just a thought, shouldnt a nuke be in the arty class, not a ridiculously slow rocket that defy's weight over flight speed? Arty would just make more sense
artillery already has an insanely powerful and very effective weapon called HE Artillery Cannon. Nukes have the following stats: 200 damage. 2000 explosion radius 1000 explosion force. heat per shot 70 Rate of Fire 10 seconds between shots, and additional 12 seconds for reload. HE artillery has these stats: Damage 150 explosion radius 900 explosion force 700 Heat per shot 15 Rate of Fire 3 seconds between shots and additional 10 seconds to reload. So, an artillery tank with HE can do damage for a little under half the radius of a nuke, but for every nuke fired, it can shoot three times, and do 250 more damage for 10 less heat overall, not counting the heat that is dissipated between shots. Overall, artillery is plenty powerful as it is. Nukes should be limited to something large, bulky, and with a very limited range to which it can be fired. It shouldn't be able to hit targets that are not visible. For example, it would suck to get nuked over that one hill in slaughtered. Overall, artillery nukes are bad. Edit: Even if you changed the nukes, it would be ridiculous to have something more powerful than HE cannon already is. Even for 1 shot. without an engineer, HE cannon can take out a building in 15~ seconds alone, or a group of buildings really. that's full 800 hp buildings. It 2-3 hits turret farms. Nothing on the artillery tank needs to be More Powerful.
Nukes are basically heavy plasma missiles. The radius gives them a nice infantry-killing effect too, but it's mostly the overheating effect you'll be after. If they were arty, people might actually use them as such. Which could be a bad thing.
I see your point of moving nukes to arty. But it would seriously unbalance the game. At the moment u have to be careful how u shoot the nuke cus if u hit the target too close then u get taken out as well. This factor does help balance the game alot. Move nukes to arty then u go back to Empires 1.7 when HE arty was like a nuke and if u had arty it was a case of HE Arty = I WIN HA HA factor Nukes do need changeing as said in this thred: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=5331 If u want to argue how nukes should be used then go to this thred
Currently, to use a nuke, you have to put your very big, expensive, hard to maneuver, heavy tank, into harms way. By giving it to artillery tanks, you remove this, and make it a weapon that you can't fight without pushing past the enemies front line.
We already had the "Nuke Arty" in 1.071, trust me, you don't want something like the nuke in the artillery chassis... Back then arty used to be able to pwn tanks all by itself, clear bases, and kill infantry, it was the best tank in the game...
So make the nuke more expensive. And you can't fight it anyway if the enemy uses it from a distance with a heavy tank, especially seeing as once you get there, you find that it is attached to a heavy tank. I'm not suggesting nuclear artillery, I'm suggesting putting the weapon as it is now on the artillery chassis and making it aim down properly when using it.
Then who would use it? Your talking about a tank which has its aim fixed forward, is hard to drive because of that, and has weak armor. Short of a game where the enemy is totally fucked, the chances of it reaching a conflict zone (other than a first strike) intact is very very low.
Well ideally it would have a degree of side to side motion and a different model when using nukes, as part of my suggestion to make arties into a general purpose heavy weapon platform, but the point is that nukes aren't a proper weapon anyway, they are designed to blow up fucked enemies faster, and that's it. Their only other function is to stall an enemy attack which is both annoying and cheap.
Nukes and artillery server somewhat similar purposes. The biggest problem with putting nukes on artillery is that artillery is accurate and can be used from a good distance away or in a location where it cannot be harmed. for both those reasons, you shouldn't have a nuke on artillery. Now, if you changed the chassis so that it can only shoot a nuke forwards and in a straight line, it would be alright.
It might work if you changed the arty so that it could only fire when deployed, i.e. in a fixed position (think the terran tank in Starcraft). Then you could make it so that it couldn't fire while moving and give it a 10 sec delay when going between deployed and mobile.
Maybe after plains are introduced, because I picture this like the Nuke Cannon in Generals. BIG, SLOW, WEAK, and SLOW firing. Easy fodder for an air strike. Would be an interesting divergence in research, go art to use nukes, or air to hunt art? Heavies are a tough nut to crack and the argument against art is that there is no way to retaliate. Putting them on a weak chassis that has to hide would be for fair then.
Any massive damage dealing attack must be made from somewhere where there is risk of counter attack. Not being able to counter a nuke immediately after it is fired and before it hits is borderline super weapon.
I am in the "just take nukes out of Empires" Camp, and here comes my opinion: Just take nukes out of Empires altogether.
Why? They cost like hell to research, and limiting weapons, doesn't improve strategys really, it limits them.
