SOF and Commander Capture

SOF and Commander Capture

This is the campaign-layer half of SCAR: instead of just killing the high-value target, you can try to capture the enemy commander alive using a finite, purchased special-operations team. A clean grab maps the enemy command network for the rest of the campaign; a botched grab strands your team behind enemy lines and starts a rescue subplot. It is the fork's most involved, multi-turn gameplay loop — a small economy of consumable assets wrapped around the SCAR hunt.

It is experimental and gated by one setting:

scar_command_post_intel (Campaign Doctrine) — default ON for new campaigns while it is being playtested. Existing saves keep whatever they were saved with. Turn it off to restore plain enemy command-post visibility and remove the SOF economy.

In-game-pass status: the planner, capture loop, and command-post fog are verified in-game; the mis-ID penalty Lua (checklist F5) and the full capture → permanent-reveal carryover across turns (F2) still owe a pass. Treat the path as experimental.

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Why capture anyone?

With the feature on, enemy command posts are hidden entirely from your map — you cannot see where the enemy is run from. Capturing an enemy commander on a SCAR sortie is how you map that command network: a clean capture permanently reveals the enemy command posts, with exact coordinates. So the SOF loop is an intelligence campaign, not just a body count — you are trading a scarce team and a risky insert for a lasting picture of the enemy's command structure.

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SOF teams are a finite, bought asset

The capture team is a real, procurable, naturally-finite campaign unit — not an abstract counter:

• It is a dedicated, buyable infantry unit (SOF Team (BLUFOR) / (OPFOR)), priced at 8 — roughly the cost of the default mis-ID penalty, so wasting a team and prosecuting the wrong convoy hurt about the same.
• You buy it like any ground unit, but it is player-only: the AI never buys, deploys, or uses SOF teams. By design the team is kept out of front-line deployment ratios, combat-strength scoring, and redeployment math, so it sits in inventory as a special asset rather than feeding the ground war.
• Your pool is simply how many SOF units your coalition holds across its bases. The generator will only offer a SOF insert while you have teams, capped per turn at the number available.

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The loop, turn by turn

1. Buy a team and plan the insert

Stock a SOF team at a rear base, then plan a SOF insert — a dedicated FlightType.SOF flight. Key points:

• The insert is a C-130 airdrop: it is flown by fixed-wing transports (C-130/An-26), not helicopters. Helos are reserved for the recovery leg. It reuses the air-assault delivery spine to drop the team at the SCAR area's ambush point along the HVT's route.
• Fragging the insert debits one team from the origin base — once per target per turn, regardless of what happens next. (Buy-and-fly is the spend; the outcome decides whether you get it back.)
• The EW (C-130J) plugin is correctly skipped on the SOF insert C-130, so you can't fly the electronic-warfare jet and run a SOF insert on the same airframe in one mission.
• If you don't fly the insert, a scripted fallback team is spawned so the loop never silently dies — but flying it for real is the intended play. The F10 mark reads "airdrop your SOF team here," and the capture binds to a player-delivered team found near the ambush point (within ~2500 m), falling back to the scripted spawn otherwise.

2. The grab, in-mission

Your job on the SCAR sortie is to find the real HVT and not kill the command vehicle — you want it alive. Outcomes are ranked killed > captured > escaped/timeout:

• Clean capture — the un-killed command vehicle drives into the capture radius while your SOF team is still alive. The team grabs the commander and escapes with the prisoner ("no one dares attack while the commander is a hostage"). The enemy command posts are revealed permanently, with exact coordinates, and the capture refunds the team — it got out, so it nets out the debit-on-frag.
• Botched / late — the team is on the ground but the grab fails or comes too late. The team is stranded behind enemy lines and becomes a rescue objective next turn (below). No refund yet — recovery is the only way to get the team back.

3. If stranded: the recovery subplot

A stranded team is surfaced next turn as a first-class "downed SOF team" map objective — a real TGO at the strand point, attached to the nearest friendly control point, that persists across turns until it is recovered or overrun.

• Loss conditions: it ages out after a 3-turn cap, or is lost if the enemy front overruns its position.
• Recovery (helo only): you get the team back two ways, and either one refunds the bought team (it only refunds once):
  1. A dedicated FlightType.CSAR helo air-assault flown at the objective that survives the sortie, or
  2. A Combat SAR flight extracting it in-mission as a MOOSE CASEVAC pickup.

This SCAR SOF-recovery CSAR is distinct from the Combat SAR pilot-rescue flight type, though a Combat SAR helo can service both. A team recovered by both paths still refunds only once.

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The economy at a glance

Event	Team cost	Intel / objective effect
Buy a SOF team	pay 8 (price)	Adds one team to your pool
Frag a SOF insert	debit 1 team (per target/turn)	Team airdropped at the ambush point
Clean capture	refund 1 team	Enemy command posts revealed permanently
Botched grab	no refund (yet)	Team stranded → "downed SOF team" objective next turn
Recover a stranded team (CSAR or Combat SAR)	refund 1 team	Objective cleared
Stranded team ages out (3 turns) or is overrun	team lost	Objective removed

The net effect: a successful capture costs you a risky sortie and an insert but returns the team and a lasting intel win; a failure costs you the team unless you mount a rescue.

Settings reference

Setting	Default	Effect
scar_command_post_intel	ON (new campaigns)	Hides enemy command posts; enables the SOF buy/insert/capture/recovery loop
scar_misid_penalty	8	Budget cost of prosecuting the wrong convoy on the SCAR hunt (0 disables) — see SCAR
SOF team price	8	Cost of one purchased SOF team
Stranded-team turn cap	3	Turns a downed SOF team objective survives before it is written off

See also

• SCAR
• Combat SAR
• Fog of War and Reconnaissance
• Mission planning