does religious *need* the talisman?

[Baron Munchausen]

Tsaarx: The Temporal Tech field has the 'Events Predictor' which gives attack/defense bonuses but not damage bonuses.

The Talisman debate seems to kick up again every so often. How about making the Talisman have balancing DIS-advantages like a major defense penalty? Say it gives off a lot of radiation and makes your ship easier to track, for example. Also, give it the Armor ability, since it seems logical that it would have to be 'outside' the ship to work. This makes it easier to destroy with normal weapons, although this also makes it immune to armor-skipping weapons.

We've discussed it in the beta forums and there are several options on the table for reducing its power.

First, you could simple make it work only every X combat rounds instead of continuously. If it works only every the 2nd round or every 3rd round then it's going to be far less unbalancing.

Another option is to give it a strictly limited number of 'charges' to be used in one combat engagement. You should have to click a button somewhere to 'use Talisman' and then your shots for that round would be 100 percent accurate but one charge would be used. Set the limit at maybe 5 and it would be much less powerful. Having to click the button for many ships in a combat would be a pain in the butt, of course, and the AI would have yet another complicated factor to manage.

Finally, you could make it work only with a specific weapon, a special weapon which would be included in the Religious tech. This weapon would be less powerful than standard weapons or have some other disadvantage.

[ January 07, 2003, 16:01: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]