Do the Advent have a super weapon?

The Advent's weapon is in the Civilian research tree, at the end of the Culture research path - it's called the Deliverance Engine.

What it does is throw a huge chunk of your culture towards any planet, friendly or hostile. This serves several purposes:

1) The Advent have research that displays any grav well where they have culture, so you can peek anywhere on the map for a fairly long while, since it takes some time for the culture effect to wear off.

2) The Advent's culture techs give all of their ships extra shield mitigation when they're in friendly culture. The other races have their own bonuses. So, shooting the Engine at a planet you're about to invade means the defending fleet doesn't get their bonus and you get yours. This can make a big difference in a fight with about even fleets.

The Vasari superweapon is the Kotsura Cannon, it damages and disables planetary structures for 3 minutes, and damages and disables ships for I think 15 seconds. It's also good for busting through heavily defended planets, since shutting down all the repair bays for 3 minutes and dealing some damage to everything isn't a bad thing.

The Advent have the Deliverance Engine, which spreads Advent culture to a target planet. It can give you your bonus in a battle, while depriving your enemy of his. If used carefully, it can even be used to flip a planet to neutral control.

The Vasari have the Kostura Cannon, which deals (fairly minor) damage to ships and orbitals around the target planet, and more importantly, disables them for a period of time.

Basically, only the Novalith is a direct-attack weapon. The other two are designed to support fleet actions, rather than to function so much on their own.

Interesting! There is a planet very close to me, which i have had a eye on for some time, its alligeiance is showing at 50% because i have researched other culture bonuses, so does this mean that hopefully i should be able to take it without the sword?

This would be very handy because the empire whom the planet belongs to is the only one who is friendly to me in a sea of 7 other competitors, i want the planet - but i dont want to go to war with them yet, i think i'll give it a shot!

What a waste of time that was! its near useless!

The only visible effect it had on the planet was increased "culture" -

Compared to the TEC Nuke this weapon sucks bigtime.

Like the Kostura, this weapon is more useful with a fleet following the shot in.

Culture bonuses aside, the Deliverance Signal also gives your ships a 15% bonus to damage output when they are in the gravity well of the affected planet. On larger fleets, this makes a rather significant difference.

That is the EXACT point of the weapon - it gives a super hit of culture.

If you understand what culture does, you will understand how it could be useful - such as making a planet neutral (as explained above)...

The Advent and Vasari superweapons are not worth the cost and are just about useless.  TEC sucks (which is why so few experienced people play TEC online) so TEC really does need a superweapon like the Novalith to make playing TEC somewhat worthwhile.

You might say that the Vasari's superweapon in 1.05 (to be killed in 1.1) is Returning Armada.

The Advent's superweapon is a synchronization of certain high level capital ships combined with Illuminators that have fully researched laser beams or Crusaders that have fully researched weapons (with the 30% weapon fire (cool down) speed up).

I have noticed that if you have a peace treaty (and likely the same for a cease fire), your culture does NOT diminish theirs and visa versa.  Culture lines happen between planets, but their culture does not go by your first planet nor adversely affect it and visa versa.

Also, it takes a LOT of culture for a planet to be abandoned.  It takes considerably less to make it uncolonizable for the enemy (or to render something colonizable with a superweapon hit).  Unlike GalCiv(1 and 2) (IIRC), you can not use culture to hose your friends, only your enemies.

I once played a game where the random, single-system map boiled down to one, single chokepoint.

All fleet resources from all races were thrown into that one point, and nobody could make any headway at all.

Hours and hours of fighting, all in that one gravity well, with no hope of actually being able to make it further with enough of a fleet to scratch the planets beyond.

Then I built a couple of Deliverance Engines, and started aiming them at fringe worlds far past the blockade.

An hour later, I'd won.

It's no less useful than a big gun, and a lot more versitile.

I'm also rather fond of the Kostura cannon.  If someone digs in with tons of defenses, it is kind of nice to temporarily disable them all when your fleet attacks that world.

None of the super weapons are really "needed", but they all have a place in extreme endgame as alternate tactics that can be called upon.

It is only my two cents, but it is nice to have "weapons" that are not really guns-with-bullets kind of weapons. It makes for a more interesting game, where there are tactics and strategies beyond just the simple shoot-em-ups.

-Teal

Sorry for the double post, but it just occured to me, haha, as an extension of the first thought, that it would be even nicer to have new and more weapons that use this kind of feature. Where they are more than just "bullet" weapons. 

Okie, thats all for now 

-Teal

I'll have to agree that the Deliverance Engine actually isn't as useless as it may seem.  No good for single direct attacks, of course, since it's a support weapon as pointed out.  But a friend and I have also found some entertaining ways of totally screwing over opponents with them.  It usually only works really well on large maps, though.  But building multiple cannons on 'backwater' worlds and firing them all off at once into an enemy's territory can have some massively devistating effects.  Do that 2 or 3 times and you'll wipe out the opponent's control of the targetted worlds and typically their neighbors without ever sending in a fleet.  Course, the defences are still there, but you can wipe those out much easier with the being in your own culture, etc.

The Superweapons should be more useful in Entrenchment, given all the defensive additions(Starbases, turret upgrades).

Nuking a planet with a Novalith or neutralizing it with the Deliverance Engine might be useful if the enemy is heavily bunkered up behind all sorts of defensive structures with a fleet on hand. The Kostura could be good too, disabling and damaging the enemy Starbase and all their other defenses for 3 minutes while you tear them up with your fleet.

That does make me wonder about the Kostura cannon.  If it can disable starbases within the gravity well of a planet...yipes.

One time on a big 5v5 map, I was doing some late game mop up of an Advent AI from a player that had quit or disconnected.  I had built some Kostura's because I was bored, and they just help with the mop up stage.  Well, one Kostura doesn't do much damage...you mostly just use it for the disabling effect, but I wanted to see if it was useful to use multiple Kostura's so I fired all 3 of mine at the world and made my assault. 

As my main battlefleet engaged the AI fleet, I threw Volatile Nanites on the bunched up enemies from my Kortul and popped over to the neighboring system to see how my reserve fleet was coming.  I popped back over to the battle and the Advent fleet was gone except for a beat up capital that quickly expired as I watched.  I was confused at first, and then my jaw dropped open as I realized what had happened.  My carefully timed Kostura shots had hit the system in rapid succession while Volatile Nanites was on the Advent fleet....and that poor fleet just....evaporated.

This was a while ago, back in 1.04 I think...I probably should have done something with the replay.  Maybe I will try and recreate it sometime. 

Moral of story, while the Novalith is lethal to planets in a straightforward way, all of the superweapons can be pretty dangerous when used creatively.