Supers where good the way they are. The AI's spammed them cause they could. Saw an AI fire one in about 20 mins.

 Nova and vas supers were fine. Advent super needs a buff.

There is the research victory which is expensive and time consuming, but will win you the game automatically.

for single player, I like the limit.  unless the AI can be fixed so not all personality types spam the supers.

I wanted to put my post here just for the record.

SuperWeapons were absolutely fine, it was the AI that was spamming them that made them 'game-breaking'. Please put them back the way they were but if you were going to buff anything, buff the Love Canon and maybe buff the Vasari one a bit. Leave the Novalith alone.

I agree.

Novalith was really only ever useful when spammed (people got to experience that first hand ). Honestly, that was an AI issue because they are the AI who if you play on higher difficulty levels will make more money than you regardless. The  TEC Loyalists are a godsend to the AI since it lets them do what they do best: mindlessly spam and make lots of money. Despite that, they are still pigs awaiting their slaughter.

When playing as the TEC though, spending all that money to build the super weapon to cause a minor inconvenience (recolonize the planet) really isn't worth it (against AI or players)...you could use it to help speed up bombing a planet for you to take but then the negative buffs hurt you when you colonize it. Furthermore, this superweapon will not likely help you neutralize any important planet as a Starbase with Auxiliary Govt would counter it. The point of the Novalith is to deal a significant blow to the enemy econ so that TEC can continue to fight a war of attrition (what they are designed for) and come out ahead. In larger maps, where Novalith spamming is actually possible, hitting a total of 4 worlds every 6 minutes is going to hurt a small fraction of their economy. They will have 20-30+ planets and very long trade chains (meaning the population and trade loss do almost nothing). Now, if the Novalith could break trade chains, that would be a nice buff.

Kostura is still good after this limit since the main use for it was the phase node. Chaining 4 shots will disable structures for a long time. AI was never really that good with this weapon.

DE also not heavily affected by this limit since just one or two will give you the damage and culture buffs for a fight. Using it to take down a planet via culture required a whole bunch of them and took a really long time to do given the capped -.07 allegiance rate (actually, might still be doable at the rate of slow with 4). This has always needed a buff. Even mindless spamming of this by the AI was fairly tame.

All in all, I hope they make some buffs or up/remove the limit. Actually, instead of limiting it to 4 superweapons, why not limit the number of superweapons you can build to the number of command points that you have researched (raising the maximum to 16).

People keep overlooking that a single novalith can keep it's debuff on 3 planets at a time.  4 novaliths can keep their debuff on 12 planets. That's a tremendous amount of income lost.

It isn't "useless" because you can't keep it up at all timeso n every single planet your opponents control.  12 is more then enough to keep the debuff active on all of a player's major worlds(desert/terran/ice), and likely will blow a few asteroids/moons out of the sky as well.

I hate how some people can't seem to distinguish between "maximal" (read: debuffing or destroying every enemy planet) and "useful".

The first shot of a novalith to a fully populated terran world costs the enemy upwards of 7000 credits over the next half an hour with debuffs alone. 

A single cannon can keep it's debuff on 3 planets at a time.  If the investment in the novalith doesn't cripple your defenses and you survive the next 15-20 minutes or so it will have already payed back it's cost in economic damage- and everything after that is a net gain.

A limit to how many can be built does not reduce your chance of surviving those 15-20 minutes.  It simply reduces the number of time you can make this advantageous long term investment(with a short term risk).

The point is a single novalith has always been a net gain and thus useful(so long as you can survive those key 15-20 minutes).   This change just reduces the chance of a game snowballing out of control once the TEC player has already survived planting the first few novaliths and can continue to drop more novaliths for similar long term benefits with drastically reduce short term risks(as the enemy's economy has already been hamstrung so even after the cost of new cannons isn't really putting the TEC player behind in fleet investment).

Yes it is a nerf, but I strongly disagree with those who say the novalith is useless unless spammed.  This is only really the case if you're too lazy to use it intelligently, manually ordering each shot to maximize spread of the debuff among key worlds while scouting regularly to keep tarck of which worlds are being economically developed.  It's certainly a certainly a nerf for players who relied on just mindlessly bombarding everything rather then choosing high value targets & spreading the debuff around.

Just noting here that I don't like the limit either,

And that the Delivarence needs a buff to be on par witht he others.

Clearly the people who wanted Novaliths/superweapons to be nerfed/limited in number are not the same as the ones who cry about the nerf now 

As a solution though, for those who are dissatisfied now, as they cant camp behind their defences, i would suggest to let the TEC Loyalists to have 2x as much Novaliths as the other factions. This would have several positive effects:

- would make sense for TEC Loyalists from lore/design standpoint, if there is one faction supposed to turtle and bombard enemies from behind its defences, its them

- it will be an alternative for people, who like to spam SWs more than anything else

- giving such alternative to only one faction out of 6 will prevent this from being "spammed", as not everyone likes to play     TEC Loyalists or is willing to dump his fav faction in order to be able to spam superweapons

The only question is, if its fair/not overpowered, but i would believe it is, as the money invested into building those 4 extra novaliths is not money invested into fleet, so its basically trade-off, rather than advantage

Yep, people who cry spam is not same people who cry limited of superweapon, to be freak, I like unlimited and spam TEC superweapon

to win and end battle for 6 to 8 hour long in single player a very large map withn 7-9 a.i players when too often it's lag, and bored to fight fleet, after fleet, vs hard a.I

so superweapon make my job much easy, now this is limited is not good for large system of map, maybe small or medium map but not large system or many system, I'm not happy with it and i don't think spam tec superweapon is overpower, I spend lot of money and build those. Yes there is a.i spam me superweapon, but I don't mind and make starbase more useful to deny them.

I like the limitation.
Why?
If you play multiple star maps, and on another star is a TEC.
He had enough time to spam his Nova and other defenses, and nuke all your planets away (if he had enough).
Superweapons should be powerfull, but not game-ending.
Maybe you could give the SWs a percentual buff.
TEC Loyal: x% chance to destroy the planet completely and turn in into an Asteroid (i have seen this in one mod, something with Atlanter race i think)
Advent: x% chance to convert some of the enemys ships, also to disable enemy broadcast for a short period of time.
Vasari: x% chance to destroy some buildings and ships inside the gravity well

I dont like the limit as i have said in other threads

i have not built any cannons since rebellion started because i dont use the advent or TEC ones. Its the threat of the TEC one that forces your enemy to spend what 6000 credits per system to but in SB's and enforced loyalty - on a small-medium map where you have 16 worlds we are talking one hundred thousand credits to defend against novalath - you dont have to build the novalith and your enemy has to build the starbases

i only build the Vasai one and i dont like the idea of being limited - i used to love putting 2 Cap ships in 8 of my enemys back systems at the same time

As the other thread states just make it a game option on or off - everyone happy

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/423179

It seemed that the problem of superweapon spam only became apparent after the AI got ahold of them. 

Yes, this cap will end that, but in my opinion the player should have the option to set the cap before the game. For example, the player could select a cap of zero (no superweapons may be built) 4, 8, or no cap at all. 

Limit of 4 superweapons will be fine, but their power needs adjustment now.  Spamming superweapons is silly, and simply a sign that a game has gone on for way too long.  TEC loyalist is not 'ruined', they still get access to them way earlier than any other faction.

This is silly. Four Novaliths can wipe out TWO planets every five minutes, unless they have Starbases or Planetary Shields protecting them. Or you can severely damage the economy of four planets every five minutes (with Planetary Shields as the only defense). Oh, and you can maintain the trade debuff on twelve planets simultaneously, indefinitely, with no defense.

Yep, that's totally useless now you can't build thirty of them!

The Kostura Cannon is still good because you don't need very many for its most powerful effect, and you can maintain the disable with even just two of them for long enough. No problems there.

The Deliverance Engine's effects don't stack anyway, so more of them is really just to maintain it longer. Four is enough to do that essentially indefinitely... but it doesn't matter a whole lot since the fleet damage bonus is the only one that can't be countered by a couple of broadcast towers anyway. One, four, or fifty of them makes almost no difference to the effectiveness of it. (And yes, it does need a buff. Considering the other two have super expensive or no counters at all, negating almost everything the DE does with culture generating buildings is really lame.)

I  have not had a chance to play this change yet, but 
for me 4 Novas has always been my max, assigned to 0, 9, 8, 7 buttons.

I could fight 2 war fronts and pound on 2 planets preferable in the rear of the enemy.  It should be more than enough to get the job done.  Yes on large maps it makes things harder but anything is better than the AI launching long range attacks all day

This is my point.

It seems the big issue then with super weapons being over powered really is mostly about the Novalith having that 30 minute debuff.

That is a problem. But pretty much what he said encompasses alot of what I hate about most super weapons. As stated above by  bilun because people cannot mindlessly autocast the Novalith they think its useless. Which is not true. I have said myself I never got more than 3 because 3 was enough to do what it was designed to do. People who got +10 were either mindless and allowed to somehow macro them in multiplayer, or a single player. But like I said if the novaliths were to have their time debuff lowered more than likely it wouldn't need to be restricted.

@MayallCommunion

U yourself said that superweapons dont come out in MP games right? Superweapons mostly come out in SP and dont rly have any effect on MP games so superweapons r a SP issue then right and there for should be balanced within SP games right?

@everyone else u thinks the limit is a good thing

4 novas doesnt do a damn thing against the ai with there income cheat. The income debuff is the only damn thing the nova can do and with only 4 it doesnt even do much of that where as the engine, even though it sucks even worse, in combo with ur own culture could overthrow a planet through its hard with how bad the engine is but still possible.

and the Kostura u rly only need 1 it do damage to someone with the phase node bonus

and the sb does for more than just counter the nova it counters the kostura as well. it would act as a delaying act till u can get ur fleet to ur world that under attack. and the advent sb counters all 3 with its culture upgrades. and they all can increase ur income with their TR upgrade