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good for morale

good in theory

just good. period.

useless but very cool

cool, but very much useless

all around bad idea

cheap

supperweapons...? Is that the kind of weapons you eat in the evening or something?

[zchris13]

That jet had a nuke onboard.
And hitting it with tactical missiles is a totally valid tactic.

[Aqizzar]

In the words of my generation: UP! YOURS!

I too like Total Annihilation's take on superweapons much more than any other game.  They would cost a fortune each, but they actually did damage.  Forget nukes, I loved the giant cannons.  My friends and I played some superlong games on maps like Seven Islands, where we'd build whole banks of cannons to shell each other, since we could both afford anti-nuke missiles anyway.  As far as I know, TA was the only game that ever had those either.

[zchris13]

It's spiritual successor had them.

[Rakonas]

Wait, we're talking about RL super weapons, right? Bah, I voted yes but I hate super weapons in games as they're rarely ever represented nicely.

[Neruz]

Yeah, SupCom takes Superweapons even further with Experimentals, 3 - 4 units for each faction that are basically walking (or swimming, or floating, or flying) Superweapons of varying degrees of power. The Seraphim in the Xpak get an Experimental Nuke Launcher that fires off 1 missile every minute, and the missiles create black holes on impact. (For reference; Nukes normally take 5 minutes to build the missile, and Anti-nukes build in 4 minutes. If a Seraphim gets a Yolana Oss up you -will- lose, because it sucks up very few resources, so even if you have enough anti-nukes to stop it (it eats 2 anti-nukes to stop each nuke, which is twice as many as normal) you'll be blowing far more resources than he will be. It's called a 'Game Ender' for a reason.)

[LordBucket]

Discuss.

My thoughts on a few superweapons:

Starcraft: Terran nuclear missiles
Nicely done. Effective, but with a catch. You had to manouever a covert ops units near your target, and it was possible for your opponent to kill him before the nuke landed. Of course, the solution to this was just to bring half a dozen of them. But even then you had to find your way to a critical target. Firign on the front lines was rarely more than a nuisance. Useful superweapon, but not game unbalancing.

Total Annihilation: Nuclear Missiles
Effective. Completely obliterated anything anywhere on the map. Unlimited range. A single silo could build and stockpile many missiles. Absolutely game-ending if your opponent doesn't prepare for it. But all your opponent has to do it build the corresponding missile defense system, and keep it stocked with defender missiles just like you keep stocked on nukes. All in all, a decent implementation, but in actual practice I tended to find nukes only useful against unskilled or careless players. Skilled player always knew it was coming, so built missile defenses at all vital installations, rendering nukes pretty much useless. I didn't usually bother to build them.

Total Annihilation: Big bertha
Massively long (but not unlimited) range immobile artilllery system. Not very accurate, but awfully devastating. And pretty much unstoppable. Once you had one of these things built, you pretty much just instructed it to auto-fire in an area you suspected your opponent probably had a base. If you were right, after a few minutes it would be destroyed. Interesting unit. Interestign implementation. Absolutely game ending against a player who didn't know how to deal with them, and players who insisted on building centralized bases around explosive facilities like fusion reactors. High skill requirement to avoid, but acceptably so. Overall, I approve. But it took a while to learn to deal with them.

Street Figher 2: Ken & Ryu's uppercut
Mixed feelings. Granted, there was a relatively high skill requirement to be able to use the attack, but people who had mastered it were nearly invincible. This attack could not only be used to overcome absolutely any aerial attack, thus keeping your opponent grounded, it could also be used to attack incoming attacks, like punches and kicks. And, it rendered one immune to ranged attacks. Consequently, a master of the uppercut with good timing could simply stand there for an entire match doing nothing other than uppercuts over and over...wait, uppercut, repeat. And win. It was possible to overcome, but only by an opponent with greater skill, and even then only if they used one of a couple suitable counter characters. A player might have completely mastered three or four characters, but if they hadn't mastered one of thr right characters, anyone who had mastered this single attack with Ken or Ryu would be completely unstoppable. Overall, I dispprove of the implementation. It didn't affect me much personally, as my choice character was the one who had the easiest time overcoming the uppercut, but lots of other people were understandably annoyed because there was simply nothing they could do other than learn to play a new character.

Star Wars: The Death Star
Massive ship with a huge laser that can blow up planets and a drive system capable of transporting it to anywhere in the entire galaxy in a matter of hours or days. Interesting idea, but badly implemented. The Death Star is the source of at least a couple entries on the "If I ever become an evil overlord" list. Why? Because this huge, massive space station the size of a moon was destroyed by a tiny one-manned spaceship that fired a single missile in the right place.

Dwarf Fortress: Flood the world with magma
Probably one of the most reasonably balanced super-weapons ever seen in any game. Ultimately destructive, but time-consuming and difficult to build, and a single mistake could cause it to backfire and completely destroy your fortress. Even if you do build it correctly, it's likely to have side effects: the destruction of trees and vegetation that might otherwise be useful. And it annoys your neighbors, the elves. Good implemenation of a super-weapon.

Star Trek Armada: The Borg Fusion Cube
Build almost every building and perform almost every type of research, and you can make a supercube. How? By building nine regular cubes, telling them to merge, and waiting 30-40 seconds. All in all, this was a reasonable attempt to solve a dilemna, but with bad results. In Star Trek, a single Borg cube was able to destroy entire Federaion fleets. Not exactly a balanced ship. But how could they include the Borg in the game without allowing them to build their token ship? So, basically they tweaked the idea slightly and made it tedious and annoying to build. Unfortuantely the fusion cube was pretty much like the cubes from Star Trek: if you got one, you could effortlessly destroy entire fleets, starbases...anything. Over the coarse of the learning curve of the game, I only ever saw one of these things destroyed twice. And both times, my opponents (same group of friends) learned how to avoid those same mistakes. Eventually it became such that if anyone managed to build a fusion cube, they won. Period. Nothing could be done to stop them. So, anytime one of us chose to play the Borg, we knew that we had eight minutes to remove them from the game. Why eight minutes? That was how long it took to build one. All in all it was an acceptable mechanic, but it wasn't very fun. Thumbs down for this superweapon.

Revenge of Shinobi: Jutsu of Mijin
You are a ninja. Plunge your sword into your chest and blow up. Your body parts will fly through the air, impaling and killing all nearby enemies. The catch is that you die. Entertaining superweapon, and well balanced. Thoroughly and indiscriminately destructive, but it comes with a price. Of course, as a console game, you're allotted several "lives" to work with, so using this art doesn't mean the game ends. But you start the game with only three lives, so it's not something you want to use very often. And of course, if you are on your last life, then yes, use it and the game is over. Good superweapon. Not one that I'd want to use in real life, but good game design.

[Neruz]

Total Annihilation: Nuclear Missiles
Effective. Completely obliterated anything anywhere on the map. Unlimited range. A single silo could build and stockpile many missiles. Absolutely game-ending if your opponent doesn't prepare for it. But all your opponent has to do it build the corresponding missile defense system, and keep it stocked with defender missiles just like you keep stocked on nukes. All in all, a decent implementation, but in actual practice I tended to find nukes only useful against unskilled or careless players. Skilled player always knew it was coming, so built missile defenses at all vital installations, rendering nukes pretty much useless. I didn't usually bother to build them.

Ah, to use an old meme; You're doin it rong.

What you do is build 1 or 2 nuke silos and have them build a nuke or two. Then build half a dozen EMP\Neutron missile silos. They're substantially cheaper than the Nuke silos.

You then use a curtain of EMP or Neutron missiles to decoy the enemy's Nuclear Defence into shooting down the cheapo EMP or Neutron missiles while your Nukes fly in under cover and blow the shit out of everything.


Bertha's and their superior Intimidator cousins could be handily defeated by a small hill due to almost no firing arc, but were otherwise very effective on medium maps (less so on large ones).

[catoblepas]

I saw a Borg tactical fusion cube get destroyed in Armada II. Well, not really destroyed....I saw a Ferengi ship towing one . I still regret not having taken a screenshot.

[Aqizzar]

I completely forgot that Total Annihilation also had The Krogoth.  Which I inordinately loved, because it was total pants.  It's almost like the Cavedog guys got so tired of being bombarded for a giant all-powerful robot, so they made one.  A giant robot that can be dropped with some sustained rocket fire, because it lumbers slower than The Can and can't shoot anything that isn't within half a screen of it's front side.  Poor Krogoth.

[Neruz]

The Krogoth was ten kinds of awesome if you could get it into range; it's HP was rediculous, it actually moved pretty fast (faster than the lump of uselessness that is The Can), it could reliably strike at both land and air thanks to the relatively long-range guided missiles, the fairly powerful gauss hands and the annihilator lazor strapped to it's chin, it's problems were twofold; it's cost and build time were rediculously inordinate for it's combat effectiveness, and long range options are substantially overpowered, missiles especially so.

But long ranged options paled in comparison to the OP that was the Flash, and EMP in general. Fortunately most people had a gentleman's ban on EMP and their Core counterparts; such a ban was impossible for missile launchers.

[de5me7]

i love defcon

i like superweapons but they need to be a well designed game mechanic. I dont like them in C&C. In all westwood games they are just irriating. They are irritating when they make u click a few extra buttons to rebuild the one or 3 buildings you have to rebuild. For the person that launched them they are iriitating because they dont actually do that much damage.

I think superweapons work best when they are a core game mechanic rather than something bolted on to the side.

[Neruz]

Superweapons generally fall into two categories; Not-That-Super and Game Ender.

CnC is a master of the Not-That-Superweapon; their superweapons look really cool, but due to balance reasons (no way to counter them, free to fire) they have to be weak, otherwise victory would just be a click away.

Games like TA and SupCom take the Game Ender approach; superweapons are stoppable if you know they're coming (Antinukes, sufficient firepower to stop a surprise Monkeylord up the ass etc), but if they catch you off guard it's gaem over.


Unsurprisingly, it's usually of little concern in CnC if your enemy has a superweapon up (doubly so because it tells you about it so you can see it coming a mile away). In SupCom the first warning you get is when it says "Strategic Launch Detected" and you realise you have about 60 seconds before you become a nuclear fireball, or a black hole. This means that scouting in CnC is often less than important, in SupCom if you don't scout, you lose.

[Neonivek]

There is the third which is a very super weapon that doesn't end the game.

In Supreme Commander for example you got tons of units that can destroy entire bases, multiple in fact. The game still continues after they are taken care of.

[Granite26]

No game design discussion?

Superweapons add the MAD back into games with viable defensive strategies.  They prevent stable 'if I attack first I'll lose because we'll be fighting near his defenses not mine' situations, without making defending a losing stategy  (Starcraft has weak defenses and strong counters to them)

[Neonivek]

I remember one game that had many powerful spells, some more powerful then others (your personal avatar could kill enemies with one hit... however... the lack of controls made it basically suicide)

However the best strategy in the game wasn't done with spells that destroy entire screens worth of enemies, in fact that might lose you the game. No the best strategy was done with 1-2 spells

Clone and Capture

First you capture tons of enemy creatures, then combine them into one ultimate heroic creature on your side.

Finally you clone that ultimate creature as many times as possible (which can get you hundreds of them). That can win you the game on any difficulty (To put it in retrospect... an ordinary monster has 50 health, these bosses you create have upwards of 600 health.) It was a very broken strategy but then again the game obviously never attempted to be balanced.