Terrain Deformations; Nukes.

You're being overly pedaaaaaaaaaantic, Geers

It's the worst thing about a nuclear strike, but isn't in itself a destructive force that visibly impacts the ground upon impact. In fact, it's the worst thing because it's not visible, nor visibly destructive.

It can be visible.

Not in the way that a deformed landscape from the impact blast is

Huh, I actually thought it had something to do with radiation too.
Although even after the science lesson, it's definitely NOT the worst thing about nukes.
The worst isn't even the initial shock wave so powerful and hot it can melt buildings and turn sand into glass.
The worst is that they can be used so easily.
*gets off soap box*

It does have something to do with radiation. It has EVERYTHING to do with radiation. Fallout is basically radioactive dust. Usually alpha emitting radiation sources aren't going to do anything since they can barely travel through air, let alone penetrate skin, but when you inhale it you're screwed. Not to mention the radioactive dust from one nuke can be carried across an entire country by wind.

Not to mention "dirty bombs" which are based on propelling radioactive material into the air. Terrible stuff.
@poll: craters: YES PLEASE?! and rocks: only for aesthetics because the nuke is strong enough itself and does not have a damage gradient, so there are no units to be hit by the rocks anyway.

Fallout is bad but the shockwave and thermal radiation is what did the majority of killi.g

Plutonium, Lead, cesium, iodine etc... potential types of radioactive isotopes that can emerge.

Nuclear weapons detonated mid air prior to impact help disperse some of the nuclear materials from the explosion.. they wanted to kill the people not the land... today nearly two million people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The difference between the two cities and the Chernobyl Exclusion zone is the amount of fuel and the reaction efficiencies... both of the bombs used only 2 of there approximately 15 pounds of (uranium (little man) and plutonium (fat boy).... the chernobyl reactors had a lot more fuel..

Missmanagement, and geography really magnified the devastation, and with the reactor being at ground level the meltdown materials interacted with the soils and pretty much everything in the area.. neutron exchange has rendered that land unusable... forever..

More on topic, craters... while realistic, would not be a good addition due to ease of access..

We could have two kinds of nukes. Basic, like we have now, and those shouldn't leave any crater.

And super Nukes, able to crack asteroids (therefore offering some sort of protection against Annihilations), and those could leave a crater. But also be way more expensive.

Because a normal Nuke that also leaves a crater could be a bit overpowered, impeding the player who's already in difficulties to react and rebuild his base.

Beside, an eventual Fallout may affect the entire surface of the planet and therefore all players.

problem is.. the engine doesn't support this (...yet??) not live deformation, just boolean 3D operations.

This could "scuff" up metal marks pretty easy...

...EXCEPT in the new build. If it cratered in this build, it would be a neat chip away mechanic. That is just because they have such a huge entry cost and a really long in-between time.

It doesn't support mesh addition and subtraction? I was hoping that was what covered asteroid impacts.

The rocks would be cool, and I'd like them to do damage. However it'd be an extra thing to balance.
E.g.:
Somebody drops 10 Nukes on an Anti-Nuke's border simultaneously, and the rocks kill a load of stuff, perhaps even a Commander.
But that situation would be rare if Nukes weren't so easy to spam.

I just think, rendering rocks is a lot of programming work, and it basically does a heavily luck based variant of "aoe". Fyi, they are working on AOE damage over distance, so farther away from strike center is less damage.

Yes please, the first thing I'm doing is making a moat.

Well honestly it's not like some rocks would do an abundant amount of damage, I could imagine them crushing t1 tanks and bots, maybe t2, but not destroying a structure or anything...

Boolean 3D operations are deformation - and they can be done live, as evidenced by the impact craters from planet smashing.

Damage falloff is already implemented, and pretty much everything with AOE has it. This is controlled by the "full_damage_splash_radius" attribute - an AOE weapon does full damage up to this point, then tapers off.
For nukes, it goes as follows:

Impact: 11000 damage
Max splash radius: 150m
Splash Damage (0 - 125m): 11000 damage (this occurs in addition to main damage, for the point of impact)
Splash Damage (125 - 150m): falls off down to 0 (I assume linear falloff)

No in gaming the term deformation is lingo for visible gradual transition in shape

Fair enough. There's nothing gradual about explosions though

IRL, they denote nukes at a fairly high altitude...they don't exactly create craters at all...
Hmm I dunno, it would be cool since nukes seem to det. on impact in PA

Real nukes detonate in the air. In PA, they detonate when they hit the ground (they actually ignore units/structures).

Smaller localised craters would be good. Throwing damage-dealing rocks is a little useless, though - the nuke has already decimated everything in and around the epicenter of its impact. Unless these rocks are catapulted across half the planet, which would be a little silly.