Commander – Wage War the Fun Way

If you, like me, enjoy playing on death worlds because we apparently hate ourselves… then you probably also hate the usual way of clearing biters: inching forward with turret creep and mountains of ammo.
Effective? Sure.
Fun? Not really.

Commander is here to fix that.

Instead of personally exterminating every nest, you build a factory that fuels a war machine—and let soldiers do the fighting while you focus on logistics, production, and glorious conquest.

What Is Commander?

Commander is a mod that introduces base-centered army building with a hierarchical command structure.

The long-term vision is to let you field up to a brigade-sized force—roughly 400–700 commandable soldiers—organized around military bases and HQ buildings.

This is not an RTS with constant micromanagement. The goal is strategic command at scale.

How It Works

• You construct HQ buildings to organize and command soldiers
• Soldiers are grouped into squads, which roll up into larger formations
• Orders are issued at higher levels and trickle down automatically
• AI behavior handles combat decisions like retreating
• Your factory produces soldier tokens, put those in the platoon HQ

Army Structure

Squad

The core unit of the mod.

• Executes all combat orders
• Forms the building block of larger units
• Spawned from the Platoon HQ
• Planned AI behavior for autonomous combat decisions
  (currently, squads can only decide to retreat, but this is broken right now :D)
• Squad consists of a heavy machine gunner and 7 riflemen. I'm looking to further expand on squad compositions, we'll see

Platoon HQ

The first command building and the heart of early army control.

• Spawns and reinforces squads
• Currently issues one order per platoon
• All squads in the platoon execute the same order
• Granular squad-level control may be added later (without heavy micro)

Spawns: 3 squads

Company HQ

• Consists of 3 platoons
• Planned to support company-wide orders affecting all platoons

Battalion HQ

• Consists of 3 companies
• Functions the same way as lower HQ tiers, at a larger scale

Brigade HQ

• Consists of 3 battalions
• Highest command tier
• Potential support for multiple brigades in the future
  (depending on performance and scaling)

Command & Control

Issuing Orders

1: shift + left-click to select an HQ
2: shift + right-click to command an attack at mouse position
(I know shift + left-click conflicts with another use and will try to overcome this, or set another key sequence)

HQ buildings and squads automatically generate map tags.
Higher-tier orders cascade down through all connected sub-units—down to each squad.

What Units Do

When given an order, a unit will:

1. Move to the attack location
2. Attack enemies in the area
3. Return to base once the mission is complete

Simple orders. Big results.

Squads, Losses & Reinforcements

Squad Thresholds

Each squad has:

• Operational threshold
• Minimum soldiers required to deploy
• Default: 6 soldiers
• Retreat threshold
• Squad disengages when losses are too high
• Default: retreat at 3 soldiers remaining (broken)

Reinforcements

• HQ buildings store soldier tokens
• Squads reinforce when they return to base after combat
• If a squad is wiped out:
• A new squad is spawned at the HQ
• Requires sufficient soldier tokens

Design Philosophy

Commander is not about micromanaging every soldier.

As your force grows, you command at higher levels:

• Platoon
• Company
• Battalion
• Brigade

Work in Progress

This mod is very much a work in progress.

Expect:

• Bugs
• Odd behavior
• Unfinished systems
• Crashes

If you try it out and:

• Encounter bugs
• Have balancing ideas
• Or just want to suggest something cool

I’d genuinely love to hear from you ❤️

Compatibility Notes

• Tested only with vanilla Factorio
• Space Age has not been tested
• I don’t own it myself
• If you try it and run into issues, please report them
• I’ll do my best to support it, but vanilla Factorio is the priority