There Be Dragons: Slaying the Deathball

Not if the nukes have tracking or can be controlled in flight.

You don't even need that. Why do you think the seraphim battleship had nukes? Nuking enemy fleets and land forces was a very viable tactic. And besides, it was nearly impossible to penetrate a base's nuke defenses if the player had half a brain. Nukes were always far more useful for me in a tactical role.

If the player expects his forces to be nuked he is very likely to move them which makes nuking an army a guessing game.

That's a good thing. I like dodging nukes when I know they're coming.
That's not "micro". That's good tactical awareness.

I just think it brakes immersion and doesn't make sense. Realistically why wouldn't you be able to change the flight of the nuke? Its' a rocket.

Realistically you can't really avoid a nuke because of the explosion radius.

I want to see this. Because it sounds like a complete lie, having nothing to do with an actual TA battle.

Rockets realistically blow all their fuel on going fast enough to breach enemy countermeasures. There is no remaining fuel to maneuver.

Also, heat seeking nukes are going to be embarrassingly good Comm sniping tools. Such a weapon doesn't seem appropriate.

i think the counter would be a lot of artillery or some awsome aoe point defence cannon thats how i always handle death balls is with the general counter to large groups of units. like in sup com 2 if theres all kings then awnser is a lot of bombers. a lot of bombers then get factory aa and shields to defend your base so on so forth. ive never hsd this death ball problem ever. but idk why. maybe its becuase the better of the rts players show respect and dont do this. ive had instances were there were what you call death balls but i seem to handle them effectively. so to me i love armys of robots that stack in the thousands and i love holding out and pulling through after the fight and showing that i am a powerful strategist and that when you fight me with your death ball it will only fail unless you plan ahead and are very well coordinated in the art of meat shields and body bags.

If that would happen in the simulation I would be happy.

Anti missile defense?

Thats why you use multiple nukes and spread them out

or a MIRV? Un-counterable, and un-avoidable.

Igncom, you bring up MIRV frequently, and I suspect you are more interested in the lore, and the association with the real-life multiple-warhead technology than how it would play. I do not think an un-counterable, un-avoidable nuclear weapon is a good idea. Counterplay is the heart of strategy.

If implemented well nukes do, to some extent, act against very large and dense concentrations of units. I do think there is a huge amount of room for growth in the TA nuke system to make it more in-depth and interesting than having very expensive silos and expensive antinuke. I won't go into detail in this thread, but nuclear warfare could be an interesting sub-game by itself; take DefCon for example. Which would be even more interesting with a large-scale army war going on across the planet at the same time. The first step would be making nuke play much more "normal" in the course of a TA style game, by making both nukes and antinuke far more accessible.

Having cheaper nukes which can destroy bases and armies, and cheaper countermeasures, is superior to having very expensive nukes that cannot be countered or avoided.

Nukes will be prone to problems as long as they have only one possible defense.

I fail to see the problem here. It seems to me that when you are fighting a mass of strong enemy units the best option is to destroy them with some kind of tactical scale AOE explosion- be it Nukes, experimental bombers (from supcom), long range artillery, or asteroid bombardment from planetary annhiliation. You think nukes are going to be prone to problems? Just wait until an asteroid wipes out your planet with your deathball.

It's just play and counterplay. Oh, you massed all of your units in one spot in a so called 'deathball'? Let me bomb that into dust for you.

In supreme commander, every faction had nukes, long rage artillery and strategic bombers, the seraphim had two kinds of nukes plus the experimental bomber, which pretty much dropped nukes itself. Battleships and Fatboy experimentals could pound swarms into dust, and let's not forget the Galactic Colossus at release. T3 point defenses had longer range than most artillery units.

Since many of the devs who made supcom are working on this game, I don't really see what the problem is. Supcom and TA are not like Starcraft 2. I think you guys are overthinking how effective swarms are going to be. There is a counter to everything.

That example was never about actual TA battles, it was a grossly generalized and oversimplified explanation to highlight the ACTUAL issue that this subject was aimed at.

I just went and tried to use a samson deathball in TA. Not as strong as people seem to be claiming. I'm not the best player but i really did try and make it work and through a combination of wreckage, terrain, fog of war and the available space to maneuver just made it really hard for me to go through battles with low attrition. It was powerful but that seems more like unit balance as i never reached anything that i would call a deathball.

I have always wanted to play a game of SupCom with no SMD or shields just to see what would happen.

But you are correct, I do really want to see the visual of such a weapon rather then the impending balance it might cause.

Indeed, could we have a implementation of unit based nukes like walking bombs and controllable cruise missiles? Would that be fun/unfun?

Agree to the point I am quoting this.

I can save you a lot of time: first guy to the nuke wins

The heart of nuclear gameplay is the MAD-like escalation and guessing game as to whether your opponent is building nukes and whether the significant investment of countering it is worth it. Or if there are defenses and you should risk your valuable warheads in a strike.

First guy to nuke only wins if you stand your commander still.

From experience with forgetting to build SMD's I can tell you that doesn't apply at all. Your commander can wander out of harms way but with your base reduced to dust you've basically lost anyway.

Buildings are static.