Yeah: The Mammoth Mark II was badass to a T.
Versus Match GDI Zone Trooper/Raider vs Clan Elementals
- Thread starter Spartan303
- Start date
Given the explicitly stated seven-minute flight time for the nuke that destroyed Vega's base, it had to be a medium-range ballistic missile at a range of approximately a thousand kilometers, not an ICBM from further out. Were it not for Kane in the cutscene ordering, "Emergency deployment, immediate launch", I would have argued it was more likely a nuclear self-destruct in the base than a missile strike.
Technically, you could *still* argue for that, if you handwave Kane's "emergency deployment" order as being prepping a transport for himself to evacuate wherever he was communicating with Vega from, against the risk of GDI back-tracking the transmission. But that's admittedly a stretch.
I said Nod had Mobile ICBM Launchers, not that the one used to destroy Vega's base was an ICBM.
I always believed that "emergency deployment" was said by Kane for his lackeys to fire a nuke double-time at Vega's base because it'd just been overrun by GDI.But yeah, that does lend credence Nod still having an active nuclear stockpile scattered around the world -- if they are just medium-ranged missiles than true ICBMs, it could mean that they have a network in such bases to give them at least partial global coverage.
But that begs the question: Why didn't they use them in the Second War? I know Kane was putting great stock in Chemical and Cluster Missiles, but using tactical nuclear weapons would've been an advantage I don't see him passing up.
His original reasoning to prevent MAD no-longer really applies, since GDI didn't use nukes any more and had the Ion Cannon, and Earth was pretty much fucked already.
I said Nod had Mobile ICBM Launchers, not that the one used to destroy Vega's base was an ICBM.
No, I understood what you meant. I agree that is the straightforward interpretation of Kane's dialogue; what I'm pointing out is that seven minutes is too short for an ICBM fired from Nod's main base at Cairo, that short a flight time would actually be right on the line between the long end of SRBMs and the short end of MRBMs.
The illogical implication of Nod apparently having a global SRBM/MRBM network but never actually using it is why I suggest the nuclear self destruct theory, even though it requires an awkward reinterpretation of Kane's orders.
Or simply misdirection on Kane's part.
Yeah, that is a bit of a problem I never could work out, too. Were the Cluster and Chemical Missiles not ready by that time? Was he holding out on using the nukes as last resorts, if GDI began to win? Did he lock control of them directly to himself because he simply didn't trust his subordinate generals (e.g. Vega) or if they'd come under the control of other splinter factions, like Hassan? We know Nod's generals after the First Tiberium War went to town with nukes (the Covert Operation's missions had post-TW1 Nod factions using nukes as a running theme), so maybe he was worried about a similar scenario playing out again.
I mean, we know that he has at least one type of long-ranged Chemical Missile (or, rather a more limited prototype of the World Altering Missile) which was used to severely contaminate Europe, but all the other Cluster and Chemical Missiles we've seen have been from local launch points (in-game Missile Silos, which would be SRBMs at best, MRBMs at a stretch given how realistically large a single TS map would be in reality).