[SDK] Dale's Combat Mod!

[boneys26]

Ok cool, I once played a game that uses you're idea of "MAD" can't remember for the life of me what it was called but you program all you're nukes with targets and as soon as one hits you all the nukes that have targets fire, but you're one looks better for 1 it's a civi mod and 2 because you're MAD will only fire at civi's that fired at you. do you know if the AI would be able to use this or will that take too much to get in?

 

[Dale]

It's a little more difficult to get the AI to use it (the first beta of it won't have it) but something should be able to be whipped up.

Dale

 

[boneys26]

I just wish I knew how to program so I could help out. but I guess I'll have to just keep testing your beta's and help out that way mate

 

[Dale]

Announcing MAD: Pre-targetted nukes!

Shot 1: Pre target your nukes to citys of civs you fear will launch a nuke at you.

Shot 2: I've pre-targetted 4 of my nukes at Greek cities. (Status report on each nuke)

Shot 3: Oh no! Greece declares war and fires a nuke at me!

Shot 4: Hahaha! My nukes have decimated his 4 cities as an automatic response!

Basically, this mod allows you to select a target for a nuke in peacetime. If a nation launches a nuke at you, then your nukes (and any nukes of allies targetted at that player) will launch automatically in response. Then his pre-targetted nukes (and his allies) will automatically launch back in response.

Nuclear ping-pong! This situation is what the USA and USSR faced as a highly potential outcome during the 1960's. Recreate that environment with Dales MAD Mod!

Coming soon to Dales Combat Mod.......

Dale

 

[Spartan117]

great

 

[boneys26]

WOW this looks so good when you have the animations on this will you see each nuke or just whats on your screen? if you have loads go off at once then it could cause problems for some people with low end graphics cards

 

[The Great Apple]

Nuclear ping-pong! This situation is what the USA and USSR faced as a highly potential outcome during the 1960's. Recreate that environment with Dales MAD Mod!

That is how nukes should work! Good job!

One slight problem that I can see is that it isn't really ping-pong. From what I can tell it goes like this; they fire one nuke at you, and then you get to fire all of your pre-targetted ones back, and finally they get to fire their remaining ones at you, is this right? Surely this would mean that the person firing the original nuke would get many of their nukes destoyed before they could launch due to the retaliation strike.

There are a number of solutions to this that I can think of. You could pretarget all your nukes before you launch the first, or maybe the retaliation strikes could happen at the end of the attacker's turn, rather than immediatly.

 

[Dale]

Okay, to simplify the explanation of MAD as I've implemented it, here goes turn by turn: (BTW, I just now got the AI to target potential enemies, so the AI does it too now )

H1 (human1) and AI1 are allies, with AI2, AI3, and AI4 allies (2 vs 3). It is peacetime, no wars.

Turn 1: H1 build a nuke, target capital of AI2
Turn 2: nothing
Turn 3: AI2 builds nuke and targets city of AI1
Turn 4: AI4 builds nuke and targets city of H1
etc etc until:
H1 has 5 nukes: 2 targeted to AI2, 1 targeted to AI3, 1 targeted to AI4 (an un targeted nuke as well)
AI1 has 3 nukes: 1 nuke targeted at AI2, AI3, AI4 each
AI2 has 1 nuke: target at AI1
AI3 has 6 nukes: 4 targeted at AI1, 2 targeted at H1
AI4 has 2 nukes: 1 targeted at H1 and AI1 each

War breaks out....... but no nukes are used. Ten turns into the conventional war, things look bad for H1 so he launches his spare nuke at AI4.
Process:
Manual launch - H1 to AI4
Auto launch - AI4 to H1 and AI1 (as both on same team)
Auto launch - H1 to AI2, AI3, AI4; and AI1 to AI2, AI3, AI4
Auto launch - AI2 to AI1; AI3 to H1, AI1; AI4 to H1, AI1
No more nukes to launch.

MAD nukes are launched before the incoming nuke/s impact (early detection systems such as radar or satellite) so no nukes are lost in other nuke explosions. This is how the USA - USSR standoff was. MAD nukes are still vulnerable to anti-nuke things such as SDI.

Dale

 

[boneys26]

Nice one Dale. each time i pop into this forum this mod has moved on, I can't wait to play with this

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I agree with TGA. What would be best is if the manual launch of 1 nuke by a player would cause all of their own nukes to fire off as well at the target enemy.

So if I have 10 nukes targeted on 10 cities of my enemy, if I launch one, all of those pre-targeted nukes I have will fire off as well. And THEN the enemy nukes will fire. They'll pass each other in the air, and the end consequence is we all die and I wish I'd never fired the first one

Also... although I've never actually seen the AI use a nuke before, I certainly hope that the AI can be made to take the pre-targeting into account before firing and killing us all... I mean, that was sort of the point of MAD: as a deterrant.

 

[boneys26]

not really what if you only wanted to launch 1 nuke and save the rest? it is best the way it is that way you can launch 1, 2 or 3 nukes and if for some reason you over looked there allies (or didn't know they had any) at least you're nukes you have left will strike back if you set them targets

 

[Dale]

I agree with boneys here. I prefer only 1 nuke being launched. You don't know if the enemy has you targetted, and if they do your other nukes will launch back anyways.

MAD is a defense system, not an attack system. It's primary role is an automatic response in the event someone lobs a nuke at you, not to automate the first strike. Both sides definitely didn't want to give the first strike to a computer (Terminator anyone?).

Dale

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I agree with boneys here. I prefer only 1 nuke being launched. You don't know if the enemy has you targetted, and if they do your other nukes will launch back anyways.

MAD is a defense system, not an attack system. It's primary role is an automatic response in the event someone lobs a nuke at you, not to automate the first strike. Both sides definitely didn't want to give the first strike to a computer (Terminator anyone?).

Dale

Yeah, but you forget that if you only launch one nuke, all of your other nukes will be incinerated in the enemy counterstrike before you even get a chance to use them.

Essentially, you're creating a situation where the aggressor has one nuke against an enemy's many nukes.

If one of the countries had decided to start WWIII, they wouldn't have fired off one nuke and then waited for retaliation before firing off whatever's left after the holocaust. They would've launched a massive full-scale assault to cut the head off the snake as it were.

I mean, if it's really a defensive thing, you might as well make it so that two civs with nukes cannot attack each other with nukes... because if the aggressor can only use one, they won't use them at all.

EDIT:

To put it another way: MAD, as you know stands for mutually assured destruction. Meaning both parties will be destroyed... but with your system however, only the attacker is in any real danger of being obliterated. The defender will have only that initial city destroyed and then will have destroyed the attacker's supply of ICBMs before the attacker ever has another chance to fire.

 

[Dale]

No, you're wrong. Nukes launch BEFORE the detonation. Therefore ALL nukes will launch, whatever side you're on.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

No, you're wrong. Nukes launch BEFORE the detonation. Therefore ALL nukes will launch, whatever side you're on.

Oh yeah? Well, then you were just unclear in your explanation

I kid, I kid! Well, if that's the way it works, then it works well

 

[Dale]

I thought it was something like that.

 

[Dale]

I'm currently adding incoming and outgoing target counters, as well as an AI deterent level for each player, in the MAD mod.

The target counters will be accessible from python so you can add them to an interface screen.

Dale

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Now I'll just combine this with TheLopez's more destructive nukes, play a game, build a whole load of nukes, and then start World War III and watch the entire planet kerplode as the whole world is laid to waste

And then load my saved game and resume as though nothing had happened

 

[Jeckel]

I didn't think nukes destroyed other nukes in Civ4. Isn't there an 'immunetonuke' xml tag?

My question is this, do all nukes have to be pretargeted?

I might want a few dozen of my nukes set to auto-counterattack, but I defintely don't want ALL of them to auto launch.

 

[Jeckel]

It won't be able to work in PBEM due to the formation selection, however since both of you are standing there for hotseat shouldn't be a problem. I could set it to chose a default formation but that defeats the purpose of an attacker being able to chose one.

So, in hotseat, when one human attacks another your just going to bring up two popup windows so both humans pick their formations for the battle on the attacking human's screen?
This doesn't seem a very good solution to me. Sure the argument can be made that in coop hotseat games the players are probly just siting right there, but in most cases only one human at a time will be at the screen, and I know I don't want any of the other players looking at the screen during my turn.
It makes sense to put safegaurds and contingencies in place to address these issues, so an /option/ to set a default formation seems logical to me.