What If We Remove GROUND Nukes?

...And replace them with orbital nuke satellites? Or KEWs?

Orbital and interplanetary gameplay, unfinished as it currently may be, is still the game's most ambitious goal, and the one we all really, really want to see happen. However, in my experience most games never reach this stage unless the map is too big for the number of players on it, or players conveniently forget to build nukes. Much like their real-world counterparts, base-scouring, commander-killing nuclear blasts have a finality to them that makes their usage an endgame scenario. If a nuke hits, it's very likely game over.

So what would happen if we moved nukes up the tech tree - literally?

Players would have nukes and transports to escape them at the same tech level. This means that, given the same start time as their opponent for an Orbital factory, a player has multiple options; Get an Astreus and have a backup plan? Get Orbital fighters and try to control the sky? Rush a Nuke sat and try to make a decisive blow? Get a (cheaper) Laser Sat/KEW to surgically strike the last target you need to march in with your tanks?

Right now, Orbital is a sort of T3, and Nukes are a sort of Tier 2.5 at which the game can end far more easily. Maybe we can change that.

I'd prefer Nucks get nerf and opened up more to more dynamic gameplay instead of the binary play we have currently.

Mike

I'd like to see nukes that only deal 50% damage to factories and have a smaller AOE (and are correspondingly cheaper) as well as cheaper and varied anti-nuke options. Currently you can't add anti-nuke capability to a mobile unit, because it would be so overpowered, but if nukes are cheaper, anti-nukes can be cheaper too and more varied. Let KEWs do the base killing, nukes should be more tactical in nature IMO.

I wouldn't mind seeing orbital nukes as you suggested if ground nukes were kept. You could make ground nukes into tactical nukes, and add orbital nukes with interplanetary capabilities and possibly larger aoe/dmg (and more HP too, nukes don't have to have just 1 hp...). In fact, it should have a decent amount of HP, because it will have a very long travel time between planets. The enemy will have see it coming for awhile and be able to prepare by repositioning any mobile anti-nukes.

Maybe those orbital nukes could be similar like the experimental Seraphin nukes? Those things needed at least two hits to get destroyed and were a nightmare...

I think antinukes shouldn't need to build the missile. If you have antinukes, you can't be nuked. Simple. Forces the player to actually escalate the combat by going interplanetary, and not just start dotting nukes around the map.

... no

care to elaborate how you imagine it to look like

Personally I would like to see long range artillery get fleshed out (maybe increase range but make it use up economy to fire) and nukes either nerfed in power or their cost increased. It seems mid and short range artillery are used/useful in many defensive or covert offensive scenarios whereas current long range offensive artillery is not really long range enough for planetary scale utility.

EDIT: I neglected to acknowledge the catapult which, in my opinion, isn't really artillery, its basically a long range homing missile. I don't know what to do with it but maybe its role in planetary warfare should be reevaluated/redesigned.

If you disagree, explain why. Anti nukes are basically useless. Nuke their nuke. It's always the better option.

just throw in a automated building option (that generaly doesn´t seem to be in yet) maybe lower the cost/buildtime or increase cost/buildtime of nukelauncher but not make the nukedefense ammunitionless like SupCom t2 TMD

I'm wary of moving things to orbit mainly because I find orbital fights to be hard to read or engage in. If I see your orbital nuke, can you stop my orbital fighters from sniping it? It's almost like "orbit" is its own RTS and it's a really terrible RTS that basically has 1 unit and no terrain and I don't even know what they can do to make it fun.

But you do make a good case that it makes sense for orbital transports and nukes to be part of the same phase of the game.

I think the immediate problem, though, is just that nukes are too cheap and too effective for how difficult they are to counter. They're basically a Super Holkins. They do what a Holkins does, only fantastically better, if rather more expensive. Reduce the nuke range? Increase nuke cost? Make anti-nukes more effective and practical? I dunno what the answer is, but I hope they don't stay in their current state.

That's not the issue. The issue is that you can just build multiple nukes and drop them all on top of the same antinuke..

You can also drop them just outside the range of the antinuke. They have 100 radius. They don't quite take out the antinuke, but if you place them well it leaves a nice little hyperbolic shape untouched, with the antinuke in the middle.

Why limit it to 2 hits? Why not make nukes like every other unit in the game and give them an HP bar, then you can give anti-nuke capability to multiple types of units/structures with varying amounts of damage/accuracy/ROF/range. Now it is not always 100% chance of hitting or 0%. You have to weight the risk of firing the nuke based on your perceived strength of the enemies anti-nuke capabilities. This is what we mean by making nukes non-binary.

Anti-nukes should use the ammo system mentioned in this thread: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/expanding-the-energy-as-ammunition-system.53540/ Instead of having to be built manually, the structure should auto-build them until it's ammo capacity is filled up. So many people build anti-nukes but then forget to actually order the structure to build anti-nukes. Nobody builds the facility without the intention of immediately constructing missiles, so making it an automatic feature would be much simpler. You still have the ability to halt construction with the energy orders if needed.

This is not an issue. You should always be able to overpower anti-nukes with a certain number of nukes. The best defense is a good offense. Also, if multiple types of anti-nuke were added (with varying degrees of viability), then it would be more difficult to calculate the exact number of nukes required to overpower an enemy.

Sending nukes at an enemy should be like sending bombers. It is difficult to tell exactly how many bombers you need to send to snipe a specific target, because there are multiple types of AA with varying degrees of success (turrets, fighters, mobile AA, flak, etc.)

The more I think about it, the more I think it just comes down to cost. Bump nuke missile cost up by about 5x and see how that feels.

The main thing that adds value (and therefore, should add cost) to the nuke is its incredible range. If you want to blast my base with artillery, you must build near enough to me that I will probably see it going up and we're going to have a fight over that forward base. With nukes you can just build them in the safety of your own base and still hit things about halfway around the planet on scale 4 worlds. I think for the safety and convenience offered by a nuke, we aren't paying a fair price.

Nucks already cost 32,400 Metal, higher cost does nothing to solve the boring binary gameplay Nucks have currently.

Mike

What if fighters could shoot down incoming nuclear missiles? Then it would be a little more like Orbital Lasers -- you can defend against them with Umbrellas but they can also be hit by Avengers. You could defend against nukes with anti-nukes, but they can also be hit by fighters.

This would make fighters the likely primary defense against nukes with anti-nukes as backup. To really get a nuke into a defended position you'd probably want to send in a ton of bombers, both to kill the anti-nuke and to distract the enemy fighters...

It seems like nukes already live in the air layer and follow the contours of the planet so it seems there wouldn't be much to do to make this work?

I think the problem is that currently the cost difference between Nucks and air units is just too large, it takes 80 T2 Fighters(or 180 T1 Fighters) to equal just the cost of the Nuck itself.

As an Idea on it's own I think it has merit, but I don't think it works well with the current Nuck Balance.

Mike

As I see it, the nuke problem is that it's a very secure structure that can reach really far out to touch someone (versus artillery that usually has to be built in a risky area near the enemy base). I think if a structure that powerful and that secure had a counter that was as simple as making a bunch of fighters and patrolling them in the right area, that might actually be alright.

Deciding WHEN to use the nuke would be vastly more important. You might need to wait for those fighters to die or otherwise run off. Right now you only need to know if there's an anti-nuke in the way and all other factors can be ignored.

Ok I see that we agree.

I think Antinukes should always work. The point of antinukes is creating a missile shield - it's actually really expensive to create a missile shield that protects your entire base, even if your base is quite small. It means that the game actually progresses to other planets and asteroids, and doesn't just become a cold war esque conflict.

I think the main point is being missed. A nuke is a nuke. It is not a suicide bomber.

The anti-nuke is quite effective and reasonably priced, the range is equivalent to the AOE of the Nuke itself. I have never seen an anti-nuke miss and I don't see a problem with the way nukes have been implemented so far.

The only time a nuke is a one shot kill is if you are turtleing and you don't have structures built over a wide area. A base that has been properly expanded and defended is wounded by a nuke but not destroyed by it.

The nuke is a viable solution in a stale mate scenario. It can be used tactically to completely destroy a death ball that is coming right for you so it has tactical application.

If I were to change one thing about the nuke I would weaken it just enough to let T2 structures survive the blast. that is how it was back in early Beta and Alpha.

Nukes should not be nerfed, what would be the point in calling it that otherwise. Anti-Nukes could come with one prebuilt rocket and a little increased range though.