Guardians currently suck for experience points. Yet some of them are really diesel. Look at the Arklan Guardian, for example. As much armor as a Moth (maybe more) and it has two Advanced Gatling Turrets, yet it gives out about 300 to 400 XP, which is about as much as for a Valent Assault. And when I say armor of a moth, I mean old school Moth. The wiki says it's 55,000 hull. Even ApuTech with their almost (new) Moth hull strength and popcorn are not as worth it.

So, I have two suggestions which should be mutually exclusive:

1) Raise the XP gain on Guardian bots, thus making them an attractive, if dangerous, choice to level on. Currently, the Vets give the advice of "stay away from guardians, just kill Assaults".

2) Lower the XP of Assaults. I like this idea less because this would mean that collectors should get less, etc etc..... to balance things out, which also means slower character progression...

So those are my ideas. Thoughts?

Leave Assault XP rewards alone. They are perfectly balanced with the XP rewards from other hive drones (with the obvious exception of Guardians).

Beef the Guardian XP rewards so that they are at the very least one and a half times the rewards of the equivalent Assault bots. i.e., low-end Aputech Guardian's XP reward should be at least 1.5x a Tycorp Assault's XP reward, an Aputech-17 should be at least 1.5x the Valent A-47, etc.

"Beef the Guardian XP rewards so that they are at the very least one and a half times the rewards of the equivalent Assault bots. i.e., low-end Aputech Guardian's XP reward should be at least 1.5x a Tycorp Assault's XP reward, an Aputech-17 should be at least 1.5x the Valent A-47, etc."

Agreed.

Assaults can be difficult to kill because they're difficult to hit, but Guardians are harder still, because to get in close enough you need to expose yourself to a lot of heavy weapon spray, and then cracking through their hull takes forever, especially when they attack in groups. Fighting guardians for XP just isn't worth it at all.

Quick reference for each Assault/Guardian pair:

Tycorp Assault/Aputech-5 Guardian:
Tycorp Assaults give 210xp towards weapons.
Aputech-5 Guardians give 100xp towards weapons. Should give at least 315xp.

Valent A-47 Assault/Aputech-17 Guardian:
Valent A-47 Assaults give 350xp towards weapons.
Aputech-17 Guardians give 180xp towards weapons. Should give at least 525xp.

Dentek Assault/Fennus R-18 Guardian:
Dentek Assaults give 400xp towards weapons.
Fennus R-18 Guardians give 125xp towards weapons. Should give at least 600xp.

Prosus Assault/Devus D3 Guardian:
Prosus Assaults give 450xp towards weapons.
Devus D3 Guardians give 125xp towards weapons. Should give at least 675xp.

Axia R18 Assault/Orne Guardian:
Axia R18 Assaults do not have a recorded xp reward.
Orne Guardians give 150xp towards weapons. Should give at least one and a half times the XP of the Axia R18.

Valent A-3 Assault/Arklan Guardian:
Valent A-4 Assaults give 450xp towards weapons.
Arlkan Guardians give 300xp towards weapons. Should give at least 675xp.

These numbers go by the order that the bots were listed on the main Wiki, so which guardian uses which assault bot's XP reward will (and should) probably be changed. It's still just an example.

*notes Miha's post*
Ugh, yeah, Fennus/Devus guardians are some of the worst... downright brutal, and with such a pathetic pat on the back XP....

Pointsman, it doesn't really matter what they're for; it matters that they're more dangerous and difficult to kill than assaults, and so should have an XP reward to match.

"I thought guardians existed to guard the roids from pesky miners and to be a disincentive to people coming into the sector. And besides, it's not like getting levels is hard as is."

That's a good point. It makes sense that the hive would build it's guardian type bots with less experience points inside the hull to keep peopel from killing them. It makes you wonder why the hive puts so many experience into assault bots? Maybe they're just not useful for anything, I guess, and the hive has to throw those points away somewhere.

What about the Overseers?

They are just as deadly as any Guardian and have one of the highest non-shielded armor classes.

They should be somewhere in the range of 700-1000, imo.

Helman Overseer isn't any harder to kill than an Arklan guardian.

[STAMP OF APPROVAL](tm)

No, I'm just pointing out that your statement of how guardians have less xp as a deterrant makes absolutey no sense from a roleplaying perspective. That you recognize my compliment as sarcasm confirms that it's not an especially valid point. If you hadn't affirmed that I was doing satire, if you had simply accepted my praise for face value, then that could have worked too. It's just that what you said was a very silly thing, cleverly disguised as something I could see others taking seriously.

For that matter, Queens being the second most difficult bot of any to kill, I'd say that their xp reward is fitting.

Pointsman likes to think about the purpose behind the bots, so I present two schools of thought:

1. You get rewarded based upon the value of a bot to the hive. (queens are worth more to the hive than guardians, so would give you more xp)

2. You get rewarded based upon the difficulty of the bot. (guardians are harder than collectors)

Currently, these two schools are not in agreement. One would think that bots more valuable to the hive would be more difficult to destroy. If we were considering a reward based upon difficulty alone, then a lone Queen, as many have discovered, can actually be destroyed by one player in very short order (and for free). However, consider their escort and you have a much higher difficulty level. With a lone levi, you need at least 3 people, so this should give you more than 3x the xp of the queens. Furthermore, you have to kill off many escorts if there are queens around. Some other bots' xp rewards are disproportionate to their importance and difficulty, the overseer and guardians for example.

If we consider reward based upon importance of the bots to the hive (which is the professed purpose for reward), then we should adjust the reward levels to match their death importance to each faction, also. For instance, mining factions would want collectors and guardians dead more than assaults and overseers.

I don't think we want to make the AI skill or armaments of the bots any easier, because then they would be annoyingly easy. Making them harder could be an option, but instead, I propose we consider changing the xp of some bots. (As has been discussed.)

Who gives you the reward? The human faction. Thus, it stands to reason that you would be rewarded based upon the amount of damage you inflict upon the hive. You should get more xp for killing more important bots, as is reflected in the hive botting badge descriptions. The difficulty of the bots does not factor into this directly, because as I said, the difficulty of a bot does not directly correspond to the value of a bot to the hive.

This brings me back to moldyman's original suggestion which is to raise the guardian's xp reward. To this, I answer with the following suggestion:

1. Reconsider the value of bots to their hive and create a scale. For instance, is it: observers, collectors, assaults, guardians, queens, levis; or is it observers, collectors, guardians, assaults, queens, levis? Also, how twisted is the factions' understanding of the hive bots' organization? Do mining factions think guardian bots (the bots that guard collectors and valuable ore) are more valuable to the hive than assault bots, and do normal factions think assault bots (which are dangerous to traders) are more valuable to the hive than guardian bots?

2. After you make this scale (potentially different for each faction), tweak the xp. Only after adjusting the xp should you consider changing the difficulty of the bots. Harder bots are, after all, more fun than easier bots. As we've seen with the queen hunting guild, harder bots also promote more player groups and interaction.

Bumped.

Almost nobody (aside from new players who don't know about the XP discrepancy) hunts Guardian bots when given a choice between them and assault bots. Please make guardian bots worth the effort it takes to kill them.

This sort of change would make them a worthwhile target.

BTW, Miharu, I haven't seen an Axia R18 in ages, are they still around?

they used to give betwen 600-800 xp if I remember correctly...

Both assaults and guardians are there to defend hive operations. its just that assaults are Interceptors and fighters. And guardians are there to get hit, go hur hur and shread you. If it was simple value to the hive, then collectors would give the highest VP nest to Queens. Cause if you blow up the collectors then there is no more material for more drones.

Practically, I took one look and the drone stats in the wiki and went huh? and then I fought a couple of aputech-5 guardians and got hammered. I thin hit Tycorp assaults and I killed them far easer and went up faster. The Guardians dropped nice loot right enough, but the repair bills outweighed the money I was getting in by selling flachette guns.

*ahem* bump.
We shouldn't have to tell every newb to avoid guardians, they should actually be worth it.

Bumped for truth, yes. This should be a fairly easy fix... right?

+1

Let's get a list of easiest --> hardest bots to kill. Then assign XP rewards based on difficulty. Yes. Should be an easy fix.