BHG - Why do nukes kill silos?

[Timeline]

Yes it's true, if a player chooses to launch a massive nuclear strike on all your carefully spaced apart missile silos - you are done for.

You only have a few seconds to respond with your nuclear weapons before they are destryed, and the chances of you actually hitting anywhere important are slim since you are in a MAD rush to hit back...

My question is, why oh why do nukes take out missile silos anyways?

Realism: In real life, there is no advantage to striking first with nuclear weapons.

Missile silos are built underground for a reason - to survive a nuclear explosion and fire back at the enemy who attacked you. This is done to assure the enemy that even if he can bomb you before you can activiate your nuclear arsonal, he must still face the wraith of revenge.

Game Balance: There is no balance when you have spent thousands of units of oil and time making a nuclear arsonal, in order to provide an effective detterant, only to have it obliterated in a mere few seconds by another player's nuke while you are in the diplomacy screen, chatting, in the bathroom, or managing a battle.

Silos should not be harmed by nukes. They should require an air force strike or ground assault to take out just like wonders.

Doing this, will give us, the players M.A.D. and sound game balance.

The winner in a RoN nuclear war should NOT be determined by the fastest clicker.

Now, having said all that, I bet there's probably a reason you guys designed nukes like this, and have already thought of everything I said I would really love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please respond!

Or maybe better yet, you have already made these changes in the Gold version.

Happy gamming

[Sean]

A very important question indeed!

[Inverse Icarus]

you cant see silos until they launch, unless you scout them out.

[Timeline]

You can't see silos until they launch! Perfect- by this time they are empty anyway.


It's so easy to send in a few commandos and pin-point enemy silo instillations, and then launch a missile strike.

You lose your nukes, you lose your airbases, maybe even your army. And you can't hit them even though you had silos ready to go.

Being destroyed by nukes is one thing, but you should be able to hit back if you had silos that were loaded and ready to fire!!!


On the other side of the coin - if silos could not be nuked:

You could bomb his cities and cause massive economic damage. Also, you would still have nukes ready if anyone tried to take advantage of the untimely situation and invade you. Or, you could regroup, and send in your own commandos to pulverize him with precision nuclear strikes.

I think it's a valid point...what do you guys think?

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Timeline
You can't see silos until they launch! Perfect- by this time they are empty anyway.


It's so easy to send in a few commandos and pin-point enemy silo instillations, and then launch a missile strike.

You lose your nukes, you lose your airbases, maybe even your army. And you can't hit them even though you had silos ready to go.

Being destroyed by nukes is one thing, but you should be able to hit back if you had silos that were loaded and ready to fire!!!


On the other side of the coin - if silos could not be nuked:

You could bomb his cities and cause massive economic damage. Also, you would still have nukes ready if anyone tried to take advantage of the untimely situation and invade you. Or, you could regroup, and send in your own commandos to pulverize him with precision nuclear strikes.

I think it's a valid point...what do you guys think?

when you get nuked, it tells you and shows you WHERE and gives you an estimate of WHEN (ie, how long you have), so you have a chance.

you can fire using the minimap as well.

you can also assign each silo to a control number and launch them easily

i do that a lot with planes, actually.

[FrostyBoy]

shouldn't the silo's just automatically launch the nukes when a nuke has been fired towards you? and of course when you click on the silo, you have an option to turn auto on and auto off. also even better, if it was on auto, you could also tell it which city to strike.

[albiedamned]

When you get the message that you're being nuked, use the hotkey 'X' to select your silos and just launch everything. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Press X, click on an enemy city on the minimap, right click the target to launch, press X again for the next silo, wash, rinse, repeat until you run out of nukes. That would be the complete panic mode reaction to the situation. A slightly more reasoned reaction would be to look at which city has been targetted and press X to cycle through your silos until you get to the ones near that city. But that takes more time. Personally, I would just hit Pause in this situation. In multiplayer, this would be where you want to use Cannon Time I guess.

[Timeline]

An auto-nuke would be very cool.

As uber mentioned, (hi uber ) you do indeed get a warning of about 5 - 7 seconds that nukes are inbound toward you.

But as I said, 5 - 7 seconds just isnt alot of time to plan an effective nuclear strike, esp if you're busy elswhere at the moment. I suppose you could hit his major cities if your lucky. But the enemy had been planning his stirke a long time, scouting you, targeting your silos, army, everything of value....and now you have 7 seconds to fire and only allowed to hit his cities????

Nukes should survive so you can plan an effective counter attack. Locate his army, nuke it. Make him PAY!

On the plus side of all of this, cannon time in multi may help some... if the hosts allow it to be activated.

With cannon time you could see if he is aiming at your silos, and if he is, fire the weapons inside before they are destroyed. Also you would have time to check that maybe he didn't fire at your silos, and realize you can hold on to them a bit longer.

Interesting debate, I can't wait to see what BHG's thoughts are.

The silo survival thing could always be easily added to a patch if they choose to do so.

[Timeline]

Originally posted by albiedamned
When you get the message that you're being nuked, use the hotkey 'X' to select your silos and just launch everything. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Press X, click on an enemy city on the minimap, right click the target to launch, press X again for the next silo, wash, rinse, repeat until you run out of nukes. That would be the complete panic mode reaction to the situation. A slightly more reasoned reaction would be to look at which city has been targetted and press X to cycle through your silos until you get to the ones near that city. But that takes more time. Personally, I would just hit Pause in this situation. In multiplayer, this would be where you want to use Cannon Time I guess.

He he, yeah, go cannon time!

I didn't know about the X thing, that could be helpful. Although if you had all your silos hotkeyed you could just click all your tagets on the mini-map and bombs away.

I'm not so much concerned over lack of time to respond, but mainly if I were to say "brb", and some jerk nuked me to ashes while i was gone LOL. I suppose if I were in a crucial battle it would not be good either.

I have some other suggestions though for BHG also: Have a different "Nuke Alarm" sound when nukes are fired at you, as opposed to other players. The current wave scares the heck out of me everytime because I hear the sirons and alarms and think they are aimed at me, until I look at the mini-map readout.

It seems that kind of "end of the world" wav that's used in the game should ONLY be used if I am being nuked.

I know, I'm picky, but I couldn't help myself.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Sn00py
shouldn't the silo's just automatically launch the nukes when a nuke has been fired towards you? and of course when you click on the silo, you have an option to turn auto on and auto off. also even better, if it was on auto, you could also tell it which city to strike.

well, that would suck with the armegeddon counter, wouldn't it?

[FrostyBoy]

oh, sorry, I haven't played the game that far yet, I seem to be editing the xml files more than anything else lol


I would just pause the game, set all your nukes to go where you want them to go, then unpause the game, the pause is not your average pause button

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Sn00py
oh, sorry, I haven't played the game that far yet, I seem to be editing the xml files more than anything else lol


I would just pause the game, set all your nukes to go where you want them to go, then unpause the game, the pause is not your average pause button

multiplayers wouldnt like that,

[albiedamned]

I've dabbled in RTS (AoK, AoM) before but I always like to play on the slowest speed and hit pause a lot. So I've never been bold enough to try online multiplayer. I'm trying hard with RoN to pause less, but I still strongly prefer playing on very slow. I'm really hoping that when the online RoN stuff gets going, there will be games out there for players like me who want it slow and don't mind enabling cannon time. If the TBS crowd gets into RoN as BHG is hoping, then I suspect there will be a lot of other players out there like me.

[Bridger]

Ok, maybe the earlier atom bombs couldn't destory silos, but dude, chynine mountain (sp?) can't even withstand a direct hit from a present day nuke. it was DESIGNED specificallly to survive, but that was in the days of the cold war. Nukes have become even more powerful. They've packed more and more **** into them every decade. I don't see why a direct or near-miss of a silo shouldn't take it out. Think of the shock alone would crumble the concrete, even if it was rinforced and 5 feet thick...

Oh, and if you want to be really cleaver, the instant you see "nuclear launch detected" hit the pause button find your silos, select them, find where you want to strike, and hit the pause button again. Now you can retailiate mear instants after his were fired!


P.S. Chynaine mountain is the base of the NORAD, which is a joint operation between the U.S. and canada as an early warning system for nukes. Don't Remember what NORAD standes for though, North American D-something.

[Bridger]

Originally posted by albiedamned
I've dabbled in RTS (AoK, AoM) before but I always like to play on the slowest speed and hit pause a lot. So I've never been bold enough to try online multiplayer. I'm trying hard with RoN to pause less, but I still strongly prefer playing on very slow. I'm really hoping that when the online RoN stuff gets going, there will be games out there for players like me who want it slow and don't mind enabling cannon time. If the TBS crowd gets into RoN as BHG is hoping, then I suspect there will be a lot of other players out there like me.

Actually if you find other people like you, there is a "free pause" option that allows you to give commands while the game is paused. If you go online and search for a room with this setting on you'll probably be in the compony of other players who like your style.