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Command

MISSION 1: FIRST CONTACT00:00
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COMMAND

Retro real-time strategy

Choose a mission:

MISSION 1: First Contact
Objective: Destroy every Legion building

The Scarlet Legion has built an outpost in the north valley: one barracks, one turret, a handful of riflemen. Open ground, plenty of crystal, and all the time you need. Tip: power plant first, then barracks. The harvester drives to the nearest field on its own — let it work and stop watching it.

DIFFICULTY

The game as it was balanced.

Left-click selects, drag a box to select several, double-click picks all units of a type. Right-click moves or attacks, on the minimap too. WASD or arrow keys scroll, the mouse wheel zooms. Ctrl+1 to 5 stores a group, 1 to 5 recalls it. H jumps to your headquarters, P pauses, Esc cancels.

On a phone: tap to select, drag to scroll the map, long-press to give an order. It plays considerably better on a desktop with a mouse.

How to play

  1. Pick one of the 15 missions from the menu. The first is playable straight away; each later one unlocks when the previous is beaten.
  2. The harvester drives to the nearest crystal field on its own and unloads at the refinery. A full load is worth 500 credits.
  3. Build in this order: power plant (energy), barracks (infantry), refinery and factory (vehicles). Buildings have to go up near your existing base.
  4. Left-click selects, a dragged box selects several units, a double-click grabs every visible unit of that type. Right-click moves or attacks.
  5. Watch the objective above the battlefield: usually destroy every building, sometimes just one particular building, and twice simply holding out against the clock. Walls are never an objective. Lose your own headquarters and the mission is over.

Command is a free real-time strategy browser game on DropPlay in which players build a base on a 44×34 tile map, mine crystal with harvesters and dismantle the enemy Scarlet Legion across fifteen missions. It follows the genre's classic loop: crystal pays for buildings, buildings unlock units, power plants keep production running, and turrets plus walls hold the base while your own army masses for the counter-attack. Ten unit types from infantry through scouts, mortars and flame tanks to the rocket launcher and the Colossus, seven kinds of building, fog of war, a minimap, control groups and five enemy commander personalities that behave differently rather than merely hitting harder. Every mission is generated fresh at each start and validated for playability before you see it. Command runs directly in the browser on desktop and laptop, with no download and no sign-up.

Tips & strategy

  • Power first. If consumption passes generation, production runs at half speed and your own turrets fire around 40 percent slower. A second power plant is cheaper than a lost base.
  • A second refinery arrives with a second harvester. It is the cheapest way to double your income, and it costs you no unit production slot.
  • Every weapon has exactly one target it hits at full strength and three it does less to. Tanks are poor against infantry, small arms nearly useless against armour, high explosive best against buildings. The damage figure shown is always the best case — the sidebar names what it applies to for whatever you have selected.
  • Rocket troopers do nearly five times a rifleman's damage to a tank, and very little to buildings. They answer vehicles, not bases — mortars and flame tanks do that. At 50 hit points they are very soft: put them behind your tanks, never in front.
  • Turrets reach 185, further than any unit except the mortar (260) and the rocket launcher (240). Two of them at the entrance to your base break the first attack waves without a single loss of your own — but siege weapons have to be met out in the field.
  • The enemy masses reinforcements into a group before committing. The quiet between two waves is build time, not waiting time.
  • Store groups with Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+5. Having tanks on 1 and rocket troopers on 2 is the difference between an attack and a traffic jam.

History & background

The game is a deliberate nod to the real-time strategy games of the 1990s, when one base, one resource and two production buildings were enough for a whole game. All of the pixel art is procedural: there are no image files, and every building and unit is drawn from rectangles, circles and gradients straight onto the canvas. That is also why the sidebar icons are the same sprites as the ones on the battlefield, only scaled down.

FAQ

Are there difficulty levels?

Three, chosen before each mission: Easy, Medium and Hard. Medium is the game as it was balanced. Easy grants 50 percent more starting credits and makes the enemy produce slower and attack later; Hard takes credits away, speeds its production up, shortens its patience and gives it one more turret. Deliberately no hit-point or damage bonuses: the enemy plays by the same rules on all three levels and simply fields more units on Hard. Unlocked missions are shared across levels, so nothing has to be earned twice.

Does Command need a mouse?

For the full feature set, yes. Box selection, right-click orders, wheel zoom and control groups are mouse and keyboard features. On a touchscreen, tap to select, drag to scroll the map and long-press to move or attack all work — playable, but noticeably slower than on a computer.

How many missions are there?

Fifteen, in three acts. Act I (1–5) introduces the economy and basic combat, act II (6–10) brings the new threats — scouts at your harvester, mortars that out-range any turret, a hold-out mission and a raid — and act III (11–15) puts the full roster on the field. Each mission you beat unlocks the next, and progress is stored in your browser.

What happens when power runs short?

Power plants generate 100 energy; the refinery, barracks, factory and turrets each consume between 20 and 40. Once consumption exceeds generation, all production runs at half speed and your turrets fire more slowly. Buildings still under construction count for neither side of the balance.

Do I have to demolish every wall at the end?

No. From mission 2 on, the Legion rings its base with walls, but walls are not a mission objective. The mission is won the moment the last real building falls, walls still standing or not. The ring also has a gap on its north and west faces, so there is always a way in.

Can I make a harvester mine a specific field?

Yes. Right-clicking a crystal tile sends the harvester there and has it mine that exact spot instead of picking the nearest field itself. Right-clicking ordinary terrain only moves it; after that it goes back to choosing a field on its own.

Are the maps the same on every attempt?

No. Each mission has a fixed terrain recipe — open plain, desert, thick woodland, a valley cut by rock ridges — but the random seed is drawn fresh at every start. Rocks, trees, the road and the crystal fields land somewhere different each time while the character of the mission stays the same. Every generated map is checked first: enough buildable room at both bases, a ground route between them, enough crystal, and at least one field within reach of your own base. A map that fails is re-rolled.

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