Religious Talisman - unbalancing or not?

[UseOfWeps]

Hi,

After a couple of games using the talisman, the group I play with are having discussions about whether we should restrict the use of the talisman or not. We all started playing SE4 together at the same time more or less, so I was hoping to get some input from some of the more experience players out there.

Thanks in advance...

[spoon]

Yes, the talisman is overpowered. However, it does not guarantee a win if you are playing with people who know about how overpowered it is. The "balancing factor" that has emerged amongst experienced players is to gang up against and wipe out anyone who chooses the Religious trait before they get the chance to weild the talisman effectively. So in a way, choosing religious can be more of a liability, which makes for a neat mechanic.

That said, I prefer to ban it in the games I play in. (along with Stellar Manipulation).

[tesco samoa]

Restricting its use is a good idea. Or using any of the mods that alter it...

But it does depend on the game...

If it is a small map with 8 players then it is not as much as a problem as it would be with a huge map.

[Kana]

Yep...it really does allow those APB's to hit an max range without missing, nor requiring any Combat Sensors, Training or Experience...

I should be better than Combat Sensors...but an automatic hit...is a bit much.

Kana

[Fyron]

Training and experience are still quite valuable, for those defense bonuses. You still want as much defense bonus as you can get, to minimize enemy hits against your ships.

I like the options of making it an enhanced combat sensor (around an extra 30% to hit, stacking with combat sensors) or making it a mount with no extra damage but a big bonus to hit (if you keep stock game mounts, which are bad to say the least).

[Phoenix-D]

If seekers or fighters were a viable late game option, it wouldn't be so bad. As it is in the late game you use direct fire, and don't gennerally get a high hit rate. That's what makes the Talisman so lethal.

[PvK]

Yes it's overpowered. The only potent counterbalance is the urgency to destroy religious empires before they can deploy it.

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
If seekers or fighters were a viable late game option, it wouldn't be so bad. As it is in the late game you use direct fire, and don't gennerally get a high hit rate. That's what makes the Talisman so lethal.

Interesting observation. Though, the way that comes to mind to make fighters viable in late game is to reduce PD accuracy and make fighters harder to hit with direct fire weapons. If Talisman still allowed 100% hits with DF weapons on fighters, they wouldn't be a counter to Talisman at all. You could reduce the types of DF weapons which can target fighters at all, but that would be more work to mod.

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

Well it wasn't so much fighters as seekers, really. and you could make fighters viable in other ways- maybe only certain weapons could kill more than one fighter per hit. That way your Heavy Mount APBs with talisman wouldn't butcher fighters..

[Roanon]

Would be nice if you need normal mounts to be able to hit fighters with direct fire. After all, these heavy mounts are much to unwieldy to be able to hit small fast-moving targets . Would give us a real choice how to equip a ship instead of "always use best mount available".

[Fyron]

Check out Adamant Mod if you want lots of choices on how to mount weapons.