Double Missile/Nuke Build Costs & Require Min. 1,000 Infra to Build

[Death LordSK]

Why? This diminishes the ability of the losing side to dish our damage for no apparent reason. Unless we want to punish the the losing side more?

[Rageproject]

I’m skipping ahead and going to be a broken record of things I’ve said about this a lot lately.

Require Missile Launch Pad + City 10 before a nation can have access to Nuclear Research Facility to create nukes.

Increase the cost of each missile or nuke by ~10% based on the total stockpile a nation has. That’s a very simple formula to code and a way to balance the idea of people who want to turret regularly. The 10th missile or nuke in stockpile caps the cost at double the original cost.

Nukes and missiles are definitely cheaper than the ratio of what they can destroy overall. Blocking a missile with iron dome is hardly harming the attacker since they lose $700K vs. $7m+ of a high infra defender (same for $7M nuke vs $70M+ infra). 

[Exalts]

10 minutes ago, Rageproject said:

I’m skipping ahead and going to be a broken record of things I’ve said about this a lot lately.

Require Missile Launch Pad + City 10 before a nation can have access to Nuclear Research Facility to create nukes.

Increase the cost of each missile or nuke by ~10% based on the total stockpile a nation has. That’s a very simple formula to code and a way to balance the idea of people who want to turret regularly. The 10th missile or nuke in stockpile caps the cost at double the original cost.

Nukes and missiles are definitely cheaper than the ratio of what they can destroy overall. Blocking a missile with iron dome is hardly harming the attacker since they lose $700K vs. $7m+ of a high infra defender (same for $7M nuke vs $70M+ infra). 

There's few reasons to stockpile more than one rebuy of missiles or nukes at a time, as they'll get spied out after day change. Missiles are pretty cheap but don't do that much damage, also ID has a really high success rate. Nukes however are really expensive, and especially once your infra starts going down it becomes difficult to afford them without your bank giving you free nukes, and that's not possible at all if you're being cycled.

[Anarchist Empire]

Let's double the cost of air crafts to fix the air attack griefing strategy next with people attacking each other. As well as declare war button griefing strategy people use to attack others in this game.

More seriously, bad idea. (The 1k infra minimum in a nation seems like it wouldn't matter, so w/e there.)

Edited June 10 by Anarchist Empire

[Thalmor]

Using missiles and nukes to damage the cities of enemy alliances, while one is on the losing side of an alliance war, is one of the only ways to effectively fight back if you're outnumbered and outgunned. This game doesn't need the few strats there are to be nerfed. The war system needs a complete overhaul first, for such an idea to be considered. 

There is no compelling reason to nerf missiles and nukes. Any argument presented is just pixelhugger cope. 

[Anarchist Empire]

Maybe can rename this to politics and hugs, replace war button with hug button. Since apparently fighting and attacking is griefing now. (Already if someone has less than 2k infra in a city, barely even worth the cost of the nuke if it connects. Even at 2k infra with attrition, only 24k damage. So person uses 12 MAP with chance of it being shot down in an attrition war; they only maybe get less than 4x the cost of the nuke in damage.

Someone needs a lot of infra in a city for it even really be worth the damage. Only extreme whale cities 2.5k+ are they really doing much damage. Nuke someone with less than 1k per city,, you're spending around 10x the amount on the nukes than damage done. So only people with 3k+ cities who want to be immune from damage are probably complaining about this. Should at the very least double the damage they do if you're going to double the cost. So still worth using in some situations.

Last person who tried nuke turreting me, just ended up negative 15m from expenses trying, since both got blocked and their missile. Then they also got looted, since I beiged them. So was just pure profit for me that they tried. So already nations risk just coming out at pure loss and benefiting those they declare on if they nuke turret. (Then at the very end they tried building up conventional with infra & units to prevent me from finishing them convetional, so I finished them with a nuke. However damage done with the nuke infra wise was still less than the cost of the nuke. All the infra damage I did combined in that attrition war maybe came out to cost of the nuke I finished them with. Even though they bought to 1.5k infra per city or something right at the end. So even at the infra level, just come out even on the cost of the nuke max. If attrition war, otherwise less.

So mostly just for the resistance reduction are they currently worth using on nation which don't have a lot of infra. Double the cost, will only do worthwhile damage on really high infra nations. Kind of ridiculous. (Maybe double the population requirements for aircraft if you want to do this, so nations can't just be at 1k infra per city with max air force & not worth nuking)

Edited June 10 by Anarchist Empire

[Nepleslia]

Please stop with the incredibly late April’s Fools jokes, @Alex. They’re not funny, not wanted (seriously, who asked for this?), and do not benefit the game in the slightest.

[Anarchist Empire]

21 minutes ago, Nepleslia said:

Please stop with the incredibly late April’s Fools jokes, @Alex. They’re not funny, not wanted (seriously, who asked for this?), and do not benefit the game in the slightest.

Even if he doesn't do these things, that he makes it sound like he wants to makes game not seem stable. Where people don't know what projects are worth investing in, since don't know what will suddenly be made almost useless. Even after he increased costs to get the project. So this idea is bad enough doubt it will happen, but he needs a project swap feature added to the game if he wants to nerf our projects. Where you can freely swap out projects for another if he modifies it without needing the infra if you decide it's not worth having anymore. (As well as refund on the project in cases where he nerfs it after you bought it. Would seem if he did this & added drones, suddenly drones would be the better project in most cases. Less people would have defenses for it, could do resistance damage & even now nukes are only worth using on people 2k infra at least for the actual damage. So only really high infra nations would they have any use with this, since drones would be better for resistance damage.)

Edited June 10 by Anarchist Empire

[sneb]

7 hours ago, Alex said:

Basically, the title.

Double the cost (money and resources) for missiles and nukes, as well as require at least 1,000 infrastructure in your whole nation to build any new ones.

This is a nerf to the nuke/missile turret (or griefing) strategy, while still making it possible (just more expensive - you have to buy at least 1K infra and spend more per missile/nuke) and would have minimal to no impact on regular players.

Alex, you just made more nuke and missile projects, which cost a shit load then when TGH people who've been getting nuke turreted come crying you say let's change nukes? Literally all but one of the upvotes of the post are from TGH people. 

[Anarchist Empire]

1 hour ago, sneb said:

Alex, you just made more nuke and missile projects, which cost a shit load then when TGH people who've been getting nuke turreted come crying you say let's change nukes? Literally all but one of the upvotes of the post are from TGH people. 

Not sure why he wants to make projects people bought worse, when if he thinks nukes are to powerful; boosting SDI would be more logical. Make someones investment pay off more they made, rather than make projects people already bought worse. (I dont' agree they're to cheap or powerful, they do get blocked enough. Still boosting projects rather than nerfing them is what he should do if he doesn't want to let us freely swap out those projects with a full refund after he does it.)

Most recent case someone attrition declared me with intent to nuke turret, 100% of their nukes got blocked and missiles. So they just lost money on their attacks, so SDI is probably good enough. Still boosting that would be best way to deal with it if he thinks nuking is OP) I purely profited from them declaring and they occupied a defense slot while doing no damage. Even not all wars go that way, there is a chance. So those who have bad luck in few wars they've fought since they avoid war mostly, shouldn't modify the game for them.)

I've fought many hundreds of wars. Sometimes the missile and nuke defense seems really strong; other times useless. Just luck. (I don't purely nuke turrent, I fight in all ways though. Most recent 2 wars I just finished them off conventionally since I could, even if attrition declared on one and the other attrition declared on me). Just another weapon in the arsenal and not OP.) I don't really like how troops and ships have a way higher population requirement than aircraft and tanks (As well as requiring 5 days to max them out, so with everything else nerfed overcoming people with max aircrafts will just keep getting hard, since 1/5th thing does so takes forever to max them out. Should change it to 1/3rd buy per day on aircrafts if you want people to keep trying to win conventionally and have a chance), think that is probably the most unbalanced thing about the war system atm. Not nukes or missiles. (Can sometimes win with double buying other stuff from zero if they have bad builds focused almost purely on air, but air once you've been depleted; it's a lost cause to buy more usually. Even if you get 5 days of beige, few people who are useful fighters want to sit out a war for a full 5 days to rebuild their air. So better to nuke. I tend to lack patience to stay on beige long enough to even get more than a days worth of military buys in. Boring on beige.)

Edited June 10 by Anarchist Empire

[Danzek]

10 hours ago, Alex said:

Basically, the title.

Double the cost (money and resources) for missiles and nukes, as well as require at least 1,000 infrastructure in your whole nation to build any new ones.

This is a nerf to the nuke/missile turret (or griefing) strategy, while still making it possible (just more expensive - you have to buy at least 1K infra and spend more per missile/nuke) and would have minimal to no impact on regular players.

Arguably the value proposition for missiles would still be there if the price doubled. 
The infra requirement seems inconsequential in that you'd want to have that much infra anyway, because it'd pay for itself even if you are turreting. 
For nukes, doubling the price means that if someone has the cost saving projects, it costs you more just for the nuke than you do in damage to say, a 2.2k infra city. 
(nuke cost would be on par with 2.05k infra but you dont destroy an entire city's infra with a single nuke)

I'm assuming TGH asked for this because their CoC/Wei skirmish, and that's what the proposal is aimed at. 
It would negatively effect the meta of the losing side in a GW (which seems like the main issue with things)
Even if there's not much to damage in a person turreting like that, they still have opportunity costs. 
The nukers are spending money that they saved up (or got paid), making no nation revenue, which doesn't progress them in the game.
The result for TGH is that they are still making profit, but lose ~15% to vengeful pirates. 

[Keegoz]

I think I posted this elsewhere but I'd probably just increase nuke resources cost by 25% and leave it at that. I want to roll this out however with other changes we have lined up with the war system that will hopefully buff other avenues for damage a losing side could do with conventional units.

[Zoot]

Counter proposal: How about no?

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

A little history lesson for you guys, when nukes were first introduced into the game, I believe the largest nation in the game had around 12-15 cities, and it took some significant saving to be able to afford the project (an entire alliance teamed up and pooled resources to buy the first one).  Nukes themselves were extremely expensive at the time, if I remember correctly we got 50k a day for logging in, and there was no color bonus. You could also steal all your opponents money besides 100k of it.

750 500 250 $1,750,000 To buy a nuke everyday was not the easiest ask.  Back in the day you could actually lock people down and prevent them from buying nukes.  Now, however if a nation is properly set up, due to the size of nations and the general economy and the rule changes over the years, there is no defense to stop people from buying nukes everyday. If that is what you guys want, cool dont make the change, but I dont think that was the original design intent, especially for the amount of damage they do.

Edited June 10 by Sweeeeet Ronny D

[Alastor]

39 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

If that is what you guys want, cool dont make the change, but I dont think that was the original design intent, especially for the amount of damage they do.

I think it was said somewhere that the original idea was for no one to be beyond 30 cities as well.

One nuke is almost meaningless beyond a 15 city nation, trivial to rebuild from and most impactful during wartime where they shut off farms for X amount of time -- not that this has stifled food production, food supply is at all-time-highs.

 

I know people dislike ANY kind of war when they don't feel like it, but realistically looking at numbers nukes need to be buffed not nerfed.

 

I will also comment from a "game admin" perspective: Your economy is experiencing hyper-inflation due to overproduction and over-availability of cash (in higher tiers), you want mechanics that can blow up infrastructure as the admin.

 

I do appreciate the regular interest you've been showing lately though @Alex. Keep plugging away with your ideas, I know the community may seem harsh but we appreciate the chance to give feedback on ideas even if the majority think the ideas would have a negative impact.

[Buorhann]

Just to clarify something since quite a few of you are messaging members of TGH, -none- of them had these suggestions.

The only suggestion -I- contributed in here was tying Infra to missiles/nukes just like how the military units are.

The double cost increase wasn’t my idea or anyone’s in TGH.  That was someone completely different and I won’t mention who.

Back onto my suggestion, and why, I mentioned to Alex that if players learn that a 0 Infra/0 Imp nation can still use nukes/missiles, they could fully intend on griefing the playerbase for lulz/drama.  That’s not a healthy mechanic and personally I think it was overlooked on a possibility since it’s never been done till now.

Now do I think 1k Infra is too much?  Yes.  Do I think it’s still viable?  Yes.  It’s not expensive in today’s game to build up to 1k.  Especially with the inflated daily bonus cash.

However I did suggest to have it much lower.  My suggested idea was simply to prevent players who are “effectively” not playing to prevent them from easy griefing.

The idea isn’t meant to stop the losing side from “fighting back” and it’s not meant to stop nations who legitimately turret for their services, it’s only meant to fix the possibility of griefing.

It’s easy to sit there and think it’s not a problem now since it’s not being overly done, but it will become a more popular idea.  Especially with the socialization of the game.

[Anarchist Empire]

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Just to clarify something since quite a few of you are messaging members of TGH, -none- of them had these suggestions.

The only suggestion -I- contributed in here was tying Infra to missiles/nukes just like how the military units are.

The double cost increase wasn’t my idea or anyone’s in TGH.  That was someone completely different and I won’t mention who.

Back onto my suggestion, and why, I mentioned to Alex that if players learn that a 0 Infra/0 Imp nation can still use nukes/missiles, they could fully intend on griefing the playerbase for lulz/drama.  That’s not a healthy mechanic and personally I think it was overlooked on a possibility since it’s never been done till now.

Now do I think 1k Infra is too much?  Yes.  Do I think it’s still viable?  Yes.  It’s not expensive in today’s game to build up to 1k.  Especially with the inflated daily bonus cash.

However I did suggest to have it much lower.  My suggested idea was simply to prevent players who are “effectively” not playing to prevent them from easy griefing.

The idea isn’t meant to stop the losing side from “fighting back” and it’s not meant to stop nations who legitimately turret for their services, it’s only meant to fix the possibility of griefing.

It’s easy to sit there and think it’s not a problem now since it’s not being overly done, but it will become a more popular idea.  Especially with the socialization of the game.

Even if other person doesn't get to see "Infra Damage" stat, war is still costing them & they're handicapping themselves with bad builds doing that mostly. Where they need to stockpile everything they use, so could be cycled. (You need power for most types of attacks, but since nukes aren't connected to any city; guess they can be ussed anyways. However I have seen that build & just looked pointless to me. Nothing special giving an edge. (Wouldn't really matter if a nation needs to spend 100k on infra before nuking, so just seems pointless to care about that.)

If limiting themselves to just fighting one type of way, they're also limited in damage they can do & profits they can make during it. I prefer flexbiity where I can fight all ways. So if they let down their guard anywhere, can even beige huge up declares. (So seen that build, thought it interesting they didn't need power to build nukes, but they're just handicapping themselves. Makes sense they can, since that project doesn't require power.)

People don't complain calling it greifing when people attack and do damage other ways. Placing bounties is a feature, one could call that griefing if they think others wanting to try doing damage is greifing.

Edited June 10 by Anarchist Empire

[Sketchy]

As always, mechanics that improve guerrilla warfare in ways that make these strategies less relevant/necessary are always preferable.

I don't inherently disagree with the 1000 total infra requirement, but it seems kind of moot. Would be pretty easy for someone to build 1k total. Hell at c40 that's like 25 infra per city.

[His Holy Decagon]

This is a suggested answer to a problem that doesn't actually exist. Please, can we not focus on the one or two instances where a person does something and the butt hurt people that think the entire games mechanics needs to be changed to fix it? Jesus, what a waste of everyone's time.

[Sketchy]

6 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

A little history lesson for you guys, when nukes were first introduced into the game, I believe the largest nation in the game had around 12-15 cities, and it took some significant saving to be able to afford the project (an entire alliance teamed up and pooled resources to buy the first one).  Nukes themselves were extremely expensive at the time, if I remember correctly we got 50k a day for logging in, and there was no color bonus. You could also steal all your opponents money besides 100k of it.

750 500 250 $1,750,000 To buy a nuke everyday was not the easiest ask.  Back in the day you could actually lock people down and prevent them from buying nukes.  Now, however if a nation is properly set up, due to the size of nations and the general economy and the rule changes over the years, there is no defense to stop people from buying nukes everyday. If that is what you guys want, cool dont make the change, but I dont think that was the original design intent, especially for the amount of damage they do.

Rarely do the implemented mechanics in this game ever work out as they are intended. As always the player base experiments through to the logical meta, which is usually not what was expected by development.

The reality is nukes have for better or worse have become the primary tool with which a losing alliance can deal damage. Until a superior replacement is implemented, nerfing them in order to counter nuke rogues, a very small contingent of the game, is an incredibly bad idea.

Also just to note, the reason nukes haven't scaled well over time, obviously, is the inflation of the games economy. I think you yourself would be familiar with it, Grumpy pretty much started the upper tier arms race with the meta you created.

Would be far better to simply cap city count to curtail many of these issues I would think.

[Cypher]

21 hours ago, Kastor said:

Are you legitimately 0 infra?

I was at 0 infra for a relatively short period (say 5-6 days) and still capable of attacking WELP. As someone who’s currently fighting in a global war and has no chance to win conventionally nukes and missiles are the only weapons at my disposal that can deal reliable damage. 500m net every week may seem like a lot (from the losing coalition) but I am also losing out on my potential growth running this way.
 

Another way to think about this is to count how many “griefers” there are in Orbis. I’m not counting Hatebi or the other meme Arrgh nations in this, but there are probably less than 20 at any given time compared to the 6000+ active nations in the last week. Do we really need to overhaul a whole mechanic to stop less than 0.4% of the game from indiscriminately nuking people? There are other ways of countering them instead of going straight to Sheepy such as blockade cycling effectively.

[Anarchist Empire]

1 hour ago, Cypher said:

I was at 0 infra for a relatively short period (say 5-6 days) and still capable of attacking WELP. As someone who’s currently fighting in a global war and has no chance to win conventionally nukes and missiles are the only weapons at my disposal that can deal reliable damage. 500m net every week may seem like a lot (from the losing coalition) but I am also losing out on my potential growth running this way.
 

Another way to think about this is to count how many “griefers” there are in Orbis. I’m not counting Hatebi or the other meme Arrgh nations in this, but there are probably less than 20 at any given time compared to the 6000+ active nations in the last week. Do we really need to overhaul a whole mechanic to stop less than 0.4% of the game from indiscriminately nuking people? There are other ways of countering them instead of going straight to Sheepy such as blockade cycling effectively.

Even when my main focus is targeting I guess what could be considered griefers in how people are using the word. (Raccoon); still can make money just mixing in some raids with others slot. Since can't actually nuke and missile everyone if using them all. Attacking them if they're trying to ruin you is better than trying to change game mechanics. So not very efficient just doing zero infra thing. I can still win raids with days worth of buys.

I don't like using that word, since they can only cause you grief you mentally feel that. I'd rather just focus on beating them than feel grief. Just fight them. Doesn't matter if I'm nuked. Even those who revolve their gameplay around just nuking, you can prevent them making much money & wasting all their nukes. So can't make anything on that. So can do damage by preventing them from making any gains if they actually go out of their way enough where it's worth doing. (I have a fight fire with fire attitude, just adapt to whatever the enemy. Don't think changing mechanics to help is the way, this change would be bad for them; but still don't support it.) If you need to attrition nuke a city at least 1.5k infra to break even on cost; they're not overly cheap I think. Even 2k infra is barely worth if just going for damage on attrition. Gives me a net positive in damage/expenses towards them in our war whenever they nuke. So I look at it positive and good if they try nuking.)

Edited June 10 by Anarchist Empire

[Kyubnyan]

7 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

A little history lesson for you guys, when nukes were first introduced into the game, I believe the largest nation in the game had around 12-15 cities, and it took some significant saving to be able to afford the project (an entire alliance teamed up and pooled resources to buy the first one).  Nukes themselves were extremely expensive at the time, if I remember correctly we got 50k a day for logging in, and there was no color bonus. You could also steal all your opponents money besides 100k of it.

750 500 250 $1,750,000 To buy a nuke everyday was not the easiest ask.  Back in the day you could actually lock people down and prevent them from buying nukes.  Now, however if a nation is properly set up, due to the size of nations and the general economy and the rule changes over the years, there is no defense to stop people from buying nukes everyday. If that is what you guys want, cool dont make the change, but I dont think that was the original design intent, especially for the amount of damage they do.

To be fair, when nukes were introduced to the game they operated completely differently. They immediately beiged a nation for 5 days when used and were completely unused due to this except for a player or two who went nuke rogue. This became much more affordable by the time that mechanics that we know nukes for now were introduced with the first major war overhaul. It just feels strange to compare the logistics of getting nukes when they were basically an entirely different tool in an entirely different war meta. Based on how much thought went into how they originally worked I doubt that the pricing was meticulously thought out either.

[Buorhann]

1 hour ago, Cypher said:

Do we really need to overhaul a whole mechanic to stop less than 0.4% of the game from indiscriminately nuking people?

It’s not overhauling a mechanic, simply tying it in along with what other military units have.

And blockade cycling is easily broken, but that’s not the argument or point.

(Let alone Baseball/Daily/Paid Ads go past blockades)

Edited June 10 by Buorhann

[Aaron JT]

I really don’t think that it’s all that necessary to add this in there. Also, it can take away a nations mechanism to attack making them helpless since you said total of 1,000 infrastructure.

Edited June 11 by Aaron JT