I'm not completely sure how it functions haven't been able to get my copy of the game yet sadly but I was watching a video forget the post's there in but the links to em are somewhere in the forum's and it seemed to boost the spread of your culture alot when used on one of your own planets as a target which did seem fairly useful to me but once again not really sure since I haven't played yet. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it gives friendly units in the sector a boost or something as well and the enemy's a debuff.

You won't see the, "Enemy culture is too strong to colonize" message.

I found it was great for making a strategic strike in enemy territory. Normally, if you try to take a planet near the main empire of someone, it'll say that the culture is to strong.

However, fire that thing, then go in and you got yourself a planet. It's good for setting up a production base right next to the enemy. You can just keep pumping frigates into your attack force, plus it affects all the nearby planets.

However, putting it up against the TEC end game wep, it does seem slightly less useful. That thing will just outright destroy a planet.

I actually defeated two hard computers using nothing but deliverance engines. I selected random hard and the two enemies ended up being fortifiers. So I just conquered my entire star system and built deliverance engines by every planet. Needless to say, with 30+ deliverance engines, the enemy started loosing colonies quickly.

not very, as 30+ noveliths will take away 10% of the current health of every ship in the blast radius, therefore making it impossible to win with just them.

The Deliverance Engine and Kostura Cannon have their strategic uses, but the Novalith Cannon stands alone and probably needs rebalancing. The power to spread culture and temporarily disable planets is strategic, and is designed to be followed by a fleet assault.

The Novalith Cannon will simply destroy the planet. One shot will take out any astroid and less bunkered planets. Getting two or three ensures an enemy planet, and all the massive resources he spent on pop/defense/etc upgrades, is immediately destroyed. Add in that cannons can be placed on some backwater astroid in the very rear of the TEC empire and it gets a little silly.

But then, Vasari's Returning armada is similarly overpowered. Two phase stabilizers on a couple planets each and you'll never leave your fleet popcap, even when it's maxed. I've taken dark armada fleets through high level pirate bases, killing it all, simply to save myself the jump time of going around it.

Comparatively, while advent are powerful, they don't really have a game ender.

It's not racial balance when the arrival of one piece of technology completely changes the gameplay. That's called bad balancing.

The two big contenders are Returning Armada and the Novalith. When either of these are fielded the gameplay changes drastically for the worse. Things like planet development, culture, research, and combined arms are completely thrown out the window.

Returning armada with multiple phase stabilizers will completely fill a completely researched popcap of ships in roughly five minutes, all free. After that it is almost impossible for your opponent to destroy ships faster than they are summoned for you. Try attacking a maxed out pirate planet with a popcap of dark armada, after the massive 5-10 minute battle you will still be at your popcap of ships.

The novalith can one shot any asteroid and two shot most planets. The development costs to redevelop a single planet is rediculous, especially in terms of crystal. It takes a good ten minutes simply for the population to come back up. Even if a player somehow lets his novaliths get destroyed one after another it is still almost impossible for them to not be cost effective. Consider that they can be built on any astroid in the back corners of the system and cannot be stopped. The Krostura Cannon and Deliverance Engine can be good, but are much lesser effects and must be stratgically followed up by an assault.

In small maps it is less common for the game to go on nearly as long, and thus these imbalances are less apparant. In larger maps there is significantly less ability to harass, and unlikely that any player will lose before researching and particular technology he wants. In larger games a Novalith can destroy planets faster than your fleet could even jump to them.

The races are otherwise relatively balanced around each other. TEC has the fastest and strongest economy, Advent can utilize much more micromanagement to gain the upper hand, and Vasari has powerful ships and high mobility.

Are you seriously crying because endgame stuff ends midgame?

There's another thread about the same topic going round atm. There's a pretty good explanation why they can in there.

I'd place N-Gun as the weakest of all 3 albeit the flashiest.