ICBM: Escalation News

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"Dear Presidents,

Thank you for gathering here today. I am pleased to present to you the latest developments in our strategic project, ICBM: Escalation. This discussion will highlight the significant advancements our dedicated team of developers has made since our previous feedback session. Their relentless efforts have not only addressed past concerns but have also introduced innovative features that elevate the project to new heights. Following this introduction, our developers will provide a detailed account of the evolution and enhancements of ICBM: Escalation, underscoring our commitment to excellence and progress."

Now that the beta test has had a few more waves and it’s picking up some momentum, it’s a good time to show off how it’s been going!

As always with beta tests, hunting down and squashing bugs has been at the forefront, and we’ve been hard at work making that happen. Of course, if all we tell you is “thanks to so and so, we know the game crashes if you do this thing and now it doesn’t” then that’s not really much of a conversation piece. So, what about some of the cooler stuff that’s come out of the beta?

Well, thanks to the balancing efforts of our testers, army divisions have been closing in on something of a happy medium, where they’re deadly in a conventional conflict, dangerous enough to not be underestimated in a nuclear war, and yet also overshadowed by a horde of thermonuclear warheads coming for your cities. Similarly, ABMs and SAMs have gotten a boost to a point where they’re worthwhile, but not so strong that you can just spam them with impunity like in ICBM 1. There have been lots of nice little tweaks to push everything in the right direction, but there’s also been some not-so-little tweaks as well…

Not only are armies better overall, but the AI is also better at using them. Watch your borders…

For those who remember the dev diary we did on Air Power, you’ll remember that a line of high-speed bombers was implemented for players who wanted some extra air power at their disposal. Well, thanks to testing, we now know that that particular pedigree gets a little bit anemic late into the game, so, by popular demand, we’re introducing a final late-game upgrade for high-speed bombers that’s faster, meaner, harder to kill, and would give Leonid Brezhnev nightmares if he was still around. If you want a good laugh, you can read up on his theory that the space shuttle was secretly a nuclear bomber. If you’re more interested in destruction, then you’ll probably be happy to know that there’s a sub-orbital bomber at the end of the tech tree. The culmination of a hypothetical world where the XB-70 made it into service, and somebody decided that hypersonic flight could have made it better. And, with Project Mayhem in the works, perhaps not too far off from the truth…

For when you need to take off and nuke the entire site from near-orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

Now, one of the common complaints from the beta that we have yet to address is the pace of the game. Since conquest mode is the default, games can last for a long time, and since nuclear wars have a tendency to cut things short, players don’t always make it to the end of the tech tree. We don’t necessarily consider this a bad thing - lots of people were expecting nuclear war in the 1960s, so why not keep it as a possibility? But, with that being said, soon we’ll be working on the new game modes, which should allow players to fight a faster-paced game and even start later in the tech tree. But, before we can do that, we need to finish the new strike planner. Assuming we’re still calling it that, it’s gotten quite the makeover. But, we’ll leave that for another time…

Look at this button. What does it mean? What does it do? What is it capable of? Can we even fathom what lies within?

There’s plenty of other things going on under the hood, but that’s all we’ve got for this update. Hopefully it’s piqued your interest, regardless of if you’re in the beta or not… But, as always, we’ll see you next time!

Hi everyone!

This dev diary is going to be covering something that seems to have garnered a lot of interest ever since it was first mentioned, and now that we’re far enough into development that it’s starting to bear some fruit, we think it’s finally time to spill some more details on it. Now, I would argue that ICBM is always better with friends, but a lot of people enjoy it solo. And what better way to complement a single-player game, than with an all-new single player campaign mode?

Now, at a first glance, you’re probably wondering how a single-player campaign would even work for a nuclear war game. You know, level 1, you destroy the entire world, level 2, you destroy the entire world, again…? But, that’s not going to be the case here. Well, not if you play well, anyway.

There’s not a lot of room for continuity if everybody dies immediately. So, the campaign is going to run a little differently from your average ICBM match…

So if you don’t just glass the entire planet in an hour, how does it work? Well, it’s simple. Nuclear annihilation isn’t the goal, it’s a consequence. Let me explain. Firstly, this campaign mode in particular is actually quite unique in terms of its chronology. For most games, a campaign story might span, say, a couple weeks that your hero is in combat, or the few dozen months it takes to complete a military operation, or maybe it lasts a few years if there’s a lot of exposition. Our campaign, however, is going to last decades. That’s right, we’re going to be taking you on a ride through history’s near-nuclear hotspots, from the start of the cold war, to modern day and into the hypothetical not-so-distant future. And it’s your job to 1) Achieve your nation’s goals and objectives and 2) Not accidentally cut all of human history short in the process. Now, you’re probably wondering how that works, so what better way to illustrate it than by taking a peak at the first mission?

The single-player campaign starts where the tech tree does, and arguably where the cold war did as well. 1950. And I’m sure many of the history buffs out there will recognize this as the start of the first confrontation between the East and West: The Korean War.

Ladies and Gentlemen, LET’S GET READY TO RUUUUUMMMBLLEEEEEEE

Players will have to command UN forces to repel the North Korean invasion for an hour of in-game time, ensuring that Seoul is free once the timer is up, and that the communists never reach Busan. Doing so will accomplish the primary objective and lead to (a pretty lackluster) victory.

Of course, things can get more interesting than that… ICBM is a game built by and for nuclear weapons. There’s nothing stopping you from using them other than the consequences of your own actions. If you want to unleash your inner Douglas MacArthur, this is your chance. Just remember, the Soviets detonated their first nuke in 1949, and in the world of ICBM, the Cold War isn’t quite as frigid as real life! Tempers are hotter, nukes are more accessible, and war crimes are less like felonies and more like misdemeanors. You can push the enemy farther than you could in real life, but you should expect them to push back even harder as well. So, if you wanted to take the relatively standard conventional Korean conflict of 1950 and say, spice it up by using mustard gas and nuking Pyongyang, the only thing stopping you is your conscience and whatever mysterious, faintly radioactive deliveries the Soviets have been moving into their airbases.

Just like WWI, If you’re a fan of utilitarian ethics, attritional warfare and human suffering, then chemical weapons can be a great way to stop human wave tactics. Just mind the collateral damage…

On the topic of pushing your luck and poking the bear, the campaign also comes with another neat feature: You decide how hard you want to win. Going back to the Korean War mission, the bare minimum for success is that you can’t lose Busan and you need to control Seoul by the time the smoke clears. You can just repel the attack and keep the war relatively small and contained, but for players that are feeling a little more audacious, you can settle the border dispute once and for all by completely invading and occupying North Korea, if you’re ready to deal with China’s response… And if you REALLY want to make your point, you can invade China itself and force a ceasefire if you succeed, while bearing in mind that the Soviets aren’t going to be happy, and things are probably going to get ugly. The harder you push and the more successful you are, the better you’ll score and the better off you’ll be for the next mission. Just be careful not to bite off more than you can chew, especially once Washington is within nuking distance.

Okay, so MAYBE things got a little out of hand…

Speaking of risk and reward, all the technology you gain during a mission will carry over to the next, so your strengths, doctrine and tactics will ultimately be decided by what you invest in. As mentioned before, your performance in a mission will contribute to your score, which in turn means more technology. Since every mission will require a different approach, it’s probably best to think about your overall strategy carefully. The mission following the Korean War is going to be the Cuban Missile Crisis. A ‘guns-blazing’ approach might work, especially if you’re not a fan of Florida, but maybe something more tactful would be more appropriate…

The campaign is still a work in progress and our testers are poking away at it right now, but we’re excited to see how it evolves as we get more feedback. Right now we’re aiming to have a mission for every decade from 1950 to 2040, so there should be plenty to keep you busy once it’s done. Who knows, if there’s enough interest, maybe we’ll add a second one someday… But, until then, we’ll be hard at work on this one, and we’ll see you next time!

Hi everyone!

As you probably know, ICBM: Escalation is all about conquering and/or destroying the world. Usually these dev diaries talk about all the tools you’ll have at your disposal to do that or the mechanics of how they work, but we’ve never talked too much about the world itself. Since we’re going to be destroying it on a regular basis, let’s talk about the work we’ve done to make the world detailed, dynamic and immersive, while it’s being covered in radioactive craters.

Home Sweet Home.

Similarly to ICBM 1, where the map was split 8 ways, the map in ICBM: Escalation is now split into 10 factions, based on political and cultural similarities and boundaries, but with gameplay balance at the forefront. With the advent of territory capturing, we had to take things a step further and split each faction into 15 distinct territories, so that players can invade and annex new land, one region at a time. Each region has its own unique GDP split with certain strengths and weaknesses, and not every territory is created equally, so players will be able to be selective in how they pick their targets. For example, in Europe, Germany is the industrial heart that provides most of its military production power, but the British Isles has a stronger research and espionage base, so if a player wanted to cripple their production capacity or annex some land to boost their R&D budget, it’s more nuanced than just invading Greenland because it’s undefended. Since every territory needs to be adequately represented by its population centers, the map also features a whopping 520 cities, more than double the 200 featured in ICBM 1. Better learn some geography…

The new regional menu gives you an overview of the region’s population, its cities and economic outputs, and also any invasion progress, plus a visual representation of how much damage it’s taken. Mind the placeholder.

The world in ICBM: Escalation is also more alive in terms of the ways you can interact with other factions. Before, your options boiled down to forming alliances with some basic mutual agreements, or nuking everyone into oblivion. Now, ICBM wouldn’t be ICBM without the second option, but the diplomacy and espionage system has gotten a massive rework. Players now have the option to cut deals with factions individually, rather than just forming coalitions, and the breadth and scope of what you can do has expanded considerably. You can share individual technologies, hand off spare military hardware and warheads, support each other’s industry, provide economic aid, and even give up intel on what other factions are doing. Just like in the original, you can form multi-faction alliances if you want a more team-based approach as well, and can even choose to build on each other’s territory, if you’re not expecting to get stabbed in the back.
The new diplomacy and faction overview menu, where you can cut deals with another faction and also see what intel you have on them. You also get to put a face to who you’re dealing with now too!

The espionage menu has also been reworked for clarity, and is also a little more nuanced and less luck-based than before. Espionage was often overlooked in ICBM 1, but a skilled player that can leverage it effectively can work out what their enemies are up to, which makes things much, much easier…

It’s worth talking about the global community as well. As much as ICBM players love to joke about breaking it, ICBM: Escalation now features its own take on international law: The Geneva Convention. With the Geneva Convention, it’s easier to control the flow of the game and enforce certain ‘gentlemanly agreements’ and in a way, sort of change the rules on the fly. Factions can vote on issues like banning specific weapon systems or technologies, issuing a (temporary) nuclear ban to deescalate the situation if things get out of hand, declare a global ceasefire altogether, or to nullify all of the above if they’re out for blood.

The global forum, unanimously deciding chemical weapons should be allowed. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it.

And, also worth mentioning, since it’s in the screenshot and people are going to ask about it, we’ve also implemented a DEFCON system, which allows players to evaluate how much danger they’re in and make trade-offs between their economic outputs, and a suite of bonuses to improve their performance in a conventional or nuclear war. Starting at DEFCON 5, which doesn’t change anything, each level progressively drains more of the faction’s GDP but provides bonuses to protect against increasingly dangerous threats. So for example, DEFCON 4 will make it easier to fend off a conventional military invasion and put a slight dent in the economy, while DEFCON 1 will minimize your losses during a full-blown nuclear exchange, at the cost of grinding everything to a halt. There’s also something darkly satisfying about going to DEFCON 1 before launching dozens of nuclear missiles…

And that’s it for our latest dev diary! Let us know what you think and what’s got you the most excited. The beta test is still in progress and we’re looking into expanding the tester pool shortly, so keep your eyes on your inbox and your spam folder, because you might have that email coming your way. Thanks again!

Hi everyone!

You might remember that our last update was announcing that we’ve started beta testing. Now that we’ve had some time to let the beta run, we think it’s worth sharing how it’s been going!

As expected, there’s been a lot of bug-stomping going on as the first builds hit the ground, and we’ve been hard at work getting the game running more smoothly. With our small group of testers, we’ve gotten some great feedback on the balance of the game and have been taking steps to make it even better, from control improvements, bug fixes, AI tweaks and new features. So, let’s take a peek.

Naturally, one of the hardest challenges has been striking a balance between conventional warfare and nuclear weapons. Needless to say, nukes can be a bit overpowering, so it’s been an ongoing process, but the new addition of CBRN defence tools, a refined ‘accuracy’ system for ballistic missiles and a complete overhaul of the chemical weapon system should help swing the balance back to where it needs to be, and also add a bit of historical flair and realism to the game.

By popular demand, chemical weapons have been rerolled as a way to quickly dispatch and slow down enemy armies, at the cost of being indiscriminate, causing collateral damage and also turning you into a bad person.

We’ve also introduced multi-selection for units! Fans of the first ICBM might have noticed that you could originally only select one unit at a time. While this was good enough for the original and fit well with the style and tactics of the game (it’s not exactly good form to order every single one of your silos to attack the same target, one nuke will usually do it, for example) the sequel demands a little more finesse, with the increased scope of units, and especially with the advent of mobile land units and conventional warfare. To that end, we’ve implemented unit multi-selection, and there’s plenty of ways to use it! You can click and drag a box around the units you want, or select all of a particular unit type, add or subtract units to a group, and even assign groups or individual units to hotkeys. This can be handy if, for example, you want to move a few army groups and their supporting elements at once, or if you want a silo with a 25 megaton ICBM on speed-dial if the enemy tries anything funny.

Multi-select in action. Take note of all the units attached to the unit menu. You can quickly select individual units within the group and issue specific orders to them on a whim.

On top of that, there’s also been plenty of smaller, less dramatic tweaks and fixes. We could talk about how a line in the 4th tutorial was slightly reworded to be clearer, or how the engine handles complex modifiers is slightly different, and a dozen other things that are utterly uninteresting, but just know that we’ve been keeping busy making the game better.

I fixed a typo. Whoop-de-doo.

So, where do we go from here? After our latest patch drops, we’ll be able to get more feedback and fix any major issues that arise, and once things are more stable, we should be able to expand our pool of testers and start poking around at the multiplayer side of the game and make sure everything’s running smoothly. And while our testers are doing that, we’ll be dipping our toes into the campaign…

So, that’s it for this update. We’ve had our hands full keeping up with all the feedback we’ve been getting, and the game is getting all the better for it. We’ll see you again when it’s even better!