Missile idea

[Ben Williams]

I thought of a great way in increase the realism of missiles without making it over complex. The idea is that warheads and missile would be produced seperatly, and you could "load" a warhead on a missile just like you would on a transport. Then increaseing the strength or range of missiles would be a simple matter of adding a few units. As tech advances, you could have more advanced warheads (cruise missiles should get more powerful later in the game, as well as nukes). Some of these missiles could be loadable onto ships and such. Naturally you don't have a lot of ICBM's with weak little warheads on them, but later in the game you could have a choice, like in the real world.

[Cyclotron]

Why? What is the point of this feature? Does it improve gameplay? If not, then I reiterate... Why?

[Ben Williams]

Because it gives you a choice about the range and power of your missiles. There are cruise missiles that go way further than those in civ, and they're are conventional weapons capapule of destroying much more. It means more choice and more room to expand, and I just think it sounds cool.

[johncmcleod]

I think it would be cool, but then again, it just makes everything a lot more complicated for a small change in gameplay.

[Jethro83]

A good idea. But who would really want to use the short-ranged tactical missiles, regardless of how powerful or not they are, if you can build the ICBM and place the warhead of your choice onto it.

Anyway, it means that to be able to nuke them and still have at least some semi-productive land left to conquer, you'd need to put a bit more effort into warfare, due to the short range of the tactical nuke, which apparantly doesn't leave as much fallout as the ICBM. All you do with the ICBM is push a button, and you can decimate a city on the opposite side of the world. There needs to be a huge penalty to counteract the huge bonus of being able to nuke any target in the world.

I prefer the system as it is now. If you want to nuke to soften their defences, load a few nuclear subs with tactical nukes and send them with your expeditionary force (if they're on another landmass. Substitute for cities closer to the front in the case of a land war). If on the other hand you want to nuke to deter the enemy from attacking you again, and are not interested in conquest, then use ICBMs.

[codemast01]

Why must we fear what is the "complicated"? I recently tried Alpha Centauri for the first time. Interchanging parts worked great for SMAC. Diplomacy is also something that has been, at best unchanged, at worst dumbed down from previous civ games. Where are the cease fires? Where is the ablity to threaten another civ into an alliance? Where is unit trading? Where is the base sharing (friendly troops can station in allied cities in SMAC) with allied civs? This is what simplicity gives you -- A shallow non-immersing (therefore non-addicting) game.

Oh yeah. Btw I like that interchanging parts idea.

[Jethro83]

The point is though, this game is NOT SMAC. There are so many SMAC features we want to see in current and future Civ titles, but there are still those on the outside who do find these features complicated (why? I don't know).

I don't fear the complicated, you obviously don't. But there are people out there who do.

Anyway, complication isn't the reason for my argument against.

Being able to launch a tactical warhead in a global-ranged missile would upset balance. Tactical nukes have a limited range. But their bonus is that they do less damage to surrounding terrain. ICBMs have unlimited range, but the penalty is that their devastation is immense, and leaves most of the surrounding land useless. I'd say that balance is fine.