I'll chip in my two cents in this. I think that you guys have done a great job of redesigning the ship, but I want to add a few things to it.

Urweirdsaysi wrote:

alfa22omaga wrote:lf or hf same difference dude and the majority of posts where cost is involved the prices are much more expensive than a bs man i dont know how much your bs cost man but mine dont cost millions .i think making moons harder to pop is more useful atm if people take time to be online and maintain their fleet they should be able to keep it safe or there is really not much point in playing

Urweirdsaysi wrote: If you're referring to another suggestion besides the latest one, then I apologize but this wasn't the most coherent of posts.

Like I said, not the most coherent of posts.

As for your complaints, the LAST suggestion for a ship IS the same price as a BS. And it doesn't have RF against anything but Probes, Sats, and RIPs.

I believe this is the latest version suggested:

Name: Lunar Guardian

Image

Description
Over the years, crafty emperors of Zorg Universe looked for ways to defend colonies and lunar bases against the massive firepower of Death Stars and their Graviton Cannons. Eventually, they realized that they could harness and reflect the energy from these cannons. The result was a brand new ship, named the Lunar Guardian to reflect the purpose it was first created.

As the technological advancements in shield technology increased through the Universe, durable shields were made cheaper and cheaper as the years went on. Small, cheap ships were able to be outfitted with more powerful shielding. Thus, the Lunar Guardian was created. This small lightweight ship boasted relatively quick speeds, but also sported stronger shielding than the other light ships. Coupled with the ability to deflect Gravitons back at its attacker, it quickly became the go-to ship for countering the once all-powerful Death Stars.

Specifications:

Production Base Speed: Double than RIP - Reduced 10% per Physics Tech lvl
Structure Points: 50.000
Shield Strength: 1.500
Attack Points: 700
Cargo Capacity: 20.000
Base Speed: 3.000
Fuel: 3.000

Production Cost
Metal: 15.000
Crystal: 35.000
Deuterium: 4.000

Rapid Fire Values:
Against Solar Sat: 5
Against Espionage Ship: 5
Against Death Star: 10

From Light Fighter: 10
From Heavy Fighter: 3
From Cruiser: 3
From Battleship: 2
From Battlecruiser: 2
From Plasma Cannon: 2

Requirements:
Zorg Physics Technology Level 4
Graviton Technology Level 2
Hyperspace Technology LvL 9
Hyperspace Engine LvL 10
Level 15 shipyard

Of course, this still isn't final and people can still make their suggestions. I believe this is so far what most (Or at least the ones still posting) have agreed on.

Also, I BELIEVE I've made both of the descriptions grammatically correct, but I'm still a bit unsure on the last sentence of the first paragraph as it sounds too choppy. Any help with that would be nice.

I say bump the attack points up to 750, since it wouldn't do anything to a RIP any way, and it wouldn't highly affect other ships; Down the cargo space to 15,000, since it is a relatively small ship anyway; and then up the base speed to 3,500, since it needs to be a relatively faster ship.

Oh, and bump the duet cost to 6k.

Other than that, I think the idea is perfect.

Most important point- If this is meant to be an anti-RIP ship, it should have RF against only RIPs. Adding RF against sats and probes is worse than pointless with combat engine v1.04, it means there's a 66% chance it never even RFs on the RIP.

And then there's the hilarious part.

Proposed Lunar Guardian/BattleCruiser
Cost 15k/30k metal, 35k/40k crystal, 4k/15k deut
Attack 700/700
Shield 1500/400
Cargo 20k/0.75k

So far, I am LOVING this ship. As all the lazy turtles that I farm can attest, since you have six rounds to kill the opponent but only need to ensure no-loss on the first round, shields are more important than attack. And by far, the limiting factor is shield value when attacking a turtle. For a cheaper ship, I get nearly 4 times the shields and more than 25 times the cargo capacity.

Drawbacks:
a) Speed- still faster than the recycler, which will always be the fleeter's choke point.
b) Fuel cost. 12 times the fuel cost of BC, so not cheap by any means. But well worth it as I can now send far less ships (and therefore need to build far less ships).
c) RF from PC. Laughable. Since RF only matters in close battles, and only morons fight close battles, I'll ignore this RF like I ignore all others (except the RIP's because the RIP IS OVER POWERED AND THIS SHIP DOES NOTHING TO CHANGE THAT FACT).

Have I missed anything? This ship now replaces the BC, does nothing to change the fact that the RIP is unbalanced, and will make it easier to fleet.

Here is an idea to chew on based on all discussion since my last intervention:

Specifications:

Production Base Speed: Double than RIP - Reduced 10% per Physics Tech lvl
Structure Points: 120 000
Shield Strength: 700 (Relatively strong, not Overpowered)
Attack Points: 2.000 (Same as Destroyer)
Cargo Capacity: 9.000 (x3 fuel cost)
Base Speed: 4.000 (Increased a bit as we want it to be a bit fast in order to defend)
Fuel: 3.000 (High fuel cost)

Production Cost (in total, double than BattleCruiser)
Metal: 60.000
Crystal: 60.000
Deuterium: 40.000


Revised RF table:
Rapid-Fire Against Death Star: 6 (A rapid fire rating of 6 means that it has each round the probability to rapid fire against Death star:
1st time: 83%
2nd time: 80%
3rd time: 75%
4th time: 66%
5th time: 50%

Rapid Fire Against Espionage Ship 600 (Needed to prevent attacks by probes)
Rapid Fire Against Solar Satellite 150 (Needed in order to give an extra target when attacking, so it will have more use in defense rather on offense)


Rapid-Fire From Light Fighter: 6
Rapid-Fire From Battlecruiser: 4
Rapid-Fire From Destroyer: 4
Rapid-Fire From Plasma Cannon: 4

Perhaps we will need to raise the RF against RIP and add RF from more types to further balance it but I leave it to you. I will interfere again when you got more points made. If you think a point has been missed, please feel free to reproduce your thoughts/suggestion.

Btw, It is not bad to create this ship expensive but well effective only against rips. This will be of great meaning with the implementation of ACS attack but already with ACS defend as some players will be able to choose to be Lunar Guardian hoarders and dispatch them to allies in order to face upcoming enemies.

i think it needs to take rapid fire from battleships zorg, since that is the most used ship in the game

Shandris wrote:i think it needs to take rapid fire from battleships zorg, since that is the most used ship in the game

I am only using suggestions here. If I was to reply to what you are saying, I would say that adding RF to battleship against any ship, gives more power to bs which are designed to be good against all, thus the few RF ratings.

Shaftoe wrote:Most important point- If this is meant to be an anti-RIP ship, it should have RF against only RIPs. Adding RF against sats and probes is worse than pointless with combat engine v1.04, it means there's a 66% chance it never even RFs on the RIP.

And then there's the hilarious part.

Proposed Lunar Guardian/BattleCruiser
Cost 15k/30k metal, 35k/40k crystal, 4k/15k deut
Attack 700/700
Shield 1500/400
Cargo 20k/0.75k

So far, I am LOVING this ship. As all the lazy turtles that I farm can attest, since you have six rounds to kill the opponent but only need to ensure no-loss on the first round, shields are more important than attack. And by far, the limiting factor is shield value when attacking a turtle. For a cheaper ship, I get nearly 4 times the shields and more than 25 times the cargo capacity.

Drawbacks:
a) Speed- still faster than the recycler, which will always be the fleeter's choke point.
b) Fuel cost. 12 times the fuel cost of BC, so not cheap by any means. But well worth it as I can now send far less ships (and therefore need to build far less ships).
c) RF from PC. Laughable. Since RF only matters in close battles, and only morons fight close battles, I'll ignore this RF like I ignore all others (except the RIP's because the RIP IS OVER POWERED AND THIS SHIP DOES NOTHING TO CHANGE THAT FACT).

Have I missed anything? This ship now replaces the BC, does nothing to change the fact that the RIP is unbalanced, and will make it easier to fleet.

Few nice points, however I'm still unsure that a 10 Rf from something as small as a LF (Almost anyone in the game can build a few thousand with no trouble) wouldn't make this the weakest ship ever devised to attack with, unless you sent counters to the LF.

Also, are those drawbacks for FLEETING or for the ship overall? And by "fleeter's choke point" are you referring to it making it harder or easier for a fleeter? Explanation on that one, because I seem to be lost.

Urweird-

10 RF, 10,000 RF, it doesn't matter if you can't get past the shields.
LF has an attack of 50, This ship has a (revised) shielding of 700. So on average, with equal tech, you would need at least 14 LFs per guardian to even get damage past the shields each RF round. And since the Guardian must already be en-masse in order to be effective against RIPs (which people have) it would be silly to build 14 times more LF (which are otherwise worthless) in order to counter the Guardian.

The drawbacks listed in my previous post were drawbacks for the ship being used offensively by a fleeter. As designed when I replied, it was game-changingly un-balanced. As revised by Zorg, it is far more in-line with it's stated intentions. When I was referring to recyclers being the fleeter's choke-point, I was talking about speed. Since recyclers are necessary to pick up the DF, it is almost irrelevant if any ship that is created is slowed down to prevent it from being used to attack, as long as it is faster than a recycler.

Zorg-

I understand having sats in RF to reduce utility as an attack ship. However, let's not be disingenuous.
You give the RF percentage for this ship to fire on RIPs, ASSUMING they target the RIP. If I am attacking with RIPs, and throw in one espionage probe, the chance for the first RF fire gets cut in half, and the chance for the remainder is now contingent upon the first 41.5%. I am unaware of any great need to defend against rampaging espionage ships. Since they have an attack of zero, it seems anything would suffice. Likewise, RIP shields are 50,000, and guardian attack is 2,000, so on average you need at least 25 guardians per RIP to even have a chance of the RF making a difference.

Acknowledged, this is where strategy and team-work comes in. While it makes no sense for any one person to build enough of these ships to protect their moons from RIPs, it is certainly useful for an alliance to do so and to ACS defend a moon rather than just write it off.

It is my personal opinion though, that a more expensive, and more capable ship as originally proposed by Thatguyeric would better fit this need, as it would have the same benefit that RIPs do- it would typically be less numerous in an average fleet, and therefore absorb the brunt of the damage only after the majority of the other ships have been destroyed. This increases survivability when going up against a moon-popping mission with high numbers of RIPs. All one needs to do to keep it from being used offensively is to keep fuel consumption abnormally high and to give it RF from a wide range of planetary defenses- including LL which are by far the best bang for your buck, and the easiest to build on nanite limited moons.

Once again, very nice points. However, I can't seem to get past...

Shaftoe wrote:Urweird-
And since the Guardian must already be en-masse in order to be effective against RIPs (which people have) it would be silly to build 14 times more LF (which are otherwise worthless) in order to counter the Guardian.

First, 14 LF is much cheaper than building one of these ships, so it's not like it would be some sort of impossible feat. Second, if the survival of your RIPs (Assuming you're the attacker and the Defender jumps in a bunch of these) are at stake, I'm not sure how silly it would be. I understand what you're getting at though (Or, I think I do), why build thousands of an otherwise useless ship? Well, the point, for me, for adding the tremendous RF is to give the useless ship a use. It seems like you're arguing against giving the LF a use, though that may just be me.

Assume someone bought 5k of these ships (Which would take down quite a few RIPs, if I'm not mistaken). You'd only need 70-80k LF to take them out. Pretty much anyone with a fleet worthy to protect can afford 80k LF in just 1-2 days.

Also, I'm afraid that if you get a single large ship to do the work, it's just going to end up being in every fleet, such as much as a RIP is. You don't need 10k RIPs to totally dominate everything. Build 50 RIPs and you can take on most non-RIP based fleets. Likewise, build 50 of these (If they were a large ship) and you're set. It doesn't matter that they might be a little pricey, look at RIPs. They are "expensive" and yet I can afford to build 2-3 a day without ever even raiding anyone. I don't even have that good of mines, and I can pump out enough to destroy most small players with no effort? Increasing the cost doesn't help, as then only the top players could afford it.

Smaller players, generally, don't have a bunch of RIPs. Therefore, there is no need for a large player to build ridiculous amounts of these. For a small player, they CAN'T build ridiculous amounts. So, there SHOULDN'T be a large gap in the number of "Lunar Guardians" between the top 10 and the bottom 10. Small players will spam them to try and keep stronger players from effortlessly destroying everything, and top players will build enough to keep the players at their level at bay and then simply build counters to the counter. And the cycle repeats.

Those are my thoughts on this, which is why I'm leaning toward a smaller, cheaper ship. However, if a large ship is brought up that I feel is better, I'll jump on the bandwagon.

Urweird, admittedly now that the Guardian's values have been rationalized, my argument is not as valid, but let me try to explain the way I'm coming at it.

Same tech, average roll for weapon and shield, 3-2-1 exchange ratio

50 RIPs sent by me on a moon popping mission. This gives 10m attack and 2.5m shield. In order for the defender to counter with Guardians (as recently proposed - attack 2k shield 700), he'd need at least 1250 ships to get past my shields. In reality, he'd need far more because the RIPs also have an armor value of 750k, but let's play devil's advocate and say RF against RIP is increased substantially, so all we are concerned with right now is getting enough damage to get past shields. And now, assuming LF are given an appropriately high RF against Guardian, as attacker I would need at least 17.5k LF, which would be an equivalent cost of almost 4 more RIPs. And if instead of spending resources on a worthless ship, and fuel sending worthless ships, I instead send those 4 extra RIPS, now the defenders Guardians don't make it past my shields again.

My point is, as an attacker, I will never intentionally make an attack where RF is a factor. I will not waste resources on ships that have such a limited purpose, instead I will build more ships for attack.

However, the situation is different for the defender. When a planet is hit, it is either because someone was lazy and left too many resources around, or they fleet-saved improperly. Nevertheless, if you are facing insurmountable odds, it is simple to dodge, and the worst that happens is that you lose no more than 30% of your defenses. But when a moon is threatened by a destroy mission and you are faced with insurmountable odds, you risk losing everything put into the moon, plus the uncovering of your fleet. In this situation, it may be worthwhile to lose a large amount and save the moon, rather than just give up. Unless you are lucky, and can defend the moon outright, we are going to work under the assumption that the force of RIPs you are facing would normally overpower your fleet, or the fleet you can scrape together from friends in order to ACS defend. This, in my view, is the niche the Guardian is intended to fill. So, using the same example as above, a defender faces 50 RIPs and must defend with at least 1250 Guardians, which would be a RIP equivalent of just over 25 RIPs. I do not feel this is a great enough resource advantage alone to justify building these ships, especially since I have ignored the RIP's massive armor and the Guardian's relatively low (as so far proposed) RF. Yes, an alliance can more easily deploy the numbers required, but I still believe they would be better served building RIPs rather than Guardians.

As to the Guardian's final size, it is almost irrelevant except for one point. Whether you have 1250 small ships or 125 ships that cost 10 times more with 10 times higher stats matters little, except that in a fleet of say 20k ships, the 1250 ships will take a greater portion of the initial damage than if they were 125 ships, since the non-RF damage is applied equally to all ships present. In a situation where the defender does not have overwhelming odds, all other things being equal, he is better off having his "anti-RIP" stack of ships being high powered and low in number rather than low powered and high in number.

But these are my opinions. The ridiculousness of the proposed ship has already largely been removed, so now I am nit-picking.