Iconus Guardian

The key in repulse is that it allows Illums to defeat HCs. While the range of repulse is about the same, if not slightly more than that of the illums, once you establish a perimiter with repulse, you maneuver your illums into maximal firing position. I've only used it once or twice, so I don't know if it's possible to get them into range with their sidebeams - it probably depends on how spread out the HCs are. Since HCs are supposed to counter LRF, it's a really nasty trick to drop on somebody who just pulled out a nice fleet of kodiacks to counter your illum spam.

I'm not sure how the guardian works in terms of the damage, or phase missiles.

Shield projection causes the guardian to absorb some of the damage taken by nearby allies, diverting it to its own massive shield reserves.  It gets some minor damage reduction, but otherwise that's what it does: juggles who is taking how much damage.  On its own this will quickly deplete your guardians of shields.  What you do is combo it up with a Progenitor.  With several guardians absorbing damage from your whole fleet, shield restore can provide you a massive amount of extra tanking power.  It's not uncommon to see an Advent fleet with sufficient coverage simply not taking any damage at all.

In addition, be advised that autocast Shield Projection is probably the worst of automation AI in SoaSE, so you should never ever use that. This led me to single-hotkey my Guardians in larger fleets so I can quickly tab through the bunch of them to position/fire their projectors.

As Darvin said, well-positions + supported by a Progenitor your only real weakness is to keep disabling powers off the Progenitor - your fleet is basically invulnerable. Phase Missiles may disagree with you there, ofc.

The basic idea is to form the Advent Battleball with Progen+Halcyon+Guardians+Illuminators, with the Illuminators dealing the damage, Guardians using Shield Projection to absorb as much damage as they can from the various targets within your battleball, as well as using repulse to force away all those annoying Heavy Cruisers that keep trying to molest your precious illums, and the Progen using Shield Restore to keep the Guardians' shields up (thus allowing them to use Shield Projection more and keeping your fleet alive). I'd suggest using half for shield restore and half for repulse since they use a good load of antimatter, and disciples tend to be ripped to shreds if they get close enough to use their special ability. The Halcyon is obviously there to keep those pesky strikecraft away from your valuable illums.

To give you and idea of just how powerful this synergy is, it was (and still probably is) capable of tanking through the Marza's Missile Barrage with most of your illums surviving to fight on.

Thank you for the very direct answers.  I still have a few questions though...

1. I'm assuming that they split the damage when you have multiple ones using shield projection.  Is this correct?

2. I'm also assuming that PM's ignore shield projection.  Is this correct?

3. What ratio of Guardians to Illums could you consider standard for a battleball?

1. I'm not sure on this one but I don't think the damage is split for each guardian. In any case you should generally only be having one or two firing shield projection at a time so you don't run down on antimatter too quickly and give your guardians time to recover their shields (using the Progen as and when a number of them are down to low shields/health)

2. Yeah they do, but since the illums outrange Assailants (I think, though I may be confusing this with Repulse), and the Battleball can move, it makes little difference in the long run.

3. I generally go for 6/7:1 but then I tend to fight in a very offense-heavy way and neglect my support cruisers a bit.

Ah..  I was thinking that they should all do it simultaneously so that damage is split between all of them.

Assailants outrange Illums, but Illums have sidebeams.

Thank you.

Volt - the shield projection does not stack.  In other words, if multiple shield guardians fire their shield projectors and the shield projectors overlap each other, it's wasted.  So I tend to manually stagger it.

Shield projection takes a third of the damage dealt to ships within its radius and deals it to the Guardians shields instead. It does not stack. PMs do bypass shields, but when they do inside the battle ball, a third of their damage is still dealt to the guardians shields, in other words, you do not have to have shields on your ships for shield projections to work. Using the progenitor in conjunction with shield projection allows you to spread the focus fired damage being don to your fleet out, and then quickly restore the damage being done to your ships shields. So if a bunch of assailants are firing on your cap ship, 1/3 of the damage is being dealt to the guardians shields. Hit shield restore and 2/3 of the damage is fighting against the restore on 1 ship, while 1/3 is fighting against restore on another, meaning youre getting twice the shield restore power against that damage.

Repulse has many great uses. Primarily it is good for keeping close ranged enemy units like LFs, Flak, and HCs away from your longer ranged units like Carriers and lrfs. It also spreads out enemy troops so its easier to use illums sidebeams against them, as well as it makes it difficult for enemy support cruisers to get to and support their own ships. You can also use it to throw enemy fleets into your defenses (works great in conjuction with starbases) and keep enemy fleets from fleeing the gravity well by keeping them away from the edge.

Yes, the guardians will split the damage amongst each other when shield restoring.  For larger fleets, this is important or they can be depleted in seconds.  Their damage reduction doesn't stack, however.


No, assailants outrange illums.  Phase missiles are one of the few counters to the battleball, and with the recent illum nerf it's entirely possible for a well-equipped Vasari to actually win a shootout against a battleball, forcing Advent to break formation to use the side-beams.

So, really all SP does is reduce the damage taken by the primary target by 33%?  I could see how that could help SR work better, but it still doesn't seem like much.

If they are focusing on 1 target, the battleball tactic doesnt do much (and shouldnt against a whole fleet focused on 1 ship), but you can still see how a single ship (which happens to be the target) takes 33% less damage+has its shields regenerated via the mothership. that can add up to a significant increase in life. you could add in the repulse to buy yourself a little extra regen time as well for that single target. but where its most effective is when the opponent targets your whole fleet. the damage is already spread out, and you're affecting your entire fleet's shields.

There are other significant ships to help out this configuration, but which really depend on style and resources. the mothership, the gaurdian and the illuminators are key ships in nearly all advent fleets however (as i said there are other ships. you dont just spam a combination of these only). advent uses alot of ships that alone dont work too well, but when mixed with specific other ships and tactics, synergize very well.

On the otherhand, you have that backwards. the gaurdians dont help the SR work better. the SR helps the gaurdians work better. try this experiment. take a fleet of ships that include the mothership, at least 5 gaurdians, a lot of illuminators and whatever else you like to even out that fleet. save the game before you get into a nice matchup against the AI or a willing participant in this experiment. take note of how many ships you lost, how long the battle was, whether you won or lost (obviously this shows a bit better if you win here though). then reload the save and do the battle again but without the gaurdians.

well it depends HEAVILY on ur fleet composition if Guardians works effectively, like :

this battleball requires ur entire fleet to be crowded in one place in battle thus Guardian's 33% protection is somewhat crucial for survival

well this fits for some people who splits their fleet (not crowding their entire fleet in one place); like positioning caps + HC

on the front , carriers on the back and flaks or support cruisers on the middle