Rebalancing Guardians

[Shrugging Khan]

On the issue of gravity guardians: How about changing the solid limit of 8 to something percentage-based, with variations by mark level?

[Sunshine!]

Actually it's the other way around - we can spam gravity turrets, the AI can't spam gravity guardians.  Gravity guardians have a very, very low percentage of showing up, and I've never seen two of them in the same engagement.  I'm not really for increasing the speed cap inside a gravity effect for gravity guardians - they're rare, so they should be a problem the player has to be clever about getting past.  It's not like any of them slow ships to speed 2 like a mk3 gravity turret does.  At best, I think the mk3 hits speed 8.

[chemical_art]

Actually it's the other way around - we can spam gravity turrets, the AI can't spam gravity guardians.  Gravity guardians have a very, very low percentage of showing up, and I've never seen two of them in the same engagement.  I'm not really for increasing the speed cap inside a gravity effect for gravity guardians - they're rare, so they should be a problem the player has to be clever about getting past.  It's not like any of them slow ships to speed 2 like a mk3 gravity turret does.  At best, I think the mk3 hits speed 8.

Wish I had the screen shot, but I had a system with 5 MK V gravity guardians. I more frequently see two on a planet, so the RNG just may be at work.

[TechSY730]

Actually it's the other way around - we can spam gravity turrets, the AI can't spam gravity guardians.  Gravity guardians have a very, very low percentage of showing up, and I've never seen two of them in the same engagement.  I'm not really for increasing the speed cap inside a gravity effect for gravity guardians - they're rare, so they should be a problem the player has to be clever about getting past.  It's not like any of them slow ships to speed 2 like a mk3 gravity turret does.  At best, I think the mk3 hits speed 8.

Wish I had the screen shot, but I had a system with 5 MK V gravity guardians. I more frequently see two on a planet, so the RNG just may be at work.

Since observation from a few games alone is a bad way to determine spawn chance, we need to either gather data from many planets across many game seeds across many game stages and across many AI difficulties. Or just get one of the devs to tell us their spawn chance.

[Sunshine!]

For reference, Warp Gate Guardians do spawn on diff 7, and at mark 2 have 32 million HP and 16,000x7 attack.

Mk2 Gravity Guardians have 10k range and drop speed to 8.  That's a little ridiculous for mk2.

[Red Spot]

Personally I have seen gravity guardians pretty much only in teams of 2-3, usually even within the same blob of units.
Often followed by an EMP and Warp Gate guardian, where last often come in pairs as well.

No issues with any of the units though. They seem balanced pretty well to me. (Anyone still think frigates as so useless? )

[NickAragua]

I'd just like to second the opinion that Laser Guardians are pretty buff compared to their buddies. Other guardians have a reasonable counter unit most of the time, Laser Guardians just chew through everything and are super tough.

[Shrugging Khan]

Yeah...laser guardians need something that keeps them from taking on FFs solo. Either a 0.x modifier to damage against FFs and Command-Grades, or a more vulnerable hull type to counter their offensive capabilities.

[TechSY730]

I seem to remember that people were complaining about how easily warp gaurdians could get in, and before players could notice, launch waves to otherwise non-border planets.
So the devs compromised and added an alarm warning when a warp gaurdian gets angered (and I think also having certain amount of time after angering before their "warp" property becomes "active", but I could be wrong about that). In return, they 4x their HP and attack. As mentioned by several posters, 4x was a bit too much of a buff for them, not worth the "must announce themselves" nerf they got. Maybe half all the stats that quadrupled, giving a net 2x of what they were before the announcement thing. That seems a little more reasonable.

[Entrenched Homperson]

From what I've seen, most of these Guardians have solutions you can deal with. Flak Guardians arent so much an issue, I haven't been having issues with them. Laser Guardians and Tractor Guardians are a bit of an issue for me, but that just might be playstyle. I've had more then once a tractor guardian steal ships, run through my homeworld stealing more ships and park all the frozen units in some hostile zone to be obliterated. As fast as they are its gonna be hard to catch them, and early game they can steal a sizeable enough portion of your ships that you literaly CANT catch it before it warps away.

And Laser Guardians are OP. 

[TechSY730]

How about this for laser guardians?
Highish speed
High rate of fire and a good number of shots per salvo
Low base damage per bullet
Low HP and armor (for a guardian)
A moderatly high spawn rate (for a guardian)

Sort of like a tougher version of a laser gattling.

Looks like you sort of used my idea (either intentionally or unintentionally)

Laser Guardians:

    * Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.
    * Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).
    * Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.
    * Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
    * Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.
    * Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.
    * Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.

Cool.

I noticed you didn't do anything to warp guardians. How high is their spawn rate? I need to know how scared to be of them.