Cursed Talisman

[primitive]

Organic may work. Its also a strong Racial tech, but I believe it has its main advantages in the early/mid game (unlike Crystalline and Religious).

The Organic weapons are good, but the regenerating feature of Organic Armor is virtually useless in late game big battles. The organic armor is however extremely effective in the early/mid battles (up to something like 50 medium tech LC’s on each side) where the first line of ships actually have a chance to survive several rounds of action.

IIRC (long time since I tested); an Organic race will need something like 1.25 to 1.5 times the Mineral value (+ the orgs) to be even with a Talsiman fleet (late game / large fleets).

[spoon]

Originally posted by Karibu:
Simpliest and the best way to balance talisman is to take off its automatic hit and make it a component, which gives you for example 20% for attack and which would stack with combat sensor.

Simplest, maybe... but I like the Automatic Hit - gives the Talisman its flavor. Balance it in other areas instead (cost/size/etc).

[clark]

Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting that all of the ideas be implemented at the same time, but some of them alone, or together, in different combinations might allow for a "re-balance" since the Religious trait is generally considered so unbalancing.

There are other solutions as well, I think, such as preventing mounts with ships that contain the Religious Talisman (doable?). So then your ship will always hit, but it isn't doing as much damage.

You could also set it so only one ship class can use the Religious Talisman (the Religious Class, or whatever) much like a Colony ship must carry a colony module. This way you could mod that class of ship to take longer to build, maintain, or contain only so much space for weapons.

I think ideally though, something simple would be more effective, like preventing the use of shields and armor if the ship contains a Religious Talisman. No retrofit would also help too.

Defense penalties might balance it a bit, as the Religious player can "always" hit, but their opponent has a better chance of scoring a hit now.

[Fyron]

There are other solutions as well, I think, such as preventing mounts with ships that contain the Religious Talisman (doable?). So then your ship will always hit, but it isn't doing as much damage.

Delete the component and add a mount with +999 to hit. It will have a 99% to hit rate (close enough to 100% ), but will not allow any extra damage from other mounts.

[Karibu]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
If you have, say, 8 Crystalline Armor IIIs on a ship, that gives you 120 shields from damage. Any weapon that does 60 damage or less can not harm your ship. Once shields are down, 60 damage is done to the armor, and 60 points are added to the shield total. Next shot, you do 120 damage to the shields, as the partial damage from the previous hit adds to the current hit. The 60 shields are sapped, 60 damage is done to the armor. Next shot, the 60 damage is added to the damage against the shields. The 60 shield points are gone, 60 damage is done to the armor. This will continue for ever, without ever being able to destroy any armor. Try 420 kT of CA. That is 210 shields from damage. Any weapon that does 105 or less damage is useless. 420 kT is a lot of space to use though, but on dreadnoughts, it is doable.

Now, you can certainly through shield depleters between each weapon, which can help. Or use shield disruptors to eliminate the shield generators.

If it were not for large mounts doubling the damage per shot of your weapons and heavy mounts tripling it, this would be a huge problem. But, in practice, it is not that strong of a defense.

This is correct. I once did some math and results were, that most effective combination is to have 11 crystal armor and 2 shield generators. 11 crystal armor makes you invulnerable to anything that makes less than 150 points of damage. However if one armor breaks, your damage resistace is lessened 15 points, etc. Naturally, when your armor starts to breal, it'll break faster and faster every round because components, which can generate shield points form hits, are destroyed and your "reflective shielding" is therefore weaker. So to be certain to stand a lot of punishment, you would nees some "spare armor components". Obviously, all this takes so much space, that your firepower would be weakened accordingly.

So, crystal armor is superb at the early and mid game, but later it becomes less usable, yet not totally useless.

[ June 14, 2004, 20:10: Message edited by: Karibu ]

[Ed Kolis]

More ideas for the talisman:

-Give it a maintenance penalty because of all the priests needed to attend to it... you might think twice about building a fleet of Talisman ships if they cost 4x as much to maintain!

-Give it the armor abiltity and something like 1 HP: the slightest scratch to the ship's hull will "defile" it

-Double the tonnage (and structure too, I guess)... 100kT is a lot of space to use for a single component, even on a baseship!

-Increase cost to somewhere along the lines of a Master Computer (which are overpriced anyway )

-Dunno if this will work, but how about negative systemwide ship training - unless you have Psychic Ship Training Facilities, your ships will gradually get worse and worse at defense! (I wonder if experience can go negative... )

-Allow the talisman to only be mounted on bases

-Not all of these at once or it will be useless!

[tesco samoa]

just as long as it is not removed from sev....

it is a great option that we should still have.... the automatic hit...

Just look at missles