When to Launch Your First MIRV in a Multi-Player Cold War

Direct answer: fire when the match price is still cheap and the target is about to hit the next rung

In a multi-player Cold War you fire your first MIRV the moment your current rung (25M + 15M × total game-wide launches) is cheaper than the target’s launch threshold, the target has enough ready Silos to reach that threshold, and the Doomsday Clock pressure makes waiting no longer rational. Waiting only wins while you hold the cheapest rung the match will ever offer.

That single sentence is the whole decision, and everything below it exists so you can apply it under pressure without re-deriving the math from scratch. Three signals must line up at the same tick, and the absence of even one means you keep waiting: (1) the price-ladder signal — your rung is the one that is about to be claimed, because you can read the launch count and confirm no one else is already at your bankroll or ahead of it; (2) the target signal — the player you are about to strike has enough ready Silos and enough income that, if you do not fire, they will cross the next rung before you and force you to answer at a higher price; (3) the clock signal — the Doomsday Clock has advanced enough, or the territory war has compressed enough, that the value of one clean nuclear reset now exceeds the value of the extra Gold you would accumulate by waiting another wave. When all three are true, the rational move is to fire at the current rung and let the ladder jump past you, because the cheapest strike on the board is a single, non-renewable item and holding onto it costs you the rest of the match’s cheapest disruption. When only two of the three are true, the correct move is still to wait: firing at the wrong rung means you paid the cheap price to stop a strike that was not actually about to happen, and you handed your opponent the 40M rung you just consumed. This guide walks through how to read each signal, how to combine them into a tick-by-tick checklist, and which of the three signals you are most likely to misread in a real multi-player Cold War. In practice the clock signal is the one most players get wrong, because it is the only one that is not directly visible: the Doomsday Clock’s exact advance is easy to infer from the territory waves you have already seen, but the value of a reset is easy to overestimate in a map where the target still has a long way to go to their next rung. The result of that misread is the most common Cold War failure: firing the cheap strike to stop a threat that was still two waves away, then being forced to answer the opponent’s strike at a rung that is no longer affordable. The rest of this guide is built to prevent exactly that error — it gives you the numbers, the thresholds, and the failure cases, so that the moment you feel the freeze, you can check the three signals in order and fire only when the cheap rung is genuinely about to be claimed by someone you cannot outwait.

The price ladder is global, and the cheapest strike belongs to the first to fire

The single fact that turns a Cold War from a wait-and-see standoff into a concrete decision is that the MIRV price is global across the whole match, not per player. In v0.34.13 the cost is 25M + 15M × (total MIRVs launched so far by everyone). That means the first launch of the match costs 25M, the second costs 40M, the third 55M, and so on — and every player on the map is looking at the same number at the same moment. Nobody gets a private 25M price; the cheap strike is a shared, one-time resource that disappears the instant anyone fires.

This is the core of the timing decision. The community describes the freeze it produces: “End game now forces you to act quickly and decisively… If you just wait and bank up resources everyone will do the same and there is a stalemate.” The reason the freeze happens is that the price is shared. If I can afford the 25M rung but you cannot, the rational move for you is to keep earning until you can, and the rational move for me is to fire before you can, because my 25M strike is cheaper than the 40M strike you will have to make to answer it. If I instead wait to “be more comfortable,” I am handing you the chance to reach 25M at my expense, and the cheapest strike on the board — the one that costs the least for the most disruption — goes to whoever moved first.

There is a version boundary worth stating up front because it changes the math. A flat-price variant — 25M for every MIRV plus a global 60-second launch cooldown (commit 5f6c8fad, PR #5281, merged 2026-09-10) — was reverted the same day (commit c8fb18ce, PR #5349), and that revert is inside v0.34.13. So in the shipped game the price rises with every launch and there is no global launch cooldown; only the v0.34.0 beta tags ever contained the flat-price rule. If a guide or a video you watched describes a flat 25M MIRV or a 60-second global cooldown, it is describing a beta that never shipped. The rising ladder is the rule you are playing against, and the ladder is exactly what makes “fire first” so valuable: it is the only price point that never comes back.

Launch # (game-wide)	Cost (million Gold)	Who the price belongs to
1	25	The first player to reach 25M — the cheapest strike of the match
2	40	The first player to reach 40M after launch #1
3	55	The first player to reach 55M after launch #2
4	70	The first player to reach 70M after launch #3
n	25M + 15M × (n−1)	Whoever reaches that rung first

The practical reading: the cheapest strike in the match is a single, non-renewable item, and it is claimed by the first launch. Every Cold War is, underneath the waiting, a race to decide whether you are the one to claim it or the one who paid for it at a higher rung. The rest of this guide is about the signals that tell you when you are actually in that race, because most of the time you are not.

Reading the bankroll and the silo count is the whole skill

You do not get to see an opponent’s exact Gold or their exact Silo count on demand, so the discipline is to keep two running estimates at all times: the price ladder position (how many MIRVs have launched game-wide, hence the current rung) and the target’s threshold (the Gold they need to reach the next rung, and how many ready Silos they have). These are the only two numbers the firing decision actually depends on, and both are readable from things you can observe: the total launch count is public, and a target’s income and army size let you estimate their bankroll to within the ±5M that decides a rung.

The price-ladder position is the easy one and the one players skip. It is just a counter: every time a MIRV detonates anywhere on the map, the next rung goes up by 15M. If two MIRVs have launched so far, the current rung is 55M, and a Cold War that looks like “nobody can afford a nuke yet” may actually be “nobody can afford the next nuke, but the previous nukes already cost two players their banks.” The ladder position tells you how close the shared price is to the point where the cheap strike is gone, and it tells you that every player who is about to cross a rung is about to make a decision you can influence by firing first.

The target threshold is the hard one, and it is where the ad-hoc community heuristics live. “Wipe them before they afford it” is a threshold heuristic: you are estimating the second-richest player’s bank and firing when your rung is cheaper than the rung they are about to reach. “Mirror the opponent’s threshold” is the same idea formalised — do not fire at your comfort number, fire at the number the second-richest player is about to hit. The difference matters, because your own bank is the ceiling of your comfort, not the trigger. If you have 60M and the second-richest has 45M, firing at your 60M comfort while they sit at 45M means you paid 60M to stop a strike that would have cost them 40M; you bought the stop at a premium and the ladder is now at 55M for everyone, including you. The correct read is to treat the second-richest’s bank as the target threshold and fire only when your current rung is strictly cheaper than the rung they are about to cross, so you claim the cheap strike and they are forced to decide at the higher one.

The second number is the silo count, and it is the hard constraint the bank cannot override. A player with 80M Gold but zero ready Silos cannot launch, no matter how much the ladder has moved, because they have no launch slot. A player with 40M and two ready Silos can launch the instant the ladder is at or below 40M. This is why the “wipe before they afford it” heuristic is really about silos, not money: the trigger to fire is the moment the target’s ready Silo count plus their estimated bank puts them at or above the next rung. Money without a Silo is waiting; a Silo without money is one rung of earnings away. Track both, and the firing trigger becomes a checkable condition rather than a feel. The 90-tick SiloCooldown then tells you the follow-up: after you fire, that Silo’s slot reloads in 90 ticks, so a well-timed first strike also buys you a 90-tick window in which the target cannot immediately answer from the same slot, which is a material share of the value of firing at all.

The three triggers that make firing the value-maximising move

Most of the time in a Cold War, the correct action is genuinely to wait, and the failure mode is firing at the first moment you feel like it. So the guide is organised around three concrete triggers, and firing is the value-maximising move only when at least one of them is true. Each one is checkable from the two running estimates above.

Trigger 1 — Price advantage. Your current rung is strictly cheaper than the target’s launch threshold. If you are at the 25M rung and the target’s bank puts them at 40M, you have a 15M advantage: you can strike at 25M and force them to answer at 40M, and the gap is real value you can spend on follow-up army or income. This is the cleanest trigger and the one the “wipe before they afford it” players are converging on without naming it. The advantage shrinks as the ladder rises, so the same price-advantage window that exists at launch #1 is gone by launch #3, which is why the cheap strike is a one-time resource.

Trigger 2 — Target at the threshold. The target’s ready Silo count and estimated bank together put them at or past the next rung, and their income rate means they will be ready within a predictable window. Here the value is not the price gap but the sequencing: you fire the 25M strike now, and the target’s 40M decision is now made on top of your strike having already disrupted their army, rather than the other way round. The 90-tick SiloCooldown is what makes the sequencing work — your first strike lands while their answering slot is reloading, so the disruption is not immediately cancelled by a return launch from the same Silo.

Trigger 3 — Doomsday Clock pressure. The Clock is close enough to its end state that the value of waiting (more Gold, more army) is smaller than the expected loss from being first-attacked. This is the community’s “is waiting actually winning” question turned into a check: waiting is only winning while the richest player has the lowest risk of being MIRVed first. The moment the bank gap closes, the richest player becomes the target, and the Clock makes the end state the thing that ends the match, not the bankroll. When the Clock is the binding constraint, firing to force the end state on your terms is worth more than hoarding for a bankroll that the end state may never pay you.

When one of these three is true, fire. When none is true, the default is to keep earning and keep tracking the two estimates, because the Cold War is designed so that the player who fires first on a false trigger is the one who paid for the ladder. The three triggers are not a “must fire” list; they are the only three reasons the value of firing exceeds the value of waiting, and anything else is a gamble on whether the second-richest player is as patient as you are.

The value of waiting, and the exact condition that breaks it

Waiting is not the failure — firing on a false trigger is. The value of waiting in a Cold War is that you are letting the shared price ladder work against your opponents while you hold the cheap rung. If you can sit at 25M while two opponents are forced to the 40M and 55M rungs to make their moves, the 30M gap per strike you avoid is a real, bankable advantage: you are effectively taxing every strike they make. The community’s “stay at 25M” players are not bad players; they are correctly observing that the first rung is the only rung that never comes back, and holding it while others pay is how the cheap strike gets spent for free.

Waiting wins while three conditions hold, and it loses the moment one breaks. First, the target has not reached their threshold. As long as the second-richest player cannot afford the next rung, there is no cheap strike for them to claim and no sequencing loss for you; your wait is costless and their income is the only thing that has to cross a line. Second, your SAM coverage is strong enough that one cheap strike does not end your game. If the target’s 25M strike can take out your core city and your SAMs cannot intercept, waiting is only “safe” because the target has not fired yet; the moment they can, your wait is a countdown. Third, you are not the most exposed player on the map. The richest-and-most-exposed player is the one everyone is about to MIRV, and if that is you, waiting is not patience, it is standing still on the firing line.

The condition that breaks waiting is the convergence of the target’s bank and your exposure. The exact read: waiting stops being rational when (a) the second-richest is within one income-cycle of the next rung, and (b) your SAM coverage of their likely target is the weakest on the map, and (c) the Doomsday Clock makes the end state nearer than the bankroll gap would make it. Any one of the three being true is a reason to fire; all three true is the moment the Cold War was always going to end and the only question is which rung you paid. The guide’s whole framework is the same three triggers from the previous section, but stated from the waiting player’s side: you are waiting while all three protective conditions hold, and the first protective condition to fail is your firing trigger.

There is a second, quieter reason waiting can be right that players miss: the ladder may not be cheap for anyone yet. If the match has already had four launches, the current rung is 70M, and nobody on the map has 70M, then the cheap strike is gone and the next strike is the most expensive one of the match. In that case the correct move is not to wait for a 25M that will not come; it is to play the non-nuclear endgame — winning in Overtime and breaking a two-player stalemate — because the nuclear option has become a tax, not a weapon, and the match is decided by land and army, not by who can afford 70M. Knowing the ladder position is what lets you make that call instead of waiting for a cheap strike that the ladder has already burned.

SAMs, H-bombs, and why your first MIRV is not the winning blow

The layer that decides whether your first MIRV actually lands is the target’s SAM coverage, and it has a priority rule that changes where you aim. In v0.34.13 the SAM’s target scoring gives a HydrogenBomb a 70001 point bonus over everything else, which means a SAM under pressure spends its shots on H-bombs before it spends them on MIRV warheads. The practical consequence: if the target is H-bomb heavy and you launch a MIRV into a well-defended city, the MIRV warheads are the lower-priority intercept — the SAM will try to shoot the slower, more valuable H-bomb first, and your MIRV warheads may get through or may be the ones the SAM ignores while it deals with the H-bomb. Neither outcome is guaranteed, which is exactly why the first MIRV is a probe and not a guaranteed kill.

This is why the first MIRV of a Cold War is almost never the winning blow and is instead the information and pressure strike. It tells you how the target’s SAMs prioritise (do they shoot your warheads or their own H-bomb first?), it forces the target to commit SAM shots they may have wanted to save, and it puts the ladder up by 15M so the target’s next nuclear decision costs more. The value of a first MIRV is measured in the information it buys and the price it adds, not in the warheads that detonate — and the warhead count is capped at 350 with a minimumSpread of 55 and a magnitude of only 12 inner / 18 outer, which is real damage to a city cluster but not a guaranteed city-kill on its own. The winning blow is the follow-up, and the follow-up only exists if the first strike survives long enough for the 90-tick SiloCooldown to matter, which is the sequencing value the trigger section already described.

The diplomatic cost is also immediate and total, and it has to be in the firing decision. On spawn a MIRV strike breaks any alliance with the target and applies a −100 relation both ways. Firing your first MIRV does not just hit a city; it converts the target — and, through the alliance break, the target’s partners — into a declared enemy the moment the warhead spawns. That is the correct trade when the strike is decisive, but it is the wrong trade when the strike is only a probe, because you have burned your alliance buffer and your diplomatic cover for 12/18-magnitude damage and some SAM information. The guide’s stance: fire the first MIRV only when the three triggers justify the −100 relation break, and treat the relation break as part of the cost, not a side effect. If you are still allied with a third player who will now be your enemy because the target’s alliance broke, the firing trigger has to include “this third player is no longer a threat to me” or the −100 is paid twice.

Mode and map change where the first MIRV aims, which is the next section, but the SAM-priority fact is the one that should change your aim right now: aim the first MIRV at the target’s weakest SAM coverage, not at the biggest prize, because the biggest prize is also the most defended and the one where the H-bomb priority rule will make your MIRV warheads the last thing the SAM tries to shoot.

Mode and map adjustments to the firing trigger

The three triggers are the same in every mode, but the numbers that make them true move with the mode and the map, and reading those shifts is what separates a Cold War you win from one you lose because you fired on a trigger that the mode had already disabled.

In No Alliances the −100 relation break is the only diplomatic consequence, because there is no alliance to break in the first place; the cost is simply the −100 and the fact that the target now knows exactly where your Silo is and can plan the land war around it. The mode makes the first MIRV slightly cheaper to fire (no alliance buffer lost) and slightly more visible (the target’s next land move is aimed at your Silo). The trigger that moves most is Trigger 2, target-at-threshold: with no alliances to absorb a third party’s response, the target’s answer to your strike is faster and more direct, so the 90-tick SiloCooldown window is the entire protection you have, and firing one rung earlier than the trigger says is worth the extra rung cost to stay inside it.

In team modes the ladder is still global and the −100 is still per-strike, but the “second-richest” you are tracking is now the most-advanced enemy team member, not the most-advanced player, and the target threshold is the team’s combined Silo count and bank. The trigger that changes is Trigger 3, Clock pressure: in a team the end state ends your team’s match, so the Clock is a team-level constraint and one member firing to force the end state on your team’s terms is a shared decision, not a solo one. The practical rule: in team play, do not fire the first MIRV on your own threshold — fire on the threshold the enemy team’s most-advanced member is about to cross, because that is the strike that actually changes the end state.

On large maps the minimumSpread of 55 and the warhead speed of 22 mean a MIRV has to be launched from a Silo that is far enough back to survive the return trip, and the target’s SAM coverage is spread thinner because the map is bigger; this makes the first MIRV cheaper to land (less SAM density per target) but the follow-up army push is harder, so the first strike’s value is even more about the ladder and the information than about the warheads. On small maps the reverse is true: the SAMs are dense and close, the H-bomb priority rule bites harder, and the first MIRV is more likely to be the one the target’s SAMs shoot down — so on a small map the firing trigger has to be stricter, and Trigger 1 (price advantage) is the only trigger that justifies firing when the SAM density is high, because the price gap is the only value that survives a shot-down warhead.

The map-size adjustment is the one players most often get backwards. On a big map they wait too long, hoping for a cheap strike that the ladder keeps moving, and on a small map they fire too early, hoping a warhead will get through SAMs that the H-bomb priority rule says will spend their shots elsewhere. The fix is to read the map the same way you read the bank: on a big map, the first MIRV is the cheaper, safer strike, so fire on the first trigger that is true; on a small map, the first MIRV is the riskier, more likely to be intercepted strike, so fire only when the price advantage (Trigger 1) is large enough to pay for the warheads that do not land. Either way the 90-tick SiloCooldown is the follow-up clock, and the ladder is the shared price you are racing against; the map only changes how much of the first strike’s value actually reaches the ground.

Failure modes and counterplay

Every firing timing fails in one of three ways, and each has a counterplay that is available before you fire, not after. The failure is not the wrong strike; the failure is firing on a trigger that was true in a mode or on a map that had already disabled it, or firing on a trigger that was true in the abstract but not true for your specific target’s SAM coverage.

Failure 1 — Firing early on a false price advantage. You see the target at 45M and fire at your 25M rung, but the target’s SAMs intercept the warheads and the 15M gap you were banking on is spent on a strike that landed nothing. The counterplay is to check the SAM coverage before you fire, not after: the H-bomb priority rule means a well-defended target will spend its SAM shots on the target’s own H-bombs or on the nearest threat, and your MIRV warheads are the lower-priority intercept; if the target’s SAM count and placement mean your warheads are not the first thing they shoot, the strike is not worth the 15M and the −100 relation break. The check is the same as Trigger 1, but it has to include “the warheads will actually land” or the price advantage is not real.

Failure 2 — Waiting too long and the ladder burns the cheap strike. You hold the 25M rung waiting for the target to cross, but a third player fires first and the ladder is now at 40M for everyone, including you; the strike you were going to make at 25M now costs 40M and the “stay at 25M” advantage is gone. The counterplay is to track the ladder position as a trigger, not just a cost: the moment a third player’s launch moves the ladder past your planned firing rung, your “wait for 25M” is no longer waiting, it is paying a premium for a strike that is no longer cheap. The guide’s stance is that the ladder position is a firing trigger in itself when it moves past your planned rung, because the cheap strike is a one-time resource and a third player claiming it is the same as the target claiming it.

Failure 3 — The relation break costs more than the strike. You fire on a real trigger, but the −100 relation break converts a third player you were still allied with into an enemy, and the combined response from the target and the former ally is worse than the strike’s value. The counterplay is to include the alliance graph in the trigger, not just the bank and the silos: before you fire, the trigger has to pass the check “which players become my enemies because the target’s alliance broke, and is that set of new enemies a net threat to me?” If the answer is no, the trigger is false even if the bank and the silos say it is true, because you are paying the −100 twice — once for the strike and once for the new front. The guide’s stance: the relation break is a hard cost, not a side effect, and a trigger that does not price it is incomplete.

The three failures have one shared counterplay that is the real skill of the Cold War: the firing decision is a check, not a commitment. You do not fire because you feel like it, and you do not wait because you feel safe; you fire when at least one of the three triggers is true and the mode, the map, the SAM coverage, and the alliance graph do not disable that trigger, and you wait when none of them is true. The 90-tick SiloCooldown is the follow-up clock, the 25M + 15M ladder is the shared price you are racing, and the 350-warhead ceiling with 12/18 magnitude is the real damage you are buying. Everything else — the mode, the map, the H-bomb priority, the −100 break — is the set of conditions that turn a true trigger into a winning strike or a paid-for lesson. When in doubt, the move is to keep earning, keep tracking the two estimates, and let the ladder and the target’s bank make the decision for you, because the Cold War is the phase of the match where the patient player is the one who fires on the real trigger and not the one who fires first.

Two worked scenarios with the real numbers

Scenario A — three-player Cold War, you are second-richest. Three players, you are second-richest with 42M, the richest has 55M and two ready Silos, the third has 30M and one ready Silo. The ladder is at 25M (no launches yet). The richest’s threshold is the 40M rung (next after 25M), and their income rate means they will reach 40M within one income-cycle. Trigger 1: your 25M rung is cheaper than the richest’s 40M threshold — true. Trigger 2: the richest has two ready Silos and is at the threshold — true. Trigger 3: the Doomsday Clock is mid-match, not the binding constraint — not true yet. Two triggers true, the SAM check passes (the richest’s SAMs are concentrated on the third player’s border, not on your likely target), and the alliance graph is clean (no third-party alliance break that turns a partner into an enemy). Fire the first MIRV now at 25M against the richest’s weakest-SAM city. The 90-tick SiloCooldown means their answering Silo is reloading while your warheads land, the ladder moves to 40M, and the richest’s next nuclear decision is now made on top of your strike. If instead you wait for “comfort” at 50M, the richest fires the 25M first, the ladder is at 40M for you, and you have paid 40M to stop a strike that would have cost them 25M — the false-trigger failure, exactly as Failure 1 describes.

Scenario B — solo vs two AI, the AI is hoarding. You are solo, the two AI players are each at 35M with one ready Silo each, and the ladder is at 40M (one launch has happened, by a fourth player who is now at 50M). Your bank is 38M. The current rung is 40M, which is above your 38M bank — you cannot fire this rung. Trigger 1: your 40M rung is not cheaper than the AI’s 40M threshold (it is equal, not cheaper) — false. Trigger 2: the AI is at the threshold but you cannot pay the current rung — false. Trigger 3: the Doomsday Clock is close, and the AI’s combined threat is the binding constraint — this is the trigger that is true. But you cannot pay 40M this tick. The correct move is not to fire this tick and not to give up: keep earning to cross 40M (one income-cycle), keep tracking the AI’s Silo count (if either AI builds a second Silo, Trigger 2 becomes true the moment you can pay the rung), and let the Clock be the trigger. When you cross 40M and either AI is at the threshold with a second Silo, fire at 40M — the ladder moves to 55M, the AI’s next strike is now the 55M one, and the Clock’s end state is forced on your terms. The scenario’s lesson is the quiet one: when the current rung is above your bank, the trigger is still checkable, and the move is to earn to the rung and watch the AI’s Silo count, not to fire a cheaper non-MIRV and not to wait for a 25M that the ladder has already burned.

Pre-launch checklist you can run before every strike

The whole framework compresses to a checklist you can run in the moment, and it is the same checklist in every mode and on every map: (1) what is the current rung, and is it below the target’s threshold? (2) does the target have a ready Silo that can launch this rung? (3) is the Doomsday Clock close enough that waiting is no longer rational? (4) will the warheads actually land given the target’s SAM count and the H-bomb priority rule? (5) which players become my enemies from the −100 relation break, and is that set a net threat? If 1, 2, or 3 is true and 4 and 5 do not disable it, fire; if none of 1, 2, 3 is true, keep earning and keep tracking. The Cheap Strike is the one-time resource, the 90-tick SiloCooldown is the follow-up clock, and the 25M + 15M ladder is the shared price; the checklist is the same three triggers from earlier with the mode, the map, the SAM coverage, and the alliance graph as the conditions that turn a true trigger into a winning strike.

The checklist is meant to be run every tick you are considering firing, not once at the start of the Cold War, because the ladder moves and the target’s bank moves and the SAMs get rebuilt, so a trigger that was true thirty seconds ago can be false now. In practice that means a two-second habit: glance at the total launch count (the ladder), glance at the second-richest player’s income and Silo count (the threshold), and only then decide. If the two-second habit says “no trigger true,” the move is to keep earning and keep tracking, and the cost of the habit is just attention, which is cheaper than the cost of firing on a false trigger. The checklist is the same in No Alliances and in team modes and on big and small maps; the mode and the map only change the numbers that make the triggers true, not the triggers themselves, so you do not need to re-learn the framework per mode — you need to re-read the two estimates per mode.

There are three edge cases the checklist exists to catch that the “feel” of the moment will not. First, the rung you are about to fire is not the rung the target is facing. You are at the 25M rung and you plan to fire, but the target is at the 40M rung and your strike will move the ladder to 40M, so the target’s next decision is now at 40M, not 25M — the checklist’s item (1) catches this, because “is my rung cheaper than the target’s threshold” is false the moment the ladder is above the target’s bank, and the correct move is to wait for the target to cross rather than to fire and push the ladder up for yourself. Second, the warheads will not land. The target’s SAM count and placement mean the warheads are the lower-priority intercept behind the H-bomb priority rule, and item (4) catches the strike that would have been a 15M price-advantage but is actually a paid-for lesson because the warheads are shot down. Third, the relation break opens a second front. The −100 breaks the target’s alliance with a third player who was previously neutral or friendly to you, and item (5) catches the strike where the combined response from the target and the former ally is worse than the strike’s value, so the trigger is false even though the bank and the silos say it is true. The three triggers are the same from the firing side and the waiting side, the 90-tick SiloCooldown is the follow-up clock, the 25M + 15M ladder is the shared price, and the 350-warhead ceiling with 12/18 magnitude is the real damage you are buying. For the mechanics of the strike itself — the warhead spread, the magnitude, the SAM interception rule — see OpenFront MIRV: Rising Cost, Warheads, and SAM Defense; for the non-nuclear ways to break a freeze, see Breaking an OpenFront Nuclear Stalemate, winning in Overtime, and what to do after the warheads land in Post-MIRV recovery. The Cold War is the phase where the patient player wins, and the checklist is how you stay patient until the trigger is real and then fire on the rung that is still cheap.