Tachyon Guardian Family

[Hearteater]

I've put together a set of alternatives to the Tachyon Guardian, which I'll informally name the Tachyon Guardian Family.  Each AI gets to pick a single random Guardian from this list at the start of the game.  After this initial pick, these Guardians are never unlocked in any other way.

These Guardians share the normal Guardian immunities for both Mark I-IV and special Mark V immunities.  Like the original Tachyon Guardian, these Guardians are “awake” from the start of the game.  Unlike other Guardians, these are never available for spawning outside of game setup: no Exos, no Carrier pops, no Reinforcements, etc.  Some of these Guardians are mobile, but they will never enter any system not owned by either of the AIs.

I've included the Tachyon Guardian for comparison, although it does have slightly boosted stats in terms of health and damage.  Its tachyon range is unchanged.

NOTE: All stats are for Normal/Normal games.  Only Health and Damage scale with Mark.  Armor, AP, and Range do not for any of these units unless noted below.



Monitor Guardian
This high health Guardian sports an impressive artillery weapon.  Although its DPS is fairly low, its long reload means the individual shot damage is fairly high.  It is immobile and always spawns next to the Command Station or sometimes a Fortress.  The Monitor Guardian boasts a fairly decent Tachyon range, but the Monitor Guardian's main purpose is to produce Monitor Drones.

The cloaked Monitor Drones sit on Wormholes and reveal enemy cloaked units with their tachyon beams.  Although the Monitor Drones have no attack of their own, they do trigger a short range EMP pulse when destroyed.  The Monitor Guardian spawns a replacement Monitor Drone whenever one is destroyed and the drone flies into position at the Wormhole, after which it remains immobile.  Monitor Drones, unlike some other drones, do not have a limited life span.

SPAWNING DETAILS: One Monitor Guardian spawns per system, located at the Command Station or randomly next to a Fortress.  One Monitor Drone spawns initially per wormhole in each system with a Monitor Guardian.

Monitor Guardian
ABILITIES: Tachyon Beam Emission (7500+500*Mk Range)
ADDITIONAL IMMUNITIES: Sniper Shots

Monitor Drone
ABILITIES: Cloaking, Tachyon Beam Emission (5000+500*Mk Range), 5+2*Mk Second EMP on Destruction, Strikes All Enemies in Range, Can't Use Wormholes
IMMUNITIES: Reclamation, Transport, Swallow, Mines, Repair
SPECIAL NOTE: Range 400+100*Mk (this is the radius of the EMP pulse)

Overseer Guardian
This unique Guardian patrols across AI systems, using its planet-wide Tachyon coverage to reveal cloaked units.  Although its weapons hit hard from a hefty distance, a bigger danger is the attack boost the Overseer Guardian gives to any system in which it passes through.  Destroying an Overseer can be a challenge thanks to its armor and extremely high health.

Overseers wander similar to Zenith Traders, but they always travel between systems owned by their AI that can spawn Guardians of their Mark (so +1 relative Mark).  Mark IV Overseers wander only between Core Worlds.  Mark V Overseers don't wander.

SPAWNING DETAILS: One Overseer Guardian of the appropriate Mark spawns for every four systems of each Mark (round up).  So if there are 9 Mark III systems on the map, three Mark II Overseer Guardians spawn.  Overseer Guardians are initially randomly placed on appropriate Mark systems, but not more than one per system.  The Homeworld gets a single Mark V Overseer Guardian.  Count the total Core Worlds and spawn one Mark IV Guardians for every four, with a minimum of two.  If only one Homeworld has Core Worlds belonging to the AI with Overseers, place all the Mark IV Overseers on that Homeworld, otherwise divided them up between both Homeworlds.

All system counts apply only to a single AI.  Dual AIs with Overseers spawn them independently of each other.  Overseers only wander between systems owned by their AI.  Mark IV Overseers don't cross between AI Homeworlds.

ABILITIES: Planetary Tachyon Beam Coverage, Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet (+50% Bonus)
ADDITIONAL IMMUNITIES: Artillery Ammo
SPECIAL NOTE: Infinite Engine Health

Security Guardian
This teleporting Guardian modeled after the Teleporting Battle Station uses its tachyon beams to reveal cloaked units and destroy them with its engine-overloading tasers.  Although not a combat power-house, this Guardian is fairly durable, repairs itself very quickly, and has formidable radar dampening.

Each system begins with one Security Guardian per Mark level of the planet, each sitting on a different Wormhole.  Whenever there are no human ships in system, any Security Guardian not near a Wormhole goes to one.  If two or more Security Guardians are at the same Wormhole, all but one moves elsewhere.  Only if there are more Security Guardians than Wormholes will multiple Security Guardians locate themselves at a single Wormhole.

SPAWNING DETAILS: Place one per Mark of the system distributed randomly among Wormholes, choosing unguarded Wormholes first.

ABILITIES: Tachyon Beam Emission (5000+500*Mk Range), Engine Damage 15*Mk, Teleports, Radar Dampening Range 5000, Regen Time 10:00 (all Marks)

Seeker Guardian
Despite being immobile with only a moderate short-ranged weapon, the Seeker Guardian is deadly to small groups of enemy ships.  Patterned after the Spire Blade Spawner, the Seeker releases a Seeker Blade every second while visible enemies are in system.  Seeker Blades select a visible enemy unit and with their massive speed are able to chase their target down, even passing through Wormholes if needed.  Seeker Blades can see their target even if it becomes cloaked.  If their target dies, Seeker Blades select a new target.  Seeker Blades target units with the cloaking ability if one is visible.  The Seeker Guardians themselves spawn next to every Guard Post in a system, and with fairly long tachyon range they cover a fairly large amount of the system.

SPAWNING DETAILS: Place one next to each Guard Post in the system.

Seeker Guardian
ABILITIES: Tachyon Beam Emission (7000+1000*Mk Range)
ADDITIONAL IMMUNITIES: Missile Ammo

Seeker Blade
ABILITIES: Self Attrition Time 00:05, Attacks Are Self-Damaging, Unerring (Can't lose target), Target Seek Range 2,000,000,000
IMMUNITIES: Dark Matter Ammo, Fusion Cutters, Speed Boosts, Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Force Fields, Being Insta-Killed, Repair

Tachyon Guardian
The original, the Tachyon Guardian has higher health and a slightly more powerful weapon.  It sits immobile next each Wormhole in every system.

ABILITIES: Tachyon Beam Emission (6000+500*Mk Range)

Tracker Guardian
This very fast Guardian hunts enemy ships with its long-range railguns.  Cloaked, one Tracker Guardian stations itself randomly in each system.  With a prodigious tachyon range, the Tracker can easily spot cloaked ships even from long distances.  Whenever not in combat, if enemy cloaked units are in system the Tracker wanders randomly, searching for them.  But the defining feature of the Tracker Guardian is that it can travel to other systems in search of its prey.  Any time a visible ship with cloaking escapes from a system with a Tracker Guardian, the Guardian will travel to that system.  Only when no cloaked units remain in the system with a Tracker Guardian does it return to its original system.

SPAWNING DETAILS: Place one in each system next to a random Guard Post.

ABILITIES:  Cloaked, Tachyon Beam Emission (10000+2500*Mk Range)

[keith.lamothe]

Very interesting   Though there are some difficulties.

I've put together a set of alternatives to the Tachyon Guardian, which I'll informally name the Tachyon Guardian Family.

I'm thinking of renaming the Tachyon Guardians "Tachyon Sentries" (and renaming the Sentry Eye to "Flood Eye" or something like that) so these could use that terminology.

Monitor Guardian

I think this one would work fine, the drones would keep up coverage on the wormholes until the monitor was destroyed.

Overseer Guardian

My problem with this one is that the "shifting" coverage would probably make scouting nearly trivial: just build your mkI cap (maybe with mkII cap too) of scouts on loop build and send them out on auto-scout whenever you think about it.  They'll eventually get everywhere because the only regular source of tach coverage (assuming both AIs pick this, which it won't often but "makes scouting nearly-trivial in 4% of games" or whatever is still not great) is moving from planet to planet.

And an actual attended scouting run could really get away with murder.

Though scout picketing would become very difficult until all the overseers were dead, at which point it may as well be a complete-vis game unless the AI has microfighters or whatever.

Anyway, I may be misunderstanding, please correct me if so.

Security Guardian

There would need to be at least one per wormhole or it'd just be a matter of figuring out what wormholes are "already tach-drilled" from mapgen.  Though perhaps that isn't such a bad thing.  It wouldn't be trivial, at least.

Seeker Guardian

"Unerring" would be more implementation difficulty than I'd really like, but at that movement speed I think it's unlikely the target would recloak before the blade impacted.  If it were a problem it'd be easier to have the blade "tag" just its target (from infinite range) and that tag prevent recloaking for X seconds.

The bigger problem with these is that any wormholes not within the immobile Seekerss' range would be totally without tach coverage so long as the human sticks to cloaked (rather than visible) units.  This is likely to largely trivialize the scouting game.

Or by spawning next to every guard post, do you mean to include wormhole posts?

Tracker Guardian

The tach range and wandering logic would help, but there's still going to be a ton of gaps in the "tach net" such that you could just auto-scout your way through it all before too long.  Or is that not so?

[Hearteater]

There would certainly be gaps with some of them.  But I don't see the need for the Tachyon net to be as tight as Tachyon Guardians make it.  Tachyon Guardians are a tight net, but easy to get around and fairly monotonous.  I tried to give these suggestions enough variety that there may be holes for the player to exploit, but also new problems to overcome.  A varied landscape that doesn't require the scouting game be so stagnantly strict.

Really, I don't even think much about the scouting game anymore.  It slows me down and keeps me from making my end-game plans too soon, but it isn't hard or thought-provoking.  I think these suggestions would make me pay more attention.

Overseer: Makes pickets harder, and can cause serious issues if it wanders into a system when you are fighting.  Personally, I consider pickets more important than scouting.  I only need to scout once.  I picket as many systems as possible so I can see AI movement in time to react.  If you want stricter coverage, you could increase the number that spawn.  Possibly just across the board, or maybe by difficulty.  Also note that Overseers can pass through the other AI's systems, so you can actually get a double-up effect.

Security: I considered making a Security Guardian always take up position first on any Wormhole leading to a human system, then leading to a neutral system, then any the human has been seen to enter through (sorted by how recently), and finally any other wormhole.  But I didn't want you to accuse me of making it too complex .  Another option is to spawn 2*Mark in each system instead.  That would often put at least one per wormhole.  Sure, some would have open wormholes, but a Mark IV system on a snake map would have 4 on each!

Seeker: I only meant the non-Wormhole Guard Posts.  Their Tachyon range was intended to be large enough that they get a good portion of the system.  I may have set the numbers too low...I guessed roughly and erred on the nice side.  But imagine them at 30k range...that would cover everything.  Just scale that down until you start to sometimes get holes.  Maybe something huge like 18000+2000*Mk.  An occasional wormhole uncovered is fine to create a less perfectly uniform landscape.  Don't forget, they also act like Blade Spawners, which are pretty dang annoying on their own when it comes to operating in the system.  Amusingly, I consider putting Tachyon Beams on the blades, but given their speed I wasn't sure if that would cause headaches for the engine .

Tracker: Since they always return to their home system, the best you could do is lure them away to create brief openings.  But they are pretty good at killing scouts quickly and pretty quick so the openings should be small.  Also it would be tough to drag them out of system since they only leave if a they see a cloaked ship escape.  That actually may be too uncommon an event, and it may need to be whenever any cloaked human ship leaves the system they just magically know.  Not too far off though since we can tell which systems cloaked ships are in.  The Tracker might need a bigger Tachyon range as well.  It is still affected by Scout Radar Dampening, so even if it does reveal the Scouts it needs to get within that range, so even at 30k+ the Scouts would still stand a chance if the Tracker wasn't too close when they came through.

[KDR_11k]

Why not just replace the blades with a regular gun? That won't be shaken off by cloaking or wormholes either.

Also I'm not a fan of arbitrary ammo immunities.

[Hearteater]

Why not replace the Spire Blade Spawners blade with a regular gun?

The arbitrary ammo immunities aren't actually arbitrary:

Monitor: As a single unit the protects an entire system, long range assassination is the obvious solution.  The Sniper immunity makes it a little less easy to remove.  But not impossible, as several other long-range weapons are still an option.  The Monitor Drones have pretty normal drone immunities.

Overseer: Much like the Monitor, this is a single big unit were long-range assassination is desirable.  Since there are less of them than others in the Tachyon family they have a higher health so using most long-range attacks requires a little more effort.  However, if you have an Artillery Golem it's a little too easy to remove them.  This is especially true on the homeworld with the Mark V Overseer.  So Artillery Ammo immunity means you can't just go and one-shot these off the board.

Seeker:  Since these are often located a reasonable distance from the wormholes and they have low health, I felt they needed something to keep them from getting blown up too easily, so I knocked out one of the longer ranged attacks.  The Blades have the normal immunities for such weapons.

Basically, since long-range killing of these Guardians was a running theme (except for the Tachyon, which is right on top of you when you come through) I decided to make the selection of weapons for doing this vary.  In this way, the Artillery Golem, or Sentinel Frigates, or whatever, aren't an answer for every member of the Tachyon family.  Artillery Golems are great...unless they have Overseers.  Sentinel Frigates are great, except against Monitors.  The goal was to make them feel different, and make slightly different tools optimal.

[Radiant Phoenix]

In general, I think that the less things that have immunity to superweapons or the like, the better.

IMO, Artillery Ammo immunity should only show up on units above the "level" of the Artillery golem, e.g., the Super Dreadnoughts, the Devourer Golem, and Homeworld-only structures (both human and AI).

I also dislike sniper immunity.

[Hearteater]

If the engine can support Tachyon Beams on the Seeker Blades, I'd consider giving them 3000+500*Mk Tachyon Beams and removing the Self-Damage.  This would let them shred blobs of Scouts as each one they killed would drop boosting and reveal additional ones the Blade can then attack.