NUKES!! WAY TOO O.P.

Well the addition of my proposed third resource would only be strictly for the purpose of helping to acquire nukes, not to require anything else to function. Even then, it would be more limited than metal, making it a challenge to actually nuke a person, as opposed to everyone's complaints about people acquiring nukes too early in the game.

The biggest problem i have with it is that it is way to specific of a resource and i dont feel that it would make nukewarfare any more intresting
Uranium and plutionium are also both metals aswell ... we are not just gathering ironore ore titanium as there hasnt been said what exactly is gathered from those spots .. so it can be assumed that we are gathering all kinds of metals uranium and plutonium included

If you're rushing to crank out anti nukes in reaction to the other player building a nuke silo, then you're already behind the power curve. If you're that concerned with protection from nukes, I'm sure you'd feel very differently about not being able to put as many fabs on those anti-nukes if you wanted to get them constructed as quickly as possible, well before he can begin building a nuke silo. Point is, don't wait for the enemy to have already begun production of a nuke silo. If you already have 3 fully loaded anti-nuke silos with overlapping coverage of your base by the time he even has one nuke, then it's clear that the amount of fabbers used is irrelevant.

Well, would you agree on at least a series of conditions to be met before nukes can be launched? That way, it wouldn't matter how many fabs you put on that silo to build a nuke, if there are other outside conditions that allow/prevent so and so from launching a nuke, then the number of fabs shouldn't matter at all in and of themselves. Something to consider.

Build the launcher build the nuke and go .... what else do i have to need ... radar? why shall i not be allowed to fire in the dark ala battleship
Conditions are not the way to go imo ...
You may increase its cost you may increase its buildtime but it wont change the attitude of those that want to rush nukes anyway .. and again the conditionthing merely delays the first few nukes

If Uranium and plutonium were required for nukes, then the game would be all about getting that resource and whoever gets that resource wins.

well how different is that from the current stigmata???? First to build nuke in 3ffa and beyond usually wins...... no assist makes a nice controllable buffer zone....

Instead of no assisting simply increase the energydrain on assisting fabbers
No assist is just way to radical and takes away from the idea of steering the eco to were you need it

It's different than the current setup because anyone can build nukes. Not just the one person who controls the resource that happened to be in his spawn while the other player didn't have access to any. Everyone is on the same playing field.

No assist just postpones the inevitable. Then people will build up 10 nuke launchers and we'll have 10 nukes all at once.

I disagree with you on the first to build a nuke wins. First to build a nuke has an advantage, but not a guaranteed win. It's almost like saying, "I didn't build Advanced and my opponent did and I lost. That means Advanced is over powered."

There's a simple solution - make anti-nukes cheaper. 30% cheaper, 50% cheaper, whatever. That way you will be able to defend against nukes your core base, but nukes will still be a threat to armies and base outskirts.
The mechanic is fine, but it's waaay too easy to get through antinukes.

Btw - someone suggested t2 bombers as a counter - hey, they don't fly to moons.

Orbital is under developed and irrelevant in this discussion. We can't really talk about Orbital balance until we have a fully functioning orbital.

Anti-Nuke missiles already cost half as much as a nuclear missile and the anti-nuke launcher also already costs less than the nuke launcher.

This is why I feel like the very game mechanic of nukes are truly flawed.

Care to expand?

I'm not seeing the connection.

Care to expand?

I'm not seeing the connection.[/quote]

Well if I were to introduce a new unit into the game, one that was invulnerable to any kinds of attack short of killing during construction. That would be bad, so you suggest we introduce a counter to this unit.

So now we have this super unit, and a counter, but unlike other counters for say tanks, or planes this counter only has the job of countering the super unit.

That creates a gameplay entirely devoted around building this super unit, and building the counter unit. Sure a player can decide to not build the counter, but then loses to the super unit as there is no way to defend against it.

So next game the player premptivly builds the counter (Hopefully in the right place, and hopefully with enough shots to even work) in his base, but this game the other player does not build the super unit and so now the counter unit was a waste of resources and time, as the device does nothing else.

Ok, so those two last games were a loss, not building the counter when the enemy had the super unit was bad, as was building the counter when the enemy didn't use the super unit, and building the counter when you detect the super unit via anything less then a early scout will net you a loss as you scramble to build the counter.

So what about next game?

Now the player decides not to build the counter, but fortunately the other player doest build the super unit, so no harm no foul, its a balanced game, effectively a draw.

So now thats 2 losses and a draw.

In the forth game the player premtivally builds the counter (In the right place no less!), and the other player builds the super unit! Its a win and the counter kills the otherwise super unit!

So the player who is building the counter has a 50% chance of losing, a 25% chance to draw if no one builds either and a 25% to win if they build the counter, the shots for it to work, buildis it in the right place and the enemy runs right into your trap.


That, is my definition of a bad game mechanic.



But what is the nuke mechanic? Lets go back to CNC, tiberian dawn and like at it's super weapons.

The nuclear missile is a support power, called in from its designated structure to inflict ranged damage on a enemy target if they allowed your structure to remain standing for a set amount of time, there are no counters.

But is there anything else like the nuke?

The A-10 warthog strike, another support power, but with a difference as like its vtol cousins it was vulnerable to anti-air. But did that make the support power worthless? after-all did the presence of enemy AA that they would likely build to beat your vtols make this air strike support power pointless?

No it didn't, you just chose a different target, or took out the AA, a common base defence with more then one purpose.

And in later iterations, what happened to these non-vtols? did they remain support powers? do we only have gunship like vtols in current RTS games? nope.
The air strike ascended and stopped being a off map support power and became integrated into the players arsenal. It become a build able unit, a unit that was still countered by AA, as its only logical to keep the counter into a unit that is still capable of hitting it, why would you need a separate counter when bombers or strike aircraft like the A-10 operate in much the same way as gunships like Apache helicopters or orca gunships operate?

So It is in my belief that nukes need to also make this ascension, that nukes should not require a specialised defence and should be a unit just like everyone else, whether its in the orbital layer or air layer is up for debate, but as it stands the current game mechanic for nuclear missiles is very bad. AND WE HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THIS!

I get what you're saying. May even agree with you. Just need to think on it more.

What is your suggestion for fixing this then?

Moving anti-nukes into an anti-nuke/catapult/pelter defensive structure?

Maybe make it so fighters can shoot down incoming nukes?

The fact that that you mention cnc is quite a joke already .... cnc nukes and ion cannon heck especialy the later versions werent counterable AT ALL
Are seriously suggesting to remove antinukes entirely to just have nukes .. just because its a bit of a guessinggame? Tell me what in this game IS NOT a guessing game?

I an very unlikely to ever have the right answer.

But there are many approaches to take this on from.

Possible approach one: Orbital

Remove anti-nuke, and allow orbital fighters and static anti-orbital defence to shoot and destroy nukes, along with any future anti-orbital weapons.

That way nukes become a true part of the orbital set of units, and tieing them into the orbital part of the game, as having appropriate orbital facilities will provide the defences you need against orbital capable enemys.

Strategy. If you have to plan a game around unpredictable events then you have no competitive game at all, as there is little to no way of judging one players skill vs another if they have to guess to succeed.

It would be as bad if we have a random number generator decide who wins or who loses.

I don't understand where the big difference to i.e. FA is. Nukes and Antinukes had a pretty similar relation in it.
Difference was indeed they had no assist on them. SupCom Vanilla still had assist on nukes which made the extreme late game pretty weird, as you could spam 1 nuke per second. So yeah removing assist is a valid option imho, but apart from that the general mechanic of antinukes and nukes has worked in FA, why would it not work in PA?

A unit that can only be killed by one other unit is just a bad mechanic to have, and while assisting is not a problem in a supcom game it still has the same general problems with how the mechanic works.

And frankly that is not a fun mechanic at all!

So you scout the enemy base and see a silo being built, what do you do?

Do you commence an all out attack to destroy the silo? If you win, why didn't you shoot the commander instead?

Do you build an anti-silo and hope its in the right place to defend from?

Do you do nothing and hope the nuke silo drains their economy enough to give you the edge on producing more tanks?


The point is, why are nukes so special when compared to tanks?