Nuke Sub Rework

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

@comradestryker said in Nuke Sub Rework:

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

you said a “proper nuke” bro what is a “proper nuke” if not an SML nuke

Proper being directly on their head or in their inner damage circle.
Most of the time, a nuke sub only gets like 5 frigates, a cruiser, and a destroyer.
The ships that are the threat stay alive and continue to be a threat. (Most of the time... Battleships are the threat)

A static Nuke would fair better but only because of its damage.
That's why you almost never see nuke subs nuking navy, as Caster mentioned.

Which is the whole point of this post... to give nuke subs a better role in navy, no?

~ Stryker

The reduced damage of sub nukes plus the current radius makes it pretty hard to kill T3 navy with it, at best you can only use it to force them out of position

Here's an out-there idea: make strategic subs T4, give them powerful long range torpedos, and leave their tac missiles and strategic missiles as is. Cybran has stealth and maybe slightly faster move speed, Aeon has a shield, UEF has jamming + more hp. Sera probably needs something here but not sure what tbh. Buff their t3 subs damage and health and increase its cost? Give them their own strategic sub? Not sure.

To go even further, add one more minute to the nuke build time and make it the same damage as a land based nuke, but now it takes two extra minutes to build and not the current one extra. The nuke sub nuke arbitrarily doing less damage doesn't make much sense and isn't something a new person might realize.

Something key here: most of the balance and cost for this would be around them being powerful long range torpedo support. The nuke and tml are, to an extent, fun extras. I'd want this unit to be able to be built with no intention of using the nuke. The nuke is to mostly make it viable after navy is won, like battleships are with their shore bombardment, and the tml is just too fun to snipe SMDs with when they're not paying attention to get rid of.

My issue with billy nuke subs is basically that I think as soon as the first one is fire you now have a very tedious back and forth of building and sniping tmd or having enough cruisers in the right spots which sounds not super fun to play. I also think billy subs would be very apm intensive to max their value and high level navy play is already highly apm intensive imo.

Quick edit: To be clear I would not be for normalizing damage between nuke subs and static launchers without increasing the build time by at least a full minute, and that's at a minimum. Way too strong otherwise imo. Also, I suppose this wouldn't necessarily have to be a t4 unit.

@exselsior said in Nuke Sub Rework:

make strategic subs T4, give them powerful long range torpedos, and leave their tac missiles and strategic missiles as is.

Expecting them to perform in three roles is a bit much. Most T4 (and most units in general) have a single role, and sometimes are half-way capable in a second.

Another option to nerf the nuke capability might be to require a SML (like T2/T3 factories require an HQ). Then nuke-subs may be a viable path to exhaust SMD missiles.

Another option to nerf the nuke capability might be to require a SML (like T2/T3 factories require an HQ). Then nuke-subs may be a viable path to exhaust SMD missiles.

Are you thinking of them behaving like terrans ghosts in sc were they deliver the stored nukes?

One of the strongest aspects of nuke subs is that they are discrete ways to deliver nukes-- they are not static land structures, they are underwater mobile units that don't display whether they are building a nuke or not... it would suck to have to build a land sml to shoot sub nukes

@cyborg16 said in Nuke Sub Rework:

@exselsior said in Nuke Sub Rework:

make strategic subs T4, give them powerful long range torpedos, and leave their tac missiles and strategic missiles as is.

Expecting them to perform in three roles is a bit much. Most T4 (and most units in general) have a single role, and sometimes are half-way capable in a second.

I don't think this is 3 roles anymore than the czar has three roles as good aa, good anti ground, and a factory + air staging. It's at best two roles as a strong torpedo ship + mobile SML, and even then as I said I'd want the torpedos to be the point. The TML has always been mostly pointless and only gets real value when the enemy makes what's arguably a big mistake. It's stupidly easy to counter nuke sub tml.

Another option to nerf the nuke capability might be to require a SML (like T2/T3 factories require an HQ). Then nuke-subs may be a viable path to exhaust SMD missiles.

This drastically weakens the nuke aspect of it when that's already quite niche as FTX pointed out in the main post.

Idea that crosses my mind is missile-bombardment. Imagine UEF T2 cruiser having a child with a T3 static arty. The sub gets a single charge for a 'Strategic Missile Barrage', which when used, fires ~8 tactical missiles that actually have bonkers AOE (like T3 static arty, say 6) and quite solid damage (say 3-4k per missile). All of the missiles are launched at once, and they are spread out semi-randomly within an area about the size a nuke would usually damage. The missiles are tactical, which means TMD works against them, but they have say 2x HP (compared of conventional tacs from MMLs). They would still take a while to recharge, but not 5 or 7 or however many minutes they take atm, but say 2-3. It would also have limited range, but at least twice that of the battleships.

If you did this, you also eliminate some other problems (I didn't read everything people wrote, just the first 15ish posts): you don't have to remove TMD capabilities of battleships, and it's not countered by a single static TMD. If you pair them up with a couple of cruisers, then there's an even higher chance you get them to hit even with multiple TMD. They are also great at clearing out enemy navy, but they are not strong enough to wipe out T3 navy (doesn't feel like shit when on receiving end), and even parts of your t2 could survive - given it'd take 2-3 missiles to kill a destroyer (depending on actual damage decided on and unit vet). If you attack a naval production site with them, and the enemy is semi-defended, they still loose the existing defenses, which allows you to go in to finish them off. But it's not so strong that 1 random salvo will wipe the whole production (since it's presumably not strong enough to kill an HQ in 1 salvo, unless extremely lucky with missile distribution). This means that it's both satisfying from the attacker's perspective (it actually accomplishes something, and unless the enemy is very well prepared, you'll do some damage for sure), opening up avenues to push the balance, but it's also not so devastating that you wipe their whole navy, and the battle is over because of 1 missile.

P.S.: Nuke subs being 'better' at delivering nukes and whatnot is hogwash. On larger maps, they are limited by range, and on smaller ones the intel coverage is usually good enough to find any 'sneaky' sub. Having alternative 'angles' of approach for the nuke is rarely beneficial - occasions where the SMD doesn't cover the parts you would actually want to nuke are rare, and what nuke delivery boils down to in 99.9% of cases is either getting the nuke in fast (which subs are bad for), or sniping the SMD (which subs are as good at as SMLs are). In most games, the only time I don't build SMD as part of getting into T3, is when I'm rushing a SML. So yeah, 'you won't be expecting the nuke' argument is also non-applicable, since, even if one delays his SMD, the sub takes that much longer to make the nuke and position itself, that it's not gonna get there in time. Note that, as it stands, nuke subs on mid-large maps rely on you having won the navy already (assuming you plan to nuke bases). As they are right now, they are only good for thinning out the enemy's navy at great cost and time investment (which is to say, not good at all in total) - and all that assuming you are winning or equal in navy - if you are loosing, they are dead weight.

@fichom said in Nuke Sub Rework:

P.S.: Nuke subs being 'better' at delivering nukes and whatnot is hogwash. On larger maps, they are limited by range, and on smaller ones the intel coverage is usually good enough to find any 'sneaky' sub. Having alternative 'angles' of approach for the nuke is rarely beneficial - occasions where the SMD doesn't cover the parts you would actually want to nuke are rare, and what nuke delivery boils down to in 99.9% of cases is either getting the nuke in fast (which subs are bad for), or sniping the SMD (which subs are as good at as SMLs are). In most games, the only time I don't build SMD as part of getting into T3, is when I'm rushing a SML. So yeah, 'you won't be expecting the nuke' argument is also non-applicable, since, even if one delays his SMD, the sub takes that much longer to make the nuke and position itself, that it's not gonna get there in time. Note that, as it stands, nuke subs on mid-large maps rely on you having won the navy already (assuming you plan to nuke bases). As they are right now, they are only good for thinning out the enemy's navy at great cost and time investment (which is to say, not good at all in total) - and all that assuming you are winning or equal in navy - if you are loosing, they are dead weight.

I suggested to fix the intel problem by making them more difficult to detect, for example via trigger ability that gives them stealth (or even cloak) but prevents them from moving or attacking or even building a nuke while it is on, making them the threat they are supposed to be without the risk of accidentally discovering one by a random scout patrol and without them being an invisible win button either while maintaining the nuke submarine concept of the unit

maybe if range is a problem on even medium maps, increase their range as well

most importantly, if the nuke on submarines costed less (or should I say more proportional to its damage compared with sml) it could be used to wipe out enemy outlying firebases and mex clusters that don't have smd without it being a net loss in mass for the attacker which is the main reason no one uses them for it (need minimum of 15k or whatever damage in mass just to break even), this would be giving different uses to these 2 different levels of nukes, currently the only thing that has a similar purpose to this (mini nuking smaller base) is a billy nuke, and that gets stopped easily by tmd or even shield generators due to it being a tactical missile and extremely low damage and radius respectively (so just adding to/changing billy nukes to nuke submarines isn't a fix either)

total list of possible buffs (so far) that don't redesign them into something completely different:

• increase submarine nuke range
• increase submarine nuke speed (of nuke missile itself)
• increase submarine nuke damage / reduce submarine nuke cost (currently same cost as sml nuke while having less range and <1/3rd damage), I suggest reducing cost instead of increasing damage for reasons I explained above (tldr: mass effective nukes against smaller bases for 2 tiers of nukes with different uses)
• make nuke submarines more difficult to detect underwater at some downside (ex. immobile/completely "stunned" during stealth)

all at once may make them op but these are all options available to balance them with while keeping them "nuke submarines"

if you say they are useless for any "nuke purposes" in most situations, then that is what has to be fixed, their nuking capabilities/efficiencies, not the unit redesigned into something else that primarily exists for non-nuke missile use, at that point you deleted the original unit and put something else in its place, now that is hogwash

so yes I suggested to make them better at being nuke submarines, what you (and many others) are suggesting is to forget the nuke part of them because it currently doesn't work well (and instead of fixing that you choose to double down on it?) and turn them into some kinds of tactical missile ships that I don't agree this unit is about and like someone else mentioned, neither will be the newcomers that already know it as nuke submarine from non-faf versions or many other players that don't pay attention to balance forums

if such a unit is needed then maybe it should be created as a new one instead or added to different useless existing one (aircraft carriers maybe, at least missile barrage from them would make sense especially since they could have unique mercy-like aircraft they could be the only ones to build, aka homing anti ship missile, to barrage enemy fleet with from distance (or even a medium range missile that lands into water and becomes a torpedo, to deal with certain annoying underwater units like HARMS that otherwise need exploits to deal with, the possibilities are endless), instead of being giant defenseless radars they currently are)

and with nuke submarines being "useless unless you already won navy", imo they are not supposed to be something you build to win navy by attacking navy with them directly like just another battleship, just like you don't build strats to take out enemy asf with, you build them to attack ground, which may very well win you air indirectly or the game itself, you do the same with nuke submarines to take out enemy bases, not their navy, because not every unit needs to be a direct combat unit against its own layer, some exist to push the advantage you have, to outside of the layer

@mach said in Nuke Sub Rework:

I suggested to fix the intel problem by making them more difficult to detect, for example via trigger ability that gives them stealth (or even cloak) but prevents them from moving or attacking or even building a nuke while it is on, making them the threat they are supposed to be without the risk of accidentally discovering one by a random scout patrol and without them being an invisible win button either while maintaining the nuke submarine concept of the unit

This might sound good on paper, but I don't think it's realistically viable - even if you had an ability that went full cloak+stealth, this requires you to be actively monitoring your sub 24/7. And even if you did, how could you ever predict a Spy Plane/Torp bomber flying up above? Sounds cool, but it is either too much work, or would be op if somehow automated.

maybe if range is a problem on even medium maps, increase their range as well

The problem is, where do you draw the line? Their current range is quite good, given they are near the enemy coast. But if you make it very large, then on many maps you wouldn't even have to leave your dock, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of the unit. And how they are often used - build them, start a nuke, wait for it to be finished, move it in closer for the nuke - because they are so expensive it's not worth risking a random T2 sub or a few torp bombers stumbling upon it. And even if you do argue 'we could make it cheaper' (which you do), it still doesn't change the fact that you are effectively parading your SML around the map without much protection (if they are supposed to be stealthy) - I'm pretty sure in 99% of cases, you wouldn't build an SML in an unprotected position just to get an 'odd angle' on the enemy.

most importantly, if the nuke on submarines costed less (or should I say more proportional to its damage compared with sml) it could be used to wipe out enemy outlying firebases and mex clusters that don't have smd without it being a net loss in mass for the attacker which is the main reason no one uses them for it (need minimum of 15k or whatever damage in mass just to break even), this would be giving different uses to these 2 different levels of nukes, currently the only thing that has a similar purpose to this (mini nuking smaller base) is a billy nuke, and that gets stopped easily by tmd or even shield generators due to it being a tactical missile and extremely low damage and radius respectively (so just adding to/changing billy nukes to nuke submarines isn't a fix either)

total list of possible buffs (so far) that don't redesign them into something completely different:

• increase submarine nuke range
• increase submarine nuke speed (of nuke missile itself)
• increase submarine nuke damage / reduce submarine nuke cost (currently same cost as sml nuke while having less range and <1/3rd damage), I suggest reducing cost instead of increasing damage for reasons I explained above (tldr: mass effective nukes against smaller bases for 2 tiers of nukes with different uses)
• make nuke submarines more difficult to detect underwater at some downside (ex. immobile/completely "stunned" during stealth)

As previously addressed, giving it range will boil down to two problems: not enough range, so you are still forced to park it on the enemy shoreline, or so much you never even have to get close.

Unit speed won't help. And people are maybe forgetting, but I'd just like to remind that only the Cybran Nuke Sub has stealth - others are exposed by sonar, and T3 sonar, which is relatively cheap and I'd argue a must in a naval composition, outranges it (god forbid you move it more central to a water zone).

Buffing the missile speed won't change much, except in the scenario where you are nuking navy - but you are against that, so let's presume that moot.

Changing the price/strength might be a good idea, but keep in mind SML are as efficient as they are because they serve only one role - to nuke. On the other hand, not only do nuke subs have the TML capability, they also come with a handy T3 naval factory that allows you to diverge your initial plans. Given that, I'd argue you should never approach the efficiency of a SML with a nuke sub. Currently, you don't but if you ever do, I could see players building T3 naval yards in random pond near their base to get a cheaper nuke...

if you say they are useless for any "nuke purposes" in most situations, then that is what has to be fixed, their nuking capabilities/efficiencies, not the unit redesigned into something else that primarily exists for non-nuke missile use, at that point you deleted the original unit and put something else in its place, now that is hogwash

so yes I suggested to make them better at being nuke submarines, what you (and many others) are suggesting is to forget the nuke part of them because it currently doesn't work well (and instead of fixing that you choose to double down on it?) and turn them into some kinds of tactical missile ships that I don't agree this unit is about and like someone else mentioned, neither will be the newcomers that already know it as nuke submarine from non-faf versions or many other players that don't pay attention to balance forums

if such a unit is needed then maybe it should be created as a new one instead or added to different useless existing one (aircraft carriers maybe, at least missile barrage from them would make sense especially since they could have unique mercy-like aircraft they could be the only ones to build, aka homing anti ship missile, to barrage enemy fleet with from distance (or even a medium range missile that lands into water and becomes a torpedo, to deal with certain annoying underwater units like HARMS that otherwise need exploits to deal with, the possibilities are endless), instead of being giant defenseless radars they currently are)

The whole problem is the main reason nuke subs are currently pretty obsolete is there already is a better unit filling that niche - the SML. There really is no need to have another unit that does the same thing, but worse. Also, give this a thought: you are giving a game-ending capability to a somewhat cheap T3 unit. All other game-enders are super-high cost static emplacements, or if mobile, are mounted on experimentals. Like the Tempest or Scathis. Tempest is effectively a T3 Static arty on a boat. No other T3 unit (other than the nuke-capable ones) has the game-ender capability. They are either base buildings or experimentals.

The issue of 'what will new players do omg' is a non-issue, given how much is already different compared to the original SupCom and FA.

and with nuke submarines being "useless unless you already won navy", imo they are not supposed to be something you build to win navy by attacking navy with them directly like just another battleship, just like you don't build strats to take out enemy asf with, you build them to attack ground, which may very well win you air indirectly or the game itself, you do the same with nuke submarines to take out enemy bases, not their navy, because not every unit needs to be a direct combat unit against its own layer, some exist to push the advantage you have, to outside of the layer

The problem with this analogy is you are comparing 2 air units that have different targets - air and ground, to 2 naval units that have same targets - ground. Sure, not every unit has to be, that's why we have MMLs, MAA, and so on. But nuke subs are a bad example of this concept, because they are, in fact, designed to strike at (usually) naval targets. Because of their high power (nuke), they have to be slow (time-wise to get a nuke ready). This means that, in any realistic situation, even if you are planning to use a nuke sub to take down a base, that base more than likely already has a SMD. Which means you are in the end forced to use it - against enemy's navy. This is even more evident from the fact that, the moment you launch a nuke from a nuke sub, and the nuke gets detected, players will know there's a nuke sub, and unless they lost navy, your sub is dead - takes like what, 10-12 torps to take it down in one wave, half that if the sub is not surrounded by other naval forces - which you are heavily implying would be the solution for them, to go 'stealthily on their own'.

At the end of the day, what we need is a unit that fills a particular role, and Nuke subs do not do that. And if you make them as good as SMLs, then SMLs become obsolete on naval maps, which is just shifting the problem. What is a better solution IMO, is to have the unit serve a purpose other units don't.

P.S.: there is no "nuke sub" - that's just a nickname people give it because they launch 'nukes'. Their name is 'Strategic missile submarine' - and while again this is usually abbreviated to 'nuke', a strategic missile doesn't need to mean 'nuke' - it can mean it, sure, but it can also mean a missile of strategic scale. I'd take the liberty of generalizing 'tactical' scale as one that focuses on taking out one particular target, while 'strategic' scale is a weapon capable of wiping out an entire area or in general turn the tide on its own. Like in general, I'd categorize weapons in three categories - operational, tactical and strategic. Most units fall under the 'operational' scale, some fall under tactical (say mobile arty, or T3 battleships, and the obvious TMLs, I'd even put Novax under this category). And then some are strategic - most experimentals, T3 Static Arty and Nuke launchers. With the example I gave (and not saying that is THE way to go about it), it still stays a strategic weapon - it just doesn't do a nuke.

What is the typical time from building a sml to launching

V

Typical time building the sub tand launching

Should both be 5 minutes.

@ftxcommando said in Nuke Sub Rework:

Should both be 5 minutes.

Indeed, and it appears battleship takes a bit longer - it has a stronger nuke than the subs, but weaker than the SMLs. It also has same BP/s as the subs (1080), but it appears the nuke it makes take more BP (and does 20% more dmg).

I mean wonder ss a note smd water buildable again. /ponder

@fichom said in Nuke Sub Rework:

Idea that crosses my mind is missile-bombardment.

Interesting idea, but still countered quite well by Aeon TMD. Maybe not too well if spread enough, but in this case the attack seems OP (destroying most non-T3 structures, potentially also those, in an area as large as a nuke).

Another option might simply be manual-build TML missiles (to stockpile) with very rapid launch capabilities (so easy to overload non-Aeon TMD), though arguably worse vs Aeon TMD.

@cyborg16 said in Nuke Sub Rework:

Interesting idea, but still countered quite well by Aeon TMD. Maybe not too well if spread enough, but in this case the attack seems OP (destroying most non-T3 structures, potentially also those, in an area as large as a nuke).

Well I was more imagining missiles being launched one by one within say 1.5-2 seconds. And the area would be quite large, again, about as big as a nuke - imagine drawing 8 arty-explosion-radius circles inside a nuke-radius circle. And yes, each missile is in essence a small-radius tactical nuke, so it does bunch of damage, but in a small radius - again, more akin to static T3 arty.

And this kind of attack wiping out most buildings (if you don't have any defences against) doesn't sound OP to me - keep in mind it currently launches a nuke (a weaker one, but a nuke nonetheless). Also, keep in mind these missiles would be blocked by shields as well. So it's not like you could just chuck it and wipe out a base (we are talking stage of the game where the enemy also has T3).

Also, a lot of structures don't get wiped out by a single missile (though larger ones have a higher chance to get struck by multiple). How many missiles (presuming 4k dmg per missile) to destroy a (cybran) building/unit:

• 1 missile: T2 [Land & Air factory, mex, arty, PG, Rhino, Cruiser]; T3 [SMD, SML, SM Sub]
• 2 missiles: T2 [Land & Air factory HQ, Naval factory, Destroyer]; T3 [Land & Air factory, mex, PG, SAM, Brick]
• 3 missiles: T2 [Naval factory]; T3 [Land & Air factory HQ, Arty, Gate, unupgraded ACU]; T4 [Scathis]
• 4+ missiles: T3 Naval HQ (5 missiles), T3 Carrier (5), T3 Battleship (12), Monkeylord (12), Soul Ripper(23), Megalith (28)

The way I'm imagining it is, a unit getting hit by 3 missiles will be hard (especially if it's not a large unit, say ACU), and 4 will be very hard. 5 should be nigh impossible (which means you, in essence, shouldn't be able to take out an unprotected T3 naval HQ). And these values are for somewhat non-tanky Cybrans. You can imagine adding +1 extra missile needed for many buildings of UEF.

And again, all values I give (dmg, area, amount of missiles, delay between missiles) and don't give (reload time, cost, range) can be adjusted so it feels right. Maybe, because of the relative strength of TMDs vs TMLs, you could make the missile faster than the regular TMDs, or you could make it so it's actually like 40 missiles with smaller area (so it's more akin to a single-charge Scathis attack). You could also introduce some differences between factions - like making seraphim actually use regular shells instead of missiles, since it's coming from a battleship, and maybe make some factions have more or less missiles in a salvo - I'd argue you'd give cybran more missiles (with slightly reduced dmg), since they can't easily choke TMD (while UEF and Aeon can with their T2 cruiser/T3 Missile boat).

Another option might simply be manual-build TML missiles (to stockpile) with very rapid launch capabilities (so easy to overload non-Aeon TMD), though arguably worse vs Aeon TMD.

Maybe, so it would essentially work like a regular T2 TML with very short time between missiles - but I'd guarantee you that then, players would just spam-target the same unit they really want dead (say a T3 Naval HQ or ACU) - and that kinda feels not as appealing.