ICBM: Escalation News

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!

Hi everyone!

In this dev diary, we’re going to be talking about our first beta! It’s just landed on Steam and we’re super excited to show off what we’ve been working on!

To start, we’re going to be working with a relatively small group of testers so we can dig in deep and get some really detailed feedback. The response we’ve gotten from the beta sign-up has been overwhelming and was much, MUCH bigger than we expected, so we’re grateful for all the support we’ve gotten so far. Unfortunately, this comes with the caveat that we can’t take everybody. But, don’t worry, because this is just the first beta test and as we make progress, they’ll get bigger and bigger with more and more participants. As of the time of writing, we haven’t named any names yet, but if you don’t get accepted early on, it might just be a matter of time. You’ll know if you’ve made it if you get an email from Slitherine with instructions on how to join, so keep an eye on your spam folder. Most of the administration for the actual testing is going to be on the official ICBM Discord, so make sure to drop in!

So! On to the beta itself! In our first round of testing, we’re going to be getting a feel for the pace of the game, the way the AI behaves, some of the strategies and how effective they are, and overall, just get some first impressions.

Our testers will have access to the original game modes from ICBM 1, including the original multiplayer experience, single-player skirmish matches, and a freshly redone tutorial explaining all the new mechanics. With 5 times as many technologies as the original, even more units, and a much, much more complex overall strategy and gameplay loop, the ICBM: Escalation experience should feel much different from its predecessor, so establishing how it feels early on is important. Our testers will also get a glimpse of the graphical facelift that the units, menus and map have received.

The AI is now capable of effectively leveraging land assets like special forces, armies and mobile launchers. Instead of just bases and installations, the war on the ground is going to get a lot more dynamic!

One of the crowning achievements of ICBM: Escalation is the introduction of conventional ground warfare, which adds an entirely new dimension to the game. Although players will have the choice of if they want to engage with it and attempt to invade other factions, they’ll have to be on guard, because the AI is now capable of using armies, and they’re ready and willing to invade anyone who’s not prepared! The new mechanic of escalation, from conventional warfare, to tactical nuclear warfare, and eventually total nuclear annihilation is the biggest step forward we’ve made, and also the focal point of the beta test.

ICBM may be focused around nuclear war, but that doesn’t mean that armies can’t pose a threat to you either!

So, hopefully all goes well with the first round of testing, and we can forge ICBM: Escalation into a top-notch nuclear wargame. A quick thank-you to our testers in advance before we get started, and remember, if you’re disappointed about not making it into the beta, it might just be a matter of waiting! We’ll see you again in the next dev diary!

We are excited to announce the opening of sign-ups for the beta of ICBM: Escalation.

The beta is set to commence in March and will feature both single player sandbox gameplay and multiplayer up to ten players, along with a spectator mode. As we approach the launch date, we will provide additional details regarding the content of this beta.

Stay tuned and register here: BETA