[primitive]

Originally posted by Roanon:
Could you explain why, Primitive? I have considered the crystal technology to be a *very* weak one - I normally do not use extensive armor, preferring shields, so their main advantage is gone. Or even a disadvantage, as my ships retain that 30% defeinsive bonus from scattering/stealth armor which otherwise is destroyed first. The weapons itself are laughable apart from that questionable armor-skipping feature, standard weapons are better.
The crystalline armor is nice, though I am not sure how strong its features are exactly. Still, I doubt it is worth more than a 100% guaranteed hit.

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.

As Fyron says; putting loads of Crystalline Armor on ships make them able to take huge amounts of punishment, offsetting the advantage of the Talisman (Just remember to include enough shielddepleters and set your strategy to point-blank and targeting to Has weapons-Nearest-Something).

I'm not claiming that Crystalline is a better racial choice than Religious. The facilities and weapons are rather useless (except for the maintanance reducing facility), but the Crystalline Armor rules the skies when shipsizes get larger.