What if Nukes Weren't Superweapons?

My problem with nukes are, they're all or nothing:

-either you're the first to build nukes, can launch them at undefended enemies and win the game
-or you're too late and the enemy has defences and you need a massive nukefest to overcome them.


I'd rather have them a big-splash, nice-but-not-mapwide range missile

Well they won't be interplanetary if by non map wide, because thats the asteroids job.

So I would imagine that nukes are really good planetary and to orbit weapons, but don't have the range to cross the solar system.

Personally, I had no problem with the way nukes worked in TA.

In supcom, nukes were quite literally game-enders. Barring defense silos, a single nuke can and would completely wipe out an entire base.

In TA, however, nukes fit a role closer to that of the heavy artillery towers (and were in fact of comparable expense). Yes, getting hit by one would hurt, and would likely put a sizable hold in your base, but so would a Bertha. Possibly less, considering you could shoot down a nuke, but you couldn't stop a Bertha shell.
And, much like a heavy arty, you could use it for far more than just putting holes in your opponent's base. Due to their flight speed, you could easily use them to cover the advance of an attack force, take out enemy resource expansions, deter enemy attacks, I even recall using nukes to clear an island of trees before moving construction planes in to construct a base.

And to be honest, I have no problems if PA did the exact same thing. It makes nukes more useful outside of the game-ending, base-flattening role that Supcom had them in.

In fact, you could even take it further with the stuff that was seen in the Kickstarter trailer. Principally, the bit with nukes being launched at an incoming asteroid -
Do away with specialised antinukes, and just have a normal nuke silo handle both roles. You can use a stored missile either as an offensive missile, or can switch the silo over to a defensive role and have it automatically shoot down incoming threats (such as enemy nukes, or asteroids)

Well one of the best anti-missile weapons possible is an anti-missile laser. I don't see why (other than classic gameplay reasons) you would want to create an anti-missile missile. Yes they exist, but that's cause the laser part currently has technological problems.

Such a missile-shield could of course fulfill MANY roles within PA. The laser might be too weak for anti-air except the closest ranges (and of course, planet curvature so limited range), and it doesn't really help against non-missile-esque weapons (mostly cause such lasers attack the fuel tanks and do not actually destroy the entire missile themselves).

Such a laser weapon would thus essentially be an anti-missile shield of all kinds. This also opens up the tactic of laser-defence saturation with common missiles and such.

Yea in TA it would require significant resources to effectively nuke (especially carpet-nuke) the enemy. While a powerful blow, it certanly wasn't a Supcom/Supcom2 game ender).

Currently, both lasers and missiles are feasible as anti-missile weapons. There's been plenty of news lately about the testing of powerful lasers to take down missiles and rockets (mainly from the US, but I think a few other countries are testing the technology too). On the other side, we've heard plenty about the success of Israel's Iron Dome system, which uses missiles to take down missiles and rockets.

So both methods work, there's no reason why they can't both be used in game. Missile defense lasers would probably be quicker to set up, but would require large amounts of energy per shot and cover a smaller range, while missiles would require more time to construct (both the building and the missile itself) but cover a larger range and cost nothing to fire. The amortized cost of the lasers would be greater after a number of successful defends, but their rapid deployment would be great for emergency defenses. (Or, depending on how many gas giants you're draining energy from, they may just be the more economically viable option.)

I think it is better to have discrete effects for discretely different types of weapons like missile and laser antinuke.

Suppose laser missile defense works on small missiles, including tactical missiles, cruise missiles, missile strikes from planes, etc. etc. Smaller missiles would have shorter range, but could be nuclear nonetheless. Laser defense protects against small missiles of all types.

And we have big missile defense which intercepts ICBM's (or even MRBM or SRBM's- just the big missiles) in the upper atmosphere, and works on nuclear ICBM's, as well as other ICBM missiles with different payloads (if available). Silos might fire nukes with extremely long range- global range in scope, but limits are probably good to require positioning the silo on medium-large-XL planets. Other sources such as missile submarines with nukes would have shorter-range ballistic missiles than silos (still stopped by strategic missile defense), or perhaps fire smaller missiles stopped by tactical missile defense, even though they carry nuclear payloads.

The ICBM is the rocket, the nuke is the warhead. You might have a nuke that is a shorter-range, smaller missile, or even a bomb dropped from an aircraft, against which ICBM defense would be ineffective.

And a MIRV, that splits into several nuclear warheads making interspersion impossible without letting some through.

You really like multiple warheads.

Why is having multiple warheads significant? Why not just say they have them and not change the effect. Or have MIRV be a lore justification for why ICBM explosions could be larger than cruise missile/airplane bomb blasts.

And making counterplay impossible is not a good idea in the slightest.

I like them for 2 reasons:
Preventing a single anti-nuke from being always 100% effective and invalidating nukes
And by allowing a single nuclear weapon to cover a much larger area, even for less damage per hit.

Sometimes I like to cluster nuke an area to hit everything rather then use a scalpel to annihilate 1 thing.

A single antinuke should invalidate one nuke. Perhaps two, or at most three, but a small, discrete number. To overwhelm antinuke you need to fire more missiles, not fire one nuke that cannot be stopped because that one missile splits into a dozen re-entry vehicles. Antinuke needs to be an effective shield, but not an absolute protection barrier- it can be overwhelmed by many missiles. To counter the possibility of more missiles, you should build more antinuke.

Cluster nuke? You are aware we are talking about nuclear bombs, right? Nuke != scalpel.

The only reason to fire lots of nukes at one target is you think most of those missiles aren't going to make it.

Why not just have 2 different techlevels of nukes:
1. Tactical nuke: "low" damage, medium aoe, rather cheap, quick projectile so it can easily hit moving targets.

2. Strategic nuke: Deals as much damage as a small asteroid, pretty expensive and a rather slow projectile.

In fact SupCom had this in a way already, tactical missles on t2 and nukes on t3.

Scale-wise nukes in SupCom were actually pretty weak. Maybe a few hundred meters AOE. A high tech H-Bomb actually should be able to destroy an area as big as setons clutch (20 km^2) or bigger. Considering the "1000 years of total war" story nukes in the year 3000+ should be able to wipe out entire planets. While this was gameplay-wise impossible to do in SupCom, it could be implemented in PA.

About defense against nukes: They should always be cheaper and easier to get. If you want a weapon that cannot be shot down, throw an asteroid ;D

The reason why "nuke that blows up entire planet" won't- or shouldn't- work, is because antinuke should be an effective defense.

If a nuke blows up an entire planet (dubious even given E=mc^2: nuclear rxn's aren't that efficient) then you need antinuke to cover an entire planet. Otherwise the nuke user will pick a remote spot on the planet which your antinuke isn't covering, and wipe out the entire planet anyway.

Planet killer weapons kill planets. Nuclear bombs that also kill planets is a redundant role anyway.

And tactical missiles are not nukes in SupCom/FA, although you do pay for them individually and they are quite a powerful weapon, they are useful for targeting a single specific enemy structure which you need destroyed.

We are talking about quite extreme Sci-Fi here anyway, so the "nukes" might actually work with black matter or whatever crazy things humanity will come up with before it kills itself and leaves behind infinitely fighting robot-armies.

If nukes are not interplanetary anti-nukes would be useless in a way anyway, since you could just build the a stationary "nuke"-bomb on a planet and detonate it.
So yes, the implications of nukes that can kill planets are weird.

Yes. I think I would support having tactial nukes more, in reality the super large nukes are mostly useless for gameplay.

But they reflect the idea I had: one level that offers the possibility for small surgical attacks and another level that is just destroying as much as it can.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. My suggestion was for laser-based/missile-base NUKE defenses. (Ordinary missiles would be unaffected by these structures.) The concept was to provide a choice as to whether a player would want to go for one or the other. It allows for a bit more flexibility with the way a player defends.

For example, consider a player that has a base that is meant to be disposable, say an asteroid that is being converted into a KEW. A missile-based antinuke would cost too much in resources and time, but a few antinuke lasers would be sufficient.

Obviously we want to avoid unit bloat, and making an extra item that does the same thing in a different way will potentially contribute to that problem. However, in this case, the differentiation would be justifiable.

I doubt about "super-" thing, but something like that. yes. So nerfing nukes as there is bigger thing is something like "let's nerf fists cause we have guns!"

I think it's important that a nuke doesn't replace traditional army-based warfare. I feel cheap nukes might cause that...

If nukes become more available, they shoot be used as something designed to destroy "choke-points" - enemy forward bases intended to be a main line of defense. They should not be designed as a way to take a planet for yourself, but instead to weaken it, never to deliver a killing blow.

This is partially remedied with multiple planets, but also I think nukes should be very damaging to any nearby power or energy sources. They'd be secondary methods of attack, and using them would completely wipe out any sort of gain you could've gotten from the area, meaning in the long run using a nuke is more harmful as it damages the planet you are on so you can't use it for resources so much.

This would add some interesting gameplay mechanics. For example, if the enemy army was beginning to overrun your forces, it'd be beneficial to nuke your own base, so as you are running away to a nearby moon, they'd be starved of resources after spending all they had on the recent attack. The scorched earth strategy.

Don't like this idea so much, because it ultimately means you need to build a SMD somewhere near to every mass extractor you have. Because otherwise your enemy will send one nuke after the other and decrease your economy forever (a long time).

I'm imagining that due to the new planetary biomes, that most energy and mass will be located in "hot spots" with large amounts, instead of being so spread out.

Also, I don't thing they'd be so cheap that it'd be worth it to destroy one mass extractor, if they are spread out...

I particularly dislike the gameplay combo of nuke /antinuke. It's like either you get total destruction, or nothing. And there's little point in building nukes for combat purposes, because their cost is balanced as a base killer, so it's silly to 'waste' a nuke on mobile forces unless it's an enormous blob. Moblie antinukes skew this even more in the favor of the defender, and makes the entire gameplay question hinge on whether or not the defender remembered to build the perfect counter.

I agree- big nukes are too all-or-nothing. Hence.... this entire thread.

Cheaper nukes and cheaper antinuke makes it a question of where the defender built antinuke, and how much. Not a mere presence-absence dichotomy like for big, expensive nukes and big, expensive antinuke. If this makes antinuke very commonplace, that is perfectly acceptable.

Cheaper nukes with big area of effect that destroys units but not structures makes them better against mobile armies.

And obviously you wouldn't nuke one mex to "deny economy" unless you're an idiot. The nuke would easily cost more than a single mex. Use a smaller bloody missile. Even a small outpost wouldn't be worth nuking unless there were some overriding strategic significance to it that makes it worth nuking.