Nuke, the easiest way to win without fighting

Hey all,

After some dozens of game i can't stop myself to think that the nuke is really, really, a problem.
As a matter of fact i can say that close to 80% of the games of more than 25-30 minutes sees the intensive usage of nukes.

Anti-nuke have several flaws :
- No auto-build of the missiles when it's construction is over.
- It is way too long to build thoses missiles (=increase the building rate, without necessarilly reducing the cost)
- Their range is way too small
- Way too easy to destroy (there come the issue of the ridiculous umbrella, completly unable to destroy anything in less than 5 minutes, even after the patch, yes, i confess, i have some hate for her)

Using nukes is much easier than prevent it, there is nothing easier than searching for a little flaw in the A-N cover and sending the package. If you try to launch a ground attack ? As soon as people will learn to estimate the time the missile need to cover the distance, they'll just have to nuke your troups. And even if they don't, doing an old fat turtle base is quite easy. Few turrets with walls, tacmissiles here and there and it's done, you have to spend tremondous amount of ressources in units to pierce the defence while your ennemy is simply spamming.
The only way to deal with serial nukers is to have a COMPLETE domination of the orbital stage and a perfectly done A-N grid, after that, you can start to play again.

The nuke can't be a decisive weapon in a strategy game, if it is, it means that the game is doomed to be a run to the nukes, the rest being just a diversion and a way to slow the run of the ennemy.
In PA i really have this feeling that the game is orbiting around the nuke launcher. Most players try a few time to attack with normal units and then, when they see it's hard, they just start spamming nuke everywhere.

it is much harder to turtle in PA than most RTS, from the 360 degree angle on your base at all times.... scout your target out sooner than later, put pressure on his outer mex with dox and ants.

if your "normal units" have an issue, go around....its very hard to build turrets in every direction. take out some PG and slow down his econ...that way when the next group of 30 doxs walk up he couldn't rebuild quick enough.....

bring some Fabbers along with a group, build some quick defenses around an acquired outter mex point so you can group there, then build your T1 factories there, and keep the pressure....he wont get nukes, if he stops building units / def to build a nuke and crash his econ, you will overtake him.

kill them before they make a nuke.
spread so much that a few nuke hits dont hurt you too much, only protect important things with anti nukes

... win

To be clear, i win most of the time, i'm not bragging, it's just to say that i know how to play, my problem (and i think it's not only mine) is that when the game isn't done quickly the nuke systematicly become the main weapon of my opponent.
If i can't manage to crush him the first 30min, or if he succeed on keeping enough room for his base and eco, i know for sure that he will do nukes.
On planets with lot of water or mountains, if he build tac missiles i just can't get him fast enough.

And again, the problem is exactly here, the game is orbiting around the nuke, everything is about not allowing your opponent to chain produce nuke.
The turtle bases are extremely easy to build compared to SupCom or FA, where the turtle couldn't in any way give you the victory. Defenses of equal strengh are way cheaper than offensive unit.

As example, on my last game, i was on a planet with lots of mountain, so to get to his base i had to make a lot of detours, if my assaults failed, i had to wait between 5 and 10 minutes to be on him again. Add to that the current terrible pathfinding that made my units run in circle at every obstacle... there was no way i could get him fast enough.

Cola_Colin, what you are saying can't work against an opponent who know how to play. "Don't let him", "Spread so much", that's some nice words... but it can't be done if you play against somebody who knows how to run his eco and how to secure it. If the problem was only about "low level" games, it wouldn't be a balance problem. The fact is that nuke ARE the easier way to win on a statu quo situation.
And if for some reason you loose or fail to secure the orbit, he just have to destroy your antinuke with laser stations, and you to wait for the inevitable.

What i'm saying is, again, that everything you do is about protecting yourself against nuke in one way or the other to give you the ability to crush him on the field.

I think cola_colin knows how to play PA pretty well, considering. I do agree that on certain maps though, stationary defenses can be virtually impregnable against arbitrary sized land armies. On really mountainous planets, building a few artillery that have good angles through passes combined with how large units are makes chokes just devastating.

Something similar happened to me on a metal planet, with how the poles are sort of cut off by those trenches. One team managed to fortify all 12 of the entrances with 8 or 9 advanced t2 arty pieces each, with who knows how many tac missle launchers and other turrets. It was hilarious. So yea, we nuked them. The nuke favors the non-turtler, really. You are more spread out, and dont have to worry about the anti-nukes problems. Just build things far enough apart than anything he nukes costs more than the nuke. No matter what, you will have better eco than him, so abuse opmurderdeath bombers and mymisslesaremininuke fighters. Or nukes, because he doesnt have the luxury of speading out like you do.

If someone manages to turtle AND spread out more than you, well, you did something very very wrong.

I actually really, really like how a turtle can fortify itself relying on the terrain. Much better than overlapping shields.

I can't speak for teamgames / ffa on large planets, but 1v1 on mid to large planets does not orbit around nukes at all. It might see nukes, but they are not the main actor in the games.
Ofc if you have really big games with multiple players who have really high income nukes becomes the most efficient thing. I can't see a problem with that.

What kind of settings do you usually play?

EDIT:
Also I think the mid to late game of big games is pretty broken/unfinished currently. They will probably change a lot about it. I just had a 99 minute game that ended with a "draw", as we both had a full planet with so much defenses that any assault was plain impossible. At least with the 3 fps I had. It developed from an FFA though.

Some of it has to do with laser turrets being so cost effective right now(which also is partly due to unit HP/damage ratio being off as talked about in the paper unit thread). Once units get more HP and formations are implemented to allow for more effective usage of them, armies will be more effective. So you don't have to resort to nukes as much.

Regardless, even now, in smaller games nukes aren't used that much. Like said, spreading out your key infrastructure and army is one of the best ways to preemptively counter nuke play.

I didn't said he doesn't. I just said that his advice only works with a good difference of level between you and your opponent.

You don't have to go that far, 1 T2 arty + 2 tac + 6 T2 turret, the whole with walls is barely destructible without spending all your eco on it for several minutes. If it's protected against bombers of course.

CAN favor the non-turtler. Most of the time it is quite the opposite.

I do too, that's why i find the nuke totaly "out" of the spirit of the game. The only games i ever knew that had well balance nukes, is SupCom and his cousin, in every other games the nuke is always the "cheat" to end a game. The first to have it win. In PA it has this feeling too in some ways.
It is really fun to build a small fortress using the terrain to make a "relay" closer to the main combat zone, seeing it nuked like if some god with limitless power got angry... i don't know, it doesn't feel good.

Guys, keep in mind that this is a game, there is a lot of different level of players on it. I consider myself as an average+ for the moment, not great but not just discovering anymore. The game has to be fun for the maximum of players, the idea isn't to have a game that only hardcore+++ can enjoy. I'm not talking of casual gaming, all i'm saying on this topic is that the nuke need some serious balance because at this state it's a lot easier to nuke than it is to avoid to be nuked. Wich is, considering what we are talking about, a prejudice to the game more than a plus.

EDIT : lauri0 i hope you are right.
But just one thing to be clear, i am talking about mid/long games here. Of course on short or with small planets the nuke isn't that much of a problem.

@cola_colin : I play on almost everything. 1vs1, ffa when there is nothing else and 2vs2.
Your EDIT is, i think, a good reason to the whole thing. It's true that after some time all you do is just making more of the same thing so it is really tempting to just go on nukes. Experimentals and eventually a T3 could solve that.

I think the main issue is that many people play the game to get to the late game stages. In my eyes those stages are the most broken part currently.
Games that are more focused on "normal" ground units and air (t1 and t2) work out way better. To force that kind of game you need to be very aggressive and you need a planet that's not too big.

Personally i have always liked the nuke/anti-nuke feature of these kinds of games. I kinda agree with the OP's issues, but luckily these are some really small tweaks that are needed to make them feel much better.

My biggest problem with nukes (experience from SupCom/FA, and PA ofc) is that it is almost impossible to establish a forward base once the game has reached the nuke stage, as any attemp to build one will simply get nuked, and first building an anti nuke at the site will take way too long.

Suggestion/thoughts:
1) Maybe the anti-nuke launcher should should get one "free" anti-nuke upon being built? Of course this would require the price of the anti-nuke launcher to be tweaked also.

2) Make the anti-nuke launcher mobile. It could be awesome if it could sprout legs or something, and slowly crawl to a location where it would be useful. Because it is so easy to destroy, and takes so long to rebuild, it would be nice if you could move your existing anti-nuke silos from the less important parts of your territory to where it really counts.

I do believe antinukes take a bit too long to build since they are usually build out of reaction to enemy nukes rather than by plan, specially since they cost so much. But I feel everything else about them is ok. You don't want huge range since that makes nukes useless. Autobuild is kinda convenience issue. Just queue up like 100 antinukes and you'll never need to worry about it (I use the colacolin's mod that allows me to queue units up by hundreds rather then by 5). But mostly I like anti nukes where they are now. You only build them to defend critical areas (power, production and commander one it gets too dangerous) and they can't be spammed up everywhere just to create an anti nuke shield.

I don't play PVP simply because of that nuke stuff, and getting off planet is way to easy. I stick to AI simply because I can atleast explore the game, try new strats and teck for later, but otherwise PVP is just annoyingly stressful, simply because I like to outwit my opponents then take a short cut.

What I hear is you don't like the mechanic. From what you have said you have all of the facts to counter the problem. And its quite easy to build anything faster in this game, just get a lot of fabbers.

All of that aside, the truth is if you let them chain nuke you.....you lost a long time ago even if nukes and anti nukes were removed from the game. that means his economy is doing really well, and if you can't do the same thing (chain nuke) than your eco isn't on par. Take the nukes out and he just builds a WAY bigger army than you and still wins. So while I agree the late game needs some minor tweaking it sounds like to me that you need to work on scouting, build order and effectively keeping your opponent from out expanding you.

Also the devs have stated the late game isn't done yet....in fact they have stated the WHOLE game isn't done yet and isn't balanced. Personally I'm waiting for them to say ok guys we are ready to start doing balance testing and we need feed back before I start posting things like this. Not sure when you started but since day one of the alpha things have gone from OP to nurfed and back again.

I have some qualms about nukes, but the same might be said of orbital lasers - it's an attack-counterattack race that often decisively ends entrenched games. The orbital stuff, even in its imbalanced incarnation, is at least a little more balanced - you usually have time to see it coming, umbrellas can and do defend it, and it's fairly resource-heavy.

That said, there DOES need to be some siegebreaker options - and, more importantly, the game DOES need to lend itself to scenarios where it's really, really hard to just march in and kill your enemy. Why? Because otherwise, you'll never get scenarios where dropping a moon is the best option, and the game won't live up to its name.

For that reason, I agree with you about nukes. Why waste tons of time and effort on a resource-heavy, one-use-only attack when you can spam nukes all day? However, we are missing another vital tool - moon or interplanetary attacks that can actually breach and get you a foothold on an enemy planet, such as the unit-shooting moon cannons in the trailer video. Having those as an extra incentive to jump planets, plus some small tweaks to single-planet scale nuke balance (like radius or forewarning, "Nuclear Launch Detected"), would help round things out.

In large games, nukes will happen or you're doing something wrong really. They are relatively cheap compare Adv armies and are similarly costed to orbitals. I don't see anything wrong with nuke use though. I've normally used them to destroy a frontline so my army can advance, instead of going straight for the base.

However, anti-nukes do need a change. I'd vote for a slight change in cost or build time. I do NOT support increasing their coverage though. PA supports spread out bases much more than compact tight bases. The anti-nukes are there to protect your most important clusters, not your entire base.

They aren't even really close to balanced. Antinukes need to be way cheaper and better range. Nukes could perhaps be a bit more expensive but balancing anything at this stage is wasted time until nukes are implemented in interplanetary combat and as defenses against asteroids.

I dont think they are meant for that. The whole purpose of that part in the KS video was to show that there simply is no way to defend vs an asteroid when it's already incoming.

My theory is that shattering an asteroid would keep the planet as a whole from being effected, ie outright destroyed. So it basically it ends up being more like a meteor shower rather than 1 big collision, sure you'll still prolly lose everything under and near the original impact site but the rest of the planet is still safe.

Mike

Yeah I had the idea somewhere that someone hinted that they may reduce the destruction from asteroids.

It would make sense, too. Then the size of the celestial body you are using to smash into the planet would matter, as smaller ones would be much easier to blast apart before they reach the surface/atmosphere.