Custom Nukes

I think nuke-tillery might be pushing it a bit far; usually nukes are "balanced" (for want of a better term) by the fact you can build anti-missile, which is cheaper and quicker to stock. If you can fire them as artillery they'd be unblockable unless you implement anti-artillery.

Uber have confirmed they don't want / won't make shields for the base game, so they effectively want artillery to be unblockable. (TA had no artillery defense as well).

I think you'll need to wait for the modding community to get stuck in before you get modular nuke warheads that you can fire as cannon ammo :/

While I think that variable payload is not really a good idea(covered by asteroid sizes to a limited extent), I would love to see an option to explode near the surface or in the upper atmosphere. the near surface explosion would obviously be the base destroying fireball of doom, but an atmospheric explosion has the capacity to function as an EMP weapon and to make up for the lack of destruction, would be harder to target with a anti-nuke missile and disable units and defenses for a short time, allowing conventional forces to get an advantage over a turtle base.

To problem with this type of idea(Especially the more options/variables possible) it how it tend to become more and more domination over other options.

Should there only one type of Nuke? Maybe. Should there by 50+ unique combinations for Nukes? No.

There is a nice middle ground where you have some different Nuke types, but I don't agree with them just being built ina factory, when you're dealing with powerful weapons like Nukes, readability is VERY important, having a selection of nukes built from the same 'Factory' is dangerously close to not being able to know what kind of missile is being produced until it's launched or detonated....

Some as proposed in the OP would work great as a primary game mechanic, but I don't think it fits in alongside everything else PA already has.

Mike

the factory would just build 2 types of nuke fission and fusion and inside the factory u turn the yield of the nuke up or down . it would have to be a preset limit because you wouldnt want alot of different nukes. Or inside the factory there would be a choice of say a 10kt fission nuke and 50kt fission also a 1mt fussion and a 10mt . but u could get really creative and just put a dial in the factory and dial the nuke to any setting from 10kt up or not. i just always thought having 1 flavor(yield) of nuke was unrealistic because we have tactical nukes and strategic nukes and variable yeild nukes i think. i believe Russia even detonated a 100 megaton nuke or was it bigger ?

That is exactly the issues I was referring to, in your example the 'Factory Produces 4 total Nuck types, how you you communicate that to the enemy player so he can see it while scouting, also if the 'Factory' can produce more than 1 Nuck at a time how do you indicate what it's "stored" Nuck types are?

If you can't easily communicate that information the "only" want to make it fair for the opponent is to make the Anti-Nuke have the same effectiveness against all 4 missiles, which while plausible it does open up awkward questions in regards to how much such an Anti-Nuck should cost, because it is just as effective against the most expensive Nuck as it is the Cheapest.

It's not a clear system, I'd much rather there be for example 3 Types of Nucks, and each gets it's own Distinctive Structure, so that when you scout, you can easily see exactly what's what and have non-binary systems in place for the Anti-Nuck so that there is variety to the defensive aspect just as there is for the offensive aspect.

Mike

How about this: Nuke silos produce only one type of missile but its dial-a-yield. click launch button and use mouse wheel if you want to lower the blast radius.

You waste some of the destructive power of an expensive weapon for less collateral damage and more control. According to wiki we can already do this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield

EMPs could be achieved with a second button for airburst but I think war machines would be pretty well hardened against such a thing. Maybe it would disable or destroy radar or other sensitive installations only?

The game is called "planetary annihilation", there's no room for subtleties like "collateral damage". It just doesn't fit. There aren't any situations where you'd need to worry about it. You aren't trying to control a territory for later use, free a local population and win their hearts and minds, or abide by arms or ethical treaties, you're trying to destroy every last trace of your enemies forces, and both your armies are 99% expendable.

EMP/nuke distinction is fair enough, but I think that's the limit. Anything more compromises readability and simplicity, as knight said.

You need to think about it from both sides, not just the person using it, but also the person defending against it.

And again, it comes down to how do you communicate the information to the opposing player? Admittedly in the Variable Yield scenario keeping the selected yield secret is an option, but you still should consider that the selected yield is communicated to other players.

But to be honest, I don't see the point to having a Variabl;e system as described. Because the Yield is selected post construction it doesn't affect the Nuck's cost, creating a cost that needs to be balanced for the Max Yield, and the Anti-Nuck also has to be balanced for Max Yield as well, creating a static and boring economic side to Nucks and for what, to have smaller explosions? I don't see how that's any kind of benefit or even needed, if you ever wished for a "smaller Nuck so I can use it in my base or within my army" it's not going to solve the root problem of WHY you 'needed' that smaller nuck.


Off the top of my head, here's a quick breakdown of my "ideal" system;

-3 types of Nucks (Small-Mediam-Large)
----Primarily defined by total damage and blast radius, flight profiles are also valid areas for variety but are mutable to achieve good balance and depending on Anti-Nuck Systems Available.

-The Structure for each Nuck Size is relatively cheap but have a large footprint(somewhat in scale to the Nuck Size as well) and potentially Volatile and can only store a Single Nuck.
----Cheap Launchers lead to Large Quantities of Nucks very possible, and provide an interesting dynamic with the number of missiles and the space required to house them, making them take up more space and be more costly to defend and easier to raid.


Anti-Nucks would follow a similar principle, but I don't have anything nicely set out off the top of my head, but we've had a couple good topics concerning Anti-Nucks so you try to find those to see what kinds of things we've already talked about.

And to touch on things like EMP and non-Nuck warheads, we also need to remember that we have the orbital layer and it's satellites as well, things that function more in a support role(my ideal Orbital set up[mainly consisting of satellites] is in which it plays more of supporting role, Radar, EMP weapons ect ect) and that while plausible to have Nuck-Satellites, I think it's much better for gameplay and balance that they remain landlocked.

To be frank, if you can describe your idea in detail in a paragraph for less, you might want to think abou tit some more, not just on the aspect the idea addresses itself, but also on other aspects that it affects or affects it.

And Don't Forget, Gameplay > Realism. Not that Realism isn't great to have, but it needs to be present only to provide the basis/foundation to "legitimize" the gameplay.

Mike

Anti-nukes is where you would get into a fight between realism and gameplay. The actual warhead for a nuke is small; fission warheads are less than 1 meter cubed, "fusion" ones a little larger but not much. The actual delivery missile size is determined more by the range than the payload it has to carry.

An anti-missile missile just needs to blow up the target missile; the warhead is effectively irrelevant in the calculation, so you don't need a different anti-nuke for a high-yield warhead, you only need one for a longer range or faster missile (and only if you are chasing the nuke, head-on attacks are effectively the same regardless).

So if you want to create several types of anti-nuke in order to balance several types of nuke, it is purely for gameplay reasons. I'd actually suggest having only one anti-nuke, with a cost relevant to the cheapest "nuke" (I'm drawing the line at where it would be a "strategic" rather than "tactical" type yield as reference by SupCom). Any missile with conventional destructive power (e.g. explosives) is fine, any missile with a nuke style yield would be targetable by the anti-nuke.

Tiered nukes and anti-nukes as a gameplay mechanic would work; to block a top tier nuke you need a top tier anti-nuke. It does increase complexity, and you would need easy scanning; send a scout over their base and you should be able to tell which tier nukes are being built so you know how to counter them properly. The other option is to allow higher tier anti-nukes to block lower tier nukes, however this introduces it's own balance issues; players would just use low tier nuke spam to use up all available high tier cover (taking advantage of the cost inequality), before sending their high tier nuke(s) in.

With enough nuke and anti-nuke options in the game, I can see some matches degenerating into Missile Command though, which is not the base gameplay mechanic I was hoping for in PA.

There is no Fight, as I said, Gameplay > Realism.

While it is an option that the larger Missiles in my setup could be faster or go farther, that's to be based on how they turn out in gameplay, rather than trying to predetermine it. Fact is by making each Nuck Visually Distinctive(Via Size in this case.) it's great for readability.

But if you make the Cost relevant to the cheapest Nuck, you also indirectly nerf the larger and more Expensive Nucks. It could turn into a situation where you never NOT build Anti-Nucks because it's so cheap yet effective against the larger Nucks as well.

I don't agree with this type of rigid set up, I'm thinking more so along general Variety.

For Example, imagine an Anti-Nuck that was essentially a Long Range Beam weapon. It has a slight Charge up time(but would fire until the target is destroyed, then need to charge again for the next target) and has a 'low' DPS, but perfect accuracy. Already we have a system that needs scout/spotting to make full use of it's range(either via radar or other unit's vision) and that because it's DPS is a little on the low side, which is fine for slower Nucks because it has extra time and perfect accuracy. This is not to say it could not target a faster Nuck, just that it might not be as effective.

We want to stay away from the RPS aspect of "To stop Nuck X I need Anti-Nuck B" because if nothing else, it's boring.

Like I said in my first post in this thread, the idea as presented in the OP could easily make for it's own sub-game and that on it's own it could work out to be pretty fun, but as it was presented it wouldn't fit in with the core game. I feel my proposed set up allows for some variety(both in terms of scale and potentially ability) with enough Cons to keep it from being Dominant, especially when compared to KEWs.

Mike

We're basically agreeing :mrgreen:

I like the idea of many tiered or variable payload, but I can definitely see ways of abusing it depending on how it was implemented. It also adds complexity (or over-utility) to any defense mechanism; if you have multiple defenses it's more complex, and if you stick with one defense it's either overpowered or underpowered, depending on how you set the cost. Done the wrong way, it could either completely overshadow normal gameplay (Macross missile spam > building tanks) or be so overcosted / complex that nobody actually ever bothers with it in a "normal" game beyond building a few missile defense units just in case.

SupCom only had the 2; "tactical" (normal payload) with a laser / point defense counter, and "strategic" (nuke) with an anti-missile counter. It's ok for a strict 2 tier system, it's when you start getting more complex that balancing issues start appearing.

I think variable payload missiles would better fit the asteroid defense paradigm rather than normal warfare, however it'll be hard to justify why you have it for one but not the other :/

I would keep the variants of nukes to a small set, mainly because they are only one subset of your arsenal and you want to keep that part distinctive in terms of role and visual representation.
If you only have a few variants, then knight's suggestion of different buildings for each type makes the most sense in terms of readability and building prerequisites.
As with most discussions on variants of X it is probably easier to determine an useful number of variants after having tested a base mode in a gameplay context, otherwise it turns into speculations and discussions on personal preferences (which in itself is fine, as long as you keep that in mind ).

There is only ONE decision for a nuke that costs the same no matter what- maximum payload. Anything less and you're being ripped off.

One is not like the other. Shields were universal in scope. Anti artillery only whacks down specific (usually heavy) weapons. Anything can be allowed to deliberately pass through, such as beam cannons, standard tanks, and lots of little bullets.

The universal protection of shields make it an incredible tool for protecting singular, game ending targets. No expense is too great to ensure the safety of something that absolutely positively can't be allowed to die. How many units in PA fit that description?

That would be excessive, even with ultra low accuracy.

I still think that nuclear warheads should be a unit like I suggested though, and other non nuclear warheads could be available from the factories like EMP, area denial corrosive gas, etc.

warhead yield is one thing.. I personally would rather prefer the option of being allowed to set the flight path for my nuke. So I could skirt the anti nuke defenses of other players and just get it to my target. Any takers?

Techncailly, even if PA uses the same "Straight Path" system used by SupCom Nucks, you still have a fair level of control when you think about it, because you know it takes a straight path it's really easy to plan it's path.

I think that User defined path is one of those things where the line that separates being a useless feature or being OP is a very thin ones indeed, especially when you consider that how we're playing on spheres, so the number of potential approaches has greatly increased and that will effect how Anti-Nucks functions as well.

Mike

I think this is brilliant, it solves the problems with readability and makes nukes a bit more interesting. I also don't see a problem with the suggestion of a single anti-nuke, it makes sense to take out a missile you just need a certain set of specs for a missile.

Making multiple anti-nukes would increase the complexity of the nuke anti-nuke interaction and honestly I don't think it makes any sense. Especially if rabbit9000's idea of having to load the nuke onto a single type of delivery system this makes the most sense. Hell, you could even make a bunch of dummy missiles and launch those before your expensive nuke to weed out anti-missiles or, heaven forbid, actually perform surgical strikes to take out the enemy's anti-nuke systems. That has always been the best counter to anti-nukes from my experience.

"Oh you've got an anti-nuke filled with 10 anti-nukes? Well, I see your anti-nukes and raise you... A PeeWee/Brawler Rush!!!" Problem solved.

But seriously, I don't think a single anti-nuke system ruins the game. It makes it simple, easy to read, and it can still be blown up just like everyone else.

I would have an aesthetic / theme-based dislike of point defense that could handle shells. It's only a matter of scale to adapt to smaller calibres, and this is tech that has been refined over thousands of years. It would be extremely hard to justify having it able to knock out artillery, but have nothing that could deal with tank shots or tiny bullets in the same manner.

I can see the use as a gameplay mechanic, but I'd personally be wary about going down that road, since it is quite a big turtle enabler. I'd certainly spam anti-artillery around my anti-missile buildings, and spam anti-missile buildings around all my other buildings (and spam artillery and AA around the anti-artillery as well, to be fair, I tend to turtle like that). At some point you'd get defense saturation, where the only viable breakthrough tactics are a deathball or an asteroid, because anything smaller is just getting cut down before it can do any real damage, and missiles and artillery are just being countered.

Not really. A ton of defenses already deal with tank projectiles by killing the tank. Killing artillery is an entirely different magnitude of defense, because without your own artillery there's no way to reach it from base. The cheaper solution is to intercept the projectiles and deal with any collateral damage.

So you turtle up against the big things, and then get rolled by tanks. Nothing wrong with that.

Don't forget that in Supcom, a single nuke defense was cheaper than a nuke launcher. However it was more expensive to protect multiple bases, as a single launcher could threaten ALL of them but each one needed its own SMD. An artillery weapon is going to have a similar advantage, capable of threatening multiple locations that EACH need its own defense. There will be a breaking point.

There are also ways of breaking a defense such as with synchronous fire, burst fire, cluster bombs, or using weapons that simply won't be intercepted. It could end up working pretty well.

Oh, I'd completely understand a distinction purely from a game balance perspective. I can't see an easy way to justify why in lore though; if a commander can design and build artillery point defense, it doesn't take 20,000 years for them to adjust the design to be able to deal with machine gun fire. The same way people may have an issue with a justification for melee units in PA, I'd have an aesthetic (not mechanical) dislike of artillery point defense

I build a ton of towers by default. Unless we don't also get a variety of towers, I'm assuming a point where my land defense is capable of dealing with a 100+ tank rush (any that survive the shelling on the way in need to tackle the defensive line of towers), my air defense is ok with 100+ aircraft incoming (fighter patrols plus AA towers), and I also now have anti-artillery and anti-missile saturation; effectively a defensive deathball. My opponents "advantage" is going to have to be that they used the same amount of resource I spent on towers, on building a mobile offensive deathball instead, because small groups aren't going to be big enough to make a hole (especially if artillery is no longer a good way of them pounding my defenses from range, because it gets countered). Too many defensive options tend to encourage turtle & deathball style play, and I freely admit I tend to use those tactics (mainly because I am not a very good player).

In SupCom artillery has a smaller range than missiles, especially on bigger maps; one top tier artillery piece doesn't necessarily threaten more than one or two bases on the larger maps, and it's entirely possible that the same will be true in PA (no details yet mean this is entirely supposition). Building artillery in range of my base means that your artillery is also in range of my artillery... I may be fretting over nothing, but I can see it escalating to a point where the game stops being fun and emergent and starts being Megabase vs Megahorde, because defense becomes a viable specialisation.

Having said all that, we literally have no idea how any of these will actually play out until at least alpha (but more likely beta, since alpha is going to be focused on bug hunting more than unit balancing). I'm perfectly happy to see how it all goes first before getting all melancholy about things I don't like being in the game