You realize you can destroy entire fleets with this right? Someone put a great replay of a very experienced player who hadn't experimented with this ability before getting all of his frigates killed by Wail from a nearby ice planet, and he had absolutely no idea what hit him. Just 100 population is more than enough to pop most frigates, the full 160 will kill everything but caps, titans, and maybe heavy cruisers. A desert or terran will do tons of damage.

Also if you put a starbase with the enduring devotion upgrade on it, you don't lose the planet. The HP and population are both set to zero but you keep the planet upgrades and don't have to recolonize it.

In short, its actually one of the Advent Rebels best techs, and can totally decimate the AI or a player who isn't expecting it. Experienced players will be much wiser to it but it still forces them to be much more careful to keep their fleets apart and can slow them down, so just the fear of it can be useful.

I've used it on a fully stocked desert planet and it didn't do much of anything.  Hence why I asked if it was even worth it since 267 population apparently did nill against my advert adversary.  It should have done in the ballpark of about 5000 damage, yet it had done none what so ever hence my confusion.  I went in with my fleet immediately after using it and their entire fleet was still active and undamaged.

Its situational, but very powerful. Detonating a Desert/Terran planet mid to late game can be a game winner if the entire enemy fleet is hit. Every one of their ships will die: Either to wail [All Frigates and usually all cruisers], or to your fleet [Their now heavily damaged Titan and Capital ships]. Sure, you lose a planet. But they lose their fleet, and any planets you attack whilst they rebuild it.

It's an extremely devastating weapon. Just today I used it four times to great effect in two different games.

The first was with my friend, a 2v3v3 against AI teams on a 3-star map. As we cleared our starting star system, I asked my friend to have control of the only planet directly connected to the sun so I could Wail any incoming armadas from the other systems if need be.

Later in the game, when the AI were in ruins and it got to the point where it was just a big mop up operation, we turn on each other and he swarmed me with massive amounts of bombers in the second system. After I retreated, his ships fled from my Eradica which had activated Unyielding Will and I lost track of his fleet.

Until I spotted his entire drone host fleet jumping to the other star, at which point I waited for all of them to arrive, then hit Wail of the Sacrificed on the one planet next to the star. My friends parents entered the room and asked to use the computer for a few minutes and he requested a break, to which I answered:

"Sure, since I just obliterated all of your carriers, we can take a break"

He begins to panic and I hear him hitting his hotkeys looking for his carriers.

He is still relatively new to the game and didn't fully understand how Wail worked. Now he does.

^^ This

Then that sounds like a bug!  If you can, find the autosave before the incidence, or the autorecord, and send it in.  Better yet, try to recreate the incident.

BTW, I've used it, and seen it used spectacularly!  I just wish it had some lingering visual effect on the affected planets, so that when you are on the recieving end, you know what hit you.  Its quite disconcerting to just have your fleet vanish!

Attention: Since Patch 1.02 a Starbase with Enduring devotion module does NOT any longer work with Wail of the Sacrificed

If you use it, you loose the planet, no matter what! You have to recolonize and buy all upgrades again.

I just used this ability today against an enemy that was swarming my team with corvettes. It did cost me a planet, but there is nothing like seeing 220 corvettes (worth arround 40000 credits =4 Titan rebuilds) being vapourized in the blink of an eye.

The owner of those ships was very pissed about that and I have to say I cant blame him for that.

This ability makes you think very very carefully about approaching an Advent Rebell world...

Stupid question: Wenn there is a phase stabilizer node on the planet that the wail orginates from, does it travel to that too?

Now, that would be really mean... you shoot with Kostura to get access to that system and then he wails you in return...klling your invasion fleet on its starting point...

Does that work? We should test that, lol

...that would be awesome, except you'd need a domina subjugator, upgraded with Perseverance at the planet being hit by the Kostura or else the temple of communion is disabled and you cannot activate Wail of the Sacrificed.