Lower Guardian Build Rates

@Achilleus

Its too late to fix gordos. Gordod players are unwilling to give up what theyve built. Because of this, we must deal with the symptoms, and one of those symptoms is OP guards.

Assassinators,

Top 3
Guard 114102
Miner 81802
Terran 78698
Collective 53987
Marauder 55500

Top 5
Guard 103149
Miner 77671
Terran 71812
Collective 48658
Marauder 46368

Sigh... This is the same old discussion going all over again.

The thing is, you cant look at guard build rates alone. The guard race is a hard race to play, because it takes a long time to get a good empire setup, that let you play anywhere near high PR. It takes a lot of land to get a decent income, which you can gordo on RT (it takes time), but on the TB servers you need to hoard clusters. Having only 10 cols and a base PR in the millions makes it VERY hard to play guard, unless your fed control the server. So nerfing guard build rates might work for RT. but will make guards insanely hard on TB for all but the dominant feds... and it is the nondominant feds that need guards to kill UWs.

Its still not the guard race that is the problem... its gordos... look at how many unexplorable guards you have on RT... its none! So reducing build rates will be insanely hard on TB guards and still wont change the issue that gordoed RT guards can play at 200mil all day long... it just takes them 10 minutes longer to get there.

Per 45 turns, rather.

2, maybe 3 mil a turn.

Why do Guards not need a starbase? What happens to that Guard with no borders and a C3 or two? Do they also not need the ability to move out of people`s range to be able to counter or attack an NPC?

Not that anyone does the C3 route anymore as Ank pointed out the other day.

I also have to ask what are the build rates for all races of their top 3? Top 5? Highest PR ships. Or in other words, those most likely to be spammed. That should also be considered.

Why not turn the Diamond into a ship? 1, that takes away the need to apply changes to every starbase. 2, it can be resized to be smaller and more ship-like and still fit within the design criteria of Guardian ships. The tradeoff would be that Guards would no longer have a starbase, which they really do not need.

Omegian,

The build rates would STILL be faster than any other race other than a cap ship or two for each of them.

If the issue is instead with the ability to spam up and take out UW`s, I honestly have no idea how many turns that takes. On that note though if br for guards prevents them from taking down UW`s, then that would make me assume that on tb ONLY guards are capable of taking down UW`s?

If a nerf that leaves them still FASTER than every other race makes it impossible to take out a UW, then sounds like tb is already super imbalanced and other races might need a buff.

And that is of course the alternative. Ignore guard ships entirely and br buff everything else.

Diamonds shouldn`t be re-engineerable nor should they facilitate you coming out of DP if you build them. If you play that logic, then I would ask you play that logic for all SB`s then and treat them as a ship resetting your DP (e.g. Careful hit, someone builds SBs, next hit only gives 1 colony instead of a chance for 3).

One other item about SB`s, by doing this I would say this would change some UW tactics on SB building at some points of the game. Which then would mean, if you make that SB change, then you should also nerf artifacts then (artis capped at 50 or something).

@Ank, the br nerf looks okay, not a fan of smaller ships though as that makes Guard like collectives. Would question though the mods and range ship use on TB (not looking at RT as that is just who is more active with turns).

I think that would help asmo. But I think the ship needs to be resized too. Even if I know that someone is building Diamond, there is only one non-guard ship in the game that can win against it turn for turn. Which means miner/collective/Maru have zero options to counter them except hoping the person logs off first. If you know EXACTLY what the other person is building you should always have an option to counter it effectively.

I will point out that I specifically did not suggest that Diamond be able to be REd by Virals. That would not be helpful to anyone but virals. So no.

One effective change that will benefit everyone is to either eliminate the G. Diamond, or make it so it brings you out of DP when built. Let`s also throw in that it can be captured, meaning a sneaky viral can attack a hapless Guard thinking hes defending himself with 20 Diamonds only to find they were loaded into a trailer in the middle of the night and hauled away.

Why eliminate them? Easy. They are not needed. Guardian is not a defensive race in the mode of normal GC play. In a UW situation, their purpose is to put down the UW, and starbase are useless in that role.

Why make them bring you out of dp? Obvious. To eliminate the Guards ability to spam up at warp speed to whatever pr he wants completely unable to be hit. In 24 hours, he can reach several hundred mil pr.

Why make them captureable? A new tactic to explore and strategies to develop. You may not know if a viral has Diamond in his fleet. And a sneaky collective can have exactly one at very low Pr and be able to defend for days.

Let me know when some positive change happens and I`ll be back

@DrKsTgUaRdIaN

Regarding the market. Food is overstocked (meaning miner and viral should both be having an awesome time). The black market means that nobody will ever not be able to build ships due to lack of minerals. The only impact I can imagine the market having is a lack of collective or marauder and lets be real, theres ALWAYS a lack of those two races.

People aren`t going guard because the market isnt good for other races. Theyre going guard because they have a handful of the best ships in the game and a build rate that blows every other race out of the water.

90% of the player base doesn`t even care about doing a UW, so that is hardly a penalty for them - its certainly less of a penalty than not being able to use clusters that you capture, or explore - but I dont see massive boosts to collective or marauder.

Again, these are the average build rates WITHOUT bases. On top of that, they have the fastest building base/ship in the game.

Guardian 74,719
Miner 44,370
Collective 42,900
Terran 37,776
Marauder 36,136

Once again, Ill comment on your second point which seems to be skill based points.

Study his movement, fleets, pr jumps, etc.

Frankly, this is dumb.
Youre depending on both being online while they build, and also on the guard player only building one type of ship at a time. You can throw off any math by just adding a couple random ships into your build and now you could be building up any ship and theres no way anyone can guess what it is unless its like a starbase and far outstripping the pace anything else could build at.

Yeah, if you hit me and then dont build a single ship after I should be able to counter - but thats true of every race.

Guard has no real downside - like all other races, money is pretty meaningless after a few months. You can 2x any other races build speed with any of your ships unless they spam their fastest cap ship. Guard as is will always have a fighting advantage and thats, frankly, rid

I may have just return to GC after a long rest but the way I see it is RT activity is very limited and few numbers remained and as such the market economy is rather dry. Guardian is the most independent race from the market there is being the fact they don`t require food to go tax. With a dry economy,good build rates,and cheap upkeep Guard makes a lot of sense right now. I don`t think Guard "needs" to be nerfed but I don`t feel if will affect the race much with a slight decrease in BR.

Alot of players complaining about guard "and I`m going to be blunt here" are the same ones running around spamming with no dummy stacks or don`t change out their fleets or don`t pay attention to changes in pr jumps in the ranks. When I learned how to play Guard a player taught me that you`ll always come across that one player that no matter what you do it seems you just can`t win so you have to use strategy and study his movements,his fleets, what`s the pr difference when he hits you each time and so forth. Fight smarter not harder and their is always a way to win. Play dirty or play sneaky don`t run up at someone with a baseball ball and complained you got shot by the other guy cause he had a gun and then say "no fair"! You find a work around and sneak in his house at night and beat him to death in his sleep.

Just saying.

If we don`t give a small nerf to all guardian build rates, we will likely see the trend of more people restating as guard and less people able/willing to be active to "win" the game. Do the 10% nerf to hull weapon and pr across the board and then give guardians the ability to get a prize if they "kill" an UW. We need objectives in the game, why are there so few objectives this late in the game`s life????

aacra I just mentioned that to grumpy on discord. And TB. I don`t have to explain myself to anyone ankaar. I wasn`t going to make it public but since you did
Plus1

For what it is worth..... None of the other races have chosen to forego the ability to UW and earn awesome rewards. Also playing a race is a choice and we all looked at the races, abilities, ships, build rates, ect and made a choice. no one was forced into their current race nor do they lack the ability to change their race at any given point... just bringing up the obvious that no one else has mentioned so far.

Excellent reasoning.

voted no.