Do cruise missiles suck?

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Loopy
You know modern armor sucks soooooo badly. I had to up the attack rating to 65 and movement to 6 before they became of any use at all.

What can we derive from this statement?
We can derive that you, my friend, are stupid.

[Andrew Cory]

Originally posted by Loopy
On top of being the best bombard unit, cruise missiles are the only bombarding unit that can actually destroy a unit. So they're hardest hitting, have awesome range (on rails + 3 MP), and can destroy. I can see the added utility of making them launchable off of some naval units, but I'd hardly call say they suck in stock form. The only balanced and justifiable way of giving them greater range would be to make them air units and taking away their ability to move on rails.

Simple fact is, cruise missiles are a balanced unit of appropriate strength and limitations for their cost and age. If you want mass destruction, use nukes.

I've done this, actualy. The problem with Cruise missles is not their strenght, but rather with their delivery. Increasing their bombardment range, as well as giving certain units the ability to carry them, greatly adds to this, and thus increeses their utility. There are, of course, ballance issues, and I had to tone down a lot of things I wanted to do, as well as up their costs. All in all, however, I achived a high level of utility for them. This is much more than can be said for how they behave without modification...

[reluctantfrance]

Originally posted by Loopy


On top of being the best bombard unit, cruise missiles are the only bombarding unit that can actually destroy a unit. So they're hardest hitting, have awesome range (on rails + 3 MP), and can destroy. I can see the added utility of making them launchable off of some naval units, but I'd hardly call say they suck in stock form. The only balanced and justifiable way of giving them greater range would be to make them air units and taking away their ability to move on rails.

Simple fact is, cruise missiles are a balanced unit of appropriate strength and limitations for their cost and age. If you want mass destruction, use nukes.

I agree that the ability to move on rails should be taken away and they should be considered air units. Their range should be increased and their launching platforms should include subs.

As to damage and mass destruction, cruise missiles don't need to kill every full-strength unit every time. They need to be launchable and have a platform capable of getting close to the enemy.

Their current damage rating is fine. They should be able to kill an armor unit or destroyer in one shot, they should not be able to kill a battleship in one shot.

Considering the above drawbacks and that they are one shot units makes them not worth building. They are next to useless in their stock form.

[Loopy]

Originally posted by FireDragon
What can we derive from this statement?
We can derive that you, my friend, are stupid.

Did you even read the entire post? Or did the use of analogy and paragraphs make it too complicated for you to understand? Let me write it all out for your simple mind. In that post I tried to make the point that upping modern armor stats to absurdly high values is like some of the suggested changes to cruise missiles. Though you can make the argument that the increased values (in either modern armor or cruise missiles) are based in reality, this unbalances the game. Both units have utility in their stock form.

Since you "derive" that my inflated stats to an already powerful unit is "stupid" (as intended), you (FireDragon) must also think reluctantfrance, Shadow_Cougar, Spook42, Tarquelne, Andrew Cory, Whoha, and Thoth are stupid too since they also suggested infating stats of an already powerful unit.

Units on rails can attack the same turn that they move. They can also attack outside of cities thereby increasing their range. You can also walk the missile across land if you really wanted to. This gives them much greater mobility and range than if they were only city based. Think about how quickly you can move artillery to bombard a battleship or a land unit that crosses over your borders. The cruise missile has nearly the same movement and effectively the same range. I don't see how making them air units and radically inflating their range is an improvement, unless of course you want to give them ICBM range.

[Faeelin]

Wouldn't the simple solution be to up everything? So that a musketeer beats a spearman, and a tank beats a musketman?

[Andrew Cory]

Originally posted by reluctantfrance
I agree that the ability to move on rails should be taken away and they should be considered air units. Their range should be increased and their launching platforms should include subs.

As to damage and mass destruction, cruise missiles don't need to kill every full-strength unit every time. They need to be launchable and have a platform capable of getting close to the enemy.

Their current damage rating is fine. They should be able to kill an armor unit or destroyer in one shot, they should not be able to kill a battleship in one shot.

Considering the above drawbacks and that they are one shot units makes them not worth building. They are next to useless in their stock form.

I am playing a game right now were cruise missles have become the end-all be-all of my millitary. I did modify them so that the rebase instead of move via rail (which has its own unballancing-- I can use that to place a cruise missle on a ship at sea), and so that Aegis cruisers and Subs can carry them. The end result is that attacks just got very powerful, and defense just got nearly impossible. So, time to up the price on them.

I will agree that in their native form cruise missles have limited utility, but with only minor modifications, they can be utterly devistating...

[Venger]

Originally posted by Cairo_East
Cruise missles should be divided into two units. Somethuing like a V-2 would correspond to this unit, and a modern cruise missle could be closer to the CivII unit.

Actually a better division would be between ballistic missiles (V-2, Scud, etc.) and Cruise Missiles (ALCM, Tomahawk). They can each have the same range, but the Cruise should be more expensive and have the concommitant ability to target a single unit or building in a city/square.

Neither of these replaces the ICMB however, which has it's own set of problems...

Venger