Any one out there like terror stars?
I just finished a game in which I used them for the first time. Here's what my experrience was.
The game was on a medium size galaxy with everything random (I am going through each race in turn in TA to get a feel for each race's strengths in this expansion - opponents tough). The game set up as super abundant everything - lots of stars each having at least four habitable planets. I was the Drath and the Korath Klan were the bully boys. They rapidly took down everyone else and owned about 85% of the galaxy when they declared war on me.
I eventually got the upper hand, was pushing them back and had a won game. It was taking forever to grind through to finish the game (there were hundreds of planets). It seemed that terror stars would let me win faster by wiping out whole star systems at a time.
Not really so. The research for them takes a long time, you have assemble a fleet of constructors to build them quickly, but once that's done there is then a ten turn power up delay before they even start to move, and once they do move, it's only one square at a time. On top of that, you need a strong force to defend the terror star since the AI will make an effort to take it out.
It was my experience that over the same period of time I was able to take out four or five star systems through normal invasion tactics as opposed to only one using a terror star. In addition, many enemy planets would often flip over to my side by the time I was finally able to get to their star to destroy it.
The ONLY advantage I saw in using terror stars was that they would draw out the big enemy fleets from deep in their territory into an area where I could more easily destroy them (useful, but was not the reason I built the stars).
It's obvious that a lot of effort went into the development of terror stars, but I don't see any strong reason to use them because they are not very efficient in their present form. I would not want to use them on anything larger than a medium sized galaxy because they are so slow to put into action and move, nor would I ever consider using them in any game having less than five or more habitable planets per star regardless of galaxy size.
Any one out there have a different opinion?
ALSO - FOR THE DEVS - in this game I built three terror stars. During the running of the game, one of them went POOF! (it just disappeared - did not exist anymore). They next day, restarting from my QuickSave file, it was back! I have no explanation for this and don't know if anyone has turned in an error report on this problelm.
Absolute waste of time. Built them for the first time in my game and I was so dissapointed. Extremely slow, expensive and they take ages to research. What's the point of building one and using it if I can beat the opponant by conventional invasion tactics ten times faster? Ic an understand that the devs were wary of making the game unbalanced with it but at the moment they're about as useful as a brick.
I think the TS should be "functional" after only two or three research steps. By functional I mean they could destroy stars and moce 1 parsec per turn. The last two or three TS research steps should ADD TO funtionality, with maybe one speed increase (something like the passives the Arceans get) and one defense/offense increase.
When I first learned about the TS and began to play them in the beta, I assumed they were just like military starbases, but mobile. I thought I would be able to upgrade them as I worked up the tech tree. I still think that would be the best, and most obvious way to make them more useful as the game moves forward.
While I'm happy that they're not significantly powerful enough to be overused (which I feel is what the devs had in mind by all the restrictions that are placed on them), I STILL think they'd be better -for the game-, while obviously not in a more powerful kind of way, if the terror star were destroyed when it blew up the star in question.
Especially given that you can't arm it, it does make more sense. And, personally, I have difficulty seeing how a terror star is supposed to survive the destruction of a star given that everything in the AoE is blown to bits-the star, the planets, any ships, any starbases, any asteroids (I'm not positive on that last one, it's been a while).
The two logical ways to have a terror star actually make sense in line with what it does is A. have it destroy itself TO destroy the star OR B. have it be almost indestructable (which may in fact be better). From a GC2 standpoint that would probably mean a significant HP boost (so as to win the tie rule), probably AT LEAST a factor of 5x, and more to the point significant defenses such that it would be almost impossible to overwhelm it militarily. I'm not suggesting that it be able to kill anything, but at the very least it should be nigh unkillable.
Perhaps even both-doing the latter without the former might make them too powerful.
Which brings us to essentially two ways to destroy a terror star-one, blow it up with ANOTHER terror star (when it's passing through the system), or two, bring in a fleet of dreadnoughts to punch through the armor. (Note: This is hypothetical only, as at present they have none.)
Anyway, just some thoughts that were going through my head.
They're no longer destroyed when used? Wow. That's a big change from the beta, where they were strictly kamikaze.
Having played them that way, I don't think it would make them more useful or powerful. I think it would simply add to frustration when trying to use them.
Really a TS should be an end game kind of thing - they should build faster, be more mobile, have attack and defense; but the research needed to mount them should be serious (as it is).
My post above outlines a way to have basic, mid-game TSs and later game "death stars" - really fearsome, mobile battle stations. Terror stars SHOULD be in the late game as an incentive to encourage the top civs to play more defensively and the lower civs the possibility of a daring comeback.
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