Tweet
Imagine you're a commander hidden away in your underground bunker, there's minimal risk to yourself, but as you're about to see, this is not the case for the rest of the world's population.
In front of you lies a tactical screen of the world (ala the movie called Wargames), on this screen, you command your navy, your airforce and your arsenal of tactical warheads. It's you against 5 other world superpowers, you all have the same forces, the same goal: Not to win, but to lose the least. It's M.A.D. at its very finest and pure coldest. The obliteration of a city doesn't result in a spectacular explosion with screams and fire, it's simply a white blip on the map, with a statistic saying how many dead, "Mexico City hit, 14.3million dead". You don't feel guilty, you feel proud, you get a sense of a job well done when you see a big city's population drop by a factor of 5. There's one problem, you've nuked them, they WILL nuke you back, you are going to get hit, it's unavoidable, just hope you get hit less than them.
If you haven't worked it out already, I am writing about a new game which came out yesterday (Friday 29th) called DEFCON, by Introversion Software, the makers of Uplink and Darwinia. It's a RTS but on a global scale. Each superpower gets:
6 missile silos (which can either be in defensive mode (shoots down planes + nukes) or offensive mode (launches nuclear ICBMs)) It can't be in both mode at the same time, however, and switching between the two modes takes a while, during which it is inoperable.
4 Airbases: From here you can launch fighters and bombers. Fighters are good for shooting down other planes, and have a limited capability against ships. Bombers are good against ships, and can also launch nuclear missiles.
6 Radar stations: without these you are blind, anything (exlcuding subs) within your radar, you will be able to see on the map
Naval fleets, you can make as many fleets as you like out of a total of 12 subs, 12 battleships and 12 carriers. (so you can make 36 fleets of 1 ship, but that's just dumb) A fleet can hold up to 6 ships, and contain any combination of ships.
Battleship: This ship is your naval defense, it's used to attack other battleships and carriers, it can also shoot down bombers/fighters and nuclear warheads
Carrier: This ship is a floating equivalent of the airbase, but it also has a "submarine hunting mode" and is armed with depth charges, use this to try to catch any subs sneaking up to your coast.
Submarine: This ship carries 5 medium range nuclear ballistic missiles, it can operate in "passive sonar" (silent) mode, where it will only be seen by carriers in sub hunting mode, or by other wubs in "active sonar" mode.
"active sonar" where it can see (And possible attack, I need to check this) other submarines in its vicinity. And Launch mode, when in launch mode, it is visible on radar, but by the time you get anything to it, it will probably be mid way through launching its arsenal.
From my description it kinda seems like a very uskillful game where its just launch everything etc, but that's just my bad describing, it's an extremely tactical game, but also quite simple to pick up due to the small number of units there is. Everything has limited ammunition (airbases carry 2 bombers and I think 8 nukes. Each bomber can only carry 1 nuke at a time, and must return to pick up a new one, each silo holds 10 nukes etc etc)
Also, the game goes through 5 stages:
DEFCON 5 - Start
This is when the game starts, here is when you place your units and structures, naval units may be moved within international water.
DEFCON 4 - 6 mins
You can still place units, but now your radar will show any enemy units within your range
DEFCON 3 - 12 mins
You can no longer place units. Any units not placed are lost. Hostile actions may start, you may move within enemy territory. Only conventional hostilities though, such as naval battles and air warfare (attacking navies and scouting)
DEFCON 2 - 20 mins
Same as DEFCON 3, but more aggresive
DEFCON 1 - 30 mins
Nuclear launches allowed!
After a certain amount of time, a victory countdown is started (40 minutes from countdown start) and at the end of the countdown timer the game ends and the person with the most score wins. The default scoring mode: 2 points for every million civilians you kill, -1 for every million you lose, but there are a few other scoring modes which I can't be bothered to detail :P.
The game can be run at various speeds. Typically in-game, there is a speed button toolbar (much like in Sim City games) with > >> >>> >>>> anyone can choose there preference, and by default th egame will run at the slowest requested speed. So if one person wants > (realtime) and everyone else is on >>> (I think x5 speed, maybe x10), then the game will run at realtime speed. This can change throughout the game though. I've typically found that most people want it at realtime speed until they have placed their units, and then put it at >>> until DEFCON 3 when I prefer it back down to >>. In my (limited) experience, default mode games tend to last around 40 minutes, maybe a little longer.
Of course there is "office mode" where the whole game is locked in realtime, and should take around 6 hours. This is for playing at work, and you can press esc twice and it will minimise to the system tray
Anyway, I highly recommend this game, cause not only is it great fun, it's also incerdibly cheap. You can buy it from ww.everybody-dies.com and it is also on Steam. The download is only 60mb and you can play it in Demo mode (1 v 1 only) until you unlock it with an authentication key. I think it costs $14.99 on Steam and probably the same on the website (Around £10) and from the website you can pay an extra £5 to get a boxed copy.
For more info check out the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defcon_%28computer_game%29
and also the manual for the game is online and free:
http://storefront.steampowered.com/M...N%20manual.pdf
In front of you lies a tactical screen of the world (ala the movie called Wargames), on this screen, you command your navy, your airforce and your arsenal of tactical warheads. It's you against 5 other world superpowers, you all have the same forces, the same goal: Not to win, but to lose the least. It's M.A.D. at its very finest and pure coldest. The obliteration of a city doesn't result in a spectacular explosion with screams and fire, it's simply a white blip on the map, with a statistic saying how many dead, "Mexico City hit, 14.3million dead". You don't feel guilty, you feel proud, you get a sense of a job well done when you see a big city's population drop by a factor of 5. There's one problem, you've nuked them, they WILL nuke you back, you are going to get hit, it's unavoidable, just hope you get hit less than them.
If you haven't worked it out already, I am writing about a new game which came out yesterday (Friday 29th) called DEFCON, by Introversion Software, the makers of Uplink and Darwinia. It's a RTS but on a global scale. Each superpower gets:
6 missile silos (which can either be in defensive mode (shoots down planes + nukes) or offensive mode (launches nuclear ICBMs)) It can't be in both mode at the same time, however, and switching between the two modes takes a while, during which it is inoperable.
4 Airbases: From here you can launch fighters and bombers. Fighters are good for shooting down other planes, and have a limited capability against ships. Bombers are good against ships, and can also launch nuclear missiles.
6 Radar stations: without these you are blind, anything (exlcuding subs) within your radar, you will be able to see on the map
Naval fleets, you can make as many fleets as you like out of a total of 12 subs, 12 battleships and 12 carriers. (so you can make 36 fleets of 1 ship, but that's just dumb) A fleet can hold up to 6 ships, and contain any combination of ships.
Battleship: This ship is your naval defense, it's used to attack other battleships and carriers, it can also shoot down bombers/fighters and nuclear warheads
Carrier: This ship is a floating equivalent of the airbase, but it also has a "submarine hunting mode" and is armed with depth charges, use this to try to catch any subs sneaking up to your coast.
Submarine: This ship carries 5 medium range nuclear ballistic missiles, it can operate in "passive sonar" (silent) mode, where it will only be seen by carriers in sub hunting mode, or by other wubs in "active sonar" mode.
"active sonar" where it can see (And possible attack, I need to check this) other submarines in its vicinity. And Launch mode, when in launch mode, it is visible on radar, but by the time you get anything to it, it will probably be mid way through launching its arsenal.
From my description it kinda seems like a very uskillful game where its just launch everything etc, but that's just my bad describing, it's an extremely tactical game, but also quite simple to pick up due to the small number of units there is. Everything has limited ammunition (airbases carry 2 bombers and I think 8 nukes. Each bomber can only carry 1 nuke at a time, and must return to pick up a new one, each silo holds 10 nukes etc etc)
Also, the game goes through 5 stages:
DEFCON 5 - Start
This is when the game starts, here is when you place your units and structures, naval units may be moved within international water.
DEFCON 4 - 6 mins
You can still place units, but now your radar will show any enemy units within your range
DEFCON 3 - 12 mins
You can no longer place units. Any units not placed are lost. Hostile actions may start, you may move within enemy territory. Only conventional hostilities though, such as naval battles and air warfare (attacking navies and scouting)
DEFCON 2 - 20 mins
Same as DEFCON 3, but more aggresive
DEFCON 1 - 30 mins
Nuclear launches allowed!
After a certain amount of time, a victory countdown is started (40 minutes from countdown start) and at the end of the countdown timer the game ends and the person with the most score wins. The default scoring mode: 2 points for every million civilians you kill, -1 for every million you lose, but there are a few other scoring modes which I can't be bothered to detail :P.
The game can be run at various speeds. Typically in-game, there is a speed button toolbar (much like in Sim City games) with > >> >>> >>>> anyone can choose there preference, and by default th egame will run at the slowest requested speed. So if one person wants > (realtime) and everyone else is on >>> (I think x5 speed, maybe x10), then the game will run at realtime speed. This can change throughout the game though. I've typically found that most people want it at realtime speed until they have placed their units, and then put it at >>> until DEFCON 3 when I prefer it back down to >>. In my (limited) experience, default mode games tend to last around 40 minutes, maybe a little longer.
Of course there is "office mode" where the whole game is locked in realtime, and should take around 6 hours. This is for playing at work, and you can press esc twice and it will minimise to the system tray
Anyway, I highly recommend this game, cause not only is it great fun, it's also incerdibly cheap. You can buy it from ww.everybody-dies.com and it is also on Steam. The download is only 60mb and you can play it in Demo mode (1 v 1 only) until you unlock it with an authentication key. I think it costs $14.99 on Steam and probably the same on the website (Around £10) and from the website you can pay an extra £5 to get a boxed copy.
For more info check out the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defcon_%28computer_game%29
and also the manual for the game is online and free:
http://storefront.steampowered.com/M...N%20manual.pdf
Comment