PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Ok, the results of the first poll demonstrated this is an issue that generates a lot of opinions, but was inconclusive as far as what to do about it. In an attempt to reach a consensus that we can go to Malfador with, I am doing a follow-up poll. I have dropped the two lowest vote getting options frm the first poll, and split the two change sugestions to get a feel for how strongly people think a change needs to be made.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I believe that if the ROF is reduced (and hence the overall power), that shield generator changes should be made as well, but I realize it will be hard on the AI.

I won't be using the unmodded Version much, so I suppose it dosen't matter.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I believe that a simply poll: "Is the PPB unbalanced and should the fixed? With the options Yes or Not would have been a best poll...
The options that you wrote here, doesn't include all the proposed...

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Again, the problem with that as the options is that a person could believe that a certain change should be made, but not agree that any change is better than no change. You would have the same inconclusive answer that we did from the first poll.

And yes I dropped the options that got the least support form the original poll. I felt it better to limit the choices so as not to dilute the strength of the results. If someone would have preferd one of those choices, but would not support one of these five choices, then that would be an example of a person that does not believe any change is better than no change. Which is the very reason for the second poll, to find out how many of those people are out there.

Geoschmo

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Ok Geo.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

My 2000000 cents worth.

I voted, again, to do nada. I didn't do this not because I love ppb or in someway think the weapon is perfectly balanced. I have always felt that ALL the weapons need to be reviewed and rebalanced. I have, in fact, tried to do this several times myself, but I have always been entirely dissatisfied with my end product.

I have also read the Posts and debates here on what should be changed and why in the component or component enhancement files. The debates are endless and opinions unlimited, even though they make some interesting reading and have resulted in some useful changes. So, what's the problem?

I think the Mod community needs to review and rethink just what it is that MM has given us, what they have not given us, what we can do with what we have, and what we could do if they would give us other things.

So, what do I think we have? We have a computer conflict simulator that allows for a fair amount of user value tweaking that came with a strategic space conquest sample scenario and an artificial opponent.

Surprise! And most of us thought we were buying a cool space game! LOL! Well, we were, or at least, most of us I guess, and it is a pretty good game at that, but many of us still remain dissatisfied with the limitations of the prepackaged scerio, thus we Mod and thank MM for allowing us to change so many factors impacting on game play.

What has MM not given us. LOL! I am sure this list is pretty long, however I'll keep it short (yeah, sure, prolly impossible), and focussed on the two files, (components and component enhancements ), I started to discuss, and sum it up as: They have not given us much control over resource usage or resource expenditure, nor "combat" results, nor component enhancements.

For example:
Resource usage: We can moddify how much something costs, but if you go and build it at either a planet or a spaceyard any remaining capacity there is lost rather then applied to the next item in the que.

Resource expenditure: We can set the global maintenence percentage of intial cost for ships, but not units nor facilities nor the maintenence costs for 'individual' components.

Combat results: We can modify weapon range, power, chance to hit, to some degree, what things weapon will effect and what effect it will have on the target. However, we can not randomize damage, it is always a set amount at a given range.

Component enhancements: These make it easy to modify the costs, ranges of effect, chance to hit, and power of certain classes of weapons. They do not provide the same utility for other classes of components.

Now, what can we do with what we have?
Quite a lot actually. Much has been to improve the AI behavior with the given prepackaged set of ships and components. This effort has been very succesfull. Also, vast amounts of high quality user created artwork, ( shipsets, components, planets), have been made available. Additionally, some alternative sound effects(TampaGs) can be found in the Modpak forum. I don't think there is anyone who thinks this stuff sucks.

We also have numerous example of component file and or component enhancement file mods usually including changes in the tech area and vehicle sizes files. These, regardless of vast effort on the part of their authors, are not nearly as successful as the other types of mods.
Why is this so?
Speaking personally, I suppose, at first glance, and maybe second and third too, it looks easy and, after all, the game does allow us change things fairly easily. So what are usually the first things I do? I tweak a weapon I think sucks, then another looks useless or too powerful. So I 'fix' it. Then I go add a component or extend a component line. I am not happy with the costs of certain things. I change them. Then other costs need to be 'balanced'. I work on that. I wish I had more ship types and bigger ships. I add some ... and on, and on it goes. In the end, I get frustrated and scrap the whole idea. So now, like many of you I think, I sit waiting for someone else to do it right. Devnul, Derek maybe, Pvk, someone else ...who knows!?

Something's wrong. We are hitting around the mark, but still missing it. So I think we have to look at the fundamentals of the simulator we are dealing with and ignore the 'noise' generated by the things we have.

Fundamentals( according to me)
1. Space, tonnage capacity on ships, planets, as well as units. It is a FIXED finite value underpinning all else in the game.

For ships, your maximum, is the KT of you largest hull times the maximum number of ships permitted.
You can control this amount between #KT x 1 to #KT x 20000.

For planets, your maximum, (unless you use the same quadrant over and over), varies from game to game but will be the total of all the planets capacities plus any planets you can make. You can control these values in the planet data and the settings files.

For units, there are two types, units on planets and units in space. The maximum space of the units on planets equals the maximum storage space on the planets. The maximum KT capacity of units in space is probobly, 20000 x (largest unit KT). This could be, interestly, as much space as Ships. You can control the capacity value in vehicle size file and their maximum numbers either in the game setup selections for units in space or the planet data file by messing with the planet storage capacities.

2. Stuff(money, labor?)=Resources
It looks like you have three types. Well, build a converter. There is only one. Making sure you have sufficent stocks of the 3 STUFF subcatagories is a minor and annoying inconvenience. (I wonder at the point really. Oh well, leave this for the things we want section.)
Stuff is unlimited(without limited resources set to true). You use it to make and maintain ship space and build unit and facility space. It has only one other use. If you give enough to an AI it might do something you want.(Pretty neat that. Giving something, in unlimited supply, to someone(something) that also has an unlimited supply of it to get'm to do something!) It appears you can control, to some degree gross, the amount of stuff, in the setting file or during game set up by turning on limited resources. Other than that I am not aware of any real control on its availability.

3. Time: Time has value. It is a multiplier. All other things being equal. A weapon that can shoot twice as fast or often as another is twice as good. The same logic applies to movement per turn etc. We can control the time factor with the ROF and movement setting in the component file.

4. The derivative Products: There are three; research points, intell points, and supplies. What to say about these?

Research and Intel are generated endlessly and automatically at no cost after the initial investment in space, stuff, and time to build them. This kinda sux(I think), but since they are only semi-controlable in the facility file and I'm focusing on the component and enhancement files it's beyond the scope of this rant.

Supplies: Well, they seem to be important. It looks like ships can't move or use their weapons without them, however, you can turn this off by setting supplies used to zero in the component files. It looks like we can control them; but I think this may be a mirage.

They are generated endlessly in unlimited quantities at no cost at planets with a resource 'maker' facity. Bases also have an unlimited suppy, for some strange reason, and there is also a component ability that generates them endlessly; the notorious 'quantum' factor. On top of this, many units don't need/use them nor do facilities.

Ok, what good are they then other then to bust your chops by making you think about their specific local availability and a generating 'thing-a-ma-bob'?

Actually, they might be rather useful, even though we have little control over their creation or generation, we can use them for some cool things. First off, we can control, at least for components, how many units of supply a component uses when it does something. Since a ship's supply capacity is controlable and component supply usage is under our control, we have rather significant tools here.

The only major monkey wrench is the 'quantum' factor. I recommend not using it, as to do so gives you LESS control. Here's an example why.
While I haven't seen any Modder post something like this yet, consider the following:

There is no quantum reactor. You have to get your supplies for your ships at bases or planets. You mod some weapons to use 10,000 suplies to fire. It is now a base only or planet only weapon, regardless of size, unless the ship has a really big supply capacity.

To sum up, supplies are magically generated at certain locations in the game, yet we can control how many are used by ships. This allows us to limit some things ships can do. That translates to control, unless we toss the tool away by giving them cheap, light, quantum reactors, lol!

Ack!!! I'm running out of time again. I'm going to move this to a seperate thread. It's wasting your space/time here.
***********************************************
MOVED TO SEPERATE Thread. See "Blah blah blah"
for the finished blab.
************************************************

[ June 06, 2002, 13:12: Message edited by: Tenryu ]

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Tenryu,

I like where you are going with this. I am looking forward to your continuation.

This is pretty much where I am as far as making suggestions to Malfador lately. I am leaning less towards specific changes like weapon damage and research costs, stuff that we can already mod ourselves, and more towards adding abilities and control over stuff that is currently hardcoded and we have no or limited control over.

Not to get into an argument about the Ionic weapons, but merely as an example of this point, I was one of the ones that suggested the change to Ionic wepons to remove their shield/armor skipping ability. But my suggestion was made in combination with other suggested changes that would have given us the capability of giving weapons multiple damage types. Thus if someone wanted Ionic wepons to still skip all shields and armor and damage only engines it could be modded back in. Unfortunatly, Malfador only did the one and not the other. It's possible he may do the other eventually. It does seem to be the more complex of the two, so it would stand to reason it would take more work to do. But I don't know.

Geoschmo

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Note that you can create more planet space than you realize: given the proper mod files, you can manufacture planets out of nothingness, using a star as a catalyst. (Required object, but not used up in the process)

The memory limitations before RCEs occur are unknown at the moment.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">( Quick note, I am still at work, can't do much without getting pestered by some bugger or another.)

That is exactly where I am going. I even have an idea that might move it along. But it needs more (LONG) explaining before I drop it on ya'll. But it just might work, in any case, the discussion might put some things in their proper perspective.

I will continue this blab later tonight if my brain still semiworks then.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Thanks.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I'll try and finish or at least continue my bla-blah in the morning, geoschmo. I'm too tired tonight. I am, BTW, sorry for sort of Hi-jacking your post. I didn't think I'd spew so much.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Hey, you have to be a moderator to post a poll. I'm bummed. Do I have to pass Shrapnel's security clearance to be promoted to moderator? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Ah, well. All I wanted to do was post a 'joke' poll abouit polls anyway.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

What? When did that happen? Did you try and create a poll in this thread? If so, I think that you can only post polls in new threads.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I voted for a change, however, if we make PPBs weaker, then some other weapon will emerge as the weapon of choice. Probably Null Space, Rippers, or APBs. At least rippers have shorter range to make up for the rate of fire of 1 and the best Damage per KT rating apart from racial weapons.

A Rate of Fire of 2 will make PPBs obsolete when phased shields come out as Rippers would be vastly better. Higher research will delay their entry, allowing people to get to Phased Shields perhaps before they are deployed. PPBs are decent even against Phased Shields when you look at the Range and Damage per KT ratio.

I would like to see some of the lame weapons improved. Hellbores look at first to do great damage at close range, until you divide by the KTs it takes to mount these. I tend to look at two numbers primarily in analyzing weapons: Damage/KT and Damage/KT/ROF.

The reason I like to look at Damage/KT and Damage/KT/ROF is that once you reach the ship limit, cost of the weapon becomes trivial. If you cannot reach the ship limit with contender resource, then cost is not trival. I tend to play in games with ship limits. Sometimes ROF is not as big a factor as it might seem because first fire is a big deal. I like to look at both numbers and pick a weapon that does well in both categories. Short range can cost you first fire, which lose the battle.

PPBs do well in Damage/KT and Damage/KT/ROF contests. I consider their value to be about 1.5 to 2.0 times their damage ratio while Phased Shields are absent from the battlefield. I consider Null Space to be equal to twice their damage ratio since they skip armor and all shield types.

If your enemy has difficulty hitting you, then first fire becomes less important than average damage per round per kiloton. You are probably using smaller ships and hoping to get several rounds of shots off.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I belive i've voted for the 2nd option but i will agree with you on that. Increasing research cost/lenght might do the trick, and minor damage reduction (65 -&gt; 50 to 50-&gt;35 would make the weapon almost perfect in balancing, i think)

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I tried on the main screen, and it says you have to be a moderator to use that function.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Imperator made a poll after you asked that question, and he is not a moderator. Not sure why it wouldn't let you.

Geoschmo

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

hey geo where did you get the eye. I like it.

And would love to have something like it.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, it was just a short impulse I had to make fun of polls. The old forums at the 'SE IV Center' were pretty much ruined by polls and I had an urge to make a sarcastic poll about the spam created by user polls in message Boards.

Let's hope it doesn't get out of hand here.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Back to the balance issue. If the PPB is overpowered, it is by not very much. I agree with LGM that too big a change will make it as obsolete as Last year's tax form. I do like the idea of randomizing damage (as a percentage of max damage). I do believe this tends to "balance" weaponry.

But I've often wondered why the PPB my scientists invent is IDENTICAL to the one the Krill's scientists invent. Consider this: My scientists are dough heads in this department. The standard gun weighs in at 40 kt. and is not very efficient delivering a blow only 60% of the norm. The Krill hit their Version dead on the nail. Only 25 kt firing at 140% of standard values!
Not to worry, my newly invented Null-Space Projector though of average size delivers a blow 1.5 times the expected norm!

I would love this sort of randomization. Nothing is certain, but balance would only be affected in the short term and would even out in the long. Sure, you would occasionally get creamed when you invent three consecutive lousy weapons, but who said life, or SEIV, was fair? As it stands now, I know EXACTLY what I'm going to get when I research something. Even in real life this would be boring.

Limits would be required for this to work well. If you go too far, all weapons become identical and only the randomization matters. Keep the number of variables small and the range reasonable.

In the end we may find our own treasured weapons of choice may not be the best ones after all when we are forced to use different ones.

Kim

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm... I think it's time to make my favorite observation about the SE tech system again.

D'ya ever notice how techs in SE always start at a given size and stay at that size but become more powerful (more range, more damage)? While techs in other games, like MOO, will stay at the given level of effectiveness (range, damage) and get smaller and/or cheaper? Have you ever considered the different effects that these different approaches have on game play?

If you know that a weapon you have just researched is going to get more powerful do you use it immediately at the level you have researched, or sit on it and keep researching to the next level? You have a pretty strong incentive to research to the end of the tree before using a weapon, don't you?

The reasons for this are pretty clear. Because the later generations of that weapon will have greater range and do more damage, so you'll just end up refitting the old ships with the newer weapons if you build now. If a weapon doesn't have enough range to match some other weapon your enemy is using until the third or fifth level or whatever, you're not going to benefit much from deploying it, are you? So it ends up being more like you are researching several new weapons rather than one, because the operational qualities of each level of that weapon are truly different.

In the MOO model, on the other hand, you know that the weapon will not become more powerful, except for special mods like heavy mount or whatnot becoming available. Well, at least we have mounts already in SE as soon as the weapon becomes available. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Anyway, a weapon system in MOO has a discrete level of ability and it doesn't change much. Your ability to build the system improves and it become smaller/cheaper.

I think that the MOO way of tech development makes more sense. It doesn't require you to cover many levels of a tech in order to get the weapon system to the level of ability that you need. I wonder if we couldn't solve a lot of SE IV's balance problems by revamping the entire tech tree to work more like the MOO system, with weapons immediately producing full damage and range but having high expense and large size. Then later levels could lead to miniaturization.

[ June 07, 2002, 04:16: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

"I wonder if we couldn't solve a lot of SE IV's balance problems"

No, it wouldn't. Not the PPB issue at least. (PPB is STILL almost as effective as the APB and much cheaper, plus skips normal shields)

Phoenix-D

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

The suggestion has merits and could make an interestng mod.

However, if the weapons shrunk by a meaningful amount, isn't the situation still about the same? A higher tech ship will have more of the same weapon, doing more damage, instead of the same number of weapons doing more damage. Refits to new technology would still be desirable, but would be more complicated, since the changing component sizes would make more room on the design.

Seems to me the larger problem is that the research costs are pretty small and jumps in component abilities are pretty large. In the standard data set, without High research costs, it's just too quick to develop high levels in most techs, and to get to "the end" of them. In my Proportions mod, the lower levels are used quite a bit, simply because "waiting to get the highest level" means years and years of dedicated (and often inefficient, compared to lower levels of other techs) research.

PvK

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I was thinking the other day, very dangerous, if a weapon always does, for example, 5 damage, if it hits at a certain range, and we can tweak the chance to hit, what if all weapons did only 1 damage and all components were only 1KT.

Yes, it is silly, but now instead of one 5 damage point weapon that either hits or misses, we have five 1 damage point weapons each of which may hit or miss and our real damage is going to be between 0 and 5 ! Some of us wanted something like this, so I guess we might say we sorta have it already.

Btw- Very interesting observation, Baron.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Baron, I guess I'd have to agree with Pvk here. What's the point? I think if SE4 had been set up that way to begin with, it would have been just fine. But I don't see why there is any advantage to switching to that kind of a system now. The end result would be the same kind of tech progression and retrofitting of ships just to newer smaller comps instead of newer strongewr comps. It wouldn't be any better or worse than the current system, just different.

Geo

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wow Cool idea! I always though it would be good to add a bit of randomness to research. A couple games I've played have tried it though not like this. I believe Moo2 you can have 'breakthroughs' and Alpha Centari can be set so you just research on of 4 general area and don't know what you will get.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Grandpakim: brilliant idea!

The randomness of research would realy benefit the game life expectancy. Should this option ever be implimented, it of course should be possible to turn it on/off. But it would add a realy new dimension to PBW.
Moreover Races Characteristics & Traits of the area could be added to control some of the randomization.

This wont, though, solve the PPB problem.

Miniaturization of weapons? No way!
You seem to misunderstand the real meaning of those "tech levels".
I dont remember MoO too well. I only remember there were plenty of weapons.
Have anyone played Pax Imperia? This game is a better example.

Still.
Both of those games (which are great) do not have "tech levels" for weapons. Instead they have twice or thrice the weapon types. Meaning?
SE has APB. If you want, consider APB to have all sorts of beams - beginning from simple laser cannon and ending with, say, Singularity Beam.
The idea is still the same - progressive weapons of the same type with increasing costs & power.
If you feel like it, a mod can be done to rename all the weapon tech levels to interesting and varied names. Still the idea is similar.
Also miniaturization of weapons would render smal vessels (smaller than BB i think) realy but realy obsolete. Why? What is the strenght of frigates against dreadnought? right! their small size. Dreadnought doesnt have so much weapons to just shoot them all in one turn - most likely most of the shots will be much over the frigate's defenses.
Another problemful dimension will be the multi-tracking. WIth miniaturized weapons this would become a real problem and five-targets-at-once will be not enough. I am strongly against the model because it does cause too much problems.

And same, it could not possibly solve the PPB weapon. It doesnt matter how much - 30 of 4 or 3 of 40, they will most likely have the same power. Or even more - PPB when massed is much more powerful than most other weapons in the game.

We do not have any solution to the PPB. I feel we should just leave the topic. So bad, i realy dont like the overpowering of the weapon.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

DavidG, Taera thanks for the support and I like your additional ideas too, Taera.

Alas, though, we can't agree on everything. We will have to agree to disagree on PPB. I do not think they are overpowered. I will admit they "might" be slightly overpowered, but that's all. A very minor tweak indeed.

Face it, their usefulness as a shield skipper is quite limited. I've played games against the Gold AI and seen phased shields long before I even researched Physics 2, let alone PPB's. Their strength as an ordinary gun, though, is quite good, so that is the only area where a minor reduction might be accepted by me.

If you want overpowered, look at the Null-Space Projector. Costs the same as PPB and in fact is a cheaper at the highest level (only 3 levels compared to 5 for PPB). Is deadly powerful at even the first level and everytime it hits, it does serious damage to crucial components! It is least effective when hitting shield generators since it skips ALL shields (and armor as well) anyway. But even that has an up side: now your ordinary weapons can break through to the heart of the target ship that much quicker.

And what tech is the defense against it? Beats me. I haven't found one yet. Your only recourse is battle tactics.

That it only fires every third round, I have found to be an advantage in simultaneous games. Your ships fire then skitter out of the way and let more ordinarily armed ships take the heat. When recharged they move in to deliver another devastating bLast. At the end of a successful battle all Null-Space ships unharmed, four PPB ships destroyed. The numbers vary of course, but that is a common scenario in my battles.

I don't know why I'm spewing all this, I don't want this weapon changed either. I love it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Now how about something underpowered? Shield Regenerators. Either these things have to give a lot more bang for the kiloton or have a lot fewer kilotons. It takes 12 top level regenerators to recharge ONE shield 5 in one turn. In that same space you could put 6 more shield generator 5's -- 1800 shield points! Is there any question which component I'm going to choose? Before we work on the small imbalance with PPB's lets work on this one, please.

Kim

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Re: Shield regenerators.

I would like them to be strengthened, but also know this:

If your ship can be expected to survive for 7 rounds after it is first hit, then adding shield regenerators is more effective than adding more shields...

Now, in large fleet battles, seven turns is an eternity.
In one-on-one combat, seven turns is reasonable.

If you have lots of racial bonuses for defense, and maxxed out ECM, experience, are fighting in a sensor-disrupting storm, etc, you can get amazing survival times.

If you are playing with tactical combat, seven turns is easy to achieve, especially with fleets.
(Anyone who gets hit retreats for a bit, then comes back once they're charged up)

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

Yeah, I'd be careful with shield regen. You have to always consider the 'worst case' possilbities with things like that. If someone crammed 20 regenerators into a battleship you might have an indestructible ship. Not much fire power... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif but indestrucible without special weapons.

I wonder if anyone has managed to build 'chaff' ships like htis that the AI will attack in preference to more heavily armed ships? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Null-space projector is by no means a "special" weapon. Shield depletors are not bad either.
Then there are weapon-damaging and engine-damagine weapons.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

With the enforcement of supply in the gold Version, Engine killers are bit more attractive. Rippers have a nice Damge/KT of Space ratio. Null Space are unstopable. It is hard to survive the first salvo from an equal sized ship that hits most of the time. Null Space with a Talisman is very deadly. There is no defense against a Null Space Talisman. Probably the best you can do is to find a way to fire first (hard to do when attacking out of a worm hole).

Personally, I would like to see Null Space skip armor, but not shields (like the Crystalline weapons). That way, a balanced defense would be required.

Weapon Techs should be 50K research base, not 5K. You spend 155K to get Null Space I and then it costs you only about 35K more to get the level III variety.

Because of the Null Space and Phased Polarian beams, defense modifiers are critical in the game. If you are fighting a Religious race, you better wipe them out before they get the Talisman. I am playing a high defense, religous race in a game right now. It is a very deadly combination.

I am thinking of removing the Talisman in the next game I host, because I will have to pick Deeply Religious otherwise.

Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
 

I think that's why MM's original design for the Norak used the Meson BLaster instead of the APB or some other longer ranged weapon. The shorter range of the MB reduces the advantage from the Talisman, although the greater size/damage ratio of the MB makes it pretty powerful within its range. But TDM and some other mods have changed them to use PPB instead! Same range but it skips normal shields. Now that's one nasty attack. With the MB Version at least you had shields to protect you from the guaranteed hits for a while.

It sounds like the best counter to a Religious tech race might be a missile strategy right now. Missile dance at max range and the Talisman is useless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Unless the Norak use lots of PDC, but then they aren't getting near as much of the advantage from the Talisman. Sure, your PDC hit incoming missiles all the time, but PDC won't do diddly against dreadnoughts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I wonder if a combined arms strategy is possible yet? If you could just work out how to get two different fleets, one of missile ships and one of beam ships, to work together in 'strategic' combat mode you could defeat nearly any of the stock AI empires. Heh, but if it worked for you, it would work for them and you'd be back at square one.