ICBM Research Tree - Naval Forces

The game that will "ruin friendships", ICBM allows up to 8 players to engage in total nuclear war. The winner shall be the one who lost the least.
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ledrobi
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ICBM Research Tree - Naval Forces

Post by ledrobi »

71% of the Earth’s surface is water and that means you cannot ignore attacking and being attacked from the sea in ICBM. It isn’t just aircraft that can launch attacks via unexpected non-land angles, there are also a wide range of naval forces you can deploy around your coastlines.

Naval forces are one of the biggest strategic assets you can have. They allow you to project power both at home and around the world. Discover the naval forces available in ICBM and how you can further develop them over the course of a game.

Naval Units

Carrier: An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seaborne airbase. It comes equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft.
Typically, it is the capital ship and centrepiece of any fleet as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local airbases. It is mobile, tactical, strategic and has a wide variety of means at its disposal. This includes nuclear weapons. In ICBM this means ALBM’s and more traditional gravity bombs are available as these can be deployed via the carrier’s aerial forces.
The carrier itself is extremely vulnerable to submarines and lacks any missile defences. The sheer cost of one makes for an expensive target you will not want to pay to replace.

Cruiser: The role of the cruiser varies according to ship and navy and often includes air defence and shore bombardment. Cruisers have heavy anti-ship missile armaments designed to sink carrier task forces via saturation attacks.
The cruiser boasts superior firepower and can carry Tactical Nuclear Missiles. Though it does not excel in the role, it does have anti-air defences and it can also carry ASAT missiles.
A cruiser is also equipped with specific radars - Space radar to detect satellites and over-the-horizon radar to see enemy nuclear missiles. With these radars a cruiser can serve the role of the “eyes” of a fleet and guide the defensive fire of the other ships in a group.
Like the carrier, the cruiser lacks anti-missile defences and is extremely vulnerable to submarines.

Destroyer: A destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, high-endurance warship intended to escort the larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group. Its role is to defend those same vessels against powerful short-range attackers on, above and below the sea.
It is relatively inexpensive to build compared to other naval assets and enjoys superior anti-air and anti-missile defences. It has no ability to carry nor deploy nuclear weapons, however.
Unlike other surface fleet, it can and will defend itself and others from submarine assault.

Improved Engine Technology
A ship’s propulsion is often both noisy and takes up a vast amount of any vessel’s usable space. In modern times, this means that military vessels are moving away from large and unwieldy diesel engines and are instead looking towards gas, electric and nuclear propulsion to serve their needs. There are many such upgrades available in ICBM and such improvements will automatically apply to any existing warships you own. 

Powerful engines: This improved engine technology increases the speed of surface ships. The noticeable engine noise of such propulsion systems substantially increases the chance to be detected by a submarine’s sonar equipment, however.

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Improved powerful engines: The increased fuel cost inherent in using gas-turbine engines is completely is neutralized by the huge service life of the engines themselves. As an added benefit, the acceleration dynamics of even large ships is noticeably improved when utilizing them.
Work on decreasing the noise they generate has also helped lessen the sonar visibility to more acceptable values. The bottom line is that the speed of surface ships can be improved but without the cost of increasing the range at which you can be discovered by submarines.

Advanced powerful engines:
Nuclear main propulsion machinery is considered the crown jewel of development in ship engines. Its highly efficient water-cooled reactor provides an almost unlimited range as well as superior acceleration when conducting manoeuvres.
Unfortunately, the giant size of nuclear-powered main propulsion machinery along with the substantial anti-radiation protection covering disallows their use on ships smaller than 1st class. This means you will find such engines only on aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers, and major anti-submarine ships.
In game this upgrade further increases the speed of surface ships without increasing the range at which you can be discovered by submarines.

Power improvements apply to submarine torpedoes as well, but we will cover submarines and their ordinance in the upcoming article dedicated to that topic.

Improving your Long-Wave and Short-Wave radars

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Every warship is equipped with a series of radar systems. The effective range of many weapon systems cannot be realized without also improving your radar technology. This is especially true of defensive systems. You can improve your ability to detect the enemy in the open sea with improvements to your radar systems as well.

Long-Wave Radars Improvements (Automatically upgrade carriers, destroyers and cruisers)

Improved LW Radars: Longwave radar is the only type available to detect and identify objects at extreme distances. This upgrade further increases the operating radius of long-wave radar.

Advanced LW Radars: Dual-circuit radar with repeated beam reflections off the Earth's ionosphere increases the discovery range of strategic targets to thousands of kilometres.
This essentially integrated system of similar radars with reliable power sources can theoretically control air space across the entire planet. This upgrade increases the operating radius of long-wave radar even further.

Short-Wave Radars Improvements (Automatically upgrade destroyers and cruisers)

Improved SW Radars: The decreased energy consumption and compact design of SW radar allows for the making of highly mobile radar systems. Sealed military reports contain the term "radio-locating manoeuvre" which is meant as a very fast way to expand a zone of control. This upgrade increases the operating radius of short-wave radars.

Advanced SW Radars: Reflected radar waves help determine more than just the distance to the target. Using the Doppler effect, computing radar equipment can calculate the speed on an object, its dynamic characteristics and approximate its size and composition. Powerful program support and prepared profiles with given parameters facilitate the substantially increased range and allows the detection of even stealth technology-based targets. This upgrade increases the operating radius of short-wave radars.

A key benefit of a navy is not just that it can project power almost anywhere in the world, but also that ships are an evolving threat. Thanks to modern refitting, ships can enjoy technological improvements and weapon upgrades without the need to entirely replace existing assets.

Find out more
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