Nuke Sub Rework

up the damage on the nuke to 26k, so two can potentially take down a battleship or maybe several, adjust cost accordingly

My suggestion: Nuke subs should be..

... a small-radius sniping unit designed to take out single high-value movable targets (battleships, experimental units/buildings, maybe SACUs).

Why:

• RIght now, nuke subs don't really participate in fights agains targets that can MOVE. In my oppinion, this is a shame. Lobbing missiles at static bases is boring and strictly late stage only tactic, and has all problems that Ftx explained
• We still try to keep their interactions with other units intuitive for players coming from Vanilla, ideally they use the FAF version once and immediately get how it changed

Step 1 (Damage application):

• MASSIVELY reduce their range to be a bit bigger than battleships, like 180, so that you actually have to move them to the front of your units when trying to snipe for example a battleship, allowing more counterplay opportunities. We want to see them used in actual T3 navy fights, not killing bases inland.
• MASSIVELY reduce their explosion radius so they do not kill too many units at once. Somewhere between strat bomb and billy radius
• Increase damage A LOT so they can at the very least seriously damage experimentals and kill battleships/spidermonkeys.
• Make missile speed fast enough so it has a chance to catch moving units, but slow enough so oppopnent can micro targeted unit away if missile is scouted early enough.

Step 2 (missile type and anti-missile):

• If a movable unit is targeted, the primary defense against nuke missiles should be MOVING away
• Make subnuke missiles neither real nukes nor tactical missiles, they should have their own missile category. If this is not possible, we could maybe work around by still using real nuke missile type, but change SMDs to react differently to normal nuke vs nuke sub.
• Missiles while flying should have a scoutable icon like nukes (but different icon)
• Give SMD an additional anti-nukesub-weapon that has smaller range than SMD missile and is free (takes no resources to build other thant the SMD building, but is balanced by rate of fire). Since the anti-missiles have no cost, we need to have lower range for them, otherwise, you could cover your entire navy while it is near your base against subnukes by building a single SMD near shore.
• If they are not a new missile type, we need to find a different solution, we don't want to shoot SMD missiles at nukesub missiles because SMD missiles should ONLY need to be balanced againsty actual nukes.
• If necessary we could even have a new building that is like "TMD but against nuke subs only" or add this capability to other units/buildings

Step 3 (air counterplay):

• Create counterplay opportunities for players that are aware of the existence of nukesubs before they fire by revealing the radar signature of a nukesub whenthey fire a nuke for like 10 seconds, even if it is outside radar. Maybe add a ping similar to nuke warning where they are located so their signature is not masked by other signatures when inside radar. This allows intelligent air player to build torps in preparation and target nukesub signatures when a nuke launches. Essentially make "nuke launch" an event that invites air players to fight together with navy player to attack/protect nuke sub after nuke launch, because more fighting is better.

Step 4 (balance)

• Adjust cost of unit until satisfactory usefullness is reached

buff so you don't nerf

Nuke subs could be mobile smd, if you follow the single upgrade suggestion, make a smd upgrade for some fun surprise smd plays.

Guess nobody is on board as almost no comments on it.......

Please, do the button to stop producing nuke unpressable. I think nobody cancelling every nuke loading in a subs, but they always pause it. So its a pretty huge mistake, when u cancel loading at like 4 nuke subs at 70%. U already spent all ur resources to it. But somewhy its still just make " all spented resouces for nothing" somewhy when U trying to just stop ur unit to dont move not to attract attention, for flying reconnaissance

One more possible suggestion is to change the free tact missle weapon to a free strategic missle so hills and mountains don't interfere with the missle, have same dmg and range and tmd still takes them out, maybe less fire rate, would still have the same cost problems as it has now.

Some suggestions in this thread seem like a needlessly complicated mechanic when you could just buff the damage on the nuke and maybe adjust the radius as needed. Then you could use it to try to kill navy with it. All these "make it like a nuke but not quite like a nuke" introduce a lot of fluff that is not really needed imo

The critical point is that a nuke is impossible to interact with (in the water) and therefore it’s shit gameplay if you can just nuke whatever you want in the water.

I think amphibious SMDs don’t lead to anything engaging or new in naval combat so I’d rather play around with billies and TMDs.

The interaction is to dodge and the mind games around it. I think it could be interesting, but I guess that is very subjective

You can't dodge a nuke from 100m away.

Pathfinding on the water is a pain...
And even a proper nuke doesn't do much damage to naval vessels.

I would like to see these get adjusted so they're more effective.
Difficult to say how, but I think FtX here, is on to something.

~ Stryker

Doesn't do much damage? It literally eradicates whole navy if it hits. Most of the time it doesn't hit cuz it's shot from far away.
That's one of the reasons submarine have such low damage compared to normal one, cuz it's so much friggin easier to hit big clumps of units.

How many bs would you say a nuke generally hits? I don’t think I’ve seen it hit more than 3. Would a billy at that radius be OP? It would for land armies but you could then mess with the cost of nuke subs themselves to make them more and more infeasible on maps with little water.

@casternumerouno said in Nuke Sub Rework:

Doesn't do much damage? It literally eradicates whole navy if it hits. Most of the time it doesn't hit cuz it's shot from far away.
That's one of the reasons submarine have such low damage compared to normal one, cuz it's so much friggin easier to hit big clumps of units.

Navy units don't really clump up unless a player tells them to do so or the map/pathfinding forces it.

Even then, nukes almost never do much damage because of how tanky naval units are at the T3 stage - which is when the Nukes start rolling off.

And some factions even have shields to protect their vessels, meaning less damage, too. (UEF)

~ Stryker

Not even a tempest survives a nuke, unless it has like 2 vet and full hp.

@comradestryker

Navy units do clump up all the time when you are using them to their fullest potential. Watch any late game fight and you will see all the BS, shieldboats etc clumped up in a big half circle to make them as effective as possible in a fight.

Nukes do no damage? Anything in their main radius evaporates, unless I missed something and now most units have over 70k HP which I doubt. Only reason you don't really see nuke subs nuke navy is cuz they have way lower damage that is better suited to getting rid of buildings. Otherwise I can 100% assure you, you would have players, me included use them as anti navy nuke. Dodging nuke from over 600 units is already not always entirely successful, now try doing it from 100units away.

Nukes always ignored shields. The shieldboats won't do shit.

@FtXCommando
It mostly comes down to the fact that usually you have nukes flying at you from around 600 units away. So it's hard to hit dead center navy if enemy player pays attention. But if you were to give them proper nuke they would become IMO oppressive AF as you cut down the available reaction time by around half when firing away from 100 units away.

But making it more billy like sure. That could be way better rather than outright buffing them like BlackYps suggests.

Would you want nuke subs to have little range if they had a billy nuke with high aoe in order to discourage their use on non-major navy maps?

@casternumerouno

Are you aware that Nuke subs deal a third of the damage that static nukes do?

25,000 damage at the T3 stage is just not even half of what some battleships have.

Shields can reduce the damage taken from nukes, too.
Could've sworn they did, lol.

~ Stryker

Are you trolling me right now?

Oh, guess I'm wrong on the shield part.
My bad. Whoops.

But again, nuke subs still deal a third of the damage.

The Summit would survive with just about 1K HP requiring a third nuke to finish it off.

Nukes against navy are almost never worth it in my experiences, unless you're guaranteed to cause heavy damage or if you just have a Yolo.

Most players I know automatically just spread their navy when they hear the Nuke alert, too...

~ Stryker