How to play Operation Roaring Lion

What the game is

Operation Roaring Lion is a short real-time strategy game, about 20 to 30 minutes, about a strike on a nuclear programme. You run the joint operations centre of a fictional state, the Coastal Republic. The state on the northern shore holds about 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, and the plants to take it further. You have two weeks to destroy the enrichment sites, and to find the material and seize it or bury it.

Geography, places and equipment are real, with published figures. Every nation, faction and person is fictional and named by role. Play it in your browser at https://operationroaringlion.earthablaze.com. It's free.

The three clocks

• Breakout is the clock that loses the game. It starts at 40% and climbs. At 100% the northern shore has the material and the means to make a weapon, and you've lost. Hitting enrichment and, above all, the conversion plant at Isfahan slows it. Taking the material away slows it too. The top bar shows the percentage and the days left at the current rate.
• The world's patience is international pressure. It starts at 12% when the first strike lands and rises about 6% a day, plus more for incidents. At 100% the Security Council imposes a ceasefire and you're scored on what you've done.
• Your own interceptors are finite. The northern shore fires ballistic missiles and drones back at your cities and air bases, and Arrow, David's Sling and Iron Dome stocks run down. See Defending the home front.

The mandate also ends on day 14.

How a campaign runs

1. Preparing. The campaign opens before the war. Use the time to scout with satellites, drones and agents, and to plan the first wave. Preparations can leak: the chance rises every day, and a drone over the northern shore raises it a lot. A leak puts the enemy on alert, so you lose surprise and the material starts moving.
2. The first wave. Plan it in the pause (press P). The first wave within 8 hours of H-hour has surprise: half the threat, and launchers caught in the open. See Planning a strike.
3. Suppress, then strike. Air defences make every later package expensive in aircrew, so take them down, then hit the programme.
4. Find the material. See Finding and seizing the stockpile.

Winning, losing and grades

Your score is out of 100. It rewards the programme destroyed (45%), the material taken or destroyed (40%) and your remaining political capital (15%), and subtracts aircrew lost, special forces lost, casualties at home and civilian-casualty incidents abroad.

Grades: A at 85 or more, B at 70, C at 55, D at 40, and F below that.

You win if:

• the campaign ends, by ceasefire or the end of the mandate, with a C or better, or
• the programme is 85% or more destroyed and every kilogram is seized or destroyed.

You lose if breakout reaches 100%, if political capital reaches zero, or if the campaign ends below a C.

Time and keys

One game hour takes 3 seconds at 1×, so a game day takes 72 seconds. The speed buttons 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 (the clock stops while you plan)
Esc	Close the open panel

The left panel has three tabs: Desk (operations, decisions, forces, airspace), Intel and Defence. Decision cards arrive from other nations. Each has a cost, and one you don't answer within about 36 hours lapses to its most cautious option.

If you want a reference for the aircraft, weapons, interceptors and threats, the book icon in the top bar opens the unit catalogue.