Ok, I wanted to discuss nuclear stuff in the game, I heard from people that the devs have already said there'd be thermonuclear bombs, but what about nuclear power, and uranium deposits? If there were nuclear power plants, then will there be fallout in a catastrophic failure of a nuclear power plant? Will sabotage be able to cause nuclear power plants to fail? Will a nuclear war result in mutually assured destruction? There's so much stuff I'm curious about in this game. I'm really excited to see how the devs will show these features in the finished game, and in the game in general.

In the humankind pre purchase trailer at min 0:42 you can see a building with big cooling towers. Even though modern Coal power plants have them aswell, I think this is a good indicator that there will be at least electricity.

200mm wrote:

Sabotage of nuclear power plant by espionage might be too powerful and unrealistic as well. Most nuclear power plant disasters occurred due to human errors, design flaws, natural disasters, and maintenance problems. The only incident that I know, which involves foreign country and nuclear facility, is Operation Outside the Box. After accumulating sufficient intelligence on alleged nuclear facility in Syria, Israel sent several fighter jets armed with laser-guided bombs and destroyed the site at midnight. Even this operation was a collaboration between intelligence agency and air force.  Thus, I highly doubt that an ability to destroy enemy's nuclear power plant with only espionage mechanism would fit well in Humankind.

Stuxnet is a thing, although it would require some form of hacking to be simulated ingame. 

I wonder how the devs will simulate nuclear and radioactive things in the game, seems like their considering it carefully, which is good, I really am excited to see how the game turns out.

It would be really good if they could simulate the pax atomica of MAD

Holly potato, I just saw the amount of responses. Yeah I do kind of hope they'll add mutually assured destruction just to make nuclear weapon mechanics more fair, and a diplomatic game mechanic used separately with nukes wouldn't hurt.

Espionage to sabotage a plant is also fraught with the same kind of risks of MAD. I suppose as a simulation it might be interesting to propose but I imagine it should pretty much make you a pariah. Diplomatic grievances and probably prompt anyone allied with you to break an alliance or also be given a grievance. Also whatever the worst badges you can get, or maybe all the bad badges. Maybe even bad enough people could field black ops - security forces / mercenary forces against you without themselves creating grievances. 

Hey did you hear this nation that tried to destroy a nuclear plant on this continent lost another territory to some unmarked security forces, and, it looks like all their trading ships are being directed not to leave their harbors or they will be fired upon. Apparently the government leaders responsible are still in power but they may be looking at a civil war in a few generations.

"Serves em right. Pass the butter."

Why would sabotaging a plant make you a pariah?

FlamingKetchup wrote:

Why would sabotaging a plant make you a pariah?

Conducting such a potentially devastating operation would surely provoke serious diplomatic outcomes. Therefore, at least among civilizations which possess similar military might would not take such a huge risk. Moreover, in real life most of sabotage operations against nuclear power plant happened to relatively weak countries by super power or by countries affiliated with super power. So I don't know how it could be implemented in Humankind.

How is sabotaging a plant a devastating operation?

FlamingKetchup wrote:

How is sabotaging a plant a devastating operation?

Things like radioactive fallout are pretty unpleasant.

Drai_Berlin wrote:

FlamingKetchup wrote:

How is sabotaging a plant a devastating operation?

Things like radioactive fallout are pretty unpleasant.

Serious nuclear contamination in an accident is quite limited. For example, the closed area around Chernobyl has a radius of 30 km.

Zumwalt wrote:

Drai_Berlin wrote:

FlamingKetchup wrote:

How is sabotaging a plant a devastating operation?

Things like radioactive fallout are pretty unpleasant.

Serious nuclear contamination in an accident is quite limited. For example, the closed area around Chernobyl has a radius of 30 km.

Tell that to the people affected by it and the international community

Alice99 wrote:

Zumwalt wrote:

Drai_Berlin wrote:

FlamingKetchup wrote:

How is sabotaging a plant a devastating operation?

Things like radioactive fallout are pretty unpleasant.

Serious nuclear contamination in an accident is quite limited. For example, the closed area around Chernobyl has a radius of 30 km.

Tell that to the people affected by it and the international community

Military action during the First World War left much larger areas of France, Belgium and Germany unusable.

Zumwalt wrote:

Alice99 wrote:

Zumwalt wrote:

Drai_Berlin wrote:

FlamingKetchup wrote:

How is sabotaging a plant a devastating operation?

Things like radioactive fallout are pretty unpleasant.

Serious nuclear contamination in an accident is quite limited. For example, the closed area around Chernobyl has a radius of 30 km.

Tell that to the people affected by it and the international community

Military action during the First World War left much larger areas of France, Belgium and Germany unusable.

Jes, the area affected by nuclear fallout was relativley small to the total size of the country. Still, It was a huge desaster for the image, economy and the people who lived in the zone affected by the fallout. Also there were serious levels of radiation outside of the 30km closed zone. And we shouldnt forget that the Humankind map is, lets say... not 30km big.

(Im german so please tell me if I made any mistakes in my english so I can improve.)

Okay, if they are deliberately sabotaging safety measures and trying to cause a large nuclear accident, that would of course be a big hit to their image, but why would any country do that? More likely they are going to avoid any casualties, and just putting the reactor, or say, uranium enrichment centrifuges (like Stuxnet targeted) out of commission. If they do want certain people dead they can do that separately.

Depends on the type of nuclear plant.  Chernobyl was originally created to be a breeder plant to create materials for nuclear weapons.  Power generation was an afterthought as were strict safety controls.  The design was incredibly poor.  Modern plants have much more robust safeguards in place.  As Fukushima has shown, they aren't bullet, or tsunami in this case, proof but they are awfully hard to affect in such a way that they cause catastrophic damage to the surrounding area.

Chernobyl shouldn't be used as an example of what can happen with a typical civilian nuclear plant.  Fukushima is a much better example of what happens when a civilian plant is put in the path of a catastrophic natural disaster, and is essentially the peak of how bad it could be.  Basically, I don't see that nuclear plant sabotage would serve much use in the game.

Radman wrote:

Depends on the type of nuclear plant.  Chernobyl was originally created to be a breeder plant to create materials for nuclear weapons.  Power generation was an afterthought as were strict safety controls.  The design was incredibly poor.  Modern plants have much more robust safeguards in place.  As Fukushima has shown, they aren't bullet, or tsunami in this case, proof but they are awfully hard to affect in such a way that they cause catastrophic damage to the surrounding area.

Chernobyl shouldn't be used as an example of what can happen with a typical civilian nuclear plant.  Fukushima is a much better example of what happens when a civilian plant is put in the path of a catastrophic natural disaster, and is essentially the peak of how bad it could be.  Basically, I don't see that nuclear plant sabotage would serve much use in the game.

I agree that sabotage of public facilities will not do much harm. Chernobyl and Fukushima are out of control accidents. While the catastrophe on the  Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station was prevented.

As far as nuclear disasters, I think it should be part of the event system. So if you use your uranium resources to build a nuclear power plant, it will give extra yields to quarters in the city. But you may get an event that says you will need to do maintenance, which requires either shutting it down (lose bonus yields for a few turns but no risk of meltdown), perform maintenance (spend money with only 1 in 10 risk of meltdown), or routine check up (1 in 3 risk of meltdown but no cost). I think the event system where a choice can have consequences down the line would be the perfect way to imitate that.

As far as nukes, one of the big impacts of nuclear weapons on war was the panic they caused. I think an apt description of the effects of nuclear weaponry on psychology would be it raises the populace's threshold for war - so a country would not declare war on a nuclear armed power unless the grievance bar is nearly all the way full. It would also lower wartime morale to lose a city, unless (and this is where a nuclear exchange could be encouraged) you nuke the person back. As others have suggested, using nukes could also raise grievances with other countries, so there are diplomatic downsides. I think, however, once a nuke is used all bets should be off - once you take the hit in grievances for dropping a nuke, might as well throw your whole arsenal at the other country until they capitulate.