Orders and controls in Operation 38th Parallel

The top bar

The top bar keeps the score of the war: civilian casualties, Seoul, the North's guns, your interceptors, the alliance and the escalation clock. The buttons on the right pause the game, set the speed, show or hide the side panel, turn the music and the sound on or off, open How to play, and take you back to the start screen.

Front

Select a corridor, on the map (the red markers on the front) or on the Front tab, to see the attack against your defence. Past the middle of the bar, the line gives ground. River lines (the Imjin, the Hantan and the Han) and towns make a defence stronger.

• Reserves. Your mechanised divisions and the US armoured brigade start in reserve. Commit them where the North's main effort comes: intelligence names it on day 3. Moves take hours.
• Refit. Pull worn formations out to refit before they break.

Fires

The North's guns shell the front and the towns. On the Fires tab, set the rocket brigades and artillery to Counterfire and give the air war a counterfire share. When the radars see a gun group fire, everything in reach fires back.

Intel and strikes

On the Intel tab, fly the U-2, the Global Hawk, the signals aircraft and the corps drones over the corridor you need to see. Each sees what is near it, and what nobody watches fades. They find gun sites, the echelons assembling behind the line and the missile areas.

Strike what they find by air package (three a day) or by long-range missiles. The better a target is known, the harder the strike lands. Gun sites on the line cost little escalation; the echelons behind it and the missile areas cost much more.

Missiles

Ballistic and cruise missiles come at the air bases, ports, headquarters and Seoul. Each Patriot or Cheongung battery defends its own site, and THAAD covers a wide area. Choose what each battery defends: the air bases keep your aircraft flying, the ports bring the reinforcements in, and Seoul is ten million people. Firing two interceptors at a missile is surer, and empties the launchers faster.

Desk

The Desk tab holds the civilians and the evacuation, supplies, reinforcements on the way, and the clocks.

• Civilians. Shelters protect people from the shelling, less as the days go on. Evacuating takes people out of reach of the guns but fills the roads the reserves and supplies use.
• Escalation. Deep strikes, losses and some decisions push the clock towards 100, where the campaign is lost.

Decisions

Decisions arrive with a deadline and stop the clock. Pick an option, or press Decide later to put it off until its day. If you don't decide, the first choice is taken.

Speed and keys

• The speeds are 1× (a day in two minutes), 4×, 16× and 48×.
• Space pauses and restarts.
• M turns the sound off and on.
• Escape closes.