Guardian Rebalance

Drkst, I noticed you had me top when you were hit

Ren and others have said repeatedly that it`s a very good ship - maybe too good - as a flanker. Might I suggest you try flanking somewhere other than top stack?

I applaud the staff for their choices in trying to balance ships. I believe there are a lot of players that choose guardian because it has become so easy to play (especially farming NPC for loyalty planets). There needs to be some balance to make all races desirable to play. If you look at the top 50 players currently, 30 of them are guardian or a.miner. These are easy races with some OP ships.

I agree with Sibi, which was my point Dark. The issue with guards is less their mods and more of their range. If you fix the range then tweaking mods can be adjusted.This is especially an issue with RT as a Terran I can aggro with 5 +9 range ships on a guard and wipe those stacks almost Everytime if they were using just guard ships.

TB guards is less of an issue due to not having unlimited turns.

Is this a joke?

Tourm is weak to missile, why would it beat Apollo?

My comparisons weren`t ship battling ship, but stats in a vacuum.

That`s like comparing small fodder to f javelin and me saying fodder is the more useful ship, and you saying no, look, javelin beats fodder.

Like, yeah, it does, but that doesn`t mean javelin is good....

Tourm is designed as a flanker.

Half, if not much more, of the attacks against guard (or anyone frankly) are spams. The times you`re going to get hit by a 10 stack are very uncommon. As you said, tourm doesn`t outrange - but it packs a hell of a punch. Also as you stated, most people are hitting guard on aggro. If you`re getting hit on aggro by a spam, if you 10 stack you should do fairly well in the first place. With a ship like tourm tearing into their spam on wave two you`re going to do a decent amount of damage as well.

The ship is not designed to be a spam ship. It`s not designed to lead your fleet into battle. It`s designed to shred into an enemy fleet from a flanking position while some of you`re larger ships bear the brunt of the attack with their Uber shields.

This goes for offense as well when you know the enemy fleet.

I`m sorry tourm isn`t a one size fits all ship anymore that you can just throw anywhere in a fleet and expect an easy win.

As far as comparisons made, comparisons were purely made to ships with either a similar weapon or hull ratio. The comparisons were simply made to illustrate that ships with one similar stat were generally still outdone by guards ships in other stats.

Does that mean a ship like Apollo is amazing? Not at all. Just that tourm is better.

If you`re going to complain that a specific ship is no good, you then have to look at all the ships I just compared it to and improve them too, if they`re worse.

In my oppinion the tourm nerf has been a little over the top. I would rater see the hull increased and the weapons decreased a bit, since guardians are supposed to be a defensive race.

I really dont understand the comparison of tourm with apollo. Does anyone ever use apollo? Terrans have 3 other P class ships (thor, zeus and Odin) that by far outperform apollo with the same purpose. And the comparison with pike/thresher doesnt at all include that the range of tourm is 4 and Pike 9, Thresher 7. When having a range WAY lower than avarage the stats and buildrate should compensate. Like Herc or Lictor for instance or the new range 2 Coll battleship. So just comparing hull and damage without taking range into account doesnt provide any useful information.

What I am conserned about is that since most guarrd ships (excluding L class) have somewhat low range, guards are ALWAYS hit on aggro or maybe normal stance. Never on careful! And a guard would never hit any other race on aggresive, unless he knew it was a spam. My point is, that guards attack on careful/normal due to the ship nature and are hit on aggressive/normal. And that is because of the ship range. Thus the guard ships should be heavier in hull and lighter in weapons. Tourm was rebalanced the other way around making it almost useless. Now Ruby is the better choice for almost any situation.

If I am looking at the shipyards now buth Coll, Maru and Virals look way better than guards comparing weapon and hull to PR AND considering the ship range.

Take the starbase for instance. Try comparing the stats of Diamond to one the other range 7 starbases from Collective/viral. Which one would you rather have? (I consider Terran / miner differently, as they have several starbases so you arent sure what they build if in DP).

Im all for rebalance if things are really bad. Everyone could see that Tourm needed a nerf and I think its a good idea to remove the 99% shield mods of K class for several reasons.

@Redline, what do you do with all the current guards

Rebalance guardian as playable only after a successful UW.

While Im here, let me compare Tourm to similar ships as well

P.Apollo 1.212 0.379
Tourmaline 1.229 0.768

Tourm has similar attack and double the hull of apollo.
Tourmaline has the 3rd best weapon / pr ratio in the game.

14,520
39,060

Tourmaline has 2-3x the build rate of apollo

Tourm has a shield mod total of 75, apollo 15

Tourm is better in every way than apollo, other than having 1 less range (4/5)

Defensively,
Tourm lines up here

Pike 0.784 0.784
Tourmaline 1.229 0.768
D.Thresher 0.821 0.739

Its hull / pr isnt very good, coming in around rank 100 overall. But look at the two ships it falls in between - pike and thresher. Torum has significantly more weapon / pr than both of them.

25,520
39,060
60,905

Build rate, Tourm is middle of the pack overall, and between these 2 specific ships. Luckily, it seems as if the intended use is as a flanker in the bottom of a balance stack where ideally it will be matched up against dummy stacks and on wave two absolutely shred whatever it flanks, so at least the build rate doesnt cripple it for what it is intended.

Shield Mods, Pike comes in at 0 overall, Tourm at 75 overall, Thresher at 50 overall - so on that metric, Tourm is again the winner.

Tourm and thresher have a similar maximum shield at 55, but tourms lowest shield is -20 while Thresher is -70 (A huge weakness)

When comparing Tourm to ships with similar weapon and hull ratios, tourm again comes out very strong in comparison.

@DrKsT

I ordered shiplist by weapon to pr ratio, Lictor and Li were exactly the same when going to 3 decimal places, so Ill compare them here.

K.Hun-Li 0.412 1.089 80 80 0 40
G.Lictor 0.412 1.297 80 55 0 -30

Lictor has roughly a 20% better hull ratio, exactly the same weapon ratio. So Lictor in that sense is slightly better.

Now compare the shield. First shield, Lictor and Li are exactly the same. Second shield, Lictor has a fair disadvantage given the additional hull. Third shield the same. 4th shield lictor has a major weakness, whereas Li has still a very strong shield.

Build rate

87,273
82,527

This is Miners fastest ship, and still slower.

Ill mention theyre both 2 weapon ships, with 1 weapon type being about 2x stronger than the second

All things considered, Id definitely take Li over Lictor. in a vacuum. I would take those strong shield mods over the slight buff in hull Lictor has in comparison - especially since Li doesnt have a -30 shield to take advantage of.

Lets look at another comparison when I sort by hull ratio.

K.Hun-Li 0.412 1.089 80 80 0 40
M.Alium 0.652 1.087 0 30 -15 0

Not exactly the same ratio, but for all intents and purposes, the same. Alium actually has 50% more weapon than Li, but lets be real - neither of these ships is being used as a beatstick - theyre being used for their defensive capabilities.

The shield mods on alium are a joke compared to Li. Theyre not even close. Id take Li in a heartbeat. In a blind stack or spam, Li is going to hold up WAYYYY better than Alium.

Thats not to mention the build rate difference

87,273
23,000

Li is effectively 4x Alium build rate. Li is 100% the better ship in literally every firefight possible. Even with Li`s 50% higher wep / pr, Li has a much better wep / pr / turns, so in any active fight, Li has a major advantage.

If you want to buff Li, I think you need to buff both ships I just compared them to - especially Alium. Alium is a laughingst

On the subject of guard shields, Id suggest you can have one or the other - not both.

If you have a 99% shield, you take effectively 0 damage. Heck, I think 80% shield mods are probably too high unless they come with significant downsides . Instead of a downside, youre suggesting that you need both the extreme build rate AND the extreme shields.

This means that in most scenarios, you can outbuild your opponent, so theyre firing from below. Lets assume equal turn use, a collective or a maru is easily going to get outbuilt 2-3x. Now lets ignore for a fact that pretty quickly youd be out of attackable range meaning theres literally no way for them to even hit you, all you have to do is have two or 3 ships with mixed shields and it becomes a massivley luck based situation for anyone trying to follow you up and attack you. If they get very lucky and guess the right order they MAY win (but lets not pretend like K class even has significant weaknesses. Weakest shield on Zen is 25 and weakest on Li is 0.

The new miner ship got a .6 hull ratio, while K zen and K li are around 1 (so very nearly double the hull. Like I said, their weakest shields are 0 and +25, whereas the new miner ship has both a -90 and a -60. Those are vastly inferior shields on an even lower hull ratio. Thats an example of a ship that is liable to get first wave based in a lot of scenarios. I fail to see how Guard can be justified in thinking their ships arent strong enough when compared this way.

You say any race can spam a couple and hit on careful with guaranteed wins. Thats just not true. Guard can do that because in a lot of cases, 50% of weapon types do literally zero damage to a number of your ships. Defensively, you only have to alternate a couple ships to have extremely good shield coverage making any attack on an active guard very likely to fail if the guard puts any effort into defending at all.

Thats not something you can say about most other races.

@DrKsTGuardian

Miners and Viral also suffer from this base pr problem, so why aren`t they rewarded with great build rates?

If anything, I think Marauder or coll should have guard build rates for a couple reasons.
1. They cant explore. Guards always moan about their low colony count, but maru and coll literally cant get planets without fighting. This is, especially in a low activity game, a massive handicap. Increased build rate would help make up for the inability to explore.
2. These races are the 2 highest plunder races in game. That once again steers them in the direction of fighting rather than playing econ sim. Marauders very name points at them being an aggressive race.

So since viral and miner both get shafted by base pr just like guard....and marauder and coll both have very good reasons to need faster build rates, Im unsure what justification we can base guard having 2-3x the build rates of all other races?