I like terror stars, nothing says uv been pwned like watching your terror star destroy your enemy's most productive planet.

In saying that though, I'm much too excited about all the other cool features in the game to make too much of a fuss about not having what was basically a mop up unit anyway.

Though I would like them to make an appearance in the expansion pack if they're not going to be in for release.

Why hasn't any dev talked about it yet? Maybe they completely forgot about it and feel embarrassed?

No Terror Stars.  Wanted Terror Stars but just ran out of time.  Maybe in an expansion pack or something we'll find a way to get them back in.  It wasn't so much a balance issue as just what would be required to ge them in.

I think Terror Stars would be neat because they would still target stars -- not planets.  So they'd be really devastating.

Lets use our solar system for this one...

Ok, Earth is pretty much dependant on sunlight and other solar radiation in order to support life, Assuming that a terror star makes its way to the sun, blows it up and somehow earth doesent get destroyed in a supernova then the planet is as good as dead anyway.

But I would put money on that if Brad and co. add Terror stars in, They will destroy all the planets in a system, But by going for the star rather than the planet (Think replacing Terror with Death and copyright lawsuits)

To compensate however I am also willing to bet money that their defences will be weakened, Low HP and of course crap-all Hitpoints.

--

It has been said many times that very soon after the initial release of Galciv2 there will be a free expansion pack, Perhaps in the second one TS's will make it in.

Personally, I really hate "superweapons" of any sort in strategy games. If Terror Stars are added in an expansion (or update, or whatever), then I hope we can at least disable them so that they can't be built by anyone (including myself).

If there was most of the sun's mass left over, then all of Earth isn't necessarily dead.

First off, there's a lot of heat in our core. That is what causes those little things known as volcanism, tectonic drift, smokers, etc etc etc. So life in the deep vents wouldn't even *notice* the loss.

Second, none of the races in GalCiv would be in much trouble either. Sure, their exterior would be ruined on a natively supportive world (ie, Earth), but most are going to be have access to fusion (or better) power sources, so their only short term concern would be food. If you happen to be the Yor (or other machina), then it just means you won't have any real daylight to speak of.

Now, if you just toast the star, and the system has jovians, you can move your planets of interest over to the orbit it, and let the natural gravitational flexing help keep your planet's core hot. And with a jovian the size of Jupiter or better, well... they all radiate their own light (IR) already. That's completely independant of solar input. So you can still get exterior heat and free energy. A little terraforming of the appropriate form should keep you from ending up with a purely ice world. It won't be the gaia we know, but it will be quite useable.

Now, since food could effectively be shipped in the same statis units that are used to ship your living colonists around, you really only face a situation of short term starvation.

Ergo-- you have to blow up the planets. Otherwise, you are just changing the locals from doing outside sports to inside sports.

As for the nova event (no yellow star has enough mass to supernova, no matter what you do to it), well, GC can shield whole planets. So you stick up a planetary shield and film the celestial firework. Again, no worries. Heck, if a planet that had its star blown up wanted to waste the energy, they could create their own artificial sun to provide daylight. You wouldn't need to make a true star... just a fairly big fusion station to run a few lighting stations. Being closer to the planet, it won't need to be as bright or big to radiate a fairly similar amount of light on the planet. Or with a bit of advanced tech, well, it becomes very trivial. Consider, if a civ can make their own singularities to be used as a mere ship's weapon, they can easily make a few and shoot them a steady stream of nebula gas harvested from the local neighborhood. As the gas goes down the singularity, it will heat up and glow. Control the amount feed in, and you can control what wave-lengths of light get generated.

See? It's fairly trivial for a world to survive having their star killed in GC. Not so if you just blow the world itself up though.

**double post**

I concur with your nova vs super nova story regarding the light or no light.

The point I was making was about the LOCATION of your planets.

When you blow up a star (which consists of gas) , the 'mass' will spread out due to acceleration forces caused by the explosion. So the mass will no longer be concentrated enough to sustain the former star's gravitational field.

Planets will thus no longer remain in orbit of the star and be propelled into deep space. Or more correctly propelled into orbit around the galaxy's centre of gravity, just as star(system)s do. The only problem is that this orbit will be non-circular, but eliptical perhaps even hyperbolical. In the end these planets will be crossing paths and orbits of other star systems. After time (eons) planets will be caught in the gravitational fields of other star systems. In the best case they will become an additional planet in this system (nice idea for GC II: Earth wanders in the drengin home system after Sol is blown up...). In the worst case, wandering planets will collide with other celestial bodies (plantes, moons, asteroids, comets).

This will not only happen to the earth-like planets in the former star system, but also the Jovians. Moving your Earth-like planets into the graviational field of a Jovian (thus making it a moon) which is also propelled into deep space lets you wind up with the same general idea of a 'wandering' planet.

While Terror Stars were fun every once in a while in GalCiv I, I think they were unbalanced and the AI didn't cope with them too well. Being able to blow up small civs in one round because they didn't see it coming isn't much fun in the long run. And everybody else didn't even seem to care when you blew up whole star systems.

Hi!

If there was most of the sun's mass left over, then all of Earth isn't necessarily dead.

This is about the only thing I agree with you.
See, when the Nova happens (and our Sun is still considered to be by about one third too small for it), sun's outer shell is blown away, with quite some percentage of the core. All that mass is very hot (hot on the cosmic scale - several millions degrees of Kelvin). When that mass hits a planet, that planet doesn't melt, it evaporates (not even that, it converts to plasma). Not the whole planet, it has too large mass, but its surface is gone. And the surface is again measured in planetary scale - several tens or hundreds of kilometers are gone, before the nova ceases to radiate.

About the only thing for a planet (and anything else) to survive a Nova is not to be there when it happens. If it stays, it becomes a molten rock for next few thousand years. And when it cools down, it becomes just a dead rock, probably not even in orbit. The star has blown away quite some of its mass, so its gravitation is smaller, and the planet was also pushed away with the force of explosion.

Now where in that cosmic cataclism do fit our punny fragile bodies and ships, even in the GalCiv time?
Nowhere. When sun goes away so violently, planets also go. And if planets go, life (as we know of) goes too.

BR, Iztok

Blizzard... just simmer down. Accept the fact that you will have to wait untill an update or expansion to see a Terror Star in GC2, and get over it. You will probably be even more thankful after it is put back into the game because by then they would have much more time and resources to put into the feature that would make way better than the Terror Stars in GC1

It isn't a true nova though. You create a nova like condition. A true nova, the whole outer mass is blown out. But you don't get that, because the core can still support the upper layers! So what's that mean? Smaller boom. Smaller boom, that means it doesn't eat as much space.

Second, a terror star is the size of a moon. But it survives driving right up to the star and blowing it? How? Shielding. The same way a planet would surive. Which, by the way, are all located further out in the the game the Terror Star. And have much more power to draw upon.

Again, it's trivial for a built up world to survive. Heck, since the Terror Star induced nova isn't a full, proper nova, once the induced blow is done, you still have most of your original star sitting there. A bit smaller (blew off a small portion of mass), but still shining. Result: A pretty light show. Heck, Extreme Rock Groups may *pay* hi-tech pyrotechnic companies to induce a small nova for the climax of their shows in non-good space.

Now, even if you could get a full nova, you still wouldn't cause a significant event to the moderately advanced GC worlds. A shield (remember, the same thing the Terror Star is using to *survive* the nova it causes) protects for the initial bang. You then send out some ships to scoop up the hydrogen, and feed that to your own built illumination points. Easily done.

Terror stars are no longer terrifying. They've become a mere inconvience to Earth, and an excellent way to harvest hydrogen locally, to be used to warm up those Super Earth iceballs orbitting way out in the local Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud.

Now, mounting a terror star propulsion system to a Mars or Mercury or Titan and then driving that straight into their settled worlds, that's terrorifying. I cannot think of anything in GC2 that would stop that. Other then siezing control of the planet's propulsion, and pointing it in a different direction. Hopefully, in time to get it turned before it impacts your colony. Otherwise... well, the planet will have to start to reform. It's going to be a while before its useful as a major planet. Like say, a few hundred million years.