Good question, I was a fan of the terror star.
It was always cool to destroy an important enemy planet to see i'm then surrender to your might.

Hope they are still around.

God i hope they bring them back! I'm a strong supporter of them and i would be really happy if they return. But i don't worry very much because i believe the devs have many plans for the game to improve it. I love stardock for that!

BoogieBac,
why not give Terror Stars Death Star like strength. Have them blast just a planet. Hence, adjacent tile and such. Attack could be initiated at your turn, but doesn't happen unless you have full movement points, hence a charge up of one turn. This allows the defenders a turn to respond.
This is still a devastating attack. Most systems only have one colony, anyway.

Otherwise, if you were to do the system-wide kill, then you should highlight its attack region so that a player can move it into range. Then you should prolly make the charge-up longer since it may be positioned more than a turn away from a defending planet. Research could shorten the charge time and broaden the range.

How AI handles it? Well judging by the half dozen influence starbases in my space placed by my ally, they seem to recognize how valuable and useful starbases are. Halfway there.

Bleh...just blowing up a planet is soooooo 1977 We could always give you the choice...blowing up a planet only takes 2 turns to charge up, but a system takes 5 turns to charge (or, whatever balances best).  Brad is the one that wants the system-wide blast, so you'll have to take it up with him (Frogboy on the forums).

The AI targeting the threat isn't so bad, but defending the hell out of them is more my concern. And just manuveringing them throughout the galaxy may be a calculations pig on gigantic galaxies.

Again, I'm not against it (we already have the cursor made for a tagreted planet/star), it's just a matter of working it into the time frame.

We should have an list of ideas for the expansion packs posted in the next month. We'll just have to see if it makes it on there (I sure hope it does )

I like the blowing up of entire systems idea, if they just blew up planets you could smack down your enemies so easily that every game would become a race to build a few. While that is still possible with it blowing up an entire system, it adds a lot of complexity. Especially if a system has more than one race living on it. I mean do you hate the one race bad enough to start a war with the second? I can see players intentionally building colonies in systems with the aliens to provide themselves with some extra protection against militant aliens.

Not having Terror Stars is a huge mistake!

I am pro Terror Stars to be sure. Granted they can obliterate a planet ala Star Wars and cool to see happen of course, Then you have to consider what the other races will do if you have them. You should not be allowed to have more than 1 Terror Star at a time no matter what. Yes you can build a new one after it's destroyed. As for weapons it should have 2 weapon systems basically The planet weapon is 1 and then support weapons for battleing enemy ships. it should be a slow mover no more than 2 spaces movement at a time. It should only be allowed to be built inside your sphere of influence.

As for the destruction of the systems Star thus wiping out all planets in a system that is basically what the Andromeda series called a Nova Bomb. Those might be too powerful for this game. But if you allow them I would'nt be oppossed to using them hehehe. Nova Bombs should be given to the Good Alignment Races , Terror Stars to the Evil alignment Races. Neutral alignment should have a dampening field that would prevent either of the other 2 from being used inside the zone of protection. consider a 4 point satellite spread around a star to stop nova bombs. Some form of orbital planet shielding that acts as an energy dampener from the Terror Star.

If your going to implement them you might as well go all out from the start. There will have to be negatives in using them. I would suggest that the other races impose a trade embargo if you use a Nova Bomb, if you use a Terror Star your no longer in The United Planets. It will make things more realistic this way. You can have them but at a price.

Otherwise The AI will be Nova Bombing everything, Terror Stars will be all over the place. The key is to figure out how to effectively implement them while at the same time keeping the game balanced.

You should also consider that in order to build these things in the first place you should need to research several branches of the tech tree to the very end. Not just one branch otherwise it's a simple rush to finish a single branch by everyone foregoing the need to concentrate on the other brances at all.

The Economy Branch, one of the Weapon Branch's, One of the Defense Branches,Diplomacy etc.. I would say minimum of 5 seperate branches but no more than 7 branches fully researched before these can be implemented. This means that the game will last awhile longer for one thing and you don't have to worry about being at only a large hull size research or lower and suddenly your wiped out.

There definately needs to be a civ-wide alert message on the creation of a Terror Star so you can be on the look out the same for a Novabomb Tech Researched. So you can start Scanning ships.

just some ideas.. ( yes I know the novabomb thingy was'nt really in the start of all this but someone up there was talking about taking out the star itself. I just used that and extrapolated from there...)

Starlost...

Hmm Terror stars are just the end result of uber star bases...

I would like to see them capable of converting PQ0 planets into artificial worlds that can then be improved. Otherwise it would be very easy for a galaxy to become dead once they hit the battlefields.

I would also say they only destroy planets not the stars they orbit. Planet destroyed leaving asteroid field, terrer star then moves in and acts like a colony ship but for planet construction.

Brother Angelon

Yeah the point is they are destructive. I think they should be an evil only tech with no good alternitive. And building one should make you lose a lot of relations with all good and neutral civs. I mean, war is one thing, people will regrow, but eliminating a habital planet cripples the galaxy as a whole, good and neutral should be very upset at that.

If I were to design something like this, here's how I'd implement it. Note that i have no clue how planets are defined in the game. I also think in the context of a human, and I don't know how the AI could respond.

Anyway, here's my $.03 cents.

Such a massive ship needs a massive hull. Introduce "Titan" level hulls. This means more technology to research, which would take a lot of time.

A Titan ship is in effect a mobile space station. Introduce a "Mobility module". This makes Space Stations more tactical, since you need to balance slots with sheer numbers for something with very little defense itself. This particular upgrade would be high on the tech tree, since you need to also have 'Enhanced Structural Integrity' (A new upgrade which is also needed for Titan hulls).

Titan ships also have the more practical problem of actually flying. A constructor is often enough for building a basic space station, but Titan Hulls need more - One constructor can't handle the volume of work needed for such an undertaking, so now you need to build Ship Construction Yards, which are a new kind of Space Station.

We now need a weapon... A Phase Matter Distorter! In order to build the Phase Matter Distorter, you need even more technology; particularly of Phasers and Mass Driver tech. This would be a combination of the pair.

So now you have a mobile space station which can mount shuttle weapons. It can act as a short range influence star base (it's INCREDIBLY intimidating).

So now that you have a game breaker, how does it interact with the environment?

DESTROYING PLANETS

Before I go on, I think it's important to note that the power of the ship is not the hull class, but the size of it's weapons and defenses. In effect, it could have a relatively low HP rating (it's big, but it's also an easy target). It can also mount a lot of defense, which must also be balanced with it's weaponry. If you want to mount a Phase Matter Distorter, you'd sacrifice a lot of space in the process.

Moving right along, each planet now has a hidden 'size' value which is based on it's class. This value is how much energy is required to destroy it. A typically habitable planet has a class value of between 6 and 11, so they would need a charge of 6-11; in order to aim for the most critical part of the planet, you need to do some heavy scanning and calibrating and planets which are particularly dense are harder to pinpoint. Adding to the difficulty is the existing infrastructure on the planet, adding interference to the scanning (charging) process.

Warnings would come to the players via GNN, and could be formatted as "Citizens shudder! The Terrorstar will be in target range in X weeks/turns!" In effect, this makes the Terror Star itself a bargaining chip, since other players can see the plight of the planet.

Using the Terror Star would increase your 'evil' rating, and may also demoralize planets with a low influence, who may then defect to other civilizations. Each use would permanently reduce your civilization's influence and could possibly send it into the negatives (the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers!).

If you wanted to be lazy, you could have the Terror Star counted as an Influence, military, and economy star base, and have that multiplied by 2 to freak out the AI. I have no idea how the Computer would deal with them...

This post is already much longer than I'd originally intended, but I thought I should toss in a few details, personal ideas, and some new game mechanics to balance out my weakly veiled Star Wars references. I wish I could be more helpful...