I mean, who likes cruise missiles? They're the missiles that you fire on bots because you want to get rid of them, the missiles whose greatest purpose is to lower the SDI of targets so that other more useful missiles can be used. Their impact on war is lower than the impact evidence had on the OJ Simpson trial. Now I know Gerdler or Marshal will put together a solid sounding defense in the name of cruise missiles, but don't believe them - they're liars and should not be trusted. Cruise missiles suck. They're the Wesley Crusher of missiles. A buff to cruise missiles is a buff in the name of missile parity.

you think that bot doesn't remember who missiled it in past?

Agreed with sinistril on all points.

As a clarification I dont disagree with the mechanic necessarily but with the way they are balanced.

I do think the nuke should be cut to destroy a percentage of attackers land or defenders land whichever is lower and the same should be done for chems on civs and buildings. Cruise are used to soften ppls SDIs as often as they are used for their actual effect lol, that goes to show that they are often not all that powerful.

Ohh, I like the "possibility of backfire" / collateral damage idea. I don't think it should be based on attacker's vs. defender's acreage, though. It should just be a something like 7% chance where the missile damages the launching country instead. SDI could still block it.

Hmm, thats not what I meant but I think thats a good idea too. If others like it I will take credit!!! :)

What I meant was that to do full damage with a nuke you gotta have equal acres or higher than the target, same for chems but with Civs and buildings. That would make it more important in war to build a proper country. And big cashers would be more or less immune to chem kill so you would perhaps see more cashers again in war which would be nice.

It makes sense that the bigger country can make the bigger nuke. Look at north korea and their tiny little nukes that can barely generate a registerable earthquake. Then compare to Soviet Union who made the Tsar Bomba, with a shockwave that could be felt 3 times as it went round the earth.

Disagree with Gerdy on nukes, they are good deterrent from bottom feeders. EM should be buffed to temporarily disabled a country from using turns with DR obviously. Would be useful against wallers.

I am in sympathy with sinistril et al ... cruise missiles are always the dissappointing missile ...

But i think their most interesting attriute is the decrease to the target's readiness on a hit ... on solo servers this won't come to much, but i seem to remember from swirve days that this could be devastating because the 1% decrease to readiness wasn't capped, so a coordinated barrage could effectively reduce the target's defence to near zero and all that implies ... don't know if it still works that way today ...

But buffing this aspect i think could become destabalizing, even with hard limits on far you could push it

Another long debated possibility is supporting targeted strikes on any of the target's attributes, i.e. damage against only tanks, only bushels, only oil, only civillians, only cash, only readiiness, only indie buildings, only weapons tech, only spies and so forth ... at least, this would make cruise missiles more fun to play, but getting the balance correct seems a challenge ... and new interfaces as well. I don't remember this getting past the fun to talk about stage, but it is fun to talk about.

Practically, i'd like to simply add more attributes of damage to the cruise missile, but in small amounts proportional to their current mil unit damage, damage at least to buildings, civilians, cash, bushels and oil.

A wild and spectacular upgrade, would be the destruction of one of the target's turns on each successful hit - this is too much, but also fun to talk about.

*Bonus!*

Defensive readiness has a virtual floor of 70% no matter what your actual readiness is as far as EE goes.

Uh ... i am pretty sure that within the last 2 years i've used demoralize ops to drive a target's readiness below 50% and everything worked as expected ....

Also, when you switch govs, you are reduced to 50% readiness, not 70% ...

So if there is a floor today, i'm pretty sure it is well below 50% - i think there is/was a floor, but something more like 10%

... in the past, you would use demoralize ops to push it down well below 50% and then pile on the cruise missiles.

A very small buff to it would be if it removed 3% readiness all the time and not 2% of current readiness..

now it takes like 20 hits to get a target to 70% readiness and like 65 hits to get it to 25%. with that change it would take 10 hits to get to 70% and 25 hits and 33 hits to get to 25% and 1% readiness respectively.

you could potentially start a KR with EMs on a high spal target and you could reduce the hits from the enemies breakers by removing their readiness. It wont be overpowered but significantly more powerful than today.

DancingBear what he means is that your forces work at 70% of effectiveness at 70% and lower readiness. Demoralize ops caps at like 9% or 10% readiness but that takes a whole load of ops and dont drop the break past the 7th op.

Gosh ... do i have false memories of melting an opponent's nw like an icecube under a blowtorch by demoing them down sub 25% and then attacking them successfully as if their def was indeed at 25% and hence their casualties were runniing at roughly 4x my own (actually much worse because of my med tech and weapons) ... really, i have those memories from swirve days, but they could be false or twisted up with some other game from 20 years ago ...

Regardless, the 70% minimum effective readiness floor is news to me and i thank you both for setting me straight.

Given that, a 3% flat readiness reduction doesn"t seem crazy as it is mostly about forcing the victum to take more turns to get back into the game - and if you load the vic up with a crippled economy and some bioTs, then you could set a country back a few steps ...

I still want cruise missiles to damage a tiny bit of everything ... but if not everything, at least add spy damage as per the other mil units

if the goal is to achieve both then just make effectively a reverse c:c dr

where special attacks start off having a reduced effect unless the country sending attacks has been attacked by the country it wants to deter/punish

If a nuke goes through, it takes several turns to grab/build to get to the same land as before... if a chem goes through, it takes several turns to build up to the same buildings and restore civs lost... if a cruise goes through... it takes 2/3 of a turn to regain readiness and probably less than a turn in expenses to regain the military lost. As an attacker, you might as well use a couple spy ops to get rid of readiness and get rid of the military of your choice rather than waste those turns using a cruise missile as you'll get better returns. The same can't be said about the other missiles. I think the readiness they take is negligible at best, the only interesting thing is they can take out some spies without the risk of losing your own, but even then they don't take out enough.


tldr; the only thing cruise missiles are on par with is the childhood realization that Santa is not real and your parents have been lying to you

Cruise missiles should also destroy tech IMO.

How about an in-game cruise missile coversion option, like trading oil for pm units?

Something like 2 cruise missiles, plus some amount of cash, bushels and oil to get a cm with more ems and more other resources to get a nuke ...

This doesn't address the basic missile disparity, but it would make the green lettering more truthful when you get an em

Missile market FTW!

no to missile market.

OK ... no on missile market -- been there ....

And no on other funny stuff as this is about buffing the EM enough that it isn't a dissapointment

Add 1+% loss on current technology
Add damage to population as per successful GS, also add damage to cash, bushels and oil, but destroyed, not taken
Add damage to buildings as per successful AB
Make sure damage to spies is proportional to other mil units.
Change readiness reduction form 2% of currentt to 3% flat

In our imagination, change it from a single missile to a full salvo with consequent broad spectrum damage

Any comments?

Another consideration, possibly small, possibly funny, possibly too subtle, maybe too radical ...

Remove EM strikes from any and all DR calculations on the target,
Always give EMs the chances as though target had no current DR

I really don't know the consequences or technical challenges this would create, but wanted to post it for completeness

In cpncert with the other buffing, this might be too much

Cheers!

I am against making huge broad damage cruise missiles. It carries a conventional explosive, does it not? So how can it destroy more than a nuke?

I like the targeted feel you get that the mechanism only hits the military and it takes out readiness. but its far too little. Maybe a hit can take out some tech too, Tech business are often located in a fairly concentrated area so it makes sense that you need to target it and that that could be effective. :)

I dont disagree with any of your suggestions if they are take 1 by 1, dancingbear. However, if cruise did all that it would be both very unlike the real world and also very overpowered. It would also create a lot of work for qz both to balance and to add new mechanics. The easiest changes are always to just change a number in the formula - which means those changes are the ones we are most likely to get.

Agreed make it do more damage to units and more to readiness, that is the easiest thing for QZ to do.

I don"t disagree that formula changes are easiest technically ... and an easier political sell as well

But i was wantiing to be at least as happy to get a new EM as i currently am to get a CM or NM ... and i think i would need a pretty large increase in mil unit damage to get the same kind of happy ... so large that i don't see how to make it work practically ... that's why adding other damage elements makes the new EM somewhat useful in more situations and keeps them from being devastating. If you can see potential in this idea, it is only a matter of choosing which damage elements to add and how much damage to do.

:)

Well, the game devs basically said (maybe not in as many words) until they're done the new UI they'll likely only have time for quick fixes or huge bugs. Hence why easiest is a key point :P Also, making it damage too many elements runs the risk of being equally useless as it is now or overpowered. You could probably triple damage done to military units now and double readiness without them being overpowered, to be honest. (It may seem like a lot but I think people often forget how many units are lost in a defending SS, PS, BR, GS, AB. In other words, it would still be less than a single strike of any of those in most circumstances). If you did that, they'd find their niche as a pre-kill run attack instead of running demoralise ops as is currently done (with the disadvantage of not being hidden from the news feed, potentially costing more turns than ops, and having to deal with SDI, which balances the 4% readiness loss).

We could also give the new EM an improved chance of success

If they were a flat +10% or +20%, they would have a real chance of getting thru on a max sdi target (you know, tiny target close to the ground is more difficult to intercept.) With better damage, greater readiness penalty and improved chance to hit, they would be much more attractive - maybe still not worth a CM generally, but way better than the throw away items they are now.

I like EMs.

They lower readiness and kill a portion of their spies. That's pretty badass if you ask me.

how about cruise having multiple warheads like 5?

they do already

they kill spies/troops/jets/turrets/tanks, 1 warhead couldn't do that because in reality you don't keep all those grouped together.

oh pfffffft.