Cruise Missiles

[Urban Ranger]

Kaiser: military hardware in the US is at least several mangnitudes higher than other countries. Everybody have heard of the $8000 hammer. So what is expensive in the US is not necessarily expensive elsewhere. Also, the Soviets and the Chinese have cruise missiles.

All: sure, cruise missiles can carry nukes or biochem warheads, but IMHO, the cruise missiles in Civ2 carry only conventional warheads.

[Par4]

Good point about the infantry although they should be able to seriously damage infantry and tank divisions. A cruise missile should be more for wiping out military bases/infastructure/naval units. Miniture nukes like neutron bombs and emp bombs could be loaded specially into missile deployments. I still picture the cruise missiles as more of a weapon of keeping losses down or getting into heavily guarded cities. Your civ has had many deaths and the people are mad. So you bite the bullet and go for cruise missiles and bypass the SAM sites that have been blasting your planes and losing many lives. I think they should be more tied with popular opinion and thus democratic civs. The infastructure of cruise missile launches is extensive you have your satelites, laser guidance, radar, remote control, launching platforms, construction centers, all that computer crap in em, expensive stuff.

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I use this email
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[Napoleon I]

I think it would be reasonable to let any nation build cruise missiles. After all the only reason stopping North Korea from building them is the fact that it would not be able to use them. However, the major advantage of cruise missiles would be the fact that they would not cause unhappiness, so fundamentalists and communists would automatically be prevented from building them because to them the advantages of cruise missiles would be useless.
Also CMs should be able to do some heavy damage to the infrastructure (check out pictures of Kosovo after NATO bombing). For example, a city hit with a cruise missile will not contribute to the treasury that turn (all resources are converted to local use).

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Napoleon I

[Biddles]

If the unit workshop idea is incorporated into civ3 than these problems can be solved easily. The cruise missile is your chassis than you choose the warhead (chemical, bio, nuke, conventional) and the targeting system (precision, good, average, poor, who really gives a rat's a@#) and the propulsion (high speed, average speed, slow speed). Only precision targeting systems would be able to target individual buildings. But for something like a nuke you wouldn't really care about it's targeting because a poor system is going to still place it over the city and a nuke will blow it all away. The propulsion would affect the countermeasures that your enemy throws up. It would be hard for them to launch countermeasures against a fast missile but easy against a slow missile. The better components that you use the more expensive the missile is.

I agree with the $20k hammer. It is just that the american beureucracy is just inefficient (either that or those black ops take up a lot of cash!).

The ability to be able to target individual structures is a must, and with precision targeting hardware should be 90%+ chance. To be able to cripple an oponents military or economy would be a good addition to the game. Think: Start a brief war, take out all his/her banks, markets, stockXchanges etc. Then make peace. Their economy will be crippled andd you will be sitting pretty.


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

[UltraSonix]

Just to divert back this thread - the problem about cruise missiles that was discussed was that in reality they are built to save the lives of pilots, but are very expensive. So to represent this in the game, the missiles could take a lot energy(shields/whatevers) to build, but then more importantly would have a higher morale (morale as in SMAC) than a normal unit.

And I love Biddles' idea abou the unit workshop thing with different payloads. BTW, is it Stratford as in near Sale - thought ISPs wouldn't even exist over there...

This is for the rest of 'em:

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...
[This message has been edited by UltraSonix (edited May 24, 2000).]

[Mo]

This idea should be widely implemented not only to cruise missiles, but to all air units and artillary units. Also I think that when you tell say an attack fighter to kill a carrier you should also be given an option as to how much emphasis they put on returning alive and how much on destroying the objective. You could tell them to suicide bomb the carrier, which would have a greater chance of succeding than if you told them to just drop their bombs where ever and retreat if it looks like they are facing overwhelming odds. Cruise missiles would always be at the suicide level of kill accuracy.

[Biddles]

UltraSonix: I actually live in Melbourne now. They do have ISP's over in Sale (Well, ILTNSP's - internet little to no service providers).

By the way, what do you mean we don't have kangaroos and koalas in our backyards? We do in the sticks. (Until the farmers see them anyway)

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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission
[This message has been edited by Biddles (edited May 25, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

No, don't say that!

Besides, in the city we don't get kangaroos etc anyway --> that was what I was saying.

Anyway, back to the topic - weapons that are supposed to 'disposable' should have higher morale than people units to encourage their building. eg the cruise missiles as above, but also maybe things like robots, automated fighters/bombers, and spaced based weaponry.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[agent4043]

quote: Originally posted by tniem on 05-18-2000 03:15 PM Why would it be a future tech? The U.S. has missiles today that can hit the target that they want to hit. Supposedly it is acurate to a few feet.

I meant in game terms a future tech. Not in our relative terms today. Say civ3 uses a unit workshop like biddles mentioned. You'd initially be given a cruise missle with your basic conventional warhead, poor targeting, and slow speed. With later techs, you can then upgrade the warhead, targeting or propulsion system. This can then be used to extend the tech tree by upgrading any of our realistic units allowing the modern day game to go further.

One thing that always bugged me was how the technology advantage ended soon after I got to the end as I was no longer able to advance and eventually my enemies caught up.

And I agree that cruise missles should not cause unhappiness in a Democracy. I think that was done as they are primarily an offensive weapon but it has been said a good offensive is sometimes the best defense.

[Biddles]

UltraSonix: By Morale do you mean 'experience' morale or 'Esprit de corp' morale?

Something you said got me thinking though, robots. It isn't all that far off ( ---> future tech). I can just imagine those enemy generals:
Master, Destroyers! (two droids roll out and start firing). Their shielded Master! The second general takes his lightsaber out of .... (Got a bit carried away there!).



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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

[Theben]

Well I'd rather Firaxis kept the strategic scope of the game in mind when designing any missile units. Do you really want a separate unit for a short ranged SAM, ground-to-ground, air-to-sea, and cruise for infrastructure targeting? Bah. Just give me a generic, all-purpose "missile" unit that can do all of these things. Then maybe I'll actually build some.
And make sure the AI knows how to use them.

[Theben]

And why should missiles be that expensive? A squadron of fighters or bombers would be MUCH more expensive.

[Biddles]

But should an all purpose missile have the ability to target individual structures? If so this would make the missile expensive because of it's usefulness, which would mean you wouldn't want to use them on anything other than structure targeting.


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

[Theben]

But it's still a one-shot unit, whereas the heavy bomber (if implemented as per many suggestions) would be able to do all the things I listed- except AA of course- and still survive to perform another mission in the future. So what would be a balanced ratio between the two in cost?

[The Joker]

I actually agree with everything Theben has said!