Expanding on Nukes

Yes, possibly, and most definitely with the current orbital system. Controlling orbital would mean you could nuke your opponent all you want, so it would require further tweaking. You could balance it by creating more powerful/easy/mobile ways to attack orbital from the ground. This way orbital units would nerf some of the beefier ground stuff like nukes, while ground units could be used to mitigate orbital dominance.

Id love surface dominance as a nice twist to keep the setting of the game making sense.

Like satellites skirmish, planes raid, and surface units brawl!

That's a nice way of putting it, I agree. We don't really know anything about what direction orbital is going in, but I hope it will be something more like support for ground. Orbital fighters should go, I like more the idea of a cat and mouse game of chasing satellites with a ground force.

Regarding nukes, in principle I like that there is such a powerful and simple weapon in the game. There just needs to be an equally powerful counter to it. I guess destructive power should be proportional to ease of counter.

And in general there needs to be some kind of balance of terror between orbital and ground.. having control of orbital should result in some major advantages on the ground to make it desirable, but orbital should be easy to disrupt from the ground. The kind of classic rock-paper-scissors stuff which hopefully will keep the battle from getting too one-sided.

Well the nuke is just a big flying bomb bot.

I just feel like we should be able to shoot at them with a bit more then a single weapon, that has to also be build from a specific building, for what is it's only purpose.

Of course we could go all DEFCON on PA's *** and make nuke silos where you either use the default automatic nuke defence or turn that off to use the nuke option.

But that might just cause a greater nuke inflation.

I do think the dimension of the game involving nukes would benefit a lot from becoming deeper, possibly by becoming more like Defcon. Defcon is actually a fairly simple game, but it goes to show how having more nukes and more antinukes spread across space is more interesting than what TA/SupCom do.

This is quite good.

Having to many defenses could make nukes redundant ..
Currently nukes are a sort of 50/50 kind of risk reward thing
As they are powerfull but can be stoped by a clear counter
Ad in more defenses against it and you may have to make the nuke more accessible to compensate ... that could turn the nukegame into a slugfest as others pointed out ... and were would be the fun in that wasting just missile after missile and resources why then build nukes in the first place?
I personaly think mobile and static versions of nukes and anukes is ok
Imo all there is to do is to balance costs and build time as well as the efficiency of both ... we dont realy need further defenses that just overlap in nuke defence .. unitroles should stay specific imo

Well if the nuke was just a standard unit, then how would it be any different to building tanks and going against enemy defences?

That depends on how many counters you want to include against it
The more defensive options you have against it the less viable does a nukelauncher become itself to be an option ... in that case you would be just better of with building long range artillery

Well again, you could say the same for any old tank, and considering the destructive potential of nukes, even with artillery, slipping a nuke into the right spot can be a game changer when faced with large defence fortresses.

Much like with bombers, much like with tanks. All units, many counters and strategy to them.

One player might prefer artillery, another nukes. It becomes another option rather then the only one.

Well I think that the problem is that 75% of people end up going with nukes.... Making it a more of a nuke game by the time then end of the game comes around!!!!!!

and the people that wanted to use tanks or bots have to go with nukes or just spend all there time building anti-nukes because if they don't.... well again the nukes will win!!!!!!

Exactly, nukes are so unassailable while in transit that if you don't already have the specific counter unit, then you have no hope of fighting back against it.

Better to have not wasted resources and time by instead hiding a counter missile to initiate some totally M.A.D warfair.

The problem with nukes is the combination of an extremely expensive and decisive weapon with an extremely expensive and specialized countermeasure.

The fact that nukes are so expensive and that antinuke is so expensive means that a nuke is more likely to succeed because of the decreased prominence of both. Building a pre-emptive antinuke that is useless until a nuke is fired at it is a large waste of resources.

Secondly, and more seriously, nukes are extremely individually decisive. And as a result, antinuke is individually decisive when it works. A successful nuke can decide the game. And an intercepted nuke can also decide the game.

Nukes should be split into a greater number of decisions which are individually less significant. Twenty nukes creates a lot more options than one super-expensive nuke, and a lot more possible outcomes than absolute success or absolute failure. Furthermore, cheaper nukes and antinuke will mean antinuke makes more sense as a practical defense. A smaller investment to get any nuke defense is absolutely necessary. In order to get more nuke defense, you should build more antinukes. Not just a few expensive antinukes.

Making antinuke more efficient is also necessary. In PA right now, antinuke is simply far too expensive and far too weak. Nukes can win, antinuke can only stop the enemy from nuking one spot, and it useless for any other purpose. Costing even a significant fraction as much to defend against nukes is ridiculous.

TL;DR- Make nukes cheaper and less decisive. Make antinukes cheaper, and more efficient.

I agree with all that you have stated, under the assumption that you generally agree that tiing the anti-nuke defence to a single unit/building is also a bad idea.

Generaly everything should be viable depending on the situation ..

If i am initialy nukefocused how should i best proceed?
Techrush with propper ecoexpannsion while occasionaly harass the enemy, scout enemy for nukedefense while try to read and react to his strategy and eventualy send in disposable bombers to destroy the defenses and be able to launch the gamechanging strike and finish off the enemy With a horde of units or further nuke/bombard him?

You actualy cant just focus on and shoehorn one option through a match ... you have to use many options to support the one option you want to use

in other words i should have to use my troops in order to ensure my nukes get to their destination ... the focus should still stay on overall surfacebattle with nukes to be just one option as a means to an end ... the thing to me is just that i dont see too much of a difference weither i have to build 3 expensive strong nukes against 3 expensive anukes
Or 20 cheap weak nukes against 20 cheap anukes when in the end they cause the overall same thing ... i dont realy feel that that would make missile gameplay any more intresting ...

I feel diluting the nuke is a cheap way out. A weak nuke is not a nuke anymore. Also it should be expensive, to make it high risk. Of course this is a matter of balance, but nukes should make a big impact, it is in their nature.

Antinukes should probably be mobile to make them more versatile and useful.

Only until the end game with the current balance, as nukes are only truly countered by nuking first.

And that nuke is usually a snipe to win the game. and Id prefer not to have a single unit that can do that just becuse it requires a specific counter unit that does nothing else.

I don't suggest making nukes weak. They can still deal a large amount of damage over a huge splash radius. Just not enough to completely wipe out an opponent with one missile. A similar level of investment might be able to produce similar results; you just need more missiles.

A single tactical nuke would still be very powerful. Powerful enough to wipe out a sizable group of units at a shot. That's certainly worth paying quite a bit of metal for. But not as powerful as a current PA nuke, and not deserving of the same price tag. And the antinuke to stop the smaller nuke needs to be smaller as well.

I certainly agree about mobile antinuke. But there should also be static (and perhaps also mobile) antinuke with very good range.

In optimal balance the most obvious option to counter a nuke should be any offensive approach to go and destroy the nukelauncher before it is finished or ready to fire
The anuke is a last resort defence to stop a launched nuke .... but the launcher is still there
Countering nuke with nuke is rather bad as it just takes as much resources and by that time your enemy could have nukedefence already ... obviously all depending how the eco is on both sides but using troops as counter should be rather preferable unless you realy have the eco and builtpower to rush a nuke ....

I still dont think thats a reason to make nukes cheaper and weaker ....

"Destroy it before it's built" should never be the way to balance something.

An analogy here would be do you prefer fighting with many small tanks vs defenses or only with 1 experimental vs 1 experimental defence? Not building that experimental defence in time means game over, and there's a large risk that you've built it in the wrong spot, or that your opponent isn't even building an opposing experimental. On the other hand, there's lots more leniency in the tank blob scenario, even if the overall cost of both is the same.

Not a perfect analogy, but I hope it communicates the point I'm trying to make

And that, was exactly what I wanted to say.