How to kill a Guardian?

[vmxa1]

Are the fighters interceptors or the other brand?

[Main_Brain]

My guess woul dbe Space Control Fighters?

[Eric S]

Carrier battles can be fun :-) Had one last night where several groups of fighters swarmed in on a TF, and chewed up all the ships but one in a matter of seconds. I don't know what that one ship was, but I spent the next 6 minutes watching the ship ineffectually swat at the fighters while the fighters ineffectually ate away at its shields. A constant stream of blue numbers (shield hits, right?) rose from the ship, but nothing better. Then the ship decided to go after my carriers, and an escort ship managed to score a yellow hit. All of a sudden all of the fighter hit numbers turned yellow or red, and the ship blew up in a few seconds. I don't know if the fighters were slowly eating away at the shields of that ship and the timing was coincidence, or if the ship was regenerating its shields as fast as the fighters were blowing it away and the escort hit was needed to tip the balance.

Anyway, the visuals of the battle were quite interesting. After 6 minutes of battle, the multiple carrier TFs had launched so many more waves of fighters that I couldn't see the ship anymore, and usually not the TF frame. I could usually make out the status bar, but sometimes even that was completely obscured That ship would have been toast much sooner if I hadn't been using obsolete fighter designs. I was using my old carriers to prevent piracy and the AI jumped one of my forward colonies that was only there because I charted it from the other end of a wormhole somehow, and the colony AI immediately threw enough colony ships at it to populate the whole system in one turn, bringing even the Reds up to colony status. I guess even the AI got bored of my slow, methodical plodding

[Grumbold]

I was using SCF's because I believe they have more durability.

[Arnelos]

I'm biased toward carrier TF's as well. Both for concentration of fire purposes, because they seem to have a longer "shelf life", and for sheer coolness value

[vmxa1]

Yes one of the fun things is to see a large swarm of fighters jump on someone. I also enjoy the defensive fire when they come for your fleet.

[sartha]

I killed a guardian without losing a single ship. All I had was about 25 destroyers, light cruisers and cruisers. at least 90% of them were carrier-based. They packed in as many neutron-interceptors as could fit and the fighters swarmed the guardian. (Actually I forget if it was neutron or fusion, I know it wasn't that advanced) The guardian was spinning around, desperately trying to destroy the huge swarm of fighters but before he was able to, the 2nd wave of fighters came in and finished him off. The other 10% were combo-long range attack vessels. Basically just heavy mount fusion beams with som missiles. forget what type but they did quite a number on the guardian without a chance to defend against them. Mind you, his shields were gone by then so it was probably a low-level missile with armor-piercing warhead lol

I remember thinking it had to be as week as the Moo2 guardian and I can take that down with a force of 10 frigates but my innitial attack failed miserably.

Personally I value carriers greatly. sacrifice speed for fighter-compliment and I was able to stick a good 160 interceptors (phaser) on 1 superdreadnought system-ship! And that was including ECM, ECCM and a few other useful things. I think 2 lighting field generators, not sure anymore. I built a task force of 10 of those... I could barely see my victims beneath the swarming hive of fighters.

Oh, and to retreat you have to be in control of the battle... found that out the hard way lol

[Arnelos]

The missle PD bug, if exploited, is the easiest way to knock out the guardians.

I wiped out all of the guardians with ease...

A sizable fleet with nothing more than 1-shot missle racks of light chassis nuclear missiles (and, because of their small size, ZILLIONS of the little suckers) did the trick EASILY.

A single volley not only overpowered and destroyed each of the guardians I attacked with that fleet, but that fleet (because of the PD bug) could take down most fleets in the game with equal ease.

When I decided in another game NOT to exploit the PD bug, I've used mostly carriers... they work pretty well once you get to higher techs.

[Eric S]

Originally posted by sartha
Personally I value carriers greatly. sacrifice speed for fighter-compliment and I was able to stick a good 160 interceptors (phaser) on 1 superdreadnought system-ship! And that was including ECM, ECCM and a few other useful things. I think 2 lighting field generators, not sure anymore. I built a task force of 10 of those... I could barely see my victims beneath the swarming hive of fighters.

Let's see, what have I learned about Carriers and IF ship design? Or should I say, what do I think I've learned? (in other words, all of this is gleened by looking at the numbers and a little bit of gameplay, no in-depth research, and all of it is my opinion, which could be wrong).
Chop the system drive speed down as slow as it will let you. Not only does this make for more room for fighters/missiles, but since the ships wind up staying where they are, the combat AI is much less likely to do something stupid with them if you cede control or watch combat. Heck, I even design special escort and picket ships just for the carrier/IF ships that are every bit as slow, since they can't move any faster than what they're escorting, and that gives me more room for PD and short-range/long-range weapons.

Lightning field generator is my favorite PD weapon. By the time you multiply the Multifire/FireRate, you're getting 10 shots every 1.875 seconds. The best any other weapon does is 6 shots every 1.5 seconds.

NOTE: The following paragraphs are based on a total and critical lack of data concerning the damage rating of fighters and missiles. I don't know if they change at all, or if the damage rating is determined from the volume of the fighter/missile. It isn't in any of the spreadsheet files. Testing is needed, but I'm not in a position to set up two machines for head-to-head testing right now. The following opinions assume that they don't change.

Avoid the double weapons pods for fighters. Sure, you get two shots for just less than twice the size, but you haven't increased the fighters ability to sustain damage. I'd rather have 18 fighters that do damage X than 10 fighters that do damage X*2 if the same amount of damage that would kill all 10 of the dual-pod fighters would only reduce the single pod fighters by 66% in number.

Avoid the armor piercing fighter weapons. Again, you are getting at best the ability to do 33% more damage, but taking up 50% more space to do it, and you're still swatted down just as easily. In this case, however, from a purely AU-spent ratio, the AP weapons (both fighter and ship-mount) do better, because AP doesn't affect the cost of the fighter/weapon.

Autofire lasers are more of a tossup, however. Three times the damage (though each of the shots has to overcome the armor deflection rating seperately, I believe) at the same cost, but you can only fit half as many fighters into the same carrier. Makes for cheap carriers which might be important early on.

The three previous paragraphs go out the window if the damage a fighter can take is based on the space a fighter takes up.

Similar logic applies to missiles. Armor Piercing weapons just aren't worth it unless cost is the limiting factor. In fact, AP missiles take up twice as much space, rather than just 50% more.

Missile Chassis thoughts: Oddly enough, the Heavy Missile beats out both the larger and smaller chassis on a bang for the buck and bang for the space comparison, but I suspect that the larger missiles are more vulnerable to PD fire, since there will be fewer of them. If they have more damage points, that might affect the outcome, but without knowing how the damage points scale, I'm not sure. The missile-interceptor chassis has the advantage that the missiles will chase down other missiles and fighters if no other target presents themselves, but I've never been able to deliberately target fighters or missiles with them.

[vmxa1]

I tend to agree that more fighter or missiles is better. The only caveat is that if you are talking about missiles, then being able to hit the target (if a ship or orbital) hard enought to destroy it in the first volley is better than needing a second volley as they do not get to retaliate again. For this is seems better to use those heavy damage dealing missiles. Fighter are differnt as they get to stay on site to continuing to damage.

[sartha]

Here's my strategies:
Carriers: Make a list of all the fighters available. Stick what I want on them and then add the "potential" fighter types. Then I stack as many of those fighters as I can, then get rid of them and do the same with another type etc, each time I calculate how many fighters I can put on of each type and how much "overall" damage they do. The winning combo is the one that has the most fighters and the highest damage in that order.

Missiles: Same as the carrier except I choose the missile types carefully, Point Defense for defensive fire and the heaviest mount available for raw power.

I have found that in both cases, I can eliminate a technologically supperior foe with ease.

As for putting in a Thruster with speed 1... Can I say EASY target? lol It's not worth it. The amount of ECM/Cloak tech you'd need to stick onto a carrier or missile ship with 1 speed to avoid getting destroyed easily + the armor and shield costs/space makes the ship loose more space. I usually limit the engine speed to about 1/2 it's norm. So only 750 on Thrusters and so on. They won't outrun their enemy without suppressing fire... wich normally they do anyways with their fighters and missiles hehe.

System ships are something else, I make system ships with 1 speed as an intercept version of the defensive bases.I find it annoying when the enemy parks right overtop my planet without attacking me and I end up not recieving the food and minerals I need for that planet! So with system ships, I blow them out of the skies.

[Eric S]

Reasonable thoughts. I don't find the slow carrier and IF TFs too easy of a target, because I never deploy them alone (at the very least I include a fast moving recon/PD TF to play spotter/bait), and they don't have to be anywhere near combat to be effective. Could have to do with the fact that the AI doesn't maneuver much, just tends to charge in and hope for the best. It could also have something do to with the fact that I usually field carrier and IF TFs in large sizes (armadas when practical) to ensure that they have a decent level of protection from their escorts.

My TFs that aren't carrier or IF based don't get the slow treatment, and often I use SR/LR TFs to guard the fire support ships. Oh, there's one ship type to never skimp on system speed. SR TFs need every bit of speed available, as they need to close fast or die.

As for the missiles, I can't find a use for the torpedo mount, since heavy mounts are cheaper and do more damage for a given amount of space, but other than that, I often follow your plan. Sometimes I put everything in a point defense mount just to put so many targets out there that I can overwhelm the PD of the target, but that's expensive, since PD missiles are about 3 times more expensive for a given amount of volume than standard missiles.

Couldn't agree more about the orbitals. The only advantage to orbitals that I've seen is that they don't all get clumped into one TF. I always build system ships before orbitals, especially since system ships will defend/blockade-bust any planet, not just the one they're orbiting.

[Ghostbear]

Slightly different question

Anyone,

I ran in to a Guardian early in a game and immediately bugged out.

Silly me, I forgot to write down the name of the system and later in the game I couldn't find it again.

Is there some way to identify Guardian worlds?

GB

[vmxa1]

Not that I can see, except as you mentioned. write it down. Not the planet, but the star.

[Eric S]

Still doesn't help much, since it doesn't label the star after you retreat. (Doesn't make much sense, since you knew what its name was before you retreated, except that it lets you know that the system is still unexplored).