How do you beat the Talisman?

[rextorres]

Has anyone come up with a way to consistantly beat a religious race in tactical combat once they get the Talisman?

When I play a religious tech race I always max out my defense.

With ECM III and Armor VI I set my fleet/ship strategy to max and I am feel pretty much unhitable. In fact the only thing I worry about is the mine 'bug' where the other guy launches 100s mines or so. With Engine Overload Weapons (until the next patch) it's a Turkey Shoot. I've had battles where my LCs sweep away the opponent's Baseships with hardly no damage.

Obviously you might try Missiles, but in an unmodded game Missiles aren't really that effective.

Any thoughts?

[geoschmo]

Sun Tzu, The Art of War Chapter 4:
Invincibility depends on oneself, but the enemy's vulnerability on himself. It follows that those skilled in war can make themselves invincible but cannot cause an enemy to be certainly vulnerable. Therefore, it can be said that, one may know how to win, but cannot necessarily do so.

[Phoenix-D]

A few options.

1. wax the buggers BEFORE they get it. Not an option in this case.

2. ramming speed! Lots of small ships with armor (*not* warheads) preferable organic

3. Soak his point defense. Fighters, drones (especially drones!) missiles. Sure, a lot of will get knocked down..but if you have enough some will get through.

4. Same idea as before. Use the law of probability and build LOTS of direct-fire ships. Preferably with wave-motion guns; WMGs get a to-hit bonus.

Phoenix-D

[dumbluck]

Why not ram with warheads?

[Trajan]

Playing against AI opponents, and using the DevNul mod, I use Spinal Mount Wave Motion Guns, and/or any other spinal mount direct fire weapons that I happen to have researched. I shoot for maximum punch before he can pound the snot out of me with his Talisman accuracy.

Also, I use specialty ships (cruisers and the like) which carry engine destroying, null-space, and warp weapons. I use them in this order and usually end up with an AI opponent with a lot of very damaged and slow or non-moving ships which are easily taken care at a safe distance.

I always assume that I will have losses, but the AI targets my Dreads which are heavily armored and/or shielded, while the specialty cruiser go in and do their jobs.

Cheers!
Trajan

[LGM]

If your are facing a Talisman player, keep the following in mind. You can give up on defense. Put no ECMs, or Defense Armor on your ships. Use the biggest hull, Base Ships, because the +40% to hit does not matter. Massive Mounts do 500% damage for 300%. If your Talisman opponent uses Base Ships, he makes it easier for you to hit. If he uses Light Cruisers, he will get wasted. Large Mounts are poor against Massive.

Two Massive Mount Null Space hits will toast any Light Cruiser. However, WMGs do have a +30% to hit, so you need to use those if you cannot hit with a nullspace. Use Ship and Fleet training for Tohit bonuses. If you do not have the Talisman, consider taking a +20%-+25% to hit bonus as well. Add Sensor III component, and you should be able to hit.

Organic Parasite seekers are cheap and shoot every other round.

The Psychics have a weapon that will add to the enemy's reload time (for every weapon). Put one of these on a ship. More than one probably gets wasted, even with multi-tracking. Also try Virus/Allegiance Subvert combination with this ace design (use his Talisman ships against him). Psychics also have an excellent Small weapon for figters. Use small stacks if the enemy goes to larger weapon mounts to waste damage points.

Use Tractor beams to draw the enemy closer, so you can hit better (assuming your tractor beam hits). Note he may try to use repusors against your ships.

Load up a Base ship with large Missle V satellites. Say, 20 Satellite Bay IIIs and 20 Cargo III components. Should launch about 60 satellites each, with each sattelite launching 2 missles. Should mix some point defenses though, so they cannot attack the satellites with a pure unit force. Make lots of different satellite designs with different targeting plans to avoid overkill on one ship. This strategy is very costly to implement and you must reload your satellites after every battle.

Finally, try building the largest Starbases at warp points. 700% damage on the weapon mount with +80% to hit and +6 range. Keep in mind that Multi-tracking is flawed for like weapons, so mix your weapon types.

[LGM]

By the way, in my opinion, you must either play with the Talisman or design your race to face one as you are likely to do so. This means you must either build lots of seekers or have high to hit bonus (Beserker and Racial).

[ August 06, 2002, 18:24: Message edited by: LGM ]

[Trajan]

I had a talisman race attack my warp point defenses the other day.

One of the most useful defenses I had was a stack of satellites loaded with singularity torps. I picked a few torps to fire each time, targeted a different ship in the enemy fleet.

A stack of 35 sattellites really took the teeth out of the enemy fleet of 30 odd dreads & battleships. Afterwhich my bases, which all had external missle packs fired and cleaned up the mess. My orbiting fleet 20 ships, ranging from ligt cruisers to dreads, only had to deal with a few stragglers.

Keep in mind though, that this was a close range warp point smack down, against the idiot AI, in a non-simulatneous game, and I ran it tactically. In a strategic level fight, the Sat's would have all shot their wad at only a few ships (going for the kill instead of the disable) and I would have gotten very bloodied, though I think I still would have won.

Cheers!
Trajan

[Pax]

Originally posted by Trajan:
I had a talisman race attack my warp point defenses the other day.

One of the most useful defenses I had was a stack of satellites loaded with singularity torps. I picked a few torps to fire each time, targeted a different ship in the enemy fleet.

The problem is, that relies on Tactical Combat, so,it's net entirely an option in a PBW game.

Also -- I tend to PLAY religious races (fits my RP style rather well, actually 8), and the ships tend to be PDC-heavy (a dreadnaught might have as many as 10 PDC's on it). Since the Religious player knows their direct-fire weapons -will- hit, they can afford to scrimp a bit on offensive firepower, in favor of defensive systems ... there's no need to mount, oh, 5 heavy-mount guns to ensure one will hit. Mount two, and both will hit, and that's still statistically more damage per round than a non-religious ship of the same technology would get.

And frees up hundreds of kT of space for defensive systems, maybe even a repair bay in -every- ship in th fleet, and so on.

A stack of 35 sattellites really took the teeth out of the enemy fleet of 30 odd dreads & battleships. Afterwhich my bases, which all had external missle packs fired and cleaned up the mess. My orbiting fleet 20 ships, ranging from ligt cruisers to dreads, only had to deal with a few stragglers.

Keep in mind though, that this was a close range warp point smack down, against the idiot AI, in a non-simulatneous game, and I ran it tactically. In a strategic level fight, the Sat's would have all shot their wad at only a few ships (going for the kill instead of the disable) and I would have gotten very bloodied, though I think I still would have won.

Cheers!
Trajan

Yeah; sounds like the AI designed fleets VERY light on the PDC. Let's see, large satellites, 2 missiles per satellite normally; the religious race should have mounted AT LEAST 5PDCs (my minimum, once I have the talisman, is 40% gross tonnage to defense -- shields, armor, PDC, and so on. At least 10%, possibly 10%, of gross tonnage to PDC.

REALLY cuts down on one's fear of fighters andmissiles, if you have dreads flying about with 5 to 10 PDC that will -always- hit, period. The PDC fire a group of 5 or so such dreads can put up is positively withering.

[edit] UBB error [/edit]

[ August 06, 2002, 19:00: Message edited by: Pax ]

[Pax]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
Why not ram with warheads?

The Armor parts have superior hp-per-kT compared to the warhead. So while damage will be lower per ramming ship, more of those ships will survive to actually RAM.

Organic armor is useul here especially, as it regenerates damage done to it, further preserving the ships to reach their target(s).