is added to the ticked list and never replaces it.
7. Set the Reinforcements levelChoose Aggressive (90%), Moderate (75%, the default) or Conservative (50%): the force strength at which the commander asks for reinforcements. It needs a Military Logistics module synced to this commander, and an Asymmetric commander doesn't use it. Or type an exact percentage in Reinforcements, exact (%), which overrides the choice.
8. Choose how the commander covers its ground (optional)Invasion, Occupation and Assault commanders can dig in and patrol. Set Prepared Defences and Frontline Minefields to Few or Many for forts and minefields at the objectives they hold. Set Security Patrols to Few, Some or Many to send infantry out between quiet objectives, pick Objectives or Coverage in Security Patrol Mode, and use Security Patrol Reach to limit how far a patrol goes.
9. Give players tasks around the operations (optional)Needs a Player Command/Control (C2ISTAR) module with automatic player tasks on, and players on the commander's side. On an Invasion or Occupation commander, set Preparation Tasks Before Attacks to Yes: each new attack waits for its preparation tasks, or for the Preparation Timeout (15 minutes by default). On an Occupation commander, set Pause After Capture (min) above 0: after a capture it holds new attacks while players do the clean-up tasks. Fewest and Most Tasks per Operation set how many tasks each operation gives (leave both at 0 for the usual number), and Tasks Only Against Known Enemy keeps them to enemy the commander has seen. With that on, Choice After Recon lets players answer from the OPCOM Orders menu (it needs the C2ISTAR item) whether they take what their recon found or hand it to the commander.
10. Have it find out before it attacks (optional)On an Invasion, Occupation or Assault commander, set Find Out Before Attacking to Yes. Intel Needed Before Attacking (0.5) is how sure it must be, and Intel Wait (20 minutes) the longest an assault waits. Add a Military Air Component Commander for recce flights, and a C2ISTAR module so players get a Reconnoitre Objective task. Set Intel Markers to Yes to show players on its side what it knows. Players can follow it on the tablet's Commander's Picture, which the C2ISTAR module's Commander's Picture setting turns on.
11. Play the mission and watch the campaign unfoldAs a player, move toward the contested area and watch this side capture or defend objectives (Invasion, Occupation), send wave after wave at one objective (Assault) or run insurgent activity around its depots and recruitment centres (Asymmetric). With a Player Command/Control (C2ISTAR) module placed, check its tasks, and its spot reports if it's synced to this commander.

Settings

Every setting, and what it does

These settings decide which factions the AI Commander controls, how it fights (invasion, occupation, insurgency, a dug-in last stand, or waves at one objective at a time) and how many objectives it goes after at once. Most of the lower sections only matter when the Control Type is Asymmetric, where they tune insurgent installations, recruitment, hostility and the Hearts and Minds reaction.

Presets that use this module: Combat support: CAS, transport and artillery on call, Combined arms assault: guns, armour and infantry, Defensive: CSAT invades, NATO holds, First steps: one enemy commander, Forward bases: build and hold FOBs, Ground convoy: transport, escort and recruits, Hearts and minds: NATO wins over the towns, Hunt the recruiters: NATO against FIA, Insurgency: FIA against NATO, One area: NATO holds an area you mark, Whole island: NATO takes and holds an island, Offensive: NATO attacks CSAT-held ground, Outbreak: zombies hold an area, Persistent campaign: a war that carries on where you saved, Special operations: a small team against a held town, Three-way war: NATO, CSAT and AAF. Place one in the editor to see it set up.

Quick setups

Overhaul

What changed

• Operations give players tasks, and wait for themPreparation Tasks Before Attacks (Invasion or Occupation) and Pause After Capture (Occupation) make the commander hold an attack, or hold new attacks after a capture, while players do tasks. Preparation tasks can be a wiretap, destroying the AA and mortar emplacements or the enemy vehicles at the objective, or destroying an insurgent installation near it. Clean-up tasks after a capture are Remove IED and Destroy Vehicles at a military objective, or an aid delivery and a meeting with the local leader at a town. Fewest and Most Tasks per Operation set how many are given, HQ radios the progress, and a Pause After Capture carries on after a saved game is loaded.
• Tasks Only Against Known EnemyA new setting, off by default. On, the preparation and clean-up tasks only go after enemy vehicles, emplacements and installations the commander's units have actually seen (vehicles in the last 30 minutes), so a task no longer gives away a position nobody has found. The wiretap is always offered, and Remove IED is left out because nobody sees an IED.
• Security Patrols: Coverage mode and ReachSecurity Patrols send some of the infantry a commander keeps at quiet objectives out on a walk. Security Patrol Mode now has two settings. Objectives, the default, walks the rear objectives within reach. Coverage walks the ground of the commander's own territory that none of its patrols has been through lately and no garrison watches, through up to four stops and back. Security Patrol Reach (3000 m by default) says how far from home a patrol goes. A Coverage patrol never takes an objective's last group (#1092).
• Digs in and mines the frontPrepared Defences builds a small fort at the edge of an objective facing the enemy once it has been held for 10 minutes, and on Many a bigger one after 40 minutes. Frontline Minefields lays small minefields in front of held objectives, anti-tank mines on roads and anti-personnel mines elsewhere. Both are for Invasion and Occupation commanders and stay away from players. Forts are saved with the mission when persistence is on.
• Attacks arrive together, after a barrageAttacks Arrive Together makes the faster groups of an attack wait (up to 15 minutes) so tanks no longer reach the objective minutes before the infantry. Preparation Fire has the commander call in its Military AI Commander Artillery module on an objective's defenders once its scouts have found them, and the assault waits two and a half minutes for the guns (#207).
• High Value Target and insurgent recruitersA commander can have a named officer at its most important objective: kill him and its attacks pause for the time you set. In Asymmetric, Recruiters puts a recruiter and guards in each Recruitment HQ. He can walk the town, speeds up recruiting while he lives, can be turned into an assassination task for players (Recruiter HVT Task Chance), and gives himself up for questioning if cornered.

Status

Where it stands

Testing

How you can help

Test the control types (Invasion, Occupation, Asymmetric, Dug In and Assault (waves)) on a map with objectives placed, paying attention to whether the commander actually captures/defends/holds as expected for that doctrine. For Asymmetric, place installations and let a friendly AI patrol with no players in its group approach them, with Friendly AI disables installations on Proximity, Objective Capture and Both, to confirm installations go quiet appropriately (your own group never triggers it); also watch recruitment happen gradually over a mission rather than all at once. Try a single OPCOM with two or more factions selected in the multi-select list, and one using the Additional Factions (by name) field for a faction from an unloaded mod. Load a saved mission with objectives and confirm it no longer hangs on start. If anything goes wrong, note the map, the OPCOM's control type and factions, what the AI units were doing, and attach the mission's RPT log if possible. For the newer settings: on an Invasion commander turn on Preparation Tasks Before Attacks with a C2ISTAR module and a player on the side, and check each new attack waits for its task (or the timeout). On an Occupation commander set Pause After Capture to 5 or more, take an objective and check clean-up tasks arrive and attacks start again once they're done. With Security Patrols on Many, compare Objectives and Coverage and watch where the patrols walk. With Find Out Before Attacking and Intel Markers on, watch an objective's area on the map turn from yellow to red as reports come in, and the assault go in after it. Set Control Type to Dug In and check its vehicles stay parked, no new objective is attacked, and groups go to help an objective you attack, then go back. For Assault (waves), set Wave Interval (min) to 2 and check the first wave goes at once to the most important objective, the next joins about 2 minutes later, and the commander moves on once it falls; the RPT says "assault wave" for each. Name two places in Assault Targets and check it takes them in order, then carries on as Invasion. Try Pocket with a Pocket Radius a little over the distance to a neighbouring objective, and save and load mid-attack to check the waves carry on. For Hold Until Go, set Yes and check nothing is ordered and no aircraft fly for a few minutes, then press Start the war as an admin and listen for the radio call.

Changelog

Updates to this page

• 2026-11-03
  A Sabotage marker now goes once the attempt is over: when the saboteur is killed, or 15 minutes on with the building still standing. Before, it stayed on the map, and in captured intel, until the building came down.
• 2026-11-03
  With Drug Labs on, a smuggler drives a pickup or open van loaded with sacks and bundles from each lab to the nearest town and back while a player is within 2 km, so you can follow him home. Wreck the car, kill the driver, or get him out and stand by him, and that lab stops speeding up recruitment for 30 minutes. The new Drug Smugglers setting turns it off.
• 2026-11-03
  A recon of an objective now goes to the commander's SpecOps groups first, nearest first, with ordinary groups filling any places left. A side with no SpecOps groups picks as before, and capture, defend and Command orders are unchanged.
• 2026-11-03
  Leaving factories out of Installation Types now stops an Asymmetric commander building them. Before, it still built an IED factory or drug lab in any town whose civilians opposed it.
• 2026-11-02
  The AI Commander waits for the Air Commander to finish starting before asking it for air recce. Before, an early request could be dropped, with an RPT line saying it arrived before the module started.
• 2026-11-02
  New setting, Recruit only what placements place (off by default): when on, an asymmetric commander leaves out AA and APC groups its synced placements don't place. Off, it recruits them as escalation rises, as before.
• 2026-11-02
  An asymmetric AI Commander follows the placement modules synced to it when it recruits: if none of them places AA, it stops recruiting groups with an AA vehicle (one firing air-lock missiles, like the Igla Hilux), and if all of them set Armour or Mechanised to 0, wheeled APCs such as the BTR, BRDM and Marid go too. Guns like the ZU-23 still count as ordinary technicals.
• 2026-11-01
  In Eden the AI Commander shows only the settings that fit its Control Type: about 66 of its 93 rows are out of the way on a default Invasion commander, with new Assault, Reinforcements and Occupation sections and the asymmetric settings grouped together.
• 2026-11-01
  Hold Until Go can now be started from the C2ISTAR menu's Start the war entry, so it works with Commander's Picture set to Off.
• 2026-11-01
  The Control Type tooltip now says Assault goes for the highest Objective priority first, nearest among equals, or the Assault Targets list in its order. It said nearest first.
• 2026-11-01
  A saved mission keeps the Assault target, the wave number and the time to the next wave, so the waves carry on after a load.
• 2026-11-01
  New settings Assault Order and Pocket Radius. Pocket takes every objective within Pocket Radius (1500 m) of the next target first, then the target itself. One after another, the default, works as before.
• 2026-11-01
  Assault waves no longer take garrisons off the objectives the commander already holds. Each wave asks only for the free groups it's short of.
• 2026-10-31
  Assault now attacks its most important target wherever it sits in the commander's list. A high-priority objective further away was never attacked before.
• 2026-10-31
  New setting Assault Targets: marker or object names, separated by commas. Assault takes the objective nearest each one, in that order, and carries on as Invasion once it holds them all.
• 2026-10-31
  Assault goes for the objective it doesn't hold with the highest Objective Priority first, nearest among equals, and sticks with it until it falls. The C2ISTAR stance menu and the tablet offer it.
• 2026-10-31
  New control type Assault (waves): the commander picks one objective and sends a wave at it every Wave Interval (15 min by default), Groups Per Wave groups at a time, until it falls, then moves on.
• 2026-10-31
  New setting Hold Until Go: the commander, and the Air Tasking Order with it, orders nothing until an admin presses Start the war on the tablet, so players can brief and get into place first.
• 2026-10-31
  A paused AI Commander now stays paused when its stance is changed. Before, the change started it again without saying so.
• 2026-10-31
  With Find Out Before Attacking on, once an objective falls the commander goes over every enemy group seen there: destroyed, falling back toward another objective, or not accounted for. The side hears it on the radio, and the objective most of them fell back to goes next.
• 2026-10-31
  New setting Intel Markers, off by default. With Find Out Before Attacking on, players on the commander's side see an area round each objective it's finding out about, yellow until it's sure enough and red after, with how many groups it has seen and a dot for each.
• 2026-10-31
  New Control Type Dug In: the commander keeps what it holds and never attacks. Vehicles park, infantry garrisons, and groups from other objectives help one under attack, then go back.
• 2026-10-31
  With Find Out Before Attacking on, the commander's airstrike goes for up to three enemy vehicles its recon has seen at the objective, instead of a random building.
• 2026-10-31
  A commander's recce flight now reports what the aircraft sees over the objective, once a minute, alongside what its ground recon reports.
• 2026-10-31
  New setting Go Ashore By under Start From Ship. With "Boats, helicopters with none" the commander puts its infantry ashore in boats first and flies only when it finds none. The default works as before.
• 2026-10-31
  New setting Find Out Before Attacking, off by default. An Invasion or Occupation commander finds out what's at an objective from its recon, recce flights and the players' Reconnoitre Objective task, and attacks once it's sure enough or the Intel Wait (20 minutes by default) runs out.
• 2026-10-30
  A paused commander no longer builds Prepared Defences or lays Frontline Minefields, and time spent paused doesn't count towards the 10 minutes an objective has to be held first.
• 2026-10-30
  Pausing the AI Commander from its own module's init field now works. Before, the pause was silently ignored because the commander hadn't started yet.
• 2026-10-30
  A hosted mission sets up ALiVE's forces while the host is still on the briefing screen again, instead of waiting for Continue. StartisTest is ready in 17 seconds, down from about a minute or more since 28 Oct.
• 2026-10-29
  Notices about a disabled installation or roadblock now follow your task update choice (subtitle, hint or chat) and are kept on the map's Radio Log page.
• 2026-10-29
  Three new optional settings, all doing nothing until filled in. Town-Only Factions keeps a faction to the towns and Base-Only Factions to every other objective, so one commander can hold the towns with police and the bases with its army. Task Group Range (m) stops an asymmetric commander picking groups from further away than this for a town's tasks.
• 2026-10-29
  On a map with no civilians, an asymmetric commander no longer leaves an empty group in each town. The suicide-bomber trigger only goes in when there are civilian factions, or when Military IED has its own Bomber Type, and then the bomber takes the faction Military IED picked for its bombers.
• 2026-10-29
  In Outbreak mode the commander's faction list offers civilian factions, marked (as zombies), and a faction listed as zombies fights on the zombie side. The RPT warns when a civilian faction isn't listed as zombies, or a human faction is left on the zombie side. See Zombie Outbreak.
• 2026-10-29
  An asymmetric AI Commander given a Faction Compiler faction now recruits that faction's own compiled groups, in its own uniforms. Before, it recruited the groups of the faction it was copied from, or nobody. The RPT now says how many groups each faction can recruit at each tier.
• 2026-10-28
  Start From Ship now works on a large ship that can sail, such as the Naval Legends ships, when no static ship is within 400 m of the module: 40 m long or more, not a submarine, and left where it was placed. Tried on the Sims destroyer and the Essex carrier; from the Essex the landing waves set out about 5 minutes in, 40 seconds apart.
• 2026-10-27
  In Eden this module's settings now sit under shorter headers, at most 8 settings in a group, and the Settings section here follows the same headers. Every setting keeps its name and default, so saved missions load as before.
• 2026-10-27
  Start From Ship by boat now brings the motorised groups ashore too: each gets a landing craft of its own and comes ashore on the beach as the craft lands. Before, a boat landing left them aboard.
• 2026-10-27
  New Start From Ship settings Groups Per Wave (default 2) and Seconds Between Waves (default 200) set how big each landing wave is and how far apart they come. Before, it was always 2 groups about 200 s apart.
• 2026-10-27
  New Reinforcements Match the Enemy setting (off by default): half of each reinforcement request still replaces the commander's own losses and half follows the enemy its units saw in the last 30 minutes, so a commander facing tanks asks for armour even if it only lost infantry. It never asks for more than it lost. Needs Military Logistics.
• 2026-10-26
  New Groups Call For Help setting (off by default): a group that has lost half its men in a fight asks the commander for help, and 2 free groups that can reach the enemy are sent at it. Insurgent commanders can now also call mortar fire.
• 2026-10-26
  An override box typed with a bracket missing (Task profile count or type overrides, or a placement module's Asym Installation Overrides) is now ignored, with a line in the RPT quoting it, instead of an "Undefined variable _entries" error on screen at mission start.
• 2026-10-26
  A player joining after a Recruitment HQ and an IED factory were set up in the same building now gets both disable actions. Before, a late joiner only got the one added last, so the other could not be disabled (#1097).
• 2026-10-25
  Boats carry infantry only, so motorised groups aboard are left out. With no beach within 1.5 km the commander starts on land and says why in the RPT.
• 2026-10-25
  Start From Ship now works for a faction with no transport helicopters, such as Spearhead's US Army. Its infantry go ashore in landing craft on the beach nearest the objective.
• 2026-10-25
  New setting Flanking Attacks (off by default). With 3 or more ground groups against found defenders, one group holds 300 m short while the others swing round to the side, then all close in together.
• 2026-10-25
  New setting Follow The Players Up (Occupation only, off by default). The commander stops attacking on its own and garrisons each objective players clear on foot.
• 2026-10-25
  When no furniture set fits a room, an insurgent installation's own tables and crates now stand on the floor. They used to go in at the building position, which is 24 to 39 cm above the floor in Tanoa houses, so about half of them floated. The worst piece across 81 Tanoa house types now sits 5 cm off the floor (#1097).
• 2026-10-25
  Start From Ship now works on the base game carrier (USS Freedom) and destroyer (USS Liberty). Neither has the helipad points the Expeditionary Forces ship has, so everything was going to start inside the hull. Now it finds flat open deck on its own: 6 spots on the carrier's flight deck, 2 on the destroyer (the stern helideck and the bow).
• 2026-10-24
  Start From Ship can now hold motorised groups too. Set Motorised Groups Aboard and, once the infantry are ashore, their cars and trucks are flown to the beach under heavy lift helicopters, two groups a wave. If the faction and its side have no helicopter that can lift them, they're left out and the usual reinforcements take over.
• 2026-10-24
  New option Recruiter Runs When Pressured (off by default): a recruiter runs out of town when a hostile player within 150 m kills one of his guards or fires near him, or stays within 60 m of him for half a minute. Lose sight of him and he's gone until a new one turns up; get within 30 m and he's cornered. Civilians asked about hideouts now also name his Recruitment HQ and mark him on the map.
• 2026-10-24
  The AI Commander can now start aboard a ship and fly ashore. With Start From Ship on, infantry start on a ship that never moves, such as the Expeditionary Forces amphibious ship, and Military Logistics lands them by helicopter at the objective nearest the ship, two groups a wave.
• 2026-10-24
  An AI Commander given a faction with no groups placed no longer puts a long warning in side chat at every mission start. It goes to the RPT, and to side chat as well when the commander's Debug is on.
• 2026-10-24
  ALiVE's own map pins (Addon Options, Map pins and markers) now cover the AI Commander's installations and an HVT's last sighting, on the enemy's NATO frame.
• 2026-10-23
  Spot reports and what prisoners, civilians and informants tell players now make the enemy near the reported place known to the AI Commander, so its known-only preparation tasks can use them.
• 2026-10-23
  Preparation tasks the players haven't finished when the assault goes in are cancelled, with HQ warning two minutes before the deadline, and the assault's radio line says so.
• 2026-10-23
  New setting Preparation Tasks How Often decides how many attacks get preparation tasks: every attack, many (2 in 3) or a few (1 in 3). An attack without them goes ahead as usual, and a group that opts out of automatic orders in the OPCOM Orders menu gets none either.
• 2026-10-23
  An insurgent roadblock's disable action now sits on the roadblock itself. On a roadblock with no bar gate, such as the FIA ones, it used to go on a small cone 6 m off to the side of the road, easy to miss altogether.
• 2026-10-23
  After a recon, players choose who takes the targets: Choice After Recon has HQ ask, and players answer from the OPCOM Orders menu to take a second round of tasks or hand the targets to the commander, whose own sections go in while they watch. Preparation Tasks now work on an Occupation commander too, and Harassing Fire gives an Asymmetric commander mortar attacks that shoot and scoot.
• 2026-10-22
  Reconnoitre Objective is now a real recon: reach an FRV short of the objective, then man two observation posts on different sides of it for a minute each. Only enemy you actually spot is reported, vehicles included.
• 2026-10-22
  With Tasks Only Against Known Enemy on and nothing seen at an Invasion objective, players are also sent to reconnoitre it (from Javen): get to overwatch, watch for a minute, and what they report brings a second round of tasks against it, inside the Preparation Timeout.
• 2026-10-22
  A preparation now waits for each task to be fully done: a wiretap no longer counted as soon as players reached the area, and the "Preparations are complete" call plays again.
• 2026-10-22
  The Preparation Tasks and Frontline Minefields tooltips now match what they do: destroy tasks as well as the wiretap, and minefields laid again after a saved game is loaded.
• 2026-10-22
  A new setting, Tasks Only Against Known Enemy (off by default), from A. Ares: preparation and clean-up destroy tasks only go after enemy vehicles, emplacements and installations the commander's units have seen in the last 30 minutes, so they no longer give hidden positions away. The wiretap is always offered.
• 2026-10-22
  In Coverage, the commander's reserve groups now count as spare and go out on patrol first, from Goldwep; an objective's own groups stay home. One group always stays, even at an objective held only by reserve (#1092).
• 2026-10-22
  Security Patrols has a second mode, Coverage, from Goldwep: patrols walk the ground of the commander's territory nobody has been through lately instead of the roads between its objectives, and go past the sentries at home. How many go out depends on how many groups an objective has to spare. A new Security Patrol Reach setting (3000 m by default) sets how far a patrol goes in either mode (#1092).
• 2026-10-21
  Clear Current Mission's Data now also clears the AI Commander's high value target and its pause after a capture, so a cleared mission no longer loads a target that is already dead or an old pause.
• 2026-10-21
  A pause after a capture now carries on when a saved game is loaded: attacks stay held for the time that was left and its clean-up tasks are given again.
• 2026-10-21
  New settings Fewest and Most Tasks per Operation set how many tasks players get before each Invasion attack or after each Occupation capture. Invasion preparation can now also be destroying AA and mortar emplacements, enemy vehicles, or an insurgent installation nearby, and HQ tells the side on the radio when preparations are needed and when the assault goes ahead.
• 2026-10-21
  The Factions list's title has its tooltip again, and opening an AI Commander in Eden no longer writes "String STR_ALIVE_OPCOM_FACTIONS_COMMENT not found" to the RPT.
• 2026-10-20
  Two new settings, both off by default. Pause After Capture (Occupation) holds new attacks after a capture and gives players clean-up tasks there until they're done or the time runs out. Preparation Tasks Before Attacks (Invasion) asks players to wiretap a comms building at each enemy-held objective first, up to a timeout.
• 2026-10-19
  Two new High Value Target boxes, Killed Message, His Enemies and Killed Message, His Own Side: the mission's own words when the officer dies, with %1 for his name and %2 for the grid where he was last seen. Empty keeps the standard message.
• 2026-10-19
  A new Reinforcements, exact (%) box under Reinforcements sets the force strength at which the commander asks for reinforcements, overriding the dropdown when filled in. Recruiter HVT Task Chance shows (%).
• 2026-10-18
  The Insurgency commander's recruiter and the AI Commander's high value target carry a Wallet (ID) that says who they are. Killing the recruiter, or cornering him so he gives himself up, now tells your side, naming his town.
• 2026-10-18
  No call goes out with a friendly group within 250 m of the target, and there's at most one per objective every 15 minutes. The artillery module's own settings decide whether a battery answers. Aircraft don't wait.
• 2026-10-18
  New AI Commander setting Preparation Fire (default No). With a Military AI Commander Artillery module in the mission, the commander calls for fire on the defenders once its scouts have found them, and the assault waits 150 s before its groups go in.
• 2026-10-18
  New AI Commander setting Attacks Arrive Together (default No). A faster ground group waits where it is so the attack lands at about the same time, on both legs: the points round the objective, then the capture. Aircraft aren't held.
• 2026-10-17
  A recruiter with his guards down and a hostile player within 25 m gives himself up: a prisoner to detain and question through C2ISTAR. Taking him costs his town its recruiting as a kill does, and questioned he always talks, giving away men and installations within 3 km.
• 2026-10-17
  Suicide bombers and car-bomb drivers are never made from the game's Civilian Presence men, which logged an error every second when picked.
• 2026-10-17
  New Recruiter Boost setting: while the recruiter is alive and back in town, the town recruits faster (x1.25, x1.5 or x2) (#1088).
• 2026-10-17
  New Recruiter Walks The Town setting: the recruiter walks the town's buildings with his guards instead of waiting in the HQ (#1088).
• 2026-10-17
  Recruiters get guards (Recruiter Guards, 2 by default), a class of their own (Recruiter Class), and a setting for how many of the town's recruitments a kill costs (Recruitments Skipped). If his HQ is disabled while players are near, he runs for it (#1088).
• 2026-10-17
  Civilians remember insurgent patrols: anyone an insurgent group has been within 30 m of now answers yes to "Has anyone been pressuring you?".
• 2026-10-17
  New Security Patrols setting (None by default): some of the infantry the commander keeps at quiet objectives walk a route through the rear objectives within 3 km and back home, so the ground between objectives isn't empty. Few, Some or Many; one group always stays home (#1087).
• 2026-10-17
  New Recruiters setting (Insurgency, default No): a recruiter stands in each Recruitment HQ while players are within 800 m. Killing him, or completing his task, stops that town's next recruitment, and another arrives after Recruit Cycle Max.
• 2026-10-16
  Frontline Minefields and Prepared Defences moved to the Objectives section, after Max. simultan attacks. They only work for Invasion and Occupation commanders. Missions that already set them keep their values.
• 2026-10-16
  Recruiter HVT tasks come one at a time. Each side has one open at once, and the next Recruitment HQ's task comes when that one is done or failed. One nobody goes after stops holding the queue after an hour.
• 2026-10-16
  An Asymmetric commander on a big map starts in about half the time. On the Normandy preset the start went from 475 s to 271 s, and from 338 s to 164 s with installation overrides cleared. It places the same buildings as before.
• 2026-10-15
  An insurgent installation's furniture stays inside its own building. Where huts stand close together, as on the SOG maps, up to half of it could land in the house next door, which then carried the installation's disable action too.
• 2026-10-15
  The Custom Name tooltip now says the name also opens the side's HQ radio messages, and that only the first named commander of a side is heard on the radio.
• 2026-10-15
  The 'high value target killed' popup no longer cuts its text off: it says who was killed, and the full sentence goes out as your chosen task update (subtitle, hint or chat).
• 2026-10-15
  A roadblock's roadside car is no longer created inside a tree or wall and blown up: a clear spot is kept, a blocked one moves to the nearest clear spot.
• 2026-10-15
  The Factions list has a Find box. The four Interiors pickers lose theirs (they only list a few sets), and Installation Types no longer shows a second scrollbar.
• 2026-10-14
  New Lab Interiors picker: choose which drug lab sets a lab is furnished with. The lab sets now fit every era, so SOG, Spearhead and Global Mobilization labs get them too.
• 2026-10-14
  Installation Types lists "Factories (IED or drug lab)" in place of IED factories, to match the Drug Labs setting.
• 2026-10-14
  Furnished weapons depots and recruitment HQs no longer have an IED in them: only the IED factory does, on its bench.
• 2026-10-14
  New Drug Labs setting (War on Drugs): an Asymmetric commander's IED factories become drug labs, with their own furniture and no booby-trap. Each lab left standing speeds up its recruiting, twice as fast with 4.
• 2026-10-14
  The AI Commander's prepared defences get a traffic cone beside them: once no enemy is within 60 m, hold the action on it for 15 seconds to dismantle the whole site.
• 2026-10-14
  HQ radio messages open with the AI Commander's Custom Name, for example "This is Eagle.", when the commander has one.
• 2026-10-14
  New Installation Types setting: pick which of the 8 installations and actions an Asymmetric commander may use. All 8 are on by default.
• 2026-10-14
  Insurgent installations get furnished on more maps, Livonia and CUP Takistan included: 59 of 60 test buildings on 4 maps got a furniture set.
• 2026-10-14
  Eden no longer shows a "No entry" popup for S.O.G. furniture when S.O.G. Prairie Fire isn't loaded. A mission's own furniture sets now go under ALiVE_Interiors in description.ext.
• 2026-10-13
  The high value target's class, guards and name can be picked from lists, and attacks can pause after the kill or stop for good, with a replacement when the pause ends.
• 2026-10-13
  Insurgent installations are furnished with small furniture sets in 4 eras that stand clear of the walls, in place of loose tables. Where nothing fits, nothing is placed.
• 2026-10-12
  The AI Commander's menu messages (choosing an objective, waiting for a mission) now show in the ALiVE message box, with the logo and the module's name as the title, instead of a plain hint.
• 2026-10-11
  New High Value Target setting: a named officer and guard group held at the commander's most important held objective. Intel from its dead sometimes marks where he was last seen; killing him stops the commander starting new attacks for 10, 20 or 30 minutes. Saved with the mission.
• 2026-10-11
  Prepared Defences forts are dug on level ground, clear of roads, buildings and water, instead of leaning down a hillside.
• 2026-10-11
  Prepared Defences on Many: an objective held for 40 minutes with its small fort also gets a medium fort on one flank, up to 4 per commander. Forts and frontline mines keep off runways, taxiways and aprons.
• 2026-10-11
  Frontline Minefields are kept when a saved mission is loaded: the mines left in each field are laid again where they were.
• 2026-10-10
  New setting Prepared Defences: an invasion or occupation commander builds a small fort at the edge of each objective it has held for 10 minutes, facing the enemy. Frontline Minefields now also mines objectives the commander is quietly holding.
• 2026-10-10
  New Frontline Minefields setting: the commander mines the approaches to objectives it holds near the enemy.
• 2026-10-10
  An insurgent Recruitment HQ can raise a task to kill its recruiter (Recruiter HVT Task Chance).
• 2026-10-10
  Objectives from a placement module set to Placement Only are ignored, so its forces are placed but not given those objectives.
• 2026-10-09
  With Debug on, an AI Commander that runs out of free groups logs it once, and again when a group comes free, instead of two lines per objective every cycle.
• 2026-10-08
  Insurgent IED factories, recruitment HQs and weapons depots go only in buildings that can be destroyed. On Malden 67 of the 1,021 buildings it could pick, mostly concrete bunkers and piers, couldn't be, so an installation there stayed for good.
• 2026-10-08
  A saved campaign no longer gains a "TACOM: NULL profile passed to FSM" line every time it's loaded. A vehicle kept its dead crew's ID through every save; it now lets go when the crew dies, and the AI Commander clears any such ID left in an older save.
• 2026-10-07
  Civilian support no longer stops updating after a C2ISTAR task ends. The hostility update overwrote the task's chosen town, so the RPT showed "Undefined variable in expression: _cluster" and the support change was lost, or went to the wrong town.
• 2026-10-03
  An AI Commander that stops at start-up because it has no objectives, or factions on different sides, now says so on the loading screen. The reason used to be only in the RPT.
• 2026-10-03
  A group the insurgency switches to the other side now gives up all its vehicles. With 2 or more, every second one used to stay with the old side.
• 2026-09-29
  AI Commanders of different sides can share one placement module's objectives without the start-up log calling it a faction mismatch. A commander with no groups for its faction still warns, and now says which factions its synced placements do place.
• 2026-09-29
  With a headless client, a garrisoned group now mans its guns and holds its posts; its men used to walk back to their leader. Groups the server runs behave as before.
• 2026-09-28
  When intel reveals the insurgents' sites, the suicide bomber's label reads Suicide bomber, not Suicidebomber.
• 2026-09-28
  With debug on, an insurgent objective's hostility and its actions share one label, where two labels ran into each other.
• 2026-09-28
  Insurgent ambushes now plant their roadside IEDs, which go when the ambush ends, and a retreat takes the town's IED and suicide bomber triggers with it. Escalation intensity counts only how far hostility has risen since the start, with trucks, wheeled APCs and MRAPs in the medium tier, and CQB stops garrisoning a lost insurgent objective.
• 2026-09-27
  A disabled insurgent HQ now stops recruiting. Disabling one with the hold action or with Friendly AI disables installations used to leave it producing groups, because it only stopped when the building was destroyed.
• 2026-09-27
  When insurgents give up a town, their recruitment HQ now comes down with the factory and depot, and its marker goes. The houses, walls and roads standing in for their IED spots, ambushes and sabotage targets are left standing, where a retreat used to flatten them.
• 2026-09-26
  A script can add an objective to a commander by naming its side or faction again, as the Q&A shows. On dev builds since April that call quietly did nothing.
• 2026-09-25
  Insurgents now recruit at the Recruit success chance you set. A default mission was getting about a quarter of it, 12.6% instead of 50%, so expect noticeably more insurgent groups.
• 2026-09-25
  Hearts and Minds work still slows recruitment in the towns players win over, and the Civic recruitment multiplier tooltip now explains how, with the civic model on and off.
• 2026-09-25
  A lone insurgent HQ or IED factory now turns its town towards the insurgents twice as fast.
• 2026-09-25
  Intel, Installations, Escalation intensity, Friendly AI disables installations, Civic recruitment multiplier and Custom Name now have tooltips that match what they do.
• 2026-09-25
  A persistent mission with nothing saved yet no longer gives the AI commander duplicate objectives, which flooded the log with exclusion messages.
• 2026-09-24
  An Asymmetric commander synced to Military Placement (Cust. Obj.) or (Cust. Civ. Obj.) now uses their objectives, and Asym Installation Overrides on a Cust. Civ. Obj. take effect.
• 2026-09-18
  Groups sent out on an order the commander then drops now come straight back to it. They used to keep walking to an abandoned objective, unavailable for up to an hour.
• 2026-09-18
  Asking the air commander for a recce no longer throws a script error. Recce itself always worked; the error just landed once per request.
• 2026-09-18
  The AI Commander tasks its forces again. Since 31 August nothing it ordered was ever carried out: orders timed out after 10 seconds and went straight out again, on every objective.
• 2026-09-18
  The repeat hit attack, defend and reserve orders alike, with no limit, for as long as the mission ran. That's why commanders looked idle on recent development builds.
• 2026-09-18
  The tactical side's check for a stale order works again too.
• 2026-09-03
  The commander's reserve garrison, the troops it sends to hold an objective, now seats itself around the centre of that objective instead of wherever the group was standing when the order came.
• 2026-09-03
  Reach is still 200 metres from the centre, so on a very large objective the outermost buildings stay empty. The whole-objective search on the Military Placement page applies to garrisons a placement module puts down, not to these.
• 2026-09-03
  Roadblock, airbase, headquarters, insurgent cell and composition guards are deliberately unchanged, since each was placed to man one structure.
• 2026-09-01
  The limit on how many objectives a commander works at once now does what it says; it used to take on more. Orders also queue instead of overwriting each other, so one no longer goes missing.
• 2026-08-30
  Commanders start up and think faster on large missions.
• 2026-08-27
  An Insurgency commander keeps track of the units it sends out again. Units already sent weren't counted, casualties never came off the list, objectives were never marked taken, and the log filled with hundreds of Undefined variable messages.
• 2026-08-27
  Capture orders point at the objective the commander actually picked, and it now looks for defenders across the objective's own size, between 200m and 500m, instead of a flat 300m. On a large objective it used to find nobody and drop the order.
• 2026-08-26
  The commander no longer loses capture orders to a coin toss. It picked one enemy side at random to search for, so a listed side with nobody on the map cost you the order; it now searches every enemy side at once.
• 2026-08-16
  The AI Commander's faction warning stops going off on every mission. It used to name every faction you'd set as unmatched and tell you to correct three things that were already right.
• 2026-08-16
  Which faction you picked never mattered, so it hit stock ALiVE and modded factions alike. The check worked when it was added on 20 April, broke five days later and had caught nothing since.
• 2026-08-16
  A mission that really is misconfigured warns again, and after four months of silence that'll look like a new warning.
• 2026-08-15
  Taking a faction off the AI Commander's list now sticks; a removed BLUFOR used to come back ticked. The field beneath is renamed Additional Factions, since it adds to your selection rather than replacing it. Needs a rebuilt copy of the mod.
• 2026-08-15
  IED factories that spawn empty with no way to disable them are fixed. A building already carrying an insurgent installation is no longer offered for another. Nine factories across three runs all worked as they should.
• 2026-08-13
  Fixed a hole in how the insurgency commander adds up hostility: a settlement with no hostility or casualty figures stopped the total accumulating. Worth watching if you're measuring insurgency growth or decay, since it would look like the balance drifting on its own.
• 2026-08-13
  Hostility shifts are now weighted by what was involved: foot troops as before, technicals and pickups a quarter more, trucks and wheeled APCs half again, and boats, armour and aircraft double. Supplies arriving by boat were the case this was raised for.
• 2026-08-13
  With escalation intensity switched on, the earliest escalation stage now recruits the faction's own foot-troop groups instead of a generic infantry pick, so what turns up there differs by faction.
• 2026-08-13
  The strongest stage is unchanged, since it draws on everything.
• 2026-08-13
  If you're testing insurgency balance, separate this from whatever else you're measuring and take a look at what the earliest stage actually fields for the factions you run.
• 2026-08-06
  Player objectives can be added at the front of the queue and reordered while the mission runs, and they last the session. The call-for-fire rate setting now takes effect.
• 2026-07-27
  Overhaul briefing first published.