New missile for Nuke Silo

I've been thinking about how Nuke/Anti Nuke interactions could be made more interesting.

I thought it would be interesting to have a second missile available to the Nuke Silo - a cheaper decoy missile without a warhead.

This would make it possible for players to "scout" for Anti-missile presence by firing a dummy missile first; or easier for two Nuke Silo to brute force one Anti-nuke by allowing one of them to cheaply decoy Anti-missile projectiles.

Since Nuke is intended to be an end-game weapon, this would make Nuke vs Anti warfare more of a slippery slope and add a bit more room for counter play vs a relentlessly turtling opponent with multiple inaccessible anti-nukes.

Plus it could make a comedy "dropped accordion" noise on impact.

Generally having some cool endgame alternative missiles available in the Silo (all the same cost or greater, all blocked by anti) seems like a low-cost low-effort source of cool and lols. Like an enormous implosion, an enormous impulse or a tine AOE hyper damage singularity missile.

Anarchid, here we call that one puppy ;)

quote: Okay. Non-replicating nuclear puppy on tank treads with zero flight range.

Skuttle finally has a big brother.

Yes, the idea is that it opens when given a Detonate order, first sliding the side doors down, then opening the middle capsule and exposing the shiny core which proceeds to glow intensely. This should take maybe up to a couple seconds.

The fluff is that it's just an antimatter transport with an emergency cargo dump option that sometimes comes handy. I'm unsure whether detonation is a weapon-thing (and can be prevented by killing it in time), or a bomb thing (and killing it just makes it go off sooner).

As to names, i have two candidates in mind.
Sprawler - because it's very heavily inspired by the Sprawler Juggernaut from Dark Reign 2
Fatboy - because many TA-like games games have a fatboy, but this one is also a bomb.

I like Fatboy as a combination of Little Boy and Fat Man.

Monolith was the first name that came to my mind as I was thinking of names based on Trinity.

Just fix detri already!
COST -> 6k-8k
ALL WEAPONS REMOVED
INSTANT SELFD (like skittle)

This could make porc castles an obsolete design and any army would be fast enough to avoid explosion ...

Sorry if this puts the thread back on its track again somewhat, but I think a decoy missile is not a bad idea, except that it should look like a lobster in sunglasses and a bomber jacket.

>Introduce MIRV missile who have three active nuke warheads or one active and two decoys. And player can choose where target each missile. And silo + missile cost more.
>Make antis missile cost resources and add antis ability to intercept also silo missiles.


>Give funnelweb antis with shorter range as antis and ability to intercept only one nuke at once.
>Make mobile tacnuke unit for ground.

quote: I'd make it heavily armoured and really slow, so as to have some interesting drama as teams try to kill it before it reaches their critical areas.

It can't be much slower than a Djinn.

Doomsday Device is also a good name candidate though!

On the OP, I don't see the benefits of decoy missiles outweighing the increase in UI complexity that would be required (see Missile Silo). I really like the simplicity of Nuke Silo, you build it, leave it to do its own thing, and later tell it to attack a location. Nuke is not primarily intended to be an endgame weapon, it is intended to create more targets of high importance (anti-nukes) within opponents bases. Having a nuke confers an advantage, but I don't want it to be any more of a slippery slope.

Would a decoy missile even be any good? What sort of stats would it need to be superior to 1000 metal of scouts? Remember that a decoy missile can only find one anti-nuke, does not reveal its location, and requires Silo-BP, which is much more valuable than regular buildpower. If nukes need buffing, why not buff them in a different way? This sounds like a suggestion to give energy structure an overcharge ability which increases their energy output but makes the energy only available for overdrive. Technically it is a buff, but it is a UI nightmare, and if I wanted to buff overdrive I would do take another approach.

I am also not in favour of multiple missile types, for similar reasons. The more interesting aspects of nuke play occur before impact, in the maneuvering required to sneak a nuke through. The details of the type of destruction caused by a nuke impact matter less than the fact that an impact occurred.

Big Skuttle seems like a good idea, but may be difficult to balance. What is the counterplay to launching this with a Newton ramp? If it only costs 3k-5k it sounds cheap and light enough to launch. Perhaps it needs to be on firm ground for some amount of time to activate its denotation.