Cursed Talisman

[Paul1980au]

All great ideas if it is goign to carry forward into SE5

[Atrocities]

I wonder how many times this thing has been talked about? It is just so damn lethal and when you watch your fleet be obliterated by a race employing this technology, you just wanna scream - FOUL! "Thats NOT fair!"

[Grandpa Kim]

It's been discussed before: It is over powered but it can be beat. And that's all I'll say about that.

The real problem is it's no fun!

I'm in a game with five remaining players. Three of us have the talisman. I have the talisman, my partner does not. My two strongest opponents have the talisman, the third does not. My ship designs are simplicity itself: basics + talisman + shields + guns. No sensors, no stealth armor, no training, they are pointless.

When a battle occurs, there are few surprises. We count up the firepower on each side and the one with the most wins. Whoopee!

No, it's not the power of the talisman that is the problem, it's the certainty!

**For the record, the game still is fun despite the talisman because of the quality of the players. The chess game Cyclop and I have going on makes it all worthwhile! **

[Roanon]

So only one solution remains: every non-religious race ally and gang up on the religious races as early as possible. Just too bad if 9 out of 10 players take religious - even if they consider it to be no fun. I myself would rather prefer to loose a game than having to play a boring one.

[primitive]

Quit *****ing guys

The strongest military (ships and weapons) racial tech is: Crystalline
A full tech Crystalline fleet can beat an equal value (not size) full tech Religious fleet anytime.

The real strenghts of Religious is:
1. It frees points from Agresivness.
2. The Shrines
3. It makes Sats and WP's valuable in late game.

[Roanon]

Could you explain why, Primitive? I have considered the crystal technology to be a *very* weak one - I normally do not use extensive armor, preferring shields, so their main advantage is gone. Or even a disadvantage, as my ships retain that 30% defeinsive bonus from scattering/stealth armor which otherwise is destroyed first. The weapons itself are laughable apart from that questionable armor-skipping feature, standard weapons are better.
The crystalline armor is nice, though I am not sure how strong its features are exactly. Still, I doubt it is worth more than a 100% guaranteed hit.

[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.

[ June 13, 2004, 21:47: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Phoenix-D]

Its not just 420kt of CA though- you need the shields to hold that many shield points too.

[primitive]

Originally posted by Roanon:
Could you explain why, Primitive? I have considered the crystal technology to be a *very* weak one - I normally do not use extensive armor, preferring shields, so their main advantage is gone. Or even a disadvantage, as my ships retain that 30% defeinsive bonus from scattering/stealth armor which otherwise is destroyed first. The weapons itself are laughable apart from that questionable armor-skipping feature, standard weapons are better.
The crystalline armor is nice, though I am not sure how strong its features are exactly. Still, I doubt it is worth more than a 100% guaranteed hit.

Armor is not weak, shields are
With shielddepleaters beeing so cheap and small, there is no problem putting enough on a fleet to make Shields viritually useless.

As Fyron says; putting loads of Crystalline Armor on ships make them able to take huge amounts of punishment, offsetting the advantage of the Talisman (Just remember to include enough shielddepleters and set your strategy to point-blank and targeting to Has weapons-Nearest-Something).

I'm not claiming that Crystalline is a better racial choice than Religious. The facilities and weapons are rather useless (except for the maintanance reducing facility), but the Crystalline Armor rules the skies when shipsizes get larger.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Its not just 420kt of CA though- you need the shields to hold that many shield points too.

A Phased - Shield Generator III makes 225 shield points, which covers it. You only actually need 105 shield points to make use of the CA to be invincible against 105 damage or less weapons.