Taking a look at Guardians

[LordSloth]

http://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11176

Have a save file.

I tried spawning a few new maps, new seeds,  new AIs, just 7.0, kept reoccurring.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I think it's just an error I made while shuffling something around recently.

[Hearteater]

They might be Mark V on Core Worlds (which are Mark IV).

@Keith
In that case I don't think Guardians need the immunity.  They aren't really all that farmable, and they all have enough damage to make them unsafe to "farm" with fleet ships.

[TechSY730]

Not sure how much I like the carrier guardian "gimmick" changes. I think that teaching the AI how to use carrier guardians better would do the trick for that. (6528: AI Units wait too long before retreating to a carrier guardian, 6529: AI Units retreating from attacks should consider using carrier guardians)


Also, when you refactored the warp gate guardian to have a noticable attack, did you remember to also make it such that it doesn't have a crazy high HP for a guardian of its mark?


Anyways, from the descriptions, the changes seem reasonable. I still need to look over the numbers you posted though.

[LordSloth]

Oh, good, good. Some of them were adjacent to my homeworld, I wasn't particularily looking forward to popping a mark V counterattack guard post with a spire hammer AI type, but now I'm really curious.

Curiosity satisfied with two Spire Dreadnaughts to my homeworld shortly after game start.

[Hearteater]

Not sure how much I like the carrier guardian "gimmick" changes. I think that teaching the AI how to use carrier guardians better would do the trick for that. (6528: AI Units wait too long before retreating to a carrier guardian, 6529: AI Units retreating from attacks should consider using carrier guardians)


Also, when you refactored the warp gate guardian to have a noticable attack, did you remember to also make it such that it doesn't have a crazy high HP for a guardian of its mark?

I don't think the existing Carrier can ever really work.  Going into the Carrier will still trigger all shots en-route.  So a lot of ships going into the Carrier die anyway.  I've watched them now for a bit, and I've never seen them do anything remotely useful for the AI.  Even if they just loaded themselves up all the time, which is the best-case behavior I can imagine, they are just persistent normal Carriers with a worse attack.  What does this bring to the table that just spawning a normal Carrier and sticking 100-500 ship in it doesn't?

Nope, the Warp Gate Guardian still has crazy hp.  However, since I didn't change the HP of it or the Carrier Guardian, it actually has a 50% health nerf at the Mark I level.  Given that it uses Antimatter Bombs which Force Fields are immune to, and it does 0 damage to Command-Grade so it can't even hurt Command Stations, it poses much less danger to the player even if it is rampaging in their space.  I could see its health getting reduced, but I think that's really going to depend on if it keeps its current rarity.

[keith.lamothe]

@Hearteater: I'm assuming the damage numbers in that chart are for normal combat style, rather than epic.  Is that correct?  So you're proposing that the (epic) numbers for the Artillery Guardian go from 160k*mk => 482,500*mk, rather than 160k*mk => 965k*mk, right?

[Hearteater]

Yes, those are Normal combat values if I recall.  Fighters do 4080 damage and have 165k health if that tells you which scale I'm on.

[Lee]

My feelings on Guardians are that most of them don't serve much purpose. If you replaced each guardian spawn with a similar power level of fleet ships I don't think anyone would notice the difference. If you make them weak then they're ignorable. If you make them extremely strong then they're problematic, but you deal with them just like you would deal with more fleet ships, bring more guns. If they have extremely powerful effects, e.g. the EMP guardian, then they can end up being extremely frustrating. The EMP specifically can punish you for not reading the corner of the screen or having the volume turned off.

So a change to guardians should:
1) Make them a challenge such that they are not ignorable or trivially solvable (run the fleetball into them).
2) Make them so that the danger they pose are within player control, but are not do-or-die frustrating (EMPs, some combination of guardian/shield/guardpost that is massively time consuming).

My proposal:
Make guardians big and mean for their matk. Give them a big shield, really slow engines, and some long range guns. Have guardians activate the same way they do now, or in reaction to a certain amount of player FP in the system. When a guardian activates, disable their shield, weapons, engines etc, start a timer of some moderate length. When the timer hits zero have them jump 2x their mark level in systems toward the nearest human homeworld, activate their shields and start chugging toward it.

Why I am in favor of this idea:
1) Guardians are a challenge that MUST be addressed when taking a system, and the player's choices have consequence. If you leave them be while you take out the ships and guardposts attacking you then you will have to deal with their deepstrike. If you decide to take them out while they are helpless, you may have to make sub-optimal decisions such as charging a guardpost that gets good multipliers against your ships so you can blow up the guardian before it warps out. If you decide to mix it up, you get to choose which guardians you will go after while helpless and which you let activate. In short, guardians give players a lot of options on how they want to play, and it allows players to take advantage of their tech/ship unlocks and their general strategy as they like.

2) A new mechanic could allow for more balancing without just tweaking numbers. For example, logicstics stations could cause guardians to "spend" extra jumps to pass through them. A new AI type may exclusively use guardians that deepstrike further. Alarm Guardposts would be something to REALLY play around.


Any thoughts?

[TechSY730]

What's the intended balance "tier" of guardians again? Greater than fleet ships, but less than starships?

[Hearteater]

Keith's rough suggestion was 25% of a cap of fleet ships, but with less health and more dps.  So the reverse of Starships which are high health and low dps compared to fleet ships.  For comparison, I used 50% health and 150% dps of 1/4th a cap of average triangle ships.

[chemical_art]

Keith's rough suggestion was 25% of a cap of fleet ships, but with less health and more dps.  So the reverse of Starships which are high health and low dps compared to fleet ships.  For comparison, I used 50% health and 150% dps of 1/4th a cap of average triangle ships.

That would explain why they feel weak.

A mk V guardian has the strength 125% of a single cap of mk I ships.

No wonder I don't notice them, since I always have several caps of fleetships in my blob.

[keith.lamothe]

Right, an individual guardian isn't supposed to be a big roadblock, or running into 8 of them at once (not terribly uncommon) would be... interesting.

[chemical_art]

Right, an individual guardian isn't supposed to be a big roadblock, or running into 8 of them at once (not terribly uncommon) would be... interesting.

If you weren't already making dire guardians, I say the issue is that they shouldn't even be using the same reinforcement logic as normal forces anyway. The AI should instead use regular starships instead of guardians, and guardians have their own reinforcement / planet caps. That way they actually feel like they make an impact without them getting too many. Because with each of these "balance passes" I notice individual guardians less.

[Hearteater]

I think Guardians have a slightly different Reinforce logic, but I could see it being changed further, even with Dire Guardians.