Nuclear Weapons

• Category: Air unit.
• Cost: $125,000
• Range: 350 sectors.
• Attack power: 600.
• Damage radius: 2 sectors around the target.
• Armor: 10 (tough to shoot down, but not invincible).
• One-time use — consumed on launch.
• Stockpile cap: 3 Warheads per air base.
• Research: Air track, position 21 — the final item on the Air track.

A Warhead is launched like any other air unit — from an air base at a target sector. Unlike Jets or Missiles, a Warhead detonates in a 2-sector radius rather than hitting a single sector.

Immediate damage

The target sector and every sector within 2 hops takes damage. This damage is applied to:

• Units in the blast radius — most are killed outright or left at critical health.
• Structures in the radius (Refineries, Turrets, mines) — usually destroyed.
• Bases in the radius — heavily damaged but not always destroyed (bases are durable).

Damage falls off with distance: full damage at ground zero, reduced damage at the edge of the radius.

Resource destruction

The blast destroys resource richness in the affected sectors. A resource-rich mountain region turns barren. Resource regeneration is very slow — much slower than radiation decay. The land is visibly usable again long before it's economically productive again.

This is the key disincentive for offensive nuke use. Nuking territory you want to capture destroys the reason you wanted it in the first place.

Radiation

Ground zero gets +1.0 radiation. Sectors 1 hop away get +0.5. Sectors 2 hops away get +0.25. The radiation accumulates on top of whatever was already there (up to a cap of 2.0 — essentially the effect of two strikes).

Every cycle, radiation has two effects:

Damage to entities

During the Radiation phase (after Production), every unit, structure, and base in an irradiated sector takes damage proportional to the sector's current radiation level. Damage is reduced by armor:

unit_hp_loss     = radiation × 20 / (armor + 1)
structure_loss   = radiation × 3
base_loss        = radiation × 10

Some illustrative numbers at radiation 1.0 (fresh ground zero):

Entity	HP or strength loss / cycle
Infantry (armor 1)	10 HP/cycle
Tank (armor 3)	5 HP/cycle
Transport (armor 4)	4 HP/cycle
Spy (armor 0)	20 HP/cycle — dies in ~5 cycles
Refinery (armor 2)	3 strength/cycle
Land Base	10 strength/cycle

A unit sitting in a freshly nuked sector takes ~5–20 HP every cycle until radiation decays. Think of it as hazardous ground — you can't park valuable forces there.

Bases never die from radiation alone — they floor at strength 1. You can still capture a base by military force, just not erode one to dust with radiation.

Decay

After damage is applied, radiation decays by roughly 20% per cycle. When radiation drops below 0.05, it snaps to 0 and the sector is clean.

Total lifetime of a fresh 1.0 strike: about 15 cycles of lingering effect, with the most damaging phase in the first 5–7 cycles.

Radiation shows up in two places:

• Sector icon: a yellow radiation trefoil on affected sectors, with opacity scaled to intensity. Light haze for low radiation, solid glow for hot sectors.
• Radiation map mode: toggle the Radiation overlay on your map to see a yellow heat-map of every irradiated sector.

You see radiation on any sector you can see (current or stale visibility). Unknown sectors hide their radiation data.

The game is deliberately designed so nukes are counterproductive for first-strike conquest and effective as deterrents. Three mechanics work together:

Visibility of detonations

Every Warhead strike is logged in the world's cycle report — once you launch one, everyone sees it happened. Arsenals themselves aren't published, but the first launch advertises your capability to the entire world.

Economic destruction

Nuking the enemy's heartland destroys exactly the high-resource territory you'd want to capture. Nuking a Refinery denies it, but also makes the surrounding resource pool unusable for cycles.

Retaliation viability

Because nukes are long-range and multiple can fly in a cycle, a retaliatory strike is almost certain. Once both sides have nukes, first-strike advantage is wiped out by return fire.

The net effect: nukes become a tool of deterrence. They signal "don't push me past this line, or I'll make this whole region useless." Rational players don't launch first without extreme provocation.

Even under MAD logic, there are situations where Warheads are the right move:

• Last-resort retaliation. An aggressor is overwhelming you with conventional forces. A strike on their heartland buys you cycles of slowdown while they lose income.
• Denying a critical chokepoint. An enemy stack in a mountain pass you can't dislodge conventionally. A Warhead dislodges everything.
• Signaling. Launching a single nuke on an uninhabited corner of the map is sometimes a credible threat — "I have more, and I'll use them."
• Endgame finish. In a nearly-won Domination or Advantage world, nuking the last holdouts may be faster than conventional combat (though diminishing-returns math often favors conventional mop-up).

• Defense Turrets are the only reliable counter. Two or three Turrets on every likely flight path into your capital make nuke strikes very expensive for the attacker.
• Spread your infrastructure. Clustering every Refinery, Base, and Air Base in one region invites a single devastating strike. Spread them out so no single nuke ruins everything.
• Build your own arsenal. The only reliable deterrent to an enemy's nukes is your own. Once both sides can retaliate, first-strike rarely pays off.
• Scout for hangars. Arsenals aren't published, but a Spy Plane or Spy at an enemy Air Base will reveal whatever's stockpiled inside. Treaty with rivals before they get the chance to surprise you.

• Nukes are deterrents, not conquest tools.
• Resource destruction makes first-strike unprofitable.
• Radiation makes the land uninhabitable for you too.
• Warheads are the top of the Air research track — expect them late, not early.