ICBM
ICBM - v1.0.1 Update
Check out the full changelog.
- Now it is possible to inherit technologies from zero-cost techs as well
- Switchable weapon now appears on UI only when it is researched
- Now it is possible to define "parents" for the techs instead of "children"
- Cuban Missile Crisis scenario re-balanced
- Added the "AttackIfDestroyed" property to the unit types, forcing the AI to react as if the nuclear weapon was used to destroy such unit type
- Fixes in the Chinese translation
- Now changing the game language does not reset the mods
- Fixed the bug with saved game failing to load when satellite lasers were firing
- Changed the laser effect for better visibility
- Fixed some typos
- Fixed the problem with Destroyer losing one torpedo launcher with Advanced ABM upgrade
- Allowed to modify and delete specific properties of the units/missiles/radars/explosions in mods without the need to make a full copy of the unit/missile/radar/explosion
- Fixed the animation of laser rays when firing on a target that is already killed
- Added ImprovedBy Range tech modifier
- Added CanHangInTheAir property to the unit type
- Added the possibility to change the color and pulses of a laser ray
- Cuban Missile Crisis: if one faction is disabled, its units will not appear anymore
- Fixed the AI problems with more than 8 players map
- Fixed the units not visible for factions 9 and 10
- Ownership map generation now better supports blurred edges on the ownership png image
- Now you cannot join incompatible game as a spectator
- Removed Steam log-in from DRM-free version
- "@" symbol is now automatically added to the input line where e-mail should be entered
- Fatal. file is renamed to Fatal.txt for easier viewing
- In the fixed factions game with the possibility to build on allied territory the units can now repair and reload inside allied territory as well
- Fixed The problem with accidentally adding West Asia as an enabled faction in MP
ICBM is out
ICBM is a real time strategy game inspired by the all-time classic movie Wargames and its cultural heritage. In ICBM players take control of a nuclear superpower and prepare it to face a global war. They will attempt to maximize the destruction of their enemies with the best offensive strategy, all whilst limiting damages to their own Homeland cities.
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Fight against advanced AI in single player or face up to 7 human opponents in online competitive mode. Form alliances, but remember that betrayal is always an option – like in the Cold War age, there are no reliable allies.
Up for something different? ICBM comes with full modding support out of the box. Add or change maps, units, technologies, rules, graphics and much more. Check out Steam Workshop for the available mods.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178220/ICBM/
ICBM Research Tree - Submarines
Unlock SSBNs
Regular submarines can only use torpedoes and conventional cruise missiles. The game also allows you to unlock the Ballistic Missile Submarine (SSBN) and Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM) as well.
SSBN: Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines have the unique ability to be underwater for up to 6 months at a time. Modern naval doctrines have quickly requalified submarines as underwater missile carriers, instead of their classic status of radar and special operations ships. Nuclear submarines cruise at a specific depth, are always ready for battle and remain effectively nigh-unreachable by anti-naval weaponry.
SLBM: Equipped with a single 500 kiloton TNT equivalent nuclear warhead or 3 splitting 500 kilotons warheads with MIRV technology, these ballistic missiles can do serious damage to an enemy.
To unlock SSBN and SLBM’s you must first finish researching MRBM’s, as they are required technology for any more advanced missile.
Do not attack early
As the SSBN is not that difficult a technology to research, it may be tempting to start building them early. That can be extremely expensive when nuclear warhead production efficiency is low early on in the game because each SSBN stocks 12 SLBMs with nuclear warheads. It’s better to wait with mass production of SSBNs until they become cheap to build.
MIRV technology instantly upgrades all SLBM’s giving them three warheads instead of one and also a longer range which makes SSBN’s really deadly. So, use SSBN’s without MIRVs only when you have no other choice.
Go stealthy with silent engines
Avoid enemy Destroyers!
Submarines are deadly to carriers and cruisers, but destroyers are equipped with all means to detect and destroy any submarine. Therefore, it is wise to avoid attacking destroyers with submarines until you are well advanced in the Silent Engines technology branch.
While the submarine has a longer sonar range than a standard destroyer, it is slower and has less firepower. In a direct confrontation the chances of a victory are low. With Silent Engines improving a submarine's torpedo range, however, it becomes possible to attack enemy surface ships including destroyers while remaining undetected.
ICBM will be launching on the 17th of November. We are very excited for the launch and hope you are too. In the meantime, why not consider joining the Discord server to chat with the developer or you could also check out the product page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178220/ICBM/
ICBM Research Tree - Naval Forces
Naval forces are one of the biggest strategic assets you can have. They allow you to project power both at home and around the world. Discover the naval forces available in ICBM and how you can further develop them over the course of a game.
Naval Units
Carrier: An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seaborne airbase. It comes equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft.
Typically, it is the capital ship and centrepiece of any fleet as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local airbases. It is mobile, tactical, strategic and has a wide variety of means at its disposal. This includes nuclear weapons. In ICBM this means ALBM’s and more traditional gravity bombs are available as these can be deployed via the carrier’s aerial forces.
The carrier itself is extremely vulnerable to submarines and lacks any missile defences. The sheer cost of one makes for an expensive target you will not want to pay to replace.
Cruiser: The role of the cruiser varies according to ship and navy and often includes air defence and shore bombardment. Cruisers have heavy anti-ship missile armaments designed to sink carrier task forces via saturation attacks.
The cruiser boasts superior firepower and can carry Tactical Nuclear Missiles. Though it does not excel in the role, it does have anti-air defences and it can also carry ASAT missiles.
A cruiser is also equipped with specific radars - Space radar to detect satellites and over-the-horizon radar to see enemy nuclear missiles. With these radars a cruiser can serve the role of the “eyes” of a fleet and guide the defensive fire of the other ships in a group.
Like the carrier, the cruiser lacks anti-missile defences and is extremely vulnerable to submarines.
Destroyer: A destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, high-endurance warship intended to escort the larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group. Its role is to defend those same vessels against powerful short-range attackers on, above and below the sea.
It is relatively inexpensive to build compared to other naval assets and enjoys superior anti-air and anti-missile defences. It has no ability to carry nor deploy nuclear weapons, however.
Unlike other surface fleet, it can and will defend itself and others from submarine assault.
Improved Engine Technology
A ship’s propulsion is often both noisy and takes up a vast amount of any vessel’s usable space. In modern times, this means that military vessels are moving away from large and unwieldy diesel engines and are instead looking towards gas, electric and nuclear propulsion to serve their needs. There are many such upgrades available in ICBM and such improvements will automatically apply to any existing warships you own.
Powerful engines: This improved engine technology increases the speed of surface ships. The noticeable engine noise of such propulsion systems substantially increases the chance to be detected by a submarine’s sonar equipment, however.
Improved powerful engines: The increased fuel cost inherent in using gas-turbine engines is completely is neutralized by the huge service life of the engines themselves. As an added benefit, the acceleration dynamics of even large ships is noticeably improved when utilizing them.
Work on decreasing the noise they generate has also helped lessen the sonar visibility to more acceptable values. The bottom line is that the speed of surface ships can be improved but without the cost of increasing the range at which you can be discovered by submarines.
Advanced powerful engines: Nuclear main propulsion machinery is considered the crown jewel of development in ship engines. Its highly efficient water-cooled reactor provides an almost unlimited range as well as superior acceleration when conducting manoeuvres.
Unfortunately, the giant size of nuclear-powered main propulsion machinery along with the substantial anti-radiation protection covering disallows their use on ships smaller than 1st class. This means you will find such engines only on aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers, and major anti-submarine ships.
In game this upgrade further increases the speed of surface ships without increasing the range at which you can be discovered by submarines.
Power improvements apply to submarine torpedoes as well, but we will cover submarines and their ordinance in the upcoming article dedicated to that topic.
Improving your Long-Wave and Short-Wave radars
Every warship is equipped with a series of radar systems. The effective range of many weapon systems cannot be realized without also improving your radar technology. This is especially true of defensive systems. You can improve your ability to detect the enemy in the open sea with improvements to your radar systems as well.
Long-Wave Radars Improvements (Automatically upgrade carriers, destroyers and cruisers)
Improved LW Radars: Longwave radar is the only type available to detect and identify objects at extreme distances. This upgrade further increases the operating radius of long-wave radar.
Advanced LW Radars: Dual-circuit radar with repeated beam reflections off the Earth's ionosphere increases the discovery range of strategic targets to thousands of kilometres.
This essentially integrated system of similar radars with reliable power sources can theoretically control air space across the entire planet. This upgrade increases the operating radius of long-wave radar even further.
Short-Wave Radars Improvements (Automatically upgrade destroyers and cruisers)
Improved SW Radars: The decreased energy consumption and compact design of SW radar allows for the making of highly mobile radar systems. Sealed military reports contain the term "radio-locating manoeuvre" which is meant as a very fast way to expand a zone of control. This upgrade increases the operating radius of short-wave radars.
Advanced SW Radars: Reflected radar waves help determine more than just the distance to the target. Using the Doppler effect, computing radar equipment can calculate the speed on an object, its dynamic characteristics and approximate its size and composition. Powerful program support and prepared profiles with given parameters facilitate the substantially increased range and allows the detection of even stealth technology-based targets. This upgrade increases the operating radius of short-wave radars.
A key benefit of a navy is not just that it can project power almost anywhere in the world, but also that ships are an evolving threat. Thanks to modern refitting, ships can enjoy technological improvements and weapon upgrades without the need to entirely replace existing assets.
Find out more
Join the Discord server to chat with the developer.
ICBM - Out on Nov. 17th
If you can't wait for the game to come out and want to share your hype with our awesome community. You can join over 800 other players, who like you just want to nuke the world, on our Discord.
Free demo now available
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178220/ICBM
But you will want to hurry, it will only be available until the 13th of October.
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ICBM is the ultimate game to play with all of your friends and the demo is no exception. Go nuclear with up to 8 players in a game where the only winning move is not allowing yourself to be turned into a glow crater. Forget rooks and pawns, missiles of every imaginable size and payload will be the pieces by which entire continents will be moved and removed. Practise against the A.I. and perfect those strategies as ICBM is going to be the game that entertains match after match.
Note that the game is still in development so you may encounter some of these known issues.
If you have any feedback or you find an issue not listed there, be sure to let us know on the Steam Discussion Forums. Also, be sure to join the Discord server and become part of a community of 600 ICBM fans who can't wait to finally nuke each other for free.
ICBM Gets a Free Playable Demo for the Steam Game Festival
Make yourself comfortable and get ready to push the big red button: the demo will feature the tutorials to help you learn the game and the standard settings of the multiplayer mode.
Last but not least - don't miss the marathon stream! Starting on October 9th, 4 PM BST, we're going to stream the most epic ICBM multiplayer highlights, including Rimmy's streams and the competitive match between Slitherine and the Pentagon Wargame Team.
So tune in on Steam by that time!
ICBM - Challenge Accepted: Pentagon Wargame Team vs Slitherine Team
It is time to retire to your fallout shelters and brace yourselves for the first official ICBM challenge. We threw down the gauntlet and challenged the Pentagon Wargame Team* to play a competitive ICBM match against us.
They accepted.
We hope you are ready for an epic match between the Slitherine and Pentagon Wargame teams. We’re going to live stream the event on Twitch, on October 1st, 15:00 BST and we’re inviting everyone to watch the action.
We hope to see you all there for this epic showdown.
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Meet the Pentagon Wargame Team:
Mitch L. Reed, Philip “Doc” Wohlrab, Philip S. Bolger and Sebastian J. Bae.
Meet the Slitherine Team:
Vladimir Ufnarovskii, Bart Schouten, Dan Zsibrita and Paolo Paglianti.
How it will work:
The two teams will face off against each other in an exciting 4 vs 4 game of mutually assured destruction. Each team will form an alliance of 4 countries and will try to take down the opposite faction. There will be no restrictions on strategy, research or tactics as both teams will do whatever it takes to win. Commentary and observation will be provided by our shoutcaster Edmon, who has promised to be impartial during this epic and all-consuming global war.
Follow us on Twitch and get notified when the match starts.
*The views and comments of the DoD wargame team are their own and do not represent the views of the organizations they belong to.
ICBM Research Tree - Aircraft Technologies
Air units
Aircraft technologies allow you to develop and produce advanced air units. You’ll be able to deploy these to conquer ICBM’s nuclear green sky.
In ICBM there are four kinds of air units:
Fighters: A fighter aircraft is a military fixed-wing aircraft primarily designed for air-to-air combat against other aircraft. Operating from carriers and airfields, their great speed and manoeuvrability make them perfect to establish air superiority over the battlefield. The trade off for this capability is that they are of limited use against surface targets. They carry heavy air-to-air armament and can also carry ALBM’s, if you have researched them.
Bombers: A strategic bomber is a long-range deep-striking aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto distant targets for the purpose of debilitating the enemies capacity to wage war. They can carry the heaviest bombs and can only operate from airfields.
Attack bombers: An attack bomber is a tactical military aircraft that operates from a carrier. It has the primary role of carrying out airstrikes with greater precision than bombers can and it is robust enough to survive strong low-level air defences when on the offensive. This class of aircraft is designed mostly for naval air-to-surface missions. They can carry light nuclear weapons, but are much more difficult to intercept.
AEW&C aircraft: An airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system is an airborne radar picket system designed to detect aircraft, ships and vehicles at long range. Both land-based and naval carrier-based versions are available.
The first three types of aircraft can be produced and deployed at the beginning of a match and you can improve them by researching additional aircraft technologies.
Improve your aircraft
You can research advanced aircraft to upgrade your aircraft to newer, more advanced models. In doing so, you will automatically increase the speed, manoeuvrability, durability and payload of all your planes.
You can additionally increase the capacity of your fuel tanks by researching aerial fueling once you have the advanced aircraft technology. This technology will greatly improve the range of all your planes.
If you want to establish air superiority in ICBM, having faster and more agile planes won’t be enough: you will also need to identify threats in advance, while going unnoticed at the same time. This is where AWACS and stealth aircraft can give you an additional edge.
AWACS can be researched and produced to secure better airspace surveillance: these "flying radars" are perfect for long-duration flights and can control airspace in a radius greater than 500 km. They are extremely vulnerable if they're attacked however and will need to be protected by SAMs or fighter aircraft.
By researching AWACS, you will unlock two new air units: AWACS aircraft, which operate from an airfield and the Carrier AEW&C helicopter, which operates from a carrier. AEW&C helicopters have a smaller range than normal AWACS and less powerful radars, but they’re equipped with sonar and depth charges for anti-submarine operations.
You can elude enemy surveillance and decrease the visibility of your aircraft by researching stealth aircraft, the ultimate air technology in ICBM. This improvement automatically applies to all your planes, which will become much more difficult to detect and shut down.
Initially, your air forces won’t be very efficient in attacking surface units - the only available conventional means of sea or ground attack are the free-falling bombs, so you often will want to use smaller nuclear bombs for important targets. But this changes when you research the Air-to-Surface Missiles.
You can then upgrade to Advanced ASM to further improve the efficiency of your bombers.
To have an edge in aerial combat, you could research the Advanced AAM - those make your fighters much more deadly in dogfights.
To fully reveal the advantages of AEW&C aircraft, invest into the radar technologies - LW radars if you just want to see the targets further away, and SW radars if you want to be able to supply the precise targeting information to your fighters and bombers, allowing them to engage the enemy from the maximal distance.
Airbases and carriers
Your aircraft can take off from airbases or from carriers; airbases carry up to 15 fighters and 5 bombers, while carriers carry up to 10 fighters and 10 attack bombers.
By selecting each airbase or carrier, you can decide whether to allow air patrol or not.
When you allow air patrol, you have two fighters always in skies looking for the potential threats. This usually helps to spot enemy aircraft on the far reach, giving more time to react.
However, sometimes you want to have the patrol disabled. For example, if you already have AEW&C in the skies near your carrier, then you already have good visibility of the airborne targets, so you can switch off the patrolling to stay hidden and not give your enemy the possibility to detect the presence of your carrier by spotting the patrolling aircraft. Another case when you may want to have the patrol disabled is when your airfield is close to the enemy territory. In this case, your patrol could occasionally fly into the enemy air space triggering the response. This can easily escalate to the full-blown conflict much sooner than you’d like.
Find out more
Join the Discord server to chat with the developer.
ICBM Research Tree - Satellites
How to research and improve Satellites in ICBM
Knowing the position of your enemy assets is essential to improve your chance of winning a match in ICBM. Radars are a good option to detect and intercept enemy facilities and weapons, but they are relatively vulnerable to attacks and they have a limited range of effectiveness.
Locate enemy assets with Satellites
You can research and build Satellites to greatly improve your knowledge of the other continents’ strategy: satellites can’t be taken down with artillery, and they can observe larger territories.
The Same Portion of Territory Before and After the Satellite Deployment
How to deploy Satellites
When you deploy a Satellite, ICBM gives you more deployment options compared to any other unit in the game. Any time you build and deploy a new Satellite, you can establish its trajectory and its height.
Setting up the trajectory is a mandatory step to deploy a new Satellite. You can set it up both in map view and in globe view. In any case, its trajectory follows the natural curvature of the Earth. Choose it with care as you won’t be able to change it later.
Deploying a new Satellite
The same Trajectory in Globe View
The Satellites’ height can be set up in globe view only. The higher the height, the longer it will take to complete a full rotation around the Earth. If you deploy a satellite in map view, the height is automatically set to the minimum.
Advanced Optics
Basic Satellites, though, aren’t fully capable of taking clear images of key objects. To unlock their full observation potential, take one more step in the research tree and research Advanced Optics: this technology replaces the regular optic system with an optic-electronic one and with panchromatic, infrared and multispectral images. Once researched, Advanced Optics automatically apply to all your Satellites, that become able to control both space and hidden objects on the surface. Planning a surprise missile attack will no longer be an option for your opponents.
Destroy enemy Warheads with Laser Weapons
Even if there are no operative orbital weapons systems in the real world, strong lasers with nuclear cores could theoretically destroy warheads while they're in the space stage of their trajectory. This is why in ICBM, Satellites can be used not only as a key part of your intelligence but also as defence weapons.
After researching Advanced Optics, you can research Laser Weapons to allow your Satellites to intercept enemy warheads in flight.
Take down enemy satellites with ASAT (Anti-Satellites Weapons)
Satellites can be the best ally to your strategy, but on the other hand, enemy Satellites can make your attacks predictable and can make your facilities more vulnerable.
The only way to get rid of a Satellite standing in your way is to research ASAT (Anti-Satellites Weapons), special missiles specifically designed to destroy enemy satellites. You can launch them with Missile Silos and Mobile Missile Silos from the ground, or with your Cruisers from the sea.
Don’t forget that to unlock Anti-Satellite Weapons, you need to research SAMs, ABMs and Space Radar first. You also need to have a Space Radar to be able to see the satellites above your territory.
Find out more
Join the Discord server to chat with the developer.