Custom Nukes

Something i would like to see in game would be a selectable yield nuke and also different varieties of nukes. You could have your basic hiroshima nuke of 10KT but if that wasnt enough you could dial the yield up in increments up to a max of say 100MT . As for the different varieties of nuke well i mean fission or fusion and maybe a just an emp nuke that just disables the bots for a while. the fission and fusion nukes would come into play when your dialing the yield up because i dont think you can get a very high yield from just fission but im no rocket scientist. all this could be done with just 1 structure the plain old NUKE SILO

thank you,
Slipstik

Proud to be a backer

Based off the reasons for all the units being the same, (In that they are the best so there is no need for something else) I believe that the same reasoning is going to apply for Nukes as well.

This is a valid idea. Having a silo that works like a factory and builds an assortment of variants could be very tactical, I think that something like this could be a cool thing to see in PA

While missile spam is very true to life, in a game you're basically describing an artillery system that can specialize against EVERYTHING, small medium or large. You don't want that, it's not fun.

How do you know? Have you tried it?
If you can use missiles against missiles you can use smaller missiles to knock out bigger missiles.
I'd like to play Missile Annihilation one day...

Everything about the game design is scaleable and moddable, of course there will be different sizes of nukes.

anti-emp shielding and fortification could be useful defending against nukes. Maybe some of the units could 'hunker' down to decrease damage taken if they aren't in the kill-zone

Have you?
Are you willing to gamble the whole game by adding this kind of stuff, or would you rather have a mod that does this? Seems a lot better to me.

Warhead size is not going to affect the operations of anti-nuke missiles though, so one anti-nuke missile (not confirmed, but I'd expect one to be in as a defensive unit if they include nukes) is going to be just as effective against a gigatonne warhead as a kilotonne one.

A gigatonne asteroid (one that will make a bang as big as a gigatonne of TNT), on the other hand, is going to need more defense than a kilotonne one, due to it being much bigger it'll need more missiles to explode into dust. This would lead to the option of having one nuke (less dev time to implement) but variable asteroids (also confirmed to be in game) which would need variable defenses to cope with.

It also means that a comically expensive super-nuke isn't defeated by one cheap anti-nuke. Asteroids are the comically expensive super-nuke instead

Why would I have to? You've basically described a weapon that can do anything against everything. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out what happens next.

Sounds like a very cool Mod Idea.

Someone should do it if Uber does not.

When I first saw it, I thought this thread was about having Nukes that had custom explosions, colors, etc.

I could have all my nukes be purple colored , flower-shaped cloud. Red skull shaped cloud. Blue Galaxy-Swirl Nuke. :lol:

Maybe I will develop such a mod. Who knows?

I think I've had this discussion before in both PA forums and SupCom but whatever. Its' just a game idea I have that would strive to as "realistic" as possible, mechanically intuitive and as consistent as possible.
So you start off developing missiles with different yield and different specializations. Explosion damage, penetration damage, kinetic damage and EMP damage for example.
You define different ranges of these missiles. Longer range adds additional cost to the missile.
You define how well a missile can damage another unit.
Missiles can also shoot missiles so you can use smaller missiles to destroy larger missiles and still be cost effective.
You design some weapon platforms able to transport these missiles and build them.
You design additional anti-missile systems such as lasers and standard ballistic weaponry.
You define how much damage these weapons can do and how well they penetrate armor.
Lasers would typically only drain energy to fire so while bullets and cannon balls might cost metal. Lasers would pay off in the long run while to missiles could be cheaper in the short term.
In the end missiles are simply units with a short life expectancy and limited fuel.

Ingame you would always fear missile annihilation. The enemy could potentially make heavy missiles to assassinate your com if you there isn't enough anti-missile counters. On the other hand the commander would probably have alot of armor and healthpoints while it might itself be equipped with anti-missile weaponry. This anti-missile weaponry could also be used against ground units of course.
At the frontline you could basically always destroy a target but will it be worth the cost?
The players should typically use the terrain to advance where they can take cover inside valleys where all their anti-missile weaponry can target incoming missiles as they come above the ridges of the valley.
You expand you get cheap light units that can both work as anti-missile defense and attackers. Light missile defenses however do little damage and small penetration so they wouldn't be suitable against armor. This gives room for heavier units which if covered by adequate anti-missile defense could waltz through hordes of cheap light units.
Typically as the positions get entrenched you would see heavy units taking potshots at each other without exposing themselves too much to incoming missile attacks.
Crossing a ridge would take serious effort as units would be exposed to heavy fire and missile attacks without being able to bring all anti-missile weaponry as well.

Thats' my idea anyway.

It's perfectly realistic considering the state of warfare today.

In gameplay it's just horrible. Throwing a dozen different weapons on a single unit just won't work. Everything turns into a macross missile spam party, where the first player to build the Comm killing missile wins.

There are plenty of opportunities to put unique weapon systems on new combat units. Don't give everything to one.

This isn't a "factions" idea, whoever thought it was. He literally meant, when you select your silo to fire a nuke, you could choose the strength of the resulting nuke. This would not be a different unit, it would be the same nuke being built in the same silo that everyone builds. This would be a utility function of the structure itself, as you could use a nuke danger-close and intentionally lower the power to avoid collateral damage. This situation is actually common.

If they are invading your base, you could then use nukes at their high cost as a last-resort defence. If you are invading theirs, you could use nukes to soften up their defences without wiping out your own units on the frontline. If you are trying to deny land, you don't want to accidentally deny too much or destroy any bit of space you didn't want to destroy, like the only narrow pass leading through a mountain area to another base of yours.

Turning them up for max damage or down for minimal collateral to the planet or your units, would be a good utility. It should have a cap obviously, it shouldn't be planet-ending. It could have 2 types of blast, one that is 10-100 in magnitude and is fission blast for one cost, and one that is 100-500 in magnitude and is fusion blast for a higher one, but it definitely has to have a cap while being able to selectively water it down even more for utility purpose.

If the missiles are massively customisable, it offers up the option of just building missiles instead of tanks. Spam a load of cheap (low-yield) missiles to overtax their anti-missile defense before firing off the planet cracker you spent the last 5 minutes building.

Cool, yes. More difficult to implement, yes. Encourages versatility? Arguable. Enables turtling, definitely.

You also need to consider the range; by default most people assume low-yield would be shorter range (e.g. "tactical" vs "strategic" missiles in SupCom). If they are all silo missiles, they would by default have the same range (this is normally defined by unit, rather than by ammo) unless the unit is designed to have multiple ranges; this would make the "cheap" missiles far more versatile than if we only had 2 variants fired by different units, with the cheaper ones range limited.

Whilst I would love to play with a massively customisable missile platform, I'm struggling to see how it could be easily balanced, not to mention how you would set up an AI to take advantage of it. I suspect it would end up one of those no-brainer units (like experimentals) that everyone just relies on as the game ender and builds tens of them for overwhelming missile spamageddon.

I'd certainly do that in the first game I played with them in, anyway

Missiles aren't free and the Comm killing missile are not likely to make it through alone. Its' pretty much like using bombers in SupCom except they only drop 1 bomb and doesn't make another pass. Bombers rarely did more than 1 pass in the lategame before they were destroyed anyway.

What do you mean?
Missiles are combat units. Most of the missiles might be kamikaze combat units but you can still have a lot of other combat units as well.

How about if the nuke warheads were actual units you could store and then the rocket that shuttles commanders to new destinations could double up as the nuke deployment unit too?

The warheads could be built in a factory like previous games and kept safe, but then they'd need transporting to the launch pad. They could even have little robot legs or tracks.

It would be interesting for the warheads to be vulnerable while they go from storage to the launch pad too. Capture-able nukes.

Capturable nukes would certainly provide some lols, and perhaps add to base design in a way that differs completely from the economy based layouts of SupCom.

The warheads could take time to arm too, so no instant self destruction of a stockpile, and once armed could be detected by high level radar units. If there is an AI assistant like C&C's EVA or MechWarrior's Betty it could say "Radiation Spike Detected."

So no loading a warhead onto a tech 1 transport and flying it into an enemy base without them knowing exactly what you're doing...

And no insta-detonation when your base is about to be over run. If they get destroyed while arming, in such a situation they could just release an EMP stun wave and maybe a bit of radiation damage that isn't enough to take a T1 tank out.

Having the warheads detectable would help avoid that moment where a player has stayed out of the fight and built thirty nukes and gains a semi cheap victory...

I like this idea.... a lot. I can already imagine the tension of transporting a nuclear warhead to a launch pad, with the possibility of being attacked.

Also base design, protecting these nuke highways would be an essential part of your defense.

It wouldn't even have to be that far, but it might alter depending on your base layout and just be a fun thing to do.

Suppose the warheads could be fired by the unit cannons too... inaccurately mind.