Defeating the Guardian in MoO1

[vmxa1]

Yes I should have seen the 2,000 and realized it. I can not recall the color of the beam, but it does have +3 to hit and 2-20 damage.
Anyway in Moo1, I leave the guardian until the tech is all done to get a few more techs. This is just my quirk, nothing to do with strategy. It is basically the next to the last thing I do before the game ends.

[Zed-F]

On my computer, megabolt looks yellow, and is a very broad beam. It does 2-20 damage and has +3 to hit (very useful, means you can skimp on expensive computers and build more ships, or if you do put on good computers it increases your chance of doing 20 rather than 2 damage.) However, the Guardian has class X shields on impossible, so if you're using megabolts against it you need good computers. Stronger beams and/or a bigger fleet help too, of course.

The goal with the Guardian is to get a 1-shot kill or reasonably close to it, so you minimize your losses and minimize its auto-repair benefit. With sufficient numbers, the scatterpacks don't get enough chances to fire to whittle your force down enough to matter. You do need to have a good amount of speed to keep up with the Guardian as well, and this can help you maneuver around the relatively slow scatterpack missles to some degree, so you can get a strike in before they hit. In comparison, larger ships tend to fare less well against the Guardian's strong beam complement at this tech level, especially since the beams strike instantly and on the first turn, and the Guardian will often have the initiative. Typically those beams will get at least one shot off before you can return fire, whereas it's often possible to wax the Guardian before its missles connect, at which point the missles disappear.

[Urban Ranger]

* Crowd chants in the background

"Subspace teleporter, subspace teleporter!"

[Zed-F]

Yep, that's certainly a good option, if the game gets that far before you get around to going after the Guardian. I often find myself going after the Guardian before then, but if not I will certainly use them.

[Cxwf]

I usually design a small ship with all of the plus initiative I can pack on it, and maybe 1 laser or something just so it counts as a warship. I build only a handful of them and attack the Guardian with it. If it doesn't go before the Guardian this ship is rather pointless.

This fast ship will then be sitting right next to the guardian when he goes next, so it will be the target of the Guardians long range beams, since they are one range too short to hit the rest of your fleet on the first turn. This allows all of your other ships to move up and attack on the first turn without getting automatically blown away by the death ray and stellar converters. Getting to fire first with your whole fleet usually means the Guardian will die before he can fire again, although you might still take damage from the missiles and torpedos.

[Zed-F]

Heh, way to work the system. Personally I'd rather just run in with a ton of small fighters to begin with since they won't take a lot of losses from the Guardian's beams anyway, but if you tend to prefer larger ships that's a good plan.