Had a couple of games with Nath from a webcafe (my net access @ home was screwed)...Nath left and i kept on playing for 4 hours straight. Very addictive, you don't need to build stuff so it's very fast paced, but it's also a bit brain melting after a while.
The online game is like an RTS played on a quake server system. There's only 2 teams, US and USSR on a server. Upon joining you select a team and then an armed forces branch. You can have infantry, tanks or support (artillery) but the easiest to play when you start are helicopters. From then on, you have some unit points to spend on units (i think somewhere around 10000). You buy units, a cargo plane comes and drops them via parachute.
As long as you keep fighting, you earn some tactical points to spend on tactical abilities. These can be anything from airstrikes, planes making a pass against enemy air units up to nuclear weapons. Players can donate points to team members if they want to pool for someone to drop the nuke.
When you lose units, their unit cost is added back to a temporary pool, think of it as your bank. From there, the unit points slowly move back to the buying pool (your "wallet") and you can buy units again. So, while it's not a big deal to lose units in general, it takes time for your buying points to move from the "bank" to your "wallet" and this screws up your timing. I used to gain tactical points by using my units and when i lost them i would spent these points on tactical abilities while waiting for the "wallet" to refill.
