It takes 2 Novalith rounds to kill any unshielded planet or asteroid, 3 if it is a shielded non-asteroid planet. If the planet IS killed by a shot, the planet remains uncolonizable for a period of time.

Deliverance wasn't meant to kill population... just temporarily change the mentality of the population and weaken hostile culture. It also gives a 15% damage bonus to your ships in the gravity well of a planet hit by a Deliverance Signal.

These weapons are not meant to be the thing that guarantees you victory, however inviting it is. Modifying them to make them too easy to use/get/build will turn the game into a race to who gets to their superweapon first.

um they are far from useless. Well except for MAYBE the vasari superweapon. But after the microexpansion that is going to be FAR from useless. A starbase down for 15 seconds! The ability to attack enemy planets without using a fleet is a god given gift!

Hate to be mean, but this thread failed right here.

The Kostra Cannon is the ultimate way to take out the pirate base, it really is. 3-4 shots (from multiple cannons) usually doe it for me, once they've all been annihilated I just go colonize the base. In my opinion its the best. None of them are usuelss, although I wish you could nuetralize the planet with the Deliverance Engine.

Making the Superweapons more powerful would break the game. Like Nightmere says, its not Red Alert, and your enemy's superweapon is not 20 seconds away by airstrike. To go take out a superweapon would require a monumental effort, and anywhere up to 30 minutes to an hour of Space Travel depending on the map size. And thats assuming you dont run into resistance, or high numbers of Phase Jump Inhibitors. It would give a Player license to cause total havoc for that entire length of time.

Though if we were coming up with Beefy Superweapon ideas: I vote for a weapon that Disables Phase Jump Lanes for X amount of time. Probably a Vasari weapon option. Great way to trap and kill fleets.

A TEC player in a drawn-out game with against Vasari and/or Advent will just be surviving with his weaker ships but if he can survive long enough and defend enough planets with a good economy he can build a bunch of Novaliths and start turning the tide of battle very quickly.  Once the Starbases are in a TEC econ player will really have a good strat.  Am I off?

interesting replies, i have to agree with u now that they can be very nasty, but i have heard other people complain that they are useless, and i DID say that the novalith was good and that the Kostura would be good for disabling a starbase but they cost waaay more than a capship and have fewer uses. I've been attacked while under the affect of the deliverence and it has never been anything more than i minor annoyance.

Yes, I know this is not Red Alert where the superweapon is a few min. away by airstrike, but unlike red alert, in sins u have lots of bases not just one, so superwepons are less devastating. I f u lose 1 planet to a couple of novaliths, recapturing the planet and upgrading its infrastructure is not as expensive as researching the missile tech tree, researching the novalith and then building 2 of them.Subverters disable units for longer than the Kostura and u can easily get alot of them and you have to wait less before u can use distortion field again.

I never said that they should be a game winner, but like other repliers have stated you need a whole bunch of them to turn the tide of battle. i'm  not saying that only 1 should be able to take out a whole planet, but they are not cost affective when compared to capships. btw phase gates are NOT actually superweapons, but in v1.05 they practically qualify. I understand the role of the superweapons, but they dont seem to be cost affective. Any thoughts on this?

Sakhari, I agree 100%.  The "power" of a supoerweapon is in it's ability to reach out and hurt you without ever having to endanger itself.  Very cool.  I love them just the way they are, and with Entrenchment coming, they will rock. 

Superweapons give you an edge.  In a slower game, it is a large edge.  In a faster game, not so much.  That said...

Deliverence engine:15% extra firepower wherever you fire them at.  You can also barrage someone's homeworld (with about 3 of them) dropping not only homeworld loyalty, but that of all planets that get more than minimum 25% or whatever it is.  While this can eventually cause everything to decolonize, it more importantly hits their economy pretty hard.  You can also leave this superweapon on auto fire and it just ... gives you free loyalty wherever you fire it.

Novalith Cannon:1-3 cannons can uncolonize a turn and eliminate all the population and thus taxes.  Oh, it can be recolonized quickly, but the tax takes a lot longer to get back.  Decolonizing a planet also suspends any attempts at rebuilding static defenses or shipbuilding.  In fact, about 2 of them can probably permanently render a shipyard system largely inactive.

Kotsura cannon.  Ships are stopped for 15 seconds, orbital structures become inactive for 3 minutes!!!! yes, that means you fire a cannon so that it hits just as your fleet is arriving, half your fleet will spend 15 seconds shooting their inactive fleet to hell, THEN your whole fleet gets another 2 minutes, 45 seconds to shred their static defenses.  It also means if you know where their shipyards are, you can disable them and keep them that way.  It also means if your fleet is 2 jumps away, you can fire them 15 seconds apart

None of this has "take over a system" stamped on the side next to the "easy button".  They are not C&C superweapons and if you do not know HOW to use them, they will seem weak.  They are just strong enough that they can allow a faction with one less level of max cap, or to drain your opponent's resources.  Without shields, you build 4, that recolonization (need to get a colony ship to the right place) lost income while the pop recovers, and lost orbital build time (can't build/rebuild orbital structures if there is no colony) is something the other side has to pay TWICE every what, 3 minutes?  The development cost will pay itself off within 15-20 minutes most likely, and that's if you build 4.  If you build 8... well it's a big investment, but it pays itself off, even IF you do not use the weakened state of the colony to help your invasion push.

Kotsura basically renders any and all orbital defenses (except fighters) moot.  Note that you can have a carrier fleet and just bombard repeatedly while your fighters take out their fighters and whatever else you want.

Deliverence engine:It is a subtler weapon, but quite nasty.  You hit a planet with it, they can not colonize it for several minutes and you get a 15% damage bonus.  It can block enemy culture.  It can supress enemy culture.  It can be used to ALLOW you to colonize a planet that would otherwise have too much enemy culture.  Basically, it means you can get all the major bonuses of culture and disengage all the disadvantages in a small area (per engine).

Are superweapons worth making a mad dash for?  Not really.  Are they worth researching at some point in many games?  Yes.

The same can be said for the later improvements to trade ports and refineries.

THESE SUPERWEAPONS SHOULD NOT BE SEEN AS 'BIG GUNS'. THEY ARE AN INVASIVE INFRASTRUCTURE ADVANTAGE!!!!!!!!!  They do not and SHOULD not replace fleets.

In my own testing, I did not find them very useful for actually DESTROYING defenses.  Perhaps I was running a different version at the time.  That said, yes, they do damage on top of what they disable, and that is notable also.  Never found it added up in the version I was playing enough to make a difference.  Generally, I had to fire it, have my ships show up 5 seconds later and level it the old fashioned way while the defenses were down.  Still, if you can get enough to destroy the structures outright, hey, sounds like fun. 3 didn't seem to do the job for me for some reason, IIRC.

I never said that superweapons should be game winner. I understand how they work, but i consider research in other areas more useful, more often.