Antinuke

normally antinuke can catch 2 nukes, but when then nuke launcher is very close (but not necessarily within the protectors radius), it can catch a lot more as it seems to be able to shoot the nukes when theyre still rising. is this intended behaviour? i think players should be able to calculate the number of nukes they need to overpower antinukes. maybe change it so protector can only fire within a globe-shaped range? seems to me its cylindric right now.

but overnuking is super costly. you need to make 3 launchers to overpower just 1 protector, and if its close, you need even more.

The red circle is the range of the antinuke missile, the point at which it will fire at the enemy nuke.

The green circle is the protection radius, it will intercept a nuke fired at a target within this area.

The red circle must be larger than the green circle in order for the missile to reach the nuke in time, but this means that since the antinuke fires the moment the nuke enters the red circle, if the nuke is fired from within the red circle, the antinuke will shoot out instantly and catch the nuke while it's still rising. This used to be so bad that it would actually catch the nuke silo in the blast and blow it up.

Anyway I'm not sure much can be done about this. Spherical wont help: The nuke is fired from ground level.

Antinukes building missiles is terrible, because it means that if the enemy ever gets up a nuke before your anti, he can just nuke the anti itself before it finishes stockpiling. This means all antis must be built pre-emptively as a kind of blind RPS (scouting is rarely good enough to catch it).

wait waht 1 antinuke can hold 2 nukes??

Its actually about economy not building antinukes. Zero-k economy cant grow faster and faster so you cant make more and more nukes or antinukes, unless very specific maps. Antinuke eating metal would be unaceptable and "caching" few antinukes would be unaceptable in overnuking scenario, because of nuke cost in zk its not possible to make 20 nukes, like in ba it is.

Leviathan could have one stockpile that feeds missiles both for tacnuking and antinuking.

quote: The red circle must be larger than the green circle in order for the missile to reach the nuke in time, but this means that since the antinuke fires the moment the nuke enters the red circle, if the nuke is fired from within the red circle, the antinuke will shoot out instantly and catch the nuke while it's still rising. This used to be so bad that it would actually catch the nuke silo in the blast and blow it up.

That sounds perfect. If someone has te balls to build a protector next to your nuke it should end with a big explosion on the nuking one's side.

Ah yes, ofcourse I agree with you that it should not be buggy and inconsistent. I guess we all agree on that.

yes it can. it can hold 3 or more if the launcher is very close.

The red circle is something like twice the diameter of the green. It may be possible given the way the script on anti-nukes work (they open first, wait for the nuke to get in range, then fire) to delay the firing for a set amount of time (the same time it takes for the nuke to rise). Dunno if it's even worth the effort though, where are you doing this, like, red comet...? Duck?

Supcom (and TA) has tech tiers. You know when he is in a certain tier nukes are likely or even inevitable.

In Zero-K, you can pursue any option at any time. We designed it this way because we love the flexibility. But that also means that a nuke can potentially come at any time, or might NEVER appear if the enemy pursues air superiority, mechs, mass tanks or static arty instead, in which case an anti is a waste of 3k.

We don't want nukes to be 'Surprise! You lost!'. If you get hit by one, you take massive damage but it's still possible to dedicate all your eco to rushing up an anti and get it up before the next nuke arrives and takes out the other half of your infrastructure. Stockpiling adds an extra unassistable mandatory amount of time to every anti built- and frankly, it takes quick thinking and sometimes the economy of several players to get an anti up in time right now!

We want nukes to be about creating points of critical failure to make the endgame climactic rather than a grind: Late game, you can win with an epic anti-snipe and a well placed nuke. Getting the jump on the enemy and getting that first nuke out is devastating, but it should be more about that perfect bombing run, building that missile silo juust in range of the anti while under artillery fire, or that deep raid with only one target in mind.

This mechanic is not perfect at the moment. The first big problem is cloak generators. They take away the critical points of failure and the game of reacting to the other players moves and prioritizing your targets, because you're basically blind to the location of Anti's and Singularities (the other point of failure unit) right now. There is nothing worse than that epic anti snipe then firing a nuke into it and.... it gets intercepted because there is another under cloak you couldn't possibly have seen. What REALLY works well is mohogeos, you always know where they are and games are fought entirely around defending and trying to snipe them. I'm honestly inclined to remove area cloak for structures, or at least for these two structures.

The second big problem is that it is often cheaper to make more anti's than it is to properly defend one anti. The third problem is that you don't need these point-of-failure mechanics to stop the lategame being a grind, because Zero-K is really dynamic and offense-focused and relies a lot on mobile units so it's not a grind anyway. This just means nukes aren't needed, and why we haven't bothered to correct any of these issues.