Something needs to change with nukes.

Good to hear that, polaris. I sometimes think discussions would go a lot smoother if they were held in a pub over the occasional beer or five.
Back to that unit-role-balance-thingy. I don't have a clue how Uber are working internally and I don't want to berate them on designing their game. I love what they are doing and what they have created thus far. I am no fan of the re-branded perpetual beta that we are heading towards but I can see the rational behind that, too.
But I do have to advocate communicating the design process as clearly as they did their design goals - because the state of the game and the iterative balancing approach seem very out of touch with a lot their designated design pillars, namely basic vs. advanced tier and concise and unique unit roles.
And that worries me a great deal.

edit: good lord, that spelling again...

That really depends on what you define as your end goal. I think Scathis and the rest of Uber do have goals and a destination in mind, but that goal is not a specific roster, but rather gameplay requirements.

• The game never grind to a halt because of a missing combat role (current 2 planet orbital avenger standoff)
• It should not be possible to end the game too quickly because a combat role was delivered to soon.(Commander Rush with Transport)
• No combat role should invalidate another.(T2 bombers making T1 bombers worthless)
• All combat roles should be unique when possible.(Bots and Tanks need differentiating)
• All combat roles should add to the gameplay experience without detracting. (binary nuke play?)

As a basic concept Scathis can use combined feedback and his own playtests to identify gameplay elements that violate these requirements and then take action to correct it. It's important to not rush changes too quickly because adjusting one combat role can have sweeping changes across the balance of the whole game.

How does nuking currently work? I thought I could nuke another planet that is in orbit with the same body I am also orbiting. (ie: Earth nuking Mars) Apparently that is not the case as I tried it in a game. Is this an orbit restriction or a distance (the planets were too far away) restriction?

Yes you can only nuke moons or planets from its moon. That makes any system with more that one planet impossible to win.