DEFCON



"It's Global Thermonuclear War, and nobody wins. But maybe - just maybe - you can lose the least."

This page is about a work. If you're looking for the trope, that's Defcon Five.
A unique Real Time Strategy from Introversion Software, the makers of Uplink, Darwinia, and Multiwinia. You play a general in control of your chosen side nuclear arsenal, and your goal is to exterminate the enemy's civilian populace while preserving your own. In order to win, you must strike against your enemy's population centers while at the same time crippling their ability to retaliate. Easier said than done since launching a strike reveals the locations of that strategic asset to everyone in the game. The game is inspired by the 1983 cult classic War Games and designed to simulate the paranoia and anxiety of the Cold War.

There are three gamemodes in DEFCON:
 * Default: Score two points for every civilian kill, lose one point for every civilian loss.
 * Genocide: Score one point for every civilian kill.
 * Diplomacy: Everyone begins with a perfect score and starts in an alliance. One point is lost for every civilian death.

When playing the game, the DEFCON level drops as the game progresses. The level determines what actions can be taken in the game.
 * Defcon 5: Can place units.
 * Defcon 4: Radar coverage reveals the Fog of War.
 * Defcon 3: Can no longer place units: air and naval conflict permitted.
 * Defcon 2: No change from Defcon 3
 * Defcon 1: Nuclear attacks permitted.

DEFCON contains examples of:

 * A Million Is a Statistic: A missile hit on a city is labelled (say) "Manchester hit, 1.2m dead", but the civilian population is just a means of keeping score.
 * All Nations Are Superpowers: North America, Russia, even a single Europe make sense. A united nuclear-armed Africa, less so.
 * All There in the Manual: There is a manual available for download off the Introversion website which teaches you the basics of the game. However there are some parts where you might not be sure if it was written by a paranoid or a Cloudcuckoolander
 * Anachronism Stew: The former Soviet Republics are separate from Russia (and the European ones are a part of a United Europe), but St. Petersburg is named Leningrad in game.
 * Bombers on the Screen
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: There is no I in team, as in I win.
 * Cosmetically Different Sides: Everyone starts with the same assets and the same population count. Population centers are spread out differently between the continents though.
 * It's not entirely cosmetic, however, in that some continents are easier to defend than others due to city placement. Europe, for example, has all of its' population centers placed in a relatively tight group, so it's easy to cover them strongly with antimissile defenses. South America, on the other hand, is much more spread out.
 * Everyone hates Europe, except Russia, because most nukes fired at / from all sides arc over Europe, allowing European air defences to shoot them all down.
 * Crippling Overspecialization: Stances offer a bit of utility but overall, the units breakdown into either direct combat or support roles.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Subverted with silos and air bases. Getting hit by a nuke reduces their arsenal.
 * Defcon Five: Done correctly.
 * Dual Mode Unit: Units can be toggled between different modes to fit certain roles. For example, a silo can switch between anti-air mode (where it provides your only defense) and ICBM launch mode. There is a timed delay before a switch takes effect, and the time needed to switch back to anti air as warheads bear down on you can seem very long indeed.
 * Easy Logistics: Your nuclear stock pile is limited, and your planes have fuel. But that's about it.
 * Enemy Mine: You can form alliances, just make sure to keep an eye on your "friends".
 * Fog of War: Radar units and planes reveal the fog of war.
 * Forming an alliance also reveals everything your allies sees - including their assets (and vise-versa).
 * Homage: DEFCON takes inspiration from War Games. A number of shout outs are included in the main menu.
 * Kill All Humans: The goal of the game.
 * Lost Forever: If you haven't placed your buildings by Defcon 4, or your fleets by Defcon 3, then you'll just have to do without.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: The more missiles you fire, the more that can be expected to get through an enemies defences and hit their target.
 * Non-Entity General: You, the player.
 * One World Order: The diplomacy game mode begins like this. And slowly breaks down as nations chip away at each others' population centers to reduce their scores.
 * Painfully-Slow Projectile: Justified in that missiles are slow in relation to the size of the earth, and the parabolic arc they follow is how they'd actually fly to their target . However, it's still obnoxious watching your missiles get shot down as they slowly inch toward their targets.
 * Power Glows: Radiation from nuclear strikes is depicted by a Sickly Green Glow (the colour can be changed.)
 * Risk Style Map: The world is divided into North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Asia. Australia is non playable because that would be OP.
 * Scoring Points: Scoring kills against enemy population centers earns points. Whoever has the most points at the end of the time limit wins.
 * Sensor Suspense: The only hint of what might be really happening is the occasional sound of a woman crying.
 * Shout-Out: The menu has a terminal readout that displays random information, from a staff roll, the effects of radiation exposure and symptoms, to listing "Civilian Targets in Megadeaths", and asking if you'd rather play a nice game of chess instead.
 * Aditionally, many of the stranger seeming exceprt from the game manual come directly from the 'Protect and Survive' information handed out in the UK during the Cold War.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: There are soft, slow piano chords and One-Woman Wail, with occasional sighs or sobbing to accompany the end of humanity.
 * Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fighters beats bombers, bombers beat battleship, battleship beats fighters. Parallel to that-- battleship beats carrier, carrier beats sub, sub beats battleship.
 * The End of the World as We Know It : And you're the one orchestrating it all !
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: SAN FRANCISCO: 10 IN FLIGHT.
 * The Steam version of the game has the achievement "Have you had enough?", which involves nuking a city whose population has been already reduced to 0.
 * Unfriendly Fire: You can manually target your allies assets and population and avoid any retaliation from anti aircraft fire. Just make sure to leave the alliance before the nukes fall or you'll lose points instead.
 * Steam has an achievement for this.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Civilians are little more than points to be scored in a game of war.
 * If you had a bad day, there's nothing to relieve stress quite like obliterating humanity and reducing the Earth to a lifeless ball of irradiated rock, Laughing Mad all the while.
 * The Steam release was updated during the 2011 holiday sale to include Santa Claus travelling around the world delivering presents. You could destroy him with a well-aimed and well-timed nuke. Doing so earns you the "Merry Christmas" achievement, "and thereby end Christmas for everyone, for ever more".
 * Villain Protagonist: The whole point of the game is based around being a General Ripper and ensuring them commies/capitalists/whatevers die in a nuclear fire.
 * We Have Reserves: Since fighters respawn and everything else doesn't, sending in waves of fighters to draw AA fire from bombers or missiles is one way to try and ensure they make it through, albeit limited by the fighters' short range.