Mechanic Suggestion: Launch in Sequence/Launch in Tandem for Nukes

with the ever growing focus on interplanetary gameplay, it becomes paramount that one have the proper arsenal to deal with "that other guy on that other planet". nuclear ordinance typically becomes part, if not the entirety, of the solution.

so lets say you now have....lets lowball it at 12 nuclear launchers on a moon orbiting the main planet which you intend to blow to smithereens. all the launchers are loaded and you're ready to go.

now wouldn't it be nice if you could designate a target for each individual missile while still having all the launchers selected?

i say this out of experience.

it is a pain in the *** (currently) to designate separate destinations for a multitude of nukes. you need to select some nukes, zoom out, find your target, click for death, zoom back out and back to your remaining nukes, and so on and so forth, rinse and repeat until the dirty deed is done.

what i therefore propose is a small mechanic to allow rapid target aquisition for multiple warheads.

it would effectively work like this:

1: select your nukes.

2: set attack orders with a click (or shift + click)
Each click launches one nuke

3: enjoy the fireworks.

such a mechanic could also be extended to orbital lasers, with each separate order sending only one. satelite, allowing you to spread your mini death stars across an enemy planet quickly and efficiently.

do forgive me if this idea sounds half-baked. i only JUST thought of this.

We've already been talking about stuff like this over here;

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/multiple-nukes.55494/

Your suggestion is pretty similar to what I suggested as well.

Mike

Idk if this is the type of solution you are looking for but I reserve my groupings for the nuke launchers. That way when I'm trying to hit different targets I just cycle through the group #s and attack that way.

I think sub-selections would be neat, as they not only solve this, but are helpful in many other situations.

If you have units selected with a single unit type, pressing <tab> would then cycle through the individual units of that selection, then back to selecting all
If you have units selected with multiple unit types, pressing <tab> would instead cycle through selecting each unit type.

In both cases, <ctrl-tab> would toggle selecting all units in the selection or back to the current sub-selection (to save having to tab all the way round again when there's a lot of units).
Another key would be useful to make the current sub-selection into a new selection on it's own.

This has been suggested before and I really support this idea.

It'll make using multiple nuke launchers much easier. Especially since in large games, having a lot of nuke launchers will be common.

What about a Annihilation like system ? Select targets, then press a button like "Fire" or "Engage".

Really this puts it already in the game, just sort of complicated. It could use one of many inventive solutions to the UI, many which players could currently mod into the UI, one I am pretty sure is a player mod that selects certain units built as an infinite queue of re-selectable quick units from 1-100, and stuff.

Generally, I should playtest that and practice it, using 5 nukes with relatively fast build times assigned control groups, and use them to tandem and sequencial nuke places.

As in the other nuke thread, essentially what you suggest is smart casting for nukes. Which, while a good idea, isn't terribly revolutionary. Firing only one nuke per click, even if you have multiple silos selected, is a good idea, but is also somewhat standard fare for RTS games these days.

I would like to see a more sophisticated UI system, which allows players to specify nuke target points in advance. Instead of needing to quickly select multiple different silos and quickly issue different launch orders, the player would place target points beforehand at their leisure, and then issue a "fire" order.

It seems to me the decision of where to fire the nukes, and the decision of when to fire the nukes, is actually two separate actions. And typically the player will pan over the target area to determine where to fire, go back to find the silo, and then move the camera back again to the target area to issue the fire order. This seems wasteful, and poor UI design. Instead, the player should be able to specify a nuke target when viewing the target area for the first time.

That other thread is on its way to becoming another horse-like megathread that gets beaten and beaten with too many ideas and too little focus to separate the good from the bad. It's a tradition I'd like to break, or at least stay away from.

This thread is, for the moment, completely agreeable, short, and to the point.
Smart-casting for nukes is something everyone can appreciate. Supported.

Hold fire.
Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick. (smartcasting is a given)
Fire at will.

Why make this so hard when it doesn't have to be? (BTW 12 nuke launchers is deep in DGAF JDA territory)

I agree with you that you could (I was going to say power down, but hold fire works) hold fire your nukes, select attack commands, and then lift the hold fire (or re-power).

Idk, this is a pretty big practice in planets orbiting each other, that you want to bomb everything at once, because even if you bomb inconsistently at times, their fabbers will scramble around the explosions and survive, rebuilding the economy from the first explosion before the last explosion lands a minute later. I have done this, it works. Being able to drop ALL the bombs at the SAME time across a LOT of the surface, really has more a possibility to reset the enemy tech to the stone age.

It is in farfetched territory, but I have seen it happen once so it happens. (before update, I concede, but some people won't invade even with the option, they choose to nuke anyway)

If you can do THAT much damage with a nuclear bombardment, couldn't a small land force finish the job? I mean. Totally eliminating the enemy down to the last bot using nothing but nukes is kind of overkill.

Well, that's the point. You can definitely do it with bots, and if you can't time you definitely can't do it with nukes because after the first one hits and you fill it with fabbers to rebuild you can have the whole nuked area rebuilt in a few seconds with no real damage to economy.

Theoretically with better timing, you could achieve a lot closer to the results of total clearing off using only nukes. At least you could kill most fabbers and simultaneously all economy structures (requiring them to at least stall, instead of rebuilding eco as nukes fall so never gets bad enough to stall).

I dunno. This scenario sounds like you're already winning so unbelievably hard. I'm stuck wondering why you need to be even more victorious than already having absolute nuclear dominance over the enemy.