Radar blinding by nuclear explosion

[ivb]

P.S. Sorry, the name of the topic should be "Splitting warheads". The topic regarding radar blinding is the next. Could administrator change the title of this one?

Hi!

I greatly appreciate the delicate balance of the DEFCON and its playability. Hopefully, my suggestion enriches the tactics of the DEFCON without shifting the overall balance.

I would suggest missiles to carry splitting warheads. The amount of megatons per missile (each missile contains several warheads) is equal or below fixed amount. The more warheads carries the missile, the less total amount of megatons for given missile to deliver. This is natural, because each warhead contains (apart from the plutonium charge) many other equipment like detonator, navigation, etc. This additional equipment "eats" useful delivered mass, i.e. the mass of plutonium charge, and it increases with number of warheads carried by missile (because each warhead needs individual equipment).

The main idea is that the player may increase amount of attacking warheads (per launch) at the expense of total megatons of that launch, and at that, some warheads are more powerful than other.


For attackers, existence of warheads of different megatons would allow to perform mixed launches, where low megaton warheads are mixed up with higher megaton warheads. Extreme case of splitting warheads would be some missiles with big amount (for example, 3-5) false warheads (0 megaton), which function is only to hide the striking warheads. Another suggestion is a missile with one powerful (for example, 50%-70% of the normal charge) warhead and several (for example, 2-3) false warheads.
If mixed launch is successful, the more powerful warheads will have higher probability to hit the target by using lower amount of missiles in comparison to normal launch.

For defenders, counter-strategy can be to ignore some warheads in favor to other ones. This can be due to early detection of splitting event, which has happened within the radar coverage. If splitting point is not too far away from radar range, warheads trajectories may appear to be too close to each other and, therefore, to be suspected to carry lower megatons or being false. Such warheads may be pointed by player to be of secondary importance for antimissile silos (for example, right-click would mark or de-mark enemy's warheads to be secondary important).

Such effective counteraction would be possible if radar coverage is effectively increased by fleet radars. Therefore, the player having the advantage at sea area would also have the advantage to detect splitting warheads and, therefore, the improved defense.

The amount of warheads per missile, as well as overall percentage of such missiles, can be setup individually by each player before placing the units and fixed after that.

[Pox]

MIRVs have been suggested many times before, search first. It's been discussed, and globally rejected, because it would make the game too complex: as it is, it's very well balanced, and "easy to learn, hard to master".

[ivb]

Thank you for MIRV search keyword (English is not my original language). I was searching for "splitting warheads". And now I can imagine how "everybody dies" from this .
Ok. most of the ideas can be thrown away . How about missiles with MIRV with 2-3 empty warheads, which are splitting and flying to the same city by different trajectories, but absolutely empty and their only objective is to attract intercepting missiles? Such missiles can be loaded to some subs and ICRMs instead of normal missiles if player wish to. This should not damage the simplicity of the DEFCON.

[rus|Mike]

How about missiles with MIRV with 2-3 empty warheads, which are splitting and flying to the same city by different trajectories, but absolutely empty and their only objective is to attract intercepting missiles? Such missiles can be loaded to some subs and ICRMs instead of normal missiles if player wish to. This should not damage the simplicity of the DEFCON.

Dude just tell me WHY we need that? Even now with single-warhead missiles some games end up with deaths over 99M on both sides, sometimes the game is even unable to define a winner. And you're suggesting giving us splitting warheads! In this case any 2 more or less expirienced players wil do 99.9 kills and it will be a draw.