What is High Command's jobs
Both sides in Battleground Europe have player-run groups, known as the High Command (HC), responsible for strategic management of the side's forces. High Command players have their own avatar and when they broadcast on the Ops channel a small "HC" symbol is displayed rather than the British/French/German side's symbol. An in-game list of all currently logged in HC players is available. HC players have abilities that are not available to the rest of the playerbase, namely in the placing of Attack Objectives (AOs). When an AO is placed on a town, the other side gets an automatic Defence Objective (DO) on that town allowing all players to know that it is under attack. 10 minutes after an AO is first placed on a town, the town's Depot Office building, City Office building, and Rail Road Office buildings all become capturable. These capturable buildings are collectively known as Capture Points (CPs). Entering the Flag building linked to an Office building (marked with a large flag) will show an attacker how long it will take for the building to become capturable.
To capture a building, attackers must remain inside the Flag Building until the capture bar has hit 100%. If more than one player (up to eight) are inside the flag building, the bar will move faster. Additional attackers past the eighth have no effect on the capture speed. Defenders must kill all attackers in the flag building to start liberating the facility. Any attackers who enter the building (even if it is currently being liberated) start the capture bar moving up again. Capturing a flag gives the attacking side control of the corresponding building linked to the Office. If the Office links to a Depot that has a link to a friendly town, the Depot is referred to as "Spawnable" and players may spawn from new missions there, making them an important objective. Players may also despawn near a friendly depot and respawn inside it, called "Warping". This allows attackers to set up a Mobile Spawn Point near a non-spawnable depot and warp directly into it, avoiding any heavy defenses around the spawnable depots.
Ten minutes after an Office is captured, the town's Army Bunkers, Airfield Bunkers, Docks and Factories become capturable. The attacking side must continuously hold one flag in the town for this to happen. It does not have to be the same flag, they may capture two, lose one, capture another, lose the first, in any combination as long as they continue to hold at least one flag for ten minutes. Once all the town's Office buildings, Army Bunkers, Airfield Bunkers, Docks and Factories are captured, the AO and DO are lifted and the town changes ownership to the attacking side. All towns have an Army Base, some on rivers have Docks, some with large historical airfields have Airfields with a command bunker, and some important industrial towns have Factories.
AOs can also be placed on bridges. An AO on a bridge enables that side to destroy it, while a DO allows it to be repaired. Bombers and Naval Destroyers are usually tasked with blowing up bridges, while sapper (engineer) units must repair them. Bridges repair slowly if left alone.
High Command players are able to move their side's "brigades" along road links between friendly towns. Each brigade can be moved once every Hour if in a frontline town, or every half an hour if in a non-frontline town. A friendly brigade in a town allows players to spawn in that town to either defend or attack. Naval and Air Force brigades are considered "Self-Deployable" and can move directly from any town to another with the right Docks or Air Field facilities, as long as the destination town is held by friend forces and is not cut off from the main friendly-held area.
Each army division has a headquarters (HQ) unit and three combat brigades. Two of the brigades are Infantry brigades (with a high proportion of infantry and artillery, with only light tanks) and one brigade is classified as an Armoured brigade (with a high proportion of heavy and medium tanks and fewer infantry and artillery). The HQ unit is mostly used to resupply the other three brigades, and is vulnerable when placed on the front line by itself. It is common practice to attach the armoured brigade to one of the infantry brigades and use the HQ unit to resupply both.
The game's movement rules only allow the brigades to be moved to a friendly town that is no more than 1 town away from another brigade or the HQ in its own Division. The rule though does not apply in the case that the brigade is the only one left in its division and if this occurs it is free to move to any surrounding town. This occurs through the routing of brigades. Routing removes brigades from the game map for 6 hours and can happen in a few ways. Brigades in a division will normally "fallback" if the AB is captured, but only if the game's movement rules allow it, that is, move to within 1 link of a brigade or HQ in its own division. If none of the surrounding friendly towns are within 1 link of a brigade within its own division when the AB is captured, then the brigade will be routed off the game map for 6 hours.
High Command players that are Commanding Officers (CO) of a Brigade or higher can give out side wide messages known as dot Axis or dot Allied messages. They are named thus as the command to type one out is, ".axis" or ".allied". These messages are seen by all players on a side and are used for a number of purposes. The usual purpose of the message is to inform players of important battles. The message will tell players what town is being attacked or defended, what brigade or brigades are involved, who the Officer in Command (OIC) of the attack or defence is and what chat and possibly Team Speak channels are being used. Most high command players liven their messages up beyond just the generic and quite humorous messages can often be seen. These messages can also be used to boost the "morale" of the troops by telling them how well they have been fighting and to announce future Operations that are being planned
