Something needs to change with nukes.

It sounds like what you're asking for is the finished game. You can play that! Here's what you have to do;

1. Nap for several months.
2. Wake up, brush your teeth.
3. Play Planetary Annihilation once it has been released.

In the last 5-6 games I've played since the latest patch hit, I haven't seen nukes really come into play that much. With ground forces so cheap and pelters nerfed, , if someone tries to go all in for a nuke strategy they get overrun by slammers and doxen. With the current balance, it's hard to justify the expense of the missile when a pack of slammers can do more damage cheaper and faster. If someone goes into super turtle mode, I could see tossing up a few nukes to crack that, but that's exactly what the nukes are intended for. The one game I did get nuked recently I still came back and won, thanks to having expanded to other planets.

As far as I can tell, nukes are only overpowered if you do nothing about them, same as anything else in the game. Mustering up enough T2 bombers to snipe the launchers is cheaper and faster than ever before (you can even kill them with T1 bombers if you build enough) and flak misses quite often, so bombers can almost always drop off one load still. Same goes for the nuke defenses. The nuclear turtle strategy was never that great to begin with, and now its weaker than ever IMO.

Not saying that I wouldn't like to see a nuke/anti-nuke overhaul though. I would love to see something more dynamic with varied defensive options and a wider array of missiles to choose from. I just don't think that nukes are the be all and end all in this game that you seem to think that they are.

For that amount of mass, nukes are expensive, I can build tons of units, I can get a cheaper anti-nuke and I can build tons of orbital lasers to kill the nuke... I don't see the problem.

It is like saying Air is totally overpowered although you have not built any anti-air... fighters and so on...

It is slowly time that we can share replays to prove certain points.

Nukes have more or less been this way since Total Annihilation the spiritual granddad of this game, through all supcom games (supcom2 added a nuke redirector), its is not a matter of a not fleshed out feature this was the nuke as the devs assumed it always was and would/should be. Change would be nice, theres some neat ideas in the various threads on just this topic but complaining about it, not to mention exaggeration and hyperbole kinda just irritates people. I personally don't favor the anti-nuke duty being taken over by some kind of high RoF defense tower, i like the anti-nuke dynamic - its plenty realistic for one and the alternative leaves much to much to chance. Personally I'm partial to nukes not being assist-able or are constructed less efficiently, or having a reduced area of effect perhaps.

Nukes are what you transition to in order to win. There is a point where your economy would be better spent on nukes than anything else.

They end games when used by good players.

Turtling with nukes will not win you the game without a planet supporting your economy. And interplanetary combat is so painful right now that I soft ban it in most of my games. For the record, soft ban means that if I see you do it then I immediately move to make the game as painful for you as possible.



Giving antinuke a similar range to nukes, calculating the trajectory on entrance to the range, and firing at the closest possible collision point seems like the best fix for me. It extends the range of anti-nukes to be usable as widely as nukes can be, while allowing for anti-nuke baiting with short range defensive nukes. Meaning you should be able to safely transition into anti-nuke to stop a spammer while still leaving an economic efficiency battle that nukes were made to create.

I would like to see short range high RoF missile defense in addition to the current anti-nuke structure, and also add in a mobile anti-nuke sat. If nukes are expanded upon as well (tactical, ICBM, IPBM, MIRV) I think there would be plenty of room to have a layered anti-nuke defense solution, while still keeping nukes powerful and relevant. Removing assist build on nukes could also help balance them out, but I think that that feature could be kept in as long as nuke defenses are improved to compensate.

I wish I had a better handle on why you think they're broken so I could try to answer meaningfully. That said, balance is a fluid thing. We're always evaluating the game's various elements.

As was brought up earlier, recent unit changes have certainly made the turtle + win strategy a lot harder.

Sorry, but what subs were these? We never had subs. What we had were conventional boats which looked and called themselves subs, but didn't do the key thing that submarines do. Namely submerge themselves in water. They weren't just not finished - they were barely started.

If nukes were at the same development point as subs when they were removed (as in they didn't even perform their primary function) then I might be inclined to agree with you, and suggest there was no real point to them at the time. Except, there clearly is a point to nukes at the moment. So much so, that there is a great deal of debate about their power relative to other units. This confirms that they need to be fixed, rather than removed.

Nukes as they stand are functional, if a little boring. In order to fix them, new things need to be added. If we want to remove them based on the premise that they are detrimental to the game at the moment, then we would be viewing the state of the present game as more important than the potential of the "finished" product.

And that's just silly.

One reason I think a lot of people are disagreeing on balance for things like nukes is that the game is completely different in an FFA from a 1v1. In an FFA, it often is the best strategy to just sit there and build up nukes while other people fight it out. Balance shouldn't be concerned with FFA at all though. Focus on good 1v1 gameplay, because that's what really matters. How often do people play big 10 player FFAs in similar games?

At the risk of repeating myself, it has little to do with balance. I think regardless of the stats you apply to nukes and anti-nukes in regards to damage, cost etc, the fundamental way nukes and anti-nukes interact is not fun. I feel it goes against the fundamentals of PA to include "ammo" for either of them and only serves to increase micro. I feel nukes are just as unfinished as subs because the role I imagine for them is a clean up tool to finish off a base you've all but destroyed anyway instead of a viable alternative to building an army. There is no viable way to protect an army or an expansion from nukes even if you see them coming. Just because its how it worked in TA and sup-com doesn't mean we shouldn't improve. By that logic we would still be playing on flat maps.

you are right that FFA and 1v1 are different, but in absolutely no way is 1 more important to consider than the other. 1v1 is a very specific way to play PA and if that is the only way PA has been balanced it isn't balanced at all because it makes way to many assumptions about the setup of the game and especially PA which is focused on large scale battles an toutes 40 players and solar system sized maps. 1v1 games is basically the realm of e-sports and it's a very small sub-set of the player base of PA.

I hate to say I'm starting to agree with you, but I'll just skip #3 and warn my friends to as well if the devs agree that 1v1 is the only type of match that needs balance.

This whole thread has become very silly. We all agree that you think nukes are sorely broken, however, you are the only one so far who seems to thinks so. We believe that they are far from finished, they work, and that is what Uber wanted; they add a dynamic to the game, even if they are binary. Give Uber a chance to work on this. They have a lot on their plate for balancing, not to mention that many players no longer consider this a beta, since the release date is TBA, they are still implementing major features and are working hard on balance.

Also, you've argued that the game is in alpha because nukes are broken. By that logic, you describe a beta because they are tuning the nukes to be not-broken.

If you don't like the game, at least be fair about it. You've spent your money, be helpful, not hurtful, eh? Uber and the community would appreciate it @iron420 .

Where do you (incorrectly) get that Uber is trying to make this game for 1v1s only?

All of the evidence points to the contrary. In fact, large matches with lots of players are one of Uber's main goals. They want to have 40vs40 players. Uber has an amazing Army game type that puts a huge focus on large games with lots of people and lots of coordination. And we haven't even touched on the Alliance game mode yet.

So. Where do you get that Uber only focuses on 1v1s?

If you think Uber only cares about 1v1s... well. You couldn't be more wrong.

Uber is taking large scale gameplay, both in units and number of players, to a level never before seen in an RTS game.

Remember.

THE GAME IS IN BETA. IT IS NOT COMPLETE.

Brian i hope you are right. cptconundrum was who I was responding to. To be clear, I guess I am mostly speaking form FFA experience... for what little difference that should make

It is completely impossible to balance this game in a way that will make 1v1 and FFA players all happy. FFA is fundamentally broken anyway, because you can team up against someone or just sit out and wait for everyone to die. To win you basically have to get lucky because there is nothing you can do about being the target of two players. 1v1 should be the focus of balance since it is at least theoretically possible for it to work. I'm not saying ffa should be ignored, either. They just shouldn't get priority.

You may be in luck though because it looks like all the dev balance tests are ffas.

To fix the nuke play i believe we need a mobile anti nuke launcher unit which can also travel through the portal

Large groups of ground forces or naval forces or more cost effective to just nuke, which cannot be countered.
Not spawning nukes yourself recuires anti nuke creep, instead of pelter creep.
its still far easyer to win with building nukes, you don't need to micro the ground or navel forces.
and yes, anti nukes are cheaper then nukes, but looking at that nukes can hit anywhere and anti nukes only protect a small area, you need an average about three antinuke installations to cover the critical parts of the base against the nuke. Which makes a nuke still overpowered.

This can only hurt the development of this game. You would be better off telling your friends you don't like this, this or this about PA, but ask that they at least try your copy of the game, or watch some videos of it in action, and decide if they like it. I like to play a game myself and decide if it is good or not, or imbalanced (which can be reviewed at each stage of development, don't forget).
Maybe your friends LIKE the implementation of nukes too. And if they don't, that's fine, encourage them to voice their opinions here so we have a more balanced and informative debate.

FFA balance is mainly a matter of how players play and not at all about nukes, if even one of the players in any given FFA is of the Cull the Weak mindset anybody thinking of turtling with the aim of raining nukes down on the survivors for the win is going to lose---hard; but if all the players with the stronger eco's/armies are battling it out for supremacy your chances of winning increase somewhat...but the same can be said of planet engines, a teleporter out of radar range connected to a forge world etc... basically it isn't nukes. From my experience this happens in every other RTS where FFA's are concerned btw.

I personaly am ok with the base concept of nuke and antinuke
I dont see a need to make it more complex then that with different missiletypes ... i do agree on having mobile versions of both though
Such as an antinuke vehicle or the nukesub .... i dont realy like megabots getting into the game i fear that they would be too much like the experimental bots in supcom ... and i dislike the idea to let it have a deathnuke sounds too much like another commbombcheese option

Well I was going to take a shot at irons issues but.............im not sure where to start, so ill fire in the dark.

As it sits theres only 2 options that I think would be pleasing.

1: remove nukes all together and make many unhappy or,

2: wait for the confirmed feature to be implemented, which is having the ability to disable nukes before you launch your match.

if 2 makes you happy, its been confirmed and it will be implemented soon im sure.

I dont support option one, just looking at it from both sides of his argument.

I lately learned how to stop worrying and love the bomb.

I rarely use Nukes. I feel that for the most they are an inelegant solution. But sometimes they are just perfect for the situation. And those rare times I do enjoy very much launching one of more of them.

We should always remind ourselves that everyone plays the same game and is affected by the same rules. It is not the Nuke the sucks, even if it can be largely improved. It is our strategy and our choices that are less efficient than the counterpart. That's why we ultimately lose.

The Nuke in itself has very little to do with this crude fact.