Terror Stars - Useful???

They are useless, except if you want to scorch and burn systems, BUT you can do that by destroying the colony when you capture the planet which will turn it into a PQ0!

Yep, I agree. Its stupid to think that a ship that can destroy a star system, cannot be part of a fleet and has no defensive weapons of ant type. On top of that it is the slowest ship in the galaxy. What are it's positive attributes? Kind of reminds me of the Zepelens of ww2.

Yep, useless. Too slow and too expensive to research. Research cost should be at least halved.

I've never bothered to try them in TA, and doubt I will.

I did use one long, long ago, in GC2 for OS/2, where they blew up planets instead of stars. There was a planet that had such strong defenses that I was losing 10 of my best ships for every one of the Yor's that I destroyed, so I decided simply to take out the planet. Note that the game has evolved greatly since then, and given the enormous differences in ship offense/defense I'm not sure that situation could even occur nowdays (GC2 for OS/2 didn't have fleets).

They are good if you want a devastating opening against an ally (or close/friendly player) just build some terror stars next to their suns and in the first week they are blasted out of the universe
The best betrayal ever.

Don't Terror Stars increase your military rating significantly?
If so, that would seem like a big plus early on in the game.

Otherwise I can only see two usefull, though limited, tactics.

1) clear a path between your borders and your opponents so it'll be harder for them to beat you by influence.

2) If your opponent likes to turtle (heavy defense of planets, rarely sending out fleets) and is more powerfull than you, then blowing up their systems would be the better choice. But only if you need to defeat them quickly, otherwise you could just research better weapon/defense tech.

The best use for them that I saw (I played them into the ground during the Beta) is to send a fleet of 6 constructors to the star you wish to blow up, assemble and then destroy. If there are systems near by, then move towards them, otherwise just self-destruct the TS after it's done. This "terror star bomb" as I call it seems to be the quickest form of destroying a system that at least 10 parsecs away.

There is a special victory screen if you destroy the last 2 opponents in 1 TS blast. Otherwise than fancy text for it, I don't think it gave any more points than a normal conquest win.

As Nitro said, it can help to hold off influence creep, or decimate a race with too high of a troop defense for you to bother with.

Someone also had coined the phrase "Terrorforming" in the use of a TS to create asteroid fields in the galaxy.

Fun toy to play with if you get bored, but I'll agree they don't have much use after turn 1 of a war. Makes a great start for the war though

Terror Stars can be fleeted. However they don't add anything radical to a fleet's offensive capabilities, so basically you need only fleet them for peace of mind in case one of the enemy fleets gets in close enough to take a potshot at the exhaust port.

And to note, the fleet module for increased speed gets turned off if a TS is in the fleet. During Beta, this had worked to get them about faster

Terror Stars have only one use as far as I see, and even this is of dubious quality:

You get an empire-wide 50% morale boost for a certain amount of time when you have one. I'm not sure how long it lasts, or if blowing up stars can make it go away. All I know is that it gives the bonus. When you check a planet's approval and it shows the break down, it says "+50% from other sources" and this apparently is terror star.

Or a UP event that all races put X amount of money into the pot for a celebration...

Nah, Terror stars are useless. Very slow (1pc/week) + very expensive (both time and money) + Can't not defend against ships.
Destroy a star system? Please... Usually, there is one planet in a star system (2, if you're lucky). I rather use SPORE SHIP.

Oh my god you're right. I fail. I've seen that UP event a ton but I've never seen its resulting boost, even if I win it. Just never looked I guess...

Exactly.
In medium sized maps and less its devastating. I was allied with the Drengin, but he eventually took everyone out and I had no means to take him on in a battle. He was about to get a technological victory (I could've before him, but I decided not), so I built a TS next to each of his star systems and wiped him out in one turn .
(diplomatic victory was off).

So, we can use Terror Stars to destroy an Empire with out declare war?
Gosh, I didn't know that...

Terror Stars are not much of use (sadly). On small maps EVENTUALLY you MIGHT have use for them, but anything bigger than medium - just forget about it, not worth the hassle...

Thanks for the opinions.

The blitzkrieging, backstabbing, "I used to be your pal" approach of building terror stars next to the AI's suns while at peace with them is a novel concept. If the devs are alert, however, they can tweak the code to consider the building of a terror star in one's territory as an act of war. That would put an end to that tactic! I know that if you saw the AI building terror stars next to your suns, you might wonder what they had in mind. Would you simply say "Duh, whatcha doin?" and then do nothing or would you take action?

I always vote to ban them in the UP. That seems to make for a better game.

Yep agreed...

Good idea, but just too darn slow. I think that having them build faster would be more important than having them move faster though.

Useful, perhaps not, but when those damned thalans backstab you, fight you for years and years, and then all of a sudden want peace because you've destroyed every system they've ever had a planet on and their homeworld stands alone in the darkness...

there is no mercy among the stars...

The Terror Star is a nifty toy as it is currently. Something you use for fun, not because it's the best (or even just plain good) strategy.

The problem with them is they have a helluva lot of restrictions on them. You need to research 6 (including Advanced Starbase Construction and its kin) extremely expensive techs before you can even build one, and the beginning 5 don't even do anything with the last (for most races, at least). Then, you gotta build the thing with six constructors... and then wait 10 weeks before you can even use it. And THEN it only has a speed of 1, and that fact cannot be changed with any tech, component, event, or whatever.

That's a lot of restrictions for a strategic element. The speed issue can be circumvented in some (near cheating) circumstances, but the rest really make it hard to even want to bother.

I can certainly understand not wanting such a powerful effect (and, let's be honest, blowing an entire star system with 100% success rate (assuming the thing can make it to the star, of course) is powerful) to be easily accessible. It would just make the game all about rushing for Terror Stars, after all. But, I don't understand why Terror Stars were divided into 5 techs... just seems odd getting components you can't even use until you research the entire line anyway.

Absolute waste of time. Built them for the first time in my game and I was so dissapointed. Extremely slow, expensive and they take ages to research. What's the point of building one and using it if I can beat the opponant by conventional invasion tactics ten times faster? Ic an understand that the devs were wary of making the game unbalanced with it but at the moment they're about as useful as a brick.

 

I think the TS should be "functional" after only two or three research steps. By functional I mean they could destroy stars and moce 1 parsec per turn. The last two or three TS research steps should ADD TO funtionality, with maybe one speed increase (something like the passives the Arceans get) and one defense/offense increase.

When I first learned about the TS and began to play them in the beta, I assumed they were just like military starbases, but mobile. I thought I would be able to upgrade them as I worked up the tech tree. I still think that would be the best, and most obvious way to make them more useful as the game moves forward.

While I'm happy that they're not significantly powerful enough to be overused (which I feel is what the devs had in mind by all the restrictions that are placed on them), I STILL think they'd be better -for the game-, while obviously not in a more powerful kind of way, if the terror star were destroyed when it blew up the star in question.

Especially given that you can't arm it, it does make more sense.  And, personally, I have difficulty seeing how a terror star is supposed to survive the destruction of a star given that everything in the AoE is blown to bits-the star, the planets, any ships, any starbases, any asteroids (I'm not positive on that last one, it's been a while).

The two logical ways to have a terror star actually make sense in line with what it does is A. have it destroy itself TO destroy the star OR B. have it be almost indestructable (which may in fact be better).  From a GC2 standpoint that would probably mean a significant HP boost (so as to win the tie rule), probably AT LEAST a factor of 5x, and more to the point significant defenses such that it would be almost impossible to overwhelm it militarily.  I'm not suggesting that it be able to kill anything, but at the very least it should be nigh unkillable.

Perhaps even both-doing the latter without the former might make them too powerful.

Which brings us to essentially two ways to destroy a terror star-one, blow it up with ANOTHER terror star (when it's passing through the system), or two, bring in a fleet of dreadnoughts to punch through the armor.  (Note: This is hypothetical only, as at present they have none.)

 

Anyway, just some thoughts that were going through my head.

They're no longer destroyed when used? Wow. That's a big change from the beta, where they were strictly kamikaze.

Having played them that way, I don't think it would make them more useful or powerful. I think it would simply add to frustration when trying to use them.

Really a TS should be an end game kind of thing - they should build faster, be more mobile, have attack and defense; but the research needed to mount them should be serious (as it is).

My post above outlines a way to have basic, mid-game TSs and later game "death stars" - really fearsome, mobile battle stations. Terror stars SHOULD be in the late game as an incentive to encourage the top civs to play more defensively and the lower civs the possibility of a daring comeback.