DefCon

[Zombie]

Zombie's only real mistake was to try and defend Mexico. Although it hurts, when playing SA I think you have to locate all your silos on SA and defend there, any attempt to defend it stretches you too thin.

I never really thought of that. Guess that benevolence was always my main strategy (do onto others, etc) which doesn't allow a person to choose who to defend and who to let fend for themselves. It might be a better choice in this case, though, I doubt I could have even pulled off a win employing that strategy. Still, the game we played was about as one-sided as it could have gone.

 

Speaking of score, I honestly didn't realize I even had 33 nukes left (all of them on my subs). The mark of a horrible tactician is how many nukes you still have left at the end of the game. This should always be 0 (or a few).

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

I usually have a few left on my carriers, as it's time consuming to cycle my surviving bombers through them. You should always use the majority of your nukes, but when you're down to targeting cities that have been hit multiple times and you're only picking up fractions of a point, it's hard going.

 

Any you have spare you can use to nuke fleets, or just hose down your opponent by splashing them in the most likely locations for his facilities, you're bound to catch a few.

 

I never really thought of that. Guess that benevolence was always my main strategy (do onto others, etc) which doesn't allow a person to choose who to defend and who to let fend for themselves.

 

That's why a lot of people think Europe has a natural advantage, being so compact your defences are, almost always, concentrated. In all the other territories, you either have to spread out or leave some cities undefended.

[Zombie]

I usually have a few left on my carriers, as it's time consuming to cycle my surviving bombers through them. You should always use the majority of your nukes, but when you're down to targeting cities that have been hit multiple times and you're only picking up fractions of a point, it's hard going.

Every little point counts though, and it's always satisfying to turn a region into a nuclear wasteland with no inhabitants.

 

Quote from Commando, seems appropriate

 

[Comes out from hidden place] Come on Bennett, throw away the chicken $h!t gun, you don't just want to pull the trigger, you want to put the knife in me, and look me in the eye, and see whats going on in there when you turn it, thats what you want to do, right?

 

Any you have spare you can use to nuke fleets, or just hose down your opponent by splashing them in the most likely locations for his facilities, you're bound to catch a few.

Really? You can "shoot blind" and still destroy unseen facilities? Gotta remember this...

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

Yep! If a nuke touches down and there's a facility there, fog of war can't stop the megatons. Radars, being particularly delicate, are particularly susceptible.

[Zombie]

Well, what happens if you are a few dozen miles off-target? Will the splash damage still destroy?

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

Given the size of the explosion, you shouldn't need that many nukes to paint territories that aren't Russia and Asia. 'Clipping' a facility with an explosion seems to count as a hit, but if the facility is outside of the explosion there's no damage from fallout or anything AFAIK.

 

Silos, for instance, are usually easy to locate as when you enter their airspace they start shooting at you. You might not get close enough to spot the silo, but you can certainly see which direction the missile(s) are coming from and launch a few nukes back along the missile's trail. Unfortunately it's hard to know when you've hit a silo or not, being relatively hardy they can take three hits before being destroyed, but each hit reduces the silo's number of nukes.

 

Nukes will also take out aircraft, but timing it is a nightmare. You'd have to be in dire straights to try and take out enemy bombers with your own bomber-launched nukes.

[Zombie]

I suppose if you were really desperate, you could attempt to launch a bunch of nukes into an area with suspected missile silos, but it seems like a long-shot since the silos will probably shoot down all your nukes before they detonate.

 

Here's a stupid question: is there a way to launch all the missiles from a silo simultaneously (ie, send a volley of 5 nukes which will detonate at the intended target within a few seconds of each other)? That way you would be guaranteed to overwhelm the defenses of a silo (or a bunch of them) and hit something. I guess not since there is that 120 second wait time between launches. I just find it really hard to coordinate launches from a group of silos so the nukes arrive in waves which are harder to defend against. I mean, if I was in charge of a nuclear launch I'd make it a point to implement a strategy of a concerted attack with simultaneous volleys to maximize destruction. Can you say "nuclear carpet bombing"?

 

Can your nukes nuke enemy nukes in the air? I doubt this is possible, but it would be fun to catch them en-route.

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

Here's a stupid question: is there a way to launch all the missiles from a silo simultaneously (ie, send a volley of 5 nukes which will detonate at the intended target within a few seconds of each other)?

 

No, the closest solution I've found is to target the first missile from x number of silos at one target, the second missile from x silos at the next, etc. They're then launched within seconds of each other if you're quick, and arrive with bigger time gaps (different launch locations, different flight times to target), but still on each other's heels.

 

Can your nukes nuke enemy nukes in the air? I doubt this is possible, but it would be fun to catch them en-route.

 

I'm guessing it is, wouldn't surprise me!

[Zombie]

Played a quickie refresher game just now with me being the Soviet Union and the computer as the US. Totally one-sided. I whomped them Americans 151 to -25. About as good of a game as I could have hoped for. My only problems were: 1) not finding all the enemies subs (didn't matter as my silos destroyed all their nukes), 2) not finding two air bases in Canada, 3) not finding three radars (2 in Canada 1 in the Las Vegas area) and 4) not nuking Los Angeles enough times (it still had 1.5 million people left at the end of the game). I knew there were some Air Bases and Radars left and even sent a handful of nukes into the area where I thought the facilities were located but turns out I was way off.

 

Seems as though nukes launched from subs must target either cities or facilities (or basically anything visible on the map) whereas nukes from silos can target anything, including "shots in the dark".

 

I think the Soviet Union shouldn't be an area you can pick as it is just way too easy to defend. I really don't see any other countries or areas easier to defend than the SU.

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

Seems as though nukes launched from subs must target either cities or facilities (or basically anything visible on the map) whereas nukes from silos can target anything, including "shots in the dark".

 

Nukes launched from bombers can target anywhere, too.

 

I think the Soviet Union shouldn't be an area you can pick as it is just way too easy to defend. I really don't see any other countries or areas easier to defend than the SU.

 

Last time I checked the Introversion forums, they reckoned the one to be was Asia, using the Star of India tactic.

[Zombie]

Nukes launched from bombers can target anywhere, too.

Aye, just tested this right now.

 

Last time I checked the Introversion forums, they reckoned the one to be was Asia, using the Star of India tactic.

Against Russia yes. What about overall? You could probably use the Star of India tactic (or some variant thereof) if you played any area and you would probably do pretty good. The whole crux of it is to super-concentrate a high-population area with your silos in order to maximize coverage there. Sacrificing part of a population will always be part of it so you could use this in South America, Asia and most prominently, in the Soviet Union. Not sure how the other Star of India sub-tactics would pan out if the areas were reversed (ie use the SOI in Russia while the enemy is in Asia) but I'd wager to bet it would have little effect on the outcome.

 

When I tried an Asia campaign just before, I was unable to place any naval units in the Bay of Bengal and had to stick my entire fleet in the Pacific off of Japan. This kinda screws up most of the sub-tactics of the SOI. Can you place naval units there, or am I having trouble?

 

Ran a all-CPU game pitting the North against the South and the outcome was that the North won. Not by a whole lot. I wonder what are the 3 strongest CPU areas? Hmmm.

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

When I tried an Asia campaign just before, I was unable to place any naval units in the Bay of Bengal and had to stick my entire fleet in the Pacific off of Japan. This kinda screws up most of the sub-tactics of the SOI. Can you place naval units there, or am I having trouble?

 

Can't remember, will have to play and see!

 

Edit: Nur, yer can't. Hmm. You can stick them in the Arabian Sea, on the other side of India, though.

 

Against Russia yes. What about overall?

 

I thought it was overall, although I didn't read particularly closely. That particular tactic combined with that particular territory was a very hard combo to beat. Anyone trying the same sort of tactic with a different territory seemed to lose, sometimes by a largeish margin. Things have probably moved on now, though.

[Zombie]

Can't remember, will have to play and see!

 

Edit: Nur, yer can't. Hmm. You can stick them in the Arabian Sea, on the other side of India, though.

I guess that's where they meant you should put your naval units. The Bay of Bengal would be prime IMHO though, if it would be possible. I suppose you could initially place your naval units in the Arabian Sea and then move them into the Bay when the game starts.

 

I played a few trials with different regions employing the Star of India tactic but didn't do too good. Africa was horrible when the enemy was in the US, though I probably stuck the silos too close to the east coast to offer much protection. I tried it in the US with limited results when the enemy is Africa. That's about as far as I got because I got disgruntled after two bad losses in a row.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

FA and myself got in a couple games tonight. Here's a short recap:

 

1) FA picked the Soviet Union, and myself, Europe. Geography advantage: FA. As soon as the game started, all our facilities were visible to each other because our radars were so close. That kinda took some of the fun out of finding stuff for yourself by sending your fighters into enemy territory to do some recon. Ah well. It didn't go too good for me in either way. FA had the upper hand because his ships and subs were already in position to attack/launch right from the start. I had to fight my way into the north to be able to launch my sub-based nukes. Because his ships were entrenched, he slaughtered my fleet easily. I tried sending some sub-based nukes his way along with some bomber nukes for a 1-2 punch, but didn't get the timing right and almost everything was shot down. Last resort I heaved my silo nukes his way, but by then it was already too late. Final score was +150-something (+154 maybe?) for FA to -25 for me. That's right, minus 25. At the end FA said I did better than before. Wha? Maybe. But minus is still minus in my book. The only facility I had left was a radar station in Portugal. And I don't think the human race survived in Europe either - he must've nuked every city at least twice.

 

2) FA picked South America while I picked Africa. Geography advantage: Zombie. I tried to play a little differently than I normally do, just to shake things up a bit. Created a couple mixed naval fleets containing 3 carriers and 3 battleships and a single all-battleship group with 6 ships and a single all-carrier group with 6 ships. Spread those out along the narrow corridor between the continents, then stuck one group of subs in the north near Gibraltar with a second in the south near Cape Horn. My original intention was to move the northern group as close to Mexico as possible for a point-blank "quickie" nuclear attack of cities while the south group would navigate around SA to it's west coast to do some nuking at that side. I was hoping to keep my silos out of the mix in the early part of the game because I knew I needed them if I ever hoped to get FA's silos after they launched.

 

FA's naval fleet was impervious as usual and he blasted almost all of my ships out of the water. I did manage to do some damage to them with my own fleet but not as much as I would have liked. Even managed to send a few of my fighters out over his territory to do a little scouting which revealed some air bases and radar stations. No silos though. Time to attack then. Sent a wave of bombers from my northern carrier group to pre-nuke Mexico. FA caught wind of this and sent some bombers/fighters of his own to take them out. He succeeded of course. But that gave away the location of his group of carriers to the north. By then, he already had nukes in the air from his silos. This forced me to shoot off my sub nukes in the north prematurely to hopefully get the silos up there as well as Mexico City (huge population center). My intent was to get my southern sub group around South America and shoot off my missiles there which would draw FA's naval fleet further south allowing my northern subs clear sailing and a fast strike against Mexico. It didn't work that way though. My southern sub group was taking way too long to get around SA too. Anyhow, the northern strike from my subs managed to hit Mexico City once and I may have hit one of his silos damaging it. Don't know how I managed this though because his carriers were right on top of me and only depth-charged a couple subs before they could launch everything. Sheer luck I guess.

 

Around this time, I sent out all of my land-based bombers to nuke the east coast of SA. Not sure how many of those made it through, but I think quite a few of them did. Meanwhile, FA's silo based nukes (as well as some carrier-bomber nukes and maybe even a northern sub fleet) were screaming through north Africa decimating Egypt and a few other population centers. I kept my cool and ignored them. In retaliation, I launched my missiles from my southern sub fleet which did a number on that area of the continent (it was lightly defended). He shot off missiles from his southern sub group at about the same time I started to launch my nukes from my silos. This forced me to leave a few silos in defense mode to protect a little bit. Fortunately, I don't think he was actively trying to nuke my silos; his strategy may have been to focus on the cities instead. My first volley of nukes did some good damage killing his airbases, a few radars and some silos, and the second (and final) volley did more yet. Unfortunately, I didn't target things properly and ended up nuking cities multiple times when I should have sent them to other untouched cities.

 

When the game ended, I still had 2 nukes in the air which were targeting his silos in Mexico, but I doubt they would have made it through. Final score was 74 for me and 65 for FA. (Is this correct FA)? It was neck-in neck most of the last part of the game because we were trading nukes back and forth which evened out the score. Also, when he was spent, I was launching which gave me a free pass to hit anything I wanted without worry. This was about as close of a score as you could get in this game and it really could have gone either way up until my final volleys of nukes. All in all, it was a better effort by myself.

 

I still need to work on targeting as well as keeping my naval fleet intact. Those two areas are what's killing my game right now. At times it feels as though FA is cheating because his naval units never die. Die darnit, die!

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

First game was a solid win for me, no doubt. I had geography on my side, subs already in a good launch position, carriers ready to start launching bombers, airfields close. Only problem was we could see almost all of each other from the off.

 

I took Zombie's silo launch, defending mostly successfully while I used my subs and bombers to hit his facilities. He did manage to get Leningrad and Moscow, and hit plenty of smaller cities, but the launch left him open to my sub strike, which did a lot of damage, and topped off with my bombers he had almost nothing to hit back with, leaving the way clear for my silo launch. Nasty way to go.

 

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/btlt.jpg

 

The second game was a lot more interesting. I actually located four of my silos up in Mexico, because I remembered giving Zombie advice about leaving Mexico undefended, and didn't think he would guess I'd protect Mexico and northern SA instead of just SA. Zombie's fleets came into view right from the off, and I launched planes from my airfields ASAP, chipping away at his naval strength before my navy engaged. Further aircraft from my carriers damaged him even more, as my subs sneaked to the southern tip of Africa. But he had plenty of air cover up, and it took a terrible toll on my planes.

 

Things went nuclear quicker than I expected. My first launch, a lone bomber coming in over South Africa, was nailed as it turned to escape, and the bomber go his shortly after. I launched a bit too early with my subs, their range meant only the southern third of Africa got hit, did some decent damage but Zombie's silos were still in air defence mode and they took out a few.

 

My carrier fleets were held back, well behind my battleship fleets, and launching fighters to stop Zombie's bomber waves, when I realised his subs hadn't turned up, when plenty of time had gone by. I steamed my carriers in closer to Africa, pinging away like good 'uns and launching what few planes I had left. Still no subs. Not good.

 

Zombie launched a wave of bombers from his airfields. Unfortunately, their flight path took them directly over a fleet of my battleships (har har) and into the last of my fighter cover, so very few got through, and only one or two nukes actually hit. My good humour took a dent when his subs surfaced off Mexico. I reversed my local carriers, and managed to nearly wipe it out after it launched a few nukes. Crisis averted. Until his second sub fleet surface off the southern half of SA, near Sao Paolo. Oh shit. This was the exact position my second carrier fleet had been waiting at, and failed to find any subs. No chance of getting there in time, no aircraft left, only ships to send, which cruised lazily back and took ages wiping it out. There was no real point to this as the subs had got all their nukes away, but honour was at stake and my ships failed me, miserably. Zombie had the toughest subs I have ever seen, and they quite gladly swapped strikes with my surface ships. What a load of bobbins.

 

My main launch was okay, but my probes into Africa had found every radar and airfield, and only one silo. So they took a toll on my nukes, and ofcourse my launch revealed my silos, so when Zombie returned fire, it was a bit horrible. He timed his launch very well, shooting when we were into the victory timer and closing in on the end. For a good ten minutes of game time I was ahead by one single point, praying that this was the last nuke, no, this was the last nuke, no this one, that my remaining silos could stop any more, but then Zombie informed me that actually, he had plenty of birds still in the air, and as they rained down I wept tears of blood, etc.

 

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zwin.jpg

[Zombie]

When you picked South America I had a suspicion that you were going to try to draw me into focusing more on Mexico instead of South America. That suspicion became a reality when my fighters and bombers didn't find a single silo on the east coast of SA. But at that point changing my strategy was out of the question because your silo-based nukes were in the air. I had to fire off the nukes from my northern sub fleet while the going was good.

 

After my southern sub fleet launched, I immediately put them all in active sonar mode. This is what makes them easier to spot, but also harder to kill I imagine. I should have really snuck them around to the West coast of SA to save some points, but I really wanted to do more damage to your naval fleet! As it was I wasted half a dozen nukes trying to target your ships. Should have really put those nukes towards a saturation bombing campaign of Mexico to get rid of those pesky silos and possibly hit Mexico City again.

 

- Zombie

[Matri]

You can always use whales.

[Zombie]

That's terrible. I heard of dolphins being employed by the US navy to locate mines, bit never nuclear whales!

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

As horrible as nuclear war is, Charles Stross, a rather talented author, postulates something worse.

[Civilian]

Your nice screenshots and AAR's made me download the demo and try the game myself.

 

Here the result of the tutorial mission:

https://i46.tinypic.com/16bimw6.jpg

 

The music is so creepy and morbid... It fits perfectly to the theme of the game

[FullAuto]

The audio is perfect. I love it.

[Civilian]

I had a somewhat courageous moment and played as South America (!) against the USSR (!).

Well, let's say it his way: Not an overly good idea.

 

Russia has land to the east and the west and the south to protect it from fleets, it takes eternally to get your fleets to the north and it is big and wide.

South America instead is narrow, rather small and can be attacked by sea units from all sides.

 

Well, I lost. Big Time. Right from the beginning...

The final score was something like 110 to 30. Against me of course.

 

https://i50.tinypic.com/do6q1j.jpg

 

Btw, it is possible to enable radiation rendering by editing the file preferences.txt, hence the nice glow on the screenshot ^

 

I remember playing the other game (Uplink) from that developer for a long time some years ago, not bad either.

That is, IF you like Hacker RPG's.

[FullAuto]

Uplink is a good 'un, I got it for free with Defcon. I'm no good at it, but it's a fine game.

 

Give us a bell if you ever want a multiplayer game, Civvie, I'm sure me and Zombie can arrange a match.

[Zombie]

I had a somewhat courageous moment and played as South America (!) against the USSR (!).

Well, let's say it his way: Not an overly good idea.

 

Russia has land to the east and the west and the south to protect it from fleets, it takes eternally to get your fleets to the north and it is big and wide.

South America instead is narrow, rather small and can be attacked by sea units from all sides.

 

Well, I lost. Big Time. Right from the beginning...

The final score was something like 110 to 30. Against me of course.

That's a fairly good score, I did really bad against FA when I was SA and he was Russia. You can read about the bloodbath here.

 

Give us a bell if you ever want a multiplayer game, Civvie, I'm sure me and Zombie can arrange a match.

Assuming we can all agree on a time that's good for everyone, I'm all for it. J'ordos informs me he still can't get on multiplayer so we'll have to do this without him. That's a shame, I really want a crack at j'ordos sometime because he'd easily nuke me into oblivion.

 

- Zombie

[FullAuto]

That's annoying, I was hoping j'ordos was about to chime in and say he could play too.

 

The more the merrier!