AIR BLAST / SURFACE IMPACT

[NICE GUY]

Ok, everyone else is having their 5cents worth so I'll give it a shot...

It'd be nice to nominate Air Blast (AB) vs Surface Detonation (SD) for Nukes Mid-Flight:

1. You would nominate SD for taking out cities and infrastructure (i.e) more devastating locally.

2. You would nominate AB for taking out naval targets (i.e) wider spread blast.

What does everyone else think?

[Xocrates]

Defcon counts the number of hits something takes before being destroyed in the case of buildings and the chance of being destroyed in the case of units.

Having a short and a wider blast radius would pretty much mean everybody would choose the large one.

And even if having a shorter blast radius would be an advantage when bombing cities, the trouble of changing a bunch of nukes mid flight would be insane because you would have to track where every nuke is heading and then which mode you wanted. If this was to be made on launch it would delay the game unnecessarily since you had to launch a nuke at a time.

And on a side note. I do believe (but I may be wrong) that in reality all nukes are blown up before reaching the ground.

[Erasmus J Homeowner]

The onlly reason a nuke would touch the ground before detonation would be to either maximise the fallout (more debris = more radioactive nastiness generally through neutron capture) or to penetrate below ground to destroy a buried hardened target.
To maximise destructive force, weapons are detonated at a variety of heights depending on the yield, probability of accuracy (depending on target size) and required peak overpressure (also depending on the target).

I think one nuke, of one yield, detonating in one way is a good enough abstraction for defcon!! =]

Although, what about ex-atmospheric detonations to nail enemy radar with EMP? :p

[PsychicKid]

I don't think a city would be ground burst. Cities are typically pretty big, especially when you factor in suburbs and other little towns and communites that make the city up. If you air-burst it right above the skyline, I gurantee those skyscrapers would be gone, and those would be the only things able to even have a chance to survive a nuclear strke. You'd want an air-burst to maximize fatalities and damage for a city, since the concentrated damage from a ground burst seems irrelevent.

[Trident]

Ok,
What does everyone else think?

puppies are cute

[KingAl]

BrianBlessed: 1
Trident: 0