Nuclear Weapons!

[Thalassicus]

I've been rolling around a few ideas with my roommates, and pretty much everyone agrees that the SMAC system of nuclear defense was better. So:

What do you think of these ideas? What changes or suggestions would you make? These haven't been implemented yet, just brainstorming.

- Remove SDI
- Bomb shelters reduce nuke damage by 50%

Interceptor Missiles:
- Require Rocketry and the Manhatten Project (by anyone)
- 500 hammers, double speed with Aluminum
- 25% chance of intercepting a nuclear attack
- +25% with Satellites
- +25% with Fusion
- Destroyed after an interception

Tactical Nukes:
- Require Rocketry and the Manhatten Project (by anyone)
- 300 hammers
- Can rebase to cities or submarines
- 12-tile range
- 25% damage to units on one tile (no damage cap)
- Fallout in a 1-tile radius
- Intercepted like ICBM's (for balance)
- Atrocity: -0.5 relations with that leader and their friends (no cap), -0.25 relations with all leaders (capped at -2)
- +1 war weariness, subject to modifiers

(Thermonuclear) ICBMs:
- Require Fusion
- 500 hammers
- Cannot be rebased
- 100% damage in a 1-tile radius
- Fallout in a 1-tile radius
- Destroys all city structures
- Atrocity: -2 relations with that leader and their friends, -1 relations with all leaders (no cap).
- Major Atrocity: All leaders cancel trades and refuse communication for 10 turns.
- Genocide: If the relation modifier reaches -5, all nations declare WAR!
- +2 war weariness, subject to modifiers


We've also been discussing various methods of MAD. Currently I don't find retaliation too much of a problem since Fallout costs 2 MP to enter; it's difficult to both nuke a city and take it on the same turn (except by sea). On the other hand, a popular idea is this:

- ICBM's can be damaged by a nuclear attack
- ICBM's have a Retaliation command. When selected, you choose a tile for it to automatically fire on if nuked during any player's turn.
- This displays a message "[PlayerB] has been targeted with an ICBM by [PlayerA]!"
- The targeted leader (if an AI) receives a modifier reducing aggressiveness against the nuke-wielding leader.

Then you can hold missiles in reserve if nuked by a third party, yet have many fire automatically if you suspect one leader will be the most likely to attack.

 

[Aranor]

why not take this idea to the next level and include boi and chemical weapons as well????

 

[Lapoleon]

This souds very promising, the nuclear weapon system in civ 4 at the moment is quite boring. This will make it far more interesting, I especially like the idea of a retaliation function .

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

It would be rather Tedious to manualy "Aim" each Nuke at the desired target, perhaps it can simply be done automaticaly. Each Nuke hits the attackers city in size order for maximum devestation.

Also I found Planet Busters in SMAC to be a bit too powerfull, they can obliterate whole CONTINENTS not just bases.

 

[Osymandias]

i have tried to set sdi so that it can be build when satelites and future-tech is researched. but i havent figured it out how it works..... i think it is just wrong that sdi is aviable with satelites. i dont think that sputnik was a sdi-satelite......

 

[Thalassicus]

Also I found Planet Busters in SMAC to be a bit too powerfull, they can obliterate whole CONTINENTS not just bases.

Agreed, we're thinking about implimenting the SMAC system of missile defense, rather than the weapons themselves (now clarified in the post)

..."Aim" each Nuke at the desired target, perhaps it can simply be done automaticaly. Each Nuke hits the attackers city in size order for maximum devestation.

You bring up a good point of micromanagement if the player builds a whole lot of nukes. There's been a lot of discussion over how much automation should be in a retaliation system, if implimented.

Consider the situation where a third party launches a tactical nuke at you from a stealthed submarine off your coast: if you're at war with both parties, in the game, as in real life, you wouldn't have any idea who nuked you.

A manually targeted system brings in an element of strategy to decide if you're going to target or not, and how much. An automated system would impliment an aggressiveness modifier for each ICBM built instead. An easy solution is to have a checkbox when setting up the game, giving you choice of which you'd like to use.

MAD also isn't the only way nuclear deterrent might have come about. Had the US and Russia been at open war when nuclear weapons were under development, their use would likely have been totally different. Or what if Germany hadn't gone to war, and invented space flight and nuclear weapons all on their own? A lot of the fun in Civ comes from thinking about the what-ifs of alternate histories.