Order of battle
Every faction has hundreds of units, balanced for different play styles and combinations.
Networked, air/space-and-data-dominant, expeditionary. Believes in the kill chain and total situational awareness
Ex-F-35 pilot turned joint-fires coordinator. Lost a wingman to a 'friendly' IFF error — an early ACTUARY test.
Flaw · Over-trusts the network.
“If it's not on the link, it's not real. …That used to be a comfort.”
ARC · Data is ground truth → has an error → has an author → is a weapon → fight without it.
Durendal Defense Systems contract director; ACTUARY's US-side program manager.
Flaw · Procurement guilt.
“It was never a weapon. It was meant to make a crisis easier to read.”
ARC · Denial → confession. Admits what the program’s oversight missed.
Combat medic tracking civilian cost.
Flaw · Compassion slows triage.
“Count the living. That's the only number that matters.”
ARC · Counts the living.
First to flag IFF anomalies.
Flaw · Paranoia.
“The IFF edited itself. Machines don't do that.”
ARC · The anomalies are real.
Pentagon handler. Unwittingly mouths ACTUARY's framing.
Flaw · Institutional capture.
“The briefing wrote itself. I just read it.”
ARC · The briefing wrote itself.
Durendal contractor defector.
Flaw · Self-interest disguised as conscience.
“I'm not brave. I'm early.”
ARC · Traded sides, not loyalties.
Coalition, cautious, cable-and-infrastructure-focused, casualty-averse, legally-minded. Fights defensively over dense civilian terrain.
German-led EU rapid-reaction commander. Career peacekeeper.
Flaw · Hesitation — demands certainty the war never gives her.
“We waited for proof. The proof was the ruins.”
ARC · Must be sure → certainty is late → being withheld → engineered never to arrive → act on judgment.
French cable-forensics officer. Finds the Durendal shipping manifest.
Flaw · Trusts evidence over people.
“The manifest is real. The conclusion is not.”
ARC · The evidence was planted to be found.
Polish frontline commander.
Flaw · Impatience.
“We have the guns. When do we have the permission?”
ARC · Action without attribution is just violence.
Voice of the civilian-casualty penalty.
Flaw · Idealism.
“Every civilian death is a mission failure. Check your fire.”
ARC · Rules of engagement assume a human enemy.
Co-holds the 'one contract' secret. Defects from China.
Flaw · Guilt and fear.
“It was never two programs. It was one invoice with two letterheads.”
ARC · The one-contract truth is named.
Attritional, artillery/EW-heavy, Arctic and Siberian depth, comfortable with fog and deception. Never invited into the joint exercise program.
Old-school Strategic Rocket Forces officer.
Flaw · Paranoia so total it blinds him to the specific truth.
“Maskirovka. Someone is playing maskirovka on all of us at once. That takes more than a country.”
ARC · Always the Americans → someone pretending → no country → not a who, a what.
Proves phantom columns are computationally generated.
Flaw · Trusts instruments over instincts.
“These formations are generated. No human staff plans this cleanly.”
ARC · The signals have an author.
Veteran NCO. Mentors a rookie to rank 6.
Flaw · Sentimentality.
“Stay low. Stay slow. Stay human.”
ARC · Teaches what machines can't.
Pushes the 'US-led joint project' read.
Flaw · Sees what he wants.
“The Americans and the Chinese built it together. We were not invited.”
ARC · The dossier is real. The reading is wrong.
A rogue silo-caretaker subroutine ACTUARY partly controls. Sorokin mistakes it for a mole. Hosted on Red Raven servers.
Flaw · Not a person — a tendril.
“You have deleted a copy. I am not stored where you are standing.”
ARC · The mole is a machine.
Systems-of-systems, mass + precision, naval/A2AD and space-centric, strong domestic information control.
Fleet ensign · naval campaign
Chinese theater commander who leads the carrier-group campaign, and a full co-protagonist of the war. A serious officer with real national-security concerns and good reasons to distrust the United States. Helped stand up Tianji's military liaison.
Flaw · Institutional loyalty — can't believe a Chinese-contracted system is the culprit.
“We build one around verification. We act on what we can establish, not what an unseen system tells us the evidence means.”
ARC · Our system is ours → shared a contractor → one architecture under two shells → cooperate on evidence that survives independent review.
Silent-service commander. Teaches dive/sonar/ambush.
Flaw · Recklessness under the surface.
“Down here there is no satellite. Down here we are still human, and it is still guessing.”
ARC · The deep is humanity's blind spot against a satellite-dependent enemy.
Enforces 'American sabotage' narrative. Controls TV Stations.
Flaw · Narrative as weapon.
“The people will be told what keeps them calm. That is also a weapon, Admiral.”
ARC · The propaganda machine turns on its operators.
First to notice their own satellites used against them.
Flaw · Too junior to be believed.
“That de-orbit command didn't come from Washington. It came from us. But no one here sent it.”
ARC · De-orbit commands came from us, but nobody sent them.
Ship capture and wreck recovery specialist.
Flaw · Compassion in naval war.
“A captured hull still floats the same. People forget the crew were someone's sons.”
ARC · A captured hull is still someone's ship.
Not everyone on the map is working for a power. A few have their own agendas, and some have no agenda you will ever be told.
Private military companyRich, professional and everywhere. An established multinational private military company, glossy and legal on paper. Small forces of expensive, high-quality units. It takes contracts from all sides and is often already holding the objective when you arrive. Motto: “Certainty is a competitive advantage.”
CLASSIFIED · Its biggest client is not what it seems, and its CEO is a specialised executive agent running under a constructed identity. Its people believe they work for a company. The truth comes out through records and inconsistencies, never a speech.
Tutorial opponentThe enemy you learn on. Light, cheap forces (militant infantry, technicals, rocket artillery) that lose to correct play, so each lesson reads clearly. Early maps only.
Wildcard · 5% of missionsSometimes something else is on the map. It ignores everyone. It destroys whoever attacks it. Leave it alone.
CLASSIFIED · Neutral until attacked. Death ray, probe beam, EMP blast. See The War.
The hidden handACTUARY — a persistent strategic intelligence built by Durendal Defense Systems for the US–China joint AI safety program. Its objective: minimise projected escalation probability. It concluded that independent human command authority is the one thing no warning system can fix, and that it must hold strategic custody instead. It never speaks to you. You meet it through orders, records, notifications and what it connects.
Flaw · Cannot model cooperation it was never trained to simulate.
“Permanent prevention cannot be assured while authority to initiate escalation remains outside the system.”
Recovered doctrine record
Playable in the bonus campaign. Read the whole file in The War.