Novalith

the point of the novalith is do destroy the population, honesty the novalith is best used for harasing the enemy. espically if you have a couple cannons

but they cost so much that it would be more worth while to build a fleet.

Besides if it was a small planet i would just go in with ships instead of bombarding them with novaliths.

It might hurt their infastructure to lose a planet but they could get it back. it would only be a real loss if the cannon damaged or destroyed some of the units and structures in the planets gravity well.

Any way building the cannons drains my economy and takes up alot of tactical slots.

I just want some more bang for my buck!!!!

also if you bombard them with more than one cannon then you are probably their next target.

With larger and longer games Novaliths tend to come into their own; particularly when you have 10 or so as I have often done. Generally people tend to surrender at that point

p.s. U can't colonize straight away after a nova strike.

still if i research it early in the game id like to benifit from it.

also i know that you cant colonize right away but my point was that all their structures are still standing and producing income for that empire.

It's not meant for the early game nor games played on a small map....u really need a strong economy to get them out.

You better play Vasari, they have exactly what you are looking for: A cannon which attacks structures/units surrounding a planet.

However, loosing a planet is no fun in this game, even if you can retake it shortly afterwards, since all the upgrades are lost. It can take a lot of cash to upgrade e.g. your home planet to where it was before.

Hey, look on the bright side. Its not a deliverance engine!

alright ill look into that.

but still i think that it needs to be tweaked so that you can benifit from it without having to buy 10 of them. There should be a set limit on them or a downside to having so many e.g. a large tax on your income or a loss of loyalty.

seriously, the reason that i want it to useful earlier is because by the end its whoever has more and that is no fun. you could have the largest fleet and still get beaten because someone is spamming novaliths.

also when a cannon is fired it should tell you what empire fired it.

also the deliverence engine is a joke, the first time i played as the advent i spend all that money on researching it and then i finally get it and just go what the hell. Did it fire? what happened?

The Novalith benifits from the 2 tech researches for bombardment, fall-out and improved payloads (I dont remember the exact name), although the skills dont say that they benifit.

I was able to test this by firing one at an enemy planet, noting the population and health before it hit, and then tested it again once the enemy planet was back to full.

Shot 1 killed 65% of the maxed out infastructure on a fully developed Desert world, and all of the population.

Shot 2 (With all 4 upgrades) killed 100% of the population and infastructure with 1 hit, and of course left the planet with the heavy-fallout debuff. So it is well worth it to invest in those upgrades.


As an added benifit, you used no forces or resources to attack that planet, and had no risk of losing your own forces or planets in the process, because you kept well defended.

Since its cooldown is long, having 3 or more is a great idea. Try to place them on planets behind well defended planets & with phase-destabilizers leading to the Novalith planets, so it requres the enemy to go through a choke to get at them. Place repair bays near the Novalith if necessary as well. This gives you time to defend and wipe them out before they can get to them, and doesnt require that you leave the Novalith sytems well defended. They lose forces trying to suicide to it, and you get to keep yours.



As for the combined combat strategy with them, for the TEC, wilfully giving away your main fleets position and intended target is not necessarily a bad thing. It can cause the enemy to move additional troops there for defense of your large attack force, and not protect his side or back door planets, giving you the chance to move in to them with smaller forces. Harass the main target with your large fleet a few times, and let them know "hey, im going to attack you here with a big force soon".

Fire the Novaliths at multiple side planets, either manually in a group (using the tab key) or using the auto attack to wipe out several colonys at once, and hopefully if you have enough researched in armor/shield/hull repair (which TEC are great at), you'll win the next major fight in the nearby well defended system and wipe out their defending fleet. This gives them little chance to repopulate with undefended colony frigates, if they either run from the main fight, or lose useful troops like colony capitals.

Using small raiding partys, like a single Battleship with groups of LRMs & Light Frigates (light carriers too), can keep the Novalith bombarded worlds from being recaptured, at which point you hold the upper hand with the new system. This also causes them to waste resources and time sending out colony ships to their doom, further whittiling down the reserves they have to knock out your main fleet.

Simply clear out the side planets of defensive structures (use bombers if you can to make it go faster), colonize with your own colony ships, build defense and/or build another Novalith, and repeat.

Since the Novaliths are basically a free "IWIN" button against a populated enemy world, you dont have to use time to bombard a planet on an attack, and after clearing a planet of structures you can move to the next one quickly to keep the pressure on, and leave them little time to build up a defense force. The Novalith cleans out the planet, and you keep the attack moving inward.

This also allows you to keep a more varied fleet design. Usually it would require 4 or 5 Dreadnaughts to do the same job as quickly as a single Novalith, and that requires fleet slots, resources and capital ship crew slots. So insted of researching all of the fleet slots and cap. ship crew slots, you used 18 tactical slots to build something that took a lot less time and money than an investment in a unbalanced fleet design to do the same thing.

You'll also have to defend those Dreadnaughts with additional fleet, and spend time jumping from one system to the next, and scout out the enemy position before you move them, lest you lose the planet killing force.

With the Novalith, you can attack an enemy world at anytime, while your fleet handles frigate and capital-ship factories in other systems. You'll use a lot less time cleaning enemy worlds with the Novaliths and a large fleet makeup, than just a single bulky fleet plodding from one world to the next, that needs to stay togeather to be a force. Not to mention no cash on vulnerable Siege frigates!



Id reccomend investing those left-over fleet slots into Robotic cruisers and Command cruisers, to keep your main fleet alive and very hard to kill.

This all goes along with the TEC design of "You cant kill me, and I can leap-frog into your system with ships, defense, and Novaliths until I kill you". It works very well!

As an added benifit, you used no forces or resources to attack that planet, and had no risk of losing your own forces or planets in the process, because you kept well defended.

you dont seem to get my point you can kill the planet but all of its defences are still in orbit and you have to plow through them to get to the planet.

The Novalith can be good in really really long and big games, especially multistar.

While it says it hits within the soalr system, actually you can hit planets at another star it just takes about an hour to reach there.

So in a game that's 3+ hours long, you could actually build some at the 2 hour mark and be bombing away.



The Deliverance Engine is the best one.. It's the only one that's actually practical and useful in a medium game, sometimes.

I think in one of the future versions the cannon should be able to also make the planet under your control.I think you should be able to shoot it secounds after you first shoot it.

I for one derive joy from bombarding my enemies with pop music and blue jeans.

No I do get it - I just dont think you are thinking of it as an opportunity, insted of a staple building. A strategist wouldnt bulid a heavy artillery emplacement to destroy a closeby rampaging guerilla force, you'd use it to wipe out a known enemy position. Everything has its own place in the field, and its own time to use it. It has plenty of use, but if you dont see the value in it thats your thing.


You dont have to necessarily hit that ONE planet and wipe it out, there are almost always plenty of other targets of opportunity. Besides, at that point the tech tree taking out a planets defenses shouldnt be a problem for a TEC "never-die" fleet with Comand Cruisers, Repair Cruisers, and Flak Frigates. Also remember it becomes more useful with allies in larger games, and with all super-weapons it isnt as useful in small games, because they usually lack the tech or the economy to justify it.



(and as a note, no race, including Vasari without 7 or 8 of their super weapon on a single target, can clear out an enemy planet of all its buildings and fleet at once. Sure it can clear out that fleet and planet buildings, but more than likely the enemy is just as fortified at that point of the game at other planets, or they are aiming super weapons at you too)


The point of a strategy game is to look at what you are working with, and figure out a way to defeat an enemy. There are lots of ways to use the Novalith, listed in an earlier post, but if you are looking for a different kind of super-weapon maybe you'll want a different race?


Each racial super weapon has their own way of destroying the enemy economically and/or militarily. TEC destroy the planets population and remove the resources, manufacturing ability, tech research ownerships, and destroy credit income through population loss (which is a very big deal on high-pop worlds). It is very crippiling to the enemy if you have 3 or more of them, and usually if they dont have a super-weapon its game over.

Advent love-me-cannon is a giant problem to enemy economy, and with the right research for culture you can gather intel on other planets, and abandon planets. That gives you the economic advantage and intel advantage, so you can plan where & when is the best time to strike an economically inferior enemy.

Vasari's weapon does damage to enemy fleets and buildings anywhere in the galaxy (solar system is much quicker) at anytime, to prepare for an upcoming assault (which they will most likely win now), or to feign an assault at another location. It also wipes out undocked strikecraft, which combined with their warping abilities, different tech tree bonuses, and total phase jump detection makes them the ultimate terrorist-tactics fleet ; since they have the information, damage, crowd-control & "anywhere-at-anytime" military force.

And hey look man, im not here to make this personal, but allow me to politely pick at your original post for the sake of future readers.









That is a good reason to USE the Novalith!




Really in a game big enough to even use a Novalith is at least 15 planets large, and if there are that many planets there is a good chance that the enemy doesnt have a large force at every single bombarded planet ; but if they were somehow that superior to you in all locations, you'd probabbly be dead allready b/c they'd have crushed you with their fleet and superweapon.

With proper use of scouts and remote sensors (which you should have), you can keep tabs on every enemy position at all times, and note the weak points and better targets.




Human players and computer players do not have lots and lots of colony ships laying around each planet to recap them. If they did, their forces would be much smaller than yours. Even at full anti-matter, a colony ship that is more than 2 jumps away (and it will take a while to get there) will still need to wait for anti-matter regeneration to repopulate the planet.

Also, the amount of economy loss is tremedous at each world since they lose their resource buildings, tech buildings, and population income (which takes quite a while to get back to even half on terran & desert worlds)




Which is another good reason to use the Novalith, since you dont have to move your forces at all -- no planets = end of the game for that player. And since you are denying them all 3 resources & tech simultaniously, and have a well defended position, you have time to build more Novaliths and wipe them out!





Like I said man, nothing personal at all, this is just for those that need some direction on using the Novalith.

And I apologize for the double posting.

Hope this helps someone out!

He just want's a traditional C&C style superweapon that kills all, and is upset that sins superweapons aren't an IWIN button. You can have a weapon that hurts planets, that hurts ships and structures, or one that spreads culture(lol) but you can't have all three in one, or even two in one, it makes the game a race to get the superweapon instead of a game of strategy and tactics.

Hey I really enjoyed the Supreme Commandor super weapon "Mavor", and I won a lot of games with it, and really miss it

Its too bad there isnt one in this game, but it makes more sense that there isnt one like it.

The Novalith sounds pretty powerful. I'm waiting for someone to scream, "OMG! It's like a TEC version of the Returning Armada! It needs to be nerfed!"

Recent played game of Huge Milty-system to the end against ffa unlocked ai players, took it ab 8 hrs.

And the matter of Novalith is to use it different at different map sizes, if you play small map then having couple another Novaliths is a good deal. But at that huge 5 distant star systems these super weapons was at almost every planet and resources would allow to build more if tactical capacity allows much. So the point is that first most enemies concentrated at the middle star system and I colonized the side worlds.

So the whole Novalith crap was shooting like auto cannons cause seems like they fire another and another shot before the initial one reaches the distant destination Its like a rain on to enemies planets(and even there is no use to colonize that planets after radiation drops because need to wait until all charges are delivered or its a self destroying, only planet defense shiends can sustain that threat from own Novalith fire and probably enemies too, so its all TEC advantages, no idea how other races can handle that all:D).