(audience yells in unison) "HOW EXPENSIVE ARE THEY???????" LOL LOL

seriously, what IS the monthly cost, and just how many construstors does it take to build a bare bones one? (haven't built one yet, never got that far)

The difference is that a fast moving completed terror star would move and attack too quickly. If you had to take a turn to deconstruct/reconstruct between large moves, it would give the defenders time to see what is going on and react. Defending a terror star with a powerful fleet during this vulneralble phase would be a must, and make a nice stratigic twist.

It would be more micromanagement, though, I agree with you there.

It takes 5 constructors to build all the modules that go into a terror star, plus another 5000 B.C. to finish it off. I don't know what the maintence cost is, since I'm usually too wealthy to care at this point in my games.

That don't make any sense to me. Guess I will have to build one and see.
5000BC is a lot when you don't cheese the AI for money. But that is another rant.

So using your method, you would have to pay 5000BC every time you assembled one? What about disassembly costs?

One could also just bring a fleet of "parts is parts" constructors along with the terror star in case you lost a couple on the way. Not to mention all the resource bonuses you could garb. And with enough parts, so what if you had to take a turn to put it together. Thats not long considering how long it would take to get 5 more from your production planets.

Jinn is right about a fleet of capital ships defending the Terror Star, just as in Star Wars.
I disagree with Couslee - keep Terror Star's base speed at zero - same at battleships. Let the Rangers be the fastest (until Excaliburs) ships in the game.

BTW, I've seen this debate a few months ago.
Brad said that Terror Stars will only move at 1 - never more. They destroy stars.

Me, I play everyday and I say give them speed. I like the way they look and they could be useful in the larger galaxies.

If you don't mind throwing 5 constructors and 5000 BC away, go ahead and use them. I only use them to move resources or occasionally move a Party Palace around the smaller galaxies. Almost worthless on the big galaxies.

I do believe that a terror star should not be a SB upgrade, but a separate unit in itself.

Just my 2 bc.

~SDC~

My suggestion would be not to have to pay the 5000 B.C. every time, that is a "one-time" expense. Or maybe have a small cost, say 100 B.C. per move.




Once a terror star is "disassembled", the parts are not just ordinary constructors. This could be abstracted a bit to minimize complexity. The disassembled terror star could be represented by some graphic, such that all the parts move together or are destroyed together.

The idea is this:
- Build a terror star with 5 constructors + 5000 B.C. use it in place, if desired, and can move at rate of 1 when assembled.
- Take one turn to "disassemble & pack" the whole thing.
- Move the package using the same movement rate as constructors.
- Take one turn to reassemble the terror star weapon and pay a modest fee of 50 or 100 B.C.

This way, the player or the A.I. could see what was going on with the movement of terror stars and could see one being reassembled in their back yard and it would be a sitting duck for one turn. If the attacker doesn't have proper fleet in place, then it's bye-bye terror star.
[Message Edited]

The OS/2 Terror Stars were a separate ship - 5000 shields to build and 250 bc maintence.

how about a terror star that can move more spaces, however it would require so much resources to build, that the planet its built on actually drops 5 points in planet quality and drops a few million in population?

I think to make it more realistic the Terror Star should be virtually invincible. But give it one little know weakness that would allow a lone starfighter to make a run along one of it's trenches, fire a single shot down one of its vents (first ensuring that the starfighter's targetting computer is switched off and the pilot is a whiney guy who is only using the Force), thereby destroying the Terror Star. If Brad gets bored with writing software he could probably turn the above scenario into a movie with a possibility for some sequels. Could be moderately successful.

I'm a dickhead, I know.

LOL

~SDC~

To continue with the silly answer ministry.


Slide up to the target TerrorStar. Compliment on it's sheilds then ask it out to dinner.

LOL LOL LOL LOL

I'm not getting any work done...I've gotta stop reading this thread!

just wondering, can a terror star take out another terror star? im guessing it cant, but maybe it should be able to?

oh yea, for your question, i dont think there is an easy way to take out a terror star -i never had to take one out before, i never had an AI that built one. if the AI did build one of these, the best way would probably be to pay another AI to wage a war with them, and maybe the terror star will start drifting off to another section of the galaxy where you dont own any planets. if that doesnt work, you will have to do it the harder way, and that means build lots of powerfull ships.

unless brad gives the terror star a speed boost, they will not be of much use in any game larger than Tiny

I agree. Terror stars are worthless in any larger than a tiny galaxy. Perhaps a SB mod to increase a terror star's speed. And make a special ship that is the anti-terrorstar(like Luke's ship) that can take out the TS. That way you'd have to defend it. I like being able to attack capital ships with it.

B

But remember.....

The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the force


OF MY cannons. EAT PLASMA YOU SLIMY ALIENS!!!!

B

They do have a very limited use in larger games. My last game was on Gigantic and I was at peace with the Altarians and Yor. They had an alliance. The Yor had lots of planets and a huge military (much bigger than mine). The Altarians had 3 planets that were filled to the brim with Overlords/Avatars/Rangers. I could have destroyed the Altarians over a few turns but would have been pulled into war with Yor who would have wiped the floor with me. So I sent 3 fleets of Constructors to each Altarian planet, built Terror Stars and destroyed them the next turn.
I then dismantled the Terror Stars as they were pretty much useless at that point.

Just to note: The destroyed race don't disappear from the Diplomacy screen until the turn after so you remain at war with them for one more turn even though they have no planets. So I had to actually contact them and Make Peace (offering them lots of BCs over lots of turns) or else the Yor would have declared war.

I still prefer a Party Palace as I get to keep the population and structures. Well worth the extra cost of all those constructors.

If you're worried about a military buildup warning from the AI, just keep it on the border and move it in and out as necessary and the occasional 1 influence point bribe.

Oh, this got a little off topic, didn't it?

~SDC~

what about Brad's view - will TS have greater speed?

That's odd. I had a couple of games where terror stars were moving at the same speed as constructors. I thought that was meant to happen. So I was sending them around the galaxy left and right as you can imagine.

Then in a later game one terror star moved at a speed of 1 and the other at 6 or 8 or whatever. Since then when I've played, they only move at 1.

So anyway, you can be lucky and get them to move faster. I did wonder whether the game thought they were constructors and I may have had spare constructors (and ships) stacked with them. I had also had the UP resolution about the top speed of constructors.

Maybe there is a quirk in the game that can be exploited but I couldn't work it out!

That's a bug, Killa. You get it when you fleet the TS with ships. The TS inherits the ship's movement. I thought it was fixed in 1.09 but Cari said otherwise.

She said it's not a high priority because people love this bug.

Ray, I can't believe you haven't shared this with us previously!

Although it didn't appear to always work with stacked ships, because I am sure I experimented to work out why one terror star was moving faster than the other!

Still, from now on I'm working that bug for all it's worth.
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i had the same bug happen to me during one game a few months ago. my terror stars where actually faster then my constructors, howver i cant remember what the speed was anymore. i only remember thinking it was more logical to build my terror stars right beside my planets and then send them on their journey isntead of sending the constructors to the destination and building the terror stars there.

i think the bug has something to do with putting a terror star in a fleet, however im not sure, this only happened to me once.

i now think terror stars have a very limited use. i would rather build party palaces instead of using my constructors to build a terror star. it pays off more to have a starsystem to flip to you without causing a war then loosing a starsystem from the game. maybe they should get rid of the terror star, and instead replace it with a "planetary bomber" -it wont destroy the planet or the starsystem, but it will destroy all life and buildings, makeing the planet empty all over again with its original PQ.