why no nuclear stuff?

[mfos]

Sorry if these thoughts have been posted  before, just silencely ignore them.
I just want to give the storymakers some thoughts or inputs for the story.
I enjoy xcom-genres, specially opensource ones

Why doesnt the alien or PHALANX use nukes or dirty bombs for tactical purpose? Have we signed a galactic war-convention - lol.
is there no plutonium left on earth? or other high-fissile matter?

perhaps the aliens waited to invade us after their scouts was sure that all these stuff for making thermonuclear bombs was used up or counted for?
They surely want alot of human organs (so the game says) so their timing for an invasion should be a time where there is a large amount of humans with small chance of self-erradication.

And what about uranium in the game...
Not even U-238 for use in projectile weapons?

What about ammonition with e.g. U238-projectiles with diamond coating with a "monomolecular" edge to butter through those medium armour in the late game?

hope i gave u some ideas if you are going to work more on the story for giving excuse for no use of nukes for aliens or humans.

Please enlighten me if you are working on some of these ideas or why it is stupid of me of mentioning it

cheers Martin
and sorry for my bad english

[BTAxis]

There are no weapons of mass destruction in the game on a structural basis, because the game is about localized, squad based tactical combat. That's the only reason.

Note that nukes ARE used as part of the storyline.

[Hertzila]

I think the aliens are unwilling to use nukes since they want us to join their hivemind. You can't really assimilate something you just blowed up to smithereens (and the surviving humans would likely at least try to trigger a MAD scenario, resulting loss on both sides). Humans on the other hand, wanted to use nukes for interception but UN didn't give them the right to do that (remember, UN has teeth in UFO:AI) and you must admit that it would have resulted in pretty catastrophic aftermaths. Imagine nuclear fallout raining over everything.

Also note that depleted uranium is used in weaponry, both SHIVA rounds have uranium tips. Just like real cannons tend to have.
Kerrmaterial, on the other hand, can't be used that well in ammunition. It needs to be curved and while new AP rounds would certainly be welcome I'm not so sure you could bend kerrmaterial into a form usable in guns and cannons.

[Yatta]

Nuclear handheld weapons are very 'old style SF', and is an efficient cliché. Id like to have some, but just because its 'sounds cool'. Also, its true modern high tech weaponry has quite some fancy suff and is not limited to m16 & machineguns.

[Hertzila]

Nuclear handheld weapons are very 'old style SF', and is an efficient cliché. Id like to have some, but just because its 'sounds cool'. Also, its true modern high tech weaponry has quite some fancy suff and is not limited to m16 & machineguns.

You do realise that handheld nukes would be very stupid from the point of view of not killing your own troops? You can't limit nukes destructive power and the smallest one (Davy Crokett) possible to make was still too powerful and would have likely killed the shooter. You can of course call a wapon "mininuke" but it still won't be a real nuclear weapon. AM is also a whole different thing entirely.

Some high tech weaponry are stuff like lasers and electric weapons? We already have both. Sonic weaponry could be interesting though.

[Yatta]

Hertzila, what i am talking about is nuclear weapon. Nuclear does not means "nuclear bomb". For instance, there are "nuclear plants", and afaik their goal is not to be exploding, but to provide energy.

Its obviously dumb to think about using a nuclear bomb on the field in a tactical squad game. It could be implemented in some way in the geoscape, but to be honest im not sure what purpose it could serve - aliens goal isnt to kill everyone, and there no alien target big enough for phallanx to justify using a nuke - bases being underground.

So what i was talking about is nuclear powered weapons, or as in the modern weaponry and as mfos mentionned, U-238 ammo.

And for the high tech, i didnt mean Sci-Fi high tech, i played the game you know, its hard not to noticed those theres alot of sci-fi high tech already. Other than uranium weaponry, theres javelin missiles (rising in the sky to attack the target from above), claymore mines, a large palette of unmanned drones and reconnaissance devices, extremely quick automatic turrets, and so on ...

I dont say we need to put every existing weapon in the game, but that being limited to old and very conventionnal weapons (machinegun, rifle, shotgun ...) is odd.

[Hertzila]

Nuclear weapons and nuclear bombs tend to be used synonymously, just my observation. Still, I can't really see how would you use nuclear stuff in a battlefield in non-nukes. Powering weapons? I doubt reactors will get small enough that fast. Powering UGVs? Still not small enough to fit into one. Aircraft? Might work, but would be a downgrade from eventual AM engines.
Bases are already powered by nuclear plants.

U-238, aka depleted uranium, is used in SHIVA as I've said. And it has a lot more to do with uraniums huge weight than nuclear capabilities, so it really isn't "nuclear" in the sense that it doesn't use nuclear fission in any way.

I didn't understand what you meant by "high tech weaponry" so I asked if you meant lasers and such. No offense intended.
I admit that PHALANX has a pretty weak rocket launcher by modern standards but IIRC that was a deliberate choice by devs to avoid making it overpowered.
About mines, I don't know why they aren't used. Maybe nobody thought about them so nobody made the necessary code and artwork to add them?
UGVs are planned, just not implemented.

[Colamann]

I didn't understand what you meant by "high tech weaponry" so I asked if you meant lasers and such. No offense intended.

I think he's referring to stuff like computer controlled machine guns / air timed grenade launchers and such (What's the name, XM307?). Or those electrically fired weapons with their almost supernatural firing rates. Balancing is an issue of course.

[Hertzila]

computer controlled machine guns

UGVs? Technically their machine gun is computer controlled.

air timed grenade launchers

Air Burst mode.

Or those electrically fired weapons with their almost supernatural firing rates.

TR-20 Rocket pod. Though thanks to its inaccuracy when fired at max speed it's used more with the rate of 300 RPM.

[DiDiT]

Hmm...

well, should the hand-held mini-gun ever be put into the campaign, I would hope explosive, incendiary and U238 rounds would be available. 

[Chriswriter90]

Using Nukes isn't a very good idea; the idea is to capture alien tech, not blow it to kingdom come.

Of course while were on the topic, x-com fanfiction sometimes depicts the Blaster Bombs as guided mini-nukes.

[Destructavator]

Keep in mind that as gameplay progresses, the player gets access, through research, to all kinds of cool technologies such as chemical lasers, particle weapons, antimatter, and the technology known to be in many video games, plasma rifles - isn't all that advanced and impressive enough?

Edit:  Please also keep in mind the player needs to save civilians from the alien threat, and do it withOUT "curing the disease by killing the patient."  Otherwise the nations wouldn't fund the player.

[vedrit]

TR-20 Rocket pod. Though thanks to its inaccuracy when fired at max speed it's used more with the rate of 300 RPM.

The latest ones are actually quite accurate, BECAUSE the RoF is 300RPM+(I think its higher than this, because 300RPM is only 5RPS. I think the fastest one is 1800 RPM, and its a BEAST!) . The rounds leave the barrel before there is kickback, allowing for a majority of the rounds to hit within very close proximity of each other, even at extended range. If you were to add on computer targeting that could aim with an error of a few nanometers, loaded with depleted uranium rounds (Which, by the way, are more than just heavy. They do explode. Uranium is combustable), and you have a devestating peice of weaponry.

BUT for the sake of balancing, I really dont think it will make it in

[Hertzila]

The latest ones are actually quite accurate, BECAUSE the RoF is 300RPM+(I think its higher than this, because 300RPM is only 5RPS. I think the fastest one is 1800 RPM, and its a BEAST!) . The rounds leave the barrel before there is kickback, allowing for a majority of the rounds to hit within very close proximity of each other, even at extended range. If you were to add on computer targeting that could aim with an error of a few nanometers, loaded with depleted uranium rounds (Which, by the way, are more than just heavy. They do explode. Uranium is combustable), and you have a devestating peice of weaponry.

I didn't know DU actually explodes. I have always thought it was just for the added weight.

About TR-20, just quoting what wiki said (it does have DU rounds BTW). It says there that it can launch every single of its 152 rockets before any has even left a tube (in theory at 45600 RPM) but the accuracy of a single salvo is supposedly low, so they prefer shoot them with a milder RPM of 300. But even at that rate it runs out of rockets in just over 30 seconds.

[Jeep-Eep]

It doesn't explode. It's useful because of it's density. For armor, ammo, radiation shielding.