The Combat Mission games have proved to be some of the best and most exciting wargames in years, thanks to great gameplay. Instead of simply re-creating a board game experience like so many other wargames do, the Combat Mission games use 3D graphics to create virtual battlefields. Basically, you issue commands to all your units while the game is paused, and then the action unfolds in 60-second increments, letting you see the results of your decisions in real time. You then repeat the process until one side has won.

Shock Force will give you command of one of the US Army's new Stryker Brigades as you invade Syria.

Combat Mission: Shock Force, due out later this year, is a huge update for the series. Not only will it feature vastly improved graphics, but the game is set in a fictional near-future conflict with Syria. That's quite a change from all the previous Combat Mission games, which were set during World War II. This means that you'll command modern-day military forces in action. To learn more, we caught up with Steve Grammont, the designer of Combat Mission and one of the cofounders of Battlefront, which is publishing the game.

GameSpot: Tell us about the setting and time frame of the game. Why did you choose to focus on a NATO conflict on Syrian soil?

Steve Grammont: We wanted to create a somewhat plausible conflict between the US and a largely conventional military force based in the Middle East. We had three choices: Syria, Iran, or a completely fictional country. We rejected the latter as being uninteresting, so that left both Syria and Iran as logical choices. From a practical standpoint, Iran is untouchable on the ground. Its population, terrain, geographical size, and military strength would require the biggest military buildup in US history since 1942. This is not going to happen. The US would choke Iran off economically and/or bomb Iran into the Stone Age before it even thought of doing such a military action. Therefore, a conventional war with Iran is as likely to happen as a conventional war with Russia or China. That leaves only Syria for consideration.

Syria's military strength is not great, but it is significant. In a conflict there would probably be close to 400,000 armed men opposing an invasion. They are armed with a variety of weapons of various qualities, from very good all the way down to nearly useless. Since the US and its allies can only afford to send a fairly small conventional force into another war, the fight would be quite intense at times.

From a political standpoint, Syria is also deeply involved in the problems in Iraq. Both Iran and Syria are using Iraq as a "proxy battleground" against each other. In fact, the worst damage to US forces in Iraq is coming from Syrian-armed groups. Syria also has a long history of supporting terrorism and without it Hezbollah in Lebanon wouldn't be nearly as powerful. It is this history of supporting terrorism that we are using as the background for Shock Force's story.

In a nutshell, the war is triggered when a number of "dirty" nuclear bombs explode in several major Western cities in 2008. The terrorists are clearly traced to Syria. A US-led invasion force is put together and the player is part of that task force, which is built around the US Army's new concept of a highly mobile Stryker Brigade.

What is remarkable about the story is that it has evolved over time, not only as real-world events in Iraq developed (we began plans for the game in 2003), but also because we've deliberately entered a public dialogue with our fans on the Battlefront discussion forum about what the most likely scenario for a future conventional war could be. This story has been collectively agreed upon by us and our fans, which include casual gamers as well as former and current military personnel.

GS: How will the campaign be laid out? Will it be dynamic and branch out in different directions? How will the NATO campaign differ from the Syrian?

You'll have a mix of infantry and vehicles at your disposal.

SG: The campaign will only be playable from the US side. Due to the asymmetrical forces and objectives it really would not be possible to make the same campaign enjoyable from both sides. Playable, yes, but not enjoyable. Players who want to play as Syria will have to revert to the standalone battles and will also be able to create battles with the full-featured map and scenario editor.

The campaign system itself is what we call semidynamic. All battles are premade but the order in which they come up depend on how you do. You also carry the same pool of troops from one battle to the next, though not all at once for each battle. Therefore, losses from previous battles can translate into problems in future battles.

GS: Tell us about the military forces that will be represented in the game. What kind of conventional weaponry and armor will we see? What kind of unconventional forces, such as espionage and modern-day explosives, will we see?

SG: First off, let me reemphasize that Shock Force simulates mainly the conventional phase of a conflict, such as was seen in the first few weeks of war in Iraq. The defender has organized military formations, armor, artillery, and a broader range of combined arms. The defender, be it Syria or another country in the Middle East, will also surely have unconventional forces in the initial battles as well. We do simulate these unconventional forces, but they are not the emphasis of the game system.

The US forces in the game are centered on the concept of the Stryker Brigade, a highly mobile light armor unit that was just emerging when we started planning for Shock Force a few years ago and is now being implemented currently in Iraq and elsewhere. It centers on the Stryker vehicle, a light armored high-tech combat vehicle in a number of configurations--from an infantry carrier, a mobile gun system, a command vehicle, or an antitank platform.

One central element of this concept, which is not immediately visible, is the high-tech communications system built into these vehicles, creating a much quicker and highly efficient flow of information up and down the chain of command (in theory at least). The Stryker concept was quite controversial when introduced, and still is today to some extent, and we found it intriguing to provide a virtual testing field for its employment in the game. For the player, this opens some unique and interesting challenges not found in other games. Of course the Stryker is supported by various other conventional weapons systems, such as the M1 Abrams tank, which will be in the game available in various modifications and subtypes. There are also Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, heavy trucks, and various air and artillery support units, such as the famous A-10 tank killer.

For the Syrian player, you will usually find various types of Russian-made equipment, such as tanks ranging from the T-54 all the way to the more modern models of the T-72. You will see combat vehicles such as the BMP-1 and BMP-2 armored personnel carriers or the BTR and BRDM APCs in various types and modifications. Not all the equipment the Syrians have at their disposal is outdated, and some of their modern antitank weapons, such as the AT-14 Kornet, are extremely lethal. The campaign will be by no means a pushover for the US player.

The new Stryker vehicle is a versatile weapons platform.

Like I said initially, unconventional forces (Uncons) will be simulated to some extent as well. Since they are not the focus of the game, though, much of it is going to be abstracted. The abstraction is also a means to make sure that Uncons are not abused by players to do things they wouldn't do in real life, or on the other hand, prevented to do things that they can. Uncons derive their "power" from blending it with the crowd until they strike, and this posed some challenges to simulate realistically in the game.

We're going to simulate IED (improvised explosive devices) and VIED (vehicle-based IEDs), spies, disguised fighters, and so forth using a simple concept: The side controlling Uncons will be able to move them around the map and they will remain invisible to the other side until spotted. The chance of spotting depends on the actions of the Uncon unit and certain other parameters. For example, it's easier to move around a town full of civilians without arousing suspicion than in the desert near a US base. Once spotted, any Uncons units are treated like all other combatants.