It may have an influence indeed; fleet experience improves both your defence and your offence, which means that your ships were much more ready to fight without the Talisman than the enemy. It probably hadn't much of an influence though, especially if most ships were heavily armoured/shielded. The same reasoning would go true if some ships in the battle didn't have the Talisman (either due to a peculiar ship design or because of previous damage/retrofitting). However, save for this, two Talisman ships aren't influenced by fleet and ship experience when fighting, until said Talismans are destroyed.
However, the main factors were probably ship design and luck. Since you were in open space, who fired first was an open question, and I guess your fleet delivered first blow. Depending on the designs involved in the battle, it may have been very important; or not so, if you haven't been so lucky and only managed to do marginal damage in this first round. Given the end result, I gather luck was on your side for this battle.
Re: strategy & tactics
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