The recent changes to Superweapons, along with recent discussion about which is best, prompted me to do some research on them. I tested each, noting the effects, recorded descriptions of each, and looked up old posts regarding them. The following summarizes each weapons characteristics.
First, the 1.2 changelog states:
TEC: Novalith Cannon Primary Effect: 3500 planet health damage, and 150 population killed. Secondary Effect: Cannot re-colonize for 2 minutes "due to strong bombardment raditation". Tertiary Effect: Trade Income is reduced by 50% for 30 minutes. "Trade Income 100%" (in red). Tertiary Effect: Population cap reduced by 40% for 30 minutes. "Max Population 40%" (in red). Target: Only colonized enemy planets. Cooldown: 360 (6 minutes) Antimatter: 200 per use. Cost: 8000 credit 600 metal 500 crystal per gun, 18 tactical slots. TL: 6000 credit 450 metal 375 crystal per gun, 15 tactical slots. (-25% cost, -3 slots). Research prerequisites: 3 Tier 2, 2 Tier 4, 1 Tier 6, 1 Tier 7, 1 Tier 8, Military tree. TEC Loyalists prereqs: only 2 Tier 6!, Military tree. Research cost: 8800 credit 1400 metal 2275 crystal TL Res. cost: 2800 credit 500 metal 800 crystal Advent: Deliverance Engine Primary Effect: attacking ships gain 25% increase in damage for 150 sec., "damage output 25%" (in green) Secondary Effect: Powerful spread of '50 culture' from the planet causing a temporary loss of around 10% allegiance Tertiary Effect: Shield mitigation increased 6% due to required culture research, and culture's presence. Adv. Loyals: also recieve 20% phase missile block. Add'l techs can also boost AL damage in culture. Target: Colonized freindly & enemy planets. Not neutral uncolonized gravity wells, nor dead roids (colonized or not). Cooldown: 360 (6 minutes) Antimatter: 200 per use. Cost: 8000 credit 600 metal 500 crystal per gun, 18 tactical slots. Research prerequisites: 3 Tier 2, 2 Tier 4, 2 Tier 6, 1 Tier 8, Civilian tree. Research cost: 8700 credit 1975 metal 2225 cystal Vasari: Kostura Cannon Primary Effect: 1250 damage to all structures (before armor and shield mitigation reductions) Secondary Effect: Disable orbital structures for 3 minutes Tertiary Effect: The planet acts as if there is a phase gate at the location for 1minute 30seconds. Target: Only colonized enemy planets. Cooldown: 360 (6 minutes) Antimatter: 200 per use. Cost: 8000 credit 600 metal 500 crystal per gun, 18 tactical slots. Research prerequisites: None! 1 Tier 8, Military tree. Research cost: 1800 credit 350 metal 550 crystal
Some additional observations:
The Novalith kills most planets with one shot. 2 shots to kill a HomeWorld (3 for fully upgraded HW in Rebellion). Multiple Novaliths can be a game winner if you methodically kill all. Starbase upgrades (ie: Aux Gov) can prevent planet loss.
Repeated staggered shots from 2 Deliverance guns on one enemy planeet, say every 3 minutes, will eventually bring allegiance to zero, and affect the adjoining planets as well. Providing they don't have offsetting culture! Shots stack, so its possible to have 100 culture bombarbing a planet (requires 5 unupgraded culture towers there to offset). But that 100 is divided by the number of outgoing phase lanes reducing effectiveness against adjoining planets. (At the maxi. -0.07%/sec allegiance loss rate = about 6 minutes for 25% allegiance, or 24 for 100%);(At the typical -0.04%/sec allegiance loss rate = 10.42 minutes for 25%, or 41.67 for 100%).
Three Kosturas shots in rapid succession will destroy extractors. It takes at least 5 shots to destroy frigate factories and turrets. About 6 shots to kill labs, trade ports and cap ship factories. Most structures have 5-7 armor. 5 armor reduces 1250 damage to 1000 effective damage. Most stuctures will exhibit around 900 damage. Since turrets have around 12 armor, they will exhibit damage in the high 700s for each Kostura shot. A single shot does little effective damage, unless it is followed by a fleet jumping through the temporary phase gate, and used to disable structures.
The Kostura only costs about one-quarter of the other 2 superweapons to research. And since it requires no other prerequite research, it can be completed much quicker. The Novalith and Deliverence Engine research are roughly comparable to each other in cost, and have fairly similar prerequisite research requirements. But the Deliverence Engine costs about 500 more metal, and it can be argued that the Deliverence Engine's cultural prerequisites are less useful. TEC Loyalist Novalith research costs only about a third, and the gun itself costs 75%, while taking only 15 slots, (so it is possible to put 2 guns at most planets).
Each gun costs the same to build individually (except TL), and they all have the same cool down and antimatter requirements.
[Edit] Rebellion has introduced new features affecting superweapons. For example: TEC Loyalists can now buy Novalith's much sooner, and for less cost. Also Advent Loyalist receive several new cultural boosts in the prerequisites leading up to a Deliverance engine.
I have updated this post to reflect those changes.
Well, there's the small side effect that, generally speaking, if you have the cash to slap down multiple superweapons, you've pretty much already won the game.
A good point...the more I think about it, the more in line the novalith seems now anyway...
As was pointed out earlier (UE_Carbon I think?) the novalith doesn't do anything to damage fleets, which is the single most important asset you'll ever have...hell, novalith's don't even dependably kill planets as you can just SB them...DE's at least eventually guarantee a loss of territory, and kostura's give your fleet the mobility to do what you need to end the game...
If you shoot 2 planets with the kostura cannon can you jump between then without researching phase gates?
Yes, you simply need two stable phase nodes. Targeting two enemy planets will allow you to jump between those planets, assuming your fleet is in place for the duration of the effect.
You can also use a level 6 Antorak assuming you have one.
Or... Research Phase Tunneling and build one on one your planets... Or Research Phase Tunneling and Research Phase Stabilizer and Purchase the phase gate for your starbase...
It just depends on what your plan of attack is if you want to use the phase gate functionality.
Regardless of your approach you need two nodes to travel outside of normal phase lanes.
Some additional observations, that I may or may not add to the original post:
The Novalith kills most planets with one shot. 2 shots to kill a fully upgraded Homeworld. Multiple Novaliths can be a game winner if you methodically kill all. Starbase upgrades (ie: Aux Gov) can prevent it's planet loss.
[Edit]: Repeated shots from 2 Deliverance guns on one enemy planeet, say every 3 minutes, will eventually bring allegiance to zero, and affect the adjoining planets as well. Providing they don't have offsetting culture.(At the maxi. -0.07%/sec allegiance loss rate = about 6 minutes for 25% allegiance, or 24 for 100%);(At the typical -0.04%/sec allegiance loss rate = 10.42 minutes for 25%, or 41.67 for 100%).
Three Kosturas shots in rapid succession will destroy extractors. It takes at least 5 shots to destroy frigate factories and turrets. About 6 shots to kill labs, trade ports and cap ship factories. Most structures have 5-7 armor. 5 armor reduces 1250 damage to 1000 effective damage. Most stuctures will exhibit around 900 damage. Since turrets have around 12 armor, they will exhibit damage in the high 700s for each Kostura shot. A single shot does little effective damage, unless it is followed by a fleet jumping through the temporary phase gate.
The Kostura only costs about one-quarter of the other 2 superweapons to research. And since it requires no other prerequite research, it can be completed much quicker. The Novalith and Deliverence Engine research are roughly comparable to each other in cost, and have fairly similar prerequisite research requirements. But the Deliverence Engine costs about 500 more metal, and it can be argued that the Deliverence Engine's cultural prerequisites are less useful.
Each gun costs the same to build individually, and they all have the same cool down and antimatter requirements.
Does anyone know the actual culture spread rate for the Deliverence engine? Or how long it lasts? ZombiesRus mentioned something about 150 seconds. I can recheck, but I think I'm going to need to look in the .entity files, and I don't know how to. Possibly in the BuffCannonShellPhase files?
numEntityModifiers 1entityModifier buffEntityModifierType "CultureSpread" value Level:0 5.000000 Level:1 0.000000 Level:2 0.000000numEntityBoolModifiers 0numFinishConditions 1finishCondition finishConditionType "TimeElapsed" time Level:0 150.000000 Level:1 0.000000 Level:2 0.000000
-Edit - you can stack the culture spread infinitely. The damage bonus (25%) cannot be stacked per say but should last 150 seconds after the last impact (i.e. LastSpawnerNoLongerHasBuff) is my understanding.
Thanks Rus, Yeah the damage bonus only lasts 2 and a half minutes! And doesn't stack. I rewatched the replay to confirm. Thats not very long.
The culture spread also has the same duration, but it takes awhile for the culture to contract back to the planet, so it has a longer effect overall. Not sure what the "5" for culture spread actually means? The planet lost allegiance at a -0.04/sec rate, during the duration. Apparently the culture spread does stack? Not sure how it works. But... repeated shots from 2 guns, say every 3 minutes, will eventually bring allegiance to zero, and affect the adjoining planets as well (41.67 minutes for 100%, 10.42 for 25%?).
The 5 should be a multiplier based on the culture's setting in Gameplay.constants and any upgrades researched. Allegiance and spread rate are based on culture speed settings.
Gameplay.constants:
cultureData minPropagatedCultureRate 0.005 culturePropagationPerc .5 cultureDecayRate -0.4 neutralOrbitBodyCultureRepelRateMultiplier 0.5 enemyOrbitBodyCultureRepelRateMultiplier 0.0
...
cultureSpeedData-Slow cultureConnectionReferenceLength 250000 allegianceShiftRateScalar 0.75 cultureSpeedData-Normal cultureConnectionReferenceLength 500000 allegianceShiftRateScalar 1.0 cultureSpeedData-Fast cultureConnectionReferenceLength 750000 allegianceShiftRateScalar 1.25 cultureSpeedData-Faster cultureConnectionReferenceLength 850000 allegianceShiftRateScalar 1.45
Hey Sage, are all the times listed for Normal game speeds? I'm interested in getting all of this hard information onto the Wiki at some point.
Abilities (which is basically what these things are) are not effected by game speeds.
Anyone know how long this will take? I think my earlier calcuations were incorrect. If max culture change is -.07%/sec? Then its about 24 minutes for 100%, and 6 minutes for 25%? Culture is just baffleing (to me)!
Anyway, I bump this old post because of all of the changes and complaints about superweapon in the new Rebellion Beta. Loyalist Novaliths can be aquired much sooner at a reduced cost. So I will update the original post for these changes. But I am curious if everything else remained the same?
Finally, this post asks:
"Alright yes we all know it [Novalith] is annoying but how has this portion of its ability been allowed for so long?...30 minutes of -40% max population and -100% trade income? Holy hell. How has this been overlooked."
Based on my experience in beta 2, the Deliverance Engine's culture spread can be overwhelmed by local culture generation, in which case none of its "in your culture" effects apply and allegiance doesn't go down at all. You need a fair bit of culture generation to do that, but if you have the thing is nullified entirely except as a fleet damage booster.
Compared to the other two, it's underwhelming. Maybe it should also disable local culture generation while its in effect so it can always work.
The Novalith Cannon of the TEC is vastly overpowered. With just one shot (two shots if fully upgraded) a TCN can disable a whole planet. The planet won't have it's defences regenerated when the second shot comes in (and it's always possible to build a second NC anyway). The defending player is forced to maintain at least 2 mothership fleets and spending significant amount of crystal on rebuilding the planet, including 3x health upgrade. As time goes on the defending player will be dedicating all of his ressources just to mitigate the effects of the NC and _will_ fail eventually.
Compared to the other two super weapons the NC is ridiculously strong and breaks the game.
Solutions:
- limit super weapons to one at a time
- decrease damage (3 shots for fully upgraded planets)
- increase cooldown (planet should be able to recover fully while the NC is on CD)
- remove this shit from the game and come up with something clever instead
Solution: stop being silly, and build a starbase on each of your planets with the "never die to novalith cannon" upgrade on them.
while you are at it, you might as well also put the "its like a whole extra trade port on every one of my planets" upgrade, and the, "insignificant increase in resources earned" upgrades as well.
This is the most touted "solution". It's also ridiculous, micro-intensive, and downright annoying/not fun to have to run around building Starbases everywhere.
If Ironclad REALLY intends for the gameplay to include Starbases on every planet, they should add a button from the planet UI to just immediately start building a Starbase. That'd at least make it less annoying then needing to build and fly constructor ships around everywhere and babysit the things when they reach the planets in question.
there is a free, old rts out there, called outpost 2.
google it, and give it a try sometime.
You will never complain about micro about building buildings again.
Starbases don't solve the problem, that is losing your population and income. A single NC will force Advent into an attack sooner than later.
Apart from that, it's simply a stupid & unfun game mechanic, hence -> call for removal.
I tested the Advent Loyalist Rebellion beta 2 (0.76) Deliverence Engine today, and saw it overwhelm local culture quite easily!
The gun sends out a pulse of '50 culture' lasting 2.5 minutes. A typical local culture tower puts out '20 culture' in its own grav well. So the gun overwhelms a planet with 2 towers, but not a planet with 3 towers. But the gun's shots will stack as well if necessary. Finally, it will take repeated (alternating?) shots to bring a planet to zero allegiance (at a max of -.07%/sec).
The culture spread from the targeted planet is divided by the number of phase lanes leaving the planet. So if there only 2 lanes out, the split '25 culture' is enough to overwhelm an adjoining well with a culture tower ('20'). If there are 3 lanes, then its only '16.67 culture' and not enough to overwhelm an adjoining tower.
The nearby enemy culture towers will buffer the culture loss, so that it doesn't occur at the max -.07%/sec rate. The typical allegiance loss appears to around -10% but it seems to vary according to many factors. It may be as low as couple percent to as high as nearly 20%.
One peculiarity I discovered: the Deliverance Gun was unable to target colonized Dead Asteroids, either friendly or hostile! Not sure why this was the case? But it does make some sense.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
