Guardians-Ugh!

[herwin]

Here's the real question on people's minds--what does it take to take out a guardian in 1.2? At what point do ten armadas have a chance against it?

[Bob the Insane]

I killed my first Guardian last night... And 3 Armadas was all it took.

I had just been induring an NO smackdown, so had withdrawn all Starships to the reserve and was working on my economy and fill the reserve with newer ships while the NO ran around taking out the las t of my System Ships and planetary defences...

Later it was peace with the NO again.. I dug out my oldest ships into 3 armadas.

1 was IF, the core was IF Battleships and Battle Cruisers with Mercurite Light Missles.

2 was LR with a core of LR Battleships and Battle Cruisers.

Both 1 and 2 had PD Frigates and Corvette Recon craft..

The last was a dregs armada (actually a Recon armada) made up of old recon ships and SR destroyers.

Majority of Beam weapons were Graviton, there where also some fighter deployed on the LR Battleships.

The Dregs armada got the worst of it during the closing phase, but that save the best ships from early destruction. Then it settled into the Guardian chasing the IF armada and the IF armada tryin gto stay out of range while firing missiles.. And all the while the LR armada was harrassing the Guardian from behind.. It was a close thing as the hull of the Guardian was worn down it was thining out the armadas... Tactics where simple, my ships were as fast as the Guardian and heavily armoured and shielded. Combinded with the numbers it jst wore it down. The Missles really helped, Mercurite, armoured and shielded light missles. Ranks of 5 with 4 ranks on each Battleship (forget the numbers for the Battle Cruisers)...

Also note it was medium difficulty...

[herwin]

My point is that things have changed...

[Bob the Insane]

Sorry... that was post patch...

But as I have not killed one pre patch I can't compare....

[Beamup]

Well, I just ran some numbers. The relevant facts (posted various places, e.g. here (http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=300254&highlight=Guardian)) are that the Guardian is a Leviathan with Ultra Heavy Adamantium armor and a Damper Field. I've also used visage's Guide extensively (I did check and make sure the numbers didn't change in the patch).

To beat UHA armor deflection though a Damper Field requires 144 damage in a single hit (18 deflection for Adamantium * 2 for Ultra Heavy * 4 since only 1/4 gets past the Damper Field). The earliest you can do this is at TL 18, with Light Missiles using Neutronium Warheads or with Herculear Warheads (on Rockets will do in that case). No DF weapon can do 144 until the Improved Spinal mount or the Plasma gun, incidentally.

Since Merculite warheads show up at TL 19 and are much more powerful than Herculear, I'll do my analysis based on them. So, we're using Merculite Light Missiles. 524 damage per hit, of which 131 gets past the Damper Field.

A Leviathan system ship has 6138 space, UHA armor has 25600 armor points. So, worst-case, 31738 damage past the Damper will kill it. Most likely it would take rather less, since the internals will probably all be gone before the armor, but let's use the worst-case scenario. This means we need 243 missile hits (242.3, really, but we round up). At 95% accuracy, we expect to need 256 missiles to get past its PD.

The Guardian's main PD consists of 25 PD LFGs. It also has 14 other beams (10 Tachyons, 2 Maulers, 2 Death Rays). Assuming the LFGs get 1 shot each, the Maulers get 1, and the others get 2, that's up to 51 PD shots (well, the LFGs get 5 shots each but all at the same target). So, 307 missiles will certainly saturate its defenses enough to get 256 missiles through.

So, a volley of 307 Merculite Light Missiles can kill a Guardian. At TL 19, you can build Battleships. To keep the cost per ship reasonable, I'll consider using Cruisers instead. (Incidentally, to keep the cost down, I wouldn't use missile shields/armor - the LFGs can punch through them anyway)

Cruisers have 405 space. You need 30.8% of that for required systems and a Fusion Drive (best at TL 19), leaving just over 280. Speed-1 Thrusters will fit in the .26 spaces left. Anyway, a single Light Missile Merculite is 10 spaces, so 20 for a one-shot launcher. The Cruiser can pack in 14. So, that would indicate 22 of these ships. Of course, since at every stage I used a worst-case estimate, this should be overkill. If you wanted to use Battleships instead, 11 should do it since they're twice as big. Total cost would be about the same.

Also, this counts on you Watching the combat so the AI will fire off the missiles immediately (i.e. before the Guardian blows away any of your ships).

[Zhaneel]

While I don't run numbers, using IF with Merculite missles and Carriers with Gravitor/Ion Cannon Fighters worked well for me. A couple of LR and SR forces were thrown in just in case, and worked well to destory everything that the Guardian threw at me. Of course, I used the dregs of my old Silicoid smacking force, so they were well balanced and could move.

Zhaneel

[Lord Aramus]

Generically, around tech level 20 is where the guardians stop being a challenge. How many ships you have doesnt mean nearly as muchas what is on them. Alot of the time I go from getting creamed with 10 aramadas to hamering guardian with 3 armadas 2 or 3 tech levels later.

The real trick is keeping your allies away after beating the guardian

[Beamup]

I was wondering how much damage it would actually take to kill A armor and I internals, so I solved it. I did have to use an approximation of continuous damage, which will be valid in the limit of a large number of hits. It should be pretty much valid here. Unfortunately, there is no closed form solution (at least, not that I've found yet - I have a few tricks left up my sleeve, though). The number of damage points needed, D, is the solution to

D = I + A(1-e^(-D/A))

where I is the number of internals and A is the number of armor points (originally, of course). In this case, D turns out to be 20032.19. This means 153 hits, so 161 past PD and 212 total. So 15 Cruisers packed with Light Missile Merculites would expect to do the job. A few more to protect against bad luck (only 93% hit instead of 95%, etc.) would be useful. Or, you could just count on the fact that there's no way the Guardian's PD would really be that effective.

P.S. Lord Aramus, it so happens that TL 20 is about where you first get a chance to scratch the paint on a Guardian (assuming the DF + UHA is accurate). But, as you can see, once you get tools capable of doing the job at all, it's not that tough.

[DeckPrism]

Originally posted by Beamup
P.S. Lord Aramus, it so happens that TL 20 is about where you first get a chance to scratch the paint on a Guardian (assuming the DF + UHA is accurate). But, as you can see, once you get tools capable of doing the job at all, it's not that tough.

This is why there is a movement afoot in the thread you referenced to either make guardians tougher, or to make more than one of them at guardian systems. Aparently with mods and editors you can do that now if you want it to be more challenging. The same thing goes for Orion; you can add guardians there too.

[Beamup]

Originally posted by DeckPrism
This is why there is a movement afoot in the thread you referenced to either make guardians tougher, or to make more than one of them at guardian systems. Aparently with mods and editors you can do that now if you want it to be more challenging. The same thing goes for Orion; you can add guardians there too.

Unfortunately there's not much you can do to make Guardians tougher while keeping them a legal ship. A single legal ship just can't mount enough PD to stop a really determined mass missile wave. Sure, you might make it take 30 cruisers instead of 15, but it'll still work.

[Lord Aramus]

they are talking about them being systems ships, last I checked there could be 20 of them at a time, so yeah, i think they could make them effective at defense. :D

[DeckPrism]

A new level of armor, THATS what we need. Legal? Well I'm willing to go a little ways beyond legal with the explanation of "lost tech". Though while I'm on that thought, someone might as well add in a 10 firing LFG instead of the 5 firing one since PD still does not give (I think) it's *2.

Edit: there are several ideas that when added together should give the effect of several hundred LFGs. So instead of 15 ships you might need 150 ships.

[Beamup]

Yup, boosting the numbers is definitely what you'd have to do if it was still legal. But that would kind of take away from the whole mystique of the Guardian, IMO. Oh well, that's the good thing about mods. Those who like them can use them, those who don't won't.

Upping the LFG to *10 still wouldn't help. It would only result in even more overkill on the missiles it hit since multifire can't target more than one target. Giving it some insanely low delay might work, as would a new level of armor. Myself, I'd do both if I wanted to leave behind legality. Make a new PD weapon for it - more powerful, shield and armor penetration of .1, with a delay of like .1, but a range even shorter than the LFG. Then make a new level of armor for it with deflection about 5 times as great as UHA. Maybe an upgraded Damper Field that had 95% stopping power would be better, though - deflection does nothing once you pass its threshold. That's why the current effect of "can't touch it... can't touch it... can kill it easily" happens.

Anyway, with those changes missiles would be pretty much hopeless. Fighters already are hopeless. And it would take a REALLY beefy beam to get past 95% stopping power + UHA deflection.

(didn't know the Guardians had female Darlok captains, did you?)

[Bluekkis]

in my personal mod I've added xentronium armor, though not sure if NO's use it, haven't actually palyed such a long game yet :D (always wonddered why ol' xentronium was dropped :rolleyes: )

btw, reading your posts here it comes to me that guardian designs seems to be moddable... could some one tell me how :)

[DeckPrism]

So that everyone may know, these 2 threads talk about modding related to guardians:
http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=300254&highlight=Guardian

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=300855&highlight=Guardian

[Hikari]

Originally posted by herwin
Here's the real question on people's minds--what does it take to take out a guardian in 1.2? At what point do ten armadas have a chance against it?

I think I took one out with close to the bare minimum possible. The reason I think so is that my VERY last missile salvo is what did the job, with no leftover missiles to try and dust the Guardian's fighter swarm. So, if I had one less task force present, I'm pretty sure it would have withstanded the salvo and proceeded to chunk up my ships.

I used 36 Battle Cruiser class IF ships with standard Merculite Rockets (Light Missiles weren't on my Matrix). They weren't really optimized for sucker-punching - I like to put max speed and shields on my ships, along with a bit of ECM/ECCM/Sensors - so you could probably get by with more like 25-28 if you went pure missiles. If you have Light Missiles instead of Rockets, you can probably cut it as low as 20-25 dedicated IF B-Cruisers.

They were accompanied by 7 horribly outdated SR DF ships (Destroyers, I think) packing an enormous assortment of light-mounted, point-blank guns for PD. To be honest, I was surprised at how well they did their job - they took out the Guardian's fighter and absorbed the missiles with only 5 losses, which is a lot less than I expected.

I actually got a bit of graphical/processing lag when the missile swarms and the Guardians PD started interacting. Pretty surprising, since I'm on a P4 with a beefy GeForce card. It did make it easier to appreciate just how close I came to not finishing the job, though!

-Hikari

[Panzergrenadier]

In my actual and only afterpatch game i killed the guardian with a TF of Behemoth and LR weapons( Disintigration Beam ). The Guardian appeared and were destroyed very fast. But i was level 44 or 45 with Damper Fields on my ships.

[Strifeguard]

This thread is a good application of Visage's combat mechanics.

[DavidByron]

Beamup was wrong: I've killed Guardians with 10 squads of frigates armed with only Anionic rockets (or was it Neutronium rockets?). It's only one ship.

Now a more interesting question is how soon you can build a fleet that will wipe out the initial 18 system ships guarding Orion, AND the base, AND the fighters AND then bombard the population to nothing. Can it be done by turn 100 bringing about a rapid victory (by senate)?

I should think that would be about the quickest way to achieve a victory.