Hm. I do see what you're getting at...Very nice points.

But, really, unless you overpower the Guardian, you'd probably ALWAYS be better off buying more RIPs, because of the way RF works, correct?

Keeping your points in mind, I do think the last suggestion from Zorg is better than my previous version...However, I think the RF against Probes needs to be removed, simply because it takes away the usefulness if someone just sends a single probe. The RF against Sats should be kept, to try and make it a little less favorable during attacks (Since Sats can't be sent on attack missions, they won't effect the defender at all).

plasma cannons are stationary defense. take their RF against this ship AWAY

Base Speed: 3.000
Fuel: 3.000
at these values its 5x more expensive to move/speed than the destroyers, since they go faster for 1000. its even 2.5x more expensive than a conoly ship (currently most expensive fuel wise per speed)
wouldn't that be a little to expensive for a small ship especially if you need large numbers of these.

but i agree with shafttoe.
the costs of building these ships to the amount needed to destroy a RIP with 0 loss must never be higher than 2x a RIP cost else people wont build them.

This is because 2 rips already get flawless victories vs 1 rip at the same tech level.
2 rips have the metal value of 14.5mil so the cost of the amount of ships needed to kill 1 rip flawless need to be like 10mil or even lower else people just wont bother at all building them.

Umm... Isnt there a special property of a probe that says in any fleet containing probes, if the probes are destroyed, so is the fleet? I seem to rememeber that warning in the noob section.

If you send it on an espionage mission.

Where do you get those pictures?
Anyway it sounds like a good idea, frigate is a type of storage ship, not for the offensive attacks, the name guardian sounds better.
A thumbs up from me!

A Frigate is a type of small, offensive ship used for scouting, patrol, and fast attacks.

"In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built". These could be warships carrying their principal battery of carriage-mounted guns on a single deck or on two decks (with further smaller carriage-mounted guns usually carried on the forecastle and quarterdeck of the vessel). The term was generally used for ships too small to stand in the line of battle, although early line-of-battle ships were frequently referred to as frigates when they were built for speed."

"In the late 19th century (beginning about 1858 with the construction of prototypes by the British and French navies), the armoured frigate was a type of ironclad warship and for a time was the most powerful type of vessel afloat. The term 'frigate' was used because such ships still mounted their principal armament on a single continuous upper deck. The later 19th century battleship thus developed from the frigate rather than from the ship of the line."

Discussion on details won't be fruitful unless there are assumptions transformed into numerical proposals.

sorry zorg

Just get this baby on the road - The picture is amazing, it looks awesome - Lets build the *******