Turreting is Fine, And Here's Why

[Buorhann]

2 hours ago, Who Me said:

Once again, the "design" team is trying to "balance" a part of the game that affects a very small subset of the game because they whine the most while continuing to ignore things that affect every single player. Things like the broken assed spy system and the fact that ships have zero defense against planes. Why don't you fix those things before worrying about nuke turrets? Fix shit that matters people.

Because the point is to fix/balance things before they’re exploited and become a larger issue.

You should know this from past years of them changing things mid-major war.

[Anarchist Empire]

16 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Baseball isn't capped at $2mil either, it just drops off after that.  In any case, there's enough out there to build and attack with things that cannot be countered other than a percentage chance if the nation has VDS/ID.

The point of nukes and missiles is so people can still something if they're wrecked and keep getting attacked, trying to do so people who are getting curb stomped can't do anything would make it easier for alliances to eliminate others fully from the game; keeping wars going until their players drop out. Unable to do anything.

You have a percent chance of blocking, but it being able to by pass conventional means is the point. The game is easier than when people had to play baseball for cash if no good raids or ground forces, but for many people the game is hard regardless.

Edited May 10 by Anarchist Empire

[Who Me]

26 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Because the point is to fix/balance things before they’re exploited and become a larger issue.

You should know this from past years of them changing things mid-major war.

Then fix spies and ships, you know, things that affect everyone, not just whiny whale pixel huggers that don't want their high levels of infra destroyed. You people are trying to turn this game into another CN where one side dominates for years. Look what that got them there...

[Nepleslia]

10 minutes ago, Who Me said:

Then fix spies and ships, you know, things that affect everyone, not just whiny whale pixel huggers that don't want their high levels of infra destroyed. You people are trying to turn this game into another CN where one side dominates for years. Look what that got them there...

I wouldn’t even say it’s “you people” - just Buorhann, Ivan III, and maybe a couple of others. Clearly a case of a vocal minority screaming until their demands are met at the expense of the majority, in my opinion.

[Mayor]

14 minutes ago, Who Me said:

Then fix spies and ships, you know, things that affect everyone, not just whiny whale pixel huggers that don't want their high levels of infra destroyed. You people are trying to turn this game into another CN where one side dominates for years. Look what that got them there...

Buddy you are getting a bit into hyperbole. No one is trying to make this game like CN, it is literally just a discussion, and I or Buorhann have never cared about losing infra, come on man. Unless you are talking about stuff not said in this thread as I am not on the design team. I don't think making improvements a bit easier to destroy or nukes slightly more expensive is "trying to turn the game into another CN".

Healthy discussion requires both sides and it seems that people are overwhelmingly in favor of keeping nukes as they are.

8 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

I wouldn’t even say it’s “you people” - just Buorhann, Ivan III, and maybe a couple of others. Clearly a case of a vocal minority screaming until their demands are met at the expense of the majority, in my opinion.

It is literally a discussion, the people I see whining is you. Buorhann was even pinged to reply by the OP so saying that he is screaming until his demands are met is an absolute lie and honestly pathetic.

Edited May 10 by Mayor

[Mayor]

50 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

I wouldn’t even say it’s “you people” - just Buorhann, Ivan III, and maybe a couple of others. Clearly a case of a vocal minority screaming until their demands are met at the expense of the majority, in my opinion.

"Your nation was embargoed by Blake Armstrong of Nepleslia for the reason listed of: Loves his pixels a tad too much.."

Great response Nep, looking at your war stats I know I am dealing with a true pioneer of warfare here.

Edit: Oh my goodness, thanks so much Nep.. this is actually my first bounty.

05/10 07:01 pm

A bounty worth $30,000,000 has been posted for the defeat of your nation in a Nuclear war!

In my entire time in this game no one has ever put a bounty on me and believe me I have tried. 30m is incredible, thank you so much. This nuke will also be my 150th nuke eaten. What a day.

Edited May 10 by Mayor
nuke

[Nepleslia]

Whoa now… why are you accusing me of putting a bounty on you? I - full disclosure - blew pretty much all of my money putting that $50 million bounty onto Ivan III.

 

Edited May 10 by Nepleslia

[Mayor]

7 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

Whoa now… why are you accusing me of putting a bounty on you? I - full disclosure - blew pretty much all of my money putting that $50 million bounty onto Ivan III.

Hatebi will appreciate your 30m donation.

[Who Me]

1 hour ago, Mayor said:

Buddy you are getting a bit into hyperbole. No one is trying to make this game like CN, it is literally just a discussion, and I or Buorhann have never cared about losing infra, come on man. Unless you are talking about stuff not said in this thread as I am not on the design team. I don't think making improvements a bit easier to destroy or nukes slightly more expensive is "trying to turn the game into another CN".

Everything that makes it easier and cheaper for the winning side to keep the losing side pinned is one step closer to the shit show that CN became. So if you make it harder for people to buy nukes when they are being beaten down you make it easier for those beating them down to keep doing so. It's bad enough that the project that allows you to build one extra nuke per day costs 10 times what the project to build the first nuke per day. Who ever thought of that price needs to be tapped on the forehead and asked wtf were you thinking.

[Nepleslia]

28 minutes ago, Mayor said:

Hatebi will appreciate your 30m donation.

You never answered my question. 😕

As for the rest of your posts - which I found quite hilarious, honestly, given how incorrect they are - let’s see…

1 hour ago, Mayor said:

[It is literally a discussion, the people I see whining is you. Buorhann was even pinged to reply by the OP so saying that he is screaming until his demands are met is an absolute lie and honestly pathetic.]

(Sorry about the formatting; had to manually add the quoted part in because the mobile UI for the forums is a PAIN to work with.)

It’s “an absolute lie and honestly pathetic” to claim that you lot are doing anything screaming to protect your precious pixels, seeing as how the majority of the community opposes the changes you keep begging the developers to ram down their (the community’s) throats; as pointed out in Ivan III’s / thread, the nuke nerfs are entirely self-serving (looking at your whopping 3.2k infra, there, Mayor), and would do nothing but make it even easier for the bigger fishes to permanently oppress the smaller fishies in the pond - especially since, as Hatebi pointed out in the OP, counterplay already exists to the nuke turret strategy.

Now, before you bring it up, I’m aware that a dozen or so people does not represent the entire playerbase - but it does represent a good “slice” of it, and is several times more then yourself, Buorhann, and Ivan III

1 hour ago, Mayor said:

"Your nation was embargoed by Blake Armstrong of Nepleslia for the reason listed of: Loves his pixels a tad too much.."

Great response Nep, looking at your war stats I know I am dealing with a true pioneer of warfare here.

I don’t have to be a “true pioneer of warfare” to know that nerfing one of two tools the losing side has at for striking back at the winners is a very bad idea. 

Edited May 10 by Nepleslia
Formatting

[Mayor]

17 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

You never answered my question. 😕

With VIP I can see how many people visit my nation page. It was 2 people early this morning, after you embargoed me it was 3 people, and when I got the bounty it was 3 people.

19 minutes ago, Who Me said:

Everything that makes it easier and cheaper for the winning side to keep the losing side pinned is one step closer to the shit show that CN became. So if you make it harder for people to buy nukes when they are being beaten down you make it easier for those beating them down to keep doing so. It's bad enough that the project that allows you to build one extra nuke per day costs 10 times what the project to build the first nuke per day. Who ever thought of that price needs to be tapped on the forehead and asked wtf were you thinking.

I agree with you that the project is way to expensive and only benefits the very top of the player base. Also I agree with you that nukes should not be nerfed, I was simply giving my own experience nuking and raiding as I do think there are no ways to counter it.

17 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

It’s “an absolute lie and honestly pathetic” to claim that you lot are doing anything screaming to protect your precious pixels, seeing as how the majority of the community opposes the changes you keep begging the developers to ram down their (the community’s) throats; as pointed out in Ivan III’s / thread, the nuke nerfs are entirely self-serving (looking at your whopping 3.2k infra, there, Mayor), and would do nothing but make it even easier for the bigger fishes to permanently oppress the smaller fishies in the pond - especially since, as Hatebi pointed out in the OP, counterplay already exists to the nuke turret strategy.

Now, before you bring it up, I’m aware that a dozen or so people does not represent the entire playerbase - but it does represent a good “slice” of it, and is several times more then yourself, Buorhann, and Ivan III

I don’t have to be a “true pioneer of warfare” to know that nerfing one of two tools the losing side has at for back at the winners is a very bad idea. 

I have been nuked 149 times and lost almost a million infrastructure. I gave my own personal experience and opinion and you had a literal meltdown over it. Thanks for the bounty.

Edit: Also just want to add I don't even know this Ivan thread, also I have never even talked, let alone begged, to a developer to "ram this down the communities throat". I honestly have no idea who you even are. I have 3200 infrastructure due to the half a year long NAP and have built 3 cities and 3 projects because of it, blame Eclipse for people farming.

Edited May 10 by Mayor

[Nepleslia]

I stand by what I said earlier, and the only one having a meltdown here is you, seeing as how you keep rage-editing your posts…

Regardless, I’ve said my piece - and proven my point, imo - and thus won’t be replying further.

Edited May 10 by Nepleslia

[Mayor]

7 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

I stand by what I said earlier, and the only one having a meltdown here is you, seeing as how you keep rage-editing your posts…

All I can do is edit since you usually respond by embargoes and bounties. Makes a discussion here a bit difficult. Thanks for finally replying though.

[Kevanovia]

20 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

I stand by what I said earlier, and the only one having a meltdown here is you, seeing as how you keep rage-editing your posts…

Regardless, I’ve said my piece - and proven my point, imo - and thus won’t be replying further.

Imagine trying to be taken seriously while attempting to paint Mayor as a pixel hugger. You may want to do a bit of research before you randomly start hurling accusations.

[Buorhann]

2 hours ago, Who Me said:

Then fix spies and ships, you know, things that affect everyone, not just whiny whale pixel huggers that don't want their high levels of infra destroyed. You people are trying to turn this game into another CN where one side dominates for years. Look what that got them there...

Funny, I’ve also talked about Ships for -years-.  I’ve literally been the loudest advocate for them receiving some anti-air buff.  You can check back to 2016 on that.

Not sure what the problem with spies are though?  They seem fine?

[Who Me]

17 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Funny, I’ve also talked about Ships for -years-.  I’ve literally been the loudest advocate for them receiving some anti-air buff.  You can check back to 2016 on that.

Not sure what the problem with spies are though?  They seem fine?

Other than the fact that you lose them all in one round of attacks and it takes 20 days to buy them back?, Yeah, they are fine.

[Thalmor]

Nuke turreting is one of the few effective ways for the losing side of a war to fight back after the conventional war has been lost (which can occur as soon as the opening blitz is launched). I don't really think it should be altered unless there's some very comprehensive updates to how wars are fought overall.

Like how fighting conventionally is a skill, nuke turreting is a skill, and countering nuke turrets is a skill. In this already very limited game, we don't need any of the few playstyles to be patched out. I really liked @Who Me's suggestion of making ships have an anti-plane combat value, or some kind of change to spies overall. I think those are much better places to start.

[MBaku]

On 5/9/2024 at 12:41 PM, Hatebi said:

Normally I'm more of a "short and snappy tweet-style" poster, but I've been seeing quite a few people talking about the state of nukes and the possibility of a "nuke turret meta" and wanted to get all of my thoughts on the subject down in one place. As someone who's been turreting for over 2.5 years straight now, the discourse surrounding turreting has been the equivalent of watching someone repeatedly trying to mash a square peg into a round hole. 

There's two main concerns I hear people bring up whenever there's turret-related discourse. The first, and less seen, point is the fear of a "nuke turret alliance" that rolls around and rogues people during peace time. As cool as that'd be to witness, it's not something I expect to see on that large of a scale. There's numerous disincentives, most alliances aren't all that interested in condemning themselves to effectively fight a losing war, on their own, while everyone else is farming and growing, for an abnormally long period of time. Historically, people who have gone on nuke crusades, like HoF and CoA, have only done so for 3 to 7 weeks respectively. Go much longer and you start facing heavy member attrition. What fearmongers often forget is that vanishingly few people want to run off and throw nukes for half a year, especially outside of war season.  I feel like this one's a little obvious, but it's something I keep seeing brought up. 

The main point I've seen people make is that turreting has no counters. While I personally love it when people have this mindset and make no attempts whatsoever to impede me, it's sadly not the case. Numerous forms of counter play exists for all forms of turreting, alliances just can't be asked to put in the slightest amount of effort above what they know works against traditional raiders. 

If you really want to focus on damaging a nuke build, you've got multiple ways to go about it. The tried and true method still works, slot the turret in question with 3 raids and go to work. All you've got to do is switch your counters (and preferably whoever's been hit) over to Tactician. It takes virtually 0 effort on your part and costs essentially nothing to do, as a turret is not going to want to waste their bombs in raid type wars over the attrition types they've got active. Will you get the same instant gratification and visible damage of dragging a milled up high city raider down into the pits of Hades? No, but if you want to deal with someone who deals low, consistent damage, you're going to have to be okay with doing the same. 

But maybe you do want something a little more flashy? Something that'll hit a little heavier? Luckily for you, there's a second option that's been staring you in the face the entire time. While nukes are the main weapon of a turret, they're also it's biggest weakness. Now, most people will hear the idea of throwing nukes at someone with 500 infra and think you're either crazy or incompetent. The thing is, you're not nuking their infra, you're nuking their improvements. People have talked about the buffs nukes have received a lot, but a certain change seems to always slip by unnoticed: the buffed improvement destruction. A base nuke destroys 4 random improvements, while a guidance sat boosted nuke will level 5 of them. If you send in 3 counters in raid type wars, they'll be able to launch a total of 12 nukes while receiving minimal damage themselves. How many improvements is that in total? With guidance sat, 48 to 60 improvements in just one round of wars, depending on if the target has VDS or not. Even in the worst case scenario where none of your guys has guidance sat and the turret has VDS, you're still able to hit up to 36 improvements in a single round.

People who are sitting at 0 infra and have absolutely nothing to destroy are even easier. They're not producing anything at all and have to run off of a stockpile. This means they're permanently on a timer, both in their individual wars since they're only going to be carrying so much on them at a time and in the long run since they likely aren't replenishing very many of their resources by throwing nukes. Slot them with raid type wars on the Pirate policy and you can sap considerably amounts of their loot on-hand. Their lack of a nuke build makes them vulnerable to perma blockades, letting you completely shut them down if you can pull one off for long enough. 

Some people might say that slotting a turret and trying to spam nukes or get them in a perma blockade is too much effort. This is a totally fair opinion to have. As an alliance, it's your choice on how you want to deal with turrets. If your chosen method is "doing nothing in-game while complaining to everyone who'll listen and begging for them to be nerfed", so be it. I just think that's a little lame. 

Want to cap this off with a callout to @Buorhann specifically since he's been one of the main proponents of what I'm talking about. I tried to level with you in DMs, but you've been talking about this "nuke meta" constantly for weeks now. If you really think an alliance of nuke turrets running around and rogueing people left and right would be game breaking, why not show us? I think you know just as well as I do that you'd fracture your community and lose most of your guys after a few months all to do less damage than you could have done in a traditional war. If you believe in this so passionately, I'd love to see you put your money where your mouth is. 

@Hatebi I agree with all that. BUT, my position on the nuke turret meta has nothing to do with individual raiders. The “nuke turret meta” is what I call the optimal strategy for the losing side of a global war. What I’m talking about is the difference between the effectiveness of zero mil turrets vs militarized guerilla fighters. 

 

That’s not a good thing in my opinion. First, once all their infra is dead, nuke turreting is a way to claw back some net and the more effective it becomes the less incentive there is for a losing side to actually peace it and drag it out. It’s incredibly difficult for a sphere sized coalition to effectively shut down a sphere sized coalition of nuke turrets. Not just mechanically, but politically getting everyone on the same page to make it happen. I can see how politically, dragging out a war for more than 2 months is just not really that feasible, but if you have stubborn leadership that is ok with a prolonged war of attrition as long as their clawing back net, the new mechanics reward that. 
 

Second, the effectiveness of nuke turreting destroys militarized guerilla fighting as a viable option. Mostly because it’s better to break beige and drop 5 nukes then sit in beige for 5/6 days for rebuy/decom options while eating spy attacks just to launch a maximum of 14 grounds and then decom tanks or 7 navals and decom ships. It’s such a long wait to be effective with military. Thats not even counting the ability for an opponent to insta-slot you the second you break beige and wreck your mil before you can get some of those attacks off. 

That second part is my main concern. I want smart and effective military strategists to have the ability to deal more net than nuke turrets in a losing war. With the current buffs, I just don’t see how it’s possible. So losers are resigned to brainless turreting rather than trying to implement a difficult, risky, military strategy. I want losers to have multiple ways to lose and with the buff to turrets, guerilla warfare is dead. building and using military is expensive and there should be a reward (in the form of higher potential net damage than nuke turreting) available to players that make that investment and use their military intelligently. A losing side  should be able to pour money into building military and spending gas/muni for the chance at making inroads in conventional warfare by defeating the low tier with more low infra numbers and then climbing back up. Or at least squeezing solid net out of the military they have with flash attacks. And right now those options just doesn’t exist with the current mechanics. Thats why I say the nuke turret meta is here specifically in the context of how the losing side of global war conducts warfare. Military just isn’t a viable option right now and I think that’s very bad for the state of the game. 

 

[Hatebi]

24 minutes ago, MBaku said:

@Hatebi I agree with all that. BUT, my position on the nuke turret meta has nothing to do with individual raiders. The “nuke turret meta” is what I call the optimal strategy for the losing side of a global war. What I’m talking about is the difference between the effectiveness of zero mil turrets vs militarized guerilla fighters. 

Yeah my post was more so about individual raiders/rogues that sorta thing. I totally agree that people on the losing side of a global should have more options and should be encouraged to make more risky gambits. Part of the reason nukes/missiles have been buffed as they have is because people can't seem to agree on a way to make that happen. It's a band-aid solution. 

[Kurdanak]

3 hours ago, Nepleslia said:

I stand by what I said earlier, and the only one having a meltdown here is you, seeing as how you keep rage-editing your posts…

*immediately rage edits* >:(

3 hours ago, Nepleslia said:

Regardless, I’ve said my piece - and proven my point, imo - and thus won’t be replying further.

 

Edited May 10 by Kurdanak
(edited angrily)

[Shiho Nishizumi]

2 hours ago, Thalmor said:

Nuke turreting is one of the few effective ways for the losing side of a war to fight back after the conventional war has been lost (which can occur as soon as the opening blitz is launched). I don't really think it should be altered unless there's some very comprehensive updates to how wars are fought overall.

The irony is that this is both true and a symptom of a greater issue.

Turreting does need to be viable because of the dev team consistently making conventional guerrilla less and less viable with every conventional military change change. Propping up turreting offsets this, but it does make for an unidimensional strategy that's not as good to the sort of options that were available before 2020.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

1 hour ago, Hatebi said:

Part of the reason nukes/missiles have been buffed as they have is because people can't seem to agree on a way to make that happen. It's a band-aid solution. 

It's simple. Kamikaze relies on upfront damage, which is exactly the kind of damage that the dev team has been hard at work trying to curtail in their pursuit of "fairer wars that aren't decided in a day". The problem is that this is entirely misguided in the context of the game where people are going to find ways to hedge bets and gain advantages. The end result is that blitzes are still decided day 1 while conventional guerrilla is sacrificed in the process.

Unfortunately, I don't see it changing because, if nothing else, Alex in particular has demonstrated to be well set on his ways, whenever he can actually be bothered to do something about this game. The dev team changes do make little sense in aggregate when allowing for extra tens of millions of damage from extra missiles is fine (not a complaint; I do like missiles myself and find them to be underrated), but also deeming that the chip damage against tanks from soldiers was too high.

(I assumed that the forums were going to automatically merge both of my posts; I wouldn't have double posted otherwise).

Edited May 11 by Shiho Nishizumi

[Who Me]

2 hours ago, MBaku said:

That’s not a good thing in my opinion. First, once all their infra is dead, nuke turreting is a way to claw back some net and the more effective it becomes the less incentive there is for a losing side to actually peace it and drag it out.

Nuke turreting can also bring the winning side to the table to end the war quicker if they are taking a great deal of damage while not being able to dish out much damage. If the winning side can just sit on people and not take any appreciable amount of damage they have no incentive to end the war. Nukes are also cheaper than guerilla fighting in terms of resources so rebuilds are quicker and cheaper so maybe we won't keep seeing these long assed NAP's after every war. Probably not though as it seems that most leaders these days are pixel hugging wankers.

[Buorhann]

3 hours ago, Thalmor said:

I really liked @Who Me's suggestion of making ships have an anti-plane combat value, or some kind of change to spies overall. I think those are much better places to start.

Man, I'm quickly forgotten on being the first person to advocate this change for several years.  (But yes, I'm still of the opinion that ships need anti-air value)

[Shiho Nishizumi]

38 minutes ago, Who Me said:

If the winning side can just sit on people and not take any appreciable amount of damage they have no incentive to end the war.

This is untrue in a multisphere game, where the longer you are at war, the more other spheres outgrow you.