forum.freeciv.org

What would it take to implement mutually assured destruction (MAD) in Freeciv? At the moment, MAD is not possible because a civilization that launches a nuclear first strike will be able to capture all its enemy's cities in the same turn. The enemy will not be able to retaliate with a second strike (e.g. using submarine-launched nuclear units) because it will no longer have any cities, and all its units vanish into thin air when its cities are captured. Perhaps we could look into the ideas for implementing MAD from the CivFanatics Forums. The ability to simulate real world uses of strategic nuclear weapons would increase Freeciv's realism.

If the units, instead of dying immediately, we're instead killed through the kill unhomed function, you would have a couple of turns to retaliate. Also, how can all the cities be captured in one turn? Even if all the defenders are gone, you still have to get an occupying unit in. Only geographically small civs could be captured in one turn.

This is only about single-player, right? Since "the same turn" is still a long time (victim starts to retaliate the moment the attacker launch the first nuke, not when all units have moved). It's a problem with the AI that acts effectively between turns.

Oh, of course also in longturn where the victim might not be at computer at the time of the attack.

Make nuclear submarines and nuclear missiles unhomed.

Corbeau wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 5:39 pm Make nuclear submarines and nuclear missiles unhomed.

Wouldn't that make submarines and nuclear units free of maintenance costs? That would encourage excessive building of submarines and nuclear units since they won't use up any city production points and/or gold.

Using such unhomed units might come an option after https://www.hostedredmine.com/issues/819758 gets implemented, but that will not be coming before freeciv-3.2.

What I meant about unhomed units was that instead of killing the units immediately when the last city is lost, they should be killed through the kill unhomed function.

Elefant wrote: ↑Sun Sep 04, 2022 2:06 pm What I meant about unhomed units was that instead of killing the units immediately when the last city is lost, they should be killed through the kill unhomed function.

So the units should become unhomed when their home city gets lost? Such a freeciv engine feature sounds feasible, e.g., as unit type flag (ruleset format change can appear earliest in freeciv-3.2, though, as freeciv-3.1 format has already been frozen). Open a ticket?

cazfi wrote: ↑Sun Sep 04, 2022 6:44 pm

Elefant wrote: ↑Sun Sep 04, 2022 2:06 pm What I meant about unhomed units was that instead of killing the units immediately when the last city is lost, they should be killed through the kill unhomed function.

So the units should become unhomed when their home city gets lost? Such a freeciv engine feature sounds feasible, e.g., as unit type flag (ruleset format change can appear earliest in freeciv-3.2, though, as freeciv-3.1 format has already been frozen). Open a ticket?

1. We have some list of possible actions when a unit is up to be lost, like, we should have an action for this list "become unhomed"?
2. Possibly not suitable for this specific purpose, but I have suggested somewhere (maybe even in a ticket, can't remember) ways of national upkeep for unhomed units (CivIII always works like this).
3. As a more realistic MAD, maybe players just put rockets on bases and the strikes are all scripted? Like, the agressor fires only one nuke and the rest of their nukes are automatically fired to the rest of targets, and the reciprocal strike is scripted entirely as well as the order of hits. Just the players should be able to specify different scenarios, number of rockets fired in each one and the priority targets they try to hit.