They are very cheap to counter. I believe you can protect 5 planets for every 1 cannon they make for the same cost.

Advent and Vas have sb ups that prevent planet lost from bombardment. They are called different things though but do the same thing.

The tec only planet shield gen are cheap and should really be moved lower (tier 4 or 3) now that loyalist can spam novas at tier 6.

Experimental weapons in general are kind of that way.  Most power in a person's arsenal will be their fleet which is what you should fear.  Novaliths are the easiest to use of the three, but at the same time, don't work well with fleets.  Auxiliary Government and such can keep a planet under control even after Nova spam, but if you get hit by the same number of Kosturas, your orbital structures get wiped out, plus it opens a phase node so you could have the Vasari ignoring your heavily fortified front line and going straight for your homeworld.  The Deliverance Engine is more of a long term thing when used without a fleet as it will gradually reduce income/overthrow a world, but when used with one and high enough research, shield mitigation on Advent ships is stupid-high even in enemy gravity wells.

Now, if Loyalists are spamming at 6, then it does make sense to move the shield to a lower tier.

Does the shield really work? I always thought they block only planetary bombardment by ships only. So I guess having more planets can just easily deflecting attacks from your planets. Although keeping scout ships from reaching any of your planets is a good idea also.

Reducing the expense of shields works well enough and then you get  your economy rolling star bases are not all that expensive.  Besides the nova cost a good bit of money.  One they start firing you have to start making a push to wipeout the enemy shooting them off.  The same can be said for culture, which id used against you right I think can be even more destructive and is dangerous on the cheap

I really like the Novalith and Kostura as superweapons.

• Novalith
• Does TONS of damage (to planets, P-shields mitigates this pretty hard)
• Lets you leverage your racial edge (econ) by doing economic damage
• Powerful, immediate effect
• Many fired at one planet can devastate it (countered by SB upgrade)
• Kostura
• Does TONS of damage (to orbital structures, it's pretty damn satisfying to hit a densely built desert or terran world)
• Lets you leverage your racial edge (mobility) by creating a phase gate at the target (Rebellion will make this even better, MY TITAN SAYS HI)
• Powerful, immediate effect
• Many fired at one planet can strip it of all orbital structures short of SBs

The Advent weapon just doesn't stand up.

• Deliverance
• Spreads your culture
• Lets you leverage your racial edge (culture) by doing... culture damage
• Moderate, slow acting effect
• Many fired at one planet can... not be any more effective than a single shot.

As things are, there's just no comparison. The ROI for a Deliverance engine is nowhere near that of the other superweapons. It needs one/some of:

• serious cost reduction
• higher rate of fire
• more powerful effect
• lower tac slot cost
• pick your own

to bring it to the same level as the others.

Agreed completely. I actually quite like my Advent's SW. Build enough to shoot it fairly constantly and simply micro it on each planet assault for an easy and quite deadly +25% damage boost.

If shield generators were lower down the tree they can be a viable counter to Novalith (they start out reducing damage by 30%, which isn't much, but with the upgrades they block 70%). In some ways they're better than Starbases with axillary government because they also protect your population. You'll get hit with the trade and max population penalties but they should still be making you some credits after a massed novalith attack with a fully upgraded shield generator. 8 novalith hits will take out any planet, even with maxed out shield generator and planet health, so a Starbase would be better there.

Okay, let's consider the 25% damage boost.

In order to take advantage of it, you have to get your fleet to the buff.

So you can use it defensively, which the other superweapons aren't so good at. On the other hand, if your other defensive advantages (SBs, tac structures, culture) weren't enough, how did you manage to afford a superweapon?

You may be able to do a deep strike with a fleet, but that's painfully slow unless you're Vasari. And if you go past one SB there goes all your AM.

So that leaves the outer worlds of another empire. Unless of course you're steamrolling someone already, of course. So you drop your Signal, move your fleet in.  Opposing units lose their culture advantage (AM for TEC, +DMG% for Vas) and you gain mitigation + 25% damage. So far so good. Now your opponent can

• Defend
• Counter elsewhere
• Do nothing

I think we can agree that "Do nothing" is a bad idea, so let's forget that.

If they defend, you're at 125%, plus culture boosts. Could be tough. But if they spend 16k creds + resources on ships (what you spent on super-weapon research and construction) they'll probably be ok since that's enough for an additional 25-32 or so cruisers or 40-58 LRF, depending on race. The 25% boost does start to favor your assault if you've got 1000+ supply (~50% upkeep) in the well. Under 1000 it roughly favors the defender, but that doesn't include the mitigation boost (including that is complicated thanks to Vasari tech).

If they counter elsewhere, you get to complete your assault in 80% of the time it would have normally taken (yes, 80%, not 75%). Or with 80% of the forces in the same amount of time. I don't see either of those 20%s making a huge difference in your ability to respond to their attack.

It still doesn't feel very compelling to me. It relies on you leveraging the size of your fleet, which isn't something Advent is good at. You don't have very strong econ (especially in the resources sector) and you lack the fast fleet building of other races in the late game (RA and IJ+DM+Econ) to really explode into large fleet territory. You have to be good at something you're racially bad at to get the most out of it as an OFFENSIVE weapon.