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Writing this because some folks (*MG* *cough* *MG😉 may be unaware of how awesome and fear-inspiring combat orders can be when used effectively.

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Wiki page on Combat Orders

Combat orders allow a MU leader to directly fund efforts in a war. You can set an amount per million damage that a fighter will be awarded for doing damage in a battle. The money will be given each successful (non-partial) hit… you don’t need to do a full million damage to get CC. Funds are instantly awarded.

You can set a CO for each division, base it on citizenship, or MU membership. You can also set the CO for a percentage of domination. For example, you can set a CO that only pays if your side has 52% or less in the round and only pays people with Malaysian CS.

Only a MU and its commander can set a CO. Having a CP be able to set a CO through an org would be ideal, but isn’t a game feature.

COs replace the previous practice of supplying tanks on IRC or sending CC to a mercenary unit. Supplying tanks on IRC is an exercise in frustration, and will quickly annoy and anger the supplier dealing with the screaming masses of “WHY U NO GIVE TANKZ” until they themselves become a mouth-breathing-all-caps-IRC-troll.

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Advantages of COs:

• You only pay for damage that happens, rather than supplying tanks to fighters that may fight for the wrong side or wait and watch the round for an ideal time to fight.
• Far less logistical headache: No need to watch the domination bar, no need to verify damage done, no IRC nonsense, no screenies, none of that
• Easier to budget for: You know your maximum you are willing to spend, and funds that aren’t used are saved
• No need to buy tanks at inflated prices to supply: COs are immune to market wonkiness, and players supply their own food and tanks
• You can craft them for maximum effectiveness: Higher COs for citizens, lesser COs for allies, and a low CO for random strangers. Be creative and you can get far more damage for your treasury, and everyone gets a warm fuzzy and some CC
• People who can’t or won’t use IRC will fight for you, and you don’t need to recruit them, know them, or deal with them. No language or cultural issues.
• A CO lets the other side know you mean serious business, that you are willing to pay to win rather than passively watch the fight.
• COs let your citizens know you mean even more serious business, that the government (or MU) is actively involved, working in their interests, and fighting the good fight
• It is more difficult to "cheat" compared to IRC supplies or mercenary contracts. Fighting has to occur on your terms in-game for people to get their CC, rather than taking the tanks and not performing
• By setting the % dominion at your terms, you can avoid people over-fighting or adding useless damage when you are already winning a round

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Rule 0 of combat order majesty:

COs are expensive. Very expensive. Be prepared to spend far more than you thought you might have to. Seriously, like 10x more. Or even a hundred times more. But COs allow you to directly budget the amount, so you can set a maximum amount before... just realize that you may hit that max earlier than you thought

Rule 1:
Don’t play games with the CO.

Set the CO, make sure it has enough CC in it, and let it run. Don’t pause it if you are ahead, try and trick people into fighting and then pausing it and hope they don’t notice, waiting until the final phase of the battle before implementing a CO (because the last few minutes are “better”), putting a high CO then dropping it mid-fight, all those and many other trickster things to do to avoid paying the CO.

Sure, you may save some CC by screwing around, but all you do is annoy the people trying to take advantage of the CO. And annoyed people do things like fight for the other side, avoid your future battles, write articles about you and your alleged genetic defects, and generally distrust you and your trickster mind-games. The level of annoyance felt by a player who just used a q5 moving ticket (or spent 100cc) to move to far-away-illvania to fight in your battle only to see the CO vanish is a considerable amount. Enough that they may feel slighted, and do something against your interests.

So set a CO early, pick a reasonable number, fund the CO, and let it run. It is reasonable to wait 10-15 or even 30 minutes before setting a CO, to let BH medal hunters shoot their stockpile into the battle, but don’t wait an hour or more… by then it may be too late. PROTIP: if you are going to set a very high CO, wait at least around five minutes for the domination % to stabilize in a round.

Rule 2:
The side that sets the highest CO will (probably) win.

If in a battle with both sides having a CO, all the mercenaries will fight for the highest CO. Make sure that side is yours.

A risk with COs on both sides of a RW (rather than an MPP battle) is that folks will ping pong back and forth between the RW side and the occupier (this costs moving tickets in an MPP battle, so far less common).

So in a RW, be sure to have as small a gap between domination %s for the opposing sides: if both sides set “pay if we are at 55% at less", there is far less switching that has to be done to take funds from both sides. If both sides had “pay at 51% or less”, the advantage of side-switching is lessened. And you avoid paying as much to ping-pongers.

Rule 3:
In a RW, you want to have as commanding lead as possible as early as possible.

With Freedom Fighter medals, folks poll all the active RWs and look for those that are going to win. If a player needs 75 hits in a successful RW, they pick the 18-0 ones, not the 7-8 ones, rather than risk their 75 hits worth of fights. So if you are funding a RW, set a (very) large CO in the early rounds to get ahead quickly. It is far more difficult to win a come-from-behind RW than win one that has a sizable advantage early.

Rule 4:
Don’t set a CO if there is a promo or reason to fight like a crazy.

Last month, with the “infinite tanking for only the cost of carpel tunnel syndrome” promo, setting a CO was a bad idea. Even fighting bare-handed, a div4 tank taking advantage of a +50% damage boost and doing 5000 hits in your 10CC battle is going to cost you a lot of CC, especially when there are thousands of other players doing the same thing.

So if a “full energy per energy bar” promo comes along, or "spring treats", try not to have to set a CO. Or if WMDs are on special and everyone can do 10M extra damage because of Easter or something, avoid funding everyone's tank-splozion celebration.

Rule 5:
Adjust the CO values based on how the battle and campaign is going.

If you are ahead 50-0, you probably don’t need to set any more COs to win the campaign. Or if you aren’t getting enough div3 support, maybe bump that value up. Try not to adjust mid-battle, but between rounds. Players like consistency, stable COs that they can use to gauge if they want to move to fight in that battle, not COs that blink on and off with randomly changing values.

Rule 6:
Don’t set nonsense COs.

Don't troll your potential fighters by setting COs that award CC if dominion is less than 40%, or setting a CO if you are winning a round 80% to 20%. Sure, you get that CO marker by the battle listing in the Wars tab, but your goal shouldn’t be to annoy potential mercenaries. Because annoyed people do things for spite and lutz, and you don’t want that.

Rule 7:
You don’t need to set COs in all divisions.

Div1 only provides one dominion point per round of the campaign, which would seem to be not worth any effort or CC. But those div1 players are the ones you want to keep interested and engaged, since they are the most likely to leave the game. Setting a 200 CC/million CO for div1 (or some large but not unreasonable amount) lets junior players feel they are accomplishing something, and keeps them playing and fighting for your side. And since div1-3 players do far less damage per hit, a high CO doesn’t cost you much to keep them entertained.

By locking-in high COs for div1-3, you can avoid over-spending in div4. Remember that div4 is full of mega-elite-tanks with their candy-bar stashes and bonus damage, and they love to do hundreds of millions of damage to fuel their egos. You don't want to fund those guys if you don't have to, and by winning div1-3 each round, you can still win the campaign.

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Nice pants!

-GP