Guardian

agree with deil, but dunno about maras suggestion - why discourage fighting?

I agree with Deil

Tourm is too powerful and Topaz/Emmy are too much alike.

And I like Maras suggestion too. That might get guards on the TB servers to stack more.

this just means new guardians will have to strip-mine for an extra day or 2 b4 they can fight. however for established gaurds that seems fine

well at the moment i think the guardian are fine , however there is one more thing ide like to throw into the race

large increase in ship cost`s ( Minerals / price )
large cut in upkeep

( this will make building / fighting more expensive and sitting at x pr cheaper )

i just went with a simple lyth spam since i was lazy.

It is quite easy to beat. What ships did you choose?

The difficult part is to find some ships that you actually would have turns enough to build at turnsbased. But as i stated. Cap spams on careful may do the job.

well after spending 30 seconds in battsim i found a way for a viral or miner to beat that stack no matter which of those six ships is in the top stack. so yeah i guess guards must be unbeatable.

By having experience fighting guards I`m referring to the new guard ship list.

Your assuming the guardian opponent has spent 25000 turns researching the K class cruiser and has a paid account giving him the Zen and at least 200 turns. Despite that, I would base my attacks on a history of engagements with that opponent as I would if I attacked any other race.

From my understanding, your basing your attacks on the result of winning. With a more balanced guardian shiplist, I wouldn`t expect to win every time as many did by simply missile spamming in the past. What I would do is adjust my fleet accordingly to observed patterns over a period of time. You mention how the only solution would be to spam and attack on careful. Why do you think Guardians attacked on careful so frequently prior to the revamp? Is it any different now?

I know a veteran player such as yourself would adapt and change your fleet accordingly. Maybe I`m not quite understanding your argument, but I think you`ll agree with me in that the Guardian race is more balanced.

As you and Africa stated earlier, neither of you have had much experience fighting guards so it really is difficult to make a valid argument.

I dont think there are any good solution if you have to be stacked or semi-stacked. The only good solution i can come up with is to make a spam of pyth and hercs and then hit a couple of times on careful. That seems win a many of the times.

Well.. Then let me ask you. If you were up against a guy who builds this fleet of 200 turns every day:

G.Diamond Starbase 12 0 12
L.Topaz Cruiser 35 0 35
G.Corundum Destroyer 30 0 30
L.Emerald Destroyer 37 0 37
K.Hun-Zen Cruiser 25 0 25
K.Hun-Li Destroyer 30 0 30
K.Hun-Xe Cruiser 4 0 4
Small Strafez Fodder 3420 0 3420
Large Strafez Fodder 900 0 900
Tourmaline Fighter 28 0 28

All you know is that he has got these 6 ships at top in some random order, which is a lot of information already. What fleet would you build, that would do good against this?

True, and that is why many of the guard ships have very large negative chemical attributes. Look at the Corundum for example with a -70% effectiveness against chemical attacks (Corun`s also have a reduced hull). If you look at the L class, the Emerald and Topaz also greatly lowered hulls and negative chemical attributes.

There are capital ships that virals can re-verse engineer in addition to this so I wasn`t trying to make the point that chemical ships are virals only option. The idea is that Guards are more balanced and it will no longer simply require a missle spam to beat them. I could make an entire argument on virals and how they are difficult to attack given their wide range of ships and like I stated earlier, guards have always had a high PR to turn ratio to begin with.

I know that. But the chemical ships you mention has got a buildrate that is 25%-50% of the ships that were usual used to attack guards. It makes a huge difference if you have to build cruisers to attack guards instead of cap ships..

Pistol Pete, Guardians have always had high PR to turn build rations and in fact most of the revamped ships have actually been reduced in PR thus decreasing this ratio. They are meant to protect the galaxy.

yea, chemical is the way forward, but the turns required..ouch..

When I attack, I always ask myself the questions, Where are the hercs, hun-li, hun-xe, straf etc, the "immune to stuff" ships. Now were adding a very nice 3rd one to guards. However, The problem is not necessarily guards having 3 (+straf) its the build rate of them. And since the missile spamming of guards is definetely not longer as easy (loosing angel) as it used to be, Im just worried that things will be difficult.

But, lets see. Could be that Im wrong. I dont know how powerful the cronus will turn out to be. But a quick guess of the turns needed to kill a zen with cronus goes to something like 8 turns on aggro. This is bit out of context as the zen is not so great on offense. The cronus looks to be dead awesome once build and I cant wait to get reset!

Those ships you mention do would do good against a guardian. The problem as I see it is that if you use 300 turns as a guard building L.topaz, L.Amethyst, K.hun-li, K.hun-zen,G.corundum you get 15 mil PR. If you spend 300 turns building the chemical ships that would do good against these ships you get 4-5mil PR.

This may not be a huge problem at RT, but I think it will be a problem at turnbased servers.

I feel you (Africa) and I are both a little bit biased on the topic of guards. You being a viral and I being a guard on the Fast server.

On turned based, two of the three "immune to many" things ships require a whopping 25,000. I can see how on RT it is a different story, but even then most missile ships can make quick work of them.

I do feel guards are very susceptible to chemical attack, much more than missile as it used to be. I`m sure your aware that most strafez units can rip through any L.class ship along with the Corun.. (The addition of the Cronus with the very strong Borrelly gives virals plenty of options in dealing with many of the guard ships as it is).

Furthermore, if you look at the L.class, they seemed to have been designed for a more useful offensive role. Defensively, they seem much less capable. Range is not an issue as that aspect hasn`t changed.

In my opinion, I feel guards will actually have decently balanced stacks and that SHOULD make them more difficult to attack. The idea that they are too difficult to attack doesn`t doesn`t seem very viable. If anything, they are no longer too easy to attack. Of course, it`s still early on and only time will tell.

I share the same concern as Africa. Though, as all the guards at fast are not very active at the moment, i do not know whether i should be concerned. It seems to me that the combination of ships that you can only shoot at with missile damage and the new ships that are are almost immune to missile damage must be quite deadly, and will make it very hard to attack guards.

I was wondering now that guards have 3 "immune to many" things ships and quite a few "immune to missile" ships (here Im also thinking corr esp since it kills tyrs and angels - which virals are loosing anyway) if that might make them...well too difficult to attack. Havent tried it yet so not a statement. Just a question? The chances of "not just bad, but catastrophic matchups" seem considerable atm.

thoughts?