very nice ideas, 1st sugggested tertiary effect is great

2 3 and 4 though could all be blended into one effect. i.e. enemy broadcast centers become yours and will project your culture at a much higher rate than normal (idn, like 500% whatever your researched rate is?) for a short amount of time. lastly, the planet and any defenses there will still be under enemy control, so, if they have a broadcast center surrounded by turrets, a starbase and heaps of SC, then the broadcast center will be destroyed anyway. and if there are no defenses at the planet then the boradcast center will need to be destroyed by a fleet to stop the culture spread.

one little flaw, though, what happens if there are no broadcast centers at the planet you want to attack? i guess you could say the force of the 'blast' could inspire the crew of a construction frigate to build one that is then yours and transmits your culture, but i dont know.

and, even though i dont play as advent, i think it should be level 2 Returning Armada, just because i think you can jump an entire fleet in after a kostura cannon strike so...

anyway, well done, nice ideas

and useless unless you have ships nearby or in system to attack with. both other cannons have some sort a good reason to use them. i.e. novalith withholds a planet from your enemy for a while, and kostura not only paves the way by acting like a phase stabiliser after impact, but also lays out the welcome mat for an invading fleet by 'stunning' ships and structures in system. both cannons are effective against any planet anywhere, whereas with the engine, you would (could?) only, logically, use it on a planet next to one you control, or one you are already fighting in, because otherwise there is no way to get ships in a position to attack.

but when you use the deliverance engine on a planet and neutralize it you can just keep firing it till you neutralize all the planets around the target, this works realy well against the enemy homeworld because it also wrecks thier economy because of the tax and resources lost to them lossing allegiance and thier homeworld together making it easier for your fleet to wipe out the enemy fleet and keep it dead

hmm i thought that Auxilary Government only worked for bombardment il have to test it

Novalith cannons in larger numbers are really annoying and the vasari have their ultimate phase gate.

On paper the Deliverence specs are nice. But it only helps if you attack an enemy planet. And if you attack you should have the superior fleet anyway.

I'm seeing alot of people talking about the super weapons being used by themselves.

I think the super weapon, for any race, is meant to be used in conjunction with a fleet.  I don't think any of them are meant to take out a planet by themselves.

TEC - Hit the enemy planet just before your fleet arrives so you don't have to spend as much time bombing the planet with you caps.  You can even hit the planet with the Novalith while your fleet is isn the grav well because it won't damage your ships.

Vasari - Deep strike with a small fleet to distract the enemy's main fleet so you can take other border worlds.  Or use it on a planet that has extra tactical slots so those are negated when all the buildings are disabled (played a multi-player game once where the enemy had an extra 8 or so tactical slots.  He filled them with 4 repair platforms.  I never could take that system as TEC)

Advent - While not as 'cool sounding' as the others, receiving a damage bonus and a bonus shield mitigation can be a huge advantage for evenly matched fleets.  Especially when the enemy fleet loses their advanteges as well.

I think we get caught up in thinking there is one ship or one weapon that will win the game, I know I look for that one 'winning' unit when I first started playing.  While this may be true for many other RTS and 4x games I've played, I think Sins, and Entrenchment even more, does a very good job of making a player use a variety of tactics and units to win.

That's like shooting yourself in the foot, though. The Novalith decreases the max population on the planet for a long time after the shot (it's probably in the neighborhood of 10 miuntes, I don't have the data with me here). So if you use it to save a minute on bombardment, you'll just have a colony with 0 population. Not to mention you'll spend more time waiting for the planet to become colonizeable than you would with conventional bombing.

The Novalith is pretty poor to use to save bombardment time, because of these two things..

Personally, i don't see any situation where i needed superweapons. I did build a few but it was when i didn't know how to play this game.Now, i know that you have to keep your enemy busy and just build defenses to slow down them until you bring reinforcements. It is all about the offense, so i prefer spend my money in ships and weapon upgrade than in 8 civic labs and thousands credits in researching culture. I just research the culture center to get a 10% bonus in allegiance.

If a game last long enough to allow me getting these weapons, it means i made a strategic mistake.

If you played games where superweapons proved efficient and profitable compared to upgrading your fleet, i would love to hear about them.

Can the novalith destroy a planet with the Starbase Government upgrade?

The thing that stands out to me is unlike Kostura, Deliverance has loads of prerequisites so it takes forever to get.  Sure Novalith does too, but IMO it's worth it at least pre-Entrenchment because it's awesome at hitting the enemy's flanks and tying up resources to deal with bombardment far behind the front lines.  Maybe a good balance would be easing up on the prereqs a bit.

ok i tested culture on a planet with a starbase with Auxilary Government and once the alligence hit zero the planet went neutral so the deliverence engine can neutralize a planet with Auxilary Government meaning its not so useless after all

Interesting.

I suppose the next question is, Bug or Feature?