Nerf nuke assisting

[DeadMG]

I've encountered a few really painful experiences lately involving nuke assisting. This should be outright removed if possible, or nerfed to a useless level if not.

The problem is that nuke offers a hard limit on how long you have to build an SMD and get a missile up. After you get nuked the first time, for an unassisted nuke, you have to (after losing pretty much all of your base) get an SMD up within one minute. That's not so bad.

But if the attacker makes, say, 15 t3 Hives (or equivalent bp), this means that you have to get up your SMD AND 15 t3 hives up within just 30 seconds (!) if you want to be ready for the next impact.

Clearly it's expensive for the nuker to build a nuke launcher and 15 t3 hives. But for the nukee, it's almost completely impossible to recover from this position because you have to build an SMD and a very large quantity of build power starting from nothing in a tremendously short time period.

This leads to a very bad effect where once the first nuke lands, it's just a permanent cripple. This is especially bad on team games- the team can't really help you, even if they have resources, because you have to focus all the build power in that one spot immediately. If the bases are compressed (e.g. Dual Gap) then you can do this to more than one person simultaneously.

Nukes should not be the permanent area denial mechanism that assisting makes them into. This was nerfed from Vanilla but clearly just not hard enough for the advantages it offers. I see no positive gameplay implications about nuke assisting, and I've experienced many times that it can be a very negative mechanic. Therefore, it should be removed.

[FtXCommando]

Have you tried playing a map that doesn't allow someone to do dumb shit like make 30 t3 hives and an sml without being raped by units?

Your issue is with the map, not with the nuke. Game isn't here to be balanced around dual gap.

[DeadMG]

Considering that nuke assisting has no beneficial effects whatsoever, I would have to say that actually yes, this balance matter should be resolved in favour of playability on large team maps.

[Wesmania]

There's nothing stopping your opponent from building 2 nukes and staggering them - in fact I bet that's what happens on dual gap anyway, since nuke rush is absurdly good there. Changing buildpower numbers won't help you in such a case.

[Farmsletje]

this balance matter should be resolved in favour of playability on large team maps.

☒ Balanced for dual gap
☑ Balanced for every other 20x20 map

[jackherer]

Id like to add that even for game like gap and dual gap, if you scout enough, and work with your teamate , fast nuke, double triple nuke ... can be countered by spaming common nuke def with your ally. It required to have a lot of bp, and a good cooperation,also to build anti outside of base, to force the other team to choose between nuke def and base.
Its pretty easy to counter, if you have decent teamate (but rare on those map unfortunatly)

[ZLO_RD]

on maps teamgame maps with close bases you just nuild nuke defence in between bases and nuker if he was fast with his nuke, will have to choose to nuke inbetween bases so he can nuke later again or he will have to nuke base and after that nuke missile will be loaded.

[DeadMG]

this balance matter should be resolved in favour of playability on large team maps.

☒ Balanced for dual gap
☑ Balanced for every other 20x20 map

So change it to

☑ Balanced for dual gap
☑ Balanced for every other 20x20 map

There's nothing stopping your opponent from building 2 nukes and staggering them

Actually, this is quite a bit less favourable. The first issue is that it involves building another low health, highly volatile building in your base. The second is that the nuke launcher is completely wasted if your opponent successfully counters, instead of the build power which is still very useful. The third is that this is a much harder limit. You must build one nuke launcher and you must finish it, entirely, within the time (e.g. two and a half minutes). For the buildpower you only need to finish that much build power within five minutes to launch your next nuke that much faster. And you also can't boost the launch speed of the first nuke this way. So it's actually a lot less useful to build multiple nuke launchers compared to spam assisting the first one.

[NapSpan]

Anyway you can always scout enemy base for nukes and build defenses first

[ZeRenCZ]

I tell you something you probly dont know, ready?

you can assist antinuke aswell, isnt it cool? btw anti build it faster and well if you dont scout...