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[E. Albright]

LIES! Our spies have seen the giant fusion-powered facilities in your capital, cleaning uniforms and meat trays non-stop, month after month in an endless orgy of suds!!!

[Edit: if anyone is curious about what it looked like before, it did glow a little, but yeah, that area's seen some things...]

Spoiler: 25 turns ago, before the war, vs. now (click to show/hide)

[USEC_OFFICER]

But for all I know it could also be doing the laundry, washing dishes, and solving global warming.

Well. Nuclear winter would be one way to solve global warming...

[Il Palazzo]

Just a few turns ago I was all like: I don't need any more heavy industries, I'm already making over 100 (one hundred!) machines per turn. Lol. Like with, how does that folk legend go, when Gates said in the 80s that nobody will ever need more memory in their computer than a couple of megabytes or so.

In other news, it turns out going over the short term casualty limit ain't that bad. Just an extra point or two of a negative modifier to city happiness. Maybe it scales strongly with higher numbers. Maybe the long-term casualties are much worse. Let's find out, shall we?

Also, I know this is a fallacious reasoning, but I really don't feel the supposed effects of 90 meritocracy on leader quality. The last... few, shall we say, were some of the most terribad leaders I've ever seen. Although, it does seem like my longer-serving crappy ones have been somewhat happier to learn various skills, even when doing nothing.

Oh, and Burancon. If it ever falls, it'll be worth nothing. There'll be maybe 20k pop left and a bunker.


Finally, I have to admit - strategically, I've been larping as the Russians. Pointless frontal attacks and outdated equipment. We need a plan.

[E. Albright]

Like with, how does that folk legend go, when Gates said in the 80s that nobody will ever need more memory in their computer than a couple of megabytes or so.

IDK about Microsoft, but the team that developed the 286 literally had tee-shirts made calling themselves "the End of the World Team", b/c the 286 was so powerful it'd satisfy your computing needs until the end of the world...

Spoiler: And there we go, right back to normal (click to show/hide)

See, this is exactly how this war that you insist I've been winning has gone for me the whole time. Looking at the battle history, you sent 9.2k infantry and 80 mechs to attack (from two sides only) 20k dug-in combined-arms troops defending Burancon, and you lost 1.1k infantry and 10 mechs to my 5.1k infantry & MGs, 400 GR laser turrets, 10 AT guns (in battledress, natch) and 10 of my fancy new medium tanks. I may have killed off ~9k of your troops last turn, but it was basically all with nukes. You did the above with conventional forces, and have been ever since the war started. Your lack of a plan has been doing fine at grinding me down; if there weren't fresh-faced Grognards waiting in the south to clean up whichever of us staggers out of this bloodbath, I'd say staying your course was giving you above-average odds to win the whole game.

Unrelated, I'd like to shout out the Hornstein 11LIn BN (and their Vet Sgt), who attacked 500 of my horrid MANPADs and not only didn't overrun them, but couldn't even hurt them.

[Il Palazzo]

See, this is exactly how this war that you insist I've been winning has gone for me the whole time. Looking at the battle history, you sent 9.2k infantry and 80 mechs to attack (from two sides only) 20k dug-in combined-arms troops defending Burancon

You mean, I've sent some of my strongest troops to attack mostly infantry, a good part in heavy combat armour, 'dug in' in agricultural land - in scare quotes because it wasn't much entrenched having been pounded by most of the rocket+missile artillery I've got? And they held? And lost >a< tank? Wow, I must be really winning!

Spoiler: oh, and guess which numbers are mine (click to show/hide)

[E. Albright]

D'ya wanna talk about how your troops - "'dug in' in agricultural land", mostly in heavy combat armor, and in no stronger defensive postures than Fluid Defense - were too strong for me to push out of the farmland on the other side of the mountains w/o killing off your commanders first, but your troops managed to push mine out of the mountains back into their positions in agricultural land you now mock? Or that - again - the formation of "some of [your] strongest troops" you're pushing forward with is 92% completely generic infantry? Oh, and I checked - 15k of the troops you attacked were in battledress; the nukzookas & single-barrel MGs, tanks, and GR turrets were the other 5k. So yeah, given that you can capture & hold ground (including farmland) but I've barely been able to take back 8 hexes of over-extended salients in the north after nuking OHQs, I'd say you're really winning.

Spoiler: Oh, and you want to play the "guess who" game? (click to show/hide)

Mind you, it might not be fair to compare your two frontmost border cities to mine, as yours started of the war at 67k & 45k but are now 79k & 49k, while mine were 2k & 135k, but now are 2k & *checks notes* 49k.

[Although I gotta say - it feels like we've been at war A LOT longer than 11 turns. ><]

[Karlito]

It sounds like you are both unhappy with the war. Recognize me as Planetary Emperor, and I will mediate a peace settlement between my two vassals.

[Il Palazzo]

It sounds like you are both unhappy with the war. Recognize me as Planetary Emperor, and I will mediate a peace settlement between my two vassals.

Not until I drag him out of his bunker, kicking and screaming, and make him admit that he's winning.

[E. Albright]

On the one hand, I've just had what was probably my 3rd "Ah-ha, I've been using nukes wrong!" moment this game, so the sheer havoc I'm wrecking this turn tempts me to walk out of my bunker of my own free will.

OTOH, you finished Micro-Nuke RPG this turn, so I have, what, 2 turns until you start wholesale vaporizing my front line? And to be clear, the casualty levels suffered in my conventional counterattacks that accompanied the atomic fire this turn makes it clear that giving your infantry nukes WILL vaporize my front line.

So I think I'll stay in my bunker a little bit longer.

[Il Palazzo]

"Ah-ha, I've been using nukes wrong!"

Oh, come on!

[fatcat__25]

It sounds like you are both unhappy with the war. Recognize me as Planetary Emperor, and I will mediate a peace settlement between my two vassals.

Not until I drag him out of his bunker, kicking and screaming, and make him admit that he's winning.

Mind if I sig that?

[Il Palazzo]

That'll be three fiddy.

[E. Albright]

"Ah-ha, I've been using nukes wrong!"

Oh, come on!

Don't worry, it didn't involve anything that'd let me scratch the invincible horde menacing Burancon, so whatever else I do you should still be able to reduce that once-proud rubble heap to a slightly finer grade of rubble.

[Il Palazzo]

Is there even any counter to nukes? Those shields, maybe? Or would they melt just as easily? I could never figure out their mechanics, exactly. Not that I had spent any significant effort on the figuring out part.

[E. Albright]

There are, to some degree. I don't wanna talk too much about these things right now b/c it'd make them harder to use and they're my only serious tactical advantage ATM. But they suffer the same mechanical weirdness as artillery, only moreso. See forex how I'm not trying to use them to dislodge the forces around Burancon. I'll explain this much: the thing that makes them so lethal is their auto-kill chance (which IIRC is shared only with AA missiles). If you can't score a hit, though, the auto-kill test never comes into play.

I haven't tested shields vs. nukes b/c my experience w/them is mostly SP vs. AI and wildlife, but just based on the mechanics I do think they'd at the very least severely blunt their impact. There's a chance they'd melt immediately b/c shields are poorly tested (few people get to the tech level to use non-GR ones, and fewer still use them since the physical alternatives are so good), and the mechanics are significantly different than how other units work, but based on what they do I don't think they would. This conclusion is entirely based on me assuming the UI is correctly reporting how shields work mechanically, though, and I know about a year ago I dug into that, found it actually wasn't, and get a bug fix/shield buff implemented. It all comes down to whether the auto-kill check occurs when a hit depletes their armor by its value; it appears that counts as a miss, so it shouldn't right up until the shield is fully depleted, fails, and automatically dies. But again, their function is idiosyncratic and somewhat hard to understand, so it's not clear whether they would be subject to auto-kill checks from the first hit they take. I'd say they shouldn't, but I've been wrong about how they work in practice before, so...

I'm also not sure how shields interact with asset damage. It would make sense for Wide Area Shields to protect against artillery/nuke/aerial/conventional asset damage, but based on how THAT mechanic works I have a sneaking suspicion they don't.