Blowing up a star

[Ruatha]

What do I have to research to blow up a star?
Some kind of stellar manipulation I'd guess.
If I blow up a star will it destroy all ships and colonies in the system?

[Pablo]

Yes, Stellar manipulation but I don't remember which level exactly. But that's a LOT of researching, building and maintaining.
It's interesting for me too, because I've never used such a component and don't know how it works. Will it destroy the ship itself?
I believe so because if you blow up a star - everything should be destroyed as well. This means other stars, planets, ships, asteroids, etc. And there probably a random nebulae should appear. Well, that's how I imagine it would work
Anybody with real experience in the field?

[Ruatha]

I think I found the answer, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Level 5 stellar manipulation.
It blows up the star only.
The star that blows up destroys everything in the system, including the ship that blew up the star (a little revenge thing).
All planets becomes asteroid.
All people die.
All ships are ashes!

I MUST try this!

[Arkcon]

I've done it a couple of times. One time, it was a TDM modpack game, and the Sergetti were isolated from everyone else so they weren't exterminated early.

I had researched far enough, designed a lean design, and built it at one of my many huge breathable jubilant max pop worlds. I picked a close by system

Build time: 2.2 years. 22 turns. Sheesh.

I shut off the turn begin log and the verify end turn message and just hit F12 half a dozen times. Then turned on emergency build for another 11 times.

Then I warped it to their star, they had no ships in their home system that could attack my doomsday device. It was a black hole creator. Everything was destroyed. Whee.

In the meanwhile, while I was not reading log Messages, they had actually built a ship and glassed one of my airless tinys -- cheeky bastards. And they colonized it to, so I had divert one of my 100 dreadnoughts to totally exterminate them. Whoo-pee

This could have been a shorter post

Yeah, I've done it. But build time is so slow, maintenance is so high, and the ship needs support from attack. I don't think it has a real use as a combat tactic. YMMV

One thing's for sure, the AI knows what a stellar manipulator can do. If I send a fleet of attack ships, with a planet killer in it on "Don't get hurt" to take the planet out just in case the troops don't work, all attacks make a beeline for the manipulator. Size, speed, has weapons -- the ships don't care, thay attack the manipulator.

I built 10 fleets, and the planet killers ended up being nothing but decoys.

[ November 28, 2002, 13:12: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Suicide Junkie]

A star detonator can be useful in a military sense, you just need to use it at the right time and in the right place.
Say, for example, in a border chokepoint system.

When the enemy fleet smashes through your defenses and a hundred ships start moving towards your core systems... BOOM!
Then you fight back with your new numbers advantage, and unmothball your sun creator to re-arm the trap.

[von_toaster]

Races with Temporal Ship Yards, combined with a nice score in maintenance reduction are usually a pain in the behind for creating quickly and cheaply star destroyers and black hole creators and such.
I destroyed a few stars to avoid blowing up fleets after fleets on heavily defended homeworlds (that, and I'm also a tad lazy, it cuts down my work...)