Intercepting nukes

[mr_siika]

I'm sorry if this has been asked/observed multiple times, but I could not find a similar thread with the search function.
I tested intercepting nukes today with a hot seat multiplayer match against myself. AA-Guns and mobile SAMs did nothing, but my fighters thwarted every nuke attempt on my city or the tiles covered by the deployed fighters.

I nuked the hex outside the one-tile radius of the deployed fighter, but this did (of course) not hurt the fighter at all. So it is not possible to get through the fighter defence with several nukes.

I did not test this with the advanced nukes, just with bombers. I did not use any mods apart from a gui mod. Is this a known behaviour? Is there any further documentation available for this topic? Does anyone know more about this? Is there some sort of chance to intercept the nuke? Or does a fighter stop nukes 100% of the time?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Leyrann]

I have to admit I can't say anything for certain on Civ VI air combat, as I'm very bad at playing games out to the end, but assuming that the rules are the same as in V, then the idea of air combat and using bombers is that you first send fighters to sweep. Enemy fighters then intercept those fighters, they get into battles, and the enemy fighters have used their combat. Then you send in the bomber, wheter he has normal bombs or a nuclear bomb, and they can drop them. If you haven't used up the enemy fighters, however, they get intercepted and, well, you saw it happen. For the advanced nukes, I believe those are (even if not by name) ICBM's, right? From what I've heard, it's hard to impossible to stop them, which is an accurate depiction of real world (with it in the game being easier than in real life, apparently).

 

[mr_siika]

The problem with deployed fighters is, that most of the times you won't be able to stop them with your own fighters, because of the range (i think it's five as opposed to 10 bomber range). But I guess you may be right, if you have 4 deployed fighters and the enemy has 5 bombers, the last might get through.
I don't know about the thermo nuclear bombs, maybe the SAMs stop them?

 

[Leyrann]

The problem with deployed fighters is, that most of the times you won't be able to stop them with your own fighters, because of the range (i think it's five as opposed to 10 bomber range). But I guess you may be right, if you have 4 deployed fighters and the enemy has 5 bombers, the last might get through.
I don't know about the thermo nuclear bombs, maybe the SAMs stop them?

I'm not sure. For fighters, the idea is of course basing your fighters closer to the enemy.

 

[mr_siika]

True, 5 tiles might be doable as hardly any city manages to get a 5 tile radius around it within its borders... still I can't believe that there is no documentation on the fact(?) that my fighters blocked a nuke

 

[Leyrann]

True, 5 tiles might be doable as hardly any city manages to get a 5 tile radius around it within its borders... still I can't believe that there is no documentation on the fact(?) that my fighters blocked a nuke

They didn't block a nuke, they blocked a bomber carrying a nuke.

 

[mr_siika]

True again, guess the bomber would not have made it through with "conventional" weapons either... I should test this as soon as possible. Either the bomber is destroyed or there'll be another message similar to the one I posted above...

I did some more tests today... and I'm not as happy as I used to be. First, the fighters don't seem to protect all hexes in a 1 tile radius - only the one hex they are on. Second, nothing seems to be able to stop a nuke from a silo, even though the Mobile SAM displays an attack animation. Didn't try a missile cruiser though.

And third, nuking cities in hot seat mode seems to crash the game 50% of the time.

I guess the only hope you have against a nuke is to have no districts right next to the city center and to avoid working the tiles next to the city center when you expect a nuclear attack... I did not lose a single population one time.