The Defense Minister is capable of conducting warfare independently when properly configured from the Defense Department (DD). The DM can and will take control of you armed forces and prosecute nearby enemy Regions by default. Since its effectiveness varies, it is best to delegate discreet tasks to your DM, rather than allow it to run the "whole show". For more details on the DM see: Defense Minister
Expenditures for Maintenance + Training (M+T) can be adjusted from your DD's Spending Panel. M+T is pivotal to how well your armed forces perform on the battlefield. M+T is the main contributing factor to you unit Efficiency, which boosts many of their important combat ratings.
The Defense Department Panel also contains many controls that must be properly set for your Units to do their job properly. One of these is the "Unit Pathing" permissions on the Defense Condition Panel.
Here you will find the three buttons that activate permission for your units to path into territories With transit treaties, Without transit treaties and into Enemy territory. Unless you activate the appropriate pathing buttons you will find your Units milling around the border, unable to proceed to the hexes that you have ordered them to move to.
From the Global ROE Panel you can set the Rules Of Engagement for all of your Units at once, or for all units that are created or acquired in the future. These Rules are well described here:Global ROE Panel.
This Global ROE panel is supplemented by the Individual ROE panel that allows you to customize the ROEs for specific Units. The use of both ROE panels is well described here: Global Crisis Rules of Engagement.
If you have allowed your DM control of your armed forces then you can be assured that garrisons have been sent to many towns and cities and that many of your units have been deployed by the DM to guard your capital, military facilities and other important facilities in your region.
At this high/global level of strategy you should be concerned about how the ROEs that you set effect the over-all stance of you armed forces - what is the appropriate manner for each of your deployed units to behave in the context of your current defense posture?
If you are expecting an attack, then you should have a lot of deployed defensive units and they should be issued ROEs that allow them a great deal of initiative in order for them to react aggressively towards an attack. You want to assure that your units will engage invading enemy units and not shy away from combat.
If you are occupied with day-trading stocks of uranium or establishing treaties with African nations then you should give you DM command of your armed forces so that it can immediately respond to some sneak attack while you are occupied with other matters of State.
Most of the five Speed, Route, Initiative, Contact and Tolerance G-ROE options are oriented towards offensive military operations. If your armed forces are on the offenses then use these the Opportunity Fire and Capture Enemy Land settings.
Enabling the auto-deployment of missiles is probably appropriate for either a defensive or an offensive mode.
Keep in mind that you have at your command a supplementary Individual ROE control panel that will allow you to assign customized ROEs for each of your battle-groups, unit types or single deployed unit on the game Map.
Military facilities are complexes and node-structures dedicated to manufacturing, servicing and supporting your mobile units. These facilities are stationary Units, like cities, but they are Units just as are missiles and trucks. Like mobile units, military facilities are staffed by military personnel drawn from your reserve pool - a lot more personnel.
The most common military facilities are the Base units that reserve the equipment of specific types of mobile units and also repair them.
In addition to bases there are also complexes, fabrication facilities (fabs) and "Emplacements". Emplacement units include Air Defense and Radar Stations, Supply Depots and Fortification. But only Bases can hold reserves or make repairs.
Surprisingly only the Air Defense unit has any offensive value - the other military facilities in SR2020 have no offensive capabilities. Thus your military facilities need the protection of your combat units, just as your towns and cities do.
The Military Fortress complex and the fab have the greatest defensive value (2150). Most other node bases have only medium-level defenses against attack (1500). Technological emplacements such as the Air Defense and Radar Station units have the lowest defensive values (900).
The presence of factories, fortifications or fortresses in a hex adds a defensive entrenchment bonus to the mobile units located in the improved hex. Also, hexes with central military or city complexes create a "close combat" hex in which attackers face the CC attack values of your unit and the attackers must rely upon their CC defenses to survive.
Units reserved inside their bases are somewhat protected in that they only suffer the same percentage of damage as their reserve base. Reserves receive no defensive entrenchment bonus. As a base is repaired, so are its reserves.
Unlike civilian production facilities, production from military facilities is always at 100% efficiency regardless of Regional loyalty.
Military Complexes form supply "hubs" around which military fabrication "nodes" can be constructed. Civilian facilities such as mines and oil/gas fields cannot be built around a military complex so care should be taken not to locate a MC atop of a valuable resource.
Military bases and emplacements can also be constructed around a MC.
MCs require a military staff of 500 personnel and has a supply production ratio of 30% (0.3 out of a possible 1). It has a fairly low defensive value - about that of a small town. It offers a 10-point entrenchment bonus.
The Military Fortress (MF) complex is a high-defense value substitute for a Military Complex. It offers a 40-point entrenchment bonus to units residing in its hex. The MF and the fab have the greatest defensive values (2150) of any of the military facilities. The MF also has the largest supply-generating value of all of the military structures (50%) - nearly as much as a mega-city. Supplement one MF with two Supply Depots and that hex will generate the maximum amount allowed by the game.
A MF requires a staff of 850.
The main purpose of military bases is to reserve and repair units of their respective classes. There are three different types: Barracks for land units, Air-Fields for air units and Sea-Piers for naval units.
All three base types can be used to contain the equipment of its respective unit class while that unit is being held in reserve.
When you construct a base on an empty hex a military complex hub is automatically constructed too. Bases are constructed as "nodes" that surround the "hub".
Likewise, whenever a military factory or "fab" of a certain type is constructed, a corresponding reserve base is constructed as well. By default, Units fabricated at the new fab will automatically be placed into this Reserve base. However if the new production unit has been designated for "auto-deployment" then it will leave the fab and head for its "rally point". If there is no reserve base present, then the newly-fabricated unit will simply deploy into the fab's hex.
Bases are also used to hold undeployed units in reserve, where the unit's equipment can be stored with reduced maintenance costs. There is no stacking limit in reserve, so an unlimited number of units can place their equipment into reserve at any appropriate base. Unit Personnel are placed back into the reserve personnel pool when their unit is placed into reserve.
One base of each type is assigned as a "Delivery Point" for new units received in diplomatic exchanges.
Bases are also repair depots for their respective Units. Damaged units must enter the appropriate base for repair in response to the "Repair" order. The units will then auto-deploy once their repairs are completed.
Otherwise, units will remain in reserve until ordered to deploy by you or your Defense Minister. Deploying units will stack up in a barracks hex until a stack of ten units has deployed. Then unless these 10 units move to another hex, the remaining units are stuck in reserve and cannot deploy. If the DM is in control then these units tend to automatically spread out more, making it easier to deploy large numbers.
Whenever a base is captured by an enemy it automatically suffers 20% damage. This does not however necessarily place the base out of commission. A base can still function at a level commensurate with its damage.
Bases require a certain number of reserve personnel to staff them and new or deactivated bases cannot activate unless sufficient reserves are available. Each base has a set defense value that is the same for ground, air and indirect defense. Air and Naval bases generate supply due to the unique nature of the class of unit that they service. These values are listed in the table below:
| Base | Staff | Defense | Supply | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barracks | 500 | 1560 | 0 | |
| Air-Field | 850 | 1560 | 30% | |
| Sea-Pier | 1250 | 1560 | 30% |
Bases offer no entrenchment bonuses but they can be supplemented with Fortifications that do.
Bases are not dependent upon Military Complexes and can also be constructed on industrial complexes or town/city hexes. However each military fabrication facility is automatically furnished with a Base unit for the purpose of reserving fresh, newly fabricated units.
Barracks bases service land units and are vital to their repair.
Barracks should be located near your land borders so that land combat units have a nearby repair facility when defending your border or attacking a neighboring Region.
Land units can re-fuel and re-supply from any friendly supplied hex, so it is not necessary for Barracks to generate supplies.
If a barracks is captured by an enemy all of the units reserved in the barracks will attempt to deploy, but only the first 10 will succeed - the remainder will be destroyed.
Barracks can also be constructed near airfields or sea-piers if these air and sea facilities are to be used as major deployment hubs for land units. For instance, you might want to reserve all of your Marines near a sea-pier for quick amphibious deployment, or Airborne units in a barracks near a handy airfield.
Airfields are special because they service Air Units. Since fixed-wind air units can only land and re-fuel at airfields or aircraft-carriers, airfields are very important. And for the same reasons, airfields are capable of generating supplies (see table above).
Only ten aircraft can permanently land, re-fuel and resupply at an airfield at one time. Excess aircraft must circle the field and wait for their turn to land. In this fashion, over 100 aircraft can utilize the same airfield at the same time.
If an airfield is deactivated or destroyed then its reserved air units will automatically deploy and fly away to the nearest friendly active airfield.
Sea-piers service naval units and hold them in reserve. Sea-piers are special because they are the only source of supply for non-land hexes. Sea-piers generate supply that then flows along the coast where the sea-pier is located. This supply effect dissipates as the distance increases away from the sea-pier. You should move your naval units close to the sea-pier when re-supplying them for this reason.
Naval vessels enter the sea-pier unit to be placed into reserve or for repair. Otherwise the sea-pier is considered to be a land hex, and it is not possible for deployed naval units to move there.
Reserved units deployed from the sea-pier depart very slowly and are subject to the 10 units/per stack limit. The first 10 ships to deploy will block other ships from deploying until the sea-pier has been cleared and there is an available slot in the stack. When a sea-pier is captured or destroyed the first 10 navel units in reserve there will deploy, but the remainder will be destroyed.
The official defensive "Emplacement", a sort of mini-Fortification unit was removed from the game. I refer to the following military facilities as "emplacements":
Air Defense emplacements (AA) and Advanced Laser AA emplacements can both attack enemy aircraft at a base range of 125 km. The air attack values:
| Unit | Close | Mid | High Air | Combat Time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AD | 620 | 740 | 40 | 8 | |
| AAD | 825 | 760 | 45 | 10 |
These air attack values make them more powerful AA than any mobile units in the game.
Radar stations lift the fog of war for a distance of 12 hexes (190 km). Advanced Radar stations have a slightly longer range of 225 km and staffs of 500 or 600. These make good border defense emplacements early in the game.
Supply depots have a supply ratio of 20% (0.2 out of 1). They require a staff of 750 and have low defensive values (1500). They are used to generate supply in remote areas, or to supplement existing sources of supply.
Fortifications have a higher defensive value (2160) than other emplacements (900) or bases (1560). Most civilian industrial facilities have the same defensive value as a fortification. Fortifications are defensive structures with no staff but they offer a 100-point entrenchment bonus to units residing in its hex. This would make a fortification a good place to shelter from enemy artillery.
Fortifications make good border protection "hard-points" that do not risk reserves or equipment.
The military "Units" of your Region's armed forces are classified into three "Services" - Army, Air Force and Navy. Missiles are a class unto themselves since they are utilized by all three services. Since the units of these three Services move in a distinct terrestrial environment such land, sea and air, they represent three major "super-classes". The deployed units of the same super-class on an individual map hex are referred to as a "stack" of units.
Each super-class of units consists of a number of "classes" of unit such as Infantry, Tank, Fighter aircraft, patrol aircraft, aircraft carrier, destroyer and submarine. Each class consists of a large number of unit "Types" such as Garrison, Engineer, W-2 MLRS, Supply Truck, F-15 Tomcat, P-3 Orion ASW aircraft, C-130 Transport aircraft, Nimitz-Class Destroyer, BB-61 class Battleship, FF-7 Frigate and SS-21 Seawolf submarine.
The following chart lists all classes of SR2020 Units and Equipment.
Before a new Unit can be fabricated your Region must possess a design for it and that design must first be researched. Unit designs are closely associated with your "Tech Level" and prerequisite technologies. Unit designs and other research subjects currently being researched are known as "Projects".
All research, including Unit design research is performed at military Research Centers and these facilities are controlled from the Research Department.
The more research centers that you construct, the more Projects that your will be able to research at one time. Forty RCs is the most that you are likely to need.
In addition to constructing Research centers, you must also fund your research efforts. Depending upon how many RCs you operate, this can be a enormously expensive undertaking.
Research funding can be apportioned in three different ways: Efficiency, Technology Level and Project Development. Efficiency spending speeds all research and reduces its cost. Tech-Level spending is directed at improving the quality of your research centers - incorporating newly discovered technologies into them so that they can move to new levels of technical achievement. Project development funding goes directly to finance projects-in-progress and speed them to completion.
Most unit designs only become available for research at a certain inherent Tech level and often require you to research or otherwise acquire various base technologies required for the unit's research and construction (prerequisites). Long before they become available these potential Projects are listed in the Available to Research Sub-Panel. This list contains the names of various areas of study such as "Technology" and "Medicine", each of which expand into a list of potential research projects.
See Research Panels.
The Military Designs sub-panel is structured similar to the "Available to Research" one, but instead of research subject headers, its list box contains the names of unit classes that each expand to display potential unit designs that can be selected to become research projects on their own.
Since research is both expensive and time-consuming, it is important to research only those unit designs and other projects that most benefit your Region. In general it is efficient to research the latest model of each class of unit, when the new unit's specifications are markedly superior to what you have in the field or what is currently in your research queue.
Unit designs can also be traded for or stolen via espionage from other Regions. Trading and selling designs can be quite lucrative. The going price for these projects is often based upon the cost of the original research so the price can be in the billion-dollar range.
Transferring physical Units to other Regions is a fairly straight-forward proposition; however when you trade a unit design to another Region then its prerequisite technology is transferred with it. So if you trade the design for a phaser tank to another, then you are also giving them Phaser Technology and all of the technologies associated with that technology.
A Unit's large, complete Technical Readout window:
appears whenever you double-click on a unit design name. This window is packed with information regarding the combat performance of the selected unit and includes such vital statistics as technical level, cargo capacity, fuel usage, speed, offensive and defensive values, manufacturing details, country of origin, movement time, reaction time, default strength, stealth, spotting strength and plane and missile capacity.
Use the Unit Technical Readout to research the units best suited to your intended use. Front-line combat units should possess both range, attack and defense values. Recon units need speed and range. Artillery should possess good range and defense values as well as carry a lot of supplies.
Infantry needs high close attack and close defense values in order to neutralize dug-in enemy garrison troops.
Aircraft should possess good range and be hard to target. "Profile" is another word for stealth - the higher the Profile specification, the more stealthy an aircraft will be.
Missile platforms such as ships must be capable of loading the size of missiles that you are fabricating. Missiles for hitting specific targets must be direct-fire.
For more information see Unit Statistics and Specifications.
New Units must be constructed from a unit design that you have obtained by default, research, espionage or trade. These units are constructed at "fabs" or may be obtained from un-solicited diplomatic offers. Units can be auto-built by the Defense Minister or can be built "to order" by the player.
A military unit fabrication facility or "fab", such as a naval fabrication facility, can be constructed from the Defense Facilities Panel. When the construction of a new fab is initiated on an empty hex, the construction of a companion military complex (hub) and a reserve base node are automatically begun in the hex as well.
Completed fabs are listed on the main DD Defense panel under Production/All Production. The operation of too many active fabs can result in CB against your Region, since your neighboring units see a large nearby unit fabrication capacity (MilCap) as a threat. You can deactivate unused fabs to reduce CB and to free up reserve units, however this will also increase your Region's unemployment.
When you order the fabrication of new units you either select "All Production" from the Defense panel, or you select a specific fab/hex from its list of active fabs. If you have selected "All Production" on the Defense panel then the DM will select the first available fab from the list to queue you unit construction order to. Otherwise you must select the specific fab that you want to produce the units(s) - this is the best way.
[from GIJoe597:] "...military buildings always work at 100% capacity when you have the work force. Supply, loyalty, do not affect them at all. So you do not need to build the rails/roads and waste the upkeep cost of them."
Completed units are normally placed into reserve at a military base located on the same complex as its fab. However it is often more expedient to have newly emerging units auto-deploy and then automatically proceed to a remote "rally-point" of your choosing. The default rally-point is the hex where the unit was fabricated.
Rally-points are set using the Main Defense panel's "All Reserves" list. When a Reserve base is selected from this list the "Set Rally Point" button appears which allows you to set a RP on the map.
Units auto-built by the Defense Minister have no auto-deploy option so they always go into reserve, however when the player manually deploys them then the units will move to their rally-point.
All unit construction requires military goods, money and build time. Player controlled construction is controlled from Unit Fabrication Panel. Units can be built on a "one off" basis or can be built "Continually", serially, one at a time.
Use the unit technical readout to select units best suited to your intended use.
Missile platforms such as ships must be capable of loading the size of missiles that you are fabricating. Missiles for hitting targets must be direct-fire. Indirect fire units will do damage hex-wide but cannot target individual units or structures.
Indirect-fire ships cannot defend themselves against nearby enemy direct-fire ships. Choose ships with long-range, direct-fire characteristics for use in shore bombardment.
Airborne operations will require a well-balanced force of air-drop capable units.
Amphibious operations sometimes do not have a sea-port to use as their target beach-head therefore amphibious ships loaded with amphibious land units are required. Be sure to bring along some Engineers to build a proper sea-pier and other military base to further your invasion.
If you allow the Defense Minister to auto-build units it will likely build a balanced mix of units selected from the highest tech level of each class. The DM will use all of your active fabs. You can change this mix to be offensive or defensive in nature. Units auto-built by the DM also have the option of being built stronger than normal in smaller quantities or weaker in greater quantities.
The problem with auto-build is that the DM's construction selections may not match your own judgment or at worst may result in totally inappropriate selections. For example, bridging units are in the same class as supply trucks and the DM is fond of building supply-class units. However if the supply class unit design with the highest tech-level happens to be a bridging unit then the DM may begin mass-producing bridging units. As in most cases, here it is best to allow the DM to supplement your own management efforts.
Update 6 (Gold Edition)
Some if these problems have been mitigated with the following new Excluded/Favorites features.
All unit require money, resources and time in order to fabricate them. If you are on a low budget, time schedule or are short on resources then it would be prudent for your to choose the units to fabricate using these details from the unit's technical readout. This section will tell you which units can be build the fastest, the cheapest, what resources you must have in stock in order to build the unit.
All deployed units have a persistent Annual Maintenance cost associated with them and this is also listed on the TR.
Units such as nuclear-powered submarines have an associated Uranium Cost associated with their launch and this cost is also listed in the TR.
Only Military Units in reserve can be traded in SR2020, but neither side in a diplomatic exchange is permitted to know what units the other side has in reserve for security reasons.
Units received in a trade arrive in a damaged state at a pre-determined reserve base. By default, this point is the base nearest to the receiving region's capital. You can change this receiving point from the Defense Department's main panel. Prior to Update 6, the newly arrived units arrived in a reserved status, not in a repair state. After Update 6 these new units immediately arrive in reserve and start the repair process. When the unit is repaired it will automatically deploy.
After SR2020 Update 6/Gold Edition, one Region can offer Units to another Region through diplomatic channels, either in Trade or as a gift. The other Region can then offer its Units or other products as a counter-offer.
Prior to this Update/Edition only the player(s) could offer military Units in a trade. See Exchanges of Military Units
Player Unit offers must originate from the Diplomatic Exchange Window. A player might offer Units to another Region for purely economic reasons - the player wants to unload surplus units in exchange for profit or for some product that is needed by their own Region.
But Unit exchanges also can have a strategic or tactical motivation - suppose that you want to oppose China without an actual DOW. You could instead supply China's enemies with your own units. Perhaps you could donate gifts of amphibious transport ships to Taiwan. This might assist them in transporting their hundreds of tanks off their island to attack the Chinese mainland.
SR2020 "reserves" include your Defense Department personnel that have been recruited into you Region's armed forces, as well as all of the military hardware Units that you own, but have not deployed onto the game Map.
The relationship of Reserve Units and Reserve personnel is an important SR2020 concept. Reserved units are hardware - the vehicles, aircraft, ships, weapons, armor and other equipment that are used to equip a deployed military Unit.
Military facilities are buildings, factories and fortifications that house the specialized equipment and weapons that constitute your over-all military/industrial complex.
Reserve personnel ("reserves") are the recruited soldiers, sailors, airmen and technicians that, when deployed, staff your military's deployed units and active facilities.
The number of Reserve and Deployed personnel in your armed forces is displayed on the Defense Spending Panel. Your ability to deploy your military Units from fabrication and Unit Reserve depends upon the availability of this reservoir of military personnel. You will also be unable to activate new military facilities such as sea-piers, land fabrication units and supply depots unless your Reserve pool contains sufficient reserve personnel to staff them.
Your Region's citizens are attracted into enlisting in your military's reserve pool by your Military Salary setting. In order to build your reserve pool you should increase you "Military Salaries" setting or issue a Cabinet Priority to your DM to "Increase Reserve Personnel".
Another way to replenish your reserve pool is to deactivate unused military fabs and bases. This will free up the personnel that staff these facilities and return them to their reserve pool where they can be used to man newly deployed Units.
The purpose of placing your Units into reserve is two-fold - it saves you the fuel and maintenance costs associated with their deployment and at the same time shields them from detection by other Regions.
By default newly fabricated Units are placed into reserve at a base located on the same hex where they were constructed. Alternatively you can specify "rally-points" where these new Units will automatically move to after they exit their fab.
All of your Reserve Units are listed on the Unit Command Panel.
The reserved Units located at any of your individual military bases can be viewed on your Defense Reserves/Deployed Panel.
Any units that you intend to give to other Regions must first be placed into reserve.
You should think twice about attacking a seemingly "undefended" Region such as Cuba or the U.K. that are currently at peace. They may very well turn out to have a very large armed force hidden from you in reserve.
Bases such as barracks, air-fields and sea-piers house and protect reserve units. Any damage sustained by these bases also damages the units inside. Deactivation of bases that contain reserve units may destroy some of those units. Aircraft fare the best since all reserved aircraft seem to be able to fly away from deactivated bases unharmed. Other types of units cannot clear a deactivated base as quickly and immediately fill up their hex to its maximum of 7-10 units. This blocks the deployment of the remaining units still in reserve which are destroyed.
The same losses occur when you capture a region - you do not win the defeated region's reserve units because they are destroyed during the captured bases' transition to their new owner.
The use of nuclear weapons (nukes) is a Lobby game setting. There is also a second setting there that allows the player to select the level of foreign and domestic disapproval that the use of nukes will generate in the game.
Nukes are delivered by use of bombs or missiles and most of these units come in two models - one nuke and another with a conventional warhead. These can be equipped with either smaller-yield "tactical" warheads or larger-"strategic" payloads, depending on the unit selected. The largest nuclear warheads are those delivered by ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) and MRBMs (Medium Range Ballistic Missiles). Submarines launch both ICBMs and MRBMs. Smaller nuclear warheads can be delivered by land, ship or air-launched cruise missiles.
It is possible to intercept missile units, but due to their speed, only MDI (Missile Defense Initiative) capability offers effective protection against ballistic missiles.
Because of the method of delivery, the use of nuclear weaponry will always be directly traceable to its source region. There is no way within the game to clandestinely use nukes. Any region discovered employing nuclear weaponry in the game will become subject to varying levels of CB from other regions and from the United Nations. Your Domestic Approval Rating will also suffer.
There are two safeguards against the accidental release on nukes - the nuclear authorization button of the DD/DEFCON sub-panel and the "Nuclear Weapons Permitted" button found on the Unit Command/Individual Rules of Engagement sub-panel.
Nuclear weapons are expensive and take a long time to build.
In general, the use of nukes is not as devastating as one might think. Small and medium warheads will cause wide-spread damage to its target hex, if interception does not occur. Generally only the largest nukes will totally destroy a target city and all of the units in the target hex.
The visual effect can be startling - the whole screen is obscured by the sudden bright flash of the detonating nuke.
Each launch of and ICBM is announced by the U.N. after-the-fact via an e-mail which includes details of the strike or its interception.
Targeting is where an attacking unit spots an enemy target that is within the attacker's attack range, in order to bring its weapons to bear upon the target.
Obviously you cannot target what you cannot spot so the attacker's spotting range and the stealth of the target play crucial roles in targeting. All of this takes place under the game's Fog-of-War (FoW) that tends to cloak stealthy units and those that are stationary. Recon units like land recon units, spies and patrol aircraft can be of great help in targeting.
The stealth or "Profile" of the target reduces the ability of an attacker to spot it. But if an enemy target can be spotted then it can be attacked and in SR2020 attacks always succeed.
Enemy facilities such as bases and factories cannot be attacked or "targeted" by the player unless there is a mobile enemy unit such as a supply truck within the hex. If this is not the case then a Spy Unit can be sent as an in-hex spotter.
Some land units like recon and artillery come with a "Move and Fire" penalty that makes their targeting less effective when they are on the move. Motion also cuts a unit's stealth in half. Firing cuts it in half again.
Also, some units with gun turrets have a limited arc of fire that can inhibit their targeting ability.
AIs have a habit of fixating upon a single target until that target is destroyed. You can use this to your advantage by diverting an enemy's attention towards attacking one of your units while your other units attack and destroy the distracted enemy unit. Units also have a set rate of fire (initiative) which does not allow them to fire twice within a certain period of time. Once an enemy unit has fired on your decoy unit, your remaining units are free to attack and destroy the enemy unit as it reloads.
It is possible to turn the FoW off by using the game settings. This will lift the FoW for all regions, not just your own. Turning FoW off also tends to speed up the game.
SR2020 has an idiosyncrasy where, despite the official attack range of a unit, every attack unit in the game is capable of attacking outside its own hex.
For example, the official land attack ranges of Garrison, Infantry, tank and AT units is under 8 km., yet, in the game, each of these units can attack outside its 16 km hex.
The most annoying aspect of this game glitch is that the thousands of Garrison units in SR2020 each have official attack ranges on just 1 km. Yet can each Garrison can reach out and attack units in surrounding hexes, using close-combat attack values. These basic Garrison units that hide inside of a city can reach out and seriously damage tank units that are at least 8 km outside of the city!
Non-missile direct-fire units are capable of targeting individual enemy units and facilities if the target is within the attacker's line-of-sight. All of the destructive power of the weapon can be brought to bear on a single target with its destructive power reduced only by the defensive values of the target. Most targets can sustain multiple hits so targeting using multiple attacking units is a good idea.
In SR2020 attacks always succeed - there is no concept of diminished accuracy due to poor targeting or increased range. Efficiency may play a role however.
There are a few direct-fire missile units, such as the TL Russian SS-26 Stone (Iskander E) Penetration that do not require LOS.
Indirect-fire weapons spread their damage across a hex and so cannot be used to target individual units or structures. Even if the target is alone in its hex, the damage that it takes from indirect-fire will be less.
IF is usually "ballistic" fire as well, which means that the target does not need to be within the attacker's line-of-sight.
Indirect-fire weapons can be a poor choice for attacking structures. On an industrial hex the indirect-fire damage is distributed between the central complex and the surrounding factory nodes. Each day at midnight the structure will all be repaired by a certain percentage. If this percentage is greater than or equal to indirect damage then the attack is futile. The percentage of the repair depends upon the hex supply level, infrastructure spending and the enemy region's resources.
Only enemy units can be targeted, but neutral units have been known to take damage due to being present in an enemy hex that is taking indirect-fire. For this reason, prior to Update 6 units in U.N. waters could not be targeted with indirect-fire.
Your units share spotting and other information with your DM and with other units.
Increased communications from tech advances such as "Internet research" and "Real-time Communications" and from communications satellites improves the efficiency rating of all of your Units.
All of your military Units - land, sea, air and facility units are worthless without a source of Supply. No supply = no beans, no bullets, no buildings and no billets. Supply is generated by cities (settlements), bases and factories. It flows across your Region via roads and railroads where it furnishes fuel, material and energy to your Units.
Combat is impossible without the logistical support furnished by the Supply system. Defensive combat within your own Regions is usually not a problem, unless you have moved your Units to some remote hex far from roads and improvements. Naval units in your supplied home waters are automatically re-supplied with fuel, supplies and missiles as long as they stay on your supplied sea hexes. Aircraft can only re-supply from air-fields, or in some cases from air tankers or aircraft carriers.
In heavily supplied allied Regions their supply will sometimes "spread" over the friendly border and into your Region. However you will still receive your own supplies, not theirs.
At sea, supply is generated by sea-piers and these supplies "flow" along the sea hexes along your coasts. This ocean supply effect decreases as you move farther from the sea-pier. Transport ships can be used to re-supply naval units in un-supplied waters. Friendly Oceanic Complexes (oil platforms) can be used to resupply your ships and landed helicopters and VTOLs.
When invading another region you can quickly out-run your "supply line" that reaches back to your established Region. Since new supply is generated by "improvements" like cities and bases, it is possible to generate new sources of supply as you advance and capture the enemy's structures. However it takes two days for a captured city or base to begin producing and distributing supply again and any such structure that you captured will automatically be damaged during the turnover of ownership. Otherwise your force will have to rely upon supply trucks and aircraft, or else they will have to stop and wait unit the supply line from your established Region spreads to their current location.
This is why it is vital that you include supply units with any land or sea force of units that you deploy. Supply units have the ability to load discreet supplies such as fuel and cargo from supplied hexes and then deliver them to your supply-hungry units at the battle-front. Land units can receive re-supply from supply trucks or from supply aircraft that hover overhead.
Supply units air-dropped into enemy territory will land empty of supplies, so your airborne assault teams must rely upon their on-board supplies and fuel or else receive them from fly-over transport aircraft.
Ships can be re-supplied from tankers, carriers and transport ships that are not otherwise full of passenger units. Be aware that some transport ships are huge and take an extremely long time to re-load, even in very well supplied hexes.
If you give your DM control of you supply units it will do a pretty good job re-supplying your units. Otherwise give your supply units plenty of initiative via the ROEs and set them to "Patrol" between the battle-line and a well-supplied hex.
This bears repeating - include supply units with any land or sea force of units that you deploy.
If you set your combat units with enough initiative in the ROE's, they will leave the battle-line on their own once they run low on supplies. Artillery runs out of supplies quickly and are infamous for doing this. This is an awkward, hard-to-manage situation.
But a worse situation is when you land units do run out of supplies at the battle-line. Even if they have fuel, they will not move until they are re-supplied. This is referred to as "Supply freeze". Land units without supplies will not accept your commands. When you check their status box, under "Orders" it will say "Awaiting supplies". Meanwhile your frozen units are defenseless from enemy attack.
Another situation where unit freeze can occur is if your units are located in a neutral region on a transit treaty. If you DOW this Region then suddenly all of the supplies will disappear from your Units and they will all "supply freeze" until your supply units can re-supply them.
Hotspots are hexes that you manually mark for special attention from your Defense Minister (DM). Hotspots can be set by right-clicking on the Map and selecting the "Create Hotspot" option from the pop-up menu and are controlled from the Hotspots Panel. From the panel you will be permitted to select the force size, air support, force focus (offensive/defensive), actions and the priority of the selected action. Hotspot "Configuration Settings" include: battle support, attack, sea attack, sea supply, land transport, air support, supplies, assistance, defense and garrison.
Hotspots are a good example of the best way to use your DM - conduct your wars yourself, but give your DM specific tasks to assist with. For instance if your region is about to be attacked them you could set a row of "Defense" hotspots along your threatened border. If the enemy attacks then you can set "Air Support" hotspots at heavily attacked hexes.
Or if you want to attack a Region, you could try to set a row of "Attack" hotspots along the proposed battle-line and then match them with some more "Supplies" hotspots. Again set "Air Support" hotspots on hexes where enemy resistance is strong.
You must remember to un-lock the DM lockout of at least some of your units in order for the DM to have units that it can command.
The problem with many hotspots is that the DM's response is often slow and involves too few units, even if you have specified a maximum priority and force size.
Unfortunately the "Land Transport" hotspot does not transport your un-mounted units like the "Air Transport" and "Sea Transport" commands do. The only thing that the "Land Transport" hotspot does is to send supply trucks to the hotspot so that you can load them manually and then command them to unload your foot-units as usual.
SR2020 Naval Units and Submarines
Satellites in SR2020 are pseudo-units manufactured and launched from the Operations Department Satellite Coverage Sub-Panel. The construction and deployment of satellites requires a ground-built aero-space infrastructure that consists of an Aerospace fab, a Mission Control unit and an Orbital Launch unit.
Satellites are purely administrative "units" that are not visible or controllable. Satellites can be build (ordered) and launched. There are three types: Communications, Reconnaissance and Missile Defense (MDI). Communications satellites improve your military efficiency. Recon satellites help you see through the FoW. MDI satellites automatically attack enemy ICBMs.
Full-coverage requires you to launch 20 satellites of each type. This is equivalent to turning off the Fog-of-War - for your region only. Full recon coverage will reveal 95% of the units on the map. Stealth units such as Spys and stealth aircraft will not automatically be spotted, especially if they remain stationary.
AI regions such as the U.S. France and Russia may start out with Space facilities but AI Regions never construct or launch satellites.
Military strategy deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy. Strategies are a broad, far-reaching plan for victory, such as how to win a war; "Tactics" are more localized plans or methods used to accomplish immediate goals, such as how to win a battle. SR2020 is classified as a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game so obviously strategies are an important part of it.
In a recent "After-Action Report" a player, who was playing as the U.S., narrated his winning strategy that allowed him to become "Supreme Ruler". The elements of this strategy were as follows:
So to summarize, in this example the important strategic elements were:
When you begin a new game you have the option of choosing the "Scheduled Game End" which is how long the game will last. In other words you can choose the maximum amount of time that you will be given to win the game. Here it may be tempting to select "None" for a no-stress open-ended game. However for the military strategy game this is not recommended.
Since you will have about 183 Regions to either conquer or ally with the game will take a long time to play, both in game time (4-12 years) and in real-time (48-144 hours or more). This is OK - it is your time after-all. But the problem is that the longer the game lasts, the slower it becomes - as more game years pass, your unit's slow down and each game day takes longer to execute in real-time.
The game starts out fast and you units will rush across the map if you set the game clock to its fastest speed. A game day may take 20 seconds in real-time or faster. The reason for the gradual and profound slow-down is that each game year almost every Region on the map (183 of them!) builds more and more units. Regions that are drawn into wars automatically go into a "massive military buildup" mode. This means that each successive game year the game engine has more units to manage - move, navigate, fight, update statistics, refuel, etc.
I won't belabor this, but the point is that you should set some time limit to motivate you to finish the game as soon as possible. The longer the game draws out, the less enjoyable it will become to play, unless you are very patient.
The size of your Region will strongly affect your war strategy. Large wealthy regions may start out with a strong military, limited allies and abundant resources. Small ones may need to cultivate many allies and trading partners in order to assure years of managed growth, in order to accumulate the wealth, population and resources for successful military adventures.
Regions with protective geographic features such as oceans or mountains may be able to scrimp on defensive military expenditures and focus on offensive ones.
For all military strategies, it is important to intelligently and creatively integrate your Army, Navy, Air Force and their Missiles into joint forces that complement and strengthen one another.
The following scenarios are examples of the type of joint operations that are necessary to successfully winning wars in SR2020:
Strategic bombing is a strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy Region by destroying its economic ability to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces. It is a systematically organized and executed attack from the air on targets deemed vital to an enemy's war-making capacity.
The Strategic Bomber class of units, such as the Russian TU-95KM Bear-C, have inherent Bomb loads and can attack ground targets without loading missile units. Furthermore SBUs can attack from mid-level air and escape low-level AA.
Other strategic weapons are the long or medium-range ICBMs, such as the TL 119 U.S. UGM-116 Trident III-C1 missile and the nuclear-armed fighter-bomber aircraft such as the U.S. FB-111G Aardvark. Another strategic weapon is the long-range air-launched cruise missile is the U.S. AGM-86C ALCM with a range of 2500 km.
SB is not effective in SR2020 due the difficulty in destroying enemy buildings built around a sustaining hub/complex. Furthermore, any commodity or product that you deprive your enemy of will just be obtained on the world market.
Although this topic is intended to explain war strategies, the game can also be won through Diplomatic, Unification, Approval Rating and Total Score (Complete) strategies.
As was explained above, tactics are what win battles. Your grand war strategy is executed using intelligent, efficient, aggressive tactics.
Tactics are generally classified into two types: Defensive and Offensive, and there will be discussed at great length. However there are some other more general tactics that are vital to both classes.
Before you deploy your military units you need to first consider the tactics that you will employ to supply them and keep them supplied. The more units that you are marshaling the more robust your supply tactics must be.
Supply flows from land, sea and air units and from your Region's infrastructure. Keeping your units within your Region's or your ally's supplied hexes and your supply needs will generally be met automatically by the infrastructure. Supply will flow from your cities, bases and factories via your seas, roads and railroads and most of your in-country units will be kept healthy and supplied with fuel and ammunition. But desolate locations far from roads have poor or no supplies.
Once you units cross enemy borders you receive no infrastructure supply at all. Initially your units will be forced to consume only the supplies that they carried in. Before those run out they need for you to move in supplementary supplies using mobile supply units. At this point you need some serious supply tactics to keep fuel and ammunition flowing to your invasion forces, and to protect the supplying units.
Newly captured enemy cities take two days be become supplied and these supplies must then spread across the former enemy's infrastructure, if there is any. If your captured Region lacks good roads and supply sources, then you must build some.
Land units will freeze-up and refuse to move once they run completely out of supplies, even if they have sufficient fuel to move. Their current orders will read "Awaiting supply". Any land or sea unit that runs out of fuel will come to a halt until it is at least partially re-fueled and re-supplied.
Land units on the battle-line can be re-supplied from land or air. Your supply tactics here reply upon supply trucks that can patrol between the battle-line and supply-points located behind friendly lines. Otherwise a good tactic is to arrange for supply aircraft to fly over-head and air-drop critical supplies to your ground-units.
Another supply tactic is to set your unit's ROE for high initiative which will allow them to seek out supplies on their own automatically, if they are under DM command. Aircraft will do this without special ROEs. However this can present a problem because once the unit is withdrawn from the location where you placed it on the battle-line, it will not return.
Naval units on patrol or on the gun-line can be supplied from transport ships or from aircraft. You must either have you ships escorted by supply ships, make re-fueling calls at friendly ports or arrange for rendezvous with supply aircraft. Aircraft carriers are also supply ships, so a good tactic is to have them supply their escort ships and embarked aircraft.
Most aircraft can only obtain their fuel and ammunition while landed on an air-field or aircraft carrier, so a good tactic might be to have the aircraft patrol between an air-field and some other important location.
Some aircraft can be supplied with fuel from tanker aircraft while air-borne. So your supply tactics could involve stationing air tankers at convienient locations where you air-refuelable AC can access them.
Helos are the most fortunate since they automatically re-supply while landed on friendly supplied ground or aboard oil platforms. The non-attack helos are also supply aircraft themselves and can go on and supply other units.
Most supply units are nearly defenseless so your supply tactics must include ways to keep safe from enemy attack.
Units on the battle-line are constantly in need of repair and so you must establish tactics to provide for these. The first part of this is to supply plenty of barracks, air-fields and sea-piers for your units to repair at.
You can set the ROEs to grant your units sufficient initiative so that the DM will automatically order them to move to repair facilities when the units require it. The degree of damage that a unit will accept can also be configured via the ROEs.
Defensive tactics are those devoted to protecting your Region, its units, cities, facilities and resources from enemy attack. Border patrol, combat air patrol, garrison defenses, anti-aircraft defenses and sentry duty are all examples of routine defense tactics that can be performed to defend your Region's assets.
Each unit has an inherent defensive value for each of the four forms of attack: ground, air, close combat and indirect. A unit's stealth is a measure of how difficult it is to spot and target the unit. Some of these defensive qualities can be amplified with researched technical advances in armor and stealth.
A great defensive advantage is that when defending on your own supplied territory your units are automatically re-fueled and re-supplied without supplementary supply units.
Terrain lends a defensive advantage in terms of reduced mobility and spotting ability for attackers. Bases, cities and facilities add a defensive advantage as well since attackers are forced to attack using their close combat values.
Good defensive tactics will take all of these factors into consideration.
Because of the SR2020 diplomatic system, all DOWs are announced via E-mail, so it is unlikely that you will not receive prior warning of the beginning of hostilities. However due to the FoW, if you lack good surveillance then it is possible to be surprised by a land attack or an unexpected enemy amphibious invasion.
Your cities, complexes and fortification's first line of defense are their garrison troops. These are special units that are controlled by your Defense Minister. They are tough, stealthy and well defended, entrenched as they are in the center of your improved hexes. Garrisons can attack outside their hexes to any of the adjoining hexes. They can also attack close-air aircraft.
Up to seven garrisons can be assigned to any hex that contains a central "hub" - a city, complex or fortification. You can manually assign garrison units to a hex from the Land Department or allow your DM to control garrisoning automatically.
If you have a large Region then a good tactic is to take manual control of your garrisons and post them heavily along your border regions. This is often better than having you DM garrison an un-controlled number of hexes throughout your entire region.
A small Region on the other hand may need all of the garrisons that it can hold to ensure its defense from large hostile neighbors.
Captured Regions are bound to be be full of garrison troops placed there by the defeated AI. The 'G' key on the keyboard toggles a GUI garrison overlay that highlights all garrisoned hexes on the map.
Radar coverage is a sort of passive defense, but intelligence on enemy locations and deployment is important defensive information. Reconnaissance is difficult due to the games FoW, so radar is a good way to pierce the fog and let you see what is going on across your border.
You can park radar land units in your border towns or you can launch patrol aircraft that owe their long spotting strengths to their onboard long-range radar. All ships are equipped with some type of radar as well, but that of missile-capable combat vessels is the best. There is even a fixed radar unit that you can construct at strategic locations.
Border regions are important defensive lines that in wartime must be fortified and patrolled. Border radar stations and patrol aircraft will assure that your region is not attacked by surprise.
Enemy infantry will attempt to use roads to invade so all highway border crossings should be protected. Border towns should be garrisoned with Garrison units and infantry units in the.
Railroads cannot be used by infantry but they can and will move off-road.
It is important that your border units to not accidently cross a non-allied border and trigger a War On Incursion (WOI). Be sure that you set your Path-Around Option and pathing options to assure that this does not happen.
A potentially hostile border should be fortified with Fortification units and perhaps even Military Fortress units.
Border crossings should be protected with either fortifications or nearby barracks. Fortifications are useless without Garrison units or combat land units such as infantry to defend the hex.
You will want to supply close air support for your border defenders, so air-fields should be placed at intervals between crossings, but back from the border at least three hexes for protection.
The use of air patrols is a good defensive tactic. Risky borders should be patrolled by patrol aircraft units (ACUs) - ASWACS or JSTAR aircraft if you have them. All patrol ACUs, particularly ASWACS, can spot a long distance into neighboring territory and allow you to keep tabs on nearby foreign units.
ACUs can be set to patrol by selecting the unit, flying it to the end-point of the proposed patrol route and then issuing a "Patrol" order. That order is completed with a click on the hex at the other end of the patrol route. This is as close as you can come to setting actual way-points in SR2020.
The ROE Individual ROE Sub-Panel of Patrol ACUs should be adjusted so that they fly a stealthy patrol and avoid enemy contact. As mid-air targets they are only vulnerable to enemy mid-air capable AA and enemy aircraft.
It is good tactics to always heavily defend your region's Capital city. If your Capital is captured by an enemy then it could be the end of the game for you. Your DM knows this and if he controls your units and Garrisons then your capital will automatically be well defended by him.
Each capital contains a barracks of defense units can be kept there in reserve if need be. Towns surrounding you Capital should be garrisoned as well with heavy numbers of Garrison units. Roads leading to the capital can be fortified and guarded. Nearby air-support completes the package.
Once the battle begins you should use the tactic of forming your land combat units into defensive formations. The best way to do this is by "layering" your defenses. Units with the best armor and shortest attack ranges should face the enemy with longer-range, softer units protected to the rear.
Your tough armored units should be placed on the front line where they can project their fire-power while at the same time protecting more vulnerable units behind them from attack. These can include APCs and tanks with a few anti-tank (AT) units in the mix.
Behind your armored front line you can place your artillery. Artillery are soft targets but have long-ranges and will help attack approaching enemy units, perhaps even before they can reach your armor line.
Supply units can move in the rear, keeping the front-line units supplied with ammunition. Your artillery is especially ammo-hungry and the presence of supply trucks will assure that they can keep firing at their top rate.
In set-piece battles such as are being described, fuel is really not an issue.
AA units can also go into the third-echelon, so long as there is room to allow supply access.
If you can provide fortifications or use existing cities or structures for additional cover, then so much the better. These make good cover for AT units.
Top off your battle-line with close air support in the form of Fighter/Bombers like the A-10 and you have created a "Defense-in-Depth".
The DID tactic can be applied to naval and air warfare as well as on land.
Another good tactic is to attack an enemy unit with multiple units at the same time. One unit is rarely capable of destroying another healthy unit with just one shot, except for missiles. Enemy units will often retreat for repair if damaged beyond a certain level. But it is much better to destroy the unit out-right so that it cannot live to "fight again another day".
In order to do this you need to strengthen your attack on the enemy unit by attacking it with multiple units. Massed artillery is a good example of this as is the description of Defense-in-Depth above. With massed artillery, multiple weapons are capable of targeting the same unit or units that venture into their common "targeting area" or "field of fire". When two or more units can target the same enemy it is referred to as "overlapping fields of fire" (OFOF).
OFOF is what you need for assured kills on enemy units. The same concept can be used for AA units. If you space you anti-aircraft units apart by the correct number of hexes then you can create OFOF zones that will multiply the difficulty of enemy aircraft units destroying your AA.
Naval artillery can be massed as well, in order to create OFOF "kill zones" into which you can lure enemy ships.
The use of high ground is a good defensive tactic since it gives you a spotting range bonus, that enables you to better spot and target the enemy.
The Land Department's Map Filters Sub-Panel has a filter that will highlight terrain according to its elevation.
As has been pointed out before, in SR2020 if you cannot spot a unit then you cannot target it. But if you can target it, then you will always hit it. Therefore stealth is an excellent passive defense tactic. Stealthy land and air units are much less targetable and will therefore receive less enemy fire.
Technologies that increase your unit's stealth should be sought out and researched:
TL Technology
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Artillery tactics have already been addresses to some extent above but they play such an important defensive (and offensive) role that they bear separate discussion.
Massed artillery (AUs) is one of your most powerful and long-ranged land-based weapons. AUs are cheap and are often quick to fabricate, so producing and massing artillery is something that is within the capabilities of nearly every Region.
Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) units are among the longest range AUs. These AUs fire volleys of indirect-fire (saturation attack) rockets. MLRS units prior to technical level 102 are in generally inferior to conventional gun-artillery, however the more high tech units in general surpass conventional AUs in both range and striking power.
What makes massed artillery tactics so effective is that (in the standard "vanilla" game) enemy AIs rarely send large numbers of units to attack your defensive position. Therefore your massed artillery usually all get to fire upon the same one or two attacking enemy units. The chance of massed artillery being over-run by enemy infantry is small, especially if it is positioned behind protective armored units.
One weakness of all types of AUs is their short combat time, which is another way of stating that they need a great deal of supply. Artillery runs out of ammunition very quickly (7-8 hours for guns, 2-4 hours for MLRS). Artillery that is low on supply will not respond to your orders. If you wish to move them while they have a target in sight, you must first change their IROE to "Attack only Targets".
Many artillery units are missile launchers and others, like MLRS units, double as missile launchers. We discuss Missile tactics below.
AUs are soft targets and must constantly be protected from attack, usually by keeping them behind the line of battle.
The enemy Regions' AIs are not as smart as you, so they don't know how to mass artillery. Most enemy artillery that you encounter will be one or two pieces guarding enemy city or base hexes. The best defense against these is to move out of their range and then destroy them with fast-moving infantry, direct shore battery or with air-strikes.
The one situation where you will face massed enemy artillery is near enemy land fabs. Over the game years AIs will pump out dozens of units from each of its fabs and often they are never used. They just accumulate around the fab forming "super-bases". So you may encounter accidentialy massed enemy artillery there. See Attacking Super-Bases.
Moving out of range is usually not an option in this situation - you will want to attack the super-base with your own artillery and aircraft if possible. The solution is to move you artillery to some hex that contains defensive structures of some sort, like a city or base. Then entrench the units so that they will disapper from enemy spotters. Otherwise, quickly construct a Fortification or Military Fortress within range of the enemy artillery and entrench your own arillery there.
If the enemy artillery is unprotected by armored units then charge it with your infantry and armor. You will be surprised at how quickly the soft enemy units can be destroyed.
Anti-aircraft (AA) attack is one of your strongest defenses because the default strength of your AA units is greater than that of attacking enemy aircraft units. This combined with your "home-field" advantage of a strong source of ammunition supply for your AA units, makes AA a nearly perfect defense against enemy aircraft.
Your AA units are soft targets so you must defend them against land and sea attack.
Anti-air (AA) units (AAUs) are so powerful in SR2020 that homeland-defense AA tactics are almost a no-brainer. Simply place an AA unit in any of your city, base or factory hexes that you want to defend and they will be safe from the AI's attacking aircraft. The reasons for this are:
So the practical situation is that your homeland-defense AAUs are difficult to attack and that AIs are not smart enough to destroy them. Obviously this does not apply to multiplayer games where you may be facing human players.
Your unit formations inside you own region can easily be protected just as described above. However once you move you formations into enemy territory you leave behind your strong automatic supply infrastructure and move to where the enemy has the advantage and motivation to stage massive air-attacks on your formations. These air attacks must be met with by a massive AA defense in kind - take a lot of long-range AA with your army when you push into hostile territory. Choose AAUs with a long combat time and bring along plenty of supply trucks for them as well.
[submitted by sa_3_d911]
"To defeat the Buzz-saw tactic station 20 MIM-212 AA units around a garrisoned hex, 190 km away from the enemy Buzz-Saw. They will shoot down all of the Buzz-Saw's aircraft."
Commentary: This tactic applies to multiplayer games where a human player might attack you with a BS.
You need coastal defense tactics in order to protect your Region from amphibious attacks. Prior to Update 4 this was not an issue since AI Regions were too passive and stupid to manage to organize amphib landings. But now they can and do.
At any rate having patrol planes or patrol boats patrol you coast is a good defensive tactic. Lining you coast with patrolling submarines, missile launchers and big anti-ship artillery is probably over-kill.
It probably matters more too if your coast is on a busy waterway or on body of water that is heavily populated with warships, like the Black Sea or the Med.
Enemy amphibious attack groups consist mainly of poorly armed amphibious transport NUs but they may be escorted by heavier combat ships. In this case it is only necessary to defeat the escort ships and then the amphibs will be nearly defenseless. Depending upon the type and strength of the escort NUs, you only need to meet the amphib group with a more powerful naval force armed with anti-ship missiles like Harpoon or Exocet. Your heavier NUs can also combine their default naval gunfire capabilities to sink smaller enemy escorts.
It is likely that you may not be able to rush combat ships into position to intercept a surprise enemy amphib force. In this case attack it with multiple aircraft armed with anti-ship missiles. Keep you aircraft clear of the escort's AA. You can also use a combination of naval sea and air units to get the job done.
From what I have been told, the AI will only stage an amphib assault on a section of coast if it is un-defended. By "un-defended" I think that it means being free of land units. If this is true then only a token defense is necessary to protect a stretch of cost from amphib landings.
Defensive naval tactics like fleet operations are important in RL where groups of warships traditionally have battled fiercely and in large numbers in the open ocean. In SR2020 the only hostile fleets that you are likely to encounter in open waters are enemy amphibious attack groups headed for your coast or that of one of your allies. You are much more likely to encounter one lone enemy Naval Unit (NU) aimlessly wandering the ocean looking for trouble to get into.
Single enemy combat ships are more of a nuisance than a threat. The biggest risk is that they will attack and damage your transport ships as they pass nearby. Many of them will be out of fuel but can still attack with their ammunition supplies and perhaps missiles. In any case send some anti-ship aircraft and sink them with anti-ship missiles.
You are unlikely to encounter enemy submarines anywhere in the SR2020 game except along enemy coasts, near their home ports. Mostly enemy submarines and other surface ships sit tied to the dock at their sea-piers like big dumb ducks, until you attempt to invade their home waters. Then the subs will come out after your naval forces, along with their surface ship compatriots.
Traditionally naval combat groups such as task forces steam long distances in a defensive formation with the important "capital" ships and vulnerable tankers protected in the center, surrounded with smaller fast, armed escort ships acting as "screens" to fend off attacking ships and submarines before they can reach the aircraft carrier or other important "flag-ship".
Screens consist of submarines, destroyers and frigates that can detect and sink enemy submarines and other attacking vessels or aircraft. If it is a carrier group then the air overhead will be guarded by a Combat Air Patrol of Fighters or Interceptor naval aircraft.
Pickets are outlying patrol ships that serve as "early warning" sentries that detect and perhaps engage approaching enemy submarines and surface ships.
A radar picket is a radar-equipped ship, submarine, aircraft, or vehicle used to increase the radar detection range around a force to protect it from surprise attack. Often several detached radar units encircle a force to provide increased cover in all directions.
Typical NUs that are used for picket duty are patrol boats, corvettes, frigates and destroyers.
Aircraft carrier groups always set a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) to prevent the fleet from being attacked by hostile aircraft or "boggies". The CAP is usually Interceptor aircraft armed with air-to-air AA weapons. The Interceptor is especially designed to shoot down attacking enemy aircraft.
Although aircraft make excellent spotters, it is usually the powerful long-range radar of the combat ships that first detect and track incoming boggies.
In the game however, AI regions do not use their air units to full capacity. Aircraft carriers that carry naval Fighter and Interceptor ACUs have very little to fear from enemy aircraft when patrolling the high seas. So long as you have properly configured the ROEs for these naval ACUs, they will automatically spring to the defense of their carriers. Most ACCs and combat naval units have excellent AA.
The real enemy air threat comes when your task forces attack enemy shores and packs of enemy aircraft come out to defend.
Frigates are used as escort vessels for merchant convoys and for picket ships in naval task groups. Faster frigates can keep ahead of the larger combat ships in a naval task group formation but slower frigates are selected for convoy duty.
The frigate is best used as a missile platform against enemy ships. It may also be used to perform patrol, anti-air and ASW tasks.
"Fleet submarines" are attack-class boats that possess the speed to act as pickets for fast carrier and other naval task groups.
The job of the picket sub is to silently and stealthily patrol the waters that surround the surface group for enemy submarines that could present a threat to the capital ships in the group.
Defensive Anti-Submarine-Warfare (ASW) tactics are employed by the escort vessels of a surface task group in order to protect the larger "Capital" ships from sub-surface attack.
The prime tool in locating and defeating enemy subs is sonar with which all corvettes, frigates, destroyers and selected ASW patrol boats are equipped. ASW planes and helicopters and sonar buoys can also be utilized once a sub-threat has been localized.
Active sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) are both common submarine detection technologies. The high noise level generated by large surface groups reduces the effectiveness of passive (listening) sonar.
Once an enemy sub is located it can be attacked with depth charges and homing torpedoes launched from ships or dropped from helos.
Offensive tactics are utilized to actively pursue and destroy enemy units. Here we will explore various types of offensive tactics for all three groups of units - land, air and sea.
The most important over-all offensive tactic is to pursue and overwhelm enemy units with larger formations of more powerful units.
In both defensive and offensive situations, enemy units should be destroyed, not just damaged. Damaged units will often attempt to disengage and retreat for repair. They should not be permitted to repair and then return and fight again.
When you capture a hex with enemy bases any enemy reserves in those bases will "pop-up" out of reserve and deploy. But since the hex is no longer supplied the newly deployed enemy unit is without fuel or ammo supplies. Enemy aircraft may fly away, but land or naval units are defenseless and are easily destroyed.
When playing a game with the "Capital" Victory Setting, the player need only take a Region's Capital city to cause the entire Region to Surrender. If the "Fixed Capitals" setting is also used then the enemy can not and will not move its Capital to another city once the first Capital is taken. This makes taking Capitals very important.
However typically a Region's Capital is its best protected hex. The longer you wait to attack an enemy Capital the better defended it will become, since a Region's unit fabs are often located in or near its Capital.
So contemplating an attack on a Region's Capital well into the game can be pretty intimidating. A direct land attack with infantry and armor will inevitably turn into a furball/blood bath with dozens of your infantry/armor units slamming up against dozens of enemy defenders, and getting pelted by enemy aircraft and artillery. An immediate airborne attack is usually out of the question since enemy AA will likely severely damage your transport aircraft full of para-troop units. Wearing down enemy defenses with air and artillery attacks is time-consuming. Baiting and killing enemy units until the Capital is weakly defended will waste enemy units that could soon become yours if you could only take that Capital.
Here is a solution: use missiles or other means to neutralize the AA protecting the Capital and any armored units within the target Capital hex. This will allow a well-timed, successful airborne assault on the Capital.
Prior to a DoW on the target Region:
Pick strong air-droppable units with long combat times and good supply statistics for your airborne assault team. Have a supply aircraft standing by as well.
Load your launchers with direct-attack missiles such as ATACMS, with sufficient range to attack all enemy AA units that are within range of their Capital. This could include long-range enemy AA units located 100 km or more on the opposite side of the Capital hex. We want to locate our missile launch site close enough to pick off the enemy AA and armored units inside the Capital, but also far enough from the Region not to be over-run by attackers. Strong AA protection should keep off the enemy aircraft.
We are not going to attempt to contain the enemy region. It is OK if they take the border towns and bases - we will soon get them back. You can also remove garrisons from the surrounding complexes to save them from the enemy. Each garrison battle will just attract additional enemy attackers.
Move your units far away and set up a perimeter along a river or some other obstacle. Start up air patrols to pick off enemy units that stray too close to your units.
Check all over the map for potential enemy units. Their ships could be wide-spread and could attack your transports. If the target Region is a current ally, it may currently have land and air units within your territory. You will want to make arrangements to destroy all of these before they can cause trouble.
When everything is ready break all treaties and then DoW the Region. Check to assure that your defenses are holding. Then start searching for all long-range (greater than two 32 km range) enemy AA units withing range of the Capital hex. These units are easy to spot due to their distinctive dark-green camouflage color.
Assign one stack of three launcher units to target and disable each of these AA units with direct-fire missiles. For hexes that contain multiple enemy AA units you may bombard the hex with indirect-fire/saturation missiles or with a naval bombardment. Most AA units that you target and damage will eventually retreat into their repair barracks rather than be totally destroyed, so you must complete this mission before they have a chance to complete their repairs and re-deploy.
Your missile-fire will be weakened by enemy close-air attack from both AA and enemy units that your missiles fly over. Surprisingly the MANPADS or hand-held AA units are the hardest to kill because they contain 70 AA launchers per unit. Make sure that you use your fastest, most stealthy missiles. This resistance will lessen as you destroy more and more enemy AA.
If you are not getting the desired damage to the targets then you can try adding more launchers or use strike aircraft using tkobo's Wild Weasel tactics. Conventional or nuclear ICBMs are not subject to damage from AA fire and can also be used to take out stubborn enemy AA. Unless you are allowing Capitals to be relocated, you are playing for big stakes here and you can afford to invest your best, most powerful weapons. The payoff is an entire Region and most of its units.
Enemy naval units can also possess long-range AA. If any do then these must also be neutralized if they are a part of the enemy Capital's air-cover "umbrella".
If you find that the defending AA is too strong for your missile forces to penetrate then continue reading, but plan to use "Plan B" below instead.
Plan A:
When you have neutralized the long-range SAM sites you must target and disable the shorter range SAM and AA gun sites immediately surrounding the enemy Capital hex. Even a small AA gun with a listed range of 10 km can actually hit and damage close-air targets within its Zone of Control - that is, it can hit any close-air target in its own hex AND in all adjoining hexes. Neutralize all AA within the Capital hex and in those hexes that adjoin the Capital hex in order for your transport planes to safely drop their units on the enemy Capital. At least clear a safe path along which to fly your transports.
Any enemy aircraft based near the Capital can ruin your airborne assault by attacking your transport AC and by bombing our units once they are dropped into the Capital hex. Rather than destroying these aircraft, damage or destroy their air fields that are close to the Capital. This will cause the enemy air cover to leave the area and buy our paratroops additional time once they land in the Capital. Air fields can be put out of commission with ICMBs, Strategic Bombers or with Tomahawk cruise-missle attacks.
Enemy Capitals along the coast can be secured by neutralizing its defenders using stacks of close-in naval attack vessels. Your ships can also provide an AA "umbrella" to protect your assault team against enemy air attack.
Once AA and nearby enemy air cover has been neutralized, if possible, you should begin clearing the enemy Capital of armored units using missiles, in order to allow your para-troops to capture the city more quickly, and before enemy aircraft can ruin your assault. Target and destroy each armored APC and Tank in the enemy Capital. You can also take out any light infantry and MLRS for extra credit.
At this point you may want to save the game so that you can replay it from this point in case anything goes wrong with the air assault.
It is best to send the transport aircraft and its assault team at the same time that your launchers are engaging the armored units in the Capital. If each enemy armor target is being engaged by a stack of three launchers, then by the time that the assault team is unloaded and finishes defeating the soft defenders, your launchers should have finished neutralizing most of the enemy armor. If your launchers take out the enemy armor before the assault team lands, the enemy AI may just replace them with new, even stronger armored units.
Enemy land units like Infantry and Tanks can damage close-air targets like your Transport helicopters. Cargo aircraft however are mid-air targets and can are vulnerable to close-air attack only when they unload your assault team inside the Capital hex. A transport AC that is lightly damaged by enemy AA will unload a damaged assault team. A transport AC that is heavily damaged will veer off its approach and return to base with its badly damaged assault team.
If the enemy Capital is on the coast or has a clear path leading up to it you may want to try landing your assault team using helos. An amphibious assault is also a possibility.
Dropping too many airborne attackers into one hex will decrease their combat capabilities and cause them to "de-stack" and spill out into adjacent hexes. Ten attackers is probably optimum, but have a supplementry backup team ready in case something goes wrong. Plan on losing several.
Now comes the tricky part - timing the air-drop. We want to drop our attackers into the enemy Capital before midnight, but still give them enough time to neutralize the soft units and garrisons defending the hex. Unless the Capital is lightly defended, this will probably take at least nine hours. Once the assault team announces that they have taken the Capital, the Region will fall to us promptly at midnight. If we miss this "window" of time then our assault team will be under enemy counter-attack for at least an additional 24 hours. Also at midnight the enemy AI will send attack aircraft to pound on our assault team.
Have your transport AC approach the target Capital from the clearest, safest direction. Drop the assault team into the Capital and immediately entrench them. They will then engage the soft enemy units and Garrisons while your missiles finish off the remaining armor.
Begin your aerial re-supply patrol immediately - your little guys will run out of bullets quickly. Attackers that run out of supplies will stop fighting and will be slowly destroyed by enemy defenders. Supply aircraft or helos must circle within one hex of the Capital. Medium-sized cargo AC like the C-5A, C-130 and C-17A are ideal for re-supply. If the Capital is near the coast then your supply helos or naval supply transports can re-supply from nearby aircraft carriers.
You must destroy or surpress all enemy defenders in the Capital hex. By "surpesss" we mean attack all enemy units and garrisions until they become over-matched, stop fighting and attempt to escape from the hex. Hopefully just before midnight you will get the welcome report from your assault team - "We have taken their Capital".
If you have a game setting that allows the enemy to move its Capital then once your guys take the original Capital, the enemy AI may move its Capital to the Region's next largest city. If it does then the enemy will continue to attack your assault team and this cycle will continue until you have defeated all enemy units or until the enemy AI surrenders.
Plan B:
If your missiles cannot neutralize the enemy AA then you can still land an airborne assault team in the Capital hex, but to do this you will need to sacrifice some "decoy" aircraft. Remember, we are attempting to take the entire Region, so consider the trade-off between losing these aircraft and what you will gain if you take the whole region and all of its units.
Flood the area around the enemy Capital with cheap, disposable aircraft like small Transports, Patrol AC or Interceptors. While the defending AA is busy shooting up these decoy aircraft, quickly send in your assault Transport aircraft or helos and unload/"drop" your team into the enemy Capital. Immediately withdraw your surviving "decoy" aircraft. The team's task will likely be more difficult and time-consuming, since they will be required to neutralize any enemy armor in the Capital hex, in addition to the soft units and defending Garrisons.
You most likely will need to re-supply them by air. The "decoy" transports and Interceptors can be re-used to escort the supply aircraft to and from the Capital.
Captured bases or factories take damage when they are captured, whether you explicitly attack them or not. Since the population of an enemy Region is forever disloyal to your Region, it is assumed that some combat, damage and perhaps sabotage takes during the capture.
However a slightly damaged facility is usually still unable and can be quickly repaired once its source of supply is restored. The facility's capacity is reduced by the percentage of damage. Generally planes can land at slightly damaged air-fields and troops can be landed at damaged sea-piers.
Your attack units must be kept well supplied or else they may very well refuse orders and retreat to a supply point. As your offensive forces advance into enemy territory your automatic supply hexes are left behind and new supply lines are slow to establish themselves in your newly captured territory. You must compensate by replenishing supplies on the battle line by the use of supply trucks and aircraft. Naval combat units need well-stocked Transport ships or aircraft to replenish their fuel and ammunition.
When making offensive moves it is important to create a correctly balanced mix of units in the attack force. Important elements for a land attack force are:
For naval attack groups, including amphibious attack:
As was pointed out above in the discussion of defensive tactics, massed, long-range artillery is one of your most powerful land weapons. This is also true when speaking of offensive tactics. By massing mobile artillery behind the vanguard of you advancing forces you can project a killing zone of artillery fire ahead of your armored protective screen of tanks and infantry. Moving you units en masse using the "in formation" option with your "Move" order will maintain the configuration of your attack group.
Enemy cities, bases and their defending units can be effectively attacked by nearby stationary artillery formations. Even entrenched Garrison units can be successfully attacked once they are forced out of their holes by approaching infantry. Towed artillery units can be used for this task, freeing up your more mobile units.
Artillery is powerful but it is also a soft and therefore vulnerable target. It must be protected from both air and land attack.
When attacking, select artillery with a long combat time because re-supply may difficult to find.
MLRS has the longest range of any non-missile artillery in the game. Once past tech level 102, most MLRS units are superior to conventional howitzer artillery guns, except for their short combat times.
All artillery is indirect-fire but MLRS is the only non-ballistic artillery sub-class.
Mortars have the longest combat times of all artillery (24 hours) but the lowest attack strengths with an average of 25.
[submitted by sa_3_D911]
"In order to conquer a region I assemble an attack force that consists of a main attacking group of tanks and IFV. Behind them I station 100 Chinese WS-2 400mm Artillery units and one AWACS plane that has a detection range of greater than 200 km.
The main attack force in front of the artillery protects the WS-2s from land counter attacks. In addition, I station a couple of MIM-212 AA units near the artillery to protect them from air force attacks.
I use the AWACS plane to spot the cities that I want to clear out of garrisons. As I advance on each city I can see the number of garrisons that they have. I don't need to to pop them out - instead I use the WS-2 400mm units and the "Bombard" key, then ten seconds later the target city has no garrison.
We then move on to the next enemy city. This is a very effective method and costs almost no casualties."
Lure, Isolate, Destroy (LID) is an offensive tactic where you target a large, powerful enemy formation and destroy them unit-by-unit by luring each of the enemy units into your pre-arranged kill-zone, one or two at a time.
This tactic can succeed because in general an AI region will only respond to a direct attack on its territory. Its response is directly proportional to the number of your attackers. So if you approach a large enemy formation in its home territory with just one of your units (the bait), the enemy AI will respond with just a token response - one or two of the enemy units will move forward and attack/pursue your single attacker.
Then you simply have your bait unit lead these few enemy attackers into your pre-arranged "kill zone" and destroy them. Repeat until the enemy has wasted its initial "large, powerful enemy formation".
This tactic can be used on land, sea and air.
This may be the most effective way of destroying enemy facilities, but it usually involves taking control of the enemy hex. Therefore its use is limited to removing stubborn obsticles that prohibit the advance of your main body.
Ajust the "Approach" ROE of demolition units such as Engineers to "Unit Set for Stealth Approach - Land Not Captured". This way your Engineers can enter an enemy hex without actually capturing it and can them demolish whatever base or other facility found there.
Since this is still hostile territory, it is possible that your demolition teams will run out of supplies, which will need to brought in by land or air.
Damage to enemy facilities could also possibly draw unwanted enemy attention and a crippling attack on your stealth demo team.
A hex that contains your unit(s) and at least one Enemy unit is a zone of contention (ZOC). See Taking Territory. This can only occur on land in two ways: when your units are set to Stealth Mode and enter an occupied enemy hex, or when your airborne units air-drop into an occupied enemy hex.
[submitted by GIJoe597]:
"Stage a stealth attack or airborne assault (with units on stealth) on a garrisoned hex while the defending Garrison units are entrenched and hidden. When your attack force enters the hex and un-cloaks the hex will change ownership and become yours. The enemy Garrison units will "pop-out" and you must either neutralize them or drive them out of the hex. These defending Garrisons will be fighting on your hex now and you both will be un-supplied for two days."
Commentary: This will not work if other types of enemy defending units are present in the target hex.
Added commentary by GIJoe597: This will work if there are other units in the hex, but you will first engage them in battle. The garrison units do not pop out as long as you stay stealth. Once you have defeated the non garrison units, proceed as planned. Tested for 6.7.63.
Airborne assaults are attacks from the air using parachute-dropped troops, weapons and supplies. The first airborne assault using helos was staged by the British during the 1956 Suez Canal conflict.
The prime requirements for such a mission are:
You are going to drop your foot-pounders into a hostile un-supplied hex so either the drop troops need to have long combat times or you need to devise some sort of supply tactic such as:
Vertical Envelopment (VE) is the overly-verbose term concocted by the U.S. Marine Corps to describe dropping Marines into combat from helicopters. Initially this was a good concept that modernized the moderately successful WWII tactic of parachuting troops into a combat zone, but using the more versatile helicopter instead of a high-flying cargo aircraft.
However, modern evolutions in weaponry have placed the key VE transport vehicle in jeopardy - the transport helicopter. The state of small arms technology has grown to include MANPADS portable AA missile units and hundreds of thousands of RPG launchers - both of which can be used to shred a helo full of Marines.
Never-the-less, in SR2020 VE is a perfectly viable method of dropping your "foot-pounder" - dismounted Marines, Airborne and Special Forces units, onto enemy cities or Capitals.
Contributed by tkobo:
A Zerg tactic is one in which a player creates a large amount of cheap and ineffective units, masses them, and then simply charges them into his foes. It comes from the original Star Craft, where the Zerg unit, which was used this way, gave the play-style its name. It requires no skill beyond mouse use, and is easy mastered by the average pre-teen.
Engineers are powerful units that exist in the early game. Most of their strength is derived from their strong close-combat skills - both attack and defense.
Some players consider them to be so powerful that they represent an un-balancing force in the game. It is not surprising that players quickly devised the tactic of attacking critical enemy hexes with masses of Engineers.
You can rest assured that no AI region will rush you with Engineers, however you are free to do so. In case you have not figured out this tactic yet, here it is - round up a bunch of Engineer units and order them to attack some enemy target.
"Super-bases" (SBs) are enemy strong-points that consist of dozens of stacks of units.
Each unit fab possesses a companion base of the same type. For instance, each land fab is equipped with an adjoining barracks in which to reserve the fab's produced land units.
Over the game years Region AIs will pump out dozens of units from each of their fabs but many of these are never used. They accumulate inside the fab's adjoining reserve base. When the AI Region goes to war, all of these reserved production units exit their reserve storage base and accumulate near the fab awaiting orders. These waiting units form the "super-bases".
SBs grow in a single direction from their base (anchor) hex where their fab is located. The spawned units form the shape of a right triangle (pyramid, christmas-tree or pine-tree) since accumulated units "branch out" into adjoining hexes in a single direction. This shape is also referred to as a "star-burst".
The unit mix depends upon how many different types of fabs exist in the bottom "anchor" hex. The SB may contain only harmless bridging units or it may consist of one hundred combat aircraft and dozens of enemy artillery or tank units.
We will attempt to analyze the worst case scenario where you need to destroy a SB that consists of long-range artillery, tanks, AA and dozens of combat aircraft.
Here are the steps for you to follow in order to destroy an enemy SB:
Earlier in this guide we discussed Fields of Fire. Since a SB is wide at its base/anchor (the bottom of the pyramid) and pointy at its top end (the point of the pyramid or apex), its strongest field of fire (FOF) is to its sides where the maximum number of unit/stacks can target the same attacking unit. Its weakest FOF is at its apex. This apex is the preferred direction from which to approach and attack a SB.
We first want to neutralize the SB's air-cover by destroying most of its circling aircraft. We do this by moving masses of long-range AA units, such as the TL 103 Russian SA-20 S-400 Triumf or the TL 106 U.S. MIM-204 MEADS within range of the apex of the SB. These AA units will destroy the defending enemy aircraft that will sortie from the SB.
We also need to defend against the tanks that the SB will send our way. Therefore we will back our AA units with masses of artillery. We will protect them from the front with a row of tanks that can withstand the indirect fire from the SB artillery. Off to the side, out of enemy artillery range, we will place a stack of AT units.
Entrench all of your attacking units in order to protect them from enemy artillery fire.
We will now begin a process of attrition where we lure enemy attack aircraft and tanks from the SB and bring them within our artillery and AA kill zones. See the topic Lure, Isolate and Destroy (LID).
If the SB fails to spot your attack force then move an AT or Recon unit in the direction of the SB. This should get their attention and begin a conservative attack on your force. If the SB's aircraft fail to respond then bait them by moving a cheap aircraft in the direction of the SB.
These baiting maneuvers should invoke a response from the SB in which you are presented with successive enemy units that you can destroy in your land and AA kill zones. Attacking enemy aircraft should immediately be destroyed by your massed AA units. Approaching enemy armor should succumb to your massed artillery fire, however if this fails then attack the enemy armor with one or more group of the AT units that you have held in readiness.
If your attacking units begin to suffer damage from SB artillery then summon a large group of Engineers and construct fortified shelters for you AA and/or Artillery units. These fortifications can be Fortification units or Military Fortress complexes.
The next step is to isolate the SB from its supply infrastructure. Once you have LIDed the SB's aircraft and armor these defenders should have either been destroyed or have fled back to the SB for repair. If you isolate the SB from its supply infrastructure then you will halt its repair efforts as well as deprive its defensive artillery units of ammunition.
Maneuver your infantry to capture all roads leading to the besieged SB. Once its supply lines have been severed the SB's artillery should stop firing due to lack of supply.
At this point the SB is no longer so "super" and you can mass your infantry, artillery and armor into attack groups and directly assault the former super-base. Since it is now only defended by soft units, your assault should soon take the anchor hexes and destroy the surrounding artillery and AA units.
It is wise to finish a game quickly before your enemies can accumulate such monster defenses as SBs.
Offensive AA is when you set out to suppress or eliminate the enemy air superiority in their Region. Simply defending you invasion force against air attack is just another form of defensive AA that was discussed earlier in this Guide.
There are three tactics for actively destroying an enemy's air force:
Any of these methods can be combined with Lure, Trap and Destroy tactics.
Tactic 1 consists of crossing into an enemy region with a massive long-range AA force surrounded by a shell of protective armor or tough infantry. Enemy air units will respond and be struck down by your AA. Use close-in air support in the form of Fighter/bombers to protect your force from enemy defensive armor. The F/Bs will also have some helpful AA values.
A variation of this tactic is to lay siege to enemy air-fields that contain massive numbers of ACUs. Pull your AA units within range of the enemy air-field with its protective ring of armor up front. Bait the enemy ACUs to attack your formation and you will soon deplete the air-field of its aircraft.
Tactic 2 consists of parking long-range AA destroyers and cruisers off the enemy coast. At the higher tech-levels your naval AA will develope phenomenal range and will be capable of striking enemy aircraft circling air-fields hundreds of kilometers from the shoreline. Bring along an aircraft carrier with heavy AA values and park a few naval Interceptor planes on deck.
Tactic 3 consists of an invasion force of massed Interceptor AC that are capable of challenging the enemy aircraft for air superiority over the enemy Region. This is really not feasible unless you can first neutralize the enemy AA. But Interceptors can be also be used to bait enemy ACUs into your AA kill-zones.
Tactic 4 involves attacking and disabling enemy air-fields. Without air-fields enemy aircraft cannot re-fuel or re-arm, and will be forced to retreat or flee. You can use infantry, artillery, bombers, naval attack or a combination of all of these to destroy enemy air-fields. If the enemy Region is large, just rolling back their air cover by taking their nearby air-fields can be helpful.
Tactic 4 will not work for attack helicopters since they do not require air-fields re-supply.
Close Air-Support (CAS) usually refers to the use of combat aircraft during a land battle. Your aircraft units (ACUs) can be used as CAS to assist your troops on the ground in accomplishing their objectives. Your CAS missions may attack enemy tanks, entrenched units, fortifications and artillery units that are attacking your land forces.
CAS is usually conducted by Fighter/Bomber class of ACUs. ACUs such as the U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt II and the U.S. F-16C Falcon are commonly used for CAS missions due to their ground attack attributes. Attack helos can also be used to suppress enemy fire on the battle-line.
Care must be taken not to allow you Fighter ACUs to directly attack enemy-occupied hexes. Fighter aircraft should be patrolled past the hexes that you want to attack, with permission and initiative to engage enemy targets. This will avoid your aircraft diving to close-air level within the target hex and receiving close-air attack damage from their targets.
Conducting anti-armor missions is a good tactic since the AI has a habit of sending its units out to attack in small sorties of one or two units. Unlike CAS which is conducted on the battle-line, much anti-tank work is done by hunter-killer air missions that patrol behind enemy lines in search of enemy armor to attack. These ground-attack aircraft can also be vectored onto armor targets from patrol aircraft such as the U.S. E-8A JSTAR.
Tanks in the open are especially vulnerable to AT attack from the air using units like the U.S. A-10 and the F22-Delta Raptor. This can be done without loading missiles.
Direct-attack land-launched missiles like the TL 92 U.S. M39 ATACMS II work very well too. It is one of life's little joys to load up a missile launcher with ATAMCS and "plink" off tanks with it, one by one.
Tactical bombing missions are usually carried out against hexes that have many enemy units within them. Tactical bombing is effective against both combat units and structures, especially when performed by massed units of bomber ACUs. The ACU class of choice is the Strategic Bomber which carries a default bomb load that can be supplemented with nuclear or conventional bomb units.
Bombs are non-ballistic, indirect-fire (area) weapons and are also close-air targets, so it is possible for the enemy to hit them with AA. All bombs have a move range of just 1 km and so will not travel out of the hex that they are launched (dropped) from.
The only conventional explosive bomb in the game is the multi-region M117 341-kg Bomb - Freefall. There are three other nuclear bombs.
Fighter/Bombers will bomb from close-air level and will thus risk close-air damage from enemy units inside the target hex.
[Contributed by Tkobo]
You can do Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) or "Wild Weasel" (WW), but you have to do it manually.
To clear an area of Anti-Air (AA) Units:
Commentary:
Naval aviators refer to SEAD as "Iron Hand" missions.
The type of missiles carried by the 1st "decoy" air group does not matter, since their missiles are only intended to cause the target AA to fire.
The key to this tactic is that each unit has a certain wait/reload period between attacks. In the statistics this is known as "Initiative" - the higher a unit's Initiative the shorter the time between its attacks and the lower its Combat Time (since it fires its available ammo faster). In general AA guns and MANPADS have high (5-8) initiative while missile AA has lower (1-8) initiative.
In tkobo's WW tactic, the second WW air group waits until the enemy AA has fired on the incoming missiles, then attacks within the mandatory wait/reload time of the enemy AA.
This could be simplified by using a single group of aircraft, all armed with ground-attack missiles. One AC unit (or just a unit with one aircraft) could fire the "decoy" missile and the others could them open fire on their AA targets.
Note that AA units contain 20-40 launchers while most ground-attack air units have only 18 aircraft (Strength = 18). This suggests that in order to destroy one AA target it would take at least two (maybe three) attacking air units to destroy the target unit completely on the first launch.
Contributed by tkobo:
"Take 70 good air units, and give them an escort order for a stack of your ground units on the front line."
A RL buzz-saw is a power-tool for cutting wood that uses a rapidly rotating toothed blade that produces a "buzzing" sound.
According to "Hundane":
Commentary: A good tactic if there is not heavy enemy AA protection.
Missiles units (MUs) are powerful weapons, but many of them are vulnerable to enemy anti-aircraft (AA) because the missiles are close-air targets. Anti-aircraft units are very strong in SR2020 and all of them are capable of targeting close-air targets like missiles. Many missiles are expensive and require long fabrication times but they are easily wasted when used to attack targets defended by over-whelming AA, such as large cities and sea-piers full of combat ships.
MUs contain one missile per unit. So for instance, when an aircraft unit (ACU) of 18 aircraft load missiles, it loads at least 18 MUs - one or more per aircraft. When that ACU fires these MUs, all 18 ACUs fire one missile at the target, so a salvo of 18 missiles is launched. If a salvo of close-air missiles is within range of enemy AA and the AA Unit is able to spot and target the salvo, then 20-40 AA guns or missiles will fire at and hit the salvo.
Once you have ordered your ACUs to fire missiles at a target, the aircraft will continue firing additional salvos until the target is destroyed. This means that if your salvos are being destroyed by AA, then your attacking 18 ACUs will fire and waste their entire load of missiles. Some aircraft can carry 6 or more MUs.
Furthermore, if the target is destroyed it is likely that your ACU already has another wasted salvo on the way.
ICBMs, IRBM, SRBMs and Scud missiles are ballistic units and cannot be targeted by AA. But your anti-ballistic missile (SDI) satellites can target enemy missiles.
So, with this warning in mind, there are a number of good missile targets such as any non-AA land vehicle, single naval Units, bases, fabs and factories.
Missiles are fired from "platforms" - land, sea, air or underwater platforms such as launchers, ships, aircraft and submarines. These missile platform units have a specified "Missile Capacity" and a "Max Missile Size" (MMS). This missile capacity is equal to the MMS multiplied by the unit's strength - the number of launchers, squads or aircraft that constitute each unit. The MMS represents the total missile-carrying capacity of each launch-platform in the unit.
For instance: a certain Fighter/Bomber aircraft type may have a MMS of 12, which means that the plane can carry 6 size 2 missiles. If the FB unit contains 18 aircraft (strength=18), then the unit as a whole can carry 18 * 6 = 108 size 2 missiles. See Loading Missiles.
Long-range weapons require long-range spotting and this is especially true for missiles. Spies or patrol planes will spot your targets for you.
Ships and aircraft launched missiles can be used to attack any type of target but submarines. Land-launched platforms are limited to surface and ground targets, since there are no anti-air MUs in the game.
Here are some offensive missile tactics:
Stand-off missile tactics are used to launch missiles at a target that is not in the platform's line-of-sight. All MUs are "fire and forget" weapons that do not require any mid-course corrections from their launch platform, so in a way most missile use is a stand-off attack. But the term is mainly used to describe an attacking aircraft's release of over-the-horizon missiles.
A good example of a SOA is a B-52's release of its missile load, targeted on a distant enemy barracks or air-field.
Ballistic MUs (BMUs) come in short (Scuds or SRBMs), medium (IRBMs) and long range (ICBMs) MUs. There are usually two models - one with a nuclear warhead and another conventionally armed. Since most of these MUs are ballistic and indirect-fire they cannot be shot down by your AI enemy's AA and you do not need to spot your target in order to launch them.
AIs do not build SDI BM defenses, but you can and they may intercept enemy BMs. Such launches are announced by the U.N. via E-mail.
These are usually strategic weapons, but the shorter-range ones have tactical applications, such as attacking AA units, bases and factories. The problem is that the most powerful nukes take a long time and a lot of money to produce, and there are serious political consequences associated with their use.
The more powerful nukes will destroy fortified targets with just one missile, but the conventional models require a lot of expensive missiles. Yet many experienced gamers use them conventional BMs routinely.
There is no nuclear fallout or long-term radiation effects associated with nukes in the game.
Bombs are non-ballistic, indirect-fire (area) weapons and are also close-air targets, so it is possible for the enemy to hit them with AA. See Bombing Missions.
All bombs have a move range of just 1 km and so will not travel out of the hex that they are launched (dropped) from. This suggests that Fighter-Bombers would not be good choices for dropping bomb units because they must descend to close-air height when they attack.
The only conventional explosive bomb in the game is the multi-region M117 341-kg Bomb - Freefall. There are three other nuclear bombs.
Land-launched missile unit (LLMU) platforms are all of the Artillery class. Some, such as the Russian BAZ-135 Frog Launcher, are dedicated to shooting land missile launchers. Many MLRS artillery units, such as the U.S. M270-A MLRS also double as missile launchers.
It is important to match missile sizes to prospective platforms, since each platform (unit) has multiple launchers and each launcher has a maximum size of missile that it can accommodate. For instance the M270-A MLRS has 18 launchers (squads) and each launcher has a maximum missile size of 4, for a unit missile capacity of 18 x 4 = 72.
All artillery, including launchers, are soft targets and as such must be protected from all types of attack. Luckily since missile have such long ranges your launchers can usually be kept safe far behind the battle-line.
Direct-fire LLMUs, such as the U.S. "M39 ATACMS I" can be used to decimate enemy infantry, armor or to attack enemy bases and factories. Indirect-fire (area-effect) LLMUs can be fired at hexes that contain soft targets. These will decimate dismounted units, trucks and artillery.
Most of the BMs are land-launched. Several of the big land-launched ICMBs (size 18) were originally designed to be launched from missile silos (type 16), but silos were removed from the game.
Air Units are excellent missile platforms, but some have a limited capacity. The U.S. B-52H Stratofortress ACU has 12 aircraft, each with a missile capacity of 60. That gives it a total capacity of 720 or 240 size 3 missiles. A large Fighter ACU can carry over 100 size 2 missiles.
Fighter/Bombers loaded with hard-attack air-to-ground missiles are great for attacking and killing enemy tanks that are not escorted by AA. Two attack groups of aircraft can combine to successfully attack AA sites. See Wild Weasel.
Aircraft missile attack groups can attack ships using the AGM-84 Harpoon, bases, fabs and production facilities.
There are also a number of ballistic missiles that are launched from aircraft.
Sea-launched missiles are launched from surface ships. The most popular U.S. sea-launched missile is the BGM-84D Harpoon which is very effective at attacking enemy ships. RGM-type Harpoons can be loaded onto both ships and submarines.
U.S. ships also launch the BGM-109B Tomahawk TLAM for land attack of a variety of targets.
MUs such as the TL 104 U.S. M-40 NTACMS can be used to attack land targets such as tanks, artillery and other ships.
Submarines in SR2020 are always submerged so you do not need to surface the sub in order to launch its missiles.
Submarine platforms are the stealthiest missile platforms. Subs launch their missiles from either verticle launch tubes or from torpedo-tubes. They can launch ICBMs, U.S. UGM-84D Harpoon anti-ship or UGM-109A Tomahawk SLCM land-attack cruise missiles. RGM-type Harpoons can be loaded onto both ships and submarines.
Four U.S. Trident submarines have been modified into SSGN missile submarines and can carry the U.S. RGM-109A/B/C Tomahawk TLAM (Block III) missile to attack land targets.
Submarine-launched ballistic missiles are sometimes designated as "SLBM"s and include such types as the TL 106 U.S. Trident II ICBM, which has a range of 8250 km.
Many Russian sub-types contain AA missiles in their "sails", which allow them to shoot down attacking ASW helicopters.
Naval attack tactics are vital to winning the military game. Your naval forces can "reach out and touch someone" across an ocean without crashing into the water when they run out of fuel. They carry heavier weapons and better radar than any other units.
The two most important naval attack tactics are naval Fire Support (Shore Bombardment) and Amphibious Landings.
Supply is vital to all attacks into enemy territory and this is equally true for naval attacks.
Naval Fire support tactics consist of utilizing long-range naval artillery for Shore Bombardment (SB). Naval units offer both direct and indirect naval gunfire.
Ships with base gun ranges of less than 30 km are direct-fire units and can be used to attack individual ground and surface targets, if proper spotting is available. Ship with base ranges in excess of 29 km are indirect-fire units and can attack target hexes and inflict wider "saturation" or "area-effect" damage on units and structures.
The range of you naval artillery will improve as your tech-level increases.
You should choose gun-ships with high combat times so that they can stay on the gun-line longer. Some good choices are Battleships, Cruisers and Destroyers.
Again, supply ships are vital to the operation. Effective shore-bombardment is ammunition-intensive and a solid supply of ammo is essential. SB ships that run out of supplies on the gun line have been known not only to leave the line, but to return to their home-port clear across the ocean.
Naval missile attacks are effective tactics in the absence of defensive enemy AA. Combat ships can carry huge quantities of surface and ground attack Missiles and have powerful radars to use for spotting distant targets.
The possible targets for naval missile attacks runs the gamut of missile targets - enemy bases, land and sea units, production facilities of all types.
Missile attacks against masses of enemy combat naval units is in-effective due to the combined strength of the enemy AA protection.
Long-range missile attacks are launched from ships using cruise-missiles. There are very few ship-launched ICBMs, if any.
Hunter/Killer tactics can be use to hunt down and sink enemy naval vessels on the open ocean. See Fleet Operations.
To a large extent enemy naval units do not patrol in organized groups. The one exception is the amphibious assault group.
Ship-board radar is good but an effective HK group should have support from patrol aircraft as well. These can operate off of an aircraft-carrier in the HK group or it/they can be shore-based. A ship-board helicopter could also help with patrolling duties.
So your HK groups will typically locate single enemy vessels that are either patrolling or have run out of fuel. These are never-the-less important targets, since they represent a hazard to the navigation of your transport ships across the sea lanes.
Enemy ships can be neutralized with naval gun-fire or anti-ship missiles. If the target has AA defenses then you may need to attack with two or more of your ships.
Amphibious Assaults are aggressive tactics designed to transport large assault forces of land units onto enemy shore positions called "beachheads", using standard transport shipsamphibious transport ships (ATUs). The term "Amphibious Assault" is used in its wider sense to describe both the beach-to-beach and pier-to-pier transportation of land assault forces.
Aircraft can drop air-borne land units into combat areas, but often transport ships are the only way to move large numbers of heavy land units over-seas and into battle zones. Only large transport ships can transport 3000-ton main battle tanks.
There are amphibious and non-amphibious land and sea units in the game. It is necessary to match up capable units with appropriate loading and landing sites. An amphibious ship is one that can unload any of its embarked land units onto land without a sea-pier. An amphibious land unit is one that can cross water and swamp and load onto any transport ship without a sea-pier.
Your assault force is going to need Supply trucks with supplies of ammunition and Engineers to construct air-fields and barracks. You may be able to supply them from the air as well. Your beachhead may require protection from enemy aircraft using combat ships, land AA units or a Combat Air Patrol. Your transport ships will need naval protection from enemy ships and submarines.
You can stage and amphibious assault manually or automatically. The manual method involves you loading your land assault units onto ships and then manually unloading them using the "Load Onto" and "Unload To" orders. The process goes like this:
If there is no target sea-pier at the beachhead then all of the transport ships must be amphibious.
The Developers have also provided an automated method to stage an amphibious assualt. This process works about 95% of the time; but it is best that you know its limitations in order to be able to use it effectively. To automate an amphibious attack:
In general that is all that is required. Your DM will bring the appropriate type of transports and land units together at the sea-pier and will load the land units onto the ships. The DM will then order the ships to unload the assault force at the landing point that you selected.
Other things may happen as well:
If you want your partially loaded transports to load more troops then manually move them back to the departure sea-pier. You will find that transports will get loaded better if you transport you lighter land units first and your heavy armor last.
Amphibious transports have been known to dump their passengers onto oil-platforms or islands if there is some sort of "problem". If you are sending them into a crowded harbor to unload and there is an island in the harbor, then your land units might end up on the island instead of on the beachhead.
RECON
You need to know whats out there. Are there enemy ships? Heavy coastal defenses? enemy aircraft withen range?
PLAN
Figure out the location where you are going to land. Idealy it will have a barracks, airfield and seapier nearby. These are all structures you will need for your new front line. If none are availible then plan on bringing enginiers (idealy 28 for a large assualt 7 for a small) to speed the construction of these facilities. You may even want to bring the engineers to speed repairs to damages that were done to any facilities that where taken over militarily.
If there are enemy ships then can you destroy them while moving towards your target landing zone, or will you need to clear them out with heavy warships before you move your fragile transports in? It really sucks to loose 30,000 tons of units because the transport ship got sunk! If there are heavy coastal defenses, will your landing party have the ability to destroy them as they advance in to land your troops or will you need to clear them out before your fragile transport ships get close in?
ORGANIZE
Let's assume that the enemy has heavy ship traffic, a lot of units near the coast and heavy air support. If so then we are going to need a naval force capable of destroying their's. I prefer missles for this action so your navy should consist of ships/subs that are armed with anti-ship missles. I like to make sub-packs of about 3 groups of 7 subs each and place them into their own battlegroup.
Because of the enemy airforce you are going to need fighters too. For these you will need a few aircraft carriers in your fleet that carry Interceptors dedicated to destroying other planes. Have these carriers lined up in a row with escorts armed for anti-air and anti-ship combat. The carriers should be placed into their own battlegroup. The aircraft on each carrier should have their own battlegroup - one per ship.
You are also going to need transport ships. Choose a ship that has amphibious landing capabilities. I like the LHD-type carriers since they have a large cargo capacity, can carry helo's capable of air-dropping units deep inside enemy lines and have amphib capabilities as well. Load your units onto the LHDs manually. Line up these LHD's in a row and organize them into their own battlegroup, again with armed escorts.
We will also have to clear the coastal land units and so will need ships and or bombers to do this. For this example we will use both. Battleships are good for this task. Create a line of battships complete with armed escort and cargo ships. Place the battleships into a battlegroup. Place your bomber-groups in a battlegroup as well - 17 bombers per airfield, giving you 15 bombers per battlegroup.
PRE-DEPLOY
Now that you have all your units formed up and ready to go, let's get them into position. Select the three battlegroups of subs and have them formation-move to just outside of the range of the enemy ships.
Next, select your shore-bombardment battlegroup - just the battleships. Have them formation-move to just behind your subs. Remember - this battlegroup should consist of only the battleships with their armed escorts following the battleships automatically.
Then have your large deck carriers formation move behind the battleships. Again, only the carriers should be in the battlegroup; the support ships should be escorting. Then can have your LHD's formation move to a location behind your large deck carrier fleet. Only the LHDs should be in the battlegroup, with the support ships escorting them.
Then move your bomber-groups to the closest airfield to your target. Use seperate airfields for each bomber-group.
DECLARE WAR
When all of your ships are in postion then it is time to declare war, but only after your fleet is in postion.
DESTROY ENEMY SHIPS
Use your subs to begin destroying the enemy fleet. Clear the waters of dangerous naval units that could destroy your ships and airplanes. If the enemy sends planes to attack you then use your your carrier's fighter planes to engage them.
DESTROY COASTAL DEFENSES
Once the enemy's ships are destroyed move your battleship-group using formation-move or move them one-by-one if the coastline is a different shape than your battlegroup line. Stop when they are in range of the enemy shore units. Your carrier fleet should advance close behind to provide air-cover from enemy planes.
Send your bomber-groups out to air-patrol near enemy strongholds to give the bombers a chance to destroy them. Try assigning your bomber-groups to hotkeys since you will be constantly adjusting their flight paths during the war. Be sure you have them return to base before issuing a new flight path, otherwise you will end up with too many bombers at a single airfield.
LAND YOUR TROOPS
Now that the defending coastal troops have been destroyed move your LHDs ashore to land your troops along the coast. The easiest way to do this is select the battlegroup, find a carrier that is not under orders and tell it to off-load at a selected point along the coast. Repeat this until all the carriers have orders.
ESTABLISH A BASE OF OPERATIONS
Once you have a beachhead established, make sure that you quickly obtain a barracks, air-field and sea-pier. These will be needed to repair your damaged units. The airfield can be used as a closer airbase for your bomber-groups. The sea-pier will give you the ability to land a full land force via larger cargo-ships and will increase supply to coastal waters, so that your fleets can re-supply and re-arm.
This all might seem like a lot to do, but steps 1-4 can be done during peace-time when not much else is going on. It takes a while to organize it all but proper planning will help your operation to succeed. The acual combat is not as hard as it sounds because a lot of it is simplified with the use of battlegroups. When planning major assualts like this don't be afraid to pause the game. I am regularly pausing the game just to look over the battlefield and make sure everything is going to plan or then issuing orders to adjust to events.
Sub-hunting (ASW) in the open ocean is generally not necessary in SR2020 since enemy submarines do not patrol - they just sit in port or in reserve like big dumb ducks.
However enemy submarines do need to be neutralized before you attack an enemy coast-line. If you do not spot them early at their sea-piers and destroy them there then you will have to hunt and kill them later once they leave port and come after you.
If you see an enemy naval fab and no submarines then the subs may be too stealthy for your spotting abilities or they may still be in reserve. Once you have neutralized the visible ones it is a good tactic to leave some ASW ships or submarines there to guard against newly deployed enemy subs.
Naval offensive anti-aircraft (AA) tactics can be successfully employed to decimate an enemy's air superiority. This is due to the powerful, long-range AA and radar - spotting attributes of naval combat vessels. At higher tech-levels the range of you naval AA will reach the 200-300 km range, to the point where you can simply park your ships off an enemy coast and they will continuously attack and often destroy distant aircraft circling their "safe" air-fields.
Carriers, Cruisers and Destroyers have the best AA and should be used in groups for the AA role.
Normally fleet defense doctrines dictate that the fleet surround the aircraft-carrier and defend it. However in this game many ACCs have are powerful AA platforms and can be used effectively with AA as their main role. Of course having defensive Interceptor aircraft aboard does not hurt.
Submarine tactics are very effective due to the stealthy nature of the Submarine Units (SUs) in the game. SR2020 SUs never surface. Since all submarines possess default attack capability attributable to their on-board torpedoes. Attack SUs can be sent on missions without arming them with missiles.
Since all spotting information is shared with all of a region's units, patrol aircraft and be used to spot targets for submarines.
"wolf-packs" are groups of attack SUs whose mission is to search and destroy enemy naval units. The use of Wolf-pack tactics is better than attacking with a single [[SR2020_Naval_Units#SSN|attack submarine] since a wolf-pack can deliver a devastating attack and destroy most targets immediately.
Also single SUs are often damaged in the process of destroying their targets. The lead wolf-pack SU may also be damaged during an attack, but other boats can rotate being the leader and distribute the damage. Damage can be avoided by using an SU that can spot and attack its target from outside of the target's spotting range.
ICBM attack tactics can be used to devastate hexes half-way across the map. SSBNs SUs, also called FBMS or "boomers", carry dozens of super-long-range ICBMs armed with powerful conventional or nuclear warheads.
These attacks give the enemy no warning and since they are ballistic in nature, the enemy has no defense against them. The disadvantages are that conventional ICBMs are expensive and have long fabrication times. The use of nuclear weapons can carry with it severe political consequences.