How do you beat the Talisman?

[Baron Munchausen]

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.

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

The reason they would go for the kill is that the strategy they are using tells them to go for the kill. We really need more experimentation with strategies to see what can be done with the options we already have. I bet that creating a special satellite strategy to only damage ships 50 percent would increase the number of targets that a satellite stack would allocate. The question is, would it then stupidly NOT use a large part of its weapons when only one or two ships appeared?

[Lord_Shleepy]

*peeks head out from underneath blankies

...lots of small expendable ships. overwhelm targeting but not point defense vulnerable... tho thinking of building all the reinforcements makes me shleepy...

*ducks back under covers

[Baron Munchausen]

I've been thinking of modding a small, one-shot-per-turn seeker. Something like the Ur-Quan 'flying mine' from Star Control. They would be individually lower damage to reflect the higher rate of fire, of course. But the sheer mass of flying metal could be a real problem for even PDC-heavy ships. I bet ships armed with a huge number of these would pose a problem even for a talisman equipped fleet.

[ August 06, 2002, 20:16: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Since tailsman races will tend to go heavily defensive on their ship designs to get full use of their never miss advantage, that is where you have to attack them. As LGM says you can go as large as you want on ship size, and take out the stealth/scattering armor and ECM. They are useless and it fress up more space for weapons. Tailsman is rather large, and he will have all those defensive techs likely so that makes the weapon differential even larger. Then dedicate a large portion of your fleet to shield depleting and weapon only weapons. The key is to get rid of his weapons as quickly as possible during the fight. A ship with a tailsman and no weapons can't hurt you.

Other than that you beat them the same way you beat anybody else. Hit his planets where he isn't, take them if possible, glass them if not. Interfere with his relations. Get the other races allied agastin him, or at least not trading with him. Explain to them how hard tailsmans are to beat and they may see it's in their advantage to attack before they get too big. Tailsman ships are expensive. The Tailsman and all the shields add up quick. Beat him economically.

If players that use Tailsman start getting teamed up on regularly and put out early they will have less of an incentive to use them.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Lord_Shleepy:
*peeks head out from underneath blankies

...lots of small expendable ships. overwhelm targeting but not point defense vulnerable... tho thinking of building all the reinforcements makes me shleepy...

*ducks back under covers

This is possible, but it takes a LOT of ships. The biggest advatage using swarms of small ships is that the difficulty in hitting them makes up for how easily they go poof when hit. Against a Tailsman fleet you lose this advantage. It's better to go with fewer larger ships that can hold up to the damage longer, since their defensive disadvantage is irrelevant anyway. In the end you will land more shots against him for the same amount of resources.

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

"Why not ram with warheads?"

As has been said, armor protects you on the way in. Warheads don't. Actually warheads have a fairly low damage resistance and are big, so you might get a better ramming potential without them too.

Phoenix-D

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
I've been thinking of modding a small, one-shot-per-turn seeker. Something like the Ur-Quan 'flying mine' from Star Control. They would be individually lower damage to reflect the higher rate of fire, of course. But the sheer mass of flying metal could be a real problem for even PDC-heavy ships. I bet ships armed with a huge number of these would pose a problem even for a talisman equipped fleet.

That might be a good idea. Make them one third the damage of the regular missles?

Another way to go woould be external rack mounted missles, or single shot missle tubes. A CSM tube that fires once during combat, and only takes up one fifth the space of a regular CSM launcher. The total number of missles launced during combat would be the same, but they would all be launched at once. That could give PDC problems as well.

We are thinking of modding the Tailsman for the next History game to give it multiple levels, where you don't get the never miss tailsman till later. Early tailsman would only give high to hit bonuses instead of never missing.

Geoschmo

[Trajan]

Gentlemen,

The DevNull Mod uses external missle pods, which fire once, and take up, I think, 10kt of space.

Cheers!
Trajan

[Phoenix-D]

Proportions has the Light Missile System, which fires once per round and does roughly a third of CSM damage. Interesting component, even though it IS kind of annoying to upgrade (it gets smaller as it gets more advanced)

Phoenix-D

[Puke]

hmm, i have a slight rant on the external missile business.

the KT mass of components is not a reflection of their displacement and the space they take up inside a hull. whither they are internal or external means diddley-squat to their KT mass. engines can only move so much mass through space, no matter where its bolted on.

external missiles might be cheaper or smaller because they dont have the same ammo magazines attached to them, but they should not MASS less because they are attached to the outside. if anything, they should have the 'this component hit first' ability just like armor does, to reflect the fact that they are bolted on the outside and are unprotected.

just keep in mind that [mass != displacement]. thank you, and i now return you to your regularly scheduled thread..