Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Hi,

After a couple of games using the talisman, the group I play with are having discussions about whether we should restrict the use of the talisman or not. We all started playing SE4 together at the same time more or less, so I was hoping to get some input from some of the more experience players out there.

Thanks in advance...

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Yes, the talisman is overpowered. However, it does not guarantee a win if you are playing with people who know about how overpowered it is. The "balancing factor" that has emerged amongst experienced players is to gang up against and wipe out anyone who chooses the Religious trait before they get the chance to weild the talisman effectively. So in a way, choosing religious can be more of a liability, which makes for a neat mechanic.

That said, I prefer to ban it in the games I play in. (along with Stellar Manipulation).

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Restricting its use is a good idea. Or using any of the mods that alter it...

But it does depend on the game...

If it is a small map with 8 players then it is not as much as a problem as it would be with a huge map.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Yep...it really does allow those APB's to hit an max range without missing, nor requiring any Combat Sensors, Training or Experience...

I should be better than Combat Sensors...but an automatic hit...is a bit much.

Kana

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Training and experience are still quite valuable, for those defense bonuses. You still want as much defense bonus as you can get, to minimize enemy hits against your ships.

I like the options of making it an enhanced combat sensor (around an extra 30% to hit, stacking with combat sensors) or making it a mount with no extra damage but a big bonus to hit (if you keep stock game mounts, which are bad to say the least).

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

If seekers or fighters were a viable late game option, it wouldn't be so bad. As it is in the late game you use direct fire, and don't gennerally get a high hit rate. That's what makes the Talisman so lethal.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Yes it's overpowered. The only potent counterbalance is the urgency to destroy religious empires before they can deploy it.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Interesting observation. Though, the way that comes to mind to make fighters viable in late game is to reduce PD accuracy and make fighters harder to hit with direct fire weapons. If Talisman still allowed 100% hits with DF weapons on fighters, they wouldn't be a counter to Talisman at all. You could reduce the types of DF weapons which can target fighters at all, but that would be more work to mod.

PvK

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Well it wasn't so much fighters as seekers, really. and you could make fighters viable in other ways- maybe only certain weapons could kill more than one fighter per hit. That way your Heavy Mount APBs with talisman wouldn't butcher fighters..

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Would be nice if you need normal mounts to be able to hit fighters with direct fire. After all, these heavy mounts are much to unwieldy to be able to hit small fast-moving targets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . Would give us a real choice how to equip a ship instead of "always use best mount available".

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Check out Adamant Mod if you want lots of choices on how to mount weapons.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How do you tell when someone has chosen "Religious"?

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Once you've met a race in-game, you can click on their flag at the top left of one of their units or on the empire picture in the diplomacy screen, and one of the tabs lists what starting options that race has, eg advanced storage, religious, etc.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How do you tell when someone has chosen "Religious"? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The game is too simple in certain ways. One of them is that it tells you exactly what racial traits a given empire has as soon as you meet them. Stupid.

I hope things like this will be fixed in SE 5.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Could you mod all the Advanced Traits so they have the same name, like "Secret Advanced Trait", so that when you meet an empire, you only know how many advanced traits they have, but not what they are? Or do duplicate names cause an error?

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If they do, you can just add a differing number of spaces to the end.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

I think spaces at the end would show up, so you would want enough spaces to go past the 3rd line of display for the traits (which is only half a line, but you can still figure out what the traits are from the top halves of the names) for EVERY trait, then a random character after those spaces, as it will never be shown in-game.

The problem is that when you meet a race, most of their traits would be painfully obvious. How do you hide the fact that you use organic stuff on your ships? Or crystalline? Or the fact that you are deeply religious (your entire demeanor would give it away)? Some traits could be hidden, but most would be obvious, especially if you ever get to scan or visit a planet of theirs...

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It might be obvious that a race is religious, but that doesn't guarantee (or even imply) that they have the technology to never miss. Of course in SE4, there's only one type of "religious".

I supose as a mod idea, you could split the racial techs up and have one "religious" that gives you the talisman, and "religious " that gives you the facilities, etc. Maybe also have a "religious " that gives you nothing and costs 0 points.

EDIT: Hey, I've been promoted! Better watch out, Fyron. I'm catching up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ May 05, 2004, 19:13: Message edited by: Spoo ]

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not if you play Adamant Mod, where there are 7 types. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Way ahead of you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Psychic is also split into numerous subtraits.

[ May 05, 2004, 19:12: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Such a fast reply! I didn't even have a chance to edit!

Looks like I should finally try out Adamant. One day I'll have free time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

I didn't have a whole lot to type. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

But getting back to the discussion at hand... it would indeed be good if you had an optional field in RacialTraits.txt that was "Hidden Trait := TRUE" which would hide the trait from being displayed to other races. I would not like to see all traits forcibly hidden, even with a global setting in Settings.txt. More choices are always good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Or have it selectable at game setup.

Religious_________2000 pts.
Hidden Religious__3000 pts.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think that's the point he was trying to make -- it would be "better" if you could only discover these traits through interaction. (I put "better" in quotes because I'm not sure I agree... but it does make for an interesting twist). And your "painfully obvious" examples carry a few assumptions, I think, that don't necessarily apply to any given game...

edit: spellink

[ May 05, 2004, 20:10: Message edited by: spoon ]

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, good idea. Post it in the SE5 wishlist thread!

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

That item has been sent to MM.. On the level of what you can see on initial contact... I believe that you will know nothing... And the options to show what can and cannot be seen will be shown. Such as Ship names , planet names, Ship classes , Race descriptions and traits.

Now I would love it if everything was named differently for each race... And that as one race updates their names etc... They can only see it... For Systems, Planets , Ships..

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How so? It is very hard to hide the fact that your ships use organic technology, or crystalline. It is hard to miss someone from a deeply religious race if you converse with them... just talking with them yields all the clues you need... "deeply religious" does not mean "is religious", it means "is very religious, religion deeply permeates all aspects of their lives". Or it could be "deeply spiritual", which would have a similar affect...

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

1) Seeing a ship across the system does not mean (necesarrily) that you can scan it for it's makeup.

2) I could be Deeply Religious, but fear persecution (which, funny enough, is what would happen in a game against experienced players), so I keep quiet about it.

3) I could be Deeply Religious, and part of my religion is to not talk to outsiders. You wouldn't know if I was religious, xenophobic, crazy, or what.

Your reasoning just seemed a little steeped in role-playing, which is fine and all, but not something which should necessarily apply to SE4.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Roleplaying should most certainly apply to SE... this isn't chess here.

And anyways... this is why I suggested a field for every racial trait, so you can mod it however you would like...

[ May 05, 2004, 23:28: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

Well, at least some of the racial traits aren't obvious. For example, "ancient race" or "lucky". It would be nice to be able to hide those traits.

Re: Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?
 

It would be nice to have an option to turn off these sorts of details of other races in the game setup screen as well.