How do you counteract the early launch?

[creator]

Is there any particular way to stop those incredably effective launches from silos at defcon 1. Normally at all the major cities which are relatively close by which racks up an enormous score which usually wins the game. You can send bombers but they are only actually effective if you know that they are going to do this strategy, you are close by and even then they can fill the air with fighters and get off a fair number of nukes before your bomber do. Subs normally aren't in posistion either or it isnt safe to surface.

[Bunnet]

Normally I have most of my bombers in the air before Defcon 1 ready to nuke them, no matter what strategy they are using.

[zkl]

if he cant see and does not shoot at your silos, you will get him in the end, cause you know where his silos are, ypu can easily kill them, and rape his cities without defence in the end. its always good to have fighters ready to shoot down incoming bomber waves

[caranthir.pkk]

The real issue with silo launches is that you have to have bombers literally ten seconds away when defcon 1 hits. I was playing a 6 player default game the other day with some heavyweights, me being Europe and Feud being Africa, and despite him having bombers in the air and subs ready I still managed to squeeze of 4 bursts and win the game. Same goes for 1vs1 and monster sub-launch strategies (a la skynet). The only way to effectively beat these strategies is to predict the launch; in case of silos you need to time the flight duration + nuke timer of your bombers, in case of subs you need to predict the area where he is going to launch from and bomb it before/when he surfaces.

[creator]

if he cant see and does not shoot at your silos, you will get him in the end, cause you know where his silos are, ypu can easily kill them, and rape his cities without defence in the end. its always good to have fighters ready to shoot down incoming bomber waves

I was talking about 6 player games, where he gets alot of points leaving the remaing 5 to fight over the smaller cities.

[Feud]

The real issue with silo launches is that you have to have bombers literally ten seconds away when defcon 1 hits. I was playing a 6 player default game the other day with some heavyweights, me being Europe and Feud being Africa, and despite him having bombers in the air and subs ready I still managed to squeeze of 4 bursts and win the game. Same goes for 1vs1 and monster sub-launch strategies (a la skynet). The only way to effectively beat these strategies is to predict the launch; in case of silos you need to time the flight duration + nuke timer of your bombers, in case of subs you need to predict the area where he is going to launch from and bomb it before/when he surfaces.

That was a funny game. You barely won, and if Russia had figured out that the point of the game to to fight back, not mine for fish, you might not have been in first (seriously, the guy had around 14 million kills when he is right next to europe, which has zero silos due to the fact that I had blown them all up in the first five or 10 minutes). Didn't you nuke his fleet also?

[Ace Rimmer]

I've seen plenty of failed early launches. It used to be that early launches spelled death for the sucker trying it. Now it depends on who's playing.

The only time I launch early is usually in Diplo mode and at silos. Typically at the US if I'm not one of the Americas to remove S. Americas "shield" or at Europe/Russia to do the same to Africa/Asia if I'm one of the Americas.

I wonder how much more the tactics will change....

[Feud]

I wonder...

For sometime there has been a few of us who have advocated abandoning the cities, and focusing on protecting your ability to make war. Perhaps the early strike option is the natural outgrowth of that effort.

Think about it, a fortress stratagy requires enough time to allow for maximum deployment since you must get the most kills. You can't afford not to since your cities will die. So, in order to work properly you need time to scout the enemy, and use your airfields to destroy any threat to your silos. Otherwise you defeat the whole point of your placement.

So what is the counter to it? The counter is for the other guys to go all out at the begining, and hit enough high level targets at the begining. You have to expect them NOT to defend themselves. Then, if they place ther silos in a populated part of the country, they can focus purely on defending the coming onslaught, and figure that the amount of nukes needed to eliminate thier defenes and then make up the score in low to mid range cities is too great.

So, perhaps the way to defend against the early strike is to give up on the policy of letting your cities die, and go back to trying to defend them.

[Ace Rimmer]

Well, I don't totally abandon them. I still try to place my silos within a fair range for defending some cities, even if its the medium/small ones. In fact, typically if I'm the US with a S. American ally I still place them in/around the East coast. That doesn't keep NY from getting hit most times, but I don't go for the Canadian/Alaskan placement as I've seen others do.

Same for Africa: I place near/around Kinshasa, amongst the medium/small cities, not extreme south.
Same for S. America: I place near/around Lima/Sao Paulo, not extreme south/north.

I want every edge I can get. When playing as Russia vs Europe, I wait till Defcon 4 to see exactly where the European Radar is and place silos just on the edge of that range as close to Europe as possible, not way off in Central/Eastern Russia as some do. This "abandons" Moscow and Leningrad for the most part, but you can still shoot down a fair amount of nukes headed that way making it "harder" to hit and gets the other guy to waste just a few more nukes that might otherwise be assigned other targets.

[creator]

So, perhaps the way to defend against the early strike is to give up on the policy of letting your cities die, and go back to trying to defend them.

Ah but how do you defend against 6 clusterred nukes?

Ive also found that if two or three people use this stratagy (and they are skilled at it) normally falls apart because they all shoot at similar targets leaving plenty of smaller cities for another player to destroy later on. Launching early yourself from your silos aimed at their silos works quite well if you are close AND you know they are going ot launch early, you can destroy all of their silos and the cities in one fell swoop but it only works if you are close enough.

[Masaq]

Feud just hit upon the nail here I think; there isn't one ultimate strategy- like all the best games, there's an element of Paper-Scissors-Stone in Defcon that goes beyond the tactical elements of fleet makeups and positioning, timing strikes and silo placements. No one tactic/strategy will ever completely dominate, because each has natural consequences. By launching first you leave yourself vulnerable as your silos are known, but if you allow time then an all-out offensive by an aggressive wait-and-scout player like Feud will flatten you anyway, so if players like Feud start to give up offensive silo placements then the need to quickly launch will fade, making offensive silo placements more preferable again...(!)


In the current climate, (assuming standard rules and not Diplo), the following option seems like a good one to me:

1 of your 5 enemies silo launches early at his neighbours big cities (the Early Launcher), bursting through their defences and hitting the metropolosises for many megadeaths.

Now, if the guys he launched at protected their big cities then the early launcher's nukes will be getting targetted- so a quick launch yourself at the small cities from any available subs, bombers etc could be useful- so long as you know where the Early Launcher fired at. If they didn't, and they went for a Feud-ish placement then there's still every chance that their smaller outlying cities will also be covered. Only what, roughly a third of a continent's population (standard settings) is in the main city? That leaves 120 points to be grabbed in the outling places.

By shooting at the guys the early launcher is firing at (assuming he's only making a quick bid for easy points from capitol cities and NOT hoping to all-out flatten his targets), you're making your own missiles more likely to break through simultaniously.

Assuming your own silos aren't under iminent threat, switching say four of them to launch mode at Defcon 1 in readiness could be a good pre-emptive plan, then if someone DOES Early Launch, you're in the perfect position to join in rather than retaliate.

Then, time can be taken with bombers and subs to do the slower, longer devastation of the Early Launcher's installations and cities more towards the End-Game stage.

[Feud]

I think part of the problem, which adds to the success of the earliest launcher, is that once one guys goes ballistic other players often wig out, and rather then riding it out, they open their silos and panic launch.

So, like Masaq said, there isn't one stratagy that defeats all others. But, it is important that you have a stratagy and keep a cool head about things. It's when you cease acting on the other players, but instead allow thier actions to determine your own that things go sour (of course you do need to react to incoming bombers, subs, etc, but you know what I mean).

[Masaq]

Good point, and I think my ethos is pretty much that I'll go into a game with a plan of maybe trying a certain tactic or method, and then adapt it as it comes.

Case in point, just played a 3v3 game with some guys. Africa, Asia and Europe vs NA SA and USSR. EU and AS planned to hit Moscow/Leningrad pretty hard and fast with bombers and subs, and I was going to give a quick-launch strategy at the Americas a try- was hoping to hit Sao Palo, Mexico, Lima, NY, Washington and Chicago with about 8 apeice.

At Defcon 1, I swapped all Silos to launch, then spent the next five minutes manouvering ships, aircraft etc. Wasn't planning to launch asap, just fairly quickly. Missed the start of the launch window whilst faffing around with other units, and was about to start launching when SA started lighting up., and got a few fairly loosely organised bombers incoming.

Instead of blindly carry on with the early launch which would probably have cost me my silos and any definitely the cities nukes were inbound for, I switched back to SAM mode and started assigning airborne bombers to hit the silos. My subs, which weren't quite in an optimal firing position but nonetheless were close enough to make do also opened up, and in all I hit 4 Silos pretty hard and fast.

Incoming nukes were picked off, fighters and bombers mopped up the subs and bombers SA had sent in along with the silo-nukes, and as I'd hit 2/3 of SA's silos, I didn't need the hard and fast silo strike to break through his defences- was able to leisurely roll up most of the rest of his installations and all of his cities using bombers.

Although my actions were dictated by SA in that I abandoned my early launch attempt, by reacting assertively and proactively instead of just blindly defending I was pretty much able to not only survive the initial attack but counterattack in time to stop it mid-flow, and then continue to push on hard enough to throw the whole game in my favour- ended up winning by around 50-odd points ahead of my nearest teammate, with no player on the opposite side finishing with a positive score.

[Ace Rimmer]

I think part of the problem, which adds to the success of the earliest launcher, is that once one guys goes ballistic other players often wig out, and rather then riding it out, they open their silos and panic launch.

So, like Masaq said, there isn't one stratagy that defeats all others. But, it is important that you have a stratagy and keep a cool head about things. It's when you cease acting on the other players, but instead allow thier actions to determine your own that things go sour (of course you do need to react to incoming bombers, subs, etc, but you know what I mean).

I think part of this is due to the newer "retail" players, once the excess falls away and those that stick around learn, it'll go back to normal.

[Masaq]

I think part of this is due to the newer "retail" players, once the excess falls away and those that stick around learn, it'll go back to normal.

Lean they will. Oh yes. Ehrmm hemhemhem. </Yoda>