Defending the home front in Operation Roaring Lion

What comes back at you

Once the war starts, the northern shore fires ballistic missiles (about three waves a day at full strength) and drones (about two waves a day, taking nine hours to arrive) at your cities and air bases. At full strength its launch sites can put up about 64 missiles and 60 drones a day. Some come from sites you haven't found. About 30% of missiles fall on open ground, and the defences leave those alone.

Your Defence tab shows interceptor stocks, the doctrine, the drone patrol setting, the launch capacity you know of, and the running totals of missiles and drones fired, shot down, impacts and casualties at home.

Interceptors

System	Layer	Notes
Arrow 3	Above the atmosphere	First layer, hardest to replace
Arrow 2	Upper atmosphere
David's Sling	Lower tier	Also handles cruise missiles
Iron Dome	Drones and rockets	Cheapest answer to slow drones
THAAD, SM-3	Lent by the Western Ally	Not available until you accept; SM-3 is fired from a destroyer

Stocks are finite and only slowly replaced, and a decision card can bring an emergency Arrow resupply.

Doctrine

Choose how many interceptors fire at each missile:

• Two per missile stops about 98% and empties your stocks twice as fast.
• One per missile stops about 85%.

Drone patrols

Fighters on patrol shoot down drones long before they arrive: about 3% of each wave per sortie, up to 85%. You can hold back 0, 10, 20 or 30 F-16I sorties a day for this. Every sortie held back is one fewer for strikes. If the Hill Kingdom's drone deal is in place, it shoots down another 15%.

Shrinking the waves

The best defence is to hit the missile and drone bases. Launchers dug out of tunnels come back at about 3% a day, so strikes need repeating. Missiles can also close a runway for a time, which takes those sorties out of your day.

Losses at home cost you in the score and in political capital. See How to play.