Nuclear tank bikeshedding thread

I want to implement a nuclear suicide tank in ZK. Basically a nuclear bomb on treads.



This is a thread for designing it in further detail.

The things that can be assumed to be more or less solid atm are:
- No weapons except BOOM.
- Reasonably slow speed.
- Reasonably heavy armor for its price.

But there are also some aspects of this unit that are undecided, and ones that i'd like to finally decide on before i get to actual Spring implementation work on it (there's still a bit of texturing to do before there).

BUT CAN IT FLY?

The primary balance concern in implementing a nuke that is immune to Antinuke interception is that with the help of a few newtons, it could be made into an unstoppable version of Trinity. There are two possible ways to alleviate that that i see right now:

1) Make launching it too expensive - if one launch costs more than, say, a Zenith, then you're just making a top-tier superweapon with less reliability and absurdly high operating costs. This can be achieved by making it too heavy (and require a very expensive Newton array), or simply too expensive.

2) Make launching it too risky - if it has to be on solid ground to explode properly, then after being thrown, it will be vulnerable to interception for a time. And you won't be able to scout for an Anti to prevent this, nor even ensure an accurate landing zone. And presumably the tank costs more than 3k, so you're risking more metal than an actual nuke launch would risk. And the enemy gets the reclaim if you fail.

Possibly there are more approaches to this.

WHATSITSNAME

Several ideas have been proposed. I wonder which one is better, though:

Fatboy - references a historical TA unit name, but reimagined (Supcom also did that). Also references the two historic nuclear weapons used in war.

Sprawler - references the main inspiration for this concept, the Sprawler Juggernaut from Dark Reign 2

Doomsday Machine - former name of what is now Desolator, and one that is more fitting on this type of an infernal device rather than on a medium-range defense turret.

MAD Tank - refers to the Mutually Assured Destruction complex, as well as the Soviet suicide tank from Red Alert. Except this one is going to kill infantry.

SHINY BUT HOW SHINY

ZK has two types of nuclear explosions atm:
- the smaller Singu-grade explosion - shared by advanced geothermal, singularity reactor, and the Detriment;
- and the Trinity-grade explosion, currently unique to Trinity.

How big should the tank blow up?

APOCALYPSE HOW

Currently, all suicide units in ZK blow up as bad when killed as when manually detonated. But for a strider-level toy, this consistency is not mandatory, especially if an inconsistency can bring more Cool Factor or make it easier to balance. There are some options here:

1) The unit can have an armed or unarmed state. When destroyed or self-destructed in armed state, it goes full nuclear. When destroyed in an unarmed state, it doesn't blow up that big.

2) The unit can have its self-destruct weapon be an actual weapon, activated with an one-click button, like Krow's carpet bombing. Activating the detonation sequence would decloak the unit and give the enemies some time to flee in terror or try to prevent the sequence's completion. Then boom. Destroying the unit before the detonation sequence is complete results in a normal-sized boom.

3) Consistent ZK suicide. Always blow up nuclear. Storing one of these anywhere near your own units and getting it ambushed by the enemy means you're cooked.

I think i prefer the second of these options: when used with cloak it ensures the bomb has to decloak before blowing up, creating interplay; the detonation can be constrained to only work on firm ground to prevent it being too abusive with newtons or transports. The first option could work like that as well, but then an armed bomb would have to be always uncloakable or there's little penalty to pre-arming it and sneaking it armed; and airlifting or throwing it should disarm it on leaving ground, which is kludgy.

Both 1) and 2) have elevated Cool Factor because they allow the unit to visibly open its safebox and demonstrate the SHINY inside.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

There's also a question about how much the thing should cost.

1) I think it should definitely cost less than 10k - an armed Trinity costs 7k for silo and 3.2k for missile.

2) It should probably cost more than 3.2k - that is, a single Trinity missile.

Is a slow-moving but anti-proof, cloakable, teleportable, airdroppable nuke worth 10k? How much would you pay for such a toy before it becomes useless, or how little before it breaks the game?

Make it channel 10 sec and explode the bigger the longer it channels?

1 sec channel ~ skuttle explosion size
10 sec channel ~ 120% of trinity explosion size?

make it open and have it lob the nuke out in short range and it would have tiny bit hp left so it can escape if not killed fast and have it need to steal nuke from trinity to rearm

It depends, put some numbers on it.

The options zk has to move units around would make a unit with 10k hp, average ish speed (50ms), large nuke deathblast (which deals up to 11000 damage on a radius of almost 1000!), worth more than a paladin.

if it costs more than 3k, it'll probably be used with area cloaker + air transport.

huge explosions are also "broken" in the sense that they ignore terrain : the enemy can have relatively tough units behind a thick terrain formation and still be swept by the blast. The game would make less sense than it does now.

Nukes would be completely broken if they didn't have such a hard counter.

the worth of a single use bomb goes up dramatically with the blast radius, as affected area is proportional to r^2.


That said,

reaper sized, 50ms, 4000 HP, 1500M cost, 4k damage with 350 blast radius
(this could work)


cyclops sized, 50ms, 8000 HP, 6000M cost, 8k damage with 500 blast radius
(even something like this would break late game zk, I think)

quote: Nukes would be completely broken if they didn't have such a hard counter.

Nukes can go wherever they please, unless stopped by Anti. Usually they go for your economy clusters. A ground-trodding tank can't exactly just go there. It has to sneak like an oversized Skuttle with no jump, or slowly fly on an overloaded Herc while enjoying the hospitality of enemy AA, or be launched with an expensive and imprecise Newton array (after which, if the channeling detonation mode is used, it's at risk of being killed or stunned before the detonation happens).

It can be teleported, of course, but i'm not sure that it's that much nastier than teleporting two Dantes for the same price (and same teleport time, too!).

Another option is of course using it straight on the frontline, cloaked, activating the blast sequence right in front of the enemy lines. For this to work out, the enemy cluster that it's trying to blow up - which will either start shooting or fleeing, has to be
1) Of comparable price and not screened (otherwise it gets kited to death)
2) Despite this price, unable to kill or disable the bomb-tank
3) Slow enough that enough of it will be stuck in the blast zone to make cost

quote: cyclops sized, 50ms, 8000 HP, 6000M cost, 8k damage with 500 blast radius

This seems on the lower bound of utility, but i guess there's no need to make it too strong, either. I prefer the higher-costed version because that is less frequent, so will upset the balance less.

For a frontline use example, far from being unstoppable by any weapon known to lobster, this dies upon:
- daring to uncloak in the range of three Lances, which comfortly instagib it from their 1100 range without any risk to themselves, and while costing half less not counting the cloaker.and having other uses.
- encountering any number of Grizzlies that can just blatantly kite it, with 600 range vs 500 blast radius - and if for some reason (say, the bomb got into pointblank using a cloaker) they get into the blast zone, they narrowly survive 8k damage even straight in the epicenter. And you get three of those for the 6k.
- encountering any number of Cyclops that survive in ground zero of this explosion with 1/3 of their health left

For a newton-launch use example with channeling blast implementation and 10s fuse, assuming it lands within the target economy cluster (that cannot flee):
1) Combined defensive DPS of 8khp / 10s = 800dps - not counting fall damage - will be enough to destroy the tank before it blows up. This is two desolators or lucifers - quite expensive, but cheaper than the bomb.
2) Half a dozen gnats on patrol. Each gnat deals 600 stun damage every 1.2 seconds, and will have a 100% accuracy against such a unit - which won't have any gnat-busting escorts because it landed from a newton ramp. Even accounting for decay, six gnats somewhere around the LZ will be enough to prevent the blast. For the price of 6k, you get sixty gnats, enough to cover everything worth bombing.
3) with precisely 8000 hp, a single Widow will be enough to stun the bomb - unsure if for long, ofc - but even if it's a temporary stun, it gives more time for other units to finish the job.

All in all, this version seems not much easier to use offensively compared to the current actual nerfed skuttle.

Yeah I admit I might have overdone it on the HP lowness.

Still, I think it would be interesting to see it more vulnerable when primed, as it would incentivise sending protection along with it, which would be a suicidal mission for the units defending the bomb.

This maybe would mean we'd see nuke shieldballs?

quote: While I love the concept, sadly I see one problem: How to (ab)use unit: 1: Cloak 2: Get into enemy territory 3: Terraform downwards 4: Start the countdown 5: Laugh at the enemies foolish attempts to kill an underwater unit 6: SHINY

How many builders do you intend to bring into enemy territory alongside cloaker and the bomb, and how far from their base do you intend to terraform? How much does the base that you are trying to blow up cost?

Immobile when priming and 20s priming time means there probably isn't a single unit that can't run for cover. But that's small change compared to the amount of damage almost any combat unit can do in 20s. You only need 9250/20 = 462 dps to achieve this in time. That's two Scorchers, or maybe ten fleas.

Scylla has a lot more range though, so you can dig way outside the enemy defense and even radar radius. A 1000 elmo radius bomb is a different story, and you have to be significantly closer than max radius to inflict significant damage.

I mean, it will work if you can bury it inside hlast radius to kill two plus singus, but that's going to be harder and more expensive than Scylla - so you may as well do Scylla.

It can be used with cloaker + trans (if its transportable).
Or even worse - one djinn behind enemy line from Athena and you have nuke in your enemy base.
You can even send it front on ground with cloaker and then detonate in enemy face to make comeback.
Seems like Firepluk will have nice option to troll again.
Unit by itself is pure troll unit. So its niche is defined.

RyMarq : That's one of the most OP unit suggestions I've ever heard :o
Lightning fast, 23K hp at a 10 to 1 hp to metal ratio with 3 sec arming time?! With damage and explosion radius more than double that of a nuke?!
Whole armies struggle to do more than about 1000-2000DPS, your little unit can happily waltz into the enemy base and the entire thing to kindgom come!
Try coding this up and then try it, it's insane :o