Economy & Costs: Numerical Breakdown

The assumptions are based on the idea that there's more than one way to solve things, I raised the issue simply because your idea was incomplete in elaborating what the counter should be. You make it sound like people are to blame for making the incorrect assumptions here, but that's clearly not the case.

Let's not forget that there's more to define a unit or structure besides cost, you can either reduce the effectiveness of the function, or reduce the cost.

Other than that I generally agree with your idea.

Precisely. My point is that the effectiveness function of nukes depends not only on its own cost and damage potential, but also on the effectiveness function of antinuke. More effective, cheaper antinuke directly reduces the effectiveness of nukes, even if they can deal a huge amount of damage if they hit.

A cheap nuke that wipes out an army in one hit sounds overpowered, until you realize that it can be negated by an even cheaper antinuke. Nukes should be horrendously inefficient in general, but because of antinuke, not because of some intrinsically terrible cost-damage ratio.

I like the idea of cheaper nukes, but you'd have to severely tone down their damage/aoe to make them fit their new cost. Why not change them to be more similar to the way tactical missiles worked in supcom, but more aoe, and less dmg? Make nukes more like tactical nukes, with enough damage to severely weaken a factory but not destroy it, and a decent aoe to affect several buildings. Add in several different "anti-nukes" with varying degrees of effectiveness(missile,mini-gun,flak,laser) and mobility(tank/turret/ship/plane?) that can attempt (not always 100% chance) to intercept the missiles. Remove the catapult or change it to be the new tactical nuke launcher (since it'd cost about that much anyways) and give it a manual build/fire mode. Change stingrays and the nuke sub to work this way too if you want.

This removes the annoying catapult sniping while replacing it with something more powerful but easier to stop. You could even keep the current nukes, rename them to IPBM's (inter-planetary ballistic missiles) and only allow them to fire at other planets (make up some BS about how the rocket stages only work that way). This also makes invading a new planet easier since tactical nukes will be easier for you to defend against while trying to setup a staging area, just bring along some anti-tac-nuke tanks or something. Also, your invasion won't be threatened by whatever IPBM stockpile your opponent might have on that planet since he can't fire them at his own planet.

Have you actually played any games where nukes have become relevant? Because in any game that is on a decently sized system/planet with a lot of players (or even just two players) you'll notice that there will be *a lot* of nukes flying around with the current balance, heck, they're one of the best options for killing people and destroying bases already, and you want to make them cost as much as 5-6 levelers?

Just.. no. Nukes are fine atm, they might need some fine tuning like giving anti-nukes a bit more range and maybe a 5-10% price reduction.

But nothing like you're suggesting here, nukes are a powerful strategic option and should remain that way. I've played games where, with your proposed prices, I could've literally built a nuke every second with the income I had.

To me this sounds like a lot of theorycrafting without much if any experience with the actual gameplay as far as nukes are concerned.

Ok, there's two issues here. Nukes vs Armies and Nukes vs Anti Nukes.

Nukes vs Anti-Nuke:
I'd actually be interested to see an element of chance return to the anti nuke. Hate to keep referencing other games but, basically, in SC:FA/SupCom 2 occasionally anti nukes have been known to screw it up, miss the nuke and then turn around and chase it towards the ground.

Now as everything in this game is simulated ( and that's awesome!), if one were to give the anti nuke movement characteristics that meant it might not ALWAYS manage to catch the nuke, with say, 85% success rate, THAT would make for some gripping game-play.

I'd also suggest reducing the cost of the anti nuke SLIGHTLY.

Nukes vs Armies

Don't have the numbers to hand but I think the cost of a nuke is broadly similar to the cost of a decent sized Advanced force. So, at present, the nuke is a viable counter to mid-late game land attack.

This could be seen as a problem because it is not interesting from a game-play perspective. It is SO much more entertaining to watch armies smash in to each other and to see the management of those armies effect the outcome of the battle.

SO, how to effectively nerf the nuke against armies...

Options include:
1:Increase relative cost of nuke to traditional forces

2:Decrease effectiveness on armiesby...
a)Making a nuke easier to dodge (again, has been possible in previous games with this mechanic)
b)Reducing AoE
c)Mobile Anti (my least favourite option)



I favor option 2a: Make nukes easier to dodge. I favour this because it adds GAMEPLAY, it adds some thing YOU have to do to stop something THE OTHER GUY has done. That is the heart of entertaining game-play.

How to do that?
Perhaps make Nukes fly higher, if they spend a longer time on their "descent" there would be a longer period of the target player knowing where it is going to fall from and thus, more time to get his shizzle out of the way.

So, in summary and in big Gold f**k off letters:::

MAKE NUKES FLY HIGHER

I don't get the "constructros are mobile build power so they should be very expensive" point. I mean, yeah, they can build buildings around the area.. and factories can only produce units. A construction bot won't build you an army, they will only build you the factories to build said army.
In case you are trying to say that the fabbers can assist a factory and thus add their build power to it, well, it's still more effective to just build more factories, isn't it?

no, not to be rude but that would be indefensibly stupid as you now introduce the element of "chance"/"luck" into a strategy game. In supcom/TA there was nothing that depended upon pure luck iirc (unless you counted fire deviation from artillery) and neither do I think does such a concept belong in a strategy game. Plus, let us assume your proposal is implemented. How would it be.
One anti nukes fires at the nuke? what if it fails? It just goes through?
Second anti nuke fires if first fails? It can still fail. Then what? I don't do programming, but I can imagine it being of an incredibly low priority when a simple "1 anti negates 1 nuke" is effective enough.


Onto other points.
In TA, there was NO WAY of increasing the speed of a nuke/anti nuke.
A lot of people go "Oh, I can just assist the nuke launcher and get nukes out really quickly to neutralise advanced armies/overwhelm antis/etc" - the approach I would think of, if one were needed, is to simply make them un-assistable. Or make them have a much increased build time. In SC:FA, nukes were easily the cost of an experimental, and took a considerably amount of time to build. Engineers, the "free and mobile build power" would take perhaps a minute or two off a 5 minute timer.


The other issues with nukes vs anti nukes:
The range of anti nukes is too small
Nukes generally give the player an ability to negate the presence of an enemy in a specific area where there are no anti-nukes. But even that doesn't hold water - Players like to build anti nukes in the middle of their important structures. If you land a nuke outside of the anti-nukes radius, it can still destroy an area "covered" by the anti nuke.

Forward bases, etc, are all at the mercy of a nuke until an anti-nuke is constructed. Even then, it suffers from the problem of time. It is far easier to assist a nuke launcher and throw them out at expansions than it is to expand and build anti nukes within them.

The easiest solution to this particular problem was mentioned before in this thread, that of mobile anti-nukes ala the "hedgehog" introduced in TA:CC (Total Annihilation Core Contingency) and an increased range to the anti-nuke launcher. Refering to SC:FA, one would not utilise nukes in the above "detonate outside ring" fashion, due to how inefficient it was.

As an aside, I kind of don't like how it's too easy to spot whether someone has an anti-nuke or a nuke ready. Nor do I particularly get why their stockpile is so limited (3 and 1 respectively). But that's a personal tangent.

The other counter measures:
Finally, I also feel people are getting bogged down into a narrow-focus view of the problem. Everyone thinks "oh, antis are the only defence". No. you can destroy the launcher.

Again, referring to TA as the prime example: If your enemy has a nuke launcher, you knew you had time before he could utilise it. Your defence was therefore either A) have an anti nuke ready or B) go on a bombing run and eliminate it.

currently option B appears to be less-than-optimal due to how little time it takes, if economy is not a huge factor, to get a nuke up. And the fact that no one has really brought it up at all as a viable counter measure suggests more of a balance problem than a simple "nuke vs anti nuke" debate.



TLDR:

Nukes should remain powerful, else why build them.
Nukes perhaps should not be as easy/quick to acquire, as many people seem to attest to a "nukes solve everything" mentality.
Anti nukes should perhaps have their power reassessed, given how they seem to be much less efficient than nukes, both in their ability to defend (Ref: Detonate outside of anti nuke range, kill what's in range) and cost wise.
"nukes vs anti nukes" is not the be all and end all of the discussion here. Perhaps it might be better instead, albeit it harder, to think about why measures like utilising bombers to eliminate the threat aren't utilised more.

P.S:

I am aware that this thread is about economy, and not nukes vs anti nukes.
Currently don't have time to go into the economy debate, ill put my two cents into that later.
Sorry if you feel its gone off topic OP.

Making it impossible to assist nuke construction would actually be pretty good imo, that or increase their current build time a lot.

In FA even with assisting it took considerable time to get a nuke ready for launch, and if you did assist it you were sacrificing a huge chunk of your eco from other projects.

In PA you can comparatively build nukes insanely fast and the hit in your eco for assisting them isn't nearly as significant.

Anti-nukes could use more range, the buildings in PA are huge so lategame bases will be absolutely enormous. To cover such a base you're probably looking at something like 5 or more anti-nukes and that's not even taking into account any forward production/artillery bases.

Personally I don't really like the idea of mobile anti-nukes. Nuking can effectively eliminate the ability to build forward bases in long games currently, but I think that's more of an issue with the fact that you can rather easily get full vision on the whole map thus eliminating the requirement to scout such base, (FA had t3 radars, but you could still build forward bases under stealth since omni range was so low) and that nukes are extremely easy to build if the game lasts more than 40 minutes.

In TA:CC mobile anti nukes were easily option C when it game to dealing with nukes. Simply killing the launcher was normally the first priority. Again, enabled because it took considerable investment in time and resources to produce.

Nonetheless, I bring it up because with the current situation with nukes, I believe in coming up in as many different viable solutions as possible. I mean, they weren't in SC:FA, and no one was bemoaning their absence. Probably because anti-nukes were an actual deterrent to nukes as opposed to a mere annoyance.[/quote]