Emergency Anti-Nuke

Is it possible to stop a nuke mid-air by having a swarm of air units fly into its trajectory so the nuke hits an air unit? I know it's possible to do in SupCom, but I never got around testing it.

Not possible ATM AFAIK, but a seriously good idea.

How on earth is this a good mechanic? It invalidates the anti-nuke in favour of increased micromanagement with questionable results. It is more than just one kind of bad.

If the nuke still blows up I don't see why this would be effective.

The nuke's explosion radius is a sphere AFAIK, which means that the nuke's effectiveness would be merely decreased by the aircraft, not stopped outright.

Yes, you can do this in SupCom. Haven't explored it for traditional structure-launched nukes but I have personally witnessed a commander-launched backpack nuke strike a cloud of harassing enemy aircraft, killing the commander. There's also the self-billy, although that's is less about collision detection and more about two oddball unit-specific mechanics combining for an unexpectedly devastating result. I've witnessed some other strange occurrences in that game's nuke gameplay but they're by and large not fresh enough in my memory for me to relay in any reliable manner.

While I appreciate that collision detection for absolutely everything at all times including nukes can provide for some very amusing random events and intense last-ditch tactics, I'm not sure it holds well with PA's design ideas and/or software optimization.

It's not a mechanic per se. It's just a thing you can do because of the way the game works. 99% of the time the nuke won't hit any aircraft anyway.

This discussion has happened many times before. Should there be more than one way to answer a nuke? Yes. 100% absolutely yes.

In supcom its also possible to hit a nuke with a nuke if you both aim for the launcher...

How would this invalidate the anti-nuke. The OP just wants it to be a possibility - a very rare one. This kind of feature was balanced and fair in supcom as it could only happen during initial launch of nuke or during its descent on its target. I don't know why some people are so scared of a little bit of OPTIONAL micro.

Someone try this in PA right now.

I have had a gunship get in a nukes way in supcom by sitting above the silo.

We need to test this.

Should be possible. But has to be unfriendly aircraft. I've killed fighters with bombers.

Why does it have to be unfriendly?

Lack of friendly fire damage collision on projectiles. At least that's what I've noticed. Friendly bombers do not bomb friendly bombers (otherwise bomber stacking would be a terrible idea), but will kill fighters that fly through the bomb.

Nukes aren't friendly...

I think you'll find the projectile itself is. The explosion isn't. I tested this just now, and the nukes flew through the firefly carpet

It will collide with wreckage, though. I've seen bombs hit mid-air wreckage, and a nuke could probably hit mid-air wreckage as well. Though, how you would orchestrate a nuke hitting a bomber that's just been turned into wreckage is beyond me!

Someone ought to!

That's true.

Does anyone wanna test Nuke vs Nuke with me?