Ship Reconfiguration Part IV: Nuclear Ships Part I
There are two separate phases of Nuclear Ships: the Modern Era ships and the Fusion ships. I'm going to cover the modern ships first. Here, the benchmark previous-era unit is the Battleship at 96 strength. That makes the multiplier 96/64. This is a 1.5x modifier before adding in the ships' bonuses against diesel ships.
[TABLE=head]Ship|Old Strength|Diesel Bonus|Calculated Strength|New Strength
Supercarrier|50|15%|86.25|100
Stealth Destroyer|80|15%|138|130
Missile Cruiser|85|15%|146.625|150
Fast Battleship|98|20%|176.4|180
Littoral Combat Ship|110|25%|206.25|200
[/TABLE]
So this recalibration makes this first round of nuclear ships stronger than any diesel ship. The Missile Destroyer is also available at this tech level with 90 Strength, but it is intended as an anti-submarine ship. I raised the Supercarrier's strength a little because I like the nice round 100. The Supercarrier is defensive only so the exact strength can be pushed up a little. This also puts it a touch above the Battleship but it is still risky to use an unescorted carrier.
The one thing that the Supercarrier really needs is a speed bonus. The current speeds for Carriers are way too low at 5 (Carrier)/6 (Supercarrier)/8 (Fusion Carrier). Compare this to 7 (Battleship)/9 (Fast Battleship)/11 (Fusion Battleship) and 8 (Cruiser)/10 (Missile Cruiser)/12 (Fusion Cruiser). I am going to raise Carrier's speed to 6, Supercarrier to 9, and Fusion Carrier to 11. It's slower than the small ships but on par with the battleships.
The other thing that I found that does not work is putting an intercept chance on a stealth ship. I actually dug into the source code and found that when calculating the best interceptor, it does not count a unit that is invisible to the attacking air unit. This even applies if there is another unit nearby that can see the stealth unit. As an example, I set up a situation where I had a Fighter based in a city, with an enemy Stealth Destroyer and Transport nearby and my own Stealth Destroyer adjacent. I cranked up Stealth Destroyer's intercept percentage to 500% for this test. An airstrike mission from the Fighter was able to damage the enemy destroyer, but the enemy destroyer could not intercept the Fighter. So the Stiletto Boat, Stealth Destroyer, and Fusion Destroyer all lose their intercept chances.
There are two separate phases of Nuclear Ships: the Modern Era ships and the Fusion ships. I'm going to cover the modern ships first. Here, the benchmark previous-era unit is the Battleship at 96 strength. That makes the multiplier 96/64. This is a 1.5x modifier before adding in the ships' bonuses against diesel ships.
[TABLE=head]Ship|Old Strength|Diesel Bonus|Calculated Strength|New Strength
Supercarrier|50|15%|86.25|100
Stealth Destroyer|80|15%|138|130
Missile Cruiser|85|15%|146.625|150
Fast Battleship|98|20%|176.4|180
Littoral Combat Ship|110|25%|206.25|200
[/TABLE]
So this recalibration makes this first round of nuclear ships stronger than any diesel ship. The Missile Destroyer is also available at this tech level with 90 Strength, but it is intended as an anti-submarine ship. I raised the Supercarrier's strength a little because I like the nice round 100. The Supercarrier is defensive only so the exact strength can be pushed up a little. This also puts it a touch above the Battleship but it is still risky to use an unescorted carrier.
The one thing that the Supercarrier really needs is a speed bonus. The current speeds for Carriers are way too low at 5 (Carrier)/6 (Supercarrier)/8 (Fusion Carrier). Compare this to 7 (Battleship)/9 (Fast Battleship)/11 (Fusion Battleship) and 8 (Cruiser)/10 (Missile Cruiser)/12 (Fusion Cruiser). I am going to raise Carrier's speed to 6, Supercarrier to 9, and Fusion Carrier to 11. It's slower than the small ships but on par with the battleships.
The other thing that I found that does not work is putting an intercept chance on a stealth ship. I actually dug into the source code and found that when calculating the best interceptor, it does not count a unit that is invisible to the attacking air unit. This even applies if there is another unit nearby that can see the stealth unit. As an example, I set up a situation where I had a Fighter based in a city, with an enemy Stealth Destroyer and Transport nearby and my own Stealth Destroyer adjacent. I cranked up Stealth Destroyer's intercept percentage to 500% for this test. An airstrike mission from the Fighter was able to damage the enemy destroyer, but the enemy destroyer could not intercept the Fighter. So the Stiletto Boat, Stealth Destroyer, and Fusion Destroyer all lose their intercept chances.