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
Nuke Sub Rework
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
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
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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
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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
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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
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@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
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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
put the xbox units in the game pls u_u
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.
