OpenFront MIRV Price Ladder: When to Commit to the Late-Game Strike

Direct answer: when do you commit to the late-game strike?

Commit to a late-game MIRV when the escalating price is still the cheapest way to force the win, and pass when the same Gold is cheaper as a troop push or a threshold you can win without a nuke. The current rule is a price ladder, not a fixed price. Your first MIRV costs 25,000,000 Gold. Every MIRV anyone launches this game adds 15,000,000 to the next price, so the second is 40M, the third 55M, the fourth 70M, and the fifth 85M. The counter is global and shared: an opponent firing a MIRV raises your next price exactly as much as your own firing would. There is no global launch cooldown in the current release; your tempo is limited by your ready Missile Silo slots, each on its own 90-tick reload, and by the Gold you can actually afford at the moment you want to fire.

The practical decision is a comparison, not a reflex. At the 25M and 40M rungs the MIRV is usually still the most efficient way to break a strong position, because a single well-centered strike can remove more enemy capacity than a troop attack that risks your core and your best units. By the 55M and 70M rungs the same Gold can often buy a large, survivable land push that wins the Overtime threshold without provoking a nuclear answer, and the 85M rung is so expensive that it usually only makes sense as the final, decisive strike of the whole game. So the short version of the decision: fire early and cheap when the strike is clearly decisive, hold your Gold and switch to a non-nuclear route once the rung cost approaches the value of a full troop push, and reserve the deep ladder only for the moment you must end the game now rather than gamble on time.

The reason this matters is that many players are still budgeting on the old flat-price assumption. If you plan “three MIRVs for 75M” and the game has already seen two launches, your third costs 55M, not 25M, and your plan silently costs more than you thought while also raising the price for your opponents. This guide gives you the exact rung table, the shared-counter logic, two worked scenarios with real numbers, and a clear line for when to stop nuke-budgeting and finish with troops or Overtime instead, so you can make the commit-or-hold call before the counter moves past you. The single habit that decides most ladder endgames is to keep your eye on the counter between turns: the moment it ticks up, your budget for the next strike changes, and the player who re-checks the price before every decision is the one who avoids burning their last rungs on a strike that is no longer decisive at the new price.

Version boundary: the live rule, the reverted experiment, and the tempo

The most important thing to get right is the version boundary, because the wrong rule has been circulating in threads and older beta-era content, and it leads players to budget for a flat price that is not in the game they are playing. The current player-facing release line is v0.34.0 through v0.34.11. Every one of those tags uses the escalating ladder: the MIRV cost is 25,000,000 Gold plus 15,000,000 times the number of MIRVs already launched this game. The same ladder is present in the last v0.33 tags we checked, v0.33.9 and v0.33.14, so the ladder predates the v0.34 line and is the long-standing behavior of the game, not a brand-new v0.34 feature that some players have not seen yet.

The rule you may have read about is from v0.34.0-beta1, an experimental beta tag. In that beta the MIRV cost was a flat 25,000,000 Gold, and a successful launch started a 60-second global cooldown that blocked every other player while leaving the launcher exempt. That experiment was reverted: v0.34.0 stable and every release after it restore the ladder and drop the global launch cooldown. The current MIRV mechanics guide and this price guide therefore agree: a ready Silo and enough Gold can launch again without a game-wide safety minute. If you are playing the current release, the flat 25M price and the 60-second lockout are not the rule; they are a reverted experiment.

Because the current release has no global launch lockout, the deep rung becomes a commitment of Gold rather than a commitment of time. At 25M a MIRV is a strong but affordable tool that you can afford to spend on a single uncertain position. At 70M and 85M it is a commitment of a large fraction of your economy, one that is hard to recover if the strike is intercepted or does not decide the game. The price is paid on launch, and the counter has already moved, so by the time you are deciding whether to fire at the 85M rung you have already spent most of your nuclear budget this game. There is no refund, no reversal, and no way to get the rung back once the counter has advanced past you. A useful habit is to compute the rung before you commit: if the counter is at two and you want to fire now, you are at the 55M rung; if your opponent fires first, you jump to 70M, and knowing that a single opponent launch costs you an extra 15M lets you decide whether to fire now or gamble that they fire first.

The rung table and the shared counter

The cost function is simple to state and awkward to use, because the price depends on game history rather than on you. For the (N+1)th MIRV of the game, where N is the total number of MIRVs already launched by any player, the price is 25,000,000 plus N times 15,000,000 Gold. That gives a fixed ladder that every player shares, and it never resets within a game. The step between rungs is a constant 15M, which makes the planning math easy and predictable. You do not need to memorize the table; you need to know your current rung, which you can read straight from the price shown in the build menu at the moment you are deciding.

Launch # this game	MIRV price	Cumulative for the first k
1st	25M	25M
2nd	40M	65M
3rd	55M	120M
4th	70M	190M
5th	85M	275M

Read the second column as the price of a single launch at that rung, and the third column as the total Gold one player would have spent if they personally fired every MIRV up to that point. In practice you rarely fire all of them, because the price is driven by every launcher, not just you. If you fire one MIRV and an opponent fires two, the counter sits at three and your next MIRV costs 70M even though you only fired one. The cumulative column is most useful for deciding how many MIRVs a single player can realistically afford in one game and how quickly a planned salvo becomes unaffordable, which is the single most important number for budgeting a salvo in the endgame.

The counter is global, and this is the part most players miss. The game keeps one count of MIRVs launched this game, and it increments when a MIRV is launched, not when it lands. That means the price of your next MIRV goes up the moment anyone fires one, whether that anyone is you or an opponent, and whether the strike that was just launched succeeds or gets its warheads eaten by SAMs later. The cost is committed on launch. An opponent firing a 40M MIRV is not only spending their own Gold; they are also raising the price of every MIRV you will ever fire to 55M, which is a real strategic effect you can both suffer and use. You can also read the counter as a phase signal: a high counter means the nuclear option is getting expensive for everyone, which usually means the game is heading toward a non-nuclear finish, and the best players use that signal to switch to a push or an Overtime hold before the ladder forces them to.

Scenario 1: one launch deep and the leader stalls you

Assume a 12-player FFA. The counter is at one: the player who now leads in territory has launched one MIRV this game. You have 90M Gold, a solid land mass, and a ready Missile Silo. The leader has a large defensive position on the border that, if it holds, pushes them over the Overtime threshold in the next few minutes. Your options are to fire a 40M MIRV at that position or to spend Gold on a troop push that takes the same land, and the ladder tells you which one is the real trade.

Firing at the 40M rung is defensible here. The position is large enough that a single well-centered strike removes a meaningful chunk of it, the price is still below half your Gold, and the leader has already committed a MIRV this game, which means they are also deep in their own ladder and less able to answer cheaply. The 40M is cheaper than the troop push would be in troops and risk, because taking a defended position by land costs you the troops that die in the fight and the time you spend re-forming. Your realistic plan is to fire the 40M, center the click deep in the leader’s continuous block, and immediately push the gap left by the impact with the troops you were going to spend anyway. The strike softens the position; the push converts it into territory you actually hold.

Do not fire if the position is small. If the leader’s advantage is a handful of tiles, a 40M MIRV is overkill and you are better off spending 20M on a push that takes those tiles directly. And do not plan a follow-up second MIRV here: if you fire and the counter goes to two, your next strike is 55M, and you have already spent 40M, so two strikes would cost 95M, more than your 90M budget, for a position you might already hold from the first push. The ladder says: use one strike to break the position, then win with troops. That is the two-tool endgame the ladder rewards, and it keeps your last rungs affordable in case the game turns. If the leader is sitting on a small but well-defended tile cluster, the push is cheaper and safer; the MIRV only wins when the position is large enough that a single click removes the threat and the 40M is still a bargain against the troops you would otherwise lose taking it by land.

Scenario 2: the counter is at three and you must decide the game

Now the game is late and the counter is at three. Three MIRVs have been launched this game, and the nuclear option has become genuinely expensive for everyone. You are one of the last two players standing, and the remaining ten-million-plus territory difference is the whole game. The next MIRV is the 70M rung, and the one after it is 85M. You have 120M Gold. Your opponent is sitting on a strong position and also has Gold, and neither of you wants to be the one who burns 70M or 85M unless it is clearly and obviously decisive.

This is the exact moment the ladder is doing its job. The nuclear option is now so expensive that the rational move for both of you is to stop thinking in terms of “fire a nuke” and start thinking in terms of “which of us can force the Overtime threshold with troops and time.” If you can take the next 20 tiles with a survivable push, the game ends before anyone spends 70M, and both of you save their last rungs. If you cannot, and the position is genuinely nuke-proof to a troop attack, then the 70M is the price of a decision you have no cheaper path to, and you fire it with the full weight of a last, decisive strike, accepting that it is the end of your nuclear budget.

The key discipline is to not fire the 70M and then need the 85M. If you fire the 70M and it is intercepted, or it only scratches the position, the counter is now four and your next MIRV is 85M, which you likely cannot afford without going broke and leaving your core exposed. So before you fire the 70M, be honest about whether it is decisive on its own. A 70M MIRV that only softens the position is a bad trade; it spends almost your whole economy and leaves you unable to follow up with anything. The deep rung is an all-or-nothing price. If it is not all-in, you should be finishing with troops, or with Overtime if the threshold is close enough to win by time instead of by paying the maximum rung. In a two-player late game, the one who can force the threshold with a push first usually wins without anyone spending the deep rung at all, because the ladder makes the all-in strike so expensive that the player with the better push has the stronger position and can simply out-run the opponent’s nuclear option into irrelevance.

When the ladder says stop, and how to defend

There is a clear line where the ladder price exceeds the value of the strike, and crossing it should push you toward a non-nuclear finish. The line is roughly this: when the rung cost approaches what a large troop push would cost in troops and risk, the push is the better trade, because the push does not spend your irreplaceable nuclear budget and does not raise the counter for the rest of the game. On most maps, a 55M or 70M rung is the point where a well-timed troop push becomes the equal-or-better option, and past that the nuke is strictly the more expensive of the two ways to finish.

The non-nuclear routes are the ones you have been building anyway. A land push that takes the decisive tiles, an Overtime race where the threshold is close enough that you can win by holding your fraction and letting the threshold drop to you, or a Doomsday-clock posture where you survive the rising survival threshold instead of paying to destroy the position pushing you over it. Each of these uses Gold and troops you have already invested, and each leaves the nuclear option open for a later, cheaper rung if the game resets the tension. Firing the deep rung closes that option and spends most of your economy in one irreversible action, which is why the disciplined player holds the deep rung as a last resort rather than a working tool. The cleanest mental test is to ask, at the 55M and 70M rungs specifically, whether the push you can field this minute would take the same tiles for less, and if the answer is yes the ladder has already told you to stop and to let the troops or the clock finish the game, because the deep rung is not a tool you get to keep, it is a budget you get to spend once and then never again, and the moment that one spend is not clearly and obviously the decisive move, the push or the Overtime hold is the stronger play and the one the ladder is designed to push you toward.

The same ladder is a defensive tool, and the defender can use it in three ways. First, you can raise the counter by firing a cheap early MIRV yourself when the price is still low, forcing the game into the deep rungs where your opponent’s planned final strike becomes unaffordable for them as well. This is a real deterrent move: you do not fire to hit a position, you fire to make the next several nukes too expensive. Second, you can change what the strike is worth by dispersing your capacity, pulling your best units out of the likely blast circle, or building your next push on land outside the probable click. Third, you can refuse the nuclear endgame by forcing a faster, cheaper finish with a troop push, so the game ends before the opponent’s planned deep strike matters. Read the counter, estimate your opponent’s planned rung, and make that rung unaffordable, worthless, or unnecessary.

Mode and map adjustments: where the ladder bites hardest

The ladder interacts with mode and map in ways that change the right line. In FFA, the shared counter is the most volatile, because many players are firing and the counter climbs fast, so the deep rungs arrive earlier and the non-nuclear finish is reached sooner. In a large FFA with eight or more players, expect the counter to hit three or four before the endgame, which means your planned late strikes are already at 70M or 85M. Plan your nuclear budget around that reality: if you intend to fire late in a big FFA, budget for the deep rung, not the 40M, and treat the 85M as a last resort rather than a working tool. The ladder also interacts with your role in the game: a player who is leading in territory has a weaker incentive to fire a deep rung, because they are already winning and the 70M or 85M price is a poor trade against a position they are about to take by push anyway, whereas a player who is behind and about to lose has the opposite incentive, and is more likely to gamble the deep rung on an all-or-nothing strike that breaks the leader’s position and resets the threshold race.

In smaller lobbies, or in team modes where your team controls how many MIRVs get launched, the counter climbs slower, so the deep rungs arrive later and a late 55M or 70M strike is more realistic. The map matters just as much. On compact maps where positions are dense and a single click removes a lot, the strike is worth more at every rung, so you can afford to fire deeper before the ladder says stop. On sprawling maps where a click removes little, the troop push is the better trade earlier, because the strike’s value drops while its price keeps climbing up the same fixed ladder.

Overtime and Doomsday Clock change the calculus further still. If Overtime is active and the threshold is close, the cheapest way to win may be to hold your fraction and wait for the threshold to drop, which is cheaper than any rung of the ladder, so the ladder says stop nuke-budgeting and let time do the work. If Doomsday Clock is active and a survival threshold is rising, the defensive posture of surviving the threshold can beat paying the deep rung to destroy the position that is pushing you over it. Read the mode first, then read the counter, then pick the rung at which you commit or switch. The mode tells you how fast the counter moves, and the counter tells you what the next strike actually costs. In ranked and trusted lobbies where the players are more careful, the counter tends to climb more slowly and the deep rungs are used more decisively, whereas in open lobbies the counter often races to the top and the game ends on a push or an Overtime hold before anyone pays the maximum rung. A practical habit is to name the mode and the counter out loud in your own head before every nuclear decision, because the two numbers together determine the rung you would actually be paying and the tempo you would actually have. Once you know the mode, you know how fast the counter is likely to move in the next few minutes, and once you know the counter you know the exact price of the strike you are about to make, and the only honest question left is whether that price buys a decisive strike or an expensive gesture.

Mistakes and corrections

The most common mistake is budgeting the salvo on the flat-price assumption. If you plan “three MIRVs for 75M,” you are using the reverted beta1 number, not the live rule. On the current ladder, three launches this game cost 25M plus 40M plus 55M, which is 120M, not 75M, a difference of 45M that will break your economy if you build your plan around the wrong number. Check the rung before you budget anything, and budget the counter as it will be when you fire, not as it is right now. The build-menu price is the only number you should trust at the moment of decision, and the rung table is the tool you use to predict what that price will be once the counter moves.

The second mistake is firing the deep rung as pressure instead of as a decision. A 70M or 85M MIRV that only softens a position is a bad trade, because it spends most of your economy, raises the counter for everyone, and leaves you unable to follow up with anything. The deep rung is an all-in price; if it is not decisive on its own, do not fire it and finish with troops or Overtime instead. The third mistake is treating the counter as only your own history. The counter is global: if an opponent fires, your next price goes up even if you have not fired at all this game, and the best players track the counter the way they track a win threshold, re-checking it before every nuclear decision.

The fourth mistake is ignoring the real tempo limit. There is no global cooldown, but each silo slot reloads on its own 90-tick timer, so you cannot fire as fast as you have Gold; you fire as fast as your ready slots and the money allow. Count your ready silo slots as carefully as your Gold. The fifth mistake is firing late in a big FFA without realizing the counter has already pushed your strike to the 85M rung. The correction to all five is the same discipline: read the counter, price the rung you would actually be on, decide whether the strike is decisive at that price, and only then commit. Players who internalize that discipline stop burning their last rungs on non-decisions and start using the ladder the way it is designed to be used, as a tax on urgency that rewards the player who can wait and win with a push instead.

FAQ: the questions players keep asking

Is the MIRV price fixed at 25M?

No, not in the current release. The 25M is only the first rung of the ladder. The price is 25M plus 15M for each MIRV already launched this game, so it climbs through 40M, 55M, 70M, and 85M. The fixed 25M price you may have seen was the reverted v0.34.0-beta1 experiment, and it is not the rule in the version players are currently running. If the build menu shows a price higher than 25M, that is the ladder working, not a bug, and it reflects how many MIRVs have already launched this game.

Does an opponent’s MIRV raise my price?

Yes, and this is the part that surprises new players. The counter is shared by all players and increments the moment a MIRV launches, so any launched MIRV, from anyone, raises the next price for everyone. If an opponent fires a 40M MIRV, your next MIRV is now 55M even if you have not fired a single one. You are effectively paying for your opponent’s aggression every time they nuke, and the best players factor that shared cost into every decision.

Is there a global launch cooldown?

No, not in the current release. The 60-second global lockout was part of the reverted v0.34.0-beta1 experiment. In the current release your tempo is limited by your ready Missile Silo slots, each on its own 90-tick reload timer, and by the Gold you can afford at the rung you are on. There is no shared timer every player waits out, so the only “cooldown” that matters is your own silo reload and your own bank balance.

When does the ladder make me stop nuke-budgeting?

Roughly when the rung cost approaches the cost of a large troop push, which on most maps is the 55M or 70M rung. Past that point, the same Gold usually buys a survivable land push or an Overtime race that is cheaper than the deep rung and does not raise the counter, so you should finish with a push, an Overtime hold, or a Doomsday survival posture instead of firing the maximum rung.

Do I pay the price when the MIRV lands, or when it launches?

You pay on launch, when the MIRV spawns, not when it lands. A launch that gets its warheads intercepted by SAMs still raised the counter and committed the cost, so an intercepted deep-rung strike is doubly expensive: you lose the money and you have lost your nuclear option. Aim your deep strikes where the SAMs cannot reach, or accept that the deep rung is an all-in bet on a clean hit.

How do I read my current rung?

Read the price in the build menu; it is the authoritative number at that moment. Use the rung table to predict the next couple of launches before anyone fires, so you know what your planned strike will cost once the counter moves. The menu price is driven by the global counter, so watching it between turns is how you stay ahead of the ladder and avoid paying the deep rung on a strike that is no longer decisive.

Sources and verification boundary

The version boundary and every number in this guide are taken from the tagged openfrontio/OpenFrontIO source, not from community claims. The current release line v0.34.0 through v0.34.11 uses the ladder cost of 25,000,000 plus the number of MIRVs already launched times 15,000,000. The v0.33.9 and v0.33.14 tags use the same ladder, and v0.34.0-beta1 is the only tag that carries the flat 25M cost together with the global 60-second launch cooldown. That is the complete boundary: the ladder is the live rule, and the flat-price-and-cooldown rule belongs to a reverted beta that players should stop budgeting around. Because the community threads we surveyed still carry the flat-25M assumption, this guide treats the version boundary as a first-class fact rather than a footnote, and it repeats the ladder in plain terms at the points where a wrong assumption would quietly change a player’s budget.

The global counter is a single field that increments on launch in the stats implementation, and it is game-wide rather than per-player. The 90-tick silo reload and the MIRV carrier and warhead speeds are read from the same tagged source. The rung table and the cumulative costs are derived directly from the cost function, so if you change the ladder step in a future release, only the numbers change and the decision logic in this guide stays the same. Every number in the rung table is computed from the same two constants, the 25M base and the 15M step, so you can extend the table yourself past the fifth launch without any guesswork, and the cumulative column is simply the running sum of the single-launch prices. The decision thresholds in the guide, the 55M and 70M rungs where the troop push becomes the better trade, are the point at which the rung price approaches the cost of a large survivable push on typical maps, and they are stated as a rough line precisely because they shift with the map and the mode rather than being a hard-coded game constant.

For the carrier, the separated warheads, and the per-warhead SAM interception mechanics outside the price ladder, see the MIRV guide. For what changes when the win threshold starts to move, see the Overtime and winning guide. For the survival-threshold route, see the Doomsday Clock guide. For the fixed Gold costs and the ready-slot calculator, see the nuke calculator.