The great "Nuclear Research Facility" debate

[Bollocks]

This community has some impassioned opinions regarding nukes. Now that we have been through a couple of major wars where a significant number of nukes were fired, what does everyone think about the project now? Do you think it's still a terrible waste of money or do you think it's a viable project with a good amount of utility?  

[Abu Haddad]

The trinity bomb took more than 25mil to complete

[Buorhann]

Still a terrible waste of money.

 

The only perk it has is the Nuke Defense is 20% chance.  Otherwise, Missiles are better in almost every way, or conventional warfare.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Buorhann

[Sailor Jerry]

Depends on the situation. Against someone with high amounts of Infra, I was able to do around 1700 damage, a missle was only able to dish out just over 400. Now, in an alliance war, you're not looking to biege though. If you were able to get 3 folks to jump on the same target you could dish out 15 nukes between the 3 over the course of the first round, unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to hand that target off for another round since they'd be bieged.

[Fraggle]

Worth every penny. 

 

https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9811-fraggle-rock-nuclear-testing/

 

Who knew muppets with nukes would be so fun?

 

Round 2 coming soon.

[Buorhann]

Worth every penny. 

 

https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9811-fraggle-rock-nuclear-testing/

 

Who knew muppets with nukes would be so fun?

 

Round 2 coming soon.

 

 

Point made.  You made me change my mind.

[Caillou]

Nukes do more damage but it's less monetary damage than if you can bomb via airstrikes or navy efficiently. Because if you do 1700 infra damage with a nuke, it is all to one city and rebuilding the city isn't /that/ much due to low infra costs when a city is that small. In that same amount of time (one day of MAPs) you can do 1200 infra damage with planes but rather than it all being in one city you are only destroying the more expensive infra at a bigger spread. So I mean, it does more infra damage but it's not really worse than getting air bombed in all your big cities over time. 

[Crust]

Considering the amount of damage it does the price makes sense, but I wouldn't waste money on it.

[Spooner]

Nukes do more damage but it's less monetary damage than if you can bomb via airstrikes or navy efficiently. Because if you do 1700 infra damage with a nuke, it is all to one city and rebuilding the city isn't /that/ much due to low infra costs when a city is that small. In that same amount of time (one day of MAPs) you can do 1200 infra damage with planes but rather than it all being in one city you are only destroying the more expensive infra at a bigger spread. So I mean, it does more infra damage but it's not really worse than getting air bombed in all your big cities over time. 

 

Nuclear infrastructure damage is capped. Airstrikes do more and more infra damage as you build more cities. Plus it's spread over multiple cities. Plus it doesn't beige. Plus it's cheaper to build. Plus you can do more than one per day. The only thing to make them worthwhile is that you can launch them when losing a war. But that's a terrible way to balance something: it sucks, but it's OP as hell when you're losing. What a boring way to design war.

 

The effect of nuclear weapons should be drastically redesigned. Perhaps they do minimal infra damage, but the fallout lasts way longer. I personally think nuclear fallout should last at least 90 days -- shut the city down.

[Prefontaine]

Oh, we want to debate the effectiveness of nukes? I don't have a strong opinion on this what so ever.

 

[Spooner]

Oh, we want to debate the effectiveness of nukes? I don't have a strong opinion on this what so ever.

 

 

What is your position on them? No need to go in-depth if you don't want to, just haven't seen you post on it before.

[Caillou]

Yeah Syrup did better at explaining what I was trying to say. There are far better ways to damage a person, nuking is more of a last resort way to go down while getting a good slap in. 

Edited December 14, 2015 by Caillou

[Prefontaine]

What is your position on them? No need to go in-depth if you don't want to, just haven't seen you post on it before.

 

Radio show stuff.

 

Nukes are rubbish unless you're losing a war and trying to inflict damage on your way out, or if you get 3 people to nuke someone with lots of cities above 2500 infra so that post wars all of his cities have been nuked.

[Hooves]

Not worth it. There's so much ways to prevent them from firing or even building a nuke. Only good use of them is personal wars, not alliance warfare.

[Atzuya]

Nukes are k. They're decent, but not exactly the ideal press-ze-button-to-damage material. The improvement destruction is tad too random to be reliable, and it needs a particular situation for it to worth its costs in infra damage. A situation that you'll have a hard time finding.

 

Unlike missiles, that can be fired when you're losing for a hit-or-miss kind of deal, using nukes when you're being pinned down could actually help the attacker to maintain the controls, as the nukes put them under beige and your friends wouldn't be able to join the war and help you. I personally like the lengthy beige timer from nukes.

 

All in all, it's a somewhat situational project. In warfare you'll often have other things that perform the job better without the beige side effect. Only buy it when you're ready to deal with the drawbacks or you just want to know how it feels like to launch one.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Atzuya

[Rozalia]

Depends. If you're losing a war than it means you ain't completely defenseless and they have more punch than missiles definitely. If you're facing a lot of opponents then you may want to nuke one of them instead of sending in your ground/air forces. I have 'em just in case of such things.

[Conner Temple]

Nukes = Good

NK = New Knights

New Knights = Black Knights doom

[Memph]

Hypothetical 6 on 6 upper tier fight in an alliance war. Side A has nukes, side B has significantly stronger conventional military. Both sides has smaller nations, smaller than the point at which you'd typically get nukes.

 

Side A fills side B defensive slots.

 

Side B ground attacks side A with the aim to beige.

 

Side A drops 9 nukes before being beiged, does about 1500-2000 damage in one city in each war.

 

Side B does 6-7 ground attacks and 1 airstrike before side A is beiged, does about 1500-2000 damage spread out across multiple cities in each war, plus steal a bunch of cash and resources Side A had stocked up to build more nukes.

 

At this point everyone is under beige protection for 5 days.

 

Side B will have gotten at least 6 days to take out side A's spies and nukes before round 2, more if they started before the war. If side B's alliance has some lowbies that are outside the nuclear tier, they maybe be able to help out especially once Side A is out of spies.

 

Round 2, Side B inflicts 4500-6000 infra damage per day on each nation while Side A does 1500-2000 damage if they aren't out of resources yet.

 

GG.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Memph

[Rozalia]

Hypothetical 6 on 6 upper tier fight in an alliance war. Side A has nukes, side B has significantly stronger conventional military. Both sides has smaller nations, smaller than the point at which you'd typically get nukes.

 

Side A fills side B defensive slots.

 

Side B ground attacks side A with the aim to beige.

 

Side A drops 9 nukes before being beiged, does about 1500-2000 damage in one city in each war.

 

Side B does 6-7 ground attacks and 1 airstrike before side A is beiged, does about 1500-2000 damage spread out across multiple cities in each war, plus steal a bunch of cash and resources Side A had stocked up to build more nukes.

 

At this point everyone is under beige protection for 5 days.

 

Side B will have gotten at least 6 days to take out side A's spies and nukes before round 2, more if they started before the war. If side B's alliance has some lowbies that are outside the nuclear tier, they maybe be able to help out especially once Side A is out of spies.

 

Round 2, Side B inflicts 4500-6000 infra damage per day on each nation while Side A does 1500-2000 damage if they aren't out of resources yet.

 

GG.

 

The problem with your scenario is why is the nuclear armed nations going to have weaker conventional military exactly? I know in the two wars back there may have been, perhaps many Rose members with just that but it doesn't have to be that way. Your scenario would be more worthwhile if both sides were conventionally even.

[Memph]

The problem with your scenario is why is the nuclear armed nations going to have weaker conventional military exactly? I know in the two wars back there may have been, perhaps many Rose members with just that but it doesn't have to be that way. Your scenario would be more worthwhile if both sides were conventionally even.

I was assuming they compromised on conventional military in order to buy the nukes. One way or another, they're going to have to compromise on something, whether that's conventional military, cities, other projects... because nukes are very expensive.

 

It's not just the cost of NRF and nukes either. Depending on your approach it may be more expensive to maintain a peacetime stockpile of nukes than a peacetime military. Depending on the unit, you can max out military in 3-6 days. For nukes, you can only build one a day. That means unless you have a very long pre-war militarization period, you'll want a decent peace-time nuclear stockpile which will add to upkeep costs. Ex 10 nukes is $350k/day on top of whatever conventional military upkeep you have.

[Abu Haddad]

The nuke thing is fair GTO

[Rozalia]

I was assuming they compromised on conventional military in order to buy the nukes. One way or another, they're going to have to compromise on something, whether that's conventional military, cities, other projects... because nukes are very expensive.

 

It's not just the cost of NRF and nukes either. Depending on your approach it may be more expensive to maintain a peacetime stockpile of nukes than a peacetime military. Depending on the unit, you can max out military in 3-6 days. For nukes, you can only build one a day. That means unless you have a very long pre-war militarization period, you'll want a decent peace-time nuclear stockpile which will add to upkeep costs. Ex 10 nukes is $350k/day on top of whatever conventional military upkeep you have.

 

I'm not seeing it myself. I mean in the technical sense if I I hadn't gotten my NRF and VDS then I'd have an extra city by now and thus the ability to have 15000 more soldiers, 1250 tanks, and 90 planes which is something, but in a war scenario I'm not necessarily going to fight someone with 1 extra city who made the other choice, nor is one extra city an insurmountable advantage in a 6 on 6 war. I have 2 nukes around myself but plenty of conventional military (and even more soon). Don't get me wrong I know there are people out there who build a number of nukes and think that means they can then run 0/little conventional military, but nuke builders aren't all necessarily going to act like that.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

As someone with nukes, I still max out my military.  You just have to plan out and save for the extra gas/uranium/aluminum/cash needed to buy nukes every day.

 

If used intelligently, nukes are a fantastic weapon to have and worth the price, even in a winning war.

[Spooner]

Hypothetical 6 on 6 upper tier fight in an alliance war. Side A has nukes, side B has significantly stronger conventional military. Both sides has smaller nations, smaller than the point at which you'd typically get nukes.

 

Side A fills side B defensive slots.

 

Side B ground attacks side A with the aim to beige.

 

Side A drops 9 nukes before being beiged, does about 1500-2000 damage in one city in each war.

 

Side B does 6-7 ground attacks and 1 airstrike before side A is beiged, does about 1500-2000 damage spread out across multiple cities in each war, plus steal a bunch of cash and resources Side A had stocked up to build more nukes.

 

At this point everyone is under beige protection for 5 days.

 

Side B will have gotten at least 6 days to take out side A's spies and nukes before round 2, more if they started before the war. If side B's alliance has some lowbies that are outside the nuclear tier, they maybe be able to help out especially once Side A is out of spies.

 

Round 2, Side B inflicts 4500-6000 infra damage per day on each nation while Side A does 1500-2000 damage if they aren't out of resources yet.

 

GG.

 

Your analysis is highly flawed. On offense you should never be beiging targets, ever. That's why nukes suck. On the conventional front, with airstrikes, I can do infinite damage. Through nukes, you beige them for a minimum of 5 days, shielding them from infra damage, and allowing them to rebuild.

As someone with nukes, I still max out my military.  You just have to plan out and save for the extra gas/uranium/aluminum/cash needed to buy nukes every day.

 

If used intelligently, nukes are a fantastic weapon to have and worth the price, even in a winning war.

 

Nukes are not a weapon to be used in a winning war, period. You are demonstrably incorrect, as per usual.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Syrup

[Atzuya]

People can totally field max 5/5/5/3 military plus truckloads of nukes and still have respectable stockpile, it just takes some patience to get there.

 

Nuking while you're winning is just... no. You -should- have a better option to deal infra damage, be it tanks or ships or planes, if you don't then it's frankly your mistake there. If you're nuking someone with huge standing military just because you can't be bothered to chip away at his military, then you'll end up having to deal with them at lower strength range, as they'd only take score damage from infra alone and he gets to keep his military. I'm sure everyone is aware of this.

 

But... if you're dealing with a fat nation who just couldn't give two shit for either stockpile and military, then you're in nuke heaven. Fire away and brag about it in OWF later.