How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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?

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

Why not ram with warheads?

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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.

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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 ]

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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 ]

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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).

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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?

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

*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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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 ]

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

"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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

Gentlemen,

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

Cheers!
Trajan

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

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..

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Help!!!! It's the Atheists Union!!!! Next, we'll have the Religious Races Guild. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

"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 they're just bolted on the outside, they can indeed be much lighter. Missile + hookup to ship, that's IT, where the standard thing would be missle +internal space + hookups +launcher + magazine/reloads + reload mechanism.

Phoenix-D

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

You are correct Puke. But as far as I know all the mods that have "external mount" missiles do fire one shot per combat round and the absence of any magazine or reload mechanism is the justication of the reduced size. Not the fact that they are externally mounted. I could be wrong, but I don't believe anyone was making the case that external mounting itself means the comp would take up less displacment.

Geoschmo

EDIT: Oops. I guess Phoenix is making that case. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ August 06, 2002, 23:03: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

"EDIT: Oops. I guess Phoenix is making that case."

Uh-uh. Look at my comparison a little closer. (I've never seen a non one-shot external missile in SE4, either)

Phoenix-D

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Expect it from me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I've already drafted preliminary plans to do something similar; not sure it'll be external, but it'll be single-shot regardless.

Might be a fighter weapon, so technically it WOULD be external (mounted under a wing or the like).

Might actually be an external SHIP missile.

Might be no lighter, but do compatratively trememndous damage (picture taking the mass of a CSMV, with magazine, reload mechanism, launch system, tc ... packing it ALL into a single, half-as-big-as-an-escort missile ... LOL ...). Sort of the reverse of flooding the target's PDC; one gigantic easy-to-hit heavily-armored godawfully-huge-warhead missile. Think of it being, oh, say ... ~250kT, having perhaps 20x the damage resistance and damage potential of a CSM of comparable technology, slow as molasses, ultra-long-range, and firing once per combat. Great against bases and planets,or bigger,slower ships, but smallfry could run circles around it (like, speed 2 to 3 ... range 20 to 30 ... 3000 to 5000 damage ... damage resistance of ~1000 or so ... heh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

hmm. while a one shot launcher can save mass by leaving out specific components, one shot and external do not always go together. indeed, the only thing external should mean is that its not protected by armor.

by taking a significant part of the ships displacement and bolting it outside of the armor, you should be able to get better coverage with your existing armor for the rest of the ship. i dont think there is any way to modle this though, so external missiles really mean nothing in this game.

if you are using 'external' to be synomous with 'one shot,' then the component designs make some sense, but it could be a bit clearer, i think.

i guess im just nit-picking.

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

If it would be possible to assign "armor" ability to externally mount missiles, it will work exactly as you want - it will be destroyed before internals and even absorb some damage in the process (assigned armor ability should be small of course).

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

By all means CW if you have a one shot weapon that will fit on a small ship and take out an enemy with that one shot regardless of size, armor, or shields, then small is definetly a good way to go with that. But beyond the subverter there is no such weapon I am aware of, so for non Psychics larger is better when facing Tailsmans. And I wouldn't get too attached to that strategy. It's likely to get patched out in the future. It's a pretty cheese tactic. You shouldn't be able to capture a ship with a subverter because you destroyed the master computer. The ship doesn't spontaneously grow a crew when the computer is destroyed after all. The problem is that ships are immune to the subverter if they have a master computer. This is wrong, they should be immune to the subverter if they don't have a bridge/crew quarters/life support.

Puke, I think you are too married to the ship tonnage is displacment thing. If you simply view the ship sizes not as tonnage or mass, but as a measure of the size of components that they can contain, then external mounting using less of that space makes sense. In that case you would still take up some internal space as you need to have mounting equipment, hard points, etc. But they might not take up any more internal space than armor.

These ships function in a vacuum afterall. How do you displace vacuum? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

"By the way, fully filling up a hull is NOT a design requirement! You can always use the swarm tactic AND large/heavy mounts together. The base cost for a dreadnought is only 850 minerals more than an escort."

Don't forget the extra crew quarters/life support.

Phoenix-D

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unless ofc you'd use the Master Computer anyway, ofc.

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

Oh oh...I feel a physics joke coming on.....

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? (Spy Magazine, January 1990)

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of
living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only
Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million
according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)rate of 3.5
children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at
least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to
west(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This
is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has
1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney,
fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the
sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8
million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we
know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept),
we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2
million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least
once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh
is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses
space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional
reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds),
the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably
described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more
than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could
pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even
nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison
- this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short,
they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer
behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.The entire
reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa,
meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater
than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)would be
pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
dead now.

...........there are, of course many (eight that I know of) rebuttals to this theory.

Cheers!
Trajan

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

Gee Trajan, I've seen pictures of Queen Elizabeth and she doesn't look much over 140 pounds to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Geo

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I had the same thought when I read this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Cheers!
Trajan

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Whoever is showing disrespect to our Queenie is on extremely dangerous ground...

I have today made very good friends with a senior IRS bod in the states (called Stuart Gotobed I kid you not I havea business card to prove it)

Any colonial oik from American who shows the slightest disrespect to our Liz will be thouroughly investigated I can tell you....

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

(but Prince Charles jokes are thoroughly encouraged, chaps)

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">LOL. Gt, pulls your claws back in buddy. I meant no disrespect at all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you are using subverters against someone with talisman, it *IS* probably better to go small. AI targeting is flawed and even if you have the highest level of combat sensor, your ships won't shoot at 5 targets in one turn in simultaneous games. Build a whole bunch of light cruisers with a single virus pack and a large mount subverter each, tell them to deliver the "message" up close and personal is perhaps the best thing to do. The biggest resource wastage with small ships is that you have to build a lot more engines, so if you play with a newtonian propulsion mod the waste is a lot less significant.

By the way, fully filling up a hull is NOT a design requirement! You can always use the swarm tactic AND large/heavy mounts together. The base cost for a dreadnought is only 850 minerals more than an escort.

[ August 07, 2002, 13:12: Message edited by: CW ]

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

* double checking the thread title *
Phew, for a moment I thought I had miss-clicked and ended up in the Canttina.

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">actually, thats is exactly what i was arguing against. mass is the only important factor, so inside vs outside only effects what is or isnt protected by armor. i guess im petitioning to rename external mount missiles to 'single shot' missiles.

oh well. what was it that the Sex Pistols said about the Queen?

Re: How do you beat the Talisman?
 

"Right", camera pans left to Growltigga busily typing an email to his new chum Stuart "Feed me the ground flesh of taxpayers" Gotobed, doyenne of the IRS.

"Dear Stuart,
As discussed, I should be so grateful if you could organise for a full IRS audit to be carried out against the following individuals whi I know are obvious felons, procrastinators and tax-dodgers

G Perley of Dayton OH and a Mr L Puke of California

I do believe the death penalty is called for in both cases. In fact, I understand that the death penalty in Ohio is carried out by the condemned being played country and western music repeatedly until one's head explodes. In California, I understand that the prisoner is repeatedly poked in the genitalia with a surf board until death, in either case, please can I have ringside seats"