Cursed Talisman

[Roanon]

Originally posted by primitive:
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.

Which means, nobody will put the depleters on their ships as they do not think anybody will use the weak shields. Which makes shields strong...
It all depends. That's why this game is still not boring for me, even with its obvious balance flaws which totally eliminate many of its possible choices / features.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by 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!"

Yep, thats what prompted my post.

It breaks the game, especially in large PBW games. The only challenge for the talisman wielder is can I Last 50 turns - then it is slaughter time.

[Fyron]

I never fail to put shield depleters on my ships when I have them, and I never see good players fail to place them on their ships... they are very small on a battle cruiser or a battleship. It is just like PDC... including 1 or 2 doesn't substantially weaken your ships if you don't have targets for them, but not having them screws you over...

[ June 14, 2004, 00:16: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Atrocities]

The best way to beat him is to be like him. When setting up a game choose religious tech and max out your aggressive and defensive characteristics, or ban religious technology all together from the game.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by 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.

I was thinking that organic might be a way of fighting the cursed talisman, as it lets you get the 3 to 1 ratio of ships needed. Thoughts? Experiences?

[ June 14, 2004, 04:04: Message edited by: Joachim ]

[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 ]