Ill try to do a bit of picking through it.
A little background: I am a former USN qualified in submarines ST-S (Sonar Tech, Submarine.) I spent 10 years in active service and 4 years in the reserves. I spent 6 years of my active service on SSN-754 USS Topeka, and spent a lot of time on the beach instructing. The whole reason i bought i home PC back in the past was i saw a copy of Harpoon II in all of its 3.5 inch floppy disk glory and decided i HAD to have it. From then on, if it was a naval sim, i bet i have played it. Including Harpoon in all of its flavors, and now CMANO.
I had been following this sim for a long time. Since they first mentioned "Red Pill", which was the development name. I really didnt get my hopes up about it until is was announced that they had a publisher and Matrix games was going to distribute it. I didnt even flinch at the $80 dollar sticker price. I had done my scouting with watching any preview video i could find and decided that this HAD to be the replacement for Harpoon.
Was i right? Heck yes i was. This is the game this niche genre needed to survive. Even flawed as it is at release. But it isnt so flawed you cant play it, but now that us completists and nit pickers are getting to dig through it, we are seeing bugs and shortcomings in the AI. And they are telling the devs about it on the official Matrix forum. And happily, the developers are listening, having released several patches already, fixing various things. I am playing the latest beta patch version (build 440) so ill base my conclusions on that, and not from the initial release version.
Being a child of the cold war, i expected to see more NATO vs. Warsaw Pact scenarios. That was Harpoons strength. All those wonderful scenarios where battles that never were were played out. Command doesnt really give you a lot of those WWIII scens right out of the box. But there is hope. The community is already hard at work building scenarios, and i even know of one Red Storm Rising scenario project in the works. So soon scenarios wont be an issue.
That being said, the scenario editor is a dream to work with. It makes it VERY easy to plop down some units and start the sim and you have a battle on your hands. The only other thing that compares to it is if you had a big box of army men when you were a kid and setting them all out and having a battle with your imagination. Basically if it was a warship/warplane from 1950-today, chances are it is in this simulations database. For example, there are 81 different versions of the US Navy Ticonderoga class cruiser in the database. They represent different weapon loadouts and capabilities since its introduction all those years ago. So if you want a vintage Aegis cruiser in your scenario, or one you set foot on yesterday, the possibility is there.
Another thing i am loving right now is the mission editor. Finally i can set up CAP's and they do exactly what i want them to do. If you want to set up an ASW patrol, the plane/helo will go to the defined area (set up with reference points, be it a box or point to point) and start dropping sonobuoys, and if they find something, they will prosecute it. And making patrols that move with your surface groups is just as easy.
Another thing that i have wanted in a sim of this nature. Logistics. UNREP. Refueling. CMANO models this. your planes and ships will run out of weapons and fuel if given the chance. I have tested this and have seen a supply ship go alongside a carrier and transfer over fuel and munitions. Air to air refueling also works.
No need to worry about maps, because the whole globe is modeled. and there doesnt seem to be a limitation on physical map size. Another thing i have tested, i made a small scenario, put a base on the continental USA (Whiteman AFB) and then put a soviet era Typhoon class missile sub in the barents sea. I then launched 2 SLBM's (yes nuclear weapons are modeled in this sim, be it tactical nukes or strategic systems) and i tracked the missiles clear to detonation over whiteman. The cool thing about it was that the missiles when they started their terminal descent..MIRVed
As far as the UI goes...if you can navigate Harpoon...youll get used to this rather easily. It is not perfect, and could use some refinement, the most notable thing is id like to be able to bring up the DB with hyper-linking in certain situations such as when im in the scenario editor and trying to figure out what loadouts work with what plane. There have been some issues with unit/AI behavior that "dont work right" but have been reported and are in the pipeline for a fix. As i mentioned before the devs are guys who like alot of us LOVE this genre and and want to improve things. They know what they have released isnt perfect but are willing to listen to people and fix it. This alone makes me believe that this is going to be an amazing simulation.
I havent even mentioned another OMG moment i had with the sim the first time i played it....Unit Physics. In the past, change course with a ship in harpoon: instant 180 degree turn. With CMANO, units actually turn. planes actually dogfight(it is pretty cool to witness a furball in air combat in this sim) As far as how ASW, radar, ESM, etc, etc go..everything seems to be very well modeled, and to me it just seems right.
To end this rambling on...CMANO is a painting that is not quite finished, but it is damn close to becoming a masterpiece. If any of you have any questions, just ask away...ill try to answer.