The nuke imbalance issue - an analysis and proposed superior solutions
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please don't nerf nukes into just another normal explosion but slightly bigger, this is the only game I know of that has them properly powerful and not some minor inconvenience, when a nuke lands, it should destroy everything in the area, it is a... nuke
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Or we can just make nukes cost more, exactly as we did, without some stupid total rebalancing of the unit feel.
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Range of 725 doesn’t solve any part of the issue. You essentially stop air players from nuking each other on sentons, but this was already basically impossible without some insane nuke rush cheese. Assuming comparable skill in both players, they’ll both have comparable eco to stop it. The problem with nukes is that it forces all slots to play with the reality that a player that is in a stagnant slot can always make it and if you are not at around a third to a half full t3 mex when he does make it, you’re dead. This reality directly hurts the spawns closer to combat than other spawns.
The slots nukes would actually work on and still allow a snowball win on any decent 20x20 would still be getting nuked and allowing a snowball win.
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@ftxcommando said in The nuke imbalance issue - an analysis and proposed superior solutions:
Range of 725 doesn’t solve any part of the issue. You essentially stop air players from nuking each other on sentons, but this was already basically impossible without some insane nuke rush cheese. Assuming comparable skill in both players, they’ll both have comparable eco to stop it. The problem with nukes is that it forces all slots to play with the reality that a player that is in a stagnant slot can always make it and if you are not at around a third to a half full t3 mex when he does make it, you’re dead. This reality directly hurts the spawns closer to combat than other spawns.
The slots nukes would actually work on and still allow a snowball win on any decent 20x20 would still be getting nuked and allowing a snowball win.
Depends where you place the nuke on setons and what you define as the base, i.e. core mexes or all mexes or the usual navy yard locations. Take 700 as range, you would have to have a secure navy to place it on the coast as close as possible to reach more than 2 key locations of the opposite team's bases from the navy slots, front could reach 3-4 bases, air only 1 base. I don't see how you think that isn't doing something.
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Yada yada. Why are you so hell bent on killing the unit fantasy, instead of balancing it in current state?
What do you accomplish by killing the current feeling of the unit? And how powerful it feels to use? -
@xiaomao said in The nuke imbalance issue - an analysis and proposed superior solutions:
Yada yada. Why are you so hell bent on killing the unit fantasy, instead of balancing it in current state?
What do you accomplish by killing the current feeling of the unit? And how powerful it feels to use?I frankly do not have any idea why you post on matters you clearly have nothing to add to. All you do is complain and give useless criticism with no factual evidence or any level of conceptual analysis to back it up.
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Are you now just pretending to be stupid? A feel of a unit is important to how players feel about it. What you are proposing in both cases neuters the unit making it nothing like the current tool. Which feels great to use across different scenarios.
Option 1 kills the feeling of the unit by making it feel like nothing but expensive TML which already feels lackluster even though it's very powerful tool. Thus killing the unit fantasy.
Option 2 falls under the same problem of making the unit feel like just a little bit more fancy TML instead of a game ender that it is supposed to be, not to mention totally killing the idea of it being the great ballistic missile we know from real life. All off that while adding unnecessary layer of frustration for such big and important building being range restricted to range smaller than t3 artillery...
If you can't take this into account I don't think you are person who should work on balance. As it's not just numbers but also feel of the unit.
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I'd say the way units feel is even more important than the numbers. Nukes should be scary and overpowered and fun, everyone in real life has to fear them when one player gets them as well. Retaining large effective AOE and unlimited range are important to that I think. Increasing the cost of nukes is fine. Increasing the cost of SMD could be good as well, I don't like that TMD and SMD just get auto-built without any scouting or thought most of the time.
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@thomashiatt said in The nuke imbalance issue - an analysis and proposed superior solutions:
I'd say the way units feel is even more important than the numbers. Nukes should be scary and overpowered and fun, everyone in real life has to fear them when one player gets them as well. Retaining large effective AOE and unlimited range are important to that I think. Increasing the cost of nukes is fine. Increasing the cost of SMD could be good as well, I don't like that TMD and SMD just get auto-built without any scouting or thought most of the time.
So in that case; how about a smaller inner ring but an even larger outer ring than current with say 2500 outer ring damage. That would wipe out all shield buildings, mass storage T2 mass fabs all T1 & T2 units and damage everything else severely. Why would that take away any of the feel and not be scary?
Many T3 buildings would survive in the outer ring limiting the effectiveness of nukes. I just don’t think 70k damage over a large footprint and a tiny outer ring doing close to nothing is reasonable. -
Another direction to go is make them travel much slower and/or announce where enemy nukes are targeted. Would make nukes more of a base elimination weapon than "select and delete T4 army".
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Nukes are already quite hard to hit at moving armies. Making them even more obvious totally kills their viability as anti army tool, unless you are aiming at armies that are literally at your doorstep. Currently every decent player upon hearing the Nuke launch is gonna split all of their armies and units, so making this gamble even more unpredictable for the player nuking the army is gonna kill everyones will to actually even try sniping anything that's not 2km away from you.
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in my opinion it should be even more in other direction: enemy nukes shouldn't be announced at all unless/when you have intel over them
it's just another broken thing in intel system, giving you free info, similar to knowing when enemy destroys/upgrades a building you scouted 10 minutes ago even if you didn't have any intel over it at the time, because the icon changed color, it makes no sense
and if they moved any slower there would be enough time to reclaim the base before the nuke arrives (yes I already do this on expensive buildings sometimes)
as a counter to no warning given, I suggest nukes should be targettable by anti air fire until they reach space (novax altitude), so air can destroy them until then, once they are in space though, only smd should be able to stop them, even once they start descending to target (hp rebalancing would be needed obviously)
