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Your Defense Department (DD) is the heart of your region's military might. While manual control of your military units is accomplished via the Unit Command "department", it is from the DD that you monitor military bases, control military spending, set military policy, control military construction and fabrication, monitor reserve and deployed units.
The DD is run, in varying degrees, by your Defense Minister (DM). The DM is capable of running your military apparatus independently. By default the DM follows your specified Minister "Priorities and Concerns" (MPs), controls military salaries, maintenance and training, controls garrisons, sets DEFCON, auto-builds units and missiles. It will automatically deploy appropriate units to guard and garrison your vital military facilities and your Capital city. If war is declared then the DM will deploy units for defense and will gradually attack into enemy territory with land, air supply and sea units. The DM will also prosecute any "hotspots" that you set to receive special DM interest.
The DM will not construct military facilities such as barracks and fabrication factories without having first received an MP for a military build-up. The DM will not declare war and will not deploy nuclear weapons.
But despite the ability of the DM to recruit reserve personnel, garrison your Region, build units and conduct war, the DM cannot do it as well as the player can. This is why the player may want to "lock-out" the DM from some or all of the above mentioned aspects of DD control. The DM cannot see the "big picture" of a battle-ground, execute effective tactics or formulate strategies.
You can also "lock" individual units so that they no longer accept commands from the DM.
This sub-panel is accessed by clicking on the DM's portrait. From the list on the left you can assign MPs such as "Massive Military Buildup" and "Decrease Spending". You can double-click the MP or press the activation button on the top-right. Also on the right are the "Department Locks" - "Lock Minister from Military Spending" and "Lock Minister from Garrison Control".
This is the main panel and it is always displayed when the DD is activated. The row of four buttons at the top allows you to focus the DD onto one "Service" classification of unit - Army, Air Force, Navy or Missiles. The list box below the buttons has three list activation lines - Production, Reserves and Support. Each of these lists military hexes around your Region, according to the unit class selected.
If the "Army" button is selected, then activating the "Production" list will display all of the Land Unit Fabrication (fab) hexes in your Region and the "Fabrication" sub-panel in the center. Once you select a fab from the Production list the left two buttons are supplied to allow you to deactivate or demolish the selected fab.
While you are still in the left Defense/Production list, selecting the "Deployed/Reserves" sub-panel in the center displays two new buttons on the Production/Reserves Base list to the left.
The new center button selects the current fab/base hex as the "Delivery Point" for units that arrive in your Region as a result of a diplomatic exchange.
When units complete their fabrication they must either be placed in reserve or be auto-deployed. The third new button on the panel is used to set a "rally-point" hex for newly constructed units that auto-deploy from the Fab. The rally-point is also effective for the barracks (air-field or sea-pier) associated with the fab.
When the user presses this "Rally-Point" button, a white line terminating in a white placement circle is displayed. The player then maneuvers this circle with the mouse to the target hex where newly construction units are to be deployed to, and then clicks on the target hex.
Below the Production list in the Defense Panel is the "Reserves" list which contains the names of all hexes that contain barracks with reserve land units. Activating this list also displays the "Deployed/Reserves" sub-panel. The first button on the right side of the Production/Reserves display allows you to deactivate the currently selected base. The second button is used to select the one reserve base in your region that is designated to receive foreign military units that you have received via a diplomatic exchange.
The third list in the Defense panel is the "Support" list. This list displays all hexs that contain military facilities including research centers.
This sub-panel displays a summary of your military spending and slider controls to adjust your "Military Salaries" and expenditures for "Maintenance and Training". The DM recommended amounts are displayed for each of the two.
Displayed beneath the salaries slider are two important figures: "Active Staff" and "Reserves". The sum of these two figures represents the total number of military personnel in your armed forces available to staff you military Units, bases, fabrication facilities and other purely military facilities.
Displayed on the right of the sub-panel is a breakdown of your unit production costs by unit class, as well as the current total cost of your current unit fabrication. Below this is displayed your current DEFCON and its associated "Preparedness" cost.
From this sub-panel you can view and adjust your Region's DEFCON. The current preparedness cost and its corresponding efficiency and build speed bonus are also displayed. Below these is a button that allows you to authorize the use of nuclear weapons.
The military initiative of each class of unit can be set from the row of three buttons at the top-right of the sub-panel. The four possible settings are: None, Low, Medium, High and Full.
Below these are the "Unit Pathing" buttons. These three buttons allow you to control the territorial pathing permission for your entire armed forces. Unit pathing permission can be toggled On/Off for regions with Transit Treaties, ones without TT and for enemy regions.
This sub-panel displays a matrix of icons, figures and buttons that summarize the state of your armed forces by Service-classification (up to down) and by units in Production, Reserved and Deployed (left to right). The fifth icon/button on the right of the matrix toggles auto-build for that classification of unit and allows the DM to initiate the fabrication of these units on his own schedule.
The bottom classification - missiles, is more complicated in that it has two extra buttons to the right, plus a row of eight missile specification buttons at the bottom. These specification buttons indicate to the DM just what type of missiles that you wish built. You do this by specifying the launch platform type - Land, Air, Sea and Sub, as well as the types of targets that you want to use the missles against - Ground, Ship, Building or Saturation.
The last two buttons on the missile row actually apply to all of the non-missile unit types. The first one allows the user to select the offensive/defensive mix of units auto-built by the DM. The last button brings up a menu that allows the user to specify if the units should be fabricated with the goal of quantity or quality.
Update 6 (Gold Edition)
This sub-panel lists all of the available military structures - bases, fabs, fortresses, satellite launch, supply, radar, research and defense facilities. Selecting any one from the list allows you to build it upon nearly any land hex in your Region by moving the green spotting circle on the map and then clicking on the desired map hex. The right side of the sub-panel displays a construction summary of the selected facility type - number active, total number, number under construction and the number currently being scrapped (demolished).
This sub-panel allows you to initiate the fabrication of new units and missiles. By default completed units are placed into reserve at a dedicated base in the same hex as the fab. On the left a Design list box displays list activation lines with the names of each class (helicopter, fighter/Interceptor, Fighter/Bomber, multi-Role Fighter, etc.) for the current active Service classification - Army/Land, Air Force, Navy (Naval and Submarine) and Missiles. When a class list is activated, that line expands into a list of all available type designs of that class (F-117, F-15 Tomcat, F-16 Eagle, etc.).
On the right is a Fabrication list box that works together with the left-hand Defense panel. When a fabrication plant is chosen from the left Defense/Production list then statistics for that fab are displayed right side of the center Fabrication sub-panel. Here you will see the "Production" activation line, with a count of the number of units currently being fabricated at the fab over the fab's maximum capacity. Below this is the "Queue" list activation lines and the number of units awaiting construction in the queue. When one of the activation lines is selected a list of in-production or queued units will be listed.
Unit designs from the Design list can be added to the queue on the Fabrication side by double-clicking or by pressing the "Select Unit" button on the top. Items are transferred from the queue to be actively built at the fab each day at midnight. If the fab is at its maximum capacity the new fabrication order will remain in the queue until the currently building units have been completed.
The bottom two buttons are "Build Continuously" and "Auto-deploy when Completed". If a unit design is queued with the build continious button activated, then the fab will continue building multiple units of this design until the process is manually terminated by the player. If the auto-deploy button is active when the unit design is queued, then completed units will be deployed instead of being placed into reserve as usual.
This sub-panel is similar to the Unit Command panel in that it also displays reserved and deployed units. It also contains action buttons to deploy units, send units to reserve, etc., similar to the Unit Command panel. As with the other sub-panels, the units displayed here are limited to ("filtered") those classes of units associated with the currently selected Service on the Defense panel.
But in addition, the sub-panel only displays those units located in the "Reserves" hex currently selected on the main Defense/Reserves panel. If this Defense/Reserves selection is "All Reserves" then the reserved units displayed in the left sub-panel will consist of all reserves in the currently selected Service.
The sub-panel displays reserve units by class on the left and deployed units by class on the left. By default, the Reserves side displays all reserves of the currently selected Service.
To the left of the Reserve list are four command buttons - Deploy Unit, Deploy All Units, Scrap Unit and Rename Unit. To the left of the Deployed list are four other command buttons - Cancel Orders, Send to Reserves, Add to Selected Units and Rename Unit.
This panel is the only place in the game where you can rename your units.
This sub-panel allows you to set the rules that govern the behavior of all of your non-missile units. At the top left are the Lock buttons. These are used to lock or prohibit your units from the following behaviors:
To the right are additional behavior-altering buttons:
Once all of the above behaviors have been specified, the player uses the "Apply ROE" buttons in order to transmit the new ROE's to either all current units or only to those units that will be built in the future.
Hovering the cursor over any unit name in a DD list will display a pop-up of its short Unit Summary display. Double-clicking on the name will display its larger detailed technical readout.
Unless you manually intervene, your DM will garrison your entire Region with Garrison units. If your Region is small and vulnerable then this may be a good policy. Otherwise you may want to lock out your DM from garrison control and manually station garrisons only along your borders.
Each military complex, base, fortification, supply depot and fabrication factory requires reserve personnel to man them. These personnel are taken from your reserve pool and are deployed at these facilities. As the game progresses, you may need to review your existing military facilities and perhaps demolish or deactivate some in order to save costs or return their personnel to the reserve pool.
You can build-up your reserve pool (increase recruitment) by raising your military salaries above the recommended levels or by setting the "Increase Reserve Personnel" MP.
Reducing your number of garrisons and keeping unused units in reserve will greatly reduce your defense costs. However, all of your units will not remain in reserve if you allow the DM to control them. The DM has its own agenda for defending your Region and it will take units from reserve to defend what it considers to be important hexes in your Region.
Your military production capacity (MilCap) is equal to the number of active Land, Air and Naval fabrications that you possess. Missile fabs do not count towards your MilCap. Deactivating or demolishing one or more of these facilities will reduce your MilCap. Reducing your MilCap can have a profound effect on your diplomatic relations with other Regions by reducing their CB (justification for war) against you. This is especially true if your MilCap is the largest on the Map. The MilCap of each region is listed on Page 2 of the Scoreboard. For further information on Diplomacy see the sections on the State Department and Conducting Diplomacy elsewere in this SR2020 Guide Wiki.
Deactivating or demolishing a military base that contains reserve units is a dangerous thing to do because often these orphaned units may be destroyed in the process. In general, all air units in reserve at an air-field will deploy and escape from a deactivated air-field and automatically fly to the nearest available operational air-field. However, naval units take a great deal of time to deploy from their sea-piers and if there are more than nine ships in reserve at a deactivated base, the balance may be destroyed in the process. The same is true for barracks.
DEFCON is your Defense Condition with DEFCON 5 being peace and DEFCON 1 war. Each decrease in the DEFCON number has an additional "Preparedness" cost associated with it. This cost buys you additional unit production efficiency, unit build speed and research that assist you in wartime.
By default you start out at DEFCON 4 - Guarded. You can manually lower this to DEFCON 5 - Peace and save the Preparedness cost associated with DEFCON 4. Once peace is declared with all regions the DM will not lower your DEFCON for you. It is important that you do so manually as soon as possible because each DEFCON level below 5 costs you an additional, hefty "Preparedness" fee.
Nuclear warfare is a game condition that can be selected in the game Lobby before the Campaign begins or from the Game settings panel during the game. The use of nuclear weapons can be allowed or not. If they are allowed, then you can adjust the degree of penalties associated with their use. These penalties include decreases in your DAR, MAR and increases in the CB of other regions.
The game has bombs and missiles with nuclear payloads. There are two safeguards - 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.
New players who attempt their first invasion of an enemy Region often find that their units will not cross the enemy border. The third "Unit Pathing" button on the Defense Condition sub-panel must be activated before your units can proceed.
When auto-build is authorized, the DM will select the latest and greatest unit designs to build. If this happen to bridging units instead of tanks, then the DM's selection may not represent the best choice. Outside of the quantity/quality and offensive/defensive buttons there is no logic present to guide your DM in producing a balanced fighting force. This may thus be one of those instances where you need to offer personal guidance by locking out the DM (turning off auto-build) or by adding better choices to the build queue manually.
Saturation (area-saturation) type missiles, like artillery, are weapons that cannot be targeted to an individual unit or structure. Instead they are "area effect" weapons that do general damage to everything in the hex at which they are targeted.
When selecting the missile types to auto-build from the Summary sub-panel, if the Land, Sea, Ship and Saturation buttons were all activated, then the DM would produce land-launched anti-ship missiles, land-launched area-saturation missiles, sea-launched anti-ship missiles and sea-launched area-saturation missiles.
Specifying "Quantity" on the Summary sub-panel will result in more units but each one will have less strength than the default strength value. Specifying "Quality" will produce fewer units but each one will be stronger that the default unit. For instance, specifying "Quality" will produce larger transport helicopter units with more helicopters (more strength) per unit so that each unit as a whole can lift more cargo weight. Specifying "Quantity" will auto-build more tank units, but with fewer tanks (less strength) per unit so the unit itself can be destroyed more easily.
If "All Production" is selected in the main Defense panel when queuing units for fabrication, then the DM chooses which fab the new unit(s) will be fabricated at. This does not always work so well, especially is some of your fabs are deactivated. So it is preferable for you to pre-select your own target fabs.
By default, the "Reserves" side of the "Reserves/Deployed" displays all reserves of the currently selected Service. This can easily lead to some confusion, since the currently selected map hex may be empty or may not even contain a reserve base of the currently selected Service-classification. Use of the "Deploy Unit" or "Deploy All Units" in this situation will result in the deployment of one or more units located at un-intended hexes.
While there is always a call for the AI regions to be "tougher", there has also been a request for the AIs to not hoard every last unit in preparation for an attack or defense. To that end, we have added to the Gold edition rules for the AI to trade units. The current implementation is as follows;
Unit trades from AI regions are subject to the same rules already in place for unit trading. The units can only be traded from reserves. Units transferred are subject to the effect of Military Difficulty levels.