Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy
ICBM
ICBM Research Tree - Missile Defence Sytem
Defensive Strategy: How to Build your Missile Defence System in ICBM
Some missile technologies in ICBM are so deadly that you can’t possibly win a match if you don’t adopt an effective defensive strategy. Make sure to build anti-missile facilities to annihilate your enemies’ attempt to nuke your cities: they’ll lose precious time and resources while building missiles that will eventually get destroyed before reaching their target.
Detect enemy missiles with Radars
No matter how strong your anti-missile facilities are or how many you have deployed: you won’t be able to counter-attack if you can’t detect enemy missiles.
Different radar types have different characteristics when it comes to missile detection, so you need to choose your way.
Conventional Radars are available from the very beginning, but their main task is to detect aircraft, not missiles. With some upgrades, they’ll become good enough to deal with the Small and Medium-range missiles too. With the Improved SW Radar tech, you’ll be able to target SRBMs, while Advanced SW Radar is already good for dealing with MRBMs and even ICBMs on their terminal path. This is especially important if you plan to rely on your navy for the missile defence.
AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System) - these air units can see everything from far away, including missiles. If you use Aircraft Carriers to deliver your might overseas, you want your Destroyers to protect them from enemy missiles. AWACS can give the necessary radar coverage to support ABM systems of your DDs.
However, if you want to have the best possible Anti-missile defence, you need to go the global Early Warning System path.
Space Radars are the first step you need to take when it comes to detecting, tracking and identifying artificial objects orbiting Earth. Not only they are essential to building an anti-satellite defence, but they also allow you to unlock advanced anti-missile technologies.
Once you have researched Space Radars, you’ll be able to move on to Over-the-Horizon Radars. Their primary role is to identify incoming enemy ballistic missiles long before they reach your territory, so your missile defence has time to intercept them. Additionally, they help pinpoint the launching unit, so you can destroy it in the retaliatory strike.
Not enough yet? Research and build Early Warning System, the ultimate missile detection technology. They allow long and super-long-range detection; furthermore, they are practically not affected by radio-visibility reducing technology that counts on the absorption of centimetre and sometimes decimeter waves.
ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missiles) Launch Facilities
Once you’ve secured the detection and targeting of enemy missiles, your anti-missile complexes will be able to intercept them. You may want to build these complexes near cities, borders, and critical facilities to keep your population safe while protecting your arsenal as well.
Research SAMs (Surface-to-Air Missiles) to unlock SAM sites, their corresponding launch facilities. SAM sites are cheap to build, so investing in them is always a good idea. They can intercept aircraft, but they can’t detect missiles without the appropriate radar support, and they can’t take them down without ABMs (Anti-Ballistic Missiles): make sure to research the right technologies to improve your SAM sites effectiveness.
The main weakness of SAM complexes is their lack of mobility. If you want to assure your defence some flexibility and make your complexes harder to locate, research and build Mobile SAMs too, that you’ll be able to move multiple times within your territory.
Take your SAM sites to the ultimate level by researching Advanced SAMs: this technology automatically upgrades your anti-air missiles range and speed, while increasing at the same time the number of simultaneous targets.
Anti-Ballistic Missiles
No SAM site will be able to defend you against enemy missiles without proper defence weapons: research ABMs to make sure you have everything you need to stand against an enemy attack.
Once you’ve developed ABMs, suppose you want to improve your chances of success. Initial ABMs can deal with single ICBMs, but can be easily overwhelmed by a more significant number of incoming warheads. In that case, you can research Advanced ABMs, next-generation air defence systems able to catch any air target including drones, winged missiles and even ICBMs. Other than a massive strategic strike using MIRVs or hypersonic weapons, no other type of attack can overcome this defence.
Don’t forget though that without receipt of data from the beyond-the-horizon radar, even the new ABM systems won't be effective.
Counter-Attack from the ocean
Intercepting missiles from the ground by building and improving your SAM sites is not your only option.
You can also defend yourself from the ocean with Destroyers: fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warships intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short-range attackers. They are cheap to build, and they provide Anti-Air and Anti-Missile defence. Unlike other ships, that we’ll unveil in future articles, they are great for defensive tactics, but they can’t carry nuclear weapons.
Offensive Strategy: How to develop Nuclear Missile Technologies in ICBM
ICBM research tree offers a wide variety of technologies and strategies to explore. Depending on what you choose to develop, you can build an impassable stronghold against airstrikes, nuke other continents from the sea with submarines, spot the location of their arsenal with radars and advanced satellites, and so much more.
Missiles technologies play an important role in ICBM: knowing them inside out is one of the best ways to build an effective offensive strategy and to secure the destruction of your enemies’ military assets and cities.
Nuclear missiles
At the beginning of the game, your technology won't be advanced enough and the only means of delivering nuclear warheads will be long-range strategic bombers. However, they are very vulnerable and have a high replacement cost. So you want to possess the Nuclear missiles.
Start by researching MRBMs (Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles) and then move to ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) in order to reach more continents and to unlock advanced weapons that will allow you to arm more powerful warheads.
Tactical Nuclear Missiles
While less potent than the strategic missiles described above, tactical nuclear missiles can be extremely useful. Combining a lower production cost and high level of flexibility, tactical nuclear weapons can be the best way of pacifying your opponents assets. Tactical Nuclear missiles can be fired from missile vehicles, cruisers and in some cases even from your bombers once you unlock ALBMs. Use these versatile weapons for coastal raids, defence against enemy ships or sniping exposed enemy structures.
Research and build missile launch facilities
Once you have researched ICBMs, you will unlock missile silos. Researching MRBMs will allow you to progress into Missile Vehicles and the larger ICBM vehicles. These are nuclear launch facilities that can be easily relocated. By building these military assets, you can adopt a more flexible strategy and promptly react to your opponents’ moves. It also allows you to hide your missile platforms after firing.
Upgrading your missiles
Certain locations will be out of your range during the early phases of the game, as you will need to research long-ranged nuclear missiles in order to plan attacks from great distances.
Most of your nuclear missiles can be upgraded by researching advanced technologies. Depending on which kind of missile technologies you decided to research, you can choose the right upgrades to make your missiles faster, more difficult to intercept, more accurate.
- Heavy rockets: these super heavy nuclear warhead missiles can carry thermonuclear warheads with up to 10 megaton loads and have much greater range than the 1Mt missiles. This technology is required in order to unlock MIRVs and false warheads, because separating warheads with individual trajectories require powerful payloads.
- MIRVs (Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle) is an advanced technology that unlocks the production of ICBMs equipped with three splitting thermonuclear warheads, 1 megaton each (3x1M MIRV ICBMs). Intercepting MIRVs is a really tough mission for your enemies’ defence, as they strike with multiple warheads making it extremely difficult to take down all of them.
- Is there anything worse than MIRVs? The answer is YES. Research false warheads to unlock the production of the ultimate ICBM: a nightmare with four-megaton warheads and four false targets (4x1M+4F MIRV ICBM) to saturate the enemy anti-missile defence.
- Hypersonic missiles are one of the most advanced steps you can take when it comes to missiles technologies. This research allows you to increase the speed and range of the SSM missiles, including tactical, nuclear-tipped, naval-based missiles, and air-based nuclear missiles. Hypersonic missiles are almost impossible to shoot down.
Full list of missiles you can build
Investing time and resources to research and build a strong missile-based offensive strategy can make you the most feared continent during an ICBM game.
Which missiles will you choose to nuke the world?
- MRBM: A medium-range missile equipped with a 100 kilotons TNT equivalent nuclear warhead. - Megaton ICBM: an ICBM equipped with 1 megaton nuclear warhead. - 10 Megaton ICBM: a heavy ICBM equipped with 10 megatons thermonuclear warhead. - SRBM: a tactical nuclear missile launched from a cruiser. Deadly for enemy navy and coastal infrastructure. - ALBM: a tactical nuclear missile launched from an aircraft. Stay tuned to find out more on how to build an effective airstrike. - SLBM: A ballistic missile capable of being launched from submarines. Equipped with a single 500 kilotons TNT equivalent nuclear warhead or 3 splittings 500 kilotons warheads (with MIRV technology). Stay tuned to find out more on attacks from the ocean and advanced submarines. - 3X1M MIRV ICBM: ICBMs equipped with three splitting thermonuclear warheads, 1 megaton each. - 4x1M+4F MIRV ICBM: ICBM equipped with four-megaton warheads and four false targets.
Join the Discord server to chat with the developer and to find out more.
ICBM - Announced
We're proud to announce our partnership with SoftWarWare in the development of ICBM, the third indie title to be published under the K-Project label.
ICBM is a real-time strategy game of nuclear destruction.
Research new technologies, build up your nuclear stockpile and use a combination of ships, planes and missiles to strike at the heart of your opponents’ cities while keeping your population safe from harm.
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PREPARE FOR WAR Take command of one of the continents of the world and prepare yourself for global nuclear conflict. It is your job to ensure the complete and total destruction of your enemies, while you do all in your power to prevent enemy retaliation against your peace-loving citizens. Will you focus on developing new technologies, or mass producing existing ones? It takes a true strategist to research and build a balanced force that can deal with a multitude of enemy tactics.
SINGLE PLAYER AND ONLINE MULTIPLAYER MODE Fight against an advanced AI in single-player of face up to 6 human opponents in online multiplayer mode. Play in free for all, fixed teams or coop games, all while improving your ELO score as you climb the leaderboard. Form alliances, but remember that betrayal is always an option - like in the Cold War age, there are no reliable allies.
FULL MODDING SUPPORT 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.
APPLY FOR THE BETA and join the Discord server to support ICBM and to challenge the developer in a nuclear destruction war.
