Atomics: up close and personal?

[Ahriman]

But then you have to keep the city

You could raze it when you capture it.

BTW, I am assuming that in the current nuke's 3x3 radius we are talking about the nuke leveling the mesas, etc in all nine squares not just the center target.

Well, if we're doing this then why not go the whole hog and make them expensive but EXTREME, where they turn mesa to flat, flat to sink and sink to desert?

My suggestion to creating a nuclear booby trap would be to create a unit, that has:
Zero movement ability, but could be loaded onto a transport and therefore dropped off in enemy territory if desired or elsewhere in your territory.
Can only "defend"
The unit is hidden / cloaked,
When the unit is defeated it sets of a nuke / stoneburner effect

If the unit is hidden/cloaked then an enemy unit will not attack it, they will occupy the same tile, like a spy. You can't kill a unit that you can't see.

Also, the AI would never understand how to use such a unit, and such a unit would be unthematic.
I don't see nuclear boobytraps anywhere in Dune lore.

that used a stoneburner in their city to try and repel the attacking fremen.

Using a nuke to try to save your city is different from using a nuke to destroy the city once it has already fallen.

Its a neat idea, but I think I'd probably prefer to just stick with the regular Stoneburner and Atomic, and *maybe* a spy mission that detonates one or the other.

 

[davidlallen]

If there's a mod around that has done this it would be interesting to look at the implementation.

Custom effects for nukes are easy. Hook onNukeExplosion, which gives you the plot and the nuking unit. I have used this in Fury Road (CvFuryRoadEvents.py) to give more precise control over which plots get fallout, and to remove food bonuses from nuked plots. Once you have the callback, you can do any normal CyPlot operation like changing terrain, looping units, etc.

 

[TomChick]

By the way, it seems that spice harvesters can't be nuked. I wasted a perfectly good atomic on a tile with a spice harvester, surrounded by tiles with spice harvesters. When what passed for a nuke effect had cleared, all the harvesters were still chugging along merrily. No fair!

Great discussion, guys. I love the idea of atomics have a disastrous effect on terrain, and also being tied into espionage somehow. The blinding effect is a great idea as well. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

-Tom

 

[Ahriman]

Another question: can espionage missions be tech-linked?

A fudge way of doing this would be to have a Plant Stoneburner mission that require an espionage promotion (Stoneburner conspirator?) that required whatever tech allowed the Stoneburner missile.
Might also be neat for gameplay to require the Stoneburner be triggered only by an *experienced* spy that has survived another mission, rather than some newly constructed vanilla dude.

I think we can probably agree that you shouldn't be able to build an Atomic device (as opposed to stoneburner) through espionage without the Atomics tech and the Convention Breached wonder having been built; its probably more complex to enable an espionage mission that requires a Project to have been completed by some faction.

 

[Folket]

Perhaps but references to the books in spoiler tags. I'm only on the first. =P

 

[davidlallen]

Spoiler tags on books which are 40 years old?

 

[Deliverator]

Bump. There are good ideas here - Stoneburner applying Blinded promos, etc - wouldn't want them to get buried.

 

[Ahriman]

Should we think about some of the stuff in this thread some more?
Where did we end up with ranges/carryability of the units, at least?

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

I've looked over the thread before, but I've got too much already slated to work on. If there are good ideas in here that can be done in xml (e.i. simple), they can be implemented. Anything more complex would be good to re-summarize but will probably need to wait.

 

[Ahriman]

The range adjustments (simple XML parameters) are probably the priority; everything else can wait.

I like the idea of Atomic = nuke = range 10.
Stoneburner = range 8 cruise missile that dies little damage but adds a "blinded" promotion to all infantry and guardsmen (and maybe others?) that gives a large strength penalty promotion, which is removed if they start a turn in a city with a hospital.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

I like the idea of Atomic = nuke = range 10.
Stoneburner = range 8 cruise missile that dies little damage but adds a "blinded" promotion to all infantry and guardsmen (and maybe others?) that gives a large strength penalty promotion, which is removed if they start a turn in a city with a hospital.

That's pretty easy, and yes, it should effect others I think, tanks and thopters have crews that need to be able to see. A single fits all affected units promotion is a little clunky and unimaginative of a mechanic possibly, maybe a few tiers for how badly effected the unit was by it (5%, 10%, 20% modifiers?).

Needing a hospital is a little harsh on invading units, and impossible on the AI if invading (and useless against most cities by then). If a unit can receive reinforcements in the field, they can replace blinded men in the field--have a probability to lose a level of it each turn sped up by a hospital. It's more work, but I'd be more satisfied with it.

And of course the promotion(s) will need artwork.

 

[Ahriman]

The exact implementation of blindness would need discussion.

From a gameplay/strategic purpose; what should be our design goal for differentiating these? The stoneburner should be cheaper and available earlier, but less devastating?

I worry that if we make the stoneburner just an anti-unit thing, then it could be even better than a full nuke, because it would allow you to devastate an enemy army without getting pollution or destroying the people/buildings in a city (which could be good if you intend to capture the city).

That's pretty easy, and yes, it should effect others I think, tanks and thopters have crews that need to be able to see

Well, arguably people in vehicles are going to be seeing the world through sensors rather than direct optics, so are unlikely to be affected. I'm agnostic here from a realism perspective, the goal should be to get something that works best from a gameplay perspective. I worry that unless the stoneburner has some drawback, the fact that it just harms units would be more appealing. But maybe the fact that it just gives strength penalty (rather than doing damage) is sufficient, because late game units might already have a lot of bonuses, so a unit with +40% from promotions and -50% from blindness is still not a total pushover.

I'm agnostic about whether/how blindness should be healable. I agree that requiring a movement to a city with a hospital could be not-fun and problematic for the AI. The recovery probability (boosted by #hospitals) might work fine.

I also do really like the idea of a nuke wiping out terraforming and spice and improvements, transforming mesa to rock, and transforming flatland to sink, in a 3x3 radius. It comes at the very end of the game, so it might be fun to use it to destroy the world.
But this is low priority.

 

[clearbeard]

For an easy, first pass my suggestion would be to make nukes = Vanilla BtS tactical nukes and stoneburners = Vanilla BtS cruise missiles (high damage against only one unit), with respect to range. Make suspensor destroyers (1-2 spots) and cruisers (4 spots) able to carry them. One advantage is the AI might even have a clue as to how to use them out of the box, as vanilla BtS loads and sends out nuclear armed missile cruisers quite frequently. In general I'm not in favor of making the missiles especially long ranged, for both gameplay and canon reasons.

Giving the Fremen some why to use them without first having to capture enemy suspensor craft would be a little trickier. Perhaps their spy units could be given 1 missile capacity? Not sure if a Fremen AI would understand.

For a slightly harder addition, I think stoneburners should still deal damage to only one unit, but always apply a blindness promo to it, and give like a 20% blinding chance for all other units in the stack. Blindness would be a permanent -20% combat strength. To counter, we introduce a "Tleilaxu Eyes" resource given to the Bene Tleilax in a tradeable quantity, perhaps at some TBD tech level. For distribution I would like to see it be freely distributed to anyone the Tleilaxu are friendly or better with. Not sure how hard all that is to code.

Ultimately, nukes that change the face of Arrakis like planet busters did in SMAC would be awesome, but I doubt that's trivial to get working.

My 0.02 spice credits.