Guardian Balancing Discussion

Balance changes are made based on current in game needs. Those needs change over time depending on market conditions, current race leaders, race economics ect. These conditions are always changing and its even more noticeable with so few players in the game right now. :unfortunately rt is the most active of all the servers so most if not all changes are based on that servers need and then they take into account how it will effect tb servers.
Please be patient and considerate of the staff members involved in making changes as they do this for everyone`s benefit on a volunteer basis.

Just make some small changes now and make some small changes again in 6 months and 6 months after that. Don`t call it balancing because this game has needed "balancing" since the day it started and apparantly it hasn`t been balanced yet. So don`t pretend you are going to balance this game. Just make changes to keep it interesting for everyone.
That`s my opinion. Not that it matters a lot since im barely playing.

SD: Yes its true that pyth is easy to deal with, but mix it with some pike and tiger, and then its no walk in the park and comm virals can still build as high as guards in your comparison.

I dont think nerfing guard ships 5% or so would be the right way to go. Looking at the ship stats they are not superior to other races in any way comparing weapon/hull to PR (except tourm). Nerfing them further would just make it even more appealing to attack guards on aggro since their ships have no range. Why not just cut the BR by 5% instead? Imo guard build rates should be higher than other races, but cutting them by 5-10% could work.

But still I think decreasing ship cost and increasing upkeep could help a lot of the issues brought up here without causing too much pain for the TB guards.

Want to know how to kill K class ships

GalacticMercenaries
11,763,985 **********
9,604,041 Win

You attacked ****. Attack was successful !

Name Units Casualties Remaining
GalacticMercenaries`s fleet
Strafez King 3,750 0 3,750
Strafez Queen 3,720 1 3,719
Large Strafez Fodder 10,105 5,121 4,984
Small Strafez Fodder 25,305 17,695 7,610
Large Strafez Runner 1 1 0
F.Axe Frigate 1 0 1
Light Frigate Frigate 1 0 1
Small Strafez Runner 1 1 0
C.Aries Corvette 1 1 0
Light Corvette Corvette 1 1 0

****`s fleet
K.Hun-Zen Cruiser 28 28 0
K.Hun-Xe Cruiser 24 24 0
K.Hun-Li Destroyer 26 26 0
Tourmaline Fighter 114 0 114
Large Strafez Runner 1 0 1
C.Gemini Frigate 1 0 1
Large Strafez Fodder 1 0 1
F.Axe Frigate 1 0 1
Light Frigate Frigate 1 0 1
Small Strafez Runner 1 0 1

Colonies Captured
Name Type Land Size
E.0664 Oceanic 14
E.1970 Gas 3
E.1968 Desert 192

the number indicated was the average upkeep of the ships most often chose by virals, it was pulled from my viral econ behindysis on the strategy section on the forums.

73 mil pr in the positive his how far a comm viral can pyth spam in the positive with 200k land and 200 comm infra sib, but still that just a single ship that is fairly easy to deal with even from half. the example was just to show a gap in other market free income paths,

i`m not saying we need to boost comm terran and comm viral because guards with equal land and infra can build further in the positive with an average 10 stack. comm is a newbie path and should be fairly horrible, and viral and terran have other much better options

and every race can build up awesomely high when fez is taken into account.

though what i was giving was examples of why guard is awesome.... and GM...a new guard can easily build to 100 mil + pr on rt in a week, all they need to do is strip mine actively, all explorable races have the same potential when it comes to strip mining, but for a guard the money they would make from strip mining say 50 hours a week would go alot further than with most other races..

i don`t think we need to go nerfing guard, i think miners are a bigger issue than guards atm. there`s not much we can do econ wise for guards, no point in nerfing their econ....their upkeeps could be raised to .14-.15....but i don`t think that needs to be done, i don`t think it would change much any how.

the best way in my mind would be to scale back the survivability (hull/shields), and damage output of some guard ships by 5% or less, just to make them take a bit more damage when attacking so they`re not the turn efficient killing machines on careful that we know and love.

again, in the big scheme of things i don`t think it`s all that necessary.

or perhaps what we need is a little less variety and versatility in guard ships make them more similar to each other ?

Edited by EphemeralEternity on 2012-08-26

I`ve seen an aminer not even a week old climb to 600mil+, given there was a lot of fodder but if you compare how long it takes for guards to start up I feel income is not an issue.

But you dont see new guards at 100 mill pr everyday only the guards in SB But if you look at there Empire Age that tells it all if i was over 200 Days old i would expect for me to be able to climb every day with no isue All thease other races you see that people cry about are to weak look at there empire age reacerch ect...

EE: "a comm viral same land and infra can climb to 20 milish pr in the positive"

How did you come up with that number EE? Building pyth or lyth/herc? As I see most high PR virals on RT almost exclusively use maru ships/fez at high PR I would like to see the result of such a calculation using maru upkeeps.

I think the issue here is how guards become OP. The turning point for a guard economy is when they start making more than 1-2 mil a turn, becuase thats what their chips cost. EVERY race can sit low a day or to and make cash and then build 100mil fleet. The problem, as I see it, is when guards can build to 200mil every day never having to worry about cash. Then they should have to worry about keeping borders, but noone does because of gordos.

Building a guard empire with high income takes time, especially on TB, where loyalty planets arent captured very often. You can make a high PR fighting miner/terran much faster than a guard on any server. These days you can buy a strong empire for cash. Just purchace a lot of gordos and you have a shortcut.

One solution I can think of is to make guards market dependant, such that they eat a small amount of food, but thats probably impossible to implement. Another is to cut down on the building cost and raise the ship upkeep, but I fear both solution would seriously damage the TB guards making the race only viable on RT.

a bit off topic, but a slight rant

most staff myself included don`t care about that whole....."but guards we`re a broken race, we can`t UW....we need bonuses and stuff. " if you cared about UWing in the first place you wouldn`t have went guard.

and no guards aren`t the protectors of the universe. guards are ran by people with their own agenda`s and alliances just like every other race, their advantage during UW stems from their turn efficiency (high BR and high survival rate of ships) so the side that has the more active/establish guards has an increased chance at winning....they would be protectors of the universe if when a UW went off they lost 99% even if they`re in the fed of the UW bearer. that would compel more guards take up the banner of protector of the universe and maybe just maybe warrant something special for fighting a UW

Edited by EphemeralEternity on 2012-08-25

well the popularity of a race usually does indicate how much better one race is over others, People like playing races that give them as many advantages over others as possible.

what`s not to like about guard, easy set up, get a planet with loyalty which legitimately can is the hard part, make a c2, then grab lots of u class. spam all your turns into housing, you never have to worry about the market aside from getting minerals which quiet frankly you should have bought plenty of from strip mining ore before or while making your c2. then after you get your infra high enough or gordo yourself enough you start making 1 mil + a turn you save up a while and go fight upwards of 50-60 mil pr every few days or so depending on your activity/luck with loyalty.

from there on out, you can choose to spam or stack, but chances are on offense against a non guard you will end up killing 3-4x the turns worth of ships maybe even 8-10x the turns worth of ships ( if you hit it lucky) than you lost. the only real danger comes when defending when you may get wiped easily, but still yet you probably lost only 1x or less the turns worth of ships the person hitting you lost.
Thats where the real over-powered part of guard comes into play is the turn efficiency of guard.

On RT more so than TB the low upkeep of guard ships is also a factor, but for the most part an ungordo`d guard empire can build about as high as most other ungordo`d races in the positive...so their econ really isn`t as big of a hindrance as they mods would lead you to believe. Guards with good loyalty and gordo`s become Oped more quickly than other races because their low upkeeps. For most other races to gain a good Op`d econ, like agri terrans, mineral miners ect... there is at least the waiting period of having to sell things in a semi dynamic market. The only risk with a guards econ is the base pr itself, which is quickly nullified when you take into the account that most guards are explorable and they have high BR`s on all their ships.

Also back to gordo`s a guards gain instant income from gordos while lets say and agri empire that gordo would make more food, which would mean that eventually there would come a point where an agri empire would make more food than the server needs which would drive down the prices effectively lessing the potency of their choice to gordo.

And you may say but EE, what about Comm virals or comm Terrans they gain instant income without having to worry about buying or selling things on a dynamic market ...well Comm for both those races are secondary econs and far less efficient that the econ gained by say agri or tax their ships upkeeps were geared more towards their most efficient econs, while a guards upkeep was made entirely based on tax. Example below.

(I`ll lay it out for you like this but you can look at my econ @nalysis stuff on the strategy section of the fourm, a comm terran with 200k land and infra in comm can climb to 23.5 milish pr in the positive a comm viral same land and infra can climb to 20 milish pr in the positive while a guard with 200k land 200 infra in housing with no loyalty and no cg`s can climb to 27 mil pr in the positive, now one with same land and infra lvls with lets say 2500 loyalty and still no cg`s can climb to 54 mil pr in the positive. )

On TB the story is a little different, it takes a lot longer to get a guard account started, and gordo`s aren`t a big problem as most artifacts are invested into stc`s and btcs so most guards with higher land usually become unexplorable which helps keep the race in check. Though a guard with a decent econ and pile of money and btcs is an OP`d nightmare on TB when considering their high BR`s.

Another problem with guard is the lure of cheating, having to invest 25k-50k turns will make even the most fair-minded person want to bot on rt, and considering that having 2500 loyalty will double the amount of money earned by tax compared to 0 loyatly, and then you add the loyalty gained from missions on top of that and your talking about some serious gains in income..and the lack of people who loyalty their borders regularly tempt many people to PT borders.


i guess what it comes down to is there needs to be a better balance between the survivability/flexibility of the guard shiplist, it`s ship upkeep/econ, and the Build rate/Turn efficiency of the ships.

After all this I still think miners are a bigger problem than Guards on the game, an no not because of their ships....

Edited by EphemeralEternity on 2012-08-25

Well first off the problem dosent lie with the ships it`s the all of players and people crying cus guards are to tough. Thing is if there was more high pr terrans people would be crying cus the Terran ships are to powerful cus they see Alot more of those ships. If there was alot more people playing a.miner they would be crying about the lyth This goes for every race people crys when they (Key word here) (Thank) they are over powered but there really not.

I disagree with buffing diamond. Unless it melts to K class /pyth / herc /nirv as it does now it would be WAY to powerful in the hands of the rich guards on RT.

Also I think corr is ok. Its useless in a stack, but going after a cap spammin terran or miner it works great defending and it builds 110k a turn. I think it has more use than fluorite these days.

I understand your concern GM and aside from current in game conditions the game itself is fine, as I understand it Anfits mod packs arent translating correctly which is the problem. Bypassing the filter and flaming on a thread thats not even related to that topic is just going to get you into trouble.

Besides I dont think anyone spends as much as I do even you. Lets keep this thread on topic please.

Edited by Raistilin on 2012-08-25

From Raistilin - calm yourself young one. We are all upset at him but that doesn`t give you the right to break the rules with vulgar language ^^

Edited by Raistilin on 2012-08-25

Im advocating to keep this discussion open and productive. And I hope that staff members who are involved with the changes will take into consideration what has been discussed.

It seems on the topic of k.class were in favor of changing only one ship either the zen or the xe and replacing it with a slower build version with perhaps better range. The views on changing the shield mods on all three ships regardless of shielding seem to be rejected by the majority of the guard comunity.

On the subject of build rates which were not really up for discussion it seems everyone feels after the other races got their build rates increased it puts them on par or close to keeping up with guard. I feel guard could be slightly nerfed in this area but most disagree which is fine.

Most of us agree the corundom should be redesigned to a more useful ship that would support stacking with no retal and or no defence and a higher range with pure kinetic damage.

We havnt really mentioned diamond at all. It serves its purpose in my opinion but me personally I think
Any star base you cant fight with is a waste, it has the worst return damage and is just another lame piece of fodder in my opinion. Although you can climb over 7mill pr in 45 turns its useless other than climbing in dp. Does it need to be changed? No, should it? Yes.

That about sums it up. I ask the staff to make careful considerations adjusting guard, for some of us like myself we dont play any other race and its important that guardian tradition be upheld.

{DG}

looking for starbase redesign updates

on another note.. the smaller the ships the harder they are to kill.

Wolf, thats because if most knowledgeable players see a terran spaming up fast, on average their is a 2/3 or greater chance that whatever they are spaming will be weak to chemical. Not to mention terrans primary weapon damage as a race is missile so fezz is very effective.

Then put more ion shields lol Just a question, why is everything in the terran fleet seem to be worried about queens all the time? I have more trouble with pyth and borr than I do queens. Every now and then I run into a stack of them. But wouldnt it be nice for the terrans to have a capital ship that was actually strong against queens without having kinetic? Doesnt have to kill them. Merely swat them off.

what the hell had this ship allways been like this ??? i dont ever remember it having Energy Damage or Kinetic Damage

Name Tyr
Class Dreadnought
Weapon 10,000
Energy Damage 500
Kinetic Damage 500
Missile Damage 9,000
Chemical Damage 0
Hull 12,000
Range 7
Scanner rating 0
Power rating 13,035

Cost per unit 130,245
Upkeep 14,500

1 turn produces 5.0