Novalith Cannon Range limitations?

The Novalith can hit any enemy planet in a star system. It cannot, however, fire at planets outside of that system.

Last I knew, it could hit any planet that existed in the game, even in other systems.
It takes half an hour, often much more for those missiles to hit a planet in another system though..

Windex is right, it can fire to any planet on the map. The long flight time often leads to friendly-fire situations, when you capture the planet before the warhead arrives.

yea i had and ally turn against me because i just put three of those things on auto fire.

The vasari Kostura and advent delivrance engine have the same unlimited range.

The range is unlimited, but as mentioned the travel time is long enough to be inhibitive. Fire the cannon at another star system and then try and click on the missile icon while you can still see it. Hotkey the thing and then double tap the key at various times to note its progress. Putt putt =(

So if you fire it before an ally caps a planet, it still hits the planet?

Yep.

Of course. It's a giant nuke, it doesn't form alliances.

Also, it would be a cool way to break an alliance.

It all depends on the map when it comes to ETA. If you got huge phase lanes...like ones that take 20 minutes...its going to be a long wile for them to get there. But in cases where phase jumps are under 1 minute. Well its going to be a quick hit. Though i find them really useless in large scale maps cause once you get a number of planets you don't remember where they are anymore.

be careful about firing it into different star systems. If you colonize the world, 30 minutes later your cannon shell might obliterate it (if you haven't maxed out the planet health) which happened to me when I had 6 cannons firing 2 shells at a various worlds I had scouted and later colonized. Nothing like 12 worlds getting bombed out of existence by friendly fire.

When you fire the cannon, alert your allies. Pin the planet and tell them "this place is dead, don't touch it", or something similar.
Also try to keep cannons off of auto fire, because if you have 6 cannons set to auto-fire and you start getting enemies at your allie's place, you don't want 6 nukes heading that way.
Also, avoid shooting out-system--you could hit something friendly or hit something you didnt want to (>.<).

Good luck

You'd think those Novalith engineers would have put a self-destruct option on the warhead.

I don't know how it works out in multiplayer, but in single player on a multistar map, but the time you're taking planets in other star systems, I have to figure you can afford to just build Novaliths in the new star systems. That way it doesn't take forever to nuke your target. Anyway, it's what I've done when playing multistar maps.

There should be an button in the panel in the bottom right: Abort. (I had the same idea than Hydroseeds). You could even right-click on it to put it on auto mode. When in auto, it would automaticaly abort if an ally colonize the target. Just an additional option.

Even when they are in other systems, I like to fire the cannon at pirate bases just to keep them from getting too annoying without wasting precious fleet strength on a potentially drawn out battle... Of course, same advice as above on warning allies.