Starting Out

Welcome to Counterforce! Before you begin, there are a few facts about the game you should keep in mind. Counterforce is a work in progress. The current server was and is a testbed for various game features. Most of that testing is done, and so we have begun development of a "final release" of Counterforce. The current game server will be left mostly unchanged, but when the final version is completed, a new server and app store page will be started for the game.
The current game has a few outstanding bugs that pop up from time to time and settings are occasionally adjusted. As such, this guide is not as detailed as it could be. This is intended to serve as a guide to the basic principles of the game, rather than an in-depth description of every feature. For more information, join the Counterforce discord and join the discussion with the player-base. Now, on to the guide!

The most important element of Counterforce is being part of the community of the game. The player-base is tight-knit and very willing to accept new players and to make friends and allies. The first thing you should do is join the game discord and introduce yourself. (There is a link to the Counterforce discord at the end of this text.)
The next step is the economy. Players are given an hourly income. There are also structures the players can build that give the player money. These are solar panels, farms, ore mines, logistics depots, and banks.
Combat is the trickier part of the game. You will need to make allies to survive, and to defend yourself you can make use of various defensive and offensive structures. Combat is ultimately carried out through missiles launched from either structures, players themselves, or aircraft. Missiles can be destroyed by interceptors launched from the same platforms. ICBMs are a special class of missile that is extremely powerful and extremely expensive. They carry nuclear warheads and can only be intercepted by ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) interceptors launched from ABM silos.
There are generally 3 ways to defend yourself from an ICBM strike:
-Have an ICBM of your own so that you can avenge yourself if you are attacked. (Mutually Assured Destruction.)
-Build ABM silos and fill them with interceptors to shoot done incoming ICBMs.
-Spread your structures out enough that it would take multiple ICBMs to destroy them, which would be very expensive for your enemies.

Overall, perhaps the best way to protect yourself is to establish allies. You will not need to master every element of gameplay if you work together with other players. You and your friends can form an Alliance to defend each other in-game.

These are the basic gameplay principles that will help you survive. Counterforce is a sandbox RTS. You make your own story, and together with the other players you form the history of the game. You can play however you like; you do not have to take advantage of every feature. The one thing you must do, however, is join the community and establish friends and allies. You will not last long if you go it alone!

Join the community!

Privacy Zones

Counterforce is a GPS based game which, by necessity, shows your real-life location to other players. It is of utmost importance that you make use of privacy zones, which mask your real-life location. The privacy zone is a circle, placed by you, with a customizable size. When you enter the radius of this circle, your character in-game will remain at the edge so that no player call tell where you are inside the circle. To set a privacy zone, go to the settings menu by tapping the gear icon on the bottom left of the main screen.

Tap the button with the red X over the eye, as shown in the image above.

Once on the privacy zone screen, tap the map and use the slider bar to increase the size of the privacy zone. Once you are finished, hit "save" and then "finish" and you are done. Hit "clear all" to remove all privacy zones so you can set new ones.

Players

Players are the most important thing on the map, for obvious reasons. Tapping o a player icon will open a player information window, like this one:

Much of the information on this window is easy to understand, but let's go through some of the more mysterious bits:
1 - Alliance Name. This player is a member of the alliance "Dancing With The Devil."
2 - This icon means the player is a leader in their alliance. (This blue peace icon and the blue around the profile picture means this player is in an alliance that is at peace with yours. Red means you are at war, cyan means they are in your alliance, and purple means you have a pending treaty with their alliance or they are joining your alliance.)
3 - Relative Value Multiplier. This is an indication of how powerful this player is compared to you. In this case, Emotional Damage is 4.58 times more powerful than we are.
4 - Player wealth.
5 - Bounty. Killing the player will give you a share of this amount. We will go into this more later.
6 - Toggle Visibility. This button determines whether you can see this player's structures on the map.
7 - Attack this player with a missile.
8 - Transfer Wealth. Tap this button to give money to this player.
9 - Raise Bounty. Tap this button to raise the bounty on this player.

Bounty

As seen above in the player info screen, players can have bounty and add bounty to other players. The bounty can be collected by other players by killing the player or destroying their structures. Currently, $10,000 of the bounty will be paid to whoever kills the player. Destroying structures will reward you with the build-cost of the structure in bounty. If the amount to be payed out is more than the current bounty, you will receive all the bounty that is left.

Rank and Experience

In the player-stats in the window above you can see the player has a rank and an experience stat. These function just like any other game. Get experience to rank up, if you lose experience you will rank down. If you drop below 0 experience (into the negatives) you will earn the "Dunce" rank. Drop below -2500 experience and you will no longer have respawn protection when you respawn. Each time you rank up, your basic hourly income will increase by $50/hour. Here is a list of things that increase or decrease your rank:

Increase:
-Killing other players (if they are larger than 10% your size) (+1000)
-Destroying structures (+75)
-Building structures (Amount depends on structure)
-Intercepting missiles (+10 for normal missiles, +25 for stealth, +120 for ICBMs)
-Winning wars (+250)
-Using missiles to destroy other missiles (+75)

Decrease:
-Dying (-500)
-Killing a player less than 1/10 your size (unless you are at war with their alliance) (-300)
-Having a structure go offline due to lack of funds (-25)
-Having a structure take damage due to lack of offline upkeep funds (-50)
-Losing a war (-250)
-Having one of your structures destroyed (-35)

Alliances

Players can join together into alliances and be promoted to lead those alliances. Alliances are a way for players to obtain protection in numbers. Alliances often engage in diplomacy and politics in the Counterforce discord server.
Alliances can "affiliate" with other alliances or declare war on them. Affiliated alliances appear blue on the map, while alliances you are at war with appear red. You can see which alliances you are affiliated or at war with on the alliance info page, accessed by tapping the globe button in the top right of the bottom menu. From there, find your alliance and tap it to see your alliance's stats and political status.

Wars:
Wars are fought between 2 alliances (though one alliance can be at war with as many others simultaneously as it chooses) and can have a winner & loser, or draw. If neither alliance scores at least 1 kill against the other, the war automatically draws and no winner is chosen. If a winner is chosen, the winning alliance will receive 75% of the amount the other alliance spent on the conflict split up among each of the winning alliance's members. Each member of the winning alliance will receive 250 experience and each member of the losing alliance will lose 250 experience.
Affiliation:
Affiliations are simple peace treaties. You cannot attack players you are affiliated with, and they can't attack you. You can, however, EMP each other, so be careful who you trust. (EMP is discussed in the "missile effects" section of this guide.)

Missiles and Interceptors

Missiles

There are two types of missiles in the game: normal and ICBMs. Normal missiles can be destroyed by interceptors, but ICBMs can only be destroyed by ABMs (anti-ballistic missiles.) Purchase missiles in your personal missile site, missile site structures, or ICBM silos. (Note that your personal missile site cannot hold nuclear missiles.)
When you tap an empty missile slot to buy a missile, you will be greeted with a list of many different missile types to choose from. Each missile type will look like this:

1 - Missile stats. Some missiles have stats that are not listed on other missiles. For example, some missiles have an "EMP Radius," where they create an EMP effect. This missile, the Sabre, does not have such a stat listed, which means that stat is 0; it doesn't have an EMP radius at all.
2 - Special missile attributes. Tap on each icon for information about what it means.

Radiation

Radiation appears as a green circle on the map (unless you are using the "Contamination" or "Boring" map themes). Radiation harms players at an hourly rate and can be stacked for maximum damage.

EMP

EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) is generated by missiles with an EMP radius when they reach their target. The EMP radius will show up as a purple circle on the map (again, unless using the "Contamination" or "Boring" map themes) while the missile is in-flight. On impact, the EMP will be generated and has a chance to temporarily disable structures. The EMP chance decreases with distance from the impact site, from a max of 90% at ground zero to a minimum of 10% at the edge of the EMP.

Interceptors

Interceptor missiles are fired from SAM sites and can shoot down incoming missiles. Use them to defend yourself and your allies.
Interceptors each have a unique accuracy percentage, which can be boosted if the SAM site that fires them is inside the range of a friendly radar station.
Interceptor missiles can only target missiles that are slower than them. So make sure you are buying a variety of interceptors. Some interceptors are very cheap, but are not fast enough to target all missile types.

Missiles & Intercepters

Structures

There are several structures in-game, and each has their own unique function and part to play. They have some things in common, though. All structures can be turned online or offline via the power button in their info-boxes. When the structure is online it has full functionality but also incurs an hourly "upkeep cost." To avoid this cost, you can turn the structure offline, where it will have an hourly offline upkeep cost of $5/hour. Make sure you have enough money to maintain all of your structures. If the structure tries to charge you for its hourly upkeep cost but finds you unable to afford it, it will go offline. If you cannot afford the offline upkeep cost, the structure will take damage. Each structure can also be sold ("decommissioned") for a percentage of what you have invested in the structure.

Radar Stations

Radar Stations are vital defensive support structures that boost the accuracy of nearby SAMs and sentry guns. They are also very expensive to upgrade and keep online, so make sure you keep it well protected at the center of a cluster of sentries and SAM sites.

Sentry Guns

Sentry guns are a defensive structure that provides close-range protection for players and structures. Sentry guns will engage any missile or player that enters the radius of the purple circle, visible when they are clicked, around them. The sentry gun fires every 3 seconds and has a 25% chance of killing a missile or player. Be careful how you place sentry guns, a fast enough missile may cross the sentry gun's range so fast it doesn't get a chance to shoot! Make layers of sentry guns around your structures for the most effective defense. Be careful when approaching another player's sentry guns, as the sentry gun will attack any enemy or unaffiliated player or missile in range. Place sentry guns near radar-stations to boost their accuracy. The rage of the sentry gun is upgradeable from 400 meters to a maximum of 2.0 kilometers.

SAM Sites

SAM sites are another defensive structure for players to build. They hold interceptor missiles used to shoot down incoming enemy missiles. The SAM site's capacity and reload time can be upgraded. The beginning reload time is 30 seconds, with the final upgrade level being 5 seconds. The maximum capacity for a SAM site is 126 slots. (The capacity and reload stats are the same for both SAM sites and missile sites.)

The SAM site has 3 firing modes that can be toggled by the player:
-Automatic mode has the SAM site automatically engage any missile that threatens the player, the player's structures, or the player's allies or their structures. The SAM site will not defend players in affiliated alliances, however.
-Semi-auto mode will function like the automatic mode, but only when the player is offline or dead. If the player is online, the SAM site will do nothing.
-Manual mode is exactly what it sounds like. The SAM site will not fire any interceptors, it will only fire if the player manually targets a missile.

Each SAM site also has an "engagement distance" that can be customized by the player. The SAM site will not fire at targets beyond it's engagement distance even if it has interceptors that can reach. You can use this to prevent other players from wasting your expensive, long-range interceptors with cheap missiles.

Other players can take advantage of how your SAM sites are set. They can waste your interceptors if it is set to automatic, or they can attack your structures unchallenged if they are set to manual. Make sure you set them carefully, and make sure you have enough SAM sites to deal with any threat you may face. SAM sites will not be enough to defend you on their own, you will need to supplement them with carefully placed sentry guns to ensure your survival.

Interceptors can only target missiles that are slower than them. Be careful which ones you buy and keep an eye on their speed stats.

Build SAM sites near radar-stations to boost the accuracy of their interceptors.

Missile Sites

Missile sites are offensive structures players can build, upgrade, and use to attack their enemies. As with SAM sites, the missile site can be upgraded for faster reload time and greater missile capacity. Just like the SAM site, the base reload time is 30 seconds, fully upgraded reload time is 5 seconds, and maximum upgraded missile slots are 126. The missile site has no additional firing modes like the SAM site. It's simply point, click, boom. One fully upgraded missile site can fire every 5 seconds, but remember that your enemy's defenses can easily deal with one missile every 5 seconds, so be sure to build enough missile sites to provide a continuous stream of fire to break through enemy lines.

ICBM Silos

Nuclear missile silos are tough, expensive structures used to hold a single nuclear missile. They cannot be upgraded and they only hold 1 missile. They are extremely expensive, and they are extremely dangerous. The nuclear missiles held in them are the fastest missiles in the game; they can cross the entire globe in under 30 minutes and devastate any player they hit. If you decide to build one, you will be entering a new arena of warfare, so do so carefully. Any player with a nuke silo is a threat to everyone. Your nuke silo should be well defended and should be online and ready to fire at any moment. You will need to be ready to retaliate at a moment's notice in case any other player decides to start a nuclear war.

ABM Silos

ABM silos hold anti-ballistic missiles, your only way to defeat incoming ICBMs. Build your ABM silos near radar-stations to boost their accuracy. Anti-ballistic missiles are expensive, you don't want one to miss!

Ore Mines

Ore mines produce ore the player can collect. Currently the ore mine costs $5000/hour to operate and produces ore that ranges between $2500 and $25,000 in value each hour.