I would like the anti-nuke launcher to come equipt with one missile ready to go. For the cost and time building one, it would be nice to be able to launch as soon as its built. It would be a nice extra balance for nuke spamming imho.
That used to be a part of the game actually, but honestly- nuke spamming isn't a viable start at all.
Nukes are a painfully expensive way to win... You lost to nukes.... You were going to lose to that player no matter what that game....
You should definitely expect nukes, planet smashes and the annihilaser if you are that far into a game. You also need to ask yourself, how did he know where your commander was, yet you had no idea he was building nukes... the answer... he was scouting and you weren't.
I like to set up orbital radar at the poles on every planet in a system along with a deep space radar. I get to see the enemy commander positions and what nukes and anti-nukes are being build. I get the radars in early so that I can neutralise any threat as and when, and keep replacing them if they get taken out. If the other player has the freedom to build multiple nukes then you should expect multiple nukes. By later stages of a game it's good practice to have anti-nuke launchers regardless of whether your opponents have nukes that you can see. I dont like to micro manage scouting so if an opponent does not have much orbital to worry about I let a few ssx and orbital radar roam around a planet unchecked. You get the 'Enemy commander located' warning. What I would like to see are dirty bombs lol. No rebuilding after that one.
I don't know how you got to that point, that my enemy knew where my Com was. Because he didn't. The only thing he saw was the massive amount of avengers swarming around my planet. Also planet smashes and annihilasers wouldn't hurt me, since they are easily counter able. But I have never thought about nukes. Yet again. I said, that my enemy rushed nuke after nuke. That was about 1 nuke every 5 seconds. And it was from the same nuke launcher. He spammed my planet with it. So how did you come up with that conclusion that he knew where my com was. He wasn't able to send any orbital radar to my planet.
But did he at any point? And did you have anchors constructed above your base? As scouted buildings stay viable to a player, and anchors are almost always put above a base, one thats worth nuking.
1 Nuke costs a ton. The nuke launcher alone with a 120 Build power (that is 1.5 T2 fabers) needs a small eternity to build one. That is not including the 18k power it needs while doing so. The enemy would have needed insane ammounts of metal income and power income (to power the fabers) to produce them at that speed. And if the enemy can put those amounts of eco in that effort, you were doomed already.
Of course I did. I did build them pretty much everywhere on my planet as well as sending about a hundred avengers on patrol.
It's likely then that the starting location for your anchor construction, as well as any previous scouted information via a satellite exposed the location of your main base, and so your commander to nuke bombardment.
Plus, in a FFA especially, multi-nuke spam can win you a game you shouldn't have otherwise won. You were the last two players standing, they were prepared for pretty much everything except 6 nukes arriving at the same time -- not that outlandish in large map FFAs. If they'd had a chance they could have killed you in 10 different ways but you'd had time to build up your nuke supply while they finished off the #3 player. Nukes have their uses, though I can see where people don't get there often in 1v1 play. And anti-nukes are still dicey. I've seen 2 nukes aimed within range of 1 fully loaded anti-nuke and one nuke still lands because the anti-nuke doesn't have time to fire twice. It does if you're aiming directly for the anti-nuke but you get much less protection at the edges, due to that fire delay.
It is reality. If the enemy can overcome you with nukes, you were ways behind in the Economic game. Nukes were only the means to your end, not the reason you lost (you lost because you were simply out-ecoed). Getting nuked in this case is a lot more processing effective then the other having to invade you using 1k Astreus+asorted ground units. It would take forver to get this army in or produce it. And to simulate it all the way to win. Nukes are better then the currently broken orbital invasions to finish of an enemy.
Victory isn't ensured by eco alone. There are a lot of different components to decide who will win, especially since victory is as simple as killing one enemy unit. The most efficient way to eliminate your enemy right now is via ssx snipes. If your opponent is wasting all their eco on spamming nukes, and you drop by with 5 ssx, it's a gg in your favour. So no, you weren't always going to lose. Similarly maybe those nukes came in slapped you moments before your annihilazer was completed. So no, nuke death =! always going to have lost.
