Guardians

M MoopsOP

OP 19/04/2012 · 01:16 AM #1

So those who know me will recall that I`m a die hard Guardian player. For those who don`t know me, I`m a die hard guardian player.

I am currently not playing as Guardian because the race has been ruined. I`m interested in seeing what people think of the race, and why its currently considered balanced.

Lets start with Guardian lore. Long story short, in a last ditch effort to prevent themselves for being wiped out by the Marauders they used the UW to destroy the galaxy. That`s a big deal, and they were upset, so they vowed never to do it again. All cool right? Brofist. Enter Guardians, the self declared guardians of the galaxy now and forever.

The race entered the game filling that role pretty much perfectly. This was long ago, so I`ll shed some light:
VASTLY superior build rates, like more so than they currently are. But all the ships had -50 or -99 to all shields except energy, energy shields were the Guardians best work (also in the lore). To make up for this the ships had ridiculous amounts of hull, and small amounts of weapons.

BUT WAIT, even with low damage output that seems so OVERPOWERED MOOPS. How can we fix that? Well lets give Guardian only 1 income type, tax, remove the ability to reward, and make that income AWFUL. Like, horrid. And then give them next to 0 upkeeps.

What do we end up with? Our Guardians of the galaxy are basically tanks, capable of mounting the ranks at a moment`s notice, taking a beating without getting wiped out, doing small amounts of damage when stacked or spammed carefully, and here`s the most important part- Because of no income and no upkeep, it means that guardians could only build within their income. Sure they can fly up the ranks and take 20 hits, but once they break the threshold of their turn by turn income they were stuck.

This is the way guardian was designed to play. What we have now are overbuffed ships with extremely high damage output, lowered buildrates, and the same crab economy.

Maru 2.0 easymode
=`(

R Reaper

19/04/2012 · 03:37 AM #18

Maybe not that but start from back then and review the ships. Since what i understand, is that there was a chance followed by another chance which in the end makes a pile of changes which still don`t seem to have a balanced feel to the race and other players.

E EphemeralEternity

19/04/2012 · 03:12 AM #17

we can go back to the old five ship guards? Ruby, Quartz, Corun, Emmy, and Li everything else was a larger or smaller clone with no real purpose aside from being a space filler...

i wouldn`t mind back to the days of building what ever i wanted and no matter what built no matter the order i hit a guard on aggressive and won 2-3 no matter if i was -150 or +130

M MoopsOP

19/04/2012 · 03:07 AM #16

Honestly I don`t know lol. Every race has changed so much that I couldn`t really be sure, I think that`d have to manually be rebalanced back to a similar state to the original for that to work. Which would be a lot of manhours :(

R Reaper

19/04/2012 · 02:39 AM #15

What would happen if they were reset to their original state ;)

M MoopsOP

19/04/2012 · 02:23 AM #14

Well Reaper, like that last line of my post, I see them as Marauder easymode. They have the kill potential of the non-explore races, better build rates than all races, and as Apollo pointed out, getting around their weak income is no longer a tough issue. They are just too powerful in too many areas. I think if their weapons were put back to their "weak" state, BR`s increased slightly, and shields adjusted to fit the lore again, they would be balanced again.

Rich guards can sit on the ranks, but don`t really hold the power to wipe the entire top 10 in a single night. That`d be a good change lol.

I agree with you completely, I loved guardian because they couldn`t UW, their whole purpose was to stop anyone from repeating their own mistakes, a strong noble race haha. They`ve been changed too much from their original design now, I do not like it D:

A Apollo

19/04/2012 · 02:17 AM #13

if you want to go hardcore into Lore mode, make it so gaurds can only attack from +105 to +110 unless its on a uw holder or a retal

R Reaper

19/04/2012 · 02:14 AM #12

Interesting. And so now, how do you see guardians? Played a little bit of guard and got both K`s and i found that they are really strong as a race, but aren`t that much fun since once you get the 2 K`s the stacking gets simpler (playing coll and find it harder) and you just need to scout for 1K+ barrens.
But as you say, they are the "defenders" of the universe, which has always been why i lean towards guardian ^^

A Apollo

19/04/2012 · 02:13 AM #11

its kinda like.... i understand why guard got buffed, and i understand why viral lost G/D class... but why both, it seems like doing both is what put us in the situation of too many guardian empires, that and all the frequent planet giveaways. you dont need careful planing of an empire, you just sit and research until some1 announces on the chat that they are holding a planet giveaway with max loyalty goods

M MoopsOP

19/04/2012 · 02:08 AM #10

That`s a scary thought Apollo lol. I think it would help balance out guardians a lot, specifically D class. But it would sure screw over all the other races D:

A Apollo

19/04/2012 · 02:06 AM #9

or you can spend hours and hour mining ore, i wonder how letting viral RE g and d class again would effect current gaurdians

M MoopsOP

19/04/2012 · 02:00 AM #8

Guardian was really underplayed, I think a lot because Virals were a lot stronger, able to reverse D class and the miner`s G class ships.

The guardians individual ships were truthfully very weak, they all had similar weaknesses (with the exception of the K class) and the -50 and -99 shields really did hurt them. It wasn`t until you started getting some really big fleets did the massive hull start to matter.

So weak ships on top of a really low income = lots of complaining, and very few empires played the race. You either spammed ruby / tourm to win, or you had to know how to stack very carefully, often using fez on top to throw off the missile ships.

So then the idea came to start reworking the ships, and they weren`t very drastic, little buffs here and there, ruby / tourm adjusted to be slightly weaker but still very strong. And that was all fine, but it made them just strong enough that their insane build rates were a problem, so eventually through various admins, pretty much all the ships got redesigned and the build rates set back to "slightly above normal"

I guess the bottom line is that guardians were just harder to use effectively, so people looked down on the race. But then again it is a hard race, with careful planning you were still a powerhouse

A Apollo

19/04/2012 · 01:56 AM #7

old gaurdian ships were meant to be used on careful, but the redesign allows them to hit on normal, if you do it right

R Reaper

19/04/2012 · 01:51 AM #6

The way i see the ships then, it looked a lot more fun and interesting to play guardian then it is now. Can you shed some light on the history of why they were changed? And why they were always looked at in a bad way in those days?

G grantweep

19/04/2012 · 01:49 AM #5

Moops, i agree. Recent updates have made races more homogenous...I mean miners arent even weak to kin anymore...etc etc...it feels like there`s not much uniqueness to races anymore.

M MoopsOP

19/04/2012 · 01:25 AM #4

Just to elaborate slightly, I feel like I didn`t make this point strong enough.

Guardian was released to make its biggest weakness its income, if you took the time to build a perfect empire to overcome this weakness you were rewarded with an empire capable of standing steadfast on the top ranks. BUT you didn`t ALSO have ships capable of slaughtering mercilessly. You just had beastly tank ships. That`s the big difference between then and now

A Apollo

19/04/2012 · 01:21 AM #3

the only times iv ever successfully defended myself from a gaurd was when they use too much queens and king, and that time balzac`s spam didnt line up right

M MoopsOP

19/04/2012 · 01:17 AM #2

I miss old Guardians, the way they were designed and lore`d to be play. The current slaughterhouse ability they have disgusts me. I petition to bring back old guard ships, let me defend my galaxy once more!

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