I can only comment at length on the Guardian from having a good deal of experience trying to use it most effectively. My only experiences with the Subverter have been on the receiving end, which aren't extensive enough or from the right perspective to really intelligently weigh in on it. So, I hope what I have to say on how to handle the Guardian is listened to, but also of course taken with a grain of salt because I mostly play Advent and am protective of my most effective abilities.

With that said, here goes...

I've always viewed Repulsion as one of the great equalizing forces in the game. Advent will never have as strong an economy as TEC, and won't be able to deploy free, endless ships of the Vasari, so an ability like Repulsion that can dramatically increase the survivability of an Advent fleet is nice, I've thought. You can't use it to actually beat an enemy like TEC's economy or Vasari's Armada can, but at least you have something to keep those Heavy Cruisers from murdering your most valuable assets, the leveled Capitals and open up some more tactics than just build as many Heavy Cruisers as possible.

But anyway, I've been using this tactic for a while now (usually just to buy time while I try to get a good mixed fleet going or to be a pain so my allies have more time) and there are a few counters I've noticed that work well.

The Javelis has always ground this to a screeching halt for me. The superior range of the Javelis allows it to sit well back out of range of literally all of Advent's toys hiding in the Repulsion field and just slaughtering them (and if the Illuminators go towards the edge of the field to fire, they can get murdered too). Sending suicide Guardians directly at the Javelis to further repel them can stall sometimes, but it doesn't take long for most people to just start focus firing on any Guardians that leave the pack.

The Assailant technically doesn't outrange the Guardian's Repulsion, but from all the games I've utilized in can effectively (since Repulsion doesn't instantly send units outside of range and keep them there, they can often get in range, fire be pushed back a little and repeat). Even with a number of Guardians all deploying from the same location the Assailants can often just get into their firing range anyway and release the pain. Due to the lesser range of the Assailant, the suicide Guardian tactic can work better against a Vasari, but the tactic isn't cheap and unless you're fighting from a factory won't be sustainable.

With the Guardians going it's unlikely, but if a Subverter gets within range it's game over. Kind of ironically, the Guardian is the best counter to the Subverter for this. Advent fleets need to keep close to be most effective so the Subverter is just so potent against them, you need some kind of counter aside from massed Subjugators to try to undo the damage). Using Repulsion to keep Subverters away takes away most of your killing power, but if just a couple Subverters get into an Advent fleet it can lead to slaughter. They kind of counter each other, which leaves TEC out in the cold for a very effective support cruiser.

It's only against other Advent that this tactic seems too strong to me, mostly because Illuminators have too short a range to easily counter it and strikecraft are generally rubbish. The best they can do is start Repulsing back, but if you can do that, there's no real reason to waste time fighting the fleet, can easily torch the enemy's worlds and let him sit in his bubble defending his Asteroid or whatever.

You can try other things, massed strikecraft (between multiple Guardians using abilities this isn't very viable unless you bring tons), Anti-matter stealing/sabotaging abilities (require you to get closer than the Guardians will generally allow) or simply bypass the fleet and go for everything else.

To me, the biggest balance issue with the game right now are LRMs in early game and Heavy Cruisers late game. These units make investing in literally anything else a questionable tactic at best. Each faction has a good 15 ships, but all you need are these two, that hurts the game more than any other single thing. How much strategy is there in economy and tank rush? Nerfing the Support Cruisers (the Guardians which can keep Heavy Cruisers out of range, and the Subverter which can stun whole blobs of them) just makes Heavy Cruisers all the better, and that's not a way I want to see the game taken, personally.

These abilities are both very strong, but personally I would much rather see one of TEC's Support Cruisers get a significant buff that would aid them in the fight against Heavy Cruisers and such than nerf the other two to try to bring it in line. A much needed improvement to strikecraft of all factions could also help (and also let Advents directly counter this). I think it's nice when things other than Heavy Cruisers can change the outcome of a late game battle, rather than just the classic whoever has the most Kodiaks wins. I would rather see more ships that have uses late in the game, bring up the Hoshiko and the Ceilo, maybe the Subjugator and the Overseer too with area of effect to counter the Subjugator more clearly, rather than take away their use.

I'm afraid nerfs would just make Heavy Cruisers even better, and I'm not sure that's the direction the game should go in.

My two pence, although it turned out longer than I planned.

Obviously wrong. Please, give us actual reasoning for your point, if you have any.

I agree on the subverter but not the guardian. There are too many ways to counter the repel ability. The subverter, however, is a different matter. There are a number of soft counters that I have found effective. As TEC, the Dunov's EMP charge is area effect and can drain the subverters of anti matter. Won't stop all the subverters, but should make the situation manageable. However, this requires you spend money on a cap ship and a slot just to counter this one strategy, and the Dunov isn't particularly strong under fire as far as cap ships go. Disciples and cobalts might work against subverters if there are enough of them and you have steal anti matter / sabotage reactor researched. But by that point in the game, light frigs are basically useless otherwise and will die in prodigious numbers.

Distortion field is obviously overpowered.


Repulsion.. it's really good, but gaurdians are also more expensive than HC's.

With Gaurdians what's needed is better counters.
The problem is the range on subjugators and subverters disable is too short, so they get repelled away before they can disable.

The range on those abilities needs to be increase ~1000, and cobalts anti-am ability range increased ~2000(and get better auto-cast!) rather than nerfing the ability IMO.
Maybe make using Repulsion disable the shield ability for 30 seconds too.

HuntingX, there is a huge difference between "no frigate ability should work on capitols" and "no negative frigate ability works on capitols". Some other time, when I'm not dealing with a minor emergency, I'll explain the difference to you. I responded to the first; you gave reasoning for the latter.

You people are just now realizing the full power of the Advent. I cringe when I see people whine about Advent not being powerful enough these past few months, and now I cringe seeing people whine about how the most useful Advent ship is overpowered. Literally overnight the Advent went from being terrible to being the most powerful faction in the game. The guardian should not be changed. TEC gets their robotics cruisers and Advent gets their guardians. Advent ships, on a whole, are slightly weaker and less damaging than opposing ships, but their abilities make up for this problem to balance things out. The guardian is hands down the most strategic and useful ship in the entire game. Micromanage it and treat it like a chess piece, and your foe will kicking and screaming because they can't hit it.

If guardians are getting you down, then here's an idea. TELL YOUR FIGHTER CRAFT TO ATTACK THEM. It's very very simple if you're actually building things with fighter craft and not just spamming LRM's all day long. Oh wait, I just asked you to change your established strategy. Oh noes!11!! That's too much to ask. It's too difficult for 'competitive' players to adapt their strategies to what's going on in the game. Heaven forbid someone outplays another person via guardian micromanagement. Nevermind that guardians can't push away strike craft, it's just too difficult for you to beat them so now they need a nerf. This sort of thinking is yet another example of how 'competitive players' continue to screw things up. If you were strategically using things like the Vasari's damage nanites or TEC's ion bolt in addition to strategic positioning, then you might actually have stood a chance. Lining up like civil war soldiers and shooting until someone dies is not always a workable strategy when facing the Advent.

Now that you've realized the full power of the guardians, let me clue you in on just how unstoppable a couple of guardians, halcyons, and drone hosts are. They can just circle around your gravity well all day long while their strike craft lay waste to any attack force and/or structures. You're going to need a ton of flacks to actually make an effective counter. Then the halcyons can come in to bomb your planet once things are sufficiently clear.

But what do I know? I'm not a competitive player. I don't like clans. I'm just a casual person who has been playing strategy games since I was a kid. I'm just someone who has little trouble taking out multiple unfair AI's while playing Advent. I'm just someone who can play alone against 3 to 5 friends and completely wipe the floor with every last one of them as Advent.

The Guardians need no change, end of story.

When microed properly, repel is completely broken. 3-5 guardians can keep an ENTIRE fleet out of shooting range indefinately. I played one game with HuntingX and Therlun where they had twice as many HC's as me as well as 12 subverters but I had guardians. Although I messed up my micro near the end (I leave nothing on auto-cast), their fleets were rendered useless for almost 10-15 minutes.

If you combine a massive carrier fleet with say, 5 guardians, all parked them on the side of the grav well that the enemy needs to get to your planet and you position the guardians in front of the carriers, it is an unstoppable army. Not even vasari's mighty upgraded flak frigate can stop it. The reason is that the repulsion pushes the units very far (potentially across the grav well) and the units all scatter, leaving the flak unable to defend certain targets. Yes, they'll kill some strikecraft, but they won't be able to stop them from killing units. This battle takes an absurdly long time, but it's impossible to shut down.

More advanced players will be able to drive their fleet around repulsing the enemy from the middle, leaving his units all over the grav well. Doing this, it's much easier to pick them apart with strikecraft.

Better still, players can have multiple fleets of these invincible carrier blobs, each supported by 3-5 guardians. You can even protect your planets from any assault with just hangar bays and guardians. The enemy's attack will not be able to do any damage.

Finally, when on offense, it's impossible to defend against. They blow your ships out of range and then dismantle you infrastructure which doesn't move. When you see the repulsion/carrier/HC blob, even if your army is vastly superior, you have no choice but to leave the grav well as it's a completely futile effort to stop them.

I also think the skill is bugged. It should only push the ships out of repulsion range and temporarily slow them down. Instead, it accelerates them backwards until they leave repulsion range. It's like a leaf blower.

@Ron, I understand that you're nitpicking a little bit. Yes some frigate abilities work, for example, matyrdom, drain antimatter, hoshinko's heal bots, etc.

However, there's frigate with an ability to utterly shut down a capitol ship. When repulsion starts, it is as good as a stun on your capitol ship as it will never get into range to do anything.

You don't even need the Akkan, and you don't need to spam LRMs. Guardians are costly, comparable to a Destra Crusader. You can't just spam them. All you need is just enough LRMs to suppress the Guardians. The rest of your fleet can be the usual heavy load of Kodiaks.

That said, your point about the Guardian's ability working on capital ships is well-taken though. I don't know of any other frigate or cruiser ability that does that. The Guardian's ability shouldn't do that, or the Guardian should be weakened in some other way. Maybe a shield reduction seeing how it has a pretty much ridiculous number of shield points.

Also, your comment about strikecraft being buffed is also well-taken. I think there's a couple of ways to accomplish that. Personally, I think making the cruiser carriers cheaper would be the best way, but it's certainly not the only way.

LRM's don't outrange repel in 1.04, I believe. Even if did, they guardians simply need to drive into your lrm herd while spamming repulsion. Your units will fly away so far back they won't actually be able to do anything for a significant time. We just had a game that took next to forever and in that game, the TEC lrms were useless.

Agreed - also give the ability a casting cost to toggle it.

Regarding the subverters, they should be balanced so that they can only disable up to a certain amount of targets and perhaps lowering their AOE. It's incredibly stupid to have an 40 HC blob get stopped cold by a single subverter. If you have 12, you can even stagger them to have them basically shut down your fleet for several minutes. stupid.

Hehe, that was the first fight Jinx... I was just playing around by then, you knew we had the game . Afterwards I retreated back and had him come to me...and fought him again... I still won, mainly because his disciples were in clumps...But if you spread them around and keep more coming (waves as you say), it stops subverters pretty darn well.

hahaha, that was funny I guess fighting back and never getting close to losing in a 2v1 does that =p.