Even with its tactical uses (fair point: taking away enemy strategic resources) the weapon still feels tacked-on and incomplete imo.

I really liked some of the suggestions involving politics/diplomacy. Using a weapon of mass destruction as a powerful tool for negotiation would make sense. Additionally, populations would be utterly terrified if someone could just waltz up and obliterate everything you know and love, yes? Perhaps having a world destroyed by Core Cracker could apply a significant Approval malus to the affected system and empire, so it further emphasizes the hit to your economy.

Planet cracker can charge during coldwar/truce so once war declared you instantly lose planet. This alone is a biiiiig oversight.

Normally these are an end game mop up thing but they take too long to attack each planet.I would make them star killers.

Taking over systems is a huge bother. Destroying their worlds is a way better way to get rid of ugly neighbours who already contributed to Horatio's perfection.

OMG you destroyed Tor! Haha!

Your post gets a score of Horatio/10.

Oh dear, poor Tor!

Heretic Isyander approves, gone with the corruped!

I think the diplomatic modifiers could make planet crackers a lot of fun.  They probably also don't need to be so horribly gimped in so many ways, the idea of them needing to be installed on otherwise unarmed carriers after you've already invested so much wasted science into just getting the damn things, and then having to babysit them for a few turns... it's probably overkill.

Anyone remember how much fun Doomstars could be in Master of Orion 2?  If a game actually goes long enough for the factions to be producing planet destroying superweapons they probably shouldn't feel like a joke.

I like using planet cracker to deal with Craver-occupied worlds. Just think of it as a giant can of Raid. :P

I ve an idea, make the planet cracker a t4 tech and reduce the charge time to 1 tirn but with a cooldown of 5 turns , it would make it more useful but bot op.

It's only in there because a few people thought it was a good idea to have it.

Imho, it's a white elephant that really has little purpose in the Endless Universe.  So I ignore it.  There is so much that is good in the game, that one indulgence for the few is tolerable.

So, is the planet cracker as useless as it seems?  I finally built one to complete the Vodyani questline today and it was just a pain, with almost no strategic value whatsoever.  To make the thing work I pretty much already needed all the tools to secure a star system in vastly less time, and with vastly less specialized tools.

The_Quasar wrote:

It's only in there because a few people thought it was a good idea to have it.

Imho, it's a white elephant that really has little purpose in the Endless Universe.  So I ignore it.  There is so much that is good in the game, that one indulgence for the few is tolerable.

I don't think I'd ever accept this as suitable logic for leaving a half-baked element in a game, or being unwilling to fix something that is clearly not functional.  If the mechanic just junk, remove it.  Plus it doesn't even apply - it's part of one of the two quest endings for Vodyani, so you have to play around it if you are doing their quest or accept that one branch is closed to you.  That's unacceptable to me.  And that's assuming there aren't other half-baked, poorly concieved elements in ES2 that could stand to be ironed out, which there are many, many, many of.

I also don't really think a planet destroying superweapon is inappropriate for the Endless verse, when we've seen what else Dust can do.  If anything there aren't ENOUGH planet destroying superweapons :p

NauticalSoup wrote:

The_Quasar wrote:

It's only in there because a few people thought it was a good idea to have it.

Imho, it's a white elephant that really has little purpose in the Endless Universe.  So I ignore it.  There is so much that is good in the game, that one indulgence for the few is tolerable.

I don't think I'd ever accept this as suitable logic for leaving a half-baked element in a game, or being unwilling to fix something that is clearly not functional.  If the mechanic just junk, remove it.  Plus it doesn't even apply - it's part of one of the two quest endings for Vodyani, so you have to play around it if you are doing their quest or accept that one branch is closed to you.  That's unacceptable to me.  And that's assuming there aren't other half-baked, poorly concieved elements in ES2 that could stand to be ironed out, which there are many, many, many of.

I also don't really think a planet destroying superweapon is inappropriate for the Endless verse, when we've seen what else Dust can do.  If anything there aren't ENOUGH planet destroying superweapons :p

What quest ending for Vodyani requires that you destroy a planet? The religious/military definitely doesn't require it. And I thought the other questline just requires that you control the Academy. It's been a while since I've gone down the non-religious route, so remind me if I've misremembered.

I don't think the system is half baked. It's a very powerful late game tool that can turn a whole game around if you choose to use it. Permanently turning an excellent system into a poor one is a big deal. Even destroying a single planet can result in hundreds, or even thousands, of FIDSI loss depending on how developed that system is, how big the planet is, and what population types are there. And it's permanent, unlike the possibility of recapturing a conquered system.  

The thing with easy to access superweapons is that they are fun for the first couple of times, but then eventually everyone just realises that you should rush for them. I remember watching some of the best Civ5 players in multiplayer, and every game was essentially a cold war until someone got nukes, then that person won. You'd never see any other kind of victory type, and never see any tech past nukes. It eventually made the game one dimensional and dull. This is something the ES2 has tried to avoid, making all the victory types viable, and part of that means limiting the power of superweapons by making them difficult to attain. The other superweapon in the game is the Riftborn Orich/Quad singularity that freezes a system for ten turns. In many ways, it functions similarly to the planet killer - you can permanently shut down three enemy systems and there is nothing they can do. You can effectively destroy an empire without lifting a finger. In tech terms though, it's about three times as much as any of the Endless techs, and rightly so.  

The other quest line requires you destroy two hot planets (wat) before the academy occupation thing happens.  It's actually pretty ludicrous, since if I have enough tech and resources that I can afford to waste it researching planet destroyers, building them, and destroying totally arbitrary planets, I can probably just steamroll any remaining opposition anyway.  I think the Vodyani heretic quest line is my least favourite that I've encountered so far, and it DEFINITELY feels half-baked.  The lore justification for it is kind of insane, where you're supposed to be scrubbing the galaxy clean of Endless relics, and somehow that translates to blowing up exactly -two- planets, as long as they're also -warm-.

As others in this very thread have pointed out already, the planet cracker isn't super, it's pathetic.  "Joke weapon" would be a better way to describe it.  If you think this is adding value to your war efforts, you're clearly doing something terribly wrong - it's rare indeed to even require five terns of sieging + invasion against any star system that late in the game.

WeLoveYou wrote:

NauticalSoup wrote:

The_Quasar wrote:

It's only in there because a few people thought it was a good idea to have it.

Imho, it's a white elephant that really has little purpose in the Endless Universe.  So I ignore it.  There is so much that is good in the game, that one indulgence for the few is tolerable.

I don't think I'd ever accept this as suitable logic for leaving a half-baked element in a game, or being unwilling to fix something that is clearly not functional.  If the mechanic just junk, remove it.  Plus it doesn't even apply - it's part of one of the two quest endings for Vodyani, so you have to play around it if you are doing their quest or accept that one branch is closed to you.  That's unacceptable to me.  And that's assuming there aren't other half-baked, poorly concieved elements in ES2 that could stand to be ironed out, which there are many, many, many of.

I also don't really think a planet destroying superweapon is inappropriate for the Endless verse, when we've seen what else Dust can do.  If anything there aren't ENOUGH planet destroying superweapons :p

What quest ending for Vodyani requires that you destroy a planet? The religious/military definitely doesn't require it. And I thought the other questline just requires that you control the Academy. It's been a while since I've gone down the non-religious route, so remind me if I've misremembered.

I don't think the system is half baked. It's a very powerful late game tool that can turn a whole game around if you choose to use it. Permanently turning an excellent system into a poor one is a big deal. Even destroying a single planet can result in hundreds, or even thousands, of FIDSI loss depending on how developed that system is, how big the planet is, and what population types are there. And it's permanent, unlike the possibility of recapturing a conquered system.  

The thing with easy to access superweapons is that they are fun for the first couple of times, but then eventually everyone just realises that you should rush for them. I remember watching some of the best Civ5 players in multiplayer, and every game was essentially a cold war until someone got nukes, then that person won. You'd never see any other kind of victory type, and never see any tech past nukes. It eventually made the game one dimensional and dull. This is something the ES2 has tried to avoid, making all the victory types viable, and part of that means limiting the power of superweapons by making them difficult to attain. The other superweapon in the game is the Riftborn Orich/Quad singularity that freezes a system for ten turns. In many ways, it functions similarly to the planet killer - you can permanently shut down three enemy systems and there is nothing they can do. You can effectively destroy an empire without lifting a finger. In tech terms though, it's about three times as much as any of the Endless techs, and rightly so.  

Here ya go, this is the Quest right before you have to secure the system where the Academy is located

Your point about the superweapons is spot on; it wouldn't be fun if they were too easy to use, otherwise, you'd just rush for them and start blowing up planets as if you were Palpatine on steroids. Wars would end too easily, there wouldn't be a challenge to it, and it would make the game very boring. Also, the AI would literally make even more ships with planet crackers smh 

Anyway, hope the pics helped refresh your memory