A field manual for FrontWars

Nukes: three warheads, one gate

Three warheads, one gate. The silo costs a million and the warheads cost 750,000, five million and thirty-five million, and the whole chain is useless until you own the silo.

TESTEDall four prices and the SAM price, read off the build menu, 2026-11-03
IN-GAMEdamage lines per warhead, the 100-pixel SAM range, the 7.5 second cooldown
OFFICIAL ONLYSteam lists three warhead types without numbers
NEEDS CHECKthe blast radius in tiles, damage falloff, and whether a SAM stops every type

The war row of the build menu on 2026-11-03: atom at 750K, hydrogen at 5.00M, MIRV at 35.0M, SAM at 1.50M, with the player holding 159K and none of it affordable. — **What this shows** that the nuclear end of the game is a price ladder: the MIRV alone costs more than forty-eight defence posts.Captured 2026-11-03Client v42.5Plate 1

What each one is for

Warheads and what the client says they do
Slot	Cost	Client's description	Damage line
Atom Bomb	750,000	Nuclear weapon / Small explosion	100%
Hydrogen Bomb	5,000,000	Thermonuclear weapon / Large explosion	80%
MIRV	35,000,000	Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles	50% per warhead

The two percentage columns disagree on purpose and both are the client's: the build menu calls the atom a small explosion while the Instructions screen gives it the highest damage line at 100%. Read the damage line as the share of a target it takes, and the menu line as a mood.

The silo comes first

Nothing in the war row works from the bar. The silo at 1,000,000 is the gate: buy it, and the warhead cells become live. That is why the effective price of a first nuke is 1,750,000 and the effective price of your first MIRV is 36,000,000 — the silo is not an extra, it is the entry ticket.

SAM: 100 pixels of no

The client states the SAM launcher covers a range of 100 pixels and costs 1,500,000, with a cooldown of 7.5 seconds. A pixel range is a screen measurement, not a map one, which means the same SAM covers different ground at different zoom levels. We have not tested whether that is literally what the engine does; we are reporting the unit the client printed rather than converting it into tiles we never measured.

Two limits worth knowing before you buy

A nuke cannot be retreated. Retreatment costs 25% of the attacking troops for ordinary attacks per the Instructions screen, and nukes are excluded from that entirely — there is no take-back.

The MIRV, per the same screen, only damages the player you clicked when you fired it. It is not an area weapon against a coalition; it is one very expensive message to one person.

What we have not measured

The blast radius in tiles, whether damage falls off with distance, and whether a SAM stops all three warhead types or only some. Each needs a controlled launch with a known target, which is a session of its own. Until then this page prints the prices it read and the sentences the client printed, and nothing else.

Last checked against the client: 2026-11-03 · client v42.5