Hello there everyone, I have just played a round of planetary annihilation and well. Everything got annihilated by nukes from the enemy. He had about 10 launchers and he could produce them quick enough, to lay me under nuclear fire for about 10 minutes, and then my Com died. It was ridiculous and my purpose to counter the nuke spamming would be to limit the allowed time to build a nuke. Or even make it impossible to influence it. Also I had no chance against him, because he had a fortified planet(I also had one as well as many others(It was a 6 players FFF) Maybe you have some suggestions to limit such things, so you wouldn't be able to perma-carpet bomb a planet without building thousands of launchers. And yes I know about anti nukes, but they weren't building fast enough in comparison to the nukes from my enemy.
That's one way to win it, man. Do something that he doesn't expect, like an SXX, which is much cheaper than a nuke.
If an opponent entrenches and controls an entire planet, lots of stuff Nuclear missiles are very expensive. Anti-nukes are a lot cheaper. You can win the war of attrition with anti-nukes.
Well it was multi planet spawn, so nobody had an idea that someone is building nuke launchers and helping to build these nukes with idontknowthenumber of fabbers. Ok, at least I know what I did wrong. Only 2 Anti Nukes.
also sending out spy satellites and informing enemies to large threats could by some distraction time
Nuclear missiels are twice as expensive energy wise (18k isntead of 9k). Don't have the metal value in my mind, but afaik this was less then halve. And Anit-Nukes launcher can store up to 3 shoots (where Nuke can only one). If you have a multi-planet system a Orbital launcer and Radar as must-haves. Either he directly spawned there alone, or he rushed orbital and evacuated his commander there. The first to go orbital in a multi-team, multi-planet game has a huge advantage. If nobody else goes orbital/there is no other place to go to, this is a very reliable way to win. They can quickly get compelte map control of a planet using Aircraft, have exclusive access to the resources and thier commander is not effectively attackable (only Nukes and SXX can endanger him, wich are counterable from that position). In the meantime you were wasting resources fighting against another and distracting each other, giving him all the time in the system to prepare a winning strike. If one of you others had taken a look at the planet and warned the others about the impending doom, you could have worked together to crush him. But so he just outplayed you all. Like blue did in this game:
If you don't believe it, that it was actually unknown who would win the game, then you can watch this match. The match ID is: 12573496341074076845 Look at the yellow player on the lava planet at the end. He has about 30 air fabbers pushing the nuke, so he can actually shoot nukes without any delay.
I'm sorry, but nukes cost insanely much, they're ridiculously over priced I'd even go to say. So.. sorry, he just had a much better economy, if he out that economy on units, he'd have thousands.
You can copy-paste match ids into the replay browser now and there'll be a button to watch the match.
Late game, Mr. Yellow had better eco than two remaining players combined. No doubt you'd feel power of nukes in this situation. But think about it. 10 nukes cost more than 10 catalysts (2 annihilasers). 10 nuke AoE is much smaller than that of annihilaser, they are single use (I mean, will have to invest again), and can be countered. And you don't need two annihilasers. So, you still think nukes are OP?
If they can build hundreds of nukes, you can build hundreds of antinukes. I mean, technically, if you have a larger planet, or are more cost effective in defences, you can afford more. Like, area build antinukes, not sure if that might require a modification to your client to space them or something. Area build regular nukes too, a line of nukes also works so the default is fine. Launch 20 nukes or more at a single target, the antinuke can't fire 3 at once so you just need to fire more nukes than his capacity. And you don't need as many nukes if you use less with more accuracy. Scout his commander first. Then use nuke or even SXX snipe. Maybe even a good old fasion painstaking invasion with 100 avengers followed by 20 orbital fabbers and anchors built fast, followed by ever expanding anchors and teleporters with thousands of t2 tanks pouring out.
How many nukes can a fully loaded anti nuke launcher shoot down before they hit the ground? Was it two or the full amount of three? i tested it a while ago, i think it was not possible for the anti-nuke to shoot down three nukes incomming at the same time. EDIT: Think it was allready answered
Sounds like what I think of as the "Bad Map Problem". It's very easy to make bad maps in this game. 6-way FFA? I'm guessing there were, oh, 5+ planets? That is a bad map. It's going to be very difficult to manage the war and stop someone from pulling some super cheesy setup like "nuke spam". Simply maintaining a proper scouting of 5+ planets is time consuming when you're alone. I think these many-planet maps are best reserved for things like "4v4" where the work can be split (once the game is rolling, one player's full time job could be "constant scouting"). FFA maps with lots of planets tend to come down to nuke spam, halley spam or "whatever builds the death star wins". You really have to think about how maps will play out and choose accordingly. For a 6-way FFA I would suggest maps with 1-3 planets so you have a better chance to stay on top of the scouting.
I have seen it shoot two in short sucession, to counter a 2 Missiles salvo. Nukes are pretty slow, it does not need to be instant refire. Even one every 2 seconds would still be enough to counter a 3 missiles salvo.
In case anybody wonders: The Rate of Fire for Anti-nukes is 0.25, so one every 4 seconds. With the range this could just be enough to shoot all three in short order if three targets appear at the same time.
Also depends on the girth of the range. Assuming they fly directly overhead the antinuke across it's entire range, its likely it could fire three, definitely two. If it just barely flies across it's edge of range, or is targetting anywhere inside the antinuke's range, then it has half the time or less to deal with the nukes before they are back out the edge of range or they touchdown on the ground on the antinuke. So it is a tactical type situation. Where your antinuke is more effective the closer to your enemy and/or perimetering your base (I like triangulating mine), yet it is easier to snipe the closer it is to the edge of your base instead of within it. The "alpha" problem with antinukes were that the missile didn't travel fast enough to reach the nuke before it touched down so the antinuke only worked on flyby nukes, any nukes actually targetting the antinukes area actually succeeded. That is why now the antinuke's missile is so damn zippy it just jumps down the nuke's throat instantly. Yet, I am no pro player, but I used antinukes in alpha, I just used them as perimeter defences rather than an umbrella coverage. Placed closest to enemy base. It could still have a nuke land close enough to kill the antinuke, but that would make the nuke kill the antinuke and some defence turrets, and nothing important, wasting the cost of the nuke.
