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Leuthesius
Leuthesius
Join Date 09/2008
+10

Superweapon variety

Different grades

April 24, 2012 8:29:30 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I've tried all three of the current super weapons.

 

Deliverance engine is a joke.

Vasari superweapon doesn't effect starbases or ships.

Novalith only bombards planets

 

So here's some additional suggestions:

 

Advent:

Allow it to target ANY gravity well. If culture is about to knock out one of your planets, why not shoot the deliverance engine at your own planet? If you're in a gravity well that doesn't have a planet and you're in the middle of a fight, why not target the gravity well to boost local culture and give you a damage/whatever bonus?

 

Additional weapons.

limited range beam cannon (by limited, I mean a single phase jump within a planetary system)

Next planet over is under attack. Allow the deliverance engine to fire a powerful beam at the opposing fleet. 1000 damage to a capital if hit, destroys any frigate if hit, works like the purification beam on the advent battleship. This damage is upgradable.

 

 

TEC:

The novalith fires a big wonking projectile at a planet. Structures around that planet don't exactly move. Allow structures and starbases and whatnot to be targetable up to a phase jump away. It would give a reason to build a forward novalith at the loss of forward defenses, depending on your passive or aggressive play style. The damage to structures and planet are upgradable.

 

Vasari:

 

They have the best superweapon. In the same manner, allow it to be used up to a phase jump away for anti-ship in a localized manually targeted area. 

 

All secondary abilities are manual targeting only---no autocast.

 

All of these would add to strategic uses. I rarely use superweapons, but secondary abilities would certainly add to gameplay imo.

 

Your thoughts...?

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Leuthesius
MayallCommunion
Join Date 09/2011
+21
Reply #1 April 24, 2012 8:37:41 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

They actually do alot more than that. The Kostura creates a phase lane from the planet. The Novalith reduces tax/population for 30 minutes. And the culture from the D-Engine gives you all the auxiliary buffs that you researched.

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Leuthesius
Leuthesius
Join Date 09/2008
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Reply #2 April 24, 2012 9:26:21 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Didn't know that, but still. Some "support fire" in the form of a big frigging gun would be nice. I'm sure that's something everyone could agree with.

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Leuthesius
Mr. Haze
Join Date 05/2009
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Reply #3 April 24, 2012 9:45:21 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

You can already fire deliverance bolts at friendly planets, if I'm not mistaken. Your ships also gain a +25% bonus to their damage output when fighting over a planet that was hit by a deliverance bolt.

It's still a joke, though.

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Leuthesius
MayallCommunion
Join Date 09/2011
+21
Reply #4 April 24, 2012 10:07:00 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Well, the thing with the D-engine is that its supposed to synergize with the advents whole debuff the enemy, buff your own theme.

 

Lets say you have a full advent fleet, lots of Defense, Illuminators, Destras, Iconus Guardians, and Dominas for a touch. With your whole capital ships set up being a Progenitor, Halcyon, Discord, and Rapture. You by just having these units have just given your fleet a ridiculous amount of fire power. The Discord at max gives a -5 armor debuff to your enemy, a single target, Lethargy(best used on titans) debuffs your enemies for 50% ability cooldowns and 25% of its attack cooldowns, the progenitor gives a +30% damage propagation onto all of your enemies, then you have a huge shield regeneration buff, Vertigo from the rapture increases weapons cooldowns and decreases their chance to hit for the enemy by 40%(?), the halcyon gives your fleet the passive decrease to energy weapons cooldowns by x%(its something above 22 at this moment I dont have the game to tell me). The shield extension by the 33% from the Iconus.

 

With all of these your fleet is super buff and the enemies is, super not... But this is also where the problems of the D-engine comes in. The Kostura and the Novalith are convenient in both ways, assuming you are the rebel tec you can get the Novalith by teching through missile upgrades(loyalist get it automatically earlier without having to tech). The Vasari have to just get to 8 in the offensive tech tree. For the Advent to have a sufficient fleet like the one mentioned above you have to tech for them down the hostility tree. This requires a HUGE set up time for you to get that army up and then get the D-engine in commission. In short the D-engine is not logistically efficient compared to the Novalith and Kostura.

 

As for the actual effects of the D-engine are as listed. It spreads culture which in proxy gives your fleet a +6% mitigation bonus(because you have to upgrade the Culture Techs to actually get the D-engine, you also get the +20% resistance to phase missiles. You also get the +25% damage bonus from it, and if I recall correctly(someone correct me if im wrong) you have a +5% increase to damage already, the loyalist can upgrade this to 10%. So in actuality with culture you get +30% of a damage bonus from the D-engine, 35% if you are loyalist with the upgrade.

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Leuthesius
TheEvidence
Join Date 01/2010
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Reply #5 April 24, 2012 11:02:17 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Ok, here's what I'm thinking... if we're limiting super weapon numbers, some interesting room for buffs/specializations opens up.

 

I'm thinking superweapons could get upgrades, like Starbases. So you could, for example, buy one of the following:

Deliverance Engine:

  • Shield Recharge (Harmonic Wave)
  • Anti-matter Recharge (Particle Flux)
  • Cooldown Reduction (Unity Echo)

 

Novalith could be:

  • Reduce Logistics Slots (Low Orbit Debris)
  • Damage over time to population/infrastructure (Crustal Destabilization Warhead)
  • Damage over time to trade ships (High Orbit Debris)

Kostura:

  • Armor Reduction to Orbital Structures (Debilitating Nanite Payload)
  • Massively reduces enemy transit speed through adjacent phase lanes, or slows enemy phase charge up in adjacent wells like a pji (Phase Shockware)
  • Extra DoT to structures (Deconstructing Nanite Payload)

 

That's some ideas off the top of my head. You could have faction specific upgrades too. You could have multiple levels just like Starbases. Maybe even L8 research to unlock them (L8 seems a bit sparse right now, especially Advent Military).

 

I'm sure you can come up with more inventive, race/faction themed Superweapon upgrades.

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Leuthesius
MayallCommunion
Join Date 09/2011
+21
Reply #6 April 24, 2012 11:16:23 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Nothing really needs to be changed. Kostura is still really good. And Novalith is still good.

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Leuthesius
martox1
Join Date 01/2010
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Reply #7 April 24, 2012 11:23:43 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

4 nova aint rly that good

 

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Leuthesius
MayallCommunion
Join Date 09/2011
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Reply #8 April 24, 2012 11:47:54 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Novas are fine. Countering them involved forcing them to get a starbase and then aux govt. If they dont then they have to lose their homeworld which only takes 2. And even then they still get the 30 minute debuff.

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Leuthesius
Humility
Join Date 09/2007
+7
Reply #9 April 25, 2012 6:41:48 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

4 nove is not fine and useless in large map or system, they might be ok in small map, though.

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Leuthesius
Leuthesius
Join Date 09/2008
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Reply #10 April 25, 2012 11:37:06 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

There are enough threads bitching about the nerf. Please do not bring that to this thread.

 

I just want more abilities for the weapons.

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Leuthesius
MayallCommunion
Join Date 09/2011
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Reply #11 April 25, 2012 12:07:05 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting Humility,
reply 9
4 nove is not fine and useless in large map or system, they might be ok in small map, though.

 

Read this. Novas are fine.

 

Quoting bilun,
reply 30
People keep overlooking that a single novalith can keep it's debuff on 3 planets at a time.  4 novaliths can keep their debuff on 12 planets. That's a tremendous amount of income lost.

 

 

It isn't "useless" because you can't keep it up at all timeso n every single planet your opponents control.  12 is more then enough to keep the debuff active on all of a player's major worlds(desert/terran/ice), and likely will blow a few asteroids/moons out of the sky as well.

 

I hate how some people can't seem to distinguish between "maximal" (read: debuffing or destroying every enemy planet) and "useful".

 

 

The first shot of a novalith to a fully populated terran world costs the enemy upwards of 7000 credits over the next half an hour with debuffs alone. 

 

A single cannon can keep it's debuff on 3 planets at a time.  If the investment in the novalith doesn't cripple your defenses and you survive the next 15-20 minutes or so it will have already payed back it's cost in economic damage- and everything after that is a net gain.

 

A limit to how many can be built does not reduce your chance of surviving those 15-20 minutes.  It simply reduces the number of time you can make this advantageous long term investment(with a short term risk).

The point is a single novalith has always been a net gain and thus useful(so long as you can survive those key 15-20 minutes).   This change just reduces the chance of a game snowballing out of control once the TEC player has already survived planting the first few novaliths and can continue to drop more novaliths for similar long term benefits with drastically reduce short term risks(as the enemy's economy has already been hamstrung so even after the cost of new cannons isn't really putting the TEC player behind in fleet investment).

 

Yes it is a nerf, but I strongly disagree with those who say the novalith is useless unless spammed.  This is only really the case if you're too lazy to use it intelligently, manually ordering each shot to maximize spread of the debuff among key worlds while scouting regularly to keep tarck of which worlds are being economically developed.  It's certainly a certainly a nerf for players who relied on just mindlessly bombarding everything rather then choosing high value targets & spreading the debuff around.

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Leuthesius
Tridus
Join Date 03/2008
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Reply #12 April 25, 2012 2:25:05 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting MayallCommunion,
reply 1
They actually do alot more than that. The Kostura creates a phase lane from the planet. The Novalith reduces tax/population for 30 minutes. And the culture from the D-Engine gives you all the auxiliary buffs that you researched.

It only does that if local culture generation isn't enough to suppress it. Three broadcast centers (and maybe two with enough upgrades) is enough to overwhelm the DE's culture generation and thus give you none of the in-culture bonuses.

It's by far the easiest of the three Superweapons to counter.

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Leuthesius
MayallCommunion
Join Date 09/2011
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Reply #13 April 25, 2012 2:59:05 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I know. I never said it was not counterable.

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Leuthesius
Volt_Cruelerz
Join Date 06/2008
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Reply #14 April 25, 2012 3:16:22 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

commenting so that I don't forget to make a real post later.

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Leuthesius
Volt_Cruelerz
Join Date 06/2008
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Reply #15 April 25, 2012 6:33:46 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Real Post

Back on subject, if the superweapons are going to stay this way, I wouldn't mind them getting short range abilities.  Honestly though, I'd prefer if things went more like this..

Novalith: This should really just be an upgraded version of GRG.  Deals, say 6k damage to a target.

Deliverance Engine: Can be used on a non-capital to instacap it or if used on a cap/starbase/titan, results in a reduction in damage output

Kostura: results in a heavy DoT to hull of target and disables phase jump on surrounding ships

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