does religious *need* the talisman?

[PvK]

There has got to be a rule against what?

Unmodded Talisman is 50kT but makes combat sensors redundant (10kT). 40kT less space is not much of a disadvantage in a BC or BB, compared to guaranteed hits. They are very powerful, and IMO only balanced by preemptive/gang strikes from human players.

I don't know if it's actually possible to mod a "death talisman" component, although it could be a mount.

A "war talisman" would I suppose just be a weaker Version of an always-hitting talisman. Personally, I like what I did in Proportions, which was to have talismans start out offering small but unique (and therefore, quite important) bonuses, which increase with further research but also start to get big and expensive, and finally after a really huge amount of research (especially in Proportions where research doesn't multiply linearly with number of colonies), an all-hitting talisman, and after even more research, a more efficient one.

PvK