Multiple Nukes

An area command doesn't have to be huge. You could drag it out to cover one or two buildings, or you could cover the whole planet. If you want a simultaneous fire, or a sustained focused fire an area command would be a very fast minimal UI way to order it up.

In the game today it's not unreal to have 10+ nukes ready to fire, but when we have moons/asteroids with adjustable orbits and multiplanet spawning we're going to see an entire play style of silently building an arsenal of hundreds of nukes at the edge of the solar system before swooping into orbit and dropping a lethal dose of uranium on the enemy before changing your orbit back to the sun.

Also, I love the idea of a hotbar that would select every nuke silo capable of hitting your currently focused planet. One click to grab all nukes, and then tap the mouse to make individual attack orders, or area command to spam them all at once.

What if there was done both one click - one nuke mechanic and area nukes? Area nukes working the way that you draw a circles (just as if building PGs) and the nukes would just evenly spread out over the area? Possibly even selecting how many you want to use (while drawing the circles you could just click a number).

Why would you need to zoom out? For that matter, with the area covered by the current Nuck, why would you need to Zoom in?

I just don't see the point in giving up all that control for shaving off such a small amount of time.

Mike

If we're talking 10 nukes firing once it's not much time, but if we're talking 20+ launchers over a span of 15 minutes we're suddenly talking about a whole lot of nukes and a whole lot of clicking. The value in persistent orders is I give the attack command once, and until I tell them stop they continue to launch every nuke built at that base until no targets remain. With zero micro management I have forced the enemy to invest much more heavily into his anti-nukes because his production has to mach mine. If I combine this with a ground and air assault I can divert his attention and resources until those nukes start breaching his defense. The nice thing with an area command is they simply stop attacking when they don't see anymore units in the kill zone, and just like units, that kill zone could be a planet, or a radius the size of one building. The price for this automation is giving up the manual selection of targets. The launchers can be setup to select different targets in the kill zone with a maximum spread. If you have a large area command this could scatter your nukes all over the planet, or if you focus on the core of his base they will remain closely grouped.

It also works for one launcher with a ton of assisting fabbers. If a nuke is ready every 30 seconds we're talking about a whole lot of micro to keep every shot firing as quick as they are ready.

edit: a further thought about target prioritizing...

If you assign an area nuke command they priority should be as follows...

The first launcher targets the enemy closest to the center of the command area.

The second launcher excludes targets within an expecting nuke radius. Now, from the non-excluded targets list, target the next target closest to the center of the command.

Each additional launcher repeats the priority process of the second, exuding already nuke-assigned targets.

If you ordered so many nukes that every unit in the area is covered, clear the excluded list and start over so this nuke targets the enemy nearest the center, etc.


It would simply use a IEnumerable (vb.net jargon. what ever language applies) list of all enemies ordered by distance ascending from center of the area command. For each enemy if they are within an expected blast radius flip a boolean over to true and iterate to the first unit flagged false. When you reach the end of the list, clear all flags and start over. Fully automated, semi-intelligent, automated nucking.

I think you're talking about something different then. You seem to be talking about some kinda of "repeat" order for launchers(which I don't see any need for by the way) when I'm talking about the ability to Launch Multiple Nucks within a very short time frame(somewhere between simultaneously and with a few seconds) in specific locations.

Mike

I'm talking about both. Units already have an area attack command that behaves very similarly to the system I just described. I think nuke launchers should behave like units when given an area command. Launch everything you have, and launch again as soon as it's ready.

Isn't that kinda wasteful thought? how much can survive a single Nuck strike? Especially a mass strike with overlapping?

Also as I already explained, you lose a lot of accuracy and control if you surrender those aspects to the Area Command, bases aren't always round after all.

As Nucks are currently, I don't see any point to a system that repeatedly Launches missiles like you describe.

Mike

The same can be said of giving any unit an area command. If you're willing to spend time on micro there are places it will pay off and times it's inefficient. In theory I could give every factory an "attack whole planet order" and never once command an individual unit. In fact, vs the AI I do that at all the time because it lets me focus on expanding my economy as quickly as possible. It's not very efficient, and poorly suited for playing against a human, but it has it's time and place.

If the enemy has heavy anti-nuke defenses a sustained barrage can be used to deplete his anti-nuke supply. If the enemy knows I've been building 15 nuke silos he's probably stacked his anti-nuke too, so I need to hit the same spot enough times to clear it out, even if it takes a half hour. If this is automated it greatly reduces the micro involved while I work on other planets or manage a ground army.

Also, for every 1 nuke you see built today you're going to see a dozen built once we can change the orbits of moons. It's no problem to micro manage a couple nukes at a time, but it's a nightmare to micro manage a whole planet's economy invested in nukes.

I see it like this at current we can have 10 players max soon that will be increased to 40 theres gonna be a lot of nukes fired i think the area command for nukes would be perfect like i said when u have 20+ nukes it takes along time to fire them unless u send all nukes to the same spot. N when i say zoom in zoom out i mean u have to select a nuke on one planet and then select a location on another. To do this 20+ times take a long time and is a lot of headache it would be far easier for us to select all 20+ nukes n then send them to an area using area command if u think thats not enough accuracy then u still have the option to send single nukes if needed to the same location

Very nice Idea...maybe a counter or sometype of ui element that lets you know how many nukes you have left to launch.

This topic reminds me of a topic a while back about allowing targeting without radar or LOS coverage; if we allow target queuing there should be some sort of caveat that if you lose radar coverage then any targets influenced by the coverage are also lost (removed from queue). I get that at the time in the game that this would not be an issue as most players have orbital or at least adv. radar up. Nukes are a game changer as it is, taking out the one thing that sort of balances out their power (having to take the time to scroll around and acquire targets manually) is something that may be bad for us in the long haul.

I guess what I am getting at is how the ability to target-and-forget affects balance in the long (long, long, long) game so that we don't go from moons as a means of planet smashing to moons full of interplanetary nukes that are constantly bombarding a specific location on a planet turning it into, in essence, a planet smashing on repeat with no means to stop it and no penalty for going that route. Planet smashing works balance-wise because the ammo is destroyed in the attack, there needs to be something to effectively counteract this.


Though, imagining galactic wars where moons are just balls of nukes is pretty neat.

I dunno, I'm just beating that dead horse one more time to ring in the new year.

The nice thing about area commands is that if you loose line of sight on a target the launcher wouldn't include it in the list of valid targets, so it wouldn't fire until LOS or radar is restored.

I agree that a sustained nuke barrage would suck if nothing else is modified, but we will have looped build lists on the anti-nuke launchers, so even if nothing else changes you aren't trapped with zero defense.

Also, I don't think "gonna make you click till it hurts" is a wise method to balancing out massive nuke spams. In other topics I've been advocating a major rework of the nuke vs anti-nuke system without directly nerfing the nuke itself. First, if both nukes and anti-nukes were non-assistable, had max ammo per silo (1 nuke, or 3 anti-nuke), let anti-nukes built faster than nukes, and raise the radius of the anti-nuke launcher it would go a long way toward nerfing the "spam moon" without taking nukes out of the game. I would also make the umbrella a moderately effective defense against a single incoming nuke that can intercept the missile while it is still in orbit. If the umbrella fails, then fire a precious, limited supply, anti-nuke.

What about if we make anti nukes be able to cover the hole planet n we would have to build a anti nuke detect radar in order for it to cover the hole planet and detect incoming nukes. Its also adds a little more diversity because then u got the option of trying to work out witch one u take out with bombers.

Or maybe we could make it part of a satellite radar like an advanced nuke satellite. Im pretty sure thats how it would work in the real would

Hold Fire.
Clickclickclickclickclick.
Fire at will.

Done.

Please watch my comment on what-if-its-the-radar-the-problem page 2

What if it's the radar the problem?

I was recently wishing the game had area commands for nukes as well. Glad I'm not the only one.