There is a way to make nuke play less binary without introducing random chance.
I think this still applies, but nuke play on really large or long maps is actually not that binary.
On large maps, nukes will travel towards the target at a shallow angle when fired at a distant target(unless it have been changed and the missile always stays at the same elevation until it reaches the target area).
This means that when the nuke is destroyed by the anti-nuke, the explosion will be pretty close to the ground, and the explosion radius will even overlap with the safe anti-nuke range.
I much prefer ranges that are more "physical" and not as binary.
If we wanted nuke play to be less binary, we could make the anti-nuke a laser weapon with spherical range that requires a certain amount of time to destroy an incoming nuke, for example. The anti-nuke would then start firing at the nuke well before the nuke is in the "safe" radius of the anti-nuke, but it would destroy the nuke before the radius of the explosion area would affect the safe radius of the anti-nuke.
A disadvantage of the system I mentioned is that you could stack anti-nukes in the same place to increase the safe area drastically.