Nukes....-.-

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Illmaren, December 20, 2013.

  1. Illmaren

    Illmaren Active Member

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    Nukes must be really really get much expensiver...
    i mean at the moment its only a race who makes nukes first...whats this? i mean all the other units are completely useless when your enemy got 1 nuke and 100 t1 and t2 builder in the back and nuke them away...

    Its just pointless to play right now...;&
    Timevans999 likes this.
  2. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

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    Nuke aren't as powerful as everyone thinks. Anti-nukes are pretty good now, bombers have been buffed to snipe them too. If you spread out your base then it's not that simple to get nukes that are cost-effective in terms of how much you destroy. The only real problem is when you have a lot of eco and build power and you can spam multiple nukes per minute.

    This is mostly a balance issue, and the balancing phase hasn't begun yet.
  3. Illmaren

    Illmaren Active Member

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    i got nuked and my base wasn´t turtled
    he shot 5-6 nukes per minute at me and the game wasn´t 20 minutes long
  4. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Nukes aren't OP at all.

    I've won matches after getting nuked 4 or 5 times.

    Spread out your base and spread out your power so if you get nuked you don't lose everything.

    Anti-nukes are a lot more valid now with their increased range.

    Just gotta play right.

    And I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating that your opponent shot 5-6 nukes every minute.
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  5. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

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    That's a pretty huge exaggeration. You would need over +3000 metal and +300,000 energy per second to achieve that, which is not possible in less than 20mins.

    Scout more and snipe the nuke with air units, put more pressure on your opponent with units and we won't have the opportunity to nuke you with impunity. If you're putting pressure on him then he won't nearly have the eco to afford that.
  6. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    Aaaaaaaanddd there it goes again *sigh*
    @zaphodx ... did you thought about making a nuke only match (along with defence turtets)
    Would like to see how that plays ou
    (Would do it myself but my comp is still broken)
  7. beer4blood

    beer4blood Active Member

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    Anti nuke.......nuff said.....
  8. ledarsi

    ledarsi Post Master General

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    Nukes are not overpowered, but they are boring because of the huge expense and game impact of a single nuke either succeeding or failing. They are too binary in terms of success or failure, and a more continuous design that involves more moves and countermoves by both players would be much better.

    Nukes are no longer necessary as a destabilizing endgame weapon- we already have asteroids for that. So instead nukes should be made smaller, cheaper, and more numerous. Ten little nukes can succeed or fail separately without having an overly decisive effect on the entire game. Ten little nukes at one-tenth the price can have no impact (like big nuke interception) or total success (like big nuke success) but can also have partial success or failure. They can also be used separately, such as aiming at different targets or at different times, where a single big nuke can only be used once in one place. Firing all ten at one spot might overwhelm the antinuke, but if there is no antinuke then firing them at ten different places is more efficient.
  9. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    if we had replays I could show you a 40min+ replay where I had no nukes at all, was nuked maybe 4 times, lost all my initial main base to it and still won :p
    but yeah slightly better antinukes would good I think.
  10. ledarsi

    ledarsi Post Master General

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    My point is that a discrete count of the number of nukes used is not how nukes should work. You're not counting tanks or missiles or air strikes because they are so numerous and not individually decisive. They can be powerful, but not individually game-deciding. But you're taking serious note of asteroids because one asteroid could well decide the entire game.

    Nukes in TA and SupCom did what asteroids do in PA to destabilize the endgame. So it makes sense to downsize the significance of nukes to on-demand splash damage in a lower weight class.

    A nuke should be a pretty normal kind of fire support which deals large splash damage from a projectile priced similarly to a big unit. Both sides can build and use numerous of them over the course of a game, and some of them will land, and some of them will not. Players that use their nukes very skillfully can do more damage with more of their nukes.
  11. Timevans999

    Timevans999 Active Member

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    the only logical thing to say is dont bother with early access
  12. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    I don't understand why people have to have a specific strategy.

    Why can't we just make our own strategy?

    If we want to proxy base, let us proxy, if we want to turtle, let us turtle. Don't punish us for using a specific strategy, kind of like what nukes do at the moment.
  13. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    you can pump out more nukes than you can pump out anti nukes.
    Zoliru and Timevans999 like this.
  14. adeets

    adeets New Member

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    I would say in response then don't complain when your strategy doesn't work.

    If the planet looks like one guy spread every where and one guy with 1/8th map control, who has the better chance of victory if they lose 1/16 map control.

    Another comment, if you do want to turtle, maybe your trying to turtle the wrong way, only way to win is have a higher economy or snipe the other com... If your turtling and don't have 3 anti nukes covering the same area, it's gonna get bad.
    If you do like turtling then make a but ton of t2 bombers/fighters, and don't store them in your base, when the nuke finally gets thru ur anti nuke spam, then send all those bombers that didn't get nuked after his commander, it's either that or click on your com that's at 10% health and press delete.
  15. ledarsi

    ledarsi Post Master General

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    This is a fairly serious error of confusing a strategy game for a sandbox game.

    Strategy games give you tools that follow certain rules, and a win condition. The tools change the game state in a certain way, and certain game states are better for one player than another. Certain moves are strictly better for you than others. But you don't necessarily have the tools you might want, the information to make the correct decision, or the ability to predict what the opponent will do.

    A strategy game is not a sandbox in that 'you are free to do whatever you want.' In fact, it is eminently possible to do very stupid things that will make you lose. Quite unlike a sandbox game where you can literally do whatever you fancy and there are no consequences.

    It is inherently impossible to create a strategy game that caters to the player base that looks on it like a sandbox game. Not every strategy will be viable. In fact, the vast majority of strategies in the game theory sense of the word are really, really terrible. If you open with five laser towers and then a mex, you have already lost.

    This possibility of executing extremely bad strategies is inherent to the genre. The unavoidable reason for this is that strategies evolve over time and react to each other. A strategy that is terrible under some circumstances will actually be viable under other circumstances, and could even be optimal in still others. It is impossible to identify which strategies are useful to allow under all cases beforehand, so it makes more sense to just give players enough rope to hang themselves.

    Strategy games are meant to be played as a contest, not just to fiddle around with explodey things. You can't just "make your own strategy" from whatever you want because you're entertaining in sandbox flights of fancy instead of seriously trying to discern the optimal move from the current game state.

    Creating a truly novel strategy is very hard in any strategic exercise. The reason for this is that creating something novel that outperforms what everyone else has already thought of, and is stable to a wide variety of circumstances, is extremely challenging. It is nonsense to think you can just pick anything you want, do whatever nonsense appeals to your whim of the minute, and believe you are entitled to have it perform well.
  16. Timevans999

    Timevans999 Active Member

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    oh my god this game is boring at the moment
  17. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    10/10 great troll:rolleyes:
  18. Timevans999

    Timevans999 Active Member

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    All I can say is that we are one step away from kiddy fiddling. please manup a bit.
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  19. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    I wouldn't mind if nukes were both mildly cheaper but almost same, and mildly smaller but almost same. I also don't mind it now.

    Nukes aren't fun, because they are hit or miss, but a game has not been this fair about it in a long while.

    In RA3, superweapons weaken what they hit, they NEVER kill a fully healed base, not any structure pretty much.

    In RA2, superweapons kill any structure but "commander" (never minding specifics on that), but are not counterable at all. They had to instead add a automatic warning and location of weapon to make it fair, and it broke "immersion of game" for enemy to get free data.

    In PA, the game is designed around building over a very spread out area, so much so, that nukes should never hit more than 4 things. Some units, a pocket of mex/pp. a single factory, your orbital silo, your nuke silo, or your artillery battery. "OR", and almost never "AND", lest it be your fault for clustering them.

    If nukes won, you didn't cover half-or-more of the map, didn't build spread out on top of that, and/or didn't scout and snipe nukes with artillery or bombers.

    And my evidence to back up this "state of the game balance", is the current playerbase complaining about 6 things that usually end games and not just nukes. Those are: Nukes, Artillery, Air, t1 rushing, t2 blobbing, and orbital.
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  20. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    An asteroid in PA currently wipes an entire planet out how is that compareable to what nukes did in supcom ..
    And i heavily disagree with nukes ( not to repeat the association discussion from the other thread) being "normal" fire support ... the nuke is a breakerweapon it brakes potions were you cant simply get through because of to much resistence it brakes defenses it brakes the
    Production rate of your enemy so you get an advantage or make things even for a period of time ... especialy if you were at a disadvantage before
    And i have to ask again whats the difference weither i build 2 to 3 nukes that take out a chunk of the enemy base or built 5 to 10 medium splash (say radius of supcom scomm deathsplosion) tacmissiles to get a similar effect for almost the same costs ... there is actualy none ...

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