I think your Terror Star designers just forgot to add planets to the targetting computers. Everyone makes mistakes.

I did not know there is a difference between terror stars and Death stars. I thought terror stars are more destructive. the better solution is to build terror stars right beside the star you intend to destroy. this can be done by escorting a large fleet of constructors to the designated star system. besides, if you upgrade all the modoules at once, then you get your terror star in one turn and, the next turn, you get to blow up the star.

I haven't yet played any of the betas, but I would think that building "Terror Stars" would scare the bejesus out of the neighbours, resulting in a higher military rating for the builder, translating into more diplomatic clout and deterring others from declaring war on that builder (even if never used for it's ultimate purpose)... kind of like the way having a huge powerful navy works (R.E.S.P.E.C.T., sock it to me, sock it to me...).

So... can it be used as a diplomatic weapon/flyswatter of sorts?

I think everyone gets a little squirrelly when you have a Terror Star.

The fleeting thing must be a bug. I'd recommend reporting it via email and sending the zipped savegame, debugg.err and Smart Exception log as well.

Destroying via the planet screen does indeed intend to make it a class 0, been so for as long as I can remember that option being around.

Planets are not massive fusion reactors barely held in check by their own gravitational containment effect. Stars are. Your argument is akin to saying that a 1000 liter container of nitroglycerine should be harder to blow up than a 1 liter bottle of water, because it's bigger.

I dunno, I managed to win a game with a Terror Star. Admittedly, it was a Tiny Map Beginner level game, but I won.

BTW, a Star is worth 33 Military Points, apparently, because that was my rating when I won, and I had no other armed ships.

Anyways, I was on a Tiny map with the Altarians, and the Dark Yor... the Altarians had just got the event that increased their influence, which was very annoying... I had 74% at the time, and then dropped down to like 50%. Wanting to see how a Terror Star worked, I build one and sent it after the one planet that they had that wasn't in their home system, and blew it away. (BTW, they didn't HAVE a military anymore than I did, so going to war didn't really hurt me).

Then I sent to (slowly) towards their home system. Before it got even halfway, they surrendered. So you CAN use a Terror Star, as long as the enemy can't fight back.

I think They need some improvements. Because currently they are too slow to be useful in a war, cost too much to reasearch, have paper thin armour, no attacks and the ability to destroy systems (as opposed to capturing them and eating the conquered races organs (particularly the tasty skin)).

If they could perhaps whipe out everything on a planet but reducing it's PQ by half, move a bit faster and maybe have some weapons and armour I personally might find them more useful. Perhaps make the military starbase upgrades appliable to them or something?

Actually, this is not the case. Every element in the galaxy heavier than Hydrogen was formed inside of STARS. that is the only place that it CAN form. The only place where the nuclear furnaces and Gravitational forces are strong enough to create elements like the stuff our planets are formed of.

If you want another theory, I would say that the Terror Stars are able to destroy Stars by knocking the Star's normal nuclear reaction out of balance and causing it to go Nova. This simple explaination explains why the same weapon won't work on Planets for the simple reason that planets are not the same construction as Planets. Exciting nuclear reactions at the heart of a planet, won't start a cascade reaction throughout the rest of the planet's nuclear reactions because that is not the major component of planets.

As for a small ship with Laser 1 being able to destroy it, that seems consistant with the source material, don't you think?

With the exception that at least the Death Star had some anti-starcraft guns mounted on it in that trench and such to shoot at them while enroute to the vent.

I had an idea for a solution to the problem. You can comment on it here.

Yes, but there is no "Force" in game either.

It is very far away. If you take the distances into account that play a role in the game, 1 parsec which is one square on the game map would be 3.3 lightyears or 31billion km / 19,176,075,967,324.937 miles

the graphics are obviously not true to scale, so just use your imagination to guess how far the terror star in the game might be away from the star system it destroys

It seems to be as close or closer than the planets and enemy ships (including the ones in the fleet with it), but those are destroyed.

do the ships that are in the fleet with the Terror Star survive? Heck don't sign me up for that suicide mission.

If you have the option enabled, they will try to get away before it blows. That means they need enough engines to do so.

Wrong. The heavier elements form during the explosive finale. They are not formed via fusion in the core. Heck, don't take my word for it, go ask Wikipedia. The heaviest element that can be formed via fusion during the burning process is Iron and Nickel. Period. Here's a source.



That was my theory reworded

Addendum: Better source covering everything I said.

Tell that to the Altarians and the Drath.

My suggestion is that you re-read the article fully before Po-poing my explaination. I think you are getting that the elements are dispersed by the explosion. Not that they elements were formed during the explosion.



It does go on to say that



but it does not say anywhere that this is in exclusivity. Yes, some amount of nuclear fusion (the process that forms these elements) that happens during the explosion, but the process is on going. The larger the star, the heavier the gravity. The heavier the gravity, the more the atoms/etc... are smooshed together. The more they are pushed together, they form heavier and heavier atoms.

As for my explaination being like yours, I don't think I read yours. But if they are similar, then great. We both agree.

The explosion is what forms the heavier elements. Energies that are far in excess of what a star can produce during it's 'normal' status is simply unable to produce temperatures and pressures high enough to even 'kill itself' producing anything heavier than iron.

In the supernova, things are different, but to say that that's a product of the star's normal fuel-burning process is, well, wrong. The supernova is what happens when the star is OUT of fuel to burn. This energy can come about as the entire star comes crashing in on itself, but that's not part of the "burning process" that describes other elemental fusion processes.

The thing is, no star can fuse anything in a normal burning process into elements heavier than nickel, no matter how big it is. The nickel itself can eventually turn into more usable fuel, but the half-life of this process is about a week long, and the star simply cannot wait that long, no matter the size.

The reason for this is that a star isn't going to fuse heavier elements while it still has fuel in lighter ones, because it's not hot enough. Once it runs out of almost all its fuel, it contracts, increasing temperatures and pressures, and the next stage of fusion begins. So a star will have all this iron floating around doing nothing, until it's almost completely out of chromium, then it'll burn iron. Once it's out of iron, it'll try to burn nickel, but begins to exponentially drain itself dry, and in MINUTES, the star is dead.

Then it collapses in on itself, and in a brief moment, once all of its mass is concentrated on the core, in the rebound, it'll begin an extremely hot, rapid fusion of everything that is inside it, producing heavier elements, which are blown off in the ensuing explosion. Everything that is left, however, is smashed into its component pieces into an ultra-dense blob of matter made of atomic components.





The problem is, they CAN'T fuse anything heavier than iron during their lifetime, because the half-lives of the isotopes are longer than the duration of the star's life.

Effectively, while a star COULD spend more of its 'living' energy fusing iron into heavier elements, it is simply unable to do so with the

Uh, that last stuff wasn't supposed to be in there - rubbish leftovers

Dont forget that we see the galaxy at a top-down perspective.
Who says the terror star isnt actually a hundred lightyears ABOVE the star it blows up?