[PvK]

The phased shield ability of cultural centers isn't perfect. Ideally, I would just give the facilities large amounts of hit points, but that is not possible. I may experiment with re-adjusting the "damage per population" in settings.txt, as I believe this still affects the damage required to destroy any facility. However there still isn't a perfect way to express the difference between the damage required to destroy, say, a resupply depot, and the damage required to destroy an entire civilization.

It's true that shield-skipping weapons end up being powerful against cultural centers, but who's to say that a null space weapon would not in reality have a great effect against at atmosphere? At any rate, there are still other ways to vaporize a homeworld's shields, such as planetary weapons, anti-planet drones, fighter-bombers, and shield depleters.

This is one case where I didn't see many choices in what I could do, but there was a very important balance issue, which was that it is a major game event if a homeworld is destroyed or captured, so it should be possible to defend one, and take a major effort to destroy or conquer one.

As Mylon mentions, players can and should keep some potent defenses at a homeworld. The cargo capacity is huge, so the 20K intrinsic shields are just part of the difficulty in attacking one. Defense bases and weapon platforms and fighters and satellites and drones and troops can be amassed, and should be expected.

Consider too that major effects can be caused simply by blockading a homeworld. That in itself has caused some human players to concede defeat.

PvK

[ September 10, 2002, 07:04: Message edited by: PvK ]