Suggestion For advent super weapon

Quote from myself in another thread:

With a limit of 2 planned Vas super will fail to kill any structures.

Well it could be something fancy, like for example almost all the culture buildings are radio towers(I actually believe they are) perhaps someone could come up with some startrek reason for why it blew up. It would also be nice to have the enemy actually pay something as well. The Novalith has the planet rebuild, the Kostura has the buildings lost to rebuild. Make the enemies pay a price for getting hit.

BUFF THEM... One shot destroys all structures (damages Starbase heavily).

Suppressing the target location's culture centers entirely might be a bit much IMO.  After all the opponent does need some counter(much as all races ahve Aux government to partially defend against novaliths).

That said I think it would be a good and very reasonable solution to have the deliverance engine reduce the culture output of centers in the targeted well by 40-50% for maybe 5-6 minutes(kind of like novalith debuffs only for culture production rather then economy).

That way a deliverance engine could be used to greatly inhibit culture generation at some key point, but the opponent would still gain some benefit from said culture structures.

Event hat may be too strong in point of fact(remember that culture buildings are the enemy's only defense against advent's already stronger culture)- but it's much more in the realm of possibility then a full disable IMO.

The Advent and Vasari supers are more of an offensive support weapon than a defensive one like the Nova. You don't need 3 kostura warheads, you just shoot one and go in with your fleet. Similarly the deliverance should push your culture to the enemy and you go in with your fleet. The Nova just reduces your income, and the loss of your planet can be completely countered by Starbases.

If the Deliverance was to destroy media hubs in one shot it would instantly turn the weakest superweapon into the strongest one. It would be the only super to destroy something in one hit, and make spam extremely dangrous not to one, but to multiple planets at once (insane culture rate plus taking away the only cultural counter). Culture creeping will be hard to counter unless you're an advent yourself and placed your culture distribution on starbases.

It would be itching in my fingers, just to get those freaking AI 9 mediahub desert planets down once and for all, but I doubt it'd really work and bring the delivarence in line with the other supers in terms of effectivity.

The 2 superweapons limit is not a final decision yet. Seeing how all superweapons are near useless in that number I#m plnety sure it'll be changed around some before beta ends.

Well I can see it working like this, the d-engine hits the planet, kills the culture producing facilities, forces the opponent to build more culture or lose the planet. I don't see how that would be any different than a novalith. And it would only destroy culture on that planet. If you lose a planet to the D-engine you got outplayed by your opponent. If you lose a planet to the Novalith it doesn't have that same feeling.

r u crazy? the damn things alrdy op enough u can open a phase nod and launch fleets to the world

how so? First, if I just shot your planet with the DE and it blew up your culture centers, that won't neutralize your planet unless I have a very strong culture presence already. Second, won't Aux government provide the same defense against the DE?

I fail to see how. It takes alot to flip a planet with culture. If I shoot my DE at your world, and it takes out your culture centers, you've got time to rebuild them there and you can spread them out so as to minimize the loss... I've had the AI 1-shot'n my planets with Novaliths recently; that's a hell of a lot worse. Yeah, maybe I should have gotten the planet hp upgrades and put up a SB with aux government, but I lost the planet now, and cant do anything till the radiation wears off and I can retake it.

furthermore, nobody says it must be every culture center at the planet. it could be 1 or 2 every shot if that is somehow found to be overpowering.

Axillary government only works on preventing you from losing the planet to bombardment (AKA anything that would deplete planet health to zero). Culture can bypass it and still take the planet, though as mentioned that is very hard to do and any decent player that still has capacity to keep some degree of control in his empire will avoid it. Destroying the culture centers would be like the novaliths secondary affect... not so much game changing but highly annoying,

aux gov doesnt protect against culture

This.  That is precisely the reason why completely shutting down culture buildings would be too strong. Every superweapon needs at least a partially effective counter.  For novalith it's Aux government, for Kostura it's having a fleet nearby.

The only problem with deliverance engine is that it instead has a full counter.

That's why I think it would be reasonable to have it debuff enemy culture production in the targeted well by 40-50%(would turn culture buildings into a partial counter) for 5-6 minutes.

But completely disabling what is essentially the only counter would be too much IMO.  

Culture already has a counter. Capitalships rebel it. And if super weapons are limited to two there is no way you'll lose a planet to deliverance engines alone.

I know... I want to see something so useful of it, not just open a phase nod.

Starbases can be upgraded to repel culture, so it's the same counter that Novaliths have (just a different upgrade).

I don't think they should destroy the culture buildings on the planet, but they SHOULD supress them while the effect is up. It's absurd that the superweapon has almost all of its effects countered on any planet with good culture generation (only the fleet damage boost works, you don't even gain the in local culture effects).

That would fix it, but you'd still need steady bombardment to actually overthrow planets with it so its main purpose would be to let you tip a planet into your culture to get the bonuses with your fleet.

Ok, wasn't sure about Aux government. But I still stand by my first statement; if DE destroys culture buildings, it wont matter much. It will still be the weakest super weapon around by a long shot. Don't forget the culture growth is only temporary and short lived.

So that I'm clear, my stance is that the DE, right now, cannot take out an enemy planet on its own in all but the rarest circumstances. The Novalith can. The Kosutra can't but it can take your fleet from anywhere directly there and will mess with any fleet stationed there (assuming it hasn't changed since diplomacy... I'm running an unmodded beta) to the point where it's basically handing the planet over to the fleet. The DE isn't close to half of either of these by a long shot.

I would say, to make it competitive, it should reverse any culture centers there and make them work for you for a limited time or destroy them (seems equal to me), gives you the 25% dmg, and you capture a certain number of ships there (not constructors). Then it's only the worst by a small margin.

 this ^

destroying the radio towers would be to powerful i think 

How about if it just temporarily flips the culture being spread by the towers to your own?

i was actually thinking of that myself,  could be quite cool of an effect but how many towers should it be able to control per shot? if it took over all of them it could be a bit much.

would be a nice counter to players who have planets clustered with radio towers 

I think the best idea is to have it reduce the culture spread rate of that planet by 50% for 10 or 20, nope, better 30 whole fkin minutes. I dont care if its imbalanced but the TEC can crush my economy for 30 minutes with 1 blast from the nova. And I cant have a starbase in every planet until late game. And the nova has a better main effect. So:

Primary effect: +25% dmg output

Secondary effect: Spreads your culture to the target planet

3tiary effect: Reduces culture spread rate from the target planet by 50% for 30 minutes.

Ok given Advent are meant to be about culture and flipping planets how does this sound,

On impact by 1 deliverance signal 60-75% of culture producing structures (excluding starbases) are flipped to producing Advent player's culture. This culture is 75% resistant to culture spread from neighbouring worlds but can never expand the culture into a neighbouring gravity-well. If a planet is flipped this way local static defences will also change allegiance (excludes starbases). In a perfect world it should mean 2 signals timed properly should be able to flip a planet with no starbase and no interaction from the enemy player over a period of say 5-10 minutes from the first signal landing to the effect of the second signal flipping the planet. The existence of a starbase with the culture upgrade however would significantly increase this duration so something like 5 or 6 timed signal impacts. Parking a capital ship with the starbase would stop the planet being flipped at all.

The idea is the larger the media centre it is for the empire the more risk it is at of being flipped due to the Advent taking over the signal while a smaller world, say asteroid, would just need a starbase to make it a very long slog to take over a fairly worthless planet. This would force a capital ship out of the enemy force to babysit a world or force them to rip down their broadcast structures which could allow the Advent player other opportunities. If nothing else it will impact the income from that planet.

Obviously the numbers and timings need finessing but you get the idea. Hit a large media centre and force investment in protection or hit a nothing planet and potentially create a beachhead or a threat deep inside enemy territory.

so, in your scenario, culture centers are bad for the planet owner and starbases are good? what if you have a starbase with culture upgrades?

Starbase with culture upgrades keeps it's culture which acts against the culture being produced from the broadcast centres since starbases are the counter for losing planets to Novalith strikes as well. I don't know about how the numbers would stack up but the starbase culture could potentially get bonus effectiveness against the Deliverance signal to slow it down enough that it falls in line with my suggested timeline.

The whole idea is that the Deliverance Engine should be a harrassment like the novalith is. Forcing the defender to commit resources to countering the effect. This even falls in line with Loyalist TEC getting double starbases. I could see 2 starbases with culture upgrade (I assume it's only the Advent who can get double culture upgrade on a starbase which also means the Advent counter themselves the best in the same way TEC does the Novalith) being basically impossible to flip with culture but that's 2 starbases and 2 'wasted' upgrades that the player could have been putting towards more offensive measures which can only be a good thing for the Advent player.

Like I said, the numbers require balancing but I think the idea is sound. It would still be able to give a buff when assaulting border planets but could also be used to screw around with an enemies inner territories. And it would also stop someone spamming culture centres across the entire empire which currently makes the Deliverance Engine completely useless. And it makes sense that the Advent should be good at the whole culture thing unless we're completely moving away from the fluff. Converting ignorant backworld hicks shouldn't be that hard.

EDIT: And if I wasn't clear, a basic starbase with no upgrades is not relevant. It would only matter with a culture upgrade but in relation to the static defences being flipped with a planet a starbase would be immune to this. (unless perhaps it has no upgrades at all?)

distill all that down to a tooltip.

All methods for fixing the DE are too complicated. Every time I think I have a way to fix the stupid thing, I realize this and it just doesn't work.

"On impact 75% of culture producing structures (excluding starbases) in the target gravity well are flipped to producing Advent player's culture."

Happy now?