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.

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.

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.

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

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

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. 

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.)

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

@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