What is wrong with my sam missiles ?

[Dertien]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new here on the forum, and also new to playing Defcon, and I enjoy the game really much.

On my last nuclear war I was playing USSR with USA as an AI enemy. I made some screenshots, but they all got greyed out and distorted, so dunno whats wrong there. Anyways that is not what I am complaining about in Defcon.

The problemis this, when the USA ICBM nukes fly over the eastern part of Russia in the direction of Moscow and cities in the vicinity, even with full radar coverage, plenty of Sam missiles got shot towards these nukes to intercept them, but the majority missed and just circled like flies around the nukes without detonating.

This seems to be a problem with the sam missiles not being able to target the nukes when coming 90° on their flight path. They just overshoot the buggers and circle back and forth and don't detonate on target, leaving the nukes a clear path towards my cities.

The AI didn't seem to have that problem and so I lost the game. VEEERY FRUSTRATING, when you have planed everything right, and you lose against AI.

I would definitely like to see that addressed in an upcoming patch.

Anything else, Don't change a thing in this game, its grand !

[Chimaera]

Welcome to the forum! Instead of a glitch, this is what you might call an unintentional feature - a large part of planning how to lose the least in defcon is working out how your nukes will arc in a way that will get through enemy defences. A few quick tips on your problem:
1. If you group your silos together, although you will have to sacrifice protection of certain periphery cities, it will be a lot easier to shoot down incoming nukes to the cities you are defending - grouping silos is also important when you are launching as the nukes will be more tightly clustered, and therefore harder to shoot down than spaced out nukes.
2. Just because they don't blow stuff up doesn't mean RADARs are unimportant - they can effectively increase the range of your silos, and therefore, your chance of shooting incoming nukes.

Lots more tips and hints can be found if you look though the Strategic Air Command section of the forum.

[Dertien]

Hello Chimaera,

Thanks for your reply.

Well I will definitely have a look in the strategic air command section, and I was going over the forums for the last hour or so.

Ok , here was the situation,

I placed three silos and three radars around Moskou, and they were all obliterated by the naval task force which came up on Murmansk.
I Didn't put one single airbase in the vicinity of the captial. Ok my mistake.

So I tried to take care of AI bombers and Subs with one Nuke silo and two Sams, but they destroyed them anyway. Now knowing that I have about 3 or 4 silos left scattered from the Urals towards the eastern part of russia,(where it borders to Alaska) this sould have been enough to kill off the ICBM's flying overhead.

Sams are fast, maneuvrable, Fire And Forget heatseaking or radar guided missiles, they are used to shoot down planes! An ICBM is a rocket going on a straight course towards earth. It doesn't zigzag, It doesn't evade sams.

A sam, let alone 5 or 6 should destroy such a nuke instead of zooming around it.

just my 5 cents.

Sorry I posted this here, but was unsure to post it in the bugs section or not.

[Ace Rimmer]

Well, as Defcon is a game and not a simulation I believe the way it works is through chance. There are no hit points, rather each sam or 'laser' fired from one unit to another has a specific 'chance' of destroying that unit. Therefore, it's possible that a unit (ICBM, BB, bomber, etc) could get hit several dozen times and not be destroyed.

The only thing close to hit points are the way ground installations work, One direct hit from a nuke kills Radar, two kills Airbases, and three kills Silos. Each time one gets hit, its payload is reduce by approximately half.