Poll: Assisting Nukes

I say yes

and bombers to reload their bombs while we're at it

this way we'll have an actual good reason for air repair pads to be in the game.

I see and agree with the rationality of the argument as far as game-ending goes.
However Nukes can be more useful than a planet smash. They are precise and can annihilate an army on your doorstep, or one that has just entered through a teleporter. Halleys require a large, cumulative investment compared with a Nuke's instant potential. Furthermore it takes time to move your units onto a new (and potentially contested) Asteroid, whereas with Nukes you need not move your hundreds of Fabricators from a fortified base.
Nukes are even used to near-instantly secure those (potentially) game-ending Asteroids; send your hundreds of Fabricators through, build a Nuke and an Anti-Nuke with a couple of Catapults and you're sorted.

Rapid-fire catapults would further invalidate ground and naval play...
We'll end up having armies full of Anti Air, Anti Missiles and Anti Nukes. Why not just cap how quickly something can fire? You don't have Combat Fabbers Assisting Mobile Artillery, or Boat Fabricators Assisting Missile Ships.

I wouldn't mind bombers reloading.

that actually is rather dependent on stats, balance, gimmicks and mechanics rather than just allowing assisting or no.

Which stats? Rolloff time, damage, AOE, target's HP, whether missiles miss (which they don't currently)?

Currently they are heat seeking little blighter with a lot of damage and range.

I feel like one of those stats needs to be changed.

Very much so yes. We can't have nukes not assistable, and nothing else.

It's a hack fix when there's better ways to balance it.

Mainly, make fabricators not very energy efficient and factories very energy efficient. That way it makes sense to make lots of factories (yes, nukes are a kind of factory) rather than assist a single factory.

I think the 'heatseeking' aspect is pretty disruptive to be honest. A catapult on a small planet is the end of a Boxing match.

I agree with this, but with Nukes it's different. It's not about how many you can make overall, it's about how quickly you can get a single Nuke built.

Players can easily build anti-nukes or scout out the nukes.

Making fabbers less energy efficient means it takes a lot more to assist a single nuke. Players must built quite a few more power plants to assist, which means a lot more metal investment and time.

It's a massive nerf to nukes.

People hate nukes because people don't know how to play against nukes. They put all of their important structures right next to me and then get mad when they lose to a single nuke. I scout my opponents and snipe their nukes or build anti-nukes to counter. I also spread out my base so I don't care if I get nuked. Often, the cost of the nuke means they put more metal into the nuke than they destroyed of my base.

i always said since the beginning catapults should be non-homing, hopefully Uber will listen to this.

Exactly what I'm trying to get at. It's not that nukes are too easy to build or too powerful. If you're losing to nukes you need better scouting/eco management strategies.

I'd be quite happy to see diminishing returns or some such nerf on Assisting to encourage the use of Factories.

I understand what you mean. There are tactics which revolve around nuke-dominated play. I'm not saying those tactics are invalid, just that they're a symptom of the fact that Nukes are quick to build. The need to constantly scout and snipe for fear of being destroyed by a single-use weapon is a bit micro-intensive.

I don't mind nukes, they are fine more or less.

I like nukes. I just don't think they should be a replacement for armies.

Depends on their capability's and counters.

So you don't ever scout your enemy's base, search for proxies, or for armies on the move?

Well if you can have Nuke-Spam then you end up needing Mobile Anti-Nukes, which leads to people microing and aiming for the anti-nukes so that they can Nuke an army.

Of course I do. I play the game in front of me, not the one I'd love to play.

I mean, if you're looking for a game where you don't have to scout ever, don't have to know what your enemy is doing, and can win the game by just sitting there... I'm not sure what you're looking for, but it's not a war game.