Emergency Anti-Nuke

In the more advanced missiles and bombs, collision hasn't been a trigger mechanism since the 19th century. In fact, collision often breaks the trigger mechanism, which is why, I imagine, you hear about poor third world children losing limbs to live bombs buried in the dirt.

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Luckily there are no children in the PA universe, because I'm sure planets would be riddled with unexploded munitions. That is, if the children survived the radiation and toxic ash clouds and gassified heavy metals.

I think modern-day missiles use an altitude-detector to figure out when to kasplode. From memory you can do that with either laser/radio or an internal barometer, thing. Something to do with pressure, maybe.

I watch Air Crash Investigation, not Missile Crash Detonation.

As long as collisions would result in the destruction of nukes and those collisions are neither reliably calculable nor reproducible I am firmly against it. It is this kind of uncalculable unit interaction that TA and its successors aimed to be rid of. Reintroducing it under the guise of misguided realism is just that - misguided.

This makes no sense.

Of course nukes should be able to collide just like any other object.

It was firmly in place in SupCom/FA. It was well-known for projectile simulation.

Not having it would bring us closer to the realm of starcraft. And as I've repeatedly stated I don't want this game to be so sloshed down in rigid mechanics that it's stagnant.

The improbable, the unintented and the unexpected can make a game interesting in a way that no amount of planning and metagame can.

It's important to note here that these unintended things should never be unfair. There should always be the knowlege you could have accounted for it, you just didn't stop to consider it. (I shall again take the self billie as an example)

Which in my opinion is nigh impossible to achieve in this case. A nuke is a huge investment in relation to a bunch of air units. Which makes it a bad mechanic for the nuking player if he looses it to an exploit that is not meant to defend against nukes. On the other hand the collision cannot be reliably forced by the air player. Which makes it a bad mechanic for the air player. It is comparable in effect to 1 in 100 (replace by any number you fancy) nukes simply failing to function. Also realistic - stuff malfunctions in real life, too - but not bringing anything to table.
See how I didn't need to resort to an abstract notion of 'realism' but instead argued purely in terms of gameplay? That is because in a game gameplay is king. And if realism damages gameplay - and it would in this case - it has to take a backseat.
By the way you can see that principle applied by scathis right now with his special armor system to somehow fix air-to-air missiles of mass destruction exploit. Not pretty, not in keeping with TA's oh-so-pure spirit but necessary for the sake of gameplay.

edit: To bring that debate to an end from my side: I see the allure in and rationale behind your point. I view non-collidable nukes as a trade-off that I am willing to support for the sake of consistent gameplay. I will still like the game if an air scout saves someones behind should that crazy scenario ever arise for me.
But I will heartily dislike that random event in disguise and I stick to my opinion of it being uncontrollable and thus undesirable in a TA-style game.