Orders and controls in Operation Epic Fury

Giving a ship orders

Select a ship, choose an order, then click a sea zone. The orders are:

• Escort protects tankers passing through a zone from missiles, drones and boats, and makes owners more willing to sail.
• Patrol hunts boats and builds intel on mines and launchers. It also helps escorts nearby.
• Sweep finds and destroys mines. It's slow, and the minefield can bite back.
• Defend puts air defence over a terminal or pipeline head.
• Blockade stops the northern shore's own exports from Kharg. It cuts their funding but raises the price and the tension.
• Rearm sends the ship to the nearest friendly port to reload missiles, refuel and repair. It returns to station afterwards.

Ship status colours

Each ship has one status, shown the same way on the map, in the Fleet list and in the planner, so you can see which ships are free for a new job:

• Available: idle or on patrol.
• Committed: escorting, sweeping, defending or blockading.
• On operation: assigned to a convoy or mine clearance operation that's running.
• Under way: moving to a new station.
• In port: reloading, refuelling or repairing.

The Fleet tab has a legend, plus bars for each ship's magazine, fuel and hull.

Planning a joint operation

Strikes aren't a ship order. Press Plan operation in the top bar, or P. The clock stops while you build one of three operations:

• a joint strike on located targets, using aircraft, bombers, cruise missiles or a special-forces raid
• a convoy operation on one lane
• a mine clearance operation in one zone

You'll see a forecast first: the chances, the cost and the risks. Then execute now or set an H-hour up to 36 hours ahead. Long-range bombers need flight time, so they push the earliest H-hour back. Scheduled operations wait on the Desk with a countdown, and you can cancel them there.

You can only strike what you've found. Strikes can fly from the carrier, from partner air bases (the host has to agree, and each use costs goodwill) and from the Masirah air base once you've set it up (below).

The Desk

The Desk tab is a stack of folding drawers: Operations, Decisions, Commitments, Intelligence, Deploy more ships, Deploy more aircraft, Land-based air defence, Partner navies and Programmes. Each header shows a short summary, such as "2 scheduled" or "satellite ready". The Decisions drawer is highlighted when a card is waiting. Which drawers you've left open is remembered on your device.

Finding launch sites

The Intelligence drawer lists four regions of the northern shore and beyond. Task a satellite pass over one: a pass is available every 12 hours, finds fixed sites well and mobile launchers poorly. To keep watching a region, send an MQ-9A Reaper or RQ-4B Global Hawk over land from the Fleet tab. Drones over land can be shot down.

Buying aircraft

Deploy more aircraft buys, with in-game budget and a delivery time of 5 to 7 days:

• a B-2A flight to Diego Garcia or a B-1B flight to RAF Fairford, each of which gives you another bomber mission
• a fighter squadron (12 aircraft, +12 strike sorties a day) at an air base whose host agrees
• a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol squadron
• an MQ-9A Reaper flight or an RQ-4B Global Hawk for surveillance over land

A second carrier is on the Deploy more ships list, at $1.20B and 21 days. Everything bought this way costs in-game budget only.

Setting up land sites

Open Land-based air defence on the Desk, or click a terminal, air base or the fleet base on the map and use Deploy here. You can set up:

• a Patriot battery (PAC-3 MSE) against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones
• a THAAD battery against ballistic missiles only
• a C-RAM and Coyote counter-drone battery, the cheap answer to drone swarms
• an AN/TPY-2 radar, which makes every battery at the site kill more often and helps give launch sites away
• a special operations detachment, which can raid island targets within 600 km without a carrier

Each takes days to arrive and shows its price first. Interceptors come from national stockpiles, which the Land-based air defence drawer shows.

The Masirah air base

Masirah Island, on the Arabian Sea, is a possible air base. Click it on the map and press Establish expeditionary air base ($350M, 14 days, and the Sultanate has to agree). Once it's set up it flies F-15E Strike Eagles, 12 sorties a day to start, and it takes squadrons and air defence like any other base.

Speed and keys

The speed buttons in the top bar run the clock at 1×, 2×, 4× or 8×, or pause it.

Key	What it does
Space	Pause or resume
P	Open the operations planner
Esc	Close the planner and clear the selection

Panels and overlays

The left panel has three tabs: Desk, Fleet for your ships, and Oil for the market.

The map overlays show Risk (the risk owners see on each lane), Mines and Escort cover. The Red Sea button fits the whole theatre on screen, Red Sea included, and Gulf zooms back in on the Gulf.

The book icon opens the unit catalogue, with the real figures behind every ship, aircraft, defence and threat. The other icons switch the radio chatter, music and sound on or off.