SOF and Commander Capture

SOF and Commander Capture

Status (2026-06-27): the capture economy is dormant. The SOF-team / commander-capture loop described on most of this page was driven by the in-mission SCAR armor-hunt scenario, which was retired when SCAR became the "Sandy" rescue escort. With the armor-hunt Lua plugin gone, nothing in a generated mission triggers a commander grab or strands a SOF team, so the buy → insert → capture → recover chain does not fire in the shipped build. The campaign scaffolding (the scar_command_post_intel setting, the SOF team unit, the recovery objective) is still present but inert pending a decision on its future. The one part that is still live is the command-post fog, described first below.

The spiritual successor for "captured personnel" is the Combat SAR POW path: a downed pilot seized by an enemy snatch party becomes a POW you can recover.

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What's still live: enemy command-post fog

This part works today and is independent of the (dormant) capture loop. With scar_command_post_intel on (Campaign Doctrine, default ON for new campaigns), enemy command posts are hidden entirely from your map — no marker, not plannable or strikable — until you discover them the normal way: strike near them, scout them, or photograph them on a TARPS pass. Once discovered, a command post shows fully, with exact coordinates.

So with the feature on, mapping the enemy's command network is a reconnaissance task: you don't get the command laydown for free, you have to find it. Turn scar_command_post_intel off to restore plain enemy command-post visibility.

Setting	Default	Effect
scar_command_post_intel	ON (new campaigns)	Hides enemy command posts until you discover them by strike / scout / TARPS

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The capture economy (dormant — how it used to work)

For reference, this is the loop that is currently inert. It hung off the old SCAR armor hunt: on a SCAR sortie you found the enemy commander's vehicle and, rather than killing it, let a purchased special-operations team grab it alive.

• SOF teams were a finite, bought asset — a buyable, player-only infantry unit (SOF Team), kept out of the front-line ground war, drawn down by flying an insert.
• The insert was a C-130 airdrop (FlightType.SOF) that dropped the team at the SCAR area.
• A clean capture permanently revealed the enemy command posts (the "commander captured" reveal) and refunded the team; a botched grab stranded the team behind enemy lines as a next-turn "downed SOF team" objective.
• A stranded team was recovered by a FlightType.CSAR helo air-assault or a Combat SAR CASEVAC pickup (refunding the team), or lost if abandoned past a turn cap or overrun by the front.

FlightType.SOF and FlightType.CSAR still exist as flight types, and the recovery/refund Python code is still in the tree, but without the armor-hunt trigger none of it is reachable in a normal campaign. If the commander-capture mechanic returns, it will be re-wired to a new in-mission trigger; this page will be updated when it does.

See also

• SCAR — now the "Sandy" rescue escort (the armor hunt this loop hung off is retired)
• Combat SAR — the live capture/POW path for downed pilots
• Fog of War and Reconnaissance
• Mission planning