Out of all the super weapons in sins the Novalith is by far the only one that poses any significant threat. The Vasari and their cannon only affects the structures around a planet making it a good weapon to use before launching an attack, it can be countered by just sending in a fleet to defend the system after it's use and if your against the AI they don't exactly coordinate their strikes with fleet attacks. The Advent have their Deliverance machine which is very handy if you have lots of abilities that give you buffs when in your own culture but it's very easily countered if it's fired into the middle of your empire but its good when used like the Vasari's cannon and used on front line systems to help you attack and take that system giving you an advantage.
Now with the Novalith it's just a spammers paradise, the AI were firing them off in all direction and in just a few minutes Id lost half my planets (6 in total at that point) and they fire so fast your planets can never recover from a hit before the second hits and wipes it out, then by time the radiation has settled it's too late and the hit it again. I have seen this in Rebellion (thought the AI are really really pathetic compared to Diplomacy) and in Sins Diplomacy usually on hard. It's a cowards weapon and really breaks the game, it's not a tactical weapon like the other 2 races weapons, it isn't use din conjunction with an attack, it's just a point and shoot cannon that can not be countered in any way, I thought the Vasari and their research into limiting planet bombing damage and faster planet health recovery would help but apparently they have no effect on Novaliths.
The game loses it's fun as far as I am concerned when you give a faction the ability to just swat enemy planets without ever having to actually send a fleet, isn't the whole game about fleet combat? I love the game but when they start wiping out my planets every minute and not giving me a chance to actually try and counter them then it's not fun, the other races are fine, yeah they use their big weapons but they are more tactical and have to be used along side your own fleet (maybe minus the deliverance machine as you can wipe out the culture but again this can be countered and if fired deeper into your empire it has little to no effect)
So please either nerf the crap out of the Novalith or give us an option to disable super weapons in a game, I despise super weapons they break a game especially ones like the Novalith, just one or 2 isn't that bad but being able to build infinite ones is massively game breaking.
My only two replies is this.
1.The Nova's destroy a planet in 1 hit and bring down home planets to about 200 health with one shot.
2.Those saying "build starbases to stop them" need to think that maybe, just maybe, we all don't play on 8x speed with the AI. My favorite games are the ones with slow settings for everything, 2k credits to build a starbase is alot.
I play 1x speed games against normal and hard AI's, and a effective counter to the novalit and kosutra is an SB on every planet. Its not hard.
@OP Starbases with aux government
Does 1 Novalith really neutralize a fully developed planet? I seem to remember having to fire 3-4. In reply to bloodmoon, if the enemy really has enough money to research the Novalith and build enough of them that it becomes an issue, I don't see why you won't have enough money at that point to build a few starbases.
Also, if you believe the Novalith really is the best superweapon, than I side with the others that say you have never seen a proper Vasari assault. Even if they see the shot incoming, it allows an entire Vasari fleet to jump between an enemy's home planet and their front line at will (with bonus jump speed I might add); requiring any non-Vasari opponent to have to split their fleet, or watch as they lose multiple planets while their fleet is in transit.
As for starbases, I would like to remind you that Starbases of all factions can be used to boost your economy, so there are other reasopns beyond protecting yourself from nova spam to build them on your backwards planets.
I retract my statement about their being no counter. I wasn't actually aware until my match tonight that the auxliury government would prevent the Novalith taking out your planet, I had assumed it was simply a protection against 'orbital bombardment' from orbit, like with ships.
Though they do need to fix the cooldown on it since AIs can currently fire them much faster than Humans can. It would also be nice if they got the AI to do something other than super weapon spam, like fighting with their fleets.
Well, since the TEC loyalists are pretty much a turtling race, they won't really ever attack, so...
it doesnt matter if they r turtles or not they still need something for attack and atm that is the nova
It's the AI that needs fixing not the novalith.
^^
I only ever play tec loyalists and I find attacking fine, if anything my well structured fleets can take out a tec rebel player if their titan isn't levelled up, I just use the advantage of my defences to use my full fleet to go and pillage other systems.
When you have 1-2 novaliths per planet and when you have more than 20 planets, you get 20+ supers over place. If they all fire at once into distant system, you will get exactly same spam of supers killing planets population down to 0 + all shields just with single shot from each (that will be 20+ shots to single planet at once).
This is where Catch 22 is....
Each novalith kills 2000 planet health (unshielded) and each planet has 6000 health maximum. So 5+ novaliths at once will kill planet instantly.
And if you spent that much money on superweapons, your fleet has probably suffered, unless of course you have such a dominant empire that it's only a matter of time until the enemy dies anyways.
For instance, in a game I've got going right now, the two enemy AI's remaining are more or less done for, but because It's a multi-star system, I'm colonizing the remaining systems first. In the mean time, I've got dozens of Kosturas raining down on their heads.
If you have planetary shields fully researched the Novas do 700 damage to your planet, your resistance to population damage is also a lot higher.
Advent can research hardened cities to reduce Nova bombing damage to 2950 per hit, giving them the chance to survive one additional hit with a fully upgraded planet.
Also 2000 x 5 = 6000? WTF? Sue your math teacher FFS...
There's only 2 things I dislike about this discussions about novas:
1. Nova being able to 1shot Asteroids/Moons sucks imo, why cant it simply do like 60% planet hp damage and population damage?
2. Saying SB with aux is a viable counter... just mentioning, that alone 2 such starbases will be more expensive than the weapon itself... Planetary shields may be named a counter, but then please let every race have one. Or make the research that reduces bombing damage affect Nova's as well. Just find ANY way to make novas not 1shot Moons/Asteroids any more...
That said, I'm pretty sure that this isn't working actually, because if it would I wouldn't be losing asteroids all the time...
Except that it is a viable counter. Starbases offer plenty of economic benefits. The Vasari have trade and tax, the Advent have trade and allegiance+culture for tax, and the TEC has a ton of trade.
supers are super for a reason, leave them be and make your own.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
