Why not death by radiation?

[Fidel]

I have been searching the forum and found some threads about radiaton and what it does, an as far as i can see, its agreed that its only a visual efect. Why arent there radiaton kills , proportional with level of radiation an decreasing with it.
It just seems a bit dumb when 2 cities side by side get radiaton cloud after one beeing nuked and the only casualties
u get are the ones made by the nuke.
I also saw how some of you would like weather influence on the game, and i think that winds moving clouds of radiation
cross continent and causing casualties woud be nice. Imagine looking to the wind direction and nuking outside the range off
SAMs, sending a nice radiation cloud over your enemie...

[NeoThermic]

It was a feature removed from the game way before it came to Alpha. I guess it was too easy to win on radiation deaths, you know, game balance and that stuff.

NeoThermic

[Fidel]

I think it would be very nice, maybe the balance could be achieved by reducing the deaths by minute?
Well, if it was removed they should know better...

[mrobertsonesq]

I would agree this would make it more "realistic" but like all things, how far do you take realism.

Annoying, circular missives aside... would be interesting for it not to feature in the game as such, but rather on the end of game score sheet.

Radiation Leakage or similar could take the total population of the city hit, then also a percentage of the population in each city +/- a certain distance.

Not a way of winning the game but just amusing info?

[Xocrates]

One can argue that the time span covered in a single game might not be enough for fallout to cause enough casualties to be noticeable in the score.

[Ace Rimmer]

One can argue that the time span covered in a single game might not be enough for fallout to cause enough casualties to be noticeable in the score.

That's realism, which Defcon doesn't contain.

[KingAl]

But the argument for inclusion of radiation is on the basis of realism, while it doesn't have a tangible positive impact on gameplay.

[Xocrates]

So the unrealistic feature is actually more realistic than the realistic suggestion since the realistic suggestion is in fact rather unrealistic, but that doesn't matter anyway because the game is unrealistic and thus the unrealistic feature which is in fact realistic is realistic in the unrealistic context of the game while the realistic suggestion which is unrealistic but was proposed to turn the unrealistic game realistic is unrealistic?

[KingAl]

Thankyou, Mr. Rumsfeld.

[Ace Rimmer]

So the unrealistic feature is actually more realistic than the realistic suggestion since the realistic suggestion is in fact rather unrealistic, but that doesn't matter anyway because the game is unrealistic and thus the unrealistic feature which is in fact realistic is realistic in the unrealistic context of the game while the realistic suggestion which is unrealistic but was proposed to turn the unrealistic game realistic is unrealistic?

Uh, yes?

Edit: that reminded me of the scene in Labyrnth... (copy and paste, forgive the SHOUTING!)

SARAH: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?
JIM: TRY ONE OF THESE DOORS.
TIM: ONE OF THEM LEADS TO THE CASTLE,
TIM: AND THE OTHER ONE LEADS TO--
RALPH: BA BA BA BUM!
TIM: CERTAIN DEATH!
GUARDS: OOH! OOH!
SARAH: WHICH ONE IS WHICH?
JIM: WE CAN'T TELL YOU.
SARAH: WHY NOT?
JIM: UH... I, UH...
JIM: WE DON'T KNOW.
TIM: BUT THEY DO.
SARAH: OH. THEN I'LL ASK THEM.
ALPH: UH...
ALPH: YOU CAN ONLY ASK ONE OF US.
RALPH: IT'S IN THE RULES.
RALPH: ONE OF US ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH,
RALPH: AND ONE OF US ALWAYS LIES.
RALPH: HE ALWAYS LIES.
ALPH: I DO NOT! I TELL THE TRUTH!
RALPH: OH, WHAT A LIE!
TIM: HA HA HA!
ALPH: HE'S THE LIAR!
SARAH: ALL RIGHT. ANSWER YES OR NO.
SARAH: WOULD HE TELL ME
SARAH: THAT THIS DOOR LEADS TO THE CASTLE?
ALPH: UH...
ALPH: WHAT DO YOU THINK?
ALPH: REALLY?
ALPH: YES.
SARAH: THEN THE OTHER DOOR LEADS TO THE CASTLE,
SARAH: AND THIS DOOR LEADS TO CERTAIN DEATH.
ALPH: HE COULD BE TELLING THE TRUTH.
SARAH: BUT THEN YOU WOULDN'T BE,
SARAH: SO IF YOU SAID HE SAID YES,
SARAH: THE ANSWER IS NO.
ALPH: I COULD BE TELLING THE TRUTH.
SARAH: THEN HE'D BE LYING.
SARAH: THE ANSWER WOULD STILL BE NO.
ALPH: IS THAT RIGHT?
RALPH: I DON'T KNOW. I'VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD IT.
SARAH: NO, IT'S RIGHT. I'VE FIGURED IT OUT.
SARAH: I COULDN'T DO IT BEFORE.
SARAH: I THINK I'M GETTING SMARTER.
SARAH: IT'S A PIECE OF CAKE!
SARAH: AAH!

[torq]

I would agree this would make it more "realistic" but like all things, how far do you take realism.

What realism are you talking about? People die out of radiation for weeks. The symptoms of the radiation sickness wouldn't probably even show until after several hours at least after the exposure. The average nuclear war continues for 5-10 hours in Defcon (quite rarely it goes any longer than 15h). So radiation deaths wouldn't matter during this time. The firefighters who first responded to the explosion at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant caught several hundreds of lethal radiation doses there but they lived on after it for several hours at least (some had lived for several months and some live still).

[hellcatv]

Well your score really should be "longterm" deaths anyway---the game should simulate out into the future and see how many deaths you caused in the next few weeks...

but realism aside...I really wish they included it for *gameplay* reasons alone...
having it as an option would have added another gameplay mode which would allow you to peg cities with nearby nukes... it would add an entire new level of strategy in addition to the standard ones.... you could also nail an opponent's defense and skimp on nukes when raking in the points by aiming them to the center of cities...

*sigh* I wish a poorly tested version had been added to the final defcon, even if it was a hidden checkbox that you had to hack the client to find...


I wonder if that sort of scoring change could be added to dedcon........

[bert_the_turtle]

I wonder if that sort of scoring change could be added to dedcon........

Wonder no more, it can't. Dedcon doesn't even know about the regular scores.

[Fidel]

My inicial thought was about realism , cause if the graphic option is there why not make it do something?
But as i thought about it i started to see the parts that helcatv highlighted, new tactics and options.
Well , about realism , it is not that important in a game.Playability is. So we have sam in same place with silos, etc.etc.
There must be a balance.
I also like the idea of inclusion on score.
A "........Million people with radiation sickness"
or a "Future ..... generations/years affected by radiation"

[torq]

There's no future. Everybody dies