A Nuclear Proposal

Day 720, 14:37 • Published in USA USA • by Lieutenant Scheisskopf

By now, I believe that everyone has read my previous article, which was originally written as a joke solution for the new MPP rule. It definitely became popular and controversial pretty quickly. Although I made it clear a few times that the notion of a nuclear weapon in eRepublik was a joke, to appease popular demand and several subscribers, here is a proposal for introducing eWeapons of Mass Destruction (eWMDs) to the game. I made a concerted effort to do so without making the weapon only a tool for the strong, and am open for ideas on how to balance its use as fairly as possible. Please read as much as you can before making comments that show you did not read this article.

Science and Technology
In real life (RL), nuclear weapons require some sort of fissile material to undergo a nuclear reaction; the materials normally consist of an enriched isotope of uranium or plutonium. Since only plutonium is an artificial substance capable of being created in a laboratory, plutonium would be the material used in eWMDs, so that no one country has the major advantage for having some uranium resources naturally. This way, every country has the chance to develop an eNuclear weapons program if they so desired, although it would cost some unspecified amount to undertake any “technological” programs or to create associated “laboratories.”

Science would be introduced to the game as a skill area (I am surprised that it hasn’t already), comparable with land, construction, or manufacturing skills. People working in science would work in laboratories to create the technology needed for eWMDs. If this technology idea is popular enough, maybe other products from laboratories could be used to improve a society’s existing capabilities in other areas (maybe more effective food, abilities to create more with less, or better maximum productivity levels are a few ideas). For the sake of this argument, without digressing too much on the science/technology course, anyone in the “science” skill area would produce “technology” as a raw material which would be later implemented in the next phase of weapons programs for countries.

Nuclear Facilities
Weapons factories and Defense systems factories would both be enabled to produce nuclear facilities for sale ONLY to the domestic government. At this facility, the government would be able to produce nuclear weapons of only one quality for one price that is constant throughout the world-- just a disclaimer, but I do not want to quantify any costs here. Technology and iron would both be the raw materials used for the creation of an eWMD, and anyone working in science, manufacturing, or construction would be able to contribute. The diverse industry bases underscore how many people working for a long period of time would be needed to build a nuclear weapon. Suffice it to say that the financial cost of creating an eWMD would be substantial, as would the cost of purchasing one-- it would be a true national undertaking that would put a Q5 hospital to shame.

To try and even the playing field for countries of all size, a producer of eWMDs would ONLY be able to sell to the domestic government, and the cost for a weapon would be fixed at proportional amount of a government’s revenue for a month based on citizenship and NOT location (I personally think 10-20% of a government’s monthly budget is reasonable, since that price reflects how rare these weapons would be). Indirectly, this would place increased value on who gets citizenship when. It would also benefit smaller states by making an eWMD financially reasonable, instead of simply charging somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000-50,000 gold for an eWMD and only seeing the eUSA and eHungary even remotely capable of buying them occasionally.

Structural Rules on eWMDs
Some physical rules on the management of nuclear weapons that I would propose consist of the following:
- Nuclear weapons can only reside in a region that has been securely held by the host country for the last 60 days, discouraging the odds of nukes being won in conquest for a territory.
- Nuclear weapons are only good for 45 days and would be physically stored in the same region as the weapons factory that built it (therefore making that region a prime target to getting nuked by an enemy). This would prevent a state from steadily stockpiling nukes and then unleashing a nuclear holocaust all at once.
- A state could only use two nuclear weapons per 30 days.
- Whenever a country builds/purchases a nuclear weapon, it would come up in an international announcement on the eRepublik homepage. The same goes for if/when a country used a nuclear weapon.
- A country that was nuked would be able to create MPPs for free for a period of 5 days, although that window that would only last for 30 days before requiring the standard amount of gold to renew them.
- A region that was nuked would be uninhabitable by the offensive country for a period of one week, but the offensive country would control it on the map. This would prevent a country from indiscriminately nuking its enemies in order to advance, since they would not be able to immediately launch an attack from the nuked territory.
- No region could be nuked by a country while it had an active war going on there, since its own citizens would theoretically be fighting a battle there (and no good government kills its own civilians, right?)
- Nuclear weapons could only be launched against an enemy region within two steps on the map from the aggressor country’s controlled territories. For example, if the eUSA had a nuclear weapon in Florida, it could be used against regions like Ontario, eCanada; South-west-of-England, eUK; and Kyushu, eJapan because these regions are all within two steps of the eUSA but not necessarily Florida. Similarly, a nuclear weapon from the eUSA would NOT be effective against Southeast-of-Mexico, eMexico; Western Siberia, eRussia; or any eHungarian region, because these are all more than 2 steps away from the eUSA’s borders.
- Any region which originally belongs to a country cannot be nuked by that same country if it is occupied by another. So in this case, the eUSA could not nuke Alaska when it was under eRussian control. eSlovakia could not nuke its way back onto the map, either.

Characteristics
Why would this enormous weapon be worth having? Some of the following are the destructive characteristics and other game-changers that could justify their construction.
- Preemptive strike against a region, preventing the need to start a battle for it that may not be won.
- Depending on the cost, in a twisted sense, it could be cost effective. eIndonesia spent nearly 10,000 gold tanking in a previous battle for California; add this to other costs arming its civilians, as well as civilian costs, and maybe a nuclear weapon set at a percentage of its monthly revenue could have saved money.
- A nuclear bomb would destroy all defense systems, hospitals, and also incapacitate all local businesses for 10 days. This INCLUDES nuclear factories which are capable of producing eWMDs, and would increase value in preemptive strikes, having a secure retaliatory option, and in keeping the location of these facilities a state secret. Overall, this could be a cool twist on the game.
- A detonated nuclear weapon would reduce the health of all citizens in the region to 35 for a period of 5 days. They will still be able to fight and work, but will be doing so at reduced health. This obviously results in an advantage that would give the aggressor the chance to fight a different region with less opposition.
- By its very nature, the creation of a nuclear weapon would be a national project and would require the involvement of a considerable portion of the population across many industries and ways of eLife.
- International politics would change significantly. Diplomacy would totally change, as would the attitude that larger states would be able to hold towards smaller regions armed with eWMDs.
- If MPPs are going by the wayside, this would greatly increase the value of any battle as a nuclear weapon-toting country was approaching its intended target. Countries which stand in between two nuclear enemies would become much more valuable in the international diplomatic system. We may even see some kind of citizen-driven IAEA emerge to curb the use of nuclear weapons.

Some sort of massive weapon may be the next logical progression for the war mechanism. I understand that Beta giants once fought one-on-one; the current war system is similar to World War I, where people on both sides basically exchange fire indiscriminately basically like trench warfare; so then the next phase is to long-distance attacks and very powerful weapons.

Compromises
I will concede that this idea is far from perfect and that many people will violently oppose it. Some may have even written how dumb the idea is, or how dumb I am, before reading this far. It is not an idea that I fully endorse, but if it were to materialize from my previous article’s suggestion, then I would at least want to lay the first proposal for its implementation and get some credit 🙂.

Many of the ideas and proposals on the weapon’s uses and limitations were intentionally arbitrary so that the eRepublik community and the admins could decide on some critical issues. These questions, such as “how much does a nuke cost;” “how many people/resources should go into a nuke;” “how much damage would an eWMD cause” should not be answered by one person, and I am far from the best person to answer them alone.

My personal goal in this nuclear draft was to keep the nuclear weapon from being a weapon reserved just for the superpowers, but it would also be a mistake to let Theocratic South Korea, or other PTO-driven states, be able to gain access to an eWMD on the cheap. Similarly, it would also be a fault to make nuclear weapons too cheap for small states, so that small states became too strong and were able to bully their neighbors who could not afford eWMDs themselves. Some sort of balance would be needed here, but I am again not the person to set that limit myself.

Conclusions
To some extent, the war feature of eRepublik deserves some spicing up, since many other aspects of the game have changed since I joined in June. Maybe nuclear weapons are a little too drastic, but I believe my “science/technology” idea could be used, and maybe a “missile” with some of the effects of a nuclear weapon, could be used. In this scenario, a missile would be about as strong as 10 tanks and could reach a longer distance. Maybe there would also be a “reloading” period of 12 hours or a day to prevent a country from bombing their opponent into the Stone Age.

For everyone who has read this and my other articles, thank you! I write so people can read, and I am glad to see that people have either liked what I have suggested (whether seriously or for the lulz), or at least wanted to talk about it. I encourage you all to chip in with your own thoughts or modifications of this idea; I will periodically edit this article to incorporate your opinions, in the event that the Admins would like to see what a final product may look like. I also encourage you to subscribe to read more of my thoughts, and to help me reach that elusive 1000 subscriber list. At this point, I believe my next article will look at improving the war module.

God Bless America,

Lieutenant Scheisskopf