Why even put Nukes in the game?

[SpriteSODA]

mmm, if the UN decided something, say free speech.
if i get the control, and call for vote for free speech again, but say No,
and get the many for No, will the other civics will be unlocked again?

 

[romelus]

yes*************

 

[player1 fanatic]

The problem with current nukes:
-SDI is cheaper then one nuke (375 hammers with Aluminium)
-SDI can be build before Fissions and Mahnattan Project
-SDI is no brainer to build by anyone (due to low shield cost)
-SDI makes even bomb shelters not important

So SDI should get its cost increased to at least 2000 (like let's say Space Elevator). And it should probably be available much later, at last to give Bomb Shelters some chance to be useful. For example with Robotics.

 

[Svensk]

shouldve had it like in civ 3, where you had ICBMs and short range nukes that could be loaded onto subs. So the ICBMs could be intercepted, but short range ones from subs and planes couldnt

 

[Mrdie]

I would be glad if Nukes were made much more powerful (Although a bit more expensive) and SDI's and etc nerfed a tiny bit.

In my view: I think that nukes should do colossal damage to a city, bunkers should have no effect on saving buildings or etc, just the population. There would be a 20% chance that a city would simply be destroyed! SDI's cost much more, and firing a nuke gives you extremely harsh negative diplomatic relations with the Civ you nuked (Obviously) and the Civs that it is friends or pleased with, while still having rather large diplomatic relation cuts with other Civs too. Any unit in the city (And tiles near it) along with improvements near it will be instantly killed and destroyed, no exceptions. I also believe that the UN's resolutions should be able to be broken, but that's another suggestion.

IMHO, nukes should actually be feared (by both you and AI), and used more by some random insane warmongering AI's who feel they cannot win, not forgotten.

 

[carn]

It really depends a lot on the weapon. I was really oversimplifying. Yes an improved cellar would work for most chemicals and many biological agents, but saying only 75% of the population and military reached them would still be fair. And they would have to be improved, not just a storm cellar, so some city improvement would still be needed. I put no fallout, but a persistant weapon would leave the area contaminated and in need of cleanup just as bad as a nuke would. Also that would mean people would be trapped in the cellars and starve or units would take damage before they could be rescued.

I'm not sure exactly what you are saying is wrong with this. Are you saying a sub launching should still affect the rep of the launcher no matter what? If the sub is invisible and in nuetral waters or enemy waters it can't be traced who launched. Now if it is seen by another sub or maybe a new improvement that allows tracking of subs then yes it should be traceable. Maybe I'll add an improvement that allows tracking of subs within that cities radius, since a lot of effort is put into tracking subs in real life. But with subs invisible I don't see it making sense to track them without some tech or improvement.

Sorry, i misunderstood, i confused "traceable" with "tracking". I talked about the ability to intercept missles or get people into bunkers, that is seriously limited with a sub that is very close to target, unless one knows it is there.
As long as no one detects the sub, nobody would know, which nation the nuke is from. Exception if the nuke is intercepted, then there is a chance to identify the attacker from the debris of the missle, either by specific construction specialities or maybe by the fission fuel, as to some extent one can tell by contamination of the fission fuel from where the intial uranium is.

Yes a suitcase bomb generally does not really fit in a suitcase. But it would fit in a truck. I don't like to quote movies, but the scene in True Lies was realistic as far as far as smuggling a bomb in to a country which is essentually what a spy would be doing. And yes a fusion bomb would destroy alot more. I think both types should even raze cities based on size, maybe 5 for fission and 10 for fusion sounds like a good start.

Yes they are not something you can build in a basement. I still stand by the fact that both could fit in a medium to large truck.

Ok, even the low tech nukes fit into large trucks and they could be of same explosive power as missle carried ones. And geiger counters would offer a decent protection against such nukes, one could not pack enough lead onto the truck to shield the rediation.
But suitcase nukes are possible, since at least backpack nukes have been developed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_bomb), their explosive power would be less than 2 kilotons, thats enough for destruction in 200-400 m radius, so nothing one would bother to use against a city to disable it.




Carn

 

[BlizzardGR]

I really hope they completely rework how nukes work. i thought they were somewhat underpowered in civ3, not to mention civ4.
If balance is essential for multiplayer, then just balance them ONLY for multiplay.

I want them to be as devastating as the player wants them to be.Let me explain:

why not let the player decide how powerful the nuke should be? i mean nowadays we have the ability of building a bomb capable of destroying the whole planet! i'm not saying there should be such a bomb in the game but the most powerfull bomb should be able to kill all the units in a city or even destroy the city itself!

Also, things like SDI must be dumped completely! There is no such thing in reality and i don't want it in the game either.

The world's defence against nuclear weapons should be deplomacy. If you dare to fire a couple of them everyone turns against you. Noone would do it if they want to play a sensible game but at least you know you have the power to make armageddon a reality!

Knowing that you can destroy all your enemies(along with yourself) with the push of the button is even more satisfying than doing it. Everybody fears you!
You are the king of the world!

 

[Flendon]

Sorry, i misunderstood, i confused "traceable" with "tracking". I talked about the ability to intercept missles or get people into bunkers, that is seriously limited with a sub that is very close to target, unless one knows it is there.
As long as no one detects the sub, nobody would know, which nation the nuke is from. Exception if the nuke is intercepted, then there is a chance to identify the attacker from the debris of the missle, either by specific construction specialities or maybe by the fission fuel, as to some extent one can tell by contamination of the fission fuel from where the intial uranium is.


Ok, even the low tech nukes fit into large trucks and they could be of same explosive power as missle carried ones. And geiger counters would offer a decent protection against such nukes, one could not pack enough lead onto the truck to shield the rediation.
But suitcase nukes are possible, since at least backpack nukes have been developed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_bomb), their explosive power would be less than 2 kilotons, thats enough for destruction in 200-400 m radius, so nothing one would bother to use against a city to disable it.




Carn

Great input! I'll keep all of that in mind. I'm reading through all the mod guides now. I still have no idea if this will ever make it far enough to be published though.

 

[carn]

Great input! I'll keep all of that in mind. I'm reading through all the mod guides now. I still have no idea if this will ever make it far enough to be published though.

I'm just thinking, maybe it's possible to detect the source of the uranium for the nuke, even if the nuke exploded.
That would depend on how much of the fission fuel is actually burned in the explosion and how the weather conditions are after explosion.
If that is possible it's still far more diffcult to identify source compared to having a shot down nuke.

Protection against smuggled nukes via geiger counters requires electricity, as uranium is known with physics, radioactivity is known and with electricity a geiger counter is possible.

Also if a smuggled nuke is detected and captured undamaged, it will help the research of fission/fusion weapon tech or finishing Manhatten Project, though will not give the techs completely, but i have no good idea how much help it would be. My guess is between 20% and 60% for techs and less for Manhatten Project(since it was a lot about getting fission material from uranium and there a finished nuke helps less).

Furthermore one time consuming process in building a nuke is getting from natural uranium, which is afaik 97% for weapons useless U-235, the 3% useful U-238. If one has already a bomb one can simply open it and get the needed fission material, then only the carrier system(e.g. missle) and the ignition system has to be built. Could probably mean more than 50% of nuke build and even nations without access to uranium could build a similar nuke(fission/fusion), receiving the same production bonus.

Scientific method is probably enough to realize a nuke is something important, as scientific method means the concept of scientist putting their nose everywhere and after a few scientists die looking at the inside of the nuke, the entire truck will be identified as some dangerous stuff, which should be understood one day, hence will be kept.

And anyone with physics could have the idea to ask a few polite questions to the captured spy, paint the truck differently and sent it back to where it came from ....
Or somewhere else...

Carn

 

[carn]

The problem with current nukes:
-SDI is cheaper then one nuke (375 hammers with Aluminium)
-SDI can be build before Fissions and Mahnattan Project
-SDI is no brainer to build by anyone (due to low shield cost)
-SDI makes even bomb shelters not important

So SDI should get its cost increased to at least 2000 (like let's say Space Elevator). And it should probably be available much later, at last to give Bomb Shelters some chance to be useful. For example with Robotics.

It would be probably even more realistic and more fun, if SDI had a price per charge and each charge had a interception chance of 75%.

The civ SDI concept is based on the political propaganda of the SDI project of Reagan, which included stupid ideas about satellites armed with lasers, that somehow shoot missles several hundred kilometers away. Such a laser is not possible anytime soon to fit into a satellite, i think that even a laser not defocussing in vacuum after that distance is well beyond current science(to all trakies out there: even in 100 years people will use chemical powered guns, lasers are even more useless in atmosphere).

So any reasonable SDI system is using conventional armed missles to intercept the nukes(US is just developing such a system for long and short range missle attacks, short meaning here 1000 km), with satelites for tracking.

While the satellites remain, the missles have to be built and they cannot be far cheaper, than the missile part of ICBMs, i guess 20-40% would be fitting.

That would mean for civ, a nation with satellites can build the national project SDI, representing the orbital tracking satellites, and could then build anti-missles with rocketry. For simplicity those anti-missles would be just stored in the building cities, but could intercept nukes everywhere.
If an enemy nuke attacks the closest antimissles would intercept with 75% chance, if it misses it's still gone the nuke hits. Exception could be, if a city would be affected and has several anti missles, then they all could get their chance to intercept, though this is a game balance issue.

And if an enemy realizes through spying that he has twice as many nukes as the enemy has interception missles, he can take full advantage of it, knowing that 50% of his nukes are guranteed a hit.


But i have no idea whether these changes could be possible via xml files, one would have to change at least the original SDI thing from a project into a unit and include a new national project for the satellites, which is requirement for the "unit" SDI.

Probably just increasing tech and cost requirements for sdi/shelter is most simple solution.
Carn

 

[carn]

There would be a 20% chance that a city would simply be destroyed!

I think it's not a good idea to have a 20% chance to destroy the city whether its 2 or 30 inhabitants, better in my eyes and more realistic is a minimum pop kill of 5- 10(affected by bunker).
Complete killing of units in the square makes sense, though further away, there should be survival chance, especially for big units like BBs and Subs as they have a decent protection underwater.


Carn

 

[carn]

why not let the player decide how powerful the nuke should be?

That's relistic, though in reality there is some point where the cost increase gets inefficient, as both bombs and missiles get drastically more expensive. Neither Soviets nor US ever build on a large scale 50+ megaton nukes, several small ones are more cost efficient.
A limtation upon cost efficiency of larger nukes is atmosphere. To get maximum blast damage a nuke has to detonated at a certain height, otherwise some airpressure effects lower the damage(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_explosion). This height is higher the bigger the nuke is.
So from a certain size on(i do not know how big, but i'd guess 1 gigaton), the maximum damage would be done above 15 km height, but there atmosphere is already thin, so also blast damage is lessened, compared to the situation one would have if atmosphere is more 15 km thick.
And if nukes get even bigger, the curvature of earth would reduce effectivness, as either one reduces the damage of radiation by exploding in atmosphere and therefore areas beyond horizon, would be protected by km of earth and rock, so undamaged by radiation(Blast damage can effect beyond horizon, just as sound can be heard from beyond horizon).
Or one chooses a great height to affect as much as possible by radiation, but then one is in very thin atmosphere, so little blast damage.

i mean nowadays we have the ability of building a bomb capable of destroying the whole planet! i'm not saying there should be such a bomb in the game but the most powerfull bomb should be able to kill all the units in a city or even destroy the city itself!

Only theoretically, i'm fairly certain that such a nuke would fail due to technical construction problems. I guess it would be a nuke, which size would be measured in km. At least if you are talking about destroying the planet and not just removing life or even humans from earth's surface, though that is cheaper to be done with a few hundred "small" nukes.

Also, things like SDI must be dumped completely! There is no such thing in reality and i don't want it in the game either.

US are developing as i said in another post, so if flying to alpha centauri is allowed, which is a bit more difficult than SDI, SDI should be in, its less unrealistic to be developed in near future.

Carn

 

[BlizzardGR]

US are developing as i said in another post, so if flying to alpha centauri is allowed, which is a bit more difficult than SDI, SDI should be in, its less unrealistic to be developed in near future.

Well, even if it had already been developed i highly doubt the chances of intercepting an ICBM would be as high as 70%. In my opinion a percentage under 50% would be more realistic.

Only theoretically, i'm fairly certain that such a nuke would fail due to technical construction problems. I guess it would be a nuke, which size would be measured in km. At least if you are talking about destroying the planet and not just removing life or even humans from earth's surface, though that is cheaper to be done with a few hundred "small" nukes.

I was talking about wiping all humans and buildings out, not actually destroying the planet. Maybe i was exaggerating a bit, but i think you got my point(which is nukes do much more damage in reality).

Also, concerning balance, i don't think that making nukes more powerful and defences against them less effective would make the game unbalanced. They could just increase production costs, construction time and introduce stricter diplomatic penalties for using them.

And finally: make them useful as DIPLOMACY TOOLS.If that isn't realistic then i don't know what is

 

[player1 fanatic]

Well, the whole unbalanced point is that you need to 375 hammers (SDI cost), to defend from 1500 hammers (3 from 4 nukes stopped).

 

[Nilrim]

Also, things like SDI must be dumped completely! There is no such thing in reality and i don't want it in the game either.

Well there is no such thing as a space ship that can take us outside of the solar system either yet it is in the game. I think SDI should be one of the last things to research and take a long time to make but I don't want to see it taken out of the game. SDI is NOT unrealistic, we just havn't developed the Tec yet to make it workable, but we will it is only a matter of time.

 

[BlizzardGR]

Well there is no such thing as a space ship that can take us outside of the solar system either yet it is in the game.

The difference between them is that the space ship is way to win the game, while SDI is an anoying way to prevent you from nuking your rivals.

I think SDI should be one of the last things to research and take a long time to make

plus it should be less accurate

 

[carn]

Well, even if it had already been developed i highly doubt the chances of intercepting an ICBM would be as high as 70%. In my opinion a percentage under 50% would be more realistic.

Yep, with their nice test conditions, everything prepared and so on, in US tests there was a miss ratio of 50% for intercepting ICBMs.
But the short range(1000km or so) interception system already worked to some effect in gulf war of 1991, i suspect newest version will intercept missles with efficiency higher than 75%.
But ICBMs are a lot faster, so it will probably take at least a decade till it offers reliable protection, which it can at first only offer against a few missles, since the defender only has a few minutes to measure and calculate the trajectory of incoming missles and several hundred incoming could surpass computer power.

Carn

 

[BlizzardGR]

Is there a mod that changes the way nukes are handled? I couldn't find any and i think that someone should to create one (Firaxis probably won't change it).
I have seen several interesting threads on how nuclear weapons could be improved but no mod that does it.

 

[Morell]

What file has the SDI information? Some in this thread mentioned editing it's %, but I can'tfind it under buildings, where the bunker and bombshelter was in and I edited those.

 

[player1 fanatic]

It's Project not building.

Look for CIV4ProjectInfo.xml in your Assets\XML\GameInfo folder.