As far as I am aware, at no point in the betas did Terror Stars kamikaze.  There was, however, a bug at one point (3A maybe, I forget) where the TS would go completely invisible after use-and I lost track of three or four Terror Stars this way as I simply wasn't paying attention, and more to the point assumed that someone up top had finally taken my suggestion and made them one shot weapons, but alas, that was not the case.  I did not discover this until I reloaded a savegame where I had already used a TS that had disappeared on me and it came back-and I was quite surprised indeed.

If you'll read what I typed a little more carefully, you'll see I wasn't suggesting such a change would make them more useful, nor more powerful-in fact, the opposite-simply that it would be better for the game.

I like terror stars just fine, and have no problem with them being powerful, or useful, but they should certainly be limited enough that a game does not always devolve into using them.  And, personally, I feel the current system does not sufficiently strike that balance.

If I might ask...how would it add to the frustration of using them?  Do you actually move your Terror Stars from one system to another, to another, to another?  They're almost one shot as it stands-perhaps two or three if you find a cluster close enough together...beyond that, it's faster to just build more of them.

Apologies-didn't see the first post, as it created a new page and FF didn't show the new page for some odd reason-so I posted it again...and the edit button is still dead for me.

As much as i like this game, i have to admit, balancing has got to be one of its weakest points. It frustrates me because you can see the potential for really cool options and strategies in the tech tree. But what you end up with are novelties instead due to terrible balance. This frustrates me even more when it is a reason i bought the expansion pack. Case in point: terror stars.

Cut the research costs. Add modules to boost speed. Make the damn thing indestructible. I don't care. But make it useful.

I was very happy to find this post. I was beginning to worry no-one else saw a problem with our new terror star. Ok so the biggest problem with them right now is their defenseive capabilities.Right now the only way a terror star can effectively be used is if the civilization building it is already ahead of the other cultures. Sure you can build it next to a peacfull neighbor and quickly wipe them out, but afterwards if you dont have the superior military(and odds are you will not because you just wasted a year in researching the terror star), that terror star is gonna get exploded by remaining enemy fleet who is sore with you( though if playing on a smaller map like medium or small losing a system can hurt quite a bit). The weaker civ isnt going to stop competing for more advanced tech and begin researching/building terror stars, they have absolutely no defensive capability on their own and even if you have some fleets protecting it they are just gonna get blown up along with the terror star due to a years loss of research. The extremely deadly terror star, is only usefull to the guy whos already winning making a one sided fight: even more so. And as for the usefullness that i mentioned earlier , I think its been said before: helping spread and stop influence. I personally only use terror stars after Im sure i am going to win. In which case im bored of building transports and invading planets and the elimination of an entire system is at least different(even if it costs me an extra year of play time) . On the flip side I do the same thing with influence victories, I get bored of building constructors and influence starbases; so I build terror stars and just destroy a few of the last key systems and let my superior culture fill it up quickly.

BTW if u want to build some terror stars my advice is to save extra money, put the research slider to 100%, and productivity to 100%. The extra money will be needed just for research btw so dont forget about the obscence costs for the starbase too. This will cut the time for research in half or maybe even less:D so hopefully you dont fall too far behind in the techs of other civs. Oh and terror star tech is good trade material to civs your about to kill hehe.               Good Luck and Have Fun!

He inspired me to use them in my most recent game...I got the Dread Lords event, and left them for several years because I had no idea where they were...turns out they were right between me and Earth (I was a custom Evil race), so I spent sveral years researching the techs and managed to blow them up in what I suspect was mere turns before they begun making their move. Pity that doing this took me to war with the Terrans, who destroyed it afterwards, and I haven't bothered replacing it yet.

Does this only work with a fully upgraded fleet bubble?  During the beta this was possible, but then they added the code for it to check if a TS is in the fleet to disable that module.

Go to the Metaverse site linked in the top left of this page, then over to Account, then Edit My Characters, then on the right side of the character is a button that says Default.  Hit that on the charater's who's medals you wish to show under your posts.

BTW if this is the case with the TSs...they are then re-bugged and will see the hammer fall again.

  That is true. The drawback, however is that if you have the terror star within a fleet and you detonate the terror star on a star system while it is fleeted, the fleet gets destroyed along with the enemy (or friend if you are betraying them) planets, ships, and even space stations if there are any. Therefore, your terror star will be left vulnerable without protection from marauding enemy fleets.

   I also find that the terror star isn't worth the effort of researching if you have your technology research speed set at normal. Because you are focused on researching each stage of terror star developement for 150 weeks give or take several dozen weeks, you will most likely end up falling behind technologically compared to the other races. Then again you can trade tech with friendly races but why not keep your hard gained technologies to yourself?! Besides that hard researched Photon Torpedo might fall into the hand of the Drengin menace! (note half sarcastic and half serious tone in last part of last paragraph) 

Sorry it's taking me so long to test the TS + Warp bubble, the council outlawed Terror Stars in my last game ;-(

Unfortunalty no I got a little upset and instead of thinking I just went on a rampage and wiped out the yor and all the other races lol, and whats worse is that i changed my custom tech tree to Drengin so no warp bubbles in the following game as well doh!

 I was going to make a samll custom game with fast tech to test it out, I'll get back to ya soon as I do.

I've never used a Terror Star or seen one used in a game.  The potential usefulness of the weapon just doesn't justify, in my opinion, the immense cost to research the technology and the relatively slow moving and virtually defensless space station.  I would much rather simply capture the planet and add it to my empire.  A much more militarily useful tool in this game would be the ability to conduct orbital bombardment without destroying the planet, let alone destroying the entire star system.

What about speeding up the Terror Stars, but requiring that they "power up" before destroying a star?  That way they could move around a bit faster, but the "power up" phase would prevent an ambush.  Maybe make it so they have to park for several turns to build up enough power to destroy the star.  Maybe the amount of power/turns required could be dependent on how many planets are in the system, even?  (say, 2 turns per planet?)  That would make destroying more sparsely populated systems a little more viable.

I like some of the suggestions about making them more like mobile Military Starbases, especially if that includes the possibility of adding additional modules.  If that option is explored, then perhaps going into "star-killer mode" could weaken the Terror Star's defenses, thus making it more vulnerable to a counterattack...

Because then you won't be able to trade with your allies or other friendly races.