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It's funny how playing games leads, sometimes by a roundabout route, to playing more games.

 

Obtaining nukes in Hearts of Iron 2 led me to start watching films about nuclear war or possible nuclear conflict. Dr. Strangelove, an old favourite, was put on for the nth time. And a new one to me, Thirteen Days, based on the Cuban missile crisis. This led me to hanker for some nuclear war.

 

"Why," I asked myself, "hasn't anyone made a game about Mutually Assured Destruction?"

 

Then I realised someone had. Introversion made a game years ago, called Defcon.. It's rather fun.

 

"I wish I owned that." I mourned.

 

Than I realised I did, and had a game.

 

The world is divided up into six areas (Asia, Russia, North America, South America, Africa, Europe) and given equal forces to fight it out. Radar sites lift fog of war, airfields can launch fighters and bombers, and silos provide air defence and launch nukes. Fleets consist of subs, carriers and battleships. Subs are slow, but can launch nukes and are usually hidden underwater except when launching. Carriers are good at looking for subs, and can launch fighters and bombers. Battleships are good at blowing up other ships.

 

This is all represented by some very stylish 2D graphics, made to look like a stereotypical represntation of force movements in a bunker's war room:

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/def1.jpg

 

The countdown begins straight away, as you site your facilites and place your fleets. This is one of the great things about the game. The concept of MAD is inescapable, when you start there's nothing you can do to avert the war. It's just a matter of time. But you can't launch missiles until DefCon 1.

 

Pretty soon, fleets bump into each other. DefCon 3 is reached, and aircraft can be launched. The fighting starts as air forces mesh and collide, fighters tackling fighters, bombers missiling carriers, fighters chasing bombers, air defence shooting down any enemy aircraft, subs slipping by or being discovered, battleships blowing everything within range to bits.

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

 

You probe enemy air space with your aircraft, trying not to be intercepted, looking for their silos, radars and airfields, predicting your missiles' trajectory and wondering what to take out and how:

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

 

But this is just to get to the real goal. The cities:

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

 

By default, each territory has 25 cities, each containing a part of the territory's 100-million population. Obviously, this isn't realsitic, it's to provide balance. The cities vary in size, so if you turn London into a crater, this will kill more than if you nuke Maracaibo.

 

The location of any nuclear launch site is immediately known to the other players, so what do you do?

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

Launch early, and hope that your silos can switch back to anti-missile duty in time to hit the enemy nukes as they come for you? Stay on the defensive, and leave your silos on anti-missile duty? Half and half, launching bombers to nuke his silos? Use a massive attack from your subs and silos and bombers to overwhelm him?

 

Up to six players, human or AI, differnet game modes, alliances and betrayals, a very simple and elegant online system. Brilliant, if disturbing, audio, lovely visual style, simple controls (95% left click or right click).

 

I lost this one:

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

 

If anyone fancies a game, let me know. You can turn me (glowing) green with envy at your apocalyptic skills.

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I was just looking up DefCon on the Wikipedia and happened across a link to one of my favorite films of all time: WarGames. (Have any of you guys heard of this film or seen it)?

 

Anyway, near the bottom of the plot is this quote which is spot-on:

 

Upon arrival, Falken is able to convince military officials to cancel the counterstrike. At this point WOPR starts an attempt to launch a counterstrike on its own, using a brute force attack to crack the launch code for the U.S. nuclear missiles. Without humans in the silos as a safeguard, WOPR could trigger a mass launch. Attempts to dissuade WOPR prove useless and the computer clearly has no understanding of the difference between its games and real life. Disaster is narrowly averted when Lightman directs WOPR to play tic-tac-toe against itself, resulting in endless drawn games, to make the computer rapidly learn the concept of futility. WOPR cracks the missile code but before launching, cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it has devised, finding they all end as "WINNER: NONE" due to mutual assured destruction. WOPR observes that "the only winning move is not to play". WOPR then casually offers to play "a nice game of chess," and relinquishes control of NORAD and the missiles.

Another link which may be of interest is this one. This guy may have actually prevented an accidental exchange of nukes way back in 1983. Crikey, if it weren't for him, I would be nothing more than cinders right now! Looks like a documentary film named The Man Who Saved the World is slated to come out in July of this year. I'm going to keep an eye out for this, sounds interesting. :)

 

- Zombie

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You just can't look at these screenshots without getting instant-recall of that movie. A computer going smart and a youngster realising running out of time is actually not an impossibility when grown-ups tinker with their toys.

 

::

 

"You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death..." - Agent Smith, The Matrix motion picture, 1999

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I remember WarGames vividly. That hax0r kid wardialing, having his girlfriend swichting on the speaker of a speech generator that got its data from a console reroute ("shall we play a game?"), the feds searching the house, ... Damn that movie was nice.

I'll have to try out DefCon, too! It looks like fun to play.

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Just got this game in the mail today and tried to run a few scenarios. All I can say is that it's waaaay too hard. Don't expect to win anything, much less cause damage to the other side unless you are a god (chalk this up to my terrible skills at learning a new game). :)

 

Tried a very simple scenario of the US (me) vs a CPU controlled Europe (them, obviously). Figured this would be a one-front war so I placed all my battleships and carriers in the Atlantic in one big group near the NE coast, then stuffed all my subs closer to the equator to avoid the whole Battlemess™. They made it through to the West coast of Europe, but there must've been some ships which made it through my destroyed fleet and they subsequently picked off many of my subs before they could even launch. Those that did manage to launch had their missiles shot down almost immediately. Now it was a stalemate. Europe didn't need to launch because they knew my subs were gone so all they had to do was stay on the defense and wait for a primary strike from the mainland US. Basically game over for me. Even if I managed to launch my long range warheads, they would be shot down. Now, if my crap fleet would actually win a conflict and decimate the enemy naval fleet, then I'd stand a chance. But the way it stands, I can't see a way to win if my fleet can't make it past the battlestage to get to the submarine detection stage. :)

 

I'd happily sit in and watch someone else play to get some pointers, bit alas, I can't upgrade to the latest version (which seems to be almost necessary since many of the folks online aren't compatible with my version). :P

 

- Zombie

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Aye, that's the one. The game links to that page asking me to download it. I did. But when I tried installing, it said something like error code 5, can't delete (the executable). I just looked to see if the exe was write protected (it wasn't). As a last ditch effort, I manually cut the executable from the game folder and pasted that to my desktop, then ran the patch install app. That did the trick: it installed. :)

 

Tried to delete the old exe on my desktop and a window pops up saying access denied. So it appears to be protected, but I don't know how to unprotect it in order to delete it. Odd. :P

 

- Zombie

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Glad that's mostly sorted. Perhaps you'll be able to delete it after a restart? I've had that happen to me with shortcuts and files.

 

As for your game result, don't worry. My first game I lost 95+ million people out of the 100, even my minor cities had taken multiple strikes. It's an unusual game because it's very difficult to truly win, and against a skilled human player it's basically impossible. It's quite possible to lose the least, though. :P

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Tried to delete the old exe on my desktop and a window pops up saying access denied. So it appears to be protected, but I don't know how to unprotect it in order to delete it.

 

Try Unlocker. Tiny program. If it can't free up the file to delete it, it will schedule it for boot-up deletion.

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Thanks Matri, that program resolved it (deleted upon startup). :)

 

Well, I won a game, but I was allied with Africa against Europe. Figured I'd let Africa take the brunt of the sea battles while I cleaned up the mess/leftovers. That worked good. As soon as Europe fired off her nukes to Africa, I sent a barrage of nukes to Europe by land, sea, and air; the likes of which have never been seen. Needless to say, Europe was a giant glass crater after my attack. Scary stuff. Still sends chills up and down my spine whenever I see nukes in the air. :P

 

- Zombie

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The audio and the bleak visuals combine well, I feel.

 

Managed a win, but only versus the AI.

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

It's good to work out when the various forces need to launch in order to have a co-ordinated strike.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Me and Zombie had a game. It was epic.

 

The Z-man chose Africa, and I took on the role of the USA.

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

 

My initial set up, glorious I'm sure you'll agree. A screen of battleships, behind which my carriers lurked like bogeymen. Bogeymen capable of launching a nuclear strike.

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

 

As soon as I moved my carriers closer to his coast and launched some fighters to recon his territory, he shot them down. Drat.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zmmp3.jpg

I mean, how nasty is that?

 

And then he follows it up by launching fighters trying to find my fleets!

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zshp4.jpg

Needless to say, I ran away.

 

We both realised that relatively narrow bit of the Atlantic was the gateway to each other's doom, and made for it.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/nc5.jpg

 

I constructed my naval set up with finesse and elan, a lovely screen of battleships, carriers spaced perfectly behind so they'll be out of radar range but able to launch planes to support. And what does Zombie do? He punches a hole in it.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/messy6.jpg

 

This put the wind up me.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zombsilo7.jpg

A zombie silo. A silo for storing zombies. Scarier than nuclear war, I'm sure. However, now I've discovered it, I can nuke it.

 

Meanwhile, Zombie thrashed me in the naval arena.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zwnc8.jpg

Useless bloody US Navy. Somebody call the Coast Guard.

 

Thanks to my complete failure on the high seas, I need to do something else to actually cause him damage. Calling him names was the first thing that came to mind, but harsh language being unable (currently) to wipe out cities, I thought it best to launch some bombers.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/mycountr9.jpg

 

Zombie sneaks a bomber or two through the wall of fighters I threw up in a panic. With my fleets mostly sitting pretty on the ocean floor, my entire east coast is exposed to nuclear bombers from his carriers.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/tlotldnb10.jpg

Ah, the loneliness of the long distance nuclear bomber. Sadly, he was shot down shortly after this screenshot. Gutted.

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First hit goes to me, as I hit that silo I discovered with a nuke.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/1stbloo2me11.jpg

Silos need three hits to be taken out, but that nuke will have smashed the granny out of its number of missiles.

 

As my bombers intrude on his territory, I discover one of his radar sites. Time to poke one of his eyes out!

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/radardisc13.jpg

Without radar, he can't see my nukes or planes in that area. Oh yes.

 

Zombie got a nuke off at my vulnerable coast.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zgoo14.jpg

I was spitting all over my screen in disgust at this point.

 

Which is why I then had difficulty seeing and dealing with Zombie's bomber wave. My first two silos were launching at this point though, already getting my retaliation in.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/tfeb16.jpg

If you look at the chat, Zombie said a very naughty word.

 

I think his subs were east of Canada at this point, as a nuke came from that area and hit Boston.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/bostonooo17.jpg

I mean, what? Anywhere but Boston, you savage.

 

Followed up with a radioactive bite out of the Big Apple.

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

Just kick me when I'm down.

 

The final result was far from a foregone conclusion.

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

Zombie won the naval side entirely. He sank all of my subs, I didn't get a single missile off from them. The only reason I stopped (some) of the eastern seaboard from becoming one big glowing car park was I launched a lot of fighters I had been holding back, intercepting his bombers. His subs came too close to my continent, and my air force devestated them.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/zssanfo18.jpg

 

There was a particularly shocking moment when I thought the naval side of things was over, we were both spent, only for Zombie to comment "I didn't realise you had one fleet left."

 

"Oh yes, you know, just left it lying about the place in reserve." I said smugly, only for him to attack it with two fleets of his own. Cunning bastard.

 

Zombie got in the first major silo launch, but by then I had discovered two of them and destroyed them, and I had more bombers inbound. While they weren't in sufficient numbers to destroy his remaining four silos, they did reduce their nuke stockpiles. My phased launch (two silos at a time) was a bit of a failure, except towards the end where the missiles from four silos, thanks to their different locations, arrived roughly together and overwhelmed Zombie's defences. What it mostly did was open up gaps from Zombie's nukes to slip through, splashing the Midwest and east coast in hot nuclear goodness.

 

Bloody good game, in conclusion.

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Nice summary FA. I suppose I should comment a little to fill in some of the gaps. :)

 

First of all I hadn't played Defcon in like 2 weeks, so I was a little bit rusty. Not only that, but I only ever played against the computer. FA on the other hand just finished a game against a live opponent before we started so he was all warmed up. :P

 

My whole strategy consisted of not getting my navy slaughtered, plain and simple. The computer usually pulverized my fleet before I was able to launch nukes from my carrier-based bombers, so I was out for blood in this respect. But I made some glaring mistakes in setting up my fortifications and carrying out my strategy (not to mention determining what FA was going to do). First of all, I failed to realize that nukes going from the US to Europe/Africa (and vise-verse for that matter) always follow great circle routes (going to the North Pole and then down again) because that is a shorter distance. There was one of my silos in the mid-lower part of the continent which never saw any action. I think that when I placed the silos on the map I was betting that I'd fail to keep FA's naval fleet in the North Atlantic, so that silo was there to protect against nukes from his subs or carrier-bombers. But in hindsight, I should have placed it closer to the Mediterranean Sea in order to provide more backup for the eventuality that nukes would come raining down from the north.

 

The naval battle wasn't by any means, an easy fight. I tried my best to plug the gap between Africa and South America so that FA's ships/subs couldn't surround me. For the most part that strategy succeeded, as most of my ships were on the offensive while there were two pinging the seas with active sonar looking for subs trying to sneak past. I kept seeing enemy subs trying to slip past my net and every time I'd target one it would disappear. That had me worried the whole game as a single sub which makes it through could ruin my day. At one point he got so desperate and frustrated that he actually tried to directly nuke my ships, but luckily, they were mostly always on the move so they took minimal to no damage. Nonetheless, my naval fleet took heavy casualties and my fighters which were based on my carriers were quickly decimated by Mr Oh Bollocks.

 

If you look at the picture under the heading "Meanwhile, Zombie thrashed me in the naval arena.", you'll see I had bombers in the air. I didn't realize this and my intentions were not to launch nukes, just to defend. Somehow I accidentally launched them prematurely. :) Anyway, FA shot down those bombers which meant I still had some ships which were carrying nukes, but no bombers to load them on anymore. That really sucked because some of my ships were still alive and kicking up till the very end. When I did decide to launch my bombers, it was far too late and most of the planes never got close enough to America to fire off their nukes (or FA shot them down, take your pick).

 

Worse still, I was basically shooting blind since I had no idea where FA's silos, bases, or radars were (I wasn't searching for them either really as my land-based fighters and bombers were ill-placed to survive anyway). This forced me to target cities for nuclear destruction instead. Turns out this was a fortunate turn of events because the soft underbelly of the United States was completely unprotected which allowed one of my nukes to get near the coast. However, FA still had ships present in the Atlantic and I knew this because I kept seeing his fighters in the open ocean.

 

Meanwhile, my entire submarine fleet was quietly waiting off the coast of central west Africa. During some points in the naval battle I had tried to sneak them into the Gulf of Mexico, but FA was holding that territory with an iron fist. This forced me to slip through to the North Atlantic which sealed the subs fate. Had I been able to get into the Gulf on Mexico (or close to it, and had I known that his fleet wasn't big enough or even occupying that area), all of America's cities would be nothing more than glowing radioactive embers, and FA's win probably wouldn't have happened (or wouldn't have been so one-sided at least). I did manage to get off some nukes from my subs before they were destroyed though.

 

FA's concerted bomber attack completely overwhelmed me and my badly placed silos. I tried to send my land-based bombers to launch their nukes too but they were late and were following a route which put them too close to the northern US. Fate sealed there.

 

At one time I was made aware that he was firing off some of his land-based nukes, but he only fired them off from two silos. I knew there must be more silos and knew he was trying to force me to launch my own nukes in retaliation, and by this point I had no other option since his bomber attack crippled or destroyed two or three of my silos. Very cunning, because after I spent my nukes on his worthless silos he would fire off the rest of his nukes and wipe the map clean. :)

 

I'm pretty sure that FA managed to get a sub through to the South Atlantic and fire off a single nuke. The nuke was shot down though and I believe I located and destroyed the sub too. :)

 

So the game ended up a lot better than I thought it would, and had I not made so many big mistakes or misread FA's forces, things could have turned out differently. :)

 

- Zombie

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At one point he got so desperate and frustrated that he actually tried to directly nuke my ships, but luckily, they were mostly always on the move so they took minimal to no damage.

 

Timing that is a bugger, but I had very little in the way of a navy left, and my bombers were busy nuking your installations. I was hoping for whole fleets but I only got a ship or two.

 

Looking forward to a rematch, and if any of you other suckers want baking, I will oblige! Be even better if we can rake together 3-4 players. I've even set up a StratCore room for us to play in. Posh! :P

 

Defcon is also available on Steam or for download from Introversion's site.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Well, FA and myself had a game a few days ago. He picked the Soviet Union while I chose South America (which includes Mexico). Things started off pretty good because we were separated by thousands of miles of open ocean. But then everything headed south for me f-a-s-t. FA split his naval fleet into 2 separate forces and deployed them in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans while stupid me shoved all my resources in the Pacific. So when I realized this horrible mistake, I split some of my fleet off to boogie over to the Atlantic. Mistake #2: I should have kept my whole fleet there because when we met, I didn't do well at all.

 

FA basically creamed everything I had with only half of his. 2 to 1 odds? Crikey, he could have had 1/3 the size and still beat me. With no early warning net present anymore, his subs launched their nukes directly off the west coast and most made it to their intended targets: cities. That stung. My silos didn't do a terrible job at shooting down the inbound nukes, but I just didn't have enough of them to keep everything from getting through. Can't say I set them up improperly either. But the old saying is true: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Had I detected and sunk his subs, I wouldn't have had to worry about it much.

 

Next came a barrage of nukes from his silos. I tried sending off a retaliatory strike of my own but started too late. Again, my silos performed well all things considered, it's just that there were too many nukes in the air for me to cope with. I had to do something to save face, so I managed to nuke a couple minor cities in the east of the SU with some bombers from a few of my carriers which somehow survived. Too little, too late. As a last resort, I tried to punch a hole through FA's Atlantic fleet with my subs in hopes of launching some last minute strikes of my own, but that's as far as it went because the remainder of his fleet made mincemeat out of my subs and then time ran out. :)

 

We discussed this disaster briefly after the game ended. South America is a tough country to defend because not only does it include the continent of South America but also the thin area of Central America and Mexico. Those last two are basically sitting ducks because you simply cannot put all your defensive resources to bear on it and expect your population to survive further south. So you have to spread out and hope. The Soviet Union is just the opposite. Basically its whole population resides in the west, so you can protect almost everyone by placing all your eggs in one basket. Also, the only place where you can strike those cities with sub-based nukes is near Great Britain so it's going to be a bottleneck getting there as the other person is already anticipating this strategy and fortified things accordingly. A perfect storm if you will, is what happened in this game.

 

FA claims I learned lots from this bloodbath, but I'm skeptical. The obvious is not to pick South America as your area I guess. After that though, it's hazy. ;) I'm still to busy licking my wounds to look at this closer anyway.

 

- Zombie

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You did get the shitty end of the stick, that game.

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

 

My early sub strike was a morale booster for me, but it actually did little damage to Zombie's population, and I hadn't spotted any of his facilities so I couldn't target those. Still, on the whole my naval game went well, I managed to reduce Zombie's potentially game-winning fleet to a point where it could only hit a few targets, instead of flying in from the Pacific and devestating my western cities.

 

In truth, I wasted my Atlantic fleet, I was expecting an attack from Zombie so held back near Scandinavia, waiting for his subs. Then I got worried he had carriers parked somewhere off the European coast and was going to launch a bomber strike, and moved out. Found his subs and destroyed them, launched a late bomber attack from them and some fighters helped intercept Zombie's bombers, but they were unused for most of the game, when they could have been threatening the north coast of SA.

 

My tightly-packed silos were a good defence agaisnt Zombie's nukes, but some still got through (on Leningrad, most noticeably) and one or two of his bombers slipped through my poor fighter net. If he had made a determined attack early on with his bombers, it really would have been a crippler, I messed up my airfield placement, putting them to the north of my country, when they should have been between my cities and Zombie's bombers.

 

Geography, as Zombie said, was the deciding factor. SA's exposed to naval attack on three sides, whereas Russia is more remote. The fact that 90% of my population is located in about 20% of my country meant I could concentrate my defences and abandon a handful of small cities to craterdom. Moscow alone has about 27 million people in it, so although it is a peach of a target (more than 10% of the population with one nuke? Bargain!) it was also very well defended this game.

 

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.

 

Looking forward to our next game, and hopefully this time j'ordos can join in! Invite is open to you SCers, of course.

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