Look At All These Bombs!

needs moar lens flare >_<,

maybe nukes will also be interplanetary? Would make sense imo.

I kinda' like the idea of them following terrain. At the very least for dodging hills.

The argument can be made that ignoring terrain takes away part of the 'simulation-ness' of it, where pragmatic placement of bases on the terrain ought to have a useful effect. But for high-ticket things like nukes, I'd kinda' like them to have some smarts about how they navigate.

Is that the only way to move a planet currently ???
Hoping to see more realistic explosions in future releases.

The commander: what was that sound? It sounded like... no. No! No No No.... no No No NO NONONONONO-boom-

Also, this leads to a big question. Are nukes intended to damage air, orbital, or other projectiles like other midair missiles? That would be a neat trick, intercept a nuke with another nuke midfield.

As far as explosion looks, it could use an outward whoosh effect added to the current large area cloud lift with the big shoot cloud in center. I like the current explosion.

Oh god. Horrible memories of my planes accidentally 'intercepting' my nukes over my base in SupCom.

I meant the explosion, not the missile itself.

Oh. Carry on then!

Kryo, go play Kerbal Space Program.

While at it, can someone test how well the current server reacts to killing ~2000 units at once with a nuke?

In the early august versions, this would corrupt the Chronocam log on the server side and trying to replay the nuke event in the Chronocam would just crash your client - even after rejoin. I'm curios how the current version behaves.

Actually, nukes fly juuuuust at the edge of the atmosphere to get maximum speed and to make best use of fuel. It may not be the same general space where high altitude aircraft reside, but the delta-V is small enough to be well within reach of their weapons.

If you play Kerbal SPP, the difference between high atmosphere, low orbit and absurdly high orbit is amazingly small. The biggest factor is the time it takes to cross such vast distances.

I do! But that doesnt change the fact that interplanetary nukes are only logical to be in PA

Asssssteroids.

asteroids will probably not be reachable within a certain amount of time in the game. Nukes would be earlier, but counterable, whereas asteroids are mid to lategame and not counterable. I think that would make most sense.

Don't let Nanolathe hear you say that...

Speak of the Devil and he will appear.

Asteroids need to be just as counterable, if not more so, than Nukes. The more potential damage something can do, the more downsides and potential delays it should be subject to and most importantly the countermeasures (in this case, launching an invasion to take over the asteroid, using your own asteroid to knock it off course or bombarding it with half-a-dozen nukes) should both be relatively quick to execute and be relatively easy to obtain if you have predicted (or discovered) your opponent's stratagem correctly and swiftly.

Lollygaggers should be punished however. The counter response to a potential asteroid strike should be shorter and take fewer resources than the time taken and cost to set up the strike, but not so swift, nor cheap as to render Asteroid KEWs useless.

I was going to disagree, but Nanolathe got it pretty good. A good asteroid impact needs time to pick up speed and get a direct course. That's time enough to do something about it. You can pack up&leave (limiting your damage), counter with your own asteroid tactics (do more damage than him), or just make a direct run for his Commander (who will probably not be on the suicide asteroid, FYI).

Asteroids are not some one sided thing. Everyone is going to have them. And they're supposed to be game enders, so let them force some game-endy conditions for crying out loud.

Every asteroid impact lowers the amount of available space to build and wage-war upon. In some cases that may be a large crater, in others it may mean that a whole planet is removed from play.

Asteroids are Game Enders. They will force conflict to occur, either on the asteroid itself, on in the shattered remains of the planet, or the dwindling space left in the solar-system.
They do not need to be uncounterable however.

Why don't they make a nukes a defence and offence. Asteroids should not be totally countable but nukes should or could be used as a destroyer to the asteroids. This could ease the damage or if there is enough nukes, destroy it completely (which means it is "totally countable").

Depending on the size of the asteroid it would ether destroy or damage buildings or if small and shattered by nukes but if not the asteroid could remove the hole planet like Nanolathe said. This could make use of having more nukes in areas of were important buildings are.

This also give the player the risk of firing asteroids at your enemies base late in the game, wasting resources and time if it does close to nothing. But opportunities are also made if you see an area of the enemies base open or just starting up a base on a new planet or area. If they don't get nukes up quickly, they have wasted there time and resources and could potentially destroy there eco.

So nukes could be more than just a very annoying game ender for small to mid matches. It could be a very big counter in big 20 to 40 people matches.

But that's not possible. Even if asteroids were unstoppable pain trains, a player would always have other options at their disposal. You can run, you can hide, you can rebuild elsewhere, you can flank or snipe or go directly for the win in a different way. The opportunity cost of using an asteroid will always have to compete with other options on the table, and has nothing to do with a kill rock's numerical strength.

Reason # 347 to use gravity well energy: Smashsteroids need to have energy constructed for their engines, increasing the overall cost of whacking a planet without having to screw up other orbital costs. It also reduces overall asteroid space, forcing harder choices on its limited carry capacity.