CO's

This section is just a little rundown on all of the different CO's in the game. You can always find more information on each of these by checking the Info segment on them when selecting CO's before a mission.

You're only able to use around half of these CO's in the campaign, although they're all selectable in Battle Room, Survival, and other gameplay modes. Many of them start the game locked, though; to unlock them, you'll need to perform some deed in the Campaign, then buy them from the Battle Maps shop. Sasha, Grimm, and Javier can all be unlocked by beating mission 20 in the Campaign; all the rest are unlocked by completing the campaign's final mission. Von Bolt is the only exception; he can only be unlocked for play if you beat the Hard campaign.

CO Ranks: As you play with a CO in battles, they'll earn experience. After they earn 1,000 experience, they'll go up in rank. This doesn't directly affect their abilities in battle, but it will allow them to use better force abilities. These are different than CO Powers; force abilities are assigned on the CO Screen before a battle begins, and give all of that CO's units passive boosts throughout the battle. These boosts can be relatively modest, such as letting all APCs have extra armor, or they can be quite powerful. Some of the most powerful force abilities can only be purchased in the Battle Maps shop, and some have to be unlocked by winning the Campaign on Hard mode.

Orange Star CO's

Jake

CO Power Requirements: Three for normal, three more for super.
CO Power: Beat Down - all vehicles can fire from one more space away, and all units have increased firepower on plains.
Super CO Power: Block Rock - vehicles can fire from one more space away, and move two more spaces in a turn. All units have significantly more firepower when firing from a plain.

Jake is going to be the central CO in the game's campaign mode, or as he would put it, he's the man now, dog. Word? Although the pimp talk is going to get pretty tiresome after, say, the third mission, you'll have to put up with it, or just skip past it if you want to get down to the fight. He's going to be pretty useful on levels with a lot of plains, obviously, but his units won't get much of a benefit from fighting on roads or forests or any other kind of terrain, so you'll need to carefully place them in order to take advantage of his abilities.

Rachel

CO Power Requirements: Three for normal, three more for super.
CO Power: Lucky Lass - improves her luck ability, which will give each unit's attack a chance to do extra damage.
Super CO Power: Covering Fire - launches missiles from off the screen onto the densest concentration of enemy troops, dealing severe damage.

In World War III, we're laying even money on the Japanese forces being led into battle by teenagers plucked off the streets - it seems like every Japanese game that involves saving the world has the charge being led by tweens and barely pubescent young men. Rachel is a somewhat mysterious example of this, having been tasked with commanding the Allied Nations in Omega Land despite...not being very good? You're not likely going to want to use Rachel very much during the campaign, as her units have no special attack bonuses. When a unit returns to a base or city to heal after being damaged, it will get three points of healing per turn instead of two, but that's not exactly something to throw a parade over, and is more of a defensive ability than something that'll really help you win games quickly.

Rachel's SCOP (super CO Power) is kind of handy, in that it can take an entire army of enemy troops down to two or three health, but is most useful on smaller maps where the enemy forces are likely to be concentrated. On larger maps you'll probably either already be well on your way to winning by the time this power becomes available, in which case it's not going to be able to help you kill anything, since it can't bring a unit below one health, which will leave you with a group of roadblocks that you'll still have to plow through in order to win.