Right now as it stands with the weapons at hand it is quite easy to destroy infra and capture/destroy land. Technology on the other hand is extremely hard to capture or destroy. While it should be hard to capture, destroying it is another matter.

Right now it is far easier to destroy infra than technology leading to older nations with low infra and high technology in the same area as younger nations with high infra and low-to-mid technology for no other reason than they haven't had the time to build up. As the game continues to progress this situation becomes more and more prevalent, especially as the higher infra levels become less cost effective to invest in and nations don't buy back as much infra as they once had. This is inherently bad as these older nations will come more in contact with younger nations who have not had the time to prepare against such a well-equipped nation through no fault of their own. Even the best managed nations of that tier could fall to a below-average run nation of this kind do to the technological difference.

What my proposal would do is 2 things. First, would be a nuclear-based EMPs. For the sake of KISS method rather than a new missile this would use existing nukes. When you launch, you'd have to chose to launch it as a traditional nuclear devise or as an HEMP weapon (default would be traditional). Launching as the latter would increase the chances of success vs. an SDI (from 60% to 45% failure rate) as this would be a high-altitude launch rather than needing to hit on or near the surface. Second, this would not do any infra or land damage, but the technology damage would be increased to 75. The GRL would still rise at the same rate as if it were launched in the traditional manner. Rather than anarchy or fallout, 5% of the targeted nations technology would be rendered inoperable for 5 days which would affect upkeep, damage, costs for purchase of non-technology related items, etc. Essentially anything tied with technology but the cost of purchasing more of it. This would not be cumulative, ie if the next day someone launched another nuke as a hemp weapon it would still be 5% inoperable technology, but the duration would be reset. This would count as a launch of a nuke against your nation for that day.

There is also the possibility we could add a global Electromagnetic Storm level which this could raise which would effectively do the same thing, but on a much lower scale (0-2.5%) for everyone similar to GRL as that is one of the major drawbacks of a nuclear missile as a HEMP weapon. Thus at 0.00 there would be no electrical interference and it would go up to 5.00 where it would cap. Each .01 would represent .005% reduction. The rate of increase would be 1/2 that of the GRL.

Other alternative, after talking with Zenigata, was to make that an either/or or combine it with GRL. Ie, when launching a nuke as a HEMP weapon, you'd increase the Electromagnetic Storm level, but not the GRL and vise versa or just combine the effects all into GRL.

The second would be a separately designed EMP missile. This weapon would do minimal infra damage, 1, but a lot of tech damage, 25; no other damage will be done. The cost would be prohibitively high, say 2m, as these would be highly specialized missiles that would be designed to not cause EMP damage to your nation, ie they would not affect the afore mentioned Electromagnetic storm level. The maintenance would be fairly low though as well because the weapons are fairly stable, say 10k/missile. However, because of he technology used, it would require a substantially advanced nation to produce this, above and beyond that of a nuke. 1000 technology as a minimum purchase level. The reason for that level is it is well beyond the range where buying tech oneself is poftiable, but still not so high as to be unattainable for most of the population. In addition it might be good to make this launch an either or for a CM launch or required to be purchased at 1/day (2/day with WRC)

The effects of these 2 items would reduce the ability of a technological lead and give options to each nation: launching a nuke normal means or as a HEMP weapon. Obviously you can alternate both, but it's still a matter to decide what you start out with on your opening salvo. For the latter it would add another tool to the arsenal to use. If used in conjunction with either firing a CM or an EMP misslie you'd have to make a choice. Furthermore by limiting who can buy this it makes it somewhat more lucrative to stockpile them on lower-mid tiers if one fears being knocked out of range of being able to purchase it. If the latter option for the EMP missile is chosen, ie 1/day it may become a secondary choice for spy ops after nuclear missiles.

Approved for discussion.

bolded changes after the discussion above in the proposal.

sounds very appealing. though making 5% of the tech inoperable might be difficult to incorporate.

I vote for making a separate missile, along with the separate EMS/ESL and other nuke-like things.

75 tech is too crazy insane. I could be getting the MP in about 10 days (i could but im not ) and to think there are other people that are lower than me, that will be able to essentially wipe out almost all of my tech in a 7 day war is disturbing. We want war to be devastating, but not that devastating.

I like this--particularly the aspect requiring one to choose between mass-destruction of infrastructure or technology.

It might make the concept of "Zero Technology" a reality. And it gives smaller nations a chance to take on those big guys with 10,000 tech who were knocked down to ZI after just one round.

I don't quite agree with all of the specifics (5% of tech being inoperable goes against KISS if you ask me) but I definitely agree with the general premise of choosing between targeting infrastructure or technology.

I like the idea of a technology-targeting nuclear missile, and the idea of a technology parallel to nuclear anarchy is interesting. I'm not sure if it'd be too complicated to implicate, but it would definitely be a change I could get behind.

i'd say 2step the implementation.

1st get the missiles out there that target tech, as that shouldn't be to hard to implement.

Then spend time getting the lasting effects in place.

I like the idea (myself having seen several nations during the war at ZI and 2k tech turtled, all you could do do them was CM away tech, at very slow rates.)

You might be over thinking it however; on several levels first off, an EMP being on the same platform as a nuke makes sence, so give us the choice one a day just like nukes, they are fired on the same platform, so they would consume a "nuke" from your stockpile, buying back nukes gives us the same deal (prehaps rename it, but whatever).

EMP however is a very 'clean' weapon, after it goes off, thats it, nodda. Theres no fallout like in a nuclear blast, no residuals, so after effects aside from the initial blast damage should be wiped.

Functionally it should work like a big CM for tech only that takes up your daily nuke allotment, no fancy side effects or considerations. Just a resonable base damage +tech bonus.

Some EMPs are like that. However high-altitude nuclear launch of a nuke would act as a low-tech HEMP weapon. One of the problems with EMPs, including smaller one, is the fact you can't control it, until recently in prototype weaponry therefore the reason for the high tech level required for those weapons that don't have a backfire, ie not creating electromagnetic storms.

However as to fallout, that's one reason I think making the storms separate from GRL should be done as it really doesn't affect radition level all that much.

1. SDI can be designed to hit missiles before they enter the post-boost phase and begin dispensing warheads. Such systems would take out missiles being used as EMP weapons as well as traditional nuclear missiles.

2. EMP weapons would be devastatingly effective against nations that do not "harden" their electronics against such attacks or otherwise take special precautions. The extent of the damage would go well beyond tech as power grids would be killed, commercial aircraft would fall from the sky wreaking havoc, etc, etc. Infrastructure damage may be less than a conventional nuclear attack, but there would be infrastructure damage.

3. After the first war that saw wide spread use of EMP weapons, nations will immediately begin taking measures to harden their electronic systems and take other precautions to minimize the damage from EMP weapons.

EMP weapons are an interesting idea, but not something that should be included as game feature. If it were included anyway, then there should be a wonder (e.g. Advanced Electronics) that minimizes the damage from them.

Well its not about an EMP per se (thats just a convenient vehicle) what we want to address is the relative difficulty to destroy tech, Once you have your opponent at ZI you keep nuking him just cause its the best way to peel off tech (and he could have 3k or more), a "tech nuke" of some kind would be a good alternative, whatever we decide to call it.

Same could be said for any weapon.

Tech Nuke? Screw that! The whole point of tech is to be long term. You can't take technology par-say from a nation. You can only gain knowledge from their technology. It's not like your EMP is going to destroy the schematics.

Not all weapons cause a revolution in the way wars are fought. The question is, "can this be easily countered?"

War elephants for example caused the Romans to have to make tactical adjustments to their formations, but ultimately it didn't change the way the Romans fought. You also don't see the Romans adapting war elephants into the military arsenal.

The machinegun on the other hand made marching into battle in tight formations suicide. Armoring up individual troops simply wasn't an option since armor of that era was heavy, cumbersome and turned infantry formations into nice artillery targets. Eventually someone figured out that putting the infantry into an armored motorized box on wheels--halftracks and later APCs--gave them protection against machines guns, but then light weight anti-tank weapons made even that protection vulnerable and the infantry had to get out to protect their transportation. The revolution in warfare was complete.

What you are proposing is, in my humble opinion, the equivalent of the war elephant, not the machinegun.



If you can get me to ZI, I'll cheerfully surrender.

This, in all due candor, is no reason to introduce EMP weapons into the game. Odds are if you are ZIing 3k tech nations, the alliance they belong to is probably not long from surrender. Practically speaking, why would you want to destroy tech at that point? You are simply depriving yourself of potential reps.

Remember: Killing computers and other electronics is not the same as killing the knowledge/ability to construct new ones.

Well by that standard it should be nearly impossible to destroy tech, how do you kill an idea after all?

Whatever the reason CN has commoditized (I think I made that word up, but it fits) technological advancement, we should therefor not shy away from treating it like a commodity when it comes to war.

Slowly as technology is lost is due to the remnants of warfare. Now while an EMP cause actually no damage what so ever to people (Unless they have a pacemaker) It will sabotage equipment. The only thing it could possibly do is render something ineffective for the following day. (Also EMPs will only sabotage something that has an electrical current flowing through it)

"Slowly as technology is lost is due to the remnants of warfare" This being said. Over a period of time you will lose people with valuable information. Design of new technology will also be stolen. Nukes will destroy valuable upcoming technology. Therefor we will always have a chance to lose technology, but that is why it takes so long to destroy.

Indeed I wasn't trying to introduce the "machinegun", but nor was i trying to introduce simply a bigger sword.

That however is part of what breaks gamebalance here for low-tier old nations fighting young nations. The longer one plays the more the technology/infra ratio pushes to advantaging older nations since tech is nigh impossible to completely destroy.

More than that, for whatever reason, technology is defined as quanitifiable and targetable resource for destruction, aquisition and trading. When someone trades 50 tech to another person they are giving them something quantifiable, not some abstract idea. If they were, then that idea would not be completely lost. At least some remenant would remain. Furthermore the idea of idea spread doesn't seem to work either. No, technology in the game does not represent some idea or concept, but something concrete and tangible akin to infrastructure.

This idea will unbalance the game even more in favor of the higher tech nations, because they will be able to destroy their opponents technology much quicker, widening the gap. No, no, no.

Not really. Those nations, on both sides, will be brought down in tech relative to their strength. Sure those with more tech will be able to do more damage, but they'll be being hit with enough damage to push them down to lower tiers as well.

You get someone who gets ZI'd and they buy themselves back up to say 7k then they still have tons of tech. That wouldn't happen nearly as often.

I like this idea, the idea of having a strong weapon to target tech instead of infra would definitely add balance, there is definitely a problem with tech at the moment. I think the rest of the idea is becoming to complex, KISS.

First, to clarify what the problem with tech is, and why it unbalances the game, for people like londo
Tech is acquired at a universal set rate through tech deals, meaning the young nations can never make any gains on the old nations, if there is a 5000 tech difference there will always be a 5000 tech difference. War cannot damage tech levels in the same way as infra or land in order to close this gap, if we have high damage missiles to target tech it will balance things out exactly as infra and land get balanced by a large war. It is, in my mind an addition that will have to be made sooner or later.

The idea though, needs to be made a lot more simple to keep with the KISS methodology. The idea should be implemented so that we have access to two weapons of mass destruction, one being the traditional nuclear warhead and the other would be the new EMP (or whatever you want to call it) warhead.
Also a nation can only produce one type of missile, so we could have some nations with nukes that do a lot of infra damage and some nations with EMP missiles which do a lot of tech damage. It would then be upto the alliances to organize this into an effective strategy to get maximum tech/infra damage in a war. I would suggest limiting the total attacks by weapons of mass destruction to 1 per day, so you can be attacked with a nuke or an EMP but not both. This adds a small amount of alliance strategy in war, doesn't tip things in favor of the aggressors, and balances the entire tech issue.
The amount of damage the EMP missile does, I leave upto whoever does that.

EDIT: b

I understand the reason why KISS is generally a good idea, but i think here if we would allow nukes to be used as HEMP weapons that because nukes are not treated with the KISS method for whatever reasons, that such a method should only marginally apply, ie we don't make it complex without reason. My idea was to give an equivalent to the GRL for nuking if you launched a nuke a HEMP. Arguably it could be said to make it simpler would be to just add the effects that a magnetic storm level apply to the GRL. I do believe though that if that were done, and IMO it adds the most to the game by utilizing an existing item and giving the players a choice on how its used, it should reflect the special nature of its conventional use.

However, i don't think that would be enough. Using nukes and only nukes to destroy tech is not a good way to go about it. That's why i proposed another weapon. Which was just a simple X damage and your done. The only other items related to that would be espionage to target said weapon, the minimum requirements for buying said weapon, etc. Only if thing more complex i proposed was either chosing to launch a CM or this EMP missile OR making them like nukes and navy: max purchase/day. Both have their upside and downside.

The magnetic storm idea is good, but the meat of your idea is the missile damage on tech as opposed to infra, if this was implemented I imagine the mod team would go for the missile idea as it is a simple way to add balance to the game. The magnetic storm doesn't add any real value to this change, GRL is a blanket effect on everyone and is only different for people with radiation cleanup or things like that. So to keep it simple (and hopefully get it implemented), it's best just to perfect the general missile idea.

To me, the best way to implement it would be 2 separate types of missiles, the EMP or the nuke. If you allow the option for the nukes to simply damage tech instead of infra, it would balance out tech, but I feel it would be a bit too destructive. By making the EMP a separate missile, and allowing nations to only have one type of weapon of mass destruction, it limits the net total damage anyone can do. It also adds as a nation specialization, you can choose to damage the war effectiveness of opposing nations, or the money producing capability.

Everything else, I feel would be simple enough, the nuclear weapon would be its model, 1 purchase per day, 1 attack per day, can be spied away, it is unnecessary to add in different calculations for it.

YES!!!

One idea could be to have orbital nukes. Nukes detonated in orbit don't do as much physical damage, but they release an EMP over a huge area. Perhaps nations with a Space Program could have the option of exploding a nuke in orbit, causing tech damage or making their opponent unable to fight effectively.