Air Forces

Your Air Base is where air units are produced and stored.

• Cost: $2,500
• Strength: 1,000, Armor: 5, Upkeep: $150
• Placement: any owned land sector. Built by Construction Truck.
• Research: Air track, position 3.

An Air Base:

• Stockpiles air units. Each type has a per-base cap — your base can hold up to 9 Jets, 9 Missiles, 9 Spy Planes, 9 Helicopters, 3 Warheads, and 1 Paratrooper.
• Launches air units on air attack and intel orders.
• Heals damaged returning air units (that didn't fly this cycle).

Air Bases are high-value targets. An enemy who destroys one robs you of an entire region's air coverage. Conversely, capturing an enemy's Air Base denies them the same.

To sell an Air Base, it must be empty (no units stationed). Planes can't trivially relocate themselves.

All air units live at air bases (or on Carriers/Frigates at sea) rather than on sectors. They're stockpiled, not positioned, until launched on an order.

Jet

• Cost: $4,000
• Attack: 40, Range: 150, Armor: 3, Upkeep: $35
• Survives missions and returns to base.
• Cap per base: 9.
• Research: Air track, position 6.

The workhorse air unit. Cheap enough to mass, tough enough to survive light interception, long enough range to hit most targets. Reusable — a Jet that returns undamaged can fly again next cycle.

Missile

• Cost: $20,000
• Attack: 300, Range: 250, Armor: 3, Upkeep: $0
• One-time use.
• Cap per base: 9.
• Research: Air track, position 9.

Single-shot ordnance. Expensive, but 7.5× the attack power of a Jet — enough to crack hardened bases and destroy fortified defenders. Missiles are your answer to turrets stacked around a Refinery — one well-placed strike finishes the job.

Warhead (Nuke)

• Cost: $125,000
• Attack: 600, Range: 350, Armor: 10
• One-time use. Damage radius: 2 sectors. Leaves radiation.
• Cap per base: 3.
• Research: Air track, position 21 — the top of the Air track.

The strategic weapon. Massive damage in a 2-sector blast radius, leaves long-term radiation, destroys resources in the blast zone. See Nuclear Weapons for the full rules and the MAD dynamics.

Helicopter

• Cost: $15,000
• Attack: 20 (defensive return fire only), Range: 100, Armor: 2, Upkeep: $40
• Airlift unit: ferries one of your land units between two of your owned sectors.
• Survives missions and returns to base.
• Cap per base: 9.
• Research: Air track, position 18.

The Helicopter is how you redeploy land forces across your empire fast. Pick a land unit, pick a destination sector (both owned by you), pick a source air base. The Helicopter flies the land unit there in one cycle.

Helicopters do take interception damage along their route, and the ferry mission can fail if the Heli is shot down en route. They're not attack aircraft — their attack stat is only for defending themselves against interceptors.

Spy Plane

• Cost: $3,000
• Attack: 0, Range: 150, Armor: 2, Upkeep: $25
• Reveal radius: 3 sectors around target area.
• Survives missions.
• Cap per base: 9.
• Research: Air track, position 12.

Reconnaissance aircraft. See Intel for the full mechanics. Spy Planes fly during Phase 1 (Intel) — earlier than combat phases — so the intel they gather shapes the same cycle's combat outcomes if your country acts later.

Paratrooper

• Cost: $2,500
• Attack: 20 (used if the drop faces combat), Range: 150, Armor: 1, Upkeep: $0
• One-time use.
• Cap per base: 1.
• Research: Air track, position 15.

Airborne infantry. Launched from an air base, a Paratrooper flies through interception like other air units and, if it survives, lands as Infantry on the target sector. Great for dropping behind enemy lines to capture lightly defended territory, threaten supply lines, or open a second front.

Dropped Infantry arrive as newly-built units — they can't move the cycle they drop but defend normally.

Each air attack order sends one unit from a specific base to a specific target. The rules:

• One order per (source base, target sector, unit type) combination per cycle. Can't queue two jets from base A to target X, but you can queue one jet from A, one from B, and one missile from A all hitting X.
• Attack Sector — targets the sector as a whole. Damage distributes across whatever's there (units, bases, structures).
• Attack Unit — specifically targets one unit within the target sector, if you want to pick off a specific high-value target.

Widening your air force to multiple bases multiplies your per-cycle air throughput. Five air bases = five independent strikes on the same target per cycle.

Every air mission runs through interception. The system computes the flight path from source to target and checks what defenders are within fire range of any sector along the way:

• Defense Turrets within their fire range of the path fire at full strength (with distance falloff).
• Warships within their fire range of the path fire at full strength (no anti-air penalty), with the same falloff.
• Land units sitting on the flight path itself return fire at reduced effectiveness (~30%). Land units off-path don't contribute.
• Treaty allies' forces do not fire on your planes — friendly airspace is safe.
• Parked jets do not intercept — air units can't be assigned a passive intercept role. They only act when ordered out on a mission.

Damage is applied as health loss to the flying unit, not as a kill coin flip:

damage_to_unit = intercept_power / air_armor
health_loss    = (damage_to_unit / unit_attack_power) × 100

The unit's health is reduced by that percentage. If health hits 0, it's destroyed. If it survives, it completes its mission at reduced health and returns to base (if it's a returning type).

Practical example: a Jet against a single Turret on the path takes roughly 58% HP loss and limps home at ~42%. Two Turrets along the path kill the jet outright.

Keeping your own air bases safe is a priority:

• Build Turrets near your Air Bases. They deny enemy air strikes against the base itself and against nearby Refineries.
• Stagger your air bases — one per region, not all clustered. A single enemy strike shouldn't be able to ground your entire air force.
• Strike first. Air units can't intercept passively, so if an enemy is staging strikes from a known base, your best defense is often to nuke their planes in their own hangars before they can launch.

Warheads deserve their own careful thought:

• They're counterproductive for conquest — they destroy the value of the land you're trying to capture.
• They're visible to all players — your nuke count is public, creating MAD dynamics.
• Resource damage and radiation far outlast the fire.

See Nuclear Weapons for the full discussion.

• Jets before Missiles before Warheads. Jets are cheap probes; Missiles crack hard targets; Warheads are last-resort deterrents.
• Strike intel targets. Enemy Refineries, Air Bases, and Sea Bases are high-value — a single Missile on a Refinery can erase a big chunk of an opponent's income.
• Scout before striking deep. Fog-of-war sectors may have Turrets you don't know about. Send a Spy Plane first.
• Route around Turrets when possible. The pathing picks shortest routes, but you can plan attacks from bases that route around dense defenses.
• Don't waste Missiles on soft targets. A Missile on infantry is fine but a waste — use Jets. Save Missiles for fortified positions.
• Helicopters are tactical reserve. They're not attack aircraft. Treat them like a single-use airlift option — use them when a land march would take too long and matters too much to delay.