Missile silo.

I was thinking about how nukes are kind of no risk for the one who is building them and thought, what if they could be dangerous to turtlers too. what im thinking of is an addition to the nuke launcher where a certain amount of nukes could be stored, more for the tac missiles that we might be getting, less for the interplanetary nukes. all nukes would have to be built there and then loaded into the launcher to launch, (maybe 5 second load for tac missiles, 10 second load for normal nukes, and 20 for interplanetary ones?). the draw back to being able to store nukes like this, is that if the silo was destroyed, ( by, lets say, bombers, it would take out a massive part of the base with it, the radius and power multiplying with every missile in the silo, and every silo in range that is hit. you can still turtle with a nuke, but you better have plenty of flack cannons, or your going to get a nasty surprise.

Would this work automatically or micro?

it would automatically load the missile when you wanted to fire. you would still have to que up the missiles though. could work with infinite build button

Thank you, is it a second building and is it really necessary?

no it comes automatically with the nuke launcher

The current system with nukes and anti-nuke sis entirely visual, you can see how many an enemy has.

So storing many nukes needs to be as visual.

It shouldn't be visible only on the silo, but on the map icon as well.

I still think the entire nuke thing needs overhauled.

It looks wimpy.

It needs to be eye-catching, like HEY IM BUILDING A NUKE TO KILL YOU, instead of this sneaky nuke that can hide.

Why not make them explosive at all times? If a nuke on the launch pad goes gets blown up, why doesn't it go nuclear right then and there? That would certainly make it dangerous to turtle around a nuke.

that's what I mean. if a nuke gets hit it explodes and triggers all nukes in its radius

But how do you do it without it just kinda taking the piss for the player using them?

I was thinking a new model, or maybe just a bigger version of the one we have now.

Yeah maybe.

I was thinking that when a player sees a loaded enemy silo there should be a a UI change to the silo that makes it's strategic icon flash, and appear above other icons so the player can pick it out if they need to.

Nothing to flashy, but enough that looking over a number of monochrome bases you can clearly see the one with the loaded silo.

Intriguing. So, a wise player would build those Silos a bit afar from the main base. Like it actually happens in reality. It makes sense, and it would discourage turtling up into small bases.

I would make all of that even simpler.

The Nuke Launcher would require more time to complete than an Anti-Nuke as now but both would come pre-loaded. So no need to queue a missile for a Nuke Launcher. Why would the player build the Launcher, in the first place, if he didn't want the missile as well?

The Anti-Nuke would come pre-loaded with one missile as now. But as soon as operative, it would start building the other two anti-nuke missiles in sequence by itself.

Both would re-load in automatic after launching one of their missiles.

The difference would be that the Nuke Launcher will have only one missile. So if you want to launch three in quick succession, you need to build three, like now.

Every time the Nuke Launcher and the Anti-Nuke would launch a missile, they woult start reloading by themselves. No intervention needed from the player - less micro, same result.

I would add what you said, that hitting a Nuke Launcher would have a risk to ignite the Nuke itself, causing massive destruction on site. That sounds cool.

No need to have a silos filled up with Nukes. The player who wants to launch more nukes at the same time will have to build more Launchers, like now. And that would be visible on scouting.

No having to manually load the launchers, or queueing missiles for them, wouldn't change anything. It simply removes a burden for the player.

In fact, allowing the Anti-Nuke to counter the Nuke is a mere function of how fast and easy players can build one vs the other. And the fact that once completed, the former has three shots versus a single one of the latter.

This isn't how nukes work, and that isn't how we should be balancing them.

I would also remove the possibility to assist a Nuke Launcher with fabbers. So that to standardize the time required for obtaining a nuclear capability. And I would reduce the time necessary to build the Anti-Nuke that right now is outrageous :-D

True. But it would require the player to prepare a good defense network first, in order to go nuke. Or nut. Or to allocate the Nuke Launcher afar, therefore the need to obtain a control over a wide territory, before to risk a nuclear detonation at home, or nearby the Commander.

Realism is of great inspiration, but things do not need to be realistic in a video game in order to work better.

ps. In fact you're right. In reality Nuclear Silos are built far from cities and other strategic assets not because they could detonate if hit but because otherwise they would be annihilated by the first wave of nuclear blasts (launched by the enemy). They are also kept secrets for the same very reason. But I assume that we want them to be visible on the map in Planetary Annihilation

You can't completely nerf nuke time. I recently went through a game where i had to use 7 nukes just to clear a beachhead for my teleporter to hit an occupied moon.

Were 7 nukes not enough? Or do you mean that you had to launch 14 of them, or even 21?

I tried to launch 20 nukes at the same time on a planet, and I annihilated 5 players at once. It was awesome and I had 250 t2 air fabbers assisiting my launchers. But after the first wave, the game was over.

Assisting the launchers only made the process faster, it did not change the outcome. Down on the planet no one suspected that I was preparing 20 Nukes on my little Moon >

And I was a bit disappointed that I didn't have the chance to launch the second wave with the next 20.

Yes to flashy loaded nukelaunchersymbols when scouted no to volatility...