Defcon

[VANGUARD]

Alright, I'm not exactly uberleetzorz either, but this is what so far I've learned about the game and a few things that I can help you out with.

Defcon

Move it up to Defcon 2.

There are five Defcons - Defence Conditions - in DEFCON. The game starts at 5, and ends at 1, the highest. Defcon 5 and 4 are in peacetime, where you deploy your units. Defcon 3 means you can engage in conventional war fare - eg, no nukes. Defcon 2 is the same as Defcon 3, but it is the last Defcon in the game before Defcon 1.

Defcon 1 allows you to use your nuclear arsenals to wipe out the opposing side.

Deployment

Ooh.. look, all these shiny things. RADAR, Silos, Airfields, fleets... but where, and how to put them?

You will spend most of Defcon 5 and 4 deploying - after Defcon 4, you cannot deploy any more units, so make sure they're all down before then! Also, don't make the mistake I did - you can actualy move your units during deployment, so if you deploy subs on the edge of your influence, you can move them during Defcon 5 and 4.

Now onto the different types of stuff youn's can deploy.

RADAR [RAdio Detection And Ranging]

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Let's start with the basics. RADAR? What's the point in that, it doesn't attack anything! I wanna put my silos down and nuke, nuke, nuke! Hold on a minute mister, your RADAR bases really are quite important! Why, you ask? Well, your RADAR has a much longer range than the silos, and can pick up everything apart from subs - so if you have a fleet of enemy bombers coming in, without your RADAR, you won't know until the last minute. RADAR heightens your strategic awareness, it can be good to locate moving enemy units, and its a great help in intercepting nukes.

I usually place my RADARs first, and position them so every approach to my continent is covered with RADAR - you can see this by clicking the little 'RADAR' tab at the bottom [Example]. Uncheck it if you like, but it is useful. I find it annoying, although its great to check whether you have any gaps in your RADAR. Planes and ships have RADAR, but its nowhere near as long ranged as the RADAR base. Unfortunately, it only takes a single nuke to take out the RADAR base, so they're kinda vulnerable. Apart from that, RADAR bases don't do an awful lot more. It only comes into effect during Defcon 4, though.

During the Second World War, Britain had a network of RADAR masts - not quite as powerful as these ones though - on the English channel. It gave them great early warning of any German air movement although they could only pick up groups of planes. You can use RADAR on DEFCON to a similar effect. Couple RADAR with fighter airbases and you have a great interception tool for bombers.

Nuclear Silos and Theatre Air Defence [Yes, I know it only says Air Defence ingame, but I'm a nerd and add the Theatre.

Woo! Silos! Nuke, nuke, nuke!

No, you idiot. Get your finger off that big red butto - oh, christ.

[Important: When I say silo, I mean an air defence building. You'll understand later.]

Ah, Nuclear Silos, the bread and butter of your nuclear capabilities. But they also form one extremely important part - defence. Without any defensive capabilities, you'd be nuked back (or forwards, in some certain countries cases...) into the stone age soon as Defcon 1 comes. And so would your enemies - and that wouldn't be a very fun game to play! In this part of the guide Ill show you where you should deploy your silos, what they can do, why and when you should or shouldn't launch, and how to take out enemy silos.

Firstly, Ill explain about cities. Usualyl score is either counted by how many you kill or how many survive; equally, your larger cities are the most important to defend for obvious reasons. Most continents have groups of large cities - eg, Russia's Moscow and Leningrad, or USA's New York and Washington DC, or maybe Asia's Hong Kong-Shenyang-Seoul-Toyko line. Try to group your air defence with at least 3 silos around these sort of areas. This will stop all but the most dedicated of silo/bomber attacks and do pretty well against close range sub attacks. Try to give these places some of your aifields too, so you can keep them under your Air Defence - which I will refer to as AD - umbrella. AD also takes out planes, so if you're fighting a losing battle close to your shore - USA or Asia in the Pacific for example, you can retreat and let your AD give your planes a hand to gain air superiority which is really bloody important. I'll explain why later.

To put your silos into AD mode or back into ICBM mode, simply right click and choose the option.

When attacking, the first thing you should hit is either the enemy RADAR, or the enemy silos, and this is why not launching first is drastically important. When a silo turns into ICBM mode and launches, it becomes visible to whole world - but only in its launch state. If you switch back to AD, it will still appear as a silo to the enemy. There's a saying that goes round that goes like this - 'The first to open his silos, loses.' I wasn't quite sure at first, but it seems to be true. If you open your silos, you give off the location of your silo, and whether its in AD mode or ICBM mode isn't relevent - what is relevant is that they know where your silos are, and they can launch attacks on them, regardless if they're in AD mode or not. For example, if I have 5 submarines off the west coast of the USA, and you have a silo there - and you turn it into ICBM mode and launch at say, Moscow, I can see it and launch against it with my subs to take it out. However, silos carry ten nukes, and although they only fire one at once that's a huge amount of ordnance. Nevertheless, if you tell your enemy where your silos are, they also know where they aren't - and can hit cities that aren't covered by them. In this way, its best to keep the enemy in the dark.

By the way, in ICBM mode, a silo can't defend itself or its city, so its best to keep them most in AD mode until you're ready to hit back.

Airfields

Can I have the window seat plx?

Airfields house the two air units in DEFCON - the bomber, and the fighter. The fighter intercepts bombers and attacks subs and ships, and the bomber attacks subs and ships and n00kz things. Got it? Good. Here's how to use planes.

Bombers: Bombers have two modes, naval combat and SRBM launch. SRBM is a military acronym for Short-Range Ballistic Missile. Yes, you got it. That's a n00k! During Defcon 3 and 2, however, you can only use your naval combat mode, which is extremely effective against all ships if the bombers are escorted by carriers. During Defcon 1, however, you have the option to use your SRBMs. Do so, by like the silos, right clicking on a bomber and selecting SRBM mode.

Alternatively, when you an airfield on bomber mode selected, right click on a city or installation and a bomber will head there to fire its SRBM. Click agian and another goes, etc etc. Now remember, the bomber switches to SRBM mode automatically upon leaving the airfield but it still takes 240 seconds to prep the SRBM, so if a bomber reaches the target before its readied its SRBM, it will circle the target until the missile is ready. Alright, now lets bomb Zimbabwe. I never liked Zimbabwe.

BOMB_ZIMBABWE

What I did here was right click on Zimbabwe when I selected a bomber on naval mode - this set its destination as Zimbabwe. When you're on naval combat mode, or your SRBM is stll readying, you may maenouvre your bomber. But when you have an SRBM ready, the next click will launch the missile from your bomber. When he's launched, if possible, the bomber will return to reload a nuke if there's any left. Carriers also hold a few bombers and a few nukes.

When your bomber has reeached its target and prepped, it will fire its missile. You can change where you want it to fire, but be careful - it will fire as soon as its in range, so if you want to move it over the ocean, it will actually fire when the spot you selected is in range. This confused me loads at first, and it will confuse you too. Practice makes perfect. We can see here, that this bomber is eager to get home and has fired his nuke.

Mugabe for the lose. Literally.

But I want to use fighters!

Well then, although its actually default and i've written this the wrong way round, this is how you select your fighters. OK, I just discovered I am retarded and didn't take a screeny for this. Oh well, we can use the carrier one, and just ignore the anti sub option for now.

Anyway, back to airfields.

As you can see, this airfield is in fighter launch mode. The first type of planes are fighters, and have been led to believe that they regenerate, but I've never really used them before so I'm not sure. They're exactly the same as the carrier aircraft. The next type is the bombers - if the bombers has a shell, which in most interface sizes looks like a line (heh) in it, that means its loaded with a nuke. The next thing is how many more nukes yo have left in the airfield. If you want a planeto return, select the plane and left clikc any airfield or carrier. Planes can land on any carrier or airfield that you own =)

Tip: Cross-oceanic bomber strike sare suicide if you don't know whats in the middle of the ocean, or aren't escorting your bombers.

SSBNs - Submarines, for you non military nerds.

Dive dive dive!

Submarines are my favourite striking force in DEFCON, and here's why. Submarines are totally invisible to anyone apart from yourself (obviously..) OR an enemy carrier sweeping with its anti submarine settings on, which has a really short range. It only becomes visible when you turn the MRBM - Medium Range Ballistic Missile - mode, on. Then after 90 seconds you can launch 5 nukes per submarine in rapid succession. The best thing to do with subs is hold them back until you've scouted the enemy air defence, then pull up your subs - most people plant iar defence close to the coast, especially in Europe/USA case - and let hell loose. With a group of six subs, you should aim to kill two air defence before running out of nukes. Three is a bonus. Use the rest of the nukes you have left on the nearby cities, submerge your subs by simply moving them anywhere, and then get the hell out of there. You've just majorly pissed your enemy off.

The South Pacific is agreat place for SA and Russia to place their submarines to spring surprises on the other side of the Pacific. I very rarely see a South America player put ASW off Chile, because four games in a row I have sneaked about eight subs there undetected and wreaked havoc.

Well, I hope the guide was useful, and I will be adding to it later.

Thanks to:
Introversion, for making this pwnage game
Montyphy

Last edited by VANGUARD on Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:35 pm; edited 2 times in total

[Riot]

Cool guide, thanks for posting

[xander]

Very nice. Thank you. NeoThermic -- is this something that maybe ought to be stickied?

xander

[Montyphy]

Nice work. You also might want to mention that radar doesn't come into effect until Defcon 4.

[VANGUARD]

thanks all, and i'll go put that in

[film11]

Great post, should help all the newcomers get a hang of the game much more quickly.

[VANGUARD]

Cheers, I'm adding new stuff as I learn it myself Anything else i've missed or if yo uwant to write a paragraph for something (be prepared for me to translate it into Brit english =p) will gladly be added.

[VANGUARD]

bump, possibly still useful.

[VANGUARD]

bump for extra read

[OutOfAmmo]

Great guide, although I think you should clarify something on RADAR: if your AD can't see an enemy unit due to insuccient RADAR coverage, the AD will not fire on it until it comes into RADAR coverage. This make protecting your RADAR stations that much more importent. I found that out the hard way last night...I was Africa, and foolishly neglected to put any silos in range of my RADAR in N. Africa. Big mistake.