Simple scoring question

[Nameless_]

This is probably a really obvious thing that i've failed to work out through the tutorials and casual play but I was wondering what exactly determines wether nuking a city will cause any loss of life from a given nuke?

Quite a few frustrating times I've started my main offense on a group of cities and hit a point where despite them being loaded with population none of the nukes seeming to register kills.

This game makes my head hurt, deceptively deep, but I like how it's basically impossible to win without legitimate thought and strategy.

[Feud]

Either the defenses are shooting your missles down, or you are just missing the cities. The only factor in dertermining if a nuke will cause damage is if it hits it's target or not.

The only other option is that your game is buggy, if they are hitting the cities, then they should be going off.

[Nameless_]

Hmm, I might FRAPS a minute or two of gameplay tomorrow and up it to Youtube, but I don't think it's a bug.

Assuming the enemy doesn't have any defensive silos or anything nearby do nukes still land off target? If so then good, it must be that, but it's hard to tell really.

[NeoThermic]

The only factor in dertermining if a nuke will cause damage is if it hits it's target or not.

Not quite. Everything is based on chance. A nuke will not kill it's target 100% of the time (I spent the last two days testing this theory since I didn't have any internet access and was bored), but for statistical reasons you might as well call it 100%

NeoThermic

[Zenon]

If you're referring to the message that appears above a hit city, it only appears if the hit results in the city losing 1 million or more people. Hence, if you nuke somewhere that has 1.9 or 1.8, no message will appear, since you killed 0.9 million-ish people.

Note that each nuke hit kills half the existing population, with a slight variance, so even if you nuke a city with 2.0 million, on a rare occasion, you may not get a message. The larger the initial population, the larger the variation.

[NeoThermic]

If you're referring to the message that appears above a hit city, it only appears if the hit results in the city losing 1 million or more people. Hence, if you nuke somewhere that has 1.9 or 1.8, no message will appear, since you killed 0.9 million-ish people.

Note that each nuke hit kills half the existing population, with a slight variance, so even if you nuke a city with 2.0 million, on a rare occasion, you may not get a message. The larger the initial population, the larger the variation.

Nope, I'm referring to the actual damage a nuke does to any land or sea based unit and cities. It does not kill it's target 100% of the time, and I went through 47 test games (where I controlled both clients) to prove this (so somewhere in the region of 7,700 nukes).

NeoThermic

[Nameless_]

If you're referring to the message that appears above a hit city, it only appears if the hit results in the city losing 1 million or more people. Hence, if you nuke somewhere that has 1.9 or 1.8, no message will appear, since you killed 0.9 million-ish people.

Note that each nuke hit kills half the existing population, with a slight variance, so even if you nuke a city with 2.0 million, on a rare occasion, you may not get a message. The larger the initial population, the larger the variation.

This helps lots.

[roflamingo]

Note that each nuke hit kills half the existing population, with a slight variance, so even if you nuke a city with 2.0 million, on a rare occasion.

Just to expound on this point a little bit because it comes up in game a bit with some newer players.

A city with a claimed 2.0M people does not have 2,000,000 people. It has somewhere between 1,950,000 and 2,049,999 and the game rounds it to the nearest hundred thousand for display purposes. And unless you trial and error it with an AI, you won't know exactly (I was bored 1 day and did it on Africa in default city count).

I'm not 100% sure that a nuke will always kill 50.000% of a city's remaining population, but I'm 95%+ sure it's between 48-50% and never exceeds half.

However, you will get the fractional points and the credit even if you don't get a kill message on screen, which is why experienced players keep nuking cities below 2.0M. At end-game players will mouseover every city trying to find the highest-scoring target that they can easily hit to pump up their scores -- something tedious when you are playing a 50 city game but that's the price of Defcon war.

[Ace Rimmer]

However, you will get the fractional points and the credit even if you don't get a kill message on screen, which is why experienced players keep nuking cities below 2.0M. At end-game players will mouseover every city trying to find the highest-scoring target that they can easily hit to pump up their scores -- something tedious when you are playing a 50 city game but that's the price of Defcon war.

Every time I find myself playing with a certain other player ROFLamingo I end up doing this for the sole purpose of getting just enough points to pull ahead of him.

[roflamingo]

I used to call that seagull kills - swoop in and eat the garbage. I wasn't going to name names but I know a bunch of players who do this. This tactic is rather standard and obligatory.

[caranthir.pkk]

Note that each nuke hit kills half the existing population, with a slight variance, so even if you nuke a city with 2.0 million, on a rare occasion.

(I was bored 1 day and did it on Africa in default city count)

God rofl you are such a nerd.... almost as big as neo

[roflamingo]

I did it while waiting for my daughters to brush their teeth and pick out a story they wanted me to read. Besides God know the least nerdy people are the French.

Ohh snap I went there.

[caranthir.pkk]

I did it while waiting for my daughters to brush their teeth and pick out a story they wanted me to read. Besides God know the least nerdy people are the French.

Ohh snap I went there.

Thank god I am not French I come from a warrior tribe hehe

[roflamingo]

The fact is that you are discussing computers seems a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.