Cruise missiles

[Corbeau]

I caught a bit of a discussion in the game chat and I'd rather reply here because there it gets flooded and will disappear, while here My Words Will Last Forever

Anyway, why is "bombers carry missiles" unbalanced?

Also, cruise missiles shouldn't have an awfully long range. They are a one-shot weapon fired from, at most, a neighbouring country, a nearby sea or from a plane. Once they hit, they are gone. With a longer range, they can be (ab)used for scouting purposes which is not their intent. Actually, I'd even be willing to give it a zero visibility radius, so that you actually have to guide them into position with other nearby units (AWACS!) so that they don't accidently hit an enemy unit you didn't want to hit. Yes, that is a bit unrealistic, but it's a trade-off for the Civ feature where two non-allied units can't sit in the same tile.

[wieder]

The vision of the cruise missile was decreased to sqr(2) but I guess it could be sqr(1).

Who says bombers carry missiles is unbalanced?

What kind of range would you give to cruise missiles on a game like LT38? What about game like LT38 but with bombers being able to carry cruise missiles?

[Corbeau]

Sorry, nukes, not cruise missiles.

(T141 - 15:05:02) <Joris> because of balancing reasons nukes can't be moved with bombers. unrealistic yes but the same thing as with nukes loaded and uloaded on subs

So, why is it unbalanced?

I'd give them similar range as fighters. Basically, so that you have to move close, but not too close, and still can't fire it from across continent.

One more idea: have more types of nuclear weapons:
1. ICBMs, range 1000, expensive
2. Bombs, range 1 or 2, carried by bombers, medium expensive

However, I guess there is no way to tweak nuclear blasts? No way to emulate difference between a 20 kt and the Tzar bomb?

[Caedo]

However, I guess there is no way to tweak nuclear blasts? No way to emulate difference between a 20 kt and the Tzar bomb?

It should be possible to "increase" nuke radius using lua script: Whenever a unit_lost signal is sent with reason "detonated", the ruleset could run some additional code to wreak additional havoc. This would need to be documented explicitly and wouldn't be reflected by the tileset (i.e. the explosion graphic in the user inteface will still be the same size), but it could be used to do some things. Unfortunately, the edit.unit_kill() function has only been introduced in 2.6, so it isn't available in the current version. However, I'm not sure when unit_lost is sent. If it's sent before the nuke actually detonates, additional units to kill could be moved inside the explosion radius.

[wieder]

Nukes on bombers would be unbalanced just like the nukes on subs. You can load/unload/load indefinitely and move the nukes anywhere in on turn. At least with ships forming the "bridge" to move units (or nukes in LT40) can be seen and they are at risk while forming the bridge.