Nukes: I still think anti-nukes should cost less. I'd start with 50% and see how that feels. It's still true that 1 nuke really requires 3+ anti-nukes to counter, since you don't know where it will land. The counter to anti-nukes should be ground attacks, bombers, artillery creep, laser platforms, etc. Currently the counter to anti-nukes is "more nukes" because the cost difference isn't big enough. You can always overwhelm them. Asteroids: 3-engine asteroids shouldn't be planet killers. They should be super-nukes and ideally I think they should have a counter (as in the kickstarter video). Currently it's your easiest game-winning option. Once you're on a small asteroid like that, it's super easy to defend it and a late game economy can very rapidly build 3 halleys. The ones that require more (15?) engines are better balanced: they are larger so they're harder to fully defend and it takes a while to build that many engines. I don't even like playing maps with 3+ asteroids because it's so easy to weaponize them, so hard to keep tabs on all of the asteroids available and it's almost random who wins.
Asteroids are pretty much in the prototype phase, if I remember correctly, there was an interview where Jon Mavor says that some will be planet crushers and others will do just a large amount of damage.
I find that the true cost for nukes is construction time, not actual money. And even then, i don't like their gameplay mechanic.
its not hard to build nukes with 1000 metal per second in the late game, which is nearly a rapid fire nuke^^
Burn the whole atmosphere...? Do you have any idea how asteroids work? They burn up IN the atmosphere, the friction caused by their extreme speeds meeting with air causing them to burst into flames. Also, not all asteroids have planet-destroying capabilities in real life.
Have you tried setting an atmosphere on fire? We've tried. IRL. If such a thing was going to happen, it already would have happened long ago. Nukes are currently in a whacked out state. Part of this is due to allowing assistance (honestly this was tried in Supcom. We know what happened. It was inevitable.), and part of it is just bad black and white design. Previous titles used nukes as game enders. That was their role, and being difficult to defend is part of that role. PA nukes are NOT game enders. Being difficult to defend is NOT part of their role, PA has better game enders for that.
Realistically. Now, does anyone want to talk about GAME MECHANICS AND BALANCE? Or should we continue writing a wikipedia page? I have always been a fan of balancing small asteroids large asteroids as a weight system. A small asteroid can be reduced to pieces with another small asteroid (if they implemented asteroid counter-collisions), and a large asteroid takes 5x the halleys sometimes of a small one yet it's strike is harder to counter and more reliably a definite hit. Even with the way it is now, isn't it just a fix to how many halleys does the job? I think it should more proportionate to asteroid size. For instance, a 200 should take 5 halley, a 250 6, a 300 7, a 350 8, a 400 9, a 450 10, ect ect. If asteroids could counter asteroids, maybe it should be 200 5 halley, 250 8 halley, 300 11 halley, 350 14 halley, 400 17 halley, 450 20 halley. The idea's flexible.
the question is not if nukes are too cheap but if anti nukes still have too low radius. there are 2 radius values of the defence : 1. the radius the building has 2. the radius the building has subtractet the radius of a nuke explosion important for the balance is the secound one. it would be nice if it is shown ingame, and i still think the secound one is too small and should maybe be extendet to what the first one actual is. you still could build more nukes to brake that then, but also could someone build more antinukes to prevent it when he scouts you and is seeing what you are doing. (or use the massive amounts of resources you waste on nukes to build an army and crush you...whatever) for the planet smashing : its still way too beta to actualy talk about it since we are not feature complete here. atm we are able to throw small MOONS at planets not asteroids. if you throw a size 200 MOON to a planet with size 1000 this would in compare mean earth (radius ~6380km) would be hit by an object with radius ~1276km....meannig absolute and total destruction of everything on the surface....the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs is told to had around 15 km (~1,1% of the 1276km) radius and still killed every bigger lifeform on the planet. so just wait till we have our asteroid belt and are able to see the final mechanics before we discuss any numbers.
Party pooper I agree with thetrophysystem and most of this topic. Nukes are just another way to make someones life miserable unlike previous titles where they were able to end the game. Asteroids are in a more developmental stage and are going to be tricky to get right, mainly because it hasn't been done before. The smaller asteroids are a bit off right now, they are easy to get the engines on and absurdly easy to defend, which would be fine if they weren't used as teeny tiny bases or able to wreck a planet. Maybe having larger asteroids (400-500) as the ones that can do the whole planet smash aka extinction event and having the smaller asteroids as either assault platforms (mobile unit cannnons/nuke launchers) or super nukes (destroying with a raduis the size of something like an assault platform) I might actually start a thread on the above, but for now I'll stick the nukes As for the cost, I'm ok with where the anti-nuke missile is, it's the build time that sucks. you need 30-40 T2 fabs to match nukes and even then it's more than likely not enough.
Well, why should the anti-nuke cost so much? Complicated tech maybe, but the actual metal shouldn't be a lot. Energy should be what it really consumes, and it should definitely cost less. Why don't we consider changing the cost to being mostly in the launcher, since it would be more complex to build ('realistic', not realism here, by the way.), so then each missile isn't so overly difficult to build in a reasonable amount of time?
Was recently playing in a multi-planet system that would probably have been an extended stalemate had the server not crashed. I was building tons of slammers, hornets, orbital units and nukes on the 2 large planets hoping to use a teleporter to catch a player off guard. On the main planet, one other player was left who had turtled up very, very hard. I had more eco than I could ever hope of managing (especially since land unit patrol commands don't seem to be working), but his little base was packed with holkins, cataputs, anti-nukes, flak and umbrellas. No critical amount of units could tear it down besides a dozen or more nukes (which I was in the middle of building). Nukes were the only option. This is why I don't think anti-nukes should be made much cheaper yet. So longs as flak and to a lesser extent artillery is as strong as it is, turtles will be almost impervious to all forms of attack without wiping the whole planet.
i could definitely sport for cheaper anti nukes. mainly because it only takes 3 T2 fabbers to speed up nuke production considerably. whereas anti nukes take a lot more. and are more expensive and therefore harder to build than nuke launchers. i'm constantly winning inter-orbital battles by spamming out nukes faster than the anti nukes can handle. granted, the feeling is absolute bliss, but i cant lat forever.
Nuke/anti-nuke mechanics are still pretty iffy. I'm leaning towards a massive increase in range rather than make them cheaper. Right now I think the anti-nuke missiles are half the cost of a nuke, which, if you can cover a large enough area with a single anti-nuke, it isn't too bad.
On the topic of nukes: Would it be possible for them to leave a longer lasting "smoke trail"? Something that lingers for ~30 seconds should do it. I usually end up using the Chronocam to figure out where the nuke came from but a smoke trail would be nice.
Anti nukes with launcher are already cheaper then nuke-missles besides, they prevent explosions from happening wich is bad.
