In the planetary annihilation trailer they showed a unit cannon on one of the moons instead of just unit cannons it would be neat if you could have some sort of nuclear super weapon and launch it into the planet that you are orbiting therefor gaining more energy from being at orbital volicity and creating a bigger explosion on impact
Nucks don't get more powerful the faster they go, they aren't kinetic weapons, a Nuck's power comes from the explosion it triggers, A Nuck going 5 km/h explodes just as well as a Nuck going 500km/h, positioning matters a lot more, like how Air bursts traditionally do more than exploding on contact if I recall correctly. Mike
Rather than nukes I'd be partial to fairly small low friction shells/rockets launched from the orbiting body and allowed to gain most of its energy from just falling inwards after an initial burn. Say something like the tactical missiles in potency, but from space, wider firing area and harder to shoot down due to their faster speed.
This si a lot more likely, but will be dependent on what role Orbital stuff ends up playing, personally I prefer something much more supportive to focus on 'surface' combat, so things like unit cannons or orbital factories, spy sats and such. If Orbital gets too offensive we run into some of the same issues with having 'classical space' units and such, but we'll figure this all out together in Alpha/Beta. Mike
Same thing really, anything with a 'warhead'(assuming explosions) isn't really effected by speed aside from travel time, something more along the lines of a kinetic weapon on the other hand.... Mike
A rock could be a warhead if you strapped on the front of a missile but a rock most defiantly is a kinetic weapon
Warhead: The explosive head of a missile, torpedo, or similar weapon. Yes, a rock could be a warhead, as long as the material the rock is made out of is explosive... and at which point the kinetic energy of the transporting device is unlikely to be of major impact. There are some specific kinetic based nuclear weapons, modern "bunker busters" for example, but the kinetic and explosive parts of the weapon are entirely separate components of the weapon; the kinetic energy allows the device to penetrate its target, the explosive energy to implode it (by way of an underground explosion causing the open interior structures to collapse). Other explosive weapons may delay their explosion for a few milliseconds after collision for similar reasons as an explosion inside of an enemy structure or vehicle is usually far more effective than an explosion outside of it. Sorry if this is a bit macabre, but humans and electronics are squishy; usually the point is to destroy that rather than try to destroy anything else. The whole point of explosives is to greatly increase the amount of energy over what the kinetic energy alone would be able to accomplish. In many cases it's actually preferable for an explosive device to be detonated prior to collision as otherwise most of the explosive force would be absorbed by the ground and redirected upward. Exploding a device in the air allows the energy to reach a much larger area. This is why the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki was detonated approximately 500 meters above ground. Perhaps interestingly if Fat Man had actually hit the ground it would have been unlikely to have caused a nuclear explosion. However, this is a game. Projectiles generally explode at the point of collision. We don't calculate if the explosion occurred inside or outside or if the close to ground blast force redirected the energy away. We calculate a sphere, see what it unit hit boxes it overlaps, subtract health.
What? You mean Planetary Annihilation isn't a fully realistic total virtual universe simulator? I guess we can delete half the threads on the forums then.
Just because it's not a full, accurate-to-life simulation, doesn't mean you can't "fake" it... Especially true if not "faking it" would cause a player to have a mechanical or immersive disconnect from the game.
I'm an astronomer not a weapons expert did not know the true definition of a warhead was so lay back a bit
