Are the creators and writers of the game still around? Could we reach them somehow and hear their take on what their thoughts were while designing the game? They would probably be quite intrigued to find many people still interested in their work twenty-five years hence; a "Behind The Music"-like look at T2K would be fascinating to all of us on this forum.
My vaguely-informed speculation is that they didn't want to go whole-hog like Morrow Project and just nuke everything but there had to be enough damage to reduce all parties involved (U.S., Sovs, and the Europeans)(obliterating the Chinese not withstanding) to roughly equal military parity and keep everyone on their own territory, more or less, as well as keep an active war from continuing to mutual extermination. In addition, if you just wipe everything and everyone out it really crimps your ability to tell a good story about survival, orders-of-battle, etc.
None of which explains quite to my satisfaction why strategic nuclear weapons weren't employed in greater numbers (even at a crawl, in tit-for-tat exchanges) against the opposing side's nuclear arsenal, and nuclear infrastructure (plutonium/tritium production, weapons storage and assembly facilities...why weren't the Pantex Plant in Amarillo hit? And Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Savannah River...the list goes on.).
|