How To: Play Defcon, A Manual

How To: Play Defcon, A Manual


A.)
Hold the "Shift" key down to select multiple units to do the same action.  To make all bombers ready to fly or to put all carriers in anti-sub mode.

Example 1:  When you click on a aircraft carrier and want to select bombers to be ready to launch, you click a aircraft carrier and hold Shift, then select launch bombers and every carrier in that carrier or ship unit grouping will activate the count down timer for bombers.

Example 2:  When you want all subs to use radar/sonar and attack other ships or launch nukes at the same time, hold the Shift key.



B.)
Hold the "Spacebar" to un-select, deselect whatever you are currently selecting.  See that blue line in the top picture on the left.  Pressing Spacebar will deselect the blue bar and blue target circle so only 1 bomber will fly.

Example 1:  If you are doing something and need to do something else such as sending bombers to bomb cities but then you are alerted of a launch or some ships enter your radar range and you want to go deal with that more pressing issue, press the Spacebar to unselect the unit you have currently selected.  This will make the target circle and line go away.

Example 2:  You select to send fighters out from your airbase, but only want to send 3 of them, click the 3 places you want them to go and press Spacebar to then deselect fighters.

C.)
Press the "Esc" key to open the menu while playing.

D.) At the bottom of the main menu box is the "Mods" option.  Selecting this opens the mod loader and if you have any click to active and then click to apply them.  You can use all variety of mods that change everything from plane graphics to entirely new maps.



All mods in Defcon are saved as bitmap images which is a .bmp file name extension.  For example, if you have a mod and click on it it will be "fighter.bmp" not fighter.jpg, or fighter.png.  So what you could do is take this image above of planes and then crop it so only 1 plane is 128x128 pixels and saved with 24 bits and there you have a plane mod image!  Now just put in a data, and graphics folder.  See the post on modding Defcon.

E.) When placing "Units" at the start you can select to only place 1 unit, or 2.. if you press the left mouse button on the target circle at the bottom of the units window.


F.)  If you open the menu in-game and select Graphics, then Water, you can choose between 3 settings.
1.) Disabled
2.) Normal
3.) Shaded

I like shaded water.  I turn off city names, and country names, and this red earth you see is a "Style" document which is just a way to save the menus color settings, which can be done by anybody in the menu and then when your done it is saved a document in the games data folders titled "Style" so you can share them with other players.  See post about modding Defcon for more.

G.) You can adjust various settings before a match starts.  If the game is set to "Custom" you can adjust the map size from small to large, and adjust city and population sizes and also select if you want variable unit counts.  Variable Unit Counts means that you get a certain number of credits to spend when placing units so that you can have 20 carriers or 12 radars at the cost of having less of the other units.  Big World mode also lets you have a lot of units and the map is larger.  You can adjust the size of the map on a scale of 50-200 with 100 being the normal default. 

H.) How many nukes does it take?
To Kill Radar = 1
To Kill Airbase = 2
To Kill Silos = 3
To Kill Ships = 1 or 2

The first nuke on an airbase will wipe out about half the planes and about half the nuke reserves, same for ships if they survive the strike and same for silos they will lose nukes with every hit.

Contrary to what the game shows; planes can NOT shoot down nukes, even though fighter planes will shoot at them and you can target nukes with planes.  The hit impacts seen do nothing to the nuke. 

H.) The Defcon fighter airplanes have shorter fuel ranges than the bombers, and most likely will not make it back to the carrier or airbase most of the time, and even if they could, they will instead find another target.  The airbase does respawns fighters 1 at a time and bombers can also shoot like fighters if selected to.  A problem is fighters will continue on their own path even if selected to go elsewhere. 

FIX TO PROBLEM:  Click a plane you want to return and try to get it to return, then notice it will not return, click the plane again but place the target location next to the plane in the direction you want it to go (or any direction) and it will respond, then click it a third time to get it go to a carrier or airbase or other target.  

See the "Page" at the bottom the blog titled "Page: Known Game Issues" for a few more tips on how to deal with the known game issues.

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