Nuclear Silo

The silo is aimed by hand at a point on the map rather than at something that can be seen. It is tied to two buildings: a Radar Station and a Nuclear Reactor. Both have to stand before it can be built, and lose either and it stops fabricating and stops launching until the building is back. With the tech tree on it also waits on the tree's last node, the Nuclear Program, which any doctrine may research once its own column is done; with the tree off, as in the campaign, the radar and the reactor are enough.

How to use

Keep a completed Radar Station and a Nuclear Reactor alive, then select the silo and queue a warhead. Fabrication takes 180 seconds at full power and spends 2,500 metal over that time. The silo can hold three ready-or-queued warheads in total, on a 2×2-tile pad over a single shaft. Ready and queued EMP warheads use the same three magazine slots.

When a warhead is ready, choose Launch nuke and click any point on the map, or, with the silo selected, simply right-click the point, as you would send a unit there. The strike is aimed manually; it does not need an enemy unit to be visible or selected. The order spends the warhead at once, but the hatch takes a moment to slide open before it leaves (anyone who can see the silo sees the doors go), and the silo takes no second launch order until they have closed again. The blast deals up to 3,000 damage to ground units, buildings and surface ships within six tiles, falling off toward the edge, and 750 damage in the outer ring out to eight, where the shock front is seen to pass; the ground to that edge burns for three seconds after the fireball is gone, with a flame tank's fire. Aircraft in flight and submerged submarines are outside the blast. Your own ground units, surface ships and buildings take damage too, so pull the army clear of the target before the warhead lands.

The Nuclear Warhead is not a shell. It flies as an aircraft at a steady 3 tiles a second, and a veteran anti-air unit (rank 2 or better: a Flak Track, a Hawk or a fighter that has earned its chevrons) or a SAM Site can shoot it down. A green unit never locks on to it, and an emplacement only does when it was built for the job, since a building never ranks. One veteran Hawk under its path only scratches it; two bring it down short of the target. Point defence never touches it; a Strategic Interrupter is no protection at all. So scout the approach before spending 2,500 metal and three minutes on a target, and pick a path that avoids the enemy's veterans, since the warhead flies a straight line from the silo to the point.

A Kraken Cruise-Missile Submarine launches too: with the same radar and reactor standing (and the Nuclear Program researched, where the tree is on), it fabricates one warhead at the same price and pace while surfaced within four tiles of one of its own naval yards. It can then launch from wherever it is lying. The Barracuda has no strategic magazine.