S3-Sabre

The S3-Sabre is an unreliable weapon of mass destruction, fired from the InterPlanetary menu's Special Operations at a baron on another planet. Before you fire, you set a dial from 0 to 10, and the dial aims it:

Dial	What it goes for
0, 1	the enemy's Intelligence HeadQuarters
2, 3	residential zones, killing people
4	military bases — troops, jets, turrets and tanks together
5, 6	airbases, and nothing but jets
7, 8	regions, burning them to waste
9, 10	the food supply

The aim wanders by one setting either way in flight, and about one launch in ten ignores the dial altogether and hits whatever it likes. So a setting is a tendency, not a promise: 4 goes for military bases about half the time, while 5 goes for airbases about three times in four, because 5 and 6 both point there. Aim 5 at a baron you know keeps a large air force.

The missile is still a gamble on top of that. Most launches do nothing: it misses, it malfunctions, or the enemy's SDI shoots it down. It can also backfire — if the enemy keeps a very large trooper army, the missile may turn back and strike your own empire instead.

Your sysop decides how the dial is set. Normally you choose it yourself, but the game can be set up to roll one for you each time, to fix it at a dial the sysop chooses, or to switch the weapon off entirely. On a board set any way but "user select" you are never asked for a number — that is the setting doing its job, not a fault.

You may fire each of the three missiles — nuclear, chemical and the S3-Sabre — once a day. A missile you have already used today is not listed on the Special Operations menu at all. They have their own allowance, so spending all three leaves your bombing operations untouched, and spending those leaves the missiles untouched.