yeah, the novalith is quite useful for that.

also, remember that the other superweapons also got a boost. vasari get a phase node where it hits and advent get a damage boost (25% last I looked) inside the grav well. quite useful those things now.

Yet another feature i missed  

Is that effect permanent or temporary?

My friend used it against me in a MP game, the Novalith that is; I had lots of Asteroid planets, and it killed each with one shot.  If I remember right, a Shield around it did nothing.

I still think that the Kosutra is still the most powerful weapon.  4-5 shots will leave everything in orbit with 100 health and now my fleets are not taking damage if they are in the same grav well when its hit.  + starbase shields are usually stripped which means it falls quick to just 3 cap ships.

Sure blowing away a colony is cool and all, but you still have to deal with the defenses which can be tough against a good player.  Thats why I think sabotage will be in the next expansion.

Edit: My favorite tatic is let them wate their time researching to get their mega weapon and them send in a sneak task force to blow away a few weapon labs and disable all their cannons.

As a 'Planet Killer', the novalith isn't that awesome.. the loss of an individual planet isn't going to change the game. Nuking a single planet from across the system is at best an inconvenience at the late game stages. Unlerss you have 4 or 5. If you have that many, the game was already over and your opponent just wasn't properly notified.

But it has other advantages that I think make it an awesome ( the best ) super weapon. I use it to speed planet bombardment after I've chased off a fleet. Makes taking a planet a LOT faster. Or using it as an indirect money-resource leech. Nuking planets does a good job of causing momentary loss of income plus the money to rebuild the infrastructure. In addition, with the fall out it can't be instantly re-populated. Combine the economic drain with an all out attack, and and you can trim his fleet in pieces since replacements won't be as easy to come by.

It does have it's uses, and it's annoying, but not 'game over' . 

Personally, I find that if I'm not going to build at least two, it isn't worth it.

yup, which makes it quite nasty against pop rich planets like terran, desert or ice. I'd prefer to nuke the enemy hw, because that's usually where most of the income is settled and the hw upgrade is quite expensive to get, but with only  one I'm not sure you can do it fast enough. certainly not with 2 or shots, but several once they are ready might not give the hw infrastructure the time to regerate. in any case, if I only have one, I'd prefer to switch around targets and work primarily with the pop penalty effect.

still, while the upgrade is good, it kind of makes the weapon fulfill two functions: 1) do I want to kill the planet or 2) do I want to hurt medium turn income? possibly, as someone pointed out, 3) assault support for attacks. hm, but come to think of it, the vasari new effect is also an alternative, because the front line planets that are the target of its primary effect are reachable anyway and won't have much use for the node anyway.

Annatar , You've said you only play single player. Have you seen the ai build a superweapon? I play hard ai and havent seen them build one once.

too true. that's why I only included it as a 'sort of' option.

Also if you hit the planet early enough with 2 or so engines then your ships will get an in culture bonus (6% shield mit)

Novalith are economic cancer; if your looking for the fast mega-kill, that's not what they do.  Even if you recolonize the planets just destroyed, it takes a LONG time for them to get back up to the income they had.  There comes a time when you just don't have the income to rebuild any ships you loose.  The Tec have the best economy, and it makes perfect sence that their weapon wrecks your economy.  I think the gun actually shoots a clone of George Bush on each planet

You may say "if you want to fight me, come get me", but superweapons say "Now YOU"VE got to come fight ME"

Entrenchement - Superweapons = stalemate

Turtlers + Entrenchement - Superweapons = Cutting an apple in half and watching it turn brown. . .