As we all know, nuclear weapons are becoming more and more common amongst the nations of CN and launching a nuclear weapon is incredibly easy to do and is now considered to be accepted by the community. The days of the anti-Nuclear ideal are gone. So what I suggest is a simple revision to the Nuclear Weapon.

The suggestion is simple; When a nation decides to launch a nuclear weapon the nation in question suffers a happiness penalty due to the extremity of the action taken. As we know in the real world Nuclear Weapons are something to be feared and are seen as a drastic measure to take should one be launched. Many people would be outraged at the launch of a nuclear weapon as the resulting damage is atrocious.
So a simple Atrocity Happiness Penalty might make nations think twice about launching several nuclear weapons in one go.

Another suggestion would be to refuse the nation the ability to purchase more nuclear weapons for X amount of days following the launch.


Yay or nay?

Approved for discussion

Could have sworn this had been suggested, but the search says otherwise

Yay, People these days launch nukes way too easily. Maybe also put a time cap. For example, if you make a purchase on the 1st, you won't get the nuke for say 10 days later. The happiness penalty could last a month or more, that would really make peole think whether they really need the nuke or not.

Yay, rogues will love that option.

I support this, as I myself have nukes and have spent less than a year in CN, and I could have bought them several months ago, and launched them in any war I found myself in to great advantage, with no penalty except retailiation, which would have happened anyway. I also believe having nukes should have a slight happiness penalty, over the environment effect.

Here are some numbers, that would flesh out the OP:

Nuke Purchase delay: (Nuke recieved after purchase)

Number of Nukes Delay

1-5 24 Hours
6-10 48 Hours
11-15 72 Hours
16-20 96 Hours
21-25 120 Hours

Happiness Penalty:

0.2 per nuke when not at war (25 nukes = -5 Happiness)

Launch Penalty:

-1 Happiness per Nuke Launch ATTEMPT up to -10 Happiness, lasts until next tax collection.

Non-Retailiation Bonus:

If a nation takes at least one nuclear weapon hit without retailiating using nuclear weapons, nuclear anarchy is reduced by 1 day and the nation gains +10 happiness on the day after the happiness penalty from the hit dissipates.

If the nation does not retailiate the launching nation suffers a penalty of -10 happiness for their next 2 tax collections, due to guilt among the population.

These modifications would make the descision to launch nukes , and retailiatewith them, difficult and requiring a large amount of inter-alliance organization to determine the best course of action.

Don't see how this helps in any way
If I'm launching nukes, then I'm also likely to be recieving them. making a small happiness penalty irrelavent

And if I am launching nukes without eating in return, then my cyber peeps are more likely to be happy than mad

I think people would be mad, how could you justify using nuclear weapons against an enemy that has them but chooses not to use them? And right now it is too easy to get away with nuclear war, with the amount of nukes fired during the Karma war planet bob would be a rather large asteroid field. Maybe they should uncap GRL, let the world suffer.

You shouldn't be collecting in war anyway so a happiness penalty wouldn't do much would it?

You could make it extend 10 days after the last nuke fired, or perhaps kinda like with some spy ops, it applies till the next collection. It would force you to collect with the penalty.

How is the existing system broken? because people are too free with their nukes? Thats a social and political problem, not a gameplay problem.


Just to note though, there already is a penelty to owning nukes. It hurts your environment for every nuke you buy.

As far as a happiness penelty when launching them...considering the likelyhood that you're gonna eat one in return it and that most don't collect during war, it would basically be a null effect.

Lets look at a couple things that currently nerf the nukes that are already in place

1) SDI. 60% of your nuke launches will fail against a nation holding one of these.
2) Spys. you can lose up to 2 nukes per day from spys.

These 2 things alone weaken nukes greatly.

If you prevent a nation from rebuying for X days, you nerf nukes even more.

They're just making themselves more vulnerable to the IRS operation.

Anyway, a happiness penalty is not a deterrent. Plain and simple.

Nay. Enough with the threads on decreasing nuke amounts, or nuke strength, or who can buy nukes. There is nothing wrong with the system that is in place now. Get some nukes and make use of them instead of trying to figure out a way to make this a safer place. If you really hate nukes that much, there is a Peace Mode option you can use during wars.

I would have to say no to this, not only is it useless on a large scale as you can simply collect while your in nuclear anarchy and thus a happiness reduction wont matter, even if you were to extend it those who are large enough to support a stockpile of nukes would have a big enough of a warchest, or allies to aid them, for this not to matter. If you really want to make people think twice about launching nukes, add a spy op that, if succesfull, will make a nuke detonate on the nation launching it, perhaps even taking out several nukes at once too.

Make nukes more expensive if you want to discourage or decrease usage. I assume that's what you're aiming for given your opening line of dismay at how common they've become.

If you want to debate realism here we have only one example of nuclear weapons being used in war. America dropped two atomic weapons on Japan during world war 2, without any sort of upset among America's citizens (And there was definitely not a happiness boost among the Japanese for not nuking back). There is absolutely no justification for such a change in "realism", and there isn't a gameplay justification either, because nukes are there to be used. The environmental effects are interesting and add realism but adding others just to nerf nukes is an incredibly stupid idea.

I agree.


I vote NO

If you want to discourage nuke launches making it more expensive is not the war to go. In all out war (using everything and replacing military stuff thats lost) my mid sized nation can easily burn £15 million a day. Your -10 happiness is about £1-2 mill a day if I was collecting taxes. The infastructure damage from the retaliating nukes is easily into the tens of millions. If someone is going into all out war and using nukes, its a given they don't care about money.


If you want to introduce penalties for nuke use it might be better to have things that directly impact war performance

ie
Can't ground attack a nation once it has been nuked that day (radiation effects). This would stop them being used for tech raids

Oooh, I like this suggestion! Make it more of a decision: either you maximize damage to your opponent with nukes OR you inflict less damage with ground attacks but potentially get the loot.

Any of the suggestions to not be able to buy nukes after firing one are bad, IMO. It would only hurt the guy who's already at a disadvantage and running out of nukes fighting multiple opponents.

A small happiness penalty (that only goes away after collection, or after 20 days or something) is not a bad idea. However, as some have mentioned, I doubt this would be a major deterrent.

Pretty much this.


Theres to much talk about making nukes more harmful for a person launching them when nukes should be made more powerful so people might think twice about starting a nuke war.

Something I suggested a while back, not so much because of raids, but because deliberately charging into a radiation zone simply isn't realistic.

I disagree with this suggestion. Happiness penalties aren't going to stop people from using nukes, it's just a minor annoyance to people using nukes. No, that isn't a call for it to be harsher, nukes are a part of the game for a reason, they are a weapon of war and should be used as such.

Leave it alone. There is nothing wrong with what's in place with nukes aside from people whining about getting nuked.

Wrong,

Its a well documented tactic that on a nuclear / chemical / biological batlefield, area's of High contamination are great for advancing armour through as they are very difficult for infantry to defend.
A modern MBT or APC can seal it's crew compartments from the outside enviroment whilst charging at great speed across the landscape, whereas an infantry defender, sealed inside an NBC suit rapidly looses combat effectivness,

They don't really need to be made more harmful for launching and that would be unrealistic. More harmful in maintaining them however would be different. The effects lasting until you collect so launching them doesn't magically make things better; decoming them however would lower the penalties.

Happiness effect would be a good idea, nukes ARE used way too often, in a real world, the number of nukes fired in the Karma war would probably have destroyed the world several times over.

However the purchase delay is an idea that fails to follow the KISS method.

Well you sacrifice realism for game play all the time, our GRL is the concession to a real world nuclear winter (though given planet bobs history i dare say our nuclear clean up technology would be far more advanced than the real world).

If you think nukes are used too much its a political issue not a game play issue.

Basically the idea I came up with was, in addition to the environment damage, nukes give a -1 + (-.1) (cumulative beyond the 1st) happiness penalty. The base total number is based on the last time you collected so that if you had 25 and launched 5 then bough to, penalties would be calculated as though you own 27 nukes. This penalty lasts until you collect or the nuke is decomed by yourself. Firing or having the nuke spied away doesn't negate the penalty (though the environment is helped). In addition replacing that nuke gives you an additional number.

It's not in line with KISS, but nukes have never gone with that ideal.

So if I understand your math correctly, holding 25 nukes is a -3.4 happiness penalty, and a nation with the ability to buy two nukes a day would be looking at a -4.6 happiness penalty after a single week of nuclear war, that doesn't go away till they collect?

After two weeks of nuclear war (easy to do, we just proved it) it'd be -5.8. On top of the enviro penalties and high upkeeps nukes already come with?

I'm not sure whats worse, the fact that the penalty grows so quickly, or that you think it might actually stop people from having/using nukes.

Game mechanic changes will not stop the use of nukes, they are simply too powerful. It is a NUKE after all.

That penalty could be -10 happiness and people would still hold nukes, becuase having nukes while the other guy doesn't is too big of an advantage in war, and not having nukes while the other guy does is too big a disadvantage.

Like I said before, you want less nukes, the answer is not monkeying with how the game works, the answer is in game politics, becuase unless admin nerfs the hell out of the damage a nuke does (We're talking like a factor of 10 here) it'll still provide enough of a military advantage to be worth having no matter what.

This is a bad idea.

leave my nukes alone ty

I was having a dispute with someone recently about nuclear weapons being far too common in use.

My idea was to raise the global radiation penalty from 5.00 to 10.00. An unpopular idea, perhaps. But it would discourage overuse.



I don't think this is really necessary. Especially when everyone has stockpiles of them, it really would not affect the game much.

The happiness penalty makes some sense, but I feel the penalty for nukes should be affecting everyone, much like my global radiation penalty idea.

Why?

You throw this statment out there like its a fact, WHY would it discourage use?

In the Karma war the GRL had a higher score than the #1 alliance in the game, It nearly hit 50 ffs. Do you for one second think that in a war that huge, either side would have stopped using nukes because of an environment penalty?

Ever tried attacking an airforce of 105 thats sitting behind an AADN without nuking it first?

Nukes are FAR too useful a military tool for their use to be curtailed in war. If the GLR was completely uncapped it still would not have changed the use of nukes in the Karma war.

As far as I can tell you are just complaining that too many people have nukes, however there is no problem with the current system why not just leave it how it is? No matter what change you propose like happiness penalty or increase in nuclear cost there will still be the same amount of people with nukes and how many people use them.

If your soldiers can't go into that nation because of radiation, how can that nation buy (train) more soldiers? They wouldn't be able to either because of radiation. So that wouldn't work.

no it was -31 the -.1 was cumulative ie, first nuke is -1. Second nuke is -1.1, third nuke is -1.3, fourth nuke is -1.6, etc. At -31 happiness only those who really can afford it will be stockpiling such loads, as for launching, well nothing can really stop someone from pushing the big red button if they are determined. Best you can do is make someone who is kind of on the edge not do so.

If you want to make nukes harder to get you need to increase the damage they cause.

OK now your are just trying to tweak the game system to suit yourself instead of any semblance of game balance.

Population Happiness: [Your population is in love with you.] 33.49

Thats me with a nearly full set of improvements, and a type A trade ring.

After a week of nuclear warfare even the most wonder loaded nations will be looking at a negative happiness number. Its extreme enough to be ridiculous.

Why don't you just ask admin to remove nukes from the game? Thats clearly the effect you are going for and it would have the benefit of being honest.

My nation is at around 98 happiness and I'm not particularly strong (~91st percentile). I think the penalty is a silly idea, but you are exaggerating the effects.

First off...let's look at your nation, since you want to use it as an example. You have 33.49 max happiness. Ok. Now let's look at the rest of your stats. Tech: 494.71, Infra 2,799.99, wonders: SM and you haven't even finished getting all the economic improvements yet. Your nation, even if it had uranium and a MHP and HNMS should not be loaded down with 25 nukes.

However you put higher ranged nations and the happiness bonus does hurt, but won't wipe out all of it unless they keep launching nuke after nuke without collecting which only happens during wartime.

As someone who's been on both sides of the nuclear weapons coin -- I have to say, IMO this just makes no sense.

-31 happiness for 25 nukes would be insane, also, you hurt mid-range nations the most -- for some nations, 31 happiness would be half of their happiness. For others it would be a quarter.

That's a big effect. And RL nuclear arming nations, guess what -- most of the time the populace *celebrates* that arming.

Yes, eventually, the honeymoon wears off, but not right away. Simply put, the mechanics of a RL nuke and a IG nuke are too different. Literally, an IG 'nuke' is more like a 'blockbuster', or other powerful but non-radiation-bearing weapons. In other words, your population doesn't experience any 'lasting' effects.

While a RL nuke has lasting consequences (aside from the political), 60 years later -- the IG nukes effects stop, the GRL goes down after 30 days. And despite dozens of nuclear tests during the 1950s and 1960s, there was only one RL war where nuclear weapons were used.

There was a time, I've heard, when you could fire as many nukes as you had against someone, right after declaring war. *That* is realism. Not this.

Because, had the Soviet Union and United States actually gone to nuclear war, they would have been launching tens if not hundreds of weapons at once. None of this, Nuke, wait a day, nuke, wait another, nuke, business that the game world has.

Mid-range nations really should be just that-mid range in their warload capacity unless they really want no economic growth. On the flip side I'd also be in favor of removing the cap and just making the HMNS actually "hide" 5 of your nukes from spying, being seen and counting toward NS.

Which is why RL should only marginally play a factor. This is a game first and foremost.

A stacking .1 penalty starting with 1.1 gives us a negative happiness scale that looks like this.

1 1.1
2 1.3
3 1.6
4 2.0
5 2.5
6 3.1
7 3.8
8 4.6
9 5.5
10 6.5
11 7.6
12 8.8
13 10.1
14 11.5
15 13.0
16 14.6
17 16.3
18 18.1
19 20.0
20 22.0
21 24.1
22 26.3
23 28.6
24 31.0
25 33.5

So at 25 nukes you get a -33.5, but thats just to hold them, lets see what you get after a week of nuclear war. (WRC 6 days, 12 nukes.)

26 36.1
27 38.8
28 41.6
29 44.5
30 47.5
31 50.6
32 53.8
33 57.1
34 60.5
35 64.0
36 67.6
37 71.3

-71.3 happiness after the first week of nuclear war, yea perhaps I was exaggerating, but not a whole lot as you can see your 91 happiness just became 20 happiness, would you care to collect taxes sir? or project what something like the Karma war would do to you? at 37 nukes fired we hit -71.3 who wants to guess where we sit after the second week, let alone the second month?

As you can see the danger of a stacking penalty is that while staring out it sounds not so bad, it quickly stacks up out of control 25 nukes is only (HA!) -33 but with less than half again more nukes added we more than double the penalty, into numbers that are to be blunt. Stupid.

Wait, but wasn't your justification for why this should be changed that nukes are used too often and it isn't realistic?

No and if somehow my statement seemed to imply that, I was wrong. My justification is there is no downside to launching the nuke other than GRL and that is capped so above 5, there is no downside period. Kevin obviously intended nukes to be special weapons, else why make all these special rules and yet many people treat them as big CMs because there is no direct downside to launching them.

My intent is not to stop someone gung-ho on pressing that big red button because no downside will stop them. It is more about those on the dge - and alliances on the edge - of doing so.

My formula would have the count reset after you collected to your current number.
That is exactly my point with stacking penalties to make it really suck if you really want to go all out nuclear. Won't stop someone determined to do so, but it may stop or lessen the amount for others.

I believe that nuclear missles should be able to destroy some improvements. Maybe not wonders, but definitely improvements because they are so inexpensive.

There is a downside, you are just ignoring it.

Stacking upkeep costs (nuke up keep is not linear), an environment penalty for holding them, a happiness penalty for favouring nuclear weapons, and a removal of the income benefits from uranium. Only able to buy one a day.

There is not downside to LAUNCHING a nuke, other than your opponent might nuke you back.

Seems like theres lots here separating nukes from "big CM's"



I know thats what you wanted, my point was it's idiotic, we already have all kinds of extra penalties to make nukes less appealing, and indeed there are some people who have no nukes who could, and there are even wars between alliances who have nukes but don't launch them.

But you gloss over all that for whatever reason and want to add a -30 happiness penalty into the deal, why? Are you just that rabidly anti-nuke or can you actually detail some plausible outcomes on how a crippling penalty would improve the game?

Jack up the price ( by alot ) and jack up the power and uncap GRL

Make nukes the feared weapon they are supposed to be

That's my point. There's downsides to stockpiling them...not buying a couple and continually launching them, other than the daily limit. That only really applies though if you want to launch all your nukes at all targets all the time.

My point is that there is no dis-incentive to launching. There is a dis-incentive to stockpiling. Stockpiling =/= launching by anyone's account, except it seems your's.

As someone who grew up during the Cold War, and not someone who read about it in some politically slanted "History" text *cough*...

The U.S. population was very much happy and in full knowledge of the fact that both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had the capability to effectively make the much of the planet uninhabitable in about an hour.

The simple fact is that you didn't go around thinking about it all the time. You didn't live your life thinking that it could end tomorrow. Oh you had the occasional Left-leaning Hollywood director type who would attempt to "raise the social conscious of America" by putting out a film what amounted to a less than subtle reminder that there were 10s of thousands of nuclear weapons laying about, but the exaggerated tales they would tell would get people's attention for 5 minutes, the realities of nature of the nuclear standoff would set in (it was in the best interest of both sides not to blow each other up so it was never going to happen), and then they would go back to worrying about whether or not Fonzie would keep his girlfriend.

This is not a say there weren't a few "white knuckle" moments. The Cuban Missile Crisis immediately comes to mind. But the DEFCON scale already in game sort of simulates that...or at least tries.

One more bit of ice water for the topic: If you really wanted to make nuclear weapons much less prevalent in the game, take the base damage as it stands now, 150 infra, etc. and increase it to 1500. Then when the next war breaks out and everyone starts tossing nuclear weapons like they are candy at a children's parade suddenly nations that took years to build will be ZIed in a couple of weeks at most. Thousands of players would lose many hours of work. The lucky ones that had huge warchest could start to rebuild, but in the event of a major war, you will have effectively reset the game.

Wow, that's *fun* game now isn't it? No? That's right...it's a sucky game. Nuclear war, real nuclear war, had it ever come wasn't going to be fun...at all.