The SAM (Surface-to-Air Missile system) is a Building that has the ability to shoot down nearby nukes in a 70 Tile radius around the building. It can intercept Atom Bombs as well as Hydrogen Bombs, and individual MIRV warheads. It will not stop MIRVs.

It can be upgraded since update v24.0 and the upgrades add additional range as of update v27.0^[1]

Launching an Intercepting Missile

The SAM will only intercept a missile headed for your territory. When intercepting, the SAM prioritizes Hydrogen Bombs over Atom Bombs. It will prioritize missiles that are closer to it too, but will always prioritize Hydrogen Bombs over Atom Bombs. The SAM has a 7.5 second cooldown^[2], in which while it is reloading the icon of the SAM will turn red indicating that it can not intercept a missile at that time.^[3]

Price

Your first SAM costs 1.5M Gold, and all additional SAMs cost 3M gold.

Upgrades

SAMs can be upgraded by placing an additional SAM on an existing one. This adds an additional missile before having to reload, and in v0.27 the SAM's range is increased when stacked and a preview of this range shown to the player.

The range of a level 1 SAM is 70 Tiles, and the maximum range of a SAM is 150 tiles. A SAM outreaches a Hydrogen Bomb's blast radius at level 5.

The range is calculated with the following formula:

$range (level) = maxRange - \frac{480}{l e v e l + 5}$

Meaning that a SAM will never be able to reach a range of exactly 150 tiles.

Intercepting Missile

Once the SAM detects a nuke in its range, it will launch a intercepting missile to try to stop it. The intercepting missile will move towards the target missile until it has reached it. Then, it has a 75% chance^[4] to successfully intercept the target missile.

It will only detect nukes that are close to the ground, meaning they were fired or will land nearby the SAM.

SAM Launcher

Launching an Intercepting Missile

Price

Upgrades

Intercepting Missile

See also

Sources