Double rss price of nukes/missiles

[Sir Scarfalot]

I've been thinking about the turret meta, and I realized that nukes haven't actually gotten substantially more expensive for a long time. Back when 'whale' was 25 cities, nukes required a fairly high number of one's improvement slots invested into manufacturing and mining to build, but now that the average city count has gone up, one can self-sufficiently build nukes and missiles off a relatively low amount of infra.

Therefore, I propose the resource cost (not cash) of nukes and missiles be doubled. They would therefore still be usable by turrets, but turrets would need to rebuild more often in order to maintain a steady stream of nukes and missiles.

Thoughts? Downvotes ?

Edited May 23, 2024 by Sir Scarfalot

[Anarchist Empire]

They already use a lot of Aluminum. less Gas, then less Uranium. Doubling them all would be a simplistic approach to doing it. Also not sure they need increasing. As Aluminum and Gas prices are going up, so does the price of nukes. Also in every global eventually one side is reduced to nuke turreting mostly, would you think this good if ending up on that side?

[Sir Scarfalot]

7 minutes ago, Anarchist Empire said:

They already use a lot of Aluminum. less Gas, then less Uranium. Doubling them all would be a simplistic approach to doing it. Also not sure they need increasing. As Aluminum and Gas prices are going up, so does the price of nukes. Also in every global eventually one side is reduced to nuke turreting mostly, would you think this good if ending up on that side?

True, but we've all gotten more cities and therefore more potential improvement slots at a lower cost than back when nukes were originally balanced for. I don't think I'd have a problem with rebuilding myself to a self-sufficient manufacturing build and spamming missiles and nukes even at a doubled resource cost. Aluminum and gas are going up, yes, but that's mostly a result of inflation; you'd be producing your own in any realistic turret build, so the cash value of the aluminum and gas doesn't really matter.

[Anarchist Empire]

Even if annoying when stuff gets blocked, still think just boosting the odds of VDS some would be best way if they want to make it easier to defend against nuke turrets. Cruise missiles seem to get blocked a lot, so that extra 5% makes a difference.

[Alex]

On 5/14/2024 at 10:58 PM, Sir Scarfalot said:

I've been thinking about the turret meta, and I realized that nukes haven't actually gotten substantially more expensive for a long time. Back when 'whale' was 25 cities, nukes required a fairly high number of one's improvement slots invested into manufacturing and mining to build, but now that the average city count has gone up, one can self-sufficiently build nukes and missiles off a relatively low number of improvements.

Therefore, I propose the resource cost (not cash) of nukes and missiles be doubled. They would therefore still be usable by turrets, but turrets would need to rebuild more often in order to maintain a steady stream of nukes and missiles.

Thoughts? Downvotes ?

I think it's a good idea - it nerfs nuke turreting (which is annoying to the other side) and also creates a larger resource sink, which is good for the game.

And it's simple. I like simple changes.

[Aysuna Costa]

@AlexWhy don't you increase the number of days needed to build a nuclear missile instead of making it more expensive?

 

 

[Rageproject]

12 hours ago, Alex said:

I think it's a good idea - it nerfs nuke turreting (which is annoying to the other side) and also creates a larger resource sink, which is good for the game.

And it's simple. I like simple changes.

I’ve said it before - just change the ability to build missiles and nuke projects. We already have increased the price of the projects. MLP should require being at c10. And MLP should be required to build NRF. And if you want introduce Drones as mentioned in another topic, allow those to be built at any nation size. 

[Stanko1987]

Dumb idea, nuke prices and missile prices should remain the same, if a stronger sphere and a stronger alliance attacks a weaker one and the losing side is getting dogpilled, the only way to fight back is through nuke and missile turetting. Increasing the price of building nukes and missiles only benefits the whales, larger spheres and larger alliances. Sometimes turreting is the only way to defending yourself by inflicting as much damage to your enemies as possible. 

 

[Stanko1987]

Not to mention it benefits the pixel huggers, don't let pixel huggers get their way and ruin the fun out of the game.

[Tartarus]

2 hours ago, Stanko1987 said:

Dumb idea, nuke prices and missile prices should remain the same, if a stronger sphere and a stronger alliance attacks a weaker one and the losing side is getting dogpilled, the only way to fight back is through nuke and missile turetting. Increasing the price of building nukes and missiles only benefits the whales, larger spheres and larger alliances. Sometimes turreting is the only way to defending yourself by inflicting as much damage to your enemies as possible. 

 

Few things to address here.

Nuke turreting is not defending yourself. It's destroying as much infra as possible to make the war hurt to the attacker. That's not defensive in the slightest.
Most nuke turreters go on the offensive to be annoyances to alliances.
There is "no" counter to nuke turreting if you are actually determined.

So, I like this idea because it makes it a resource sink and hurts lone actors without bank support. This won't affect alliances because they have their banks to back them.

These sorts of simple changes could and should be the start to changing the war system.

[Stanko1987]

1 hour ago, Tartarus said:

Few things to address here.

Nuke turreting is not defending yourself. It's destroying as much infra as possible to make the war hurt to the attacker. That's not defensive in the slightest.
Most nuke turreters go on the offensive to be annoyances to alliances.
There is "no" counter to nuke turreting if you are actually determined.

So, I like this idea because it makes it a resource sink and hurts lone actors without bank support. This won't affect alliances because they have their banks to back them.

These sorts of simple changes could and should be the start to changing the war system.

It already costs over 4 million dollars to build, making it already not cheap to build and you can only build once a day unless you got the Nuclear Launch Facility to build 2 Nukes a day, also if nuke turreting is annoying to alliances, nukes can always be successfully destroyed through spy ops the next day, also VDL has a chance of destroying an incoming nuke 25% of the time. If anything, i would support increasing the VDL success rate of destroying an incoming nuke from 25% of the time to 40% of the time. Other than that, prices should remain the same as this allows the losing sphere and the losing alliances to be able to nuke turret by inflicting as much damage possible to the enemy who has the advantage or total military control over the enemy, and also helps those players who are being dog pilled and beige cycled, to be able to resort to nuke turreting as a mechanism of inflicting as much pain and damage to those who are beige cycling the player. Increasing the RSS price only seems to benefit pixel huggers. There has got to be other ways and better ideas to implement into the game that would balance things out a little. One way would be to increase the VDL to successfully block a nuke 40% of the time or even 50% of the time.

[Tartarus]

14 minutes ago, Stanko1987 said:

It already costs over 4 million dollars to build, making it already not cheap to build and you can only build once a day unless you got the Nuclear Launch Facility to build 2 Nukes a day, also if nuke turreting is annoying to alliances, nukes can always be successfully destroyed through spy ops the next day, also VDL has a chance of destroying an incoming nuke 25% of the time. If anything, i would support increasing the VDL success rate of destroying an incoming nuke from 25% of the time to 40% of the time. Other than that, prices should remain the same as this allows the losing sphere and the losing alliances to be able to nuke turret by inflicting as much damage possible to the enemy who has the advantage or total military control over the enemy, and also helps those players who are being dog pilled and beige cycled, to be able to resort to nuke turreting as a mechanism of inflicting as much pain and damage to those who are beige cycling the player. Increasing the RSS price only seems to benefit pixel huggers. There has got to be other ways and better ideas to implement into the game that would balance things out a little. One way would be to increase the VDL to successfully block a nuke 40% of the time or even 50% of the time.

No one is buying nukes just to let them be killed by spies. Unless they're stockpiled, that is just not happening.

I would rather see small but incremental changes towards making the war system more advanced and fun to fight wars. Ways to specialize nations (gimme generals too) so that losing sides have some sort of chance to pull things back. Wars being decided in one day is boring, the snowball of mil death sucks from a meta perspective lol.

 

[King Doha IV]

I won't recommend doubling rss price of either nukes or missiles, it just makes it even harder to get it.  

[Sam Cooper]

2 hours ago, Tartarus said:

So, I like this idea because it makes it a resource sink and hurts lone actors without bank support. This won't affect alliances because they have their banks to back them.

so true my friend, those pesky lone actors need to be murdered so alliances don't lose the 0.0001% of their income and the precious minutes spent on milcom can be better spent further minmaxing their econ. Needless to say it should be illegal to exist outside of the top 20 where you are not backed by a $400b bank.

[Tartarus]

3 hours ago, Sam Cooper said:

so true my friend, those pesky lone actors need to be murdered so alliances don't lose the 0.0001% of their income and the precious minutes spent on milcom can be better spent further minmaxing their econ. Needless to say it should be illegal to exist outside of the top 20 where you are not backed by a $400b bank.

Yeah that just not my point at all  

I just believe more in having more equal mechanics, it’s all well and good to rogue nuke, but it doesn’t make sense to me for there to be no downside to it with an infinite upside, lol. I’d like for underdogs to be able to win wars, actual skill being needed to perhaps fight your way out a 2v1 or something (for example). How to do it? I don’t know. It won’t happen any time soon, but that’s my idealistic desire.

Why would I want to screw smaller alliances? I wish there were more prominent 10-100 rank alliances. Mechanically as it is right now, they’re all screwed in comparison.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

personally i think they should be more cost expensive.  When your daily log in bonus covers the cost of a nuke, it makes buying nukes daily much easier.

Back in the day, when the log in bonus was 50k, (not 2 million) it was nice because if you are running no infra, it was more difficult to actually buy nukes/missiles daily because your income couldn't necessarily support it.  Not really an issue anymore if you log in everyday.

[Sam Cooper]

2 hours ago, Tartarus said:

I just believe more in having more equal mechanics

and that's why you are trying to gatekeep a war mechanic for a few wealthy alliances?
It does not mean that there is no downside just because you do not understand it. Take the simple rule that "you lose nothing if you have nothing"; in order to be in a position where you can inflict damage without taking any, you need to already be zeroed, so your problem is that YOU are not getting to destroy anything in return while you get nuked, this does not mean they are in a better position than you.
If it was actually an infinitely better position, anyone with a crude sense of logic would expect you to also follow the same path but you don't do that, you always buy the lost infra back and keep farming despite eating nukes once in a while because you know having infra and getting nuked (the losing position) is far far more profitable than the "infinitely better position" of having no infra and nuking and you are here trying to preach me about the unending upsides of nukes.

You also claim to be an advocate of equality so I'll ask you, who's having the worse time? the smaller alliances that do not have any way to fight back against a larger group whatsoever or you suffering with the mild annoyance of eating 4 nukes a month? what should be addressed first?

[Tartarus]

41 minutes ago, Sam Cooper said:

and that's why you are trying to gatekeep a war mechanic for a few wealthy alliances?
It does not mean that there is no downside just because you do not understand it. Take the simple rule that "you lose nothing if you have nothing"; in order to be in a position where you can inflict damage without taking any, you need to already be zeroed, so your problem is that YOU are not getting to destroy anything in return while you get nuked, this does not mean they are in a better position than you.
If it was actually an infinitely better position, anyone with a crude sense of logic would expect you to also follow the same path but you don't do that, you always buy the lost infra back and keep farming despite eating nukes once in a while because you know having infra and getting nuked (the losing position) is far far more profitable than the "infinitely better position" of having no infra and nuking and you are here trying to preach me about the unending upsides of nukes.

You also claim to be an advocate of equality so I'll ask you, who's having the worse time? the smaller alliances that do not have any way to fight back against a larger group whatsoever or you suffering with the mild annoyance of eating 4 nukes a month? what should be addressed first?

Don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t say it’s an infinitely better position, I said it has infinite upside 

[Shiho Nishizumi]

2 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

personally i think they should be more cost expensive.  When your daily log in bonus covers the cost of a nuke, it makes buying nukes daily much easier.

Back in the day, when the log in bonus was 50k, (not 2 million) it was nice because if you are running no infra, it was more difficult to actually buy nukes/missiles daily because your income couldn't necessarily support it.  Not really an issue anymore if you log in everyday.

That ignores the little/no ground metas of the day where it was feasible to ground attack for that cash. That's not realistic anymore.

The 2m log-in bonus does guarantee a nuke, but there are missiles and ops on top to do. If you're running no infra (by which I take as meaning something below 600-800 because 600-800 is what you rebuild to to recruit military), then you're anywhere between making pennies and operating at a loss leading to bill lock (which means no resource production or commerce).

Of course, there are other ways to get cash (sell improvements), but increasing the cash cost would make them disproportionately harder to use.

On 5/15/2024 at 1:58 AM, Sir Scarfalot said:

I've been thinking about the turret meta, and I realized that nukes haven't actually gotten substantially more expensive for a long time. Back when 'whale' was 25 cities, nukes required a fairly high number of one's improvement slots invested into manufacturing and mining to build, but now that the average city count has gone up, one can self-sufficiently build nukes and missiles off a relatively low number of improvements.

Therefore, I propose the resource cost (not cash) of nukes and missiles be doubled. They would therefore still be usable by turrets, but turrets would need to rebuild more often in order to maintain a steady stream of nukes and missiles.

Thoughts? Downvotes ?

From memory, the single biggest hike was on planes with the increase from 3 to 5 aluminum per plane. Tanks got their steel cost halved while ships got their steel price slightly increased (If I recall correctly, from 25 to 30). There was also some tweaks to the gas/muns usage of some of them.

I don't recall nukes/missiles being adjusted either way, and I don't think that it'd be the best way to go about nerfing them because it'd potentially affect autarky usage (granted, you can go off of on hand but that'd be lootable). I'd also note that your point concerns whales; most players aren't whales, and the ratio you're citing remains virtually the same for today's C25's. Some could argue worse given the production changes from the great deflation, some could argue better due to gearing bonus and overall taller infra people sport nowadays (which leads to the improvement ratios you're talking about).

I think that rolling back some of the other changes as a means of addressing turreting (assuming that's the intent) would make more sense than trying to affect their usage altogether by increasing resource costs. Which of course, doesn't even delve into the fact that back then, you could only build 1 nuke and 1 missile, whereas now you can very realistically build 3 missiles, and 2 nukes if you're really dedicated to the gig (or are a whale where the project makes more sense given the costs of your cities).

[Sam Cooper]

3 hours ago, Tartarus said:

Don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t say it’s an infinitely better position, I said it has infinite upside

ok let's call it that but the question remains, what's stopping you from enjoying the infinite upsides of nukes? by all means Singularity could've utilised this unstoppable meta and conquered orbis by now.

take this idea to your econ nerds and maybe they'll teach you about the trade offs and whether it's worth it, because I'm failing to do so.

[Buorhann]

It’s not just $2mil a day.  It’s $6mil a day.  You folks are forgetting the other venues of getting cash, even while blockaded.

[Vein]

On 5/15/2024 at 6:58 AM, Sir Scarfalot said:

I've been thinking about the turret meta, and I realized that nukes haven't actually gotten substantially more expensive for a long time. Back when 'whale' was 25 cities, nukes required a fairly high number of one's improvement slots invested into manufacturing and mining to build, but now that the average city count has gone up, one can self-sufficiently build nukes and missiles off a relatively low number of improvements.

Therefore, I propose the resource cost (not cash) of nukes and missiles be doubled. They would therefore still be usable by turrets, but turrets would need to rebuild more often in order to maintain a steady stream of nukes and missiles.

Thoughts? Downvotes ?

Sounds like a good idea, the game has progressed alot in the past few years and the economy in the game is nowhere near as low as it used to be, both nukes and missile cost should increase at the very least imo.

Edited May 22, 2024 by Vein

[Buorhann]

8 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

That ignores the little/no ground metas of the day where it was feasible to ground attack for that cash. That's not realistic anymore.

The 2m log-in bonus does guarantee a nuke, but there are missiles and ops on top to do. If you're running no infra (by which I take as meaning something below 600-800 because 600-800 is what you rebuild to to recruit military), then you're anywhere between making pennies and operating at a loss leading to bill lock (which means no resource production or commerce).

Of course, there are other ways to get cash (sell improvements), but increasing the cash cost would make them disproportionately harder to use.

There’s a 0 Infra/0 Imp nation constantly nuking/missiling.  Cash isn’t an issue.  When you can accumulate $6mil+ cash through a blockade (Daily, Baseball, Ads), cash is the least of your problems.

Resources, on the other hand, can be locked out unless they spend credits to buy resources past a blockade.

Still, when someone is loaded up on resources, you either fast beige and loot (Get hit with 2 nukes still) - and allow them to restock resources while beiged

Or

You let them beige you so you have a small chance of keeping them blockaded.  Which they loot you, cause more damage, and keep going.

Of course there’s 5+ offensive slots to use too, so there’s a chance to farm beige to break out of cycling depending on circumstances.

Let’s not forget that in order to even have a small chance of countering it, you’re spending exponentially more time and resources to do so.  No other area of the game requires as much investment.  Not even close.

You also have to have infrastructure in order to build military, but not missiles or nukes.  It’s a broken style of play.

 

 

In other words, turreting is more of a grief mechanic in the game.  It just hasn’t taken off in popularity till recently once players started to wise up to it.  Either through self sufficient builds or just going in with nothing but a RSS stockpile.

Edited May 23, 2024 by Buorhann

[Shiho Nishizumi]

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

There’s a 0 Infra/0 Imp nation constantly nuking/missiling.  Cash isn’t an issue.  When you can accumulate $6mil+ cash through a blockade (Daily, Baseball, Ads), cash is the least of your problems.

I'm aware there's a nation doing it. I'd focus on the 'a'. It's a novelty that's broken in the logical sense and is infuriating, until you realize that the guy has no improvements and is therefore making no resources and little cash. The opportunity cost is substantial, and more importantly, he can be cycled due to no autarky. It's not infallible.

Realistically speaking, Hatebi's gig is far more effective due to autarky. And while you're nominally inflicting damage on such a build, in practice it is basically moot due to dirt cheap infra (and hunting for improvements isn't exactly reliable outside of you running Tact on some guy running Pirate).

I also think that you're being far too optimistic about the ease of getting those six million when most people can't even be bothered to log in every consecutive day, let alone play baseball or do ads (granted, you can autoplay ads through scripts, but that still takes a pretty amount of time and doesn't always work). 

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Resources, on the other hand, can be locked out unless they spend credits to buy resources past a blockade.

Still, when someone is loaded up on resources, you either fast beige and loot (Get hit with 2 nukes still) - and allow them to restock resources while beiged

Or

You let them beige you so you have a small chance of keeping them blockaded.  Which they loot you, cause more damage, and keep going.

Of course there’s 5+ offensive slots to use too, so there’s a chance to farm beige to break out of cycling depending on circumstances.

The offensives become an issue if the guy's hitting several alliances. If he's focused on a select few, I'd like to think that it'd be simple enough to coordinate cycling.

Quote

Let’s not forget that in order to even have a small chance of countering it, you’re spending exponentially more time and resources to do so.  No other area of the game requires as much investment.  Not even close.

I do agree with that. I wouldn't say that exchanging nukes or missiles with a turret can pass for a counter for a number of reasons. For one thing, it isn't cost effective. Secondly, you're extending the period of time that war is going on (meaning, turret gets to lob more stuff), which rules out the targets from doing so. There isn't much incentive to send counters to do that job because of the costs involved (including increased upkeep due to wartime).

The 'problem' lies in improvement survivability. I use quotation marks because this is actually a pretty good/necessary aspect in the context of nations being rolled so they still have some sort of economy going on; it's a silver lining in a context where the bulk of their income is gone alongside their infra. Normally, it'd be an overall suboptimal state of affairs that one would try to fix as soon as possible; it's just that it gets brought to the fore in the context of perma turrets who don't care much for farming/making money.

 

 

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

In other words, turreting is more of a grief mechanic in the game.  It just hasn’t taken off in popularity till recently once players started to wise up to it.  Either through self sufficient builds or just going in with nothing but a RSS stockpile.

Turretting was essentially pigeonholed into having to serve as the main way of dealing damage for rolled nations during a war, because of obtuse thinking such as Alex's inadvertently gutting conventional guerrilla time and again. I do think that it is overtuned at the moment, and ideally there'd be a balance between both turretting and conventional guerrila to make for a more engaging experience for the rolled parties, but the latter requires buffing the 'alpha' damage militaries do, which Alex thinks is horrible because he thinks that wars being decided day 1 is horrible (even though they're still decided day 1 after all the changes), so that's never going to happen.

You're left with this mechanic that is used by two completely separate groups of people: on one side, rank and files getting rolled during a global, and on the other, people who are dedicated to the niche. For the former, the turreting is unremarkable because in spite of all the buffs, people just aren't dedicated enough to lob nukes/missiles every day, alongside other factors that highlight that it really is more of a silver lining thing. For the latter, it looks broken (especially if the person doesn't care about the growth/economic cost that comes from turreting). The latter are also an extremely reduced group of just a handful of people.

Given that this mechanic is shared by both, the question thus becomes; is it worth nerfing it due to a group of people that can be probably counted with the fingers in a single hand, at the expense of everyone else that have to fall back on this mechanic as their sole realistic recourse while they're getting rolled?

Edited May 23, 2024 by Shiho Nishizumi

[Buorhann]

4 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

I'm aware there's a nation doing it. I'd focus on the 'a'. It's a novelty that's broken in the logical sense and is infuriating, until you realize that the guy has no improvements and is therefore making no resources and little cash. The opportunity cost is substantial, and more importantly, he can be cycled due to no autarky. It's not infallible.

“Opportunity costs” are subjective per person.

Cycling comes at a risk, as I already explained in the post you quoted.  Plus randoms coming in and ruining said cycling is an issue too.

Nukes and missiles shouldn’t be nerfed, but the mechanics behind it needs to be tweaked.  I have a few ideas, such as tweaking beige, imposing a certain infra level, etc.  Of course I’m looking at these as an overall thing (such as how it’d affect them during a GW, not just raiding/griefing).