Nuclear Weapons and Arachnos
To be fair, none of the things you listed remove entire cities from the map before a reaction can be mounted (at least, not without creative usage). But sure, antimatter bombs or Outbreak Plague bioweapons or something would feel more comic-book-y and less real-world-politics-y.
To be fair, none of the things you listed remove entire cities from the map before a reaction can be mounted (at least, not without creative usage). But sure, antimatter bombs or Outbreak Plague bioweapons or something would feel more comic-book-y and less real-world-politics-y.
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61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
What they have so far seems more plausible and believable with the amount suspension of belief required than say, World of Warcraft in my opinion.
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Besides, in comics, Nuclear weapons are just too ... ordinary. Sure they're devestating but really, do you think Lord Recluse would rely on something as pedestrian as a nuclear weapon??
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In addition to the aforementioned lethal subordinates he has...
Legions of beautiful women who are all trained assassins and/or psychics
Tarantulas (creepy psychic spider women)
Floaty, lightning throwing Mystics
Crab spiders (don't know about you but they intimidate the heck out of me)
A mad scientist who has figured out how to power an island with a captive demon (and made liver flavored algae paste, yum)
Yeah, a man with all of these toys would nuke you only if he really didn't care.
"Oh, it's you. I don't have time for you.... BOOM"
Writer of In-Game fiction: Just Completed: My Summer Vacation. My older things are now being archived at Fanfiction.net http://www.fanfiction.net/~jwbullfrog until I come up with a better solution.
"Sir! New intelligence report on Arachnos! They've completed development on their Super-Spider robotic gun platform powered by psychic ghosts!"
"That's just stupid. It's a giant bug! Our tanks will squish it good."
"Afraid not sir, our agent inside says it has impervium armor around its vitals and a force field strong enough to stop HEAT rounds, and main weaponry that cantake out city blocks in seconds."
"Well, for - looks like the Air Force will get the kill on this one. I wish I had a few of those MOABs... They blow up robots good."
"...Also, sir, they have nukes."
"GET ME THE SECRETARY-GENERAL NOW!"
It's not so much how powerful something is, it's how it fits in your ability to comprehend it.
If you read the history plaques, those nukes are left-overs from the '60s, and Blitz doesn't want the nukes. Malta is selling him much better weapons than that already.
And Arachnos already has better weapons than that, anyway; orbital weapons platforms and sub-orbital rockets are so retro-60s, you know. That's why player character heroes have to stop them from finishing and deploying the Grandville Array in the STF, and stop them from altering the timestream in RV. Oh, yeah, and as Serenity_NA just reminded me, a couple of years back they had the Jade Spider battlemech with its psi-blast weaponry. Ultra-tech enough for you?
BTW, I have begged every keeper of the story bible that this game has ever had to clarify the Rogue Isles' position with respect to the UN, and I've never gotten an entirely clear answer. The current impression I have is that it's close to the US's position on Taiwan vs China: there is no such country, they don't recognize its secession from the US.
Nukes keep the threat to Paragon City, but make it "normal" enough to not need a lot of the storyline to focus on it - comicbook style super weapons are the kind of things TFs, Trials and story arcs deal with - the Arachnos nuclear threat is mostly just background flavor to show how dangerous they are, and how such a small country could threaten America and get away with it for so long.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe.
You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off.
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Wouldn't it be funny if the nukes weren't actually nukes? Every time one is fired if breaks up in the atmosphere and deploys a device into orbit.
The device? A component belonging to a nearly-finished orbital ion cannon.
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To be fair, they're not just nukes. There can also be biological or chemical weapons on those Warburg rockets.
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So, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Rogue Isles are on the UN crap list for developing nuclear weapons (hijacked by Blitz). That was like the big thing, and we're made to get really threatened by some loaded silos in Warburg.
Except Arachnos has a ghost that can steal your flipping soul, a predatory mutant that can tear open ships with a smile, a bug-modeled super armored soldier who is essentially immune to conventional assaults, a desert-spirit-like entity who can summon sandstorms... and Recluse himself, who has power only slightly below Statesman, who we know can survive nuclear blasts. Interdimensional capabilities, time travel, GIANT ROBOT SPIDERS POWERED BY PSYCHICS, constant assaults against the US, seers that can predict the future..... It just seems they need to give us something better. At this point, nuclear is easy. Where are my Singularity Bombs, HyperEbola Rockets, or Nova Missiles.... something that we know a hero can't shoot down if they have to. It's equatable to someone threatening to fire a nuke at us in the real world; it simply isn't feasible. |
Just because a hero has the ability to shoot down a nuke doesn't mean thats the best option. Any damage to the missile would cause it to detonate prematurely. A High altitude detonation can be as deadly as a ground zero blast.
"I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams." Aunt May SM2
i dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone...good bye Paragon
not sure where you are getting your intel from but a rogue state firing nukes at the US is still feasible and something the military worries about.
Just because a hero has the ability to shoot down a nuke doesn't mean thats the best option. Any damage to the missile would cause it to detonate prematurely. A High altitude detonation can be as deadly as a ground zero blast. |
And, to really be honest, anybody firing a SINGLE (or even five or six) ICBM's at the US is in for a wake up call. We're not talking free fall drop bombs, these are ICBM's that produce massive amount of exhaust and signature.
In Warburg, they are 60s/70s based technology. That's laughable in the form of ICBM. Yet, Recluse develops a machine that would have, given time, made him invulnerable to any sort of "regular human" force, and the UN says.... what?
Combined with the East coast of CoH Earth hosting heroes with high speed travel and teleportation, matter and energy absorption and technical prowess, Warburg is like some drop in the water (kinda is, actually).
I agree, there needs to be clarification on UN status for Warburg and the Isles.
While nuclear weapons are indeed viable threats, even in a world of super heroes, I never could help that the OP is right, and I feel this is one of the major failings of City of Heroes.
We live in a world of super powers, but everything is so damn normal. Why aren't the Steel Canyon Star Scrapers with things like Buddhist temples or an arbitrary rural house? Where are the buildings that have garden terraces and grass top roofs with trees growing out of them? Why is the military so woefully plan in it's technological capabilities compared to the guy who's been building a suit of powered armor in a cave with a box of scraps? Why aren't the tanks equipped with high-powered railguns, capable of hovering off the ground (with jumping abilities), and armed with anti-aircraft missiles and miniature versions of the GAU-8 Avenger Gatling gun? Why do we have these dumb rotor-based helicopters and not more jet engine VTOLs like the Sky Skiff or Longbow Chaser?
I suppose, as pointed out, it's to try to keep players from disconnecting too much with the reality the game is set in. If things were too super, it would seem less like a super powered earth with everyday magic and super-science and more like some alien world with poorly planned thematics.
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In a comics based world, all of that contrast is normal.
For a person living in that world you just accept that there are mundane and explainable things like helicopters and cars, and nuclear weapons, and toasters, while at the same time you accept that there are people walking around with quark beams, and zero point generators, and all sorts of exotic weirdness. It just comes with the territory.
Writer of In-Game fiction: Just Completed: My Summer Vacation. My older things are now being archived at Fanfiction.net http://www.fanfiction.net/~jwbullfrog until I come up with a better solution.
While nuclear weapons are indeed viable threats, even in a world of super heroes, I never could help that the OP is right, and I feel this is one of the major failings of City of Heroes.
We live in a world of super powers, but everything is so damn normal. Why aren't the Steel Canyon Star Scrapers with things like Buddhist temples or an arbitrary rural house? Where are the buildings that have garden terraces and grass top roofs with trees growing out of them? Why is the military so woefully plan in it's technological capabilities compared to the guy who's been building a suit of powered armor in a cave with a box of scraps? Why aren't the tanks equipped with high-powered railguns, capable of hovering off the ground (with jumping abilities), and armed with anti-aircraft missiles and miniature versions of the GAU-8 Avenger Gatling gun? Why do we have these dumb rotor-based helicopters and not more jet engine VTOLs like the Sky Skiff or Longbow Chaser? I suppose, as pointed out, it's to try to keep players from disconnecting too much with the reality the game is set in. If things were too super, it would seem less like a super powered earth with everyday magic and super-science and more like some alien world with poorly planned thematics. |
Considering my toon has created miniature jet boots from pieces of crap.... errrr, salvage.... and is a heroic American citizen, why IS the military so woefully under equipped. I mean, Vanguard used REGULAR BULLETS on a giant, amorphous Shivan, when they have Hero-1 and captured Rikti tech? Hell, access to Impervium in quantities to make armor for all Vanguard soldiers dictates they could make bullets out of the hardest material to exist on planet Earth. Let's see Recluse shrug off one of them from a .50cal Barrett to the head.
In a comics based world, all of that contrast is normal.
For a person living in that world you just accept that there are mundane and explainable things like helicopters and cars, and nuclear weapons, and toasters, while at the same time you accept that there are people walking around with quark beams, and zero point generators, and all sorts of exotic weirdness. It just comes with the territory. |
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I can kind of get that. But part of me feels that in a world where some super humans can grow metric tons of plants with little effort, no (apparent) real food source or water, and meanwhile, it's mentioned various countries still suffer from famine, it makes it feel more and more like Super powers, good or evil, just don't change a damn thing about society or the world at large.
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Exactly.
As a Hero, I either hate my country or hate everyone outside my country. Look at Positron, as an example of this.
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As I mentioned in one of my bits of fiction recently...
"They may be Super, but they're still human."
Writer of In-Game fiction: Just Completed: My Summer Vacation. My older things are now being archived at Fanfiction.net http://www.fanfiction.net/~jwbullfrog until I come up with a better solution.
Considering my toon has created miniature jet boots from pieces of crap.... errrr, salvage.... and is a heroic American citizen, why IS the military so woefully under equipped. I mean, Vanguard used REGULAR BULLETS on a giant, amorphous Shivan, when they have Hero-1 and captured Rikti tech?
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I'm sure their fighter craft and weapons platforms are doing even better.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
for those asking why the heroes aren't doing more get an awesome graphic novel called: Squadron Supreme.
It was a group of heroes with similar powers and abilities as the Justice League deciding to make the world a better place. The problem being where do you draw the line?
"I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams." Aunt May SM2
i dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone...good bye Paragon
So, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Rogue Isles are on the UN crap list for developing nuclear weapons (hijacked by Blitz). That was like the big thing, and we're made to get really threatened by some loaded silos in Warburg.
Except Arachnos has a ghost that can steal your flipping soul, a predatory mutant that can tear open ships with a smile, a bug-modeled super armored soldier who is essentially immune to conventional assaults, a desert-spirit-like entity who can summon sandstorms... and Recluse himself, who has power only slightly below Statesman, who we know can survive nuclear blasts.
Interdimensional capabilities, time travel, GIANT ROBOT SPIDERS POWERED BY PSYCHICS, constant assaults against the US, seers that can predict the future.....
It just seems they need to give us something better. At this point, nuclear is easy. Where are my Singularity Bombs, HyperEbola Rockets, or Nova Missiles.... something that we know a hero can't shoot down if they have to.
It's equatable to someone threatening to fire a nuke at us in the real world; it simply isn't feasible.