nukes due to the recent patches are too easy to deal with and do little damage for their high costs. Players almost never use them due to this and even in planet vs planet conflict a nuke is very ineffective and inefficient because of many reasons. Almost only ever used in planet vs planet conflict, a nuke is easily blocked due to its long travel time, most of the time when the enemy player sees a nuke heading towards a planet they can instantly build anti nukes to block it before it ever arrives. Keep in mind before however they were way too powerful and due to that most players would almost always go for a fast nuke at the start or mid game, this was fixed but afterwards nukes had lost their effectiveness in most situations.
I made a thread about this a couple of months ago https://forums.uberent.com/threads/nuke-anti-nuke-cost.62611/ They have reduced the cost to 50,000 but you are right in that it is still far too expensive to do. 30/35k might be more resonable
atm they aren't very useful if they reduce the price it would make them more effective in risk vs reward. at the same time they have to also reduce the price of anti nukes to suite it
Nukes are meant to break defenses not to carpet nuke enemy. When you let enemy build up eco to the point that he can insta build 20-30 antinukes, its too late for nuking, unless you can insta build 10 of them at once. Nukes are fine now, they are very situational.
I think that anti nuke launchers need a price increase the individual anti nukes need to be cheaper and nukes need to be cheaper. This way an anti nuke over your base is still doable but you cannot cover the planet with them.
I've come to see them as a useful economy killer. 9 times out of 10, if someone sees a nuke being launched, they're going to assume its aimed at their commander, and will build accordingly. Slam it into their storage and reactors instead and get a few factories while you're at it. It can be used as a siege ender as well, toss it a bit in front of the enemy gate after they've poured through.
How is that even possible if you are remotely on the same economic level and the enemy had not started already? Anti-nuke launcher costs 12k One shoot costs 6.750k For a total cost of 18.750k If the nuke would need 1 minute travel time and you cut out all production loss due to travel time and the time it needs for the A-Nuke to start building the enemy would need a Build power of 312.5 Metal (4 T2 Fabbers have 320 BP; +45 from teh Anti-nuke for the second part). No to mention the energy consumption of the fabbers and the A-nuke during building. And I am pretty sure the average nuke needs less then 1 minut to travel interplanetary and there will be production power loss due to travel and factory delay. And if there are multiple enemies none has any idea who the target is anyway. Also since you asume to have the drop on the enemy, how about build up a 2nd nuke before launching? Double nukes can one-shoot the commander and punch through even if he rushes to build one A-nuke on launch.
It's a really tricky situation, make em too cheap, and suddenly they dominate the late game in a bad way, turtling and nuke rushing can even become viable if you go too far toward the cheap end. Make 'em too expensive and they become a completely non-viable red herring. theoretically that sweet spot in the middle does exist, but might be hard to find. Given the option of having to choose between the two extremes though, i'd prefer nukes to be overpriced rather than under priced.