Alternate Guardians

[Admiral Kirana]

A quick suggestion throwing out there.
Why not have multiple kinds of guardians, depending on the kind of station? Right now the simple large core jammer ship gets a bit repetitive.
So, I have suggestions for two other types of guardians.
For the first, for lower level stations, you would get an "ambush". These are three to eight decently sized ships of the station's level, with a single one larger than the others. Destroying that ship will make the station unlock, however its wingmen will protect it at all costs.
The other suggestion for higher level guardians or valuable stations, such as UPG stations or DCK stations, would be a "Juggernaut" vessel. It'd be far larger than a normal guardian, be armed to the teeth, and explode with extreme power when it dies, dealing 1/2 laser damage equivalent to every module on your ship except your command module if you are near it. However, it takes time to explode like the regenerating vessels from the first games (Nemmy and Eris), giving you time to run.
Potentially for NAV stations you would only have to fight a strong normal ship, potentially built as a ship a rank or two above but with the level of the station as its module level.
Feel free to bring up other alternate ideas. ;D
-A. Kirana

[scrander]

1:100,000,000 chance that the guardian will be the exact same clone of your ship (module levels and all), named Charon.

Also guardians dropping random ship parts.

[Farbs]

Hmm... you're right, there's definitely some scope for variation here. Cheers for the suggesions! I'd love to hear more ideas.

[10tativ]

I keep thinking about "maze ships" - ships with a maze of blurst shields which you have to get to the middle of to destroy the heart. In maze ships there could be Needlers or lasers and projectile launchers. You could also have Guardians that occasionally teleport or shoot the huge laser beams from the new weapon ideas thread.
You could have a Guardian that, while fighting, transmits a garbled message (e.g. "Bl... Sh...") and to connect the station, you have 1 chance to enter the password ("Blurst Shield"). If you don't, you have to fight another Guardian.

[Admiral Kirana]

Bringing in several more ideas:
The Carrier, a very large guardian that constantly spawns ships until it is killed. When at low health it self-destructs sending a weak guardian (normal, but not as strong as usual) from a random area of its old structure.

The next type is Booby Trapped stations. These appear to have no guardians until you contact them, upon which you hear a loud warning sound and the station activates and fires an enormous volley of many guardian-equipped weapons at you. There's very little time to predict where the shots will come from, and there is potential for extremely heavy damage. The booby traps deactivate after five seconds which give you 45 seconds to take down all of the weapon systems, before they activate again.

Third is a Shredder-type (in need of better name), equipped with a special kind of module which has rapidly rotating module on its front equipped with ramming spikes on every side of it, essentially a gigantic sawblade. Additionally the guardian is fast and agile, but has no other weapons.

Lastly is the Defender. It has a massive wall of girders on its front and can activate special modules to shield ones under fire from harm. It additionally has much more health than a ship of its normal level, but has almost no weapons, maybe consisting of a few spikes on the front and some side lasers. However, the back is completely vulnerable allowing people to destroy the shielder modules thus easily defeating the guardian.

[Vaconcovat]

Well, if we are on the topic of the current "station rescuing" system, i say that it needs more than just new types of guardians.

I say that, quite rarely, you just get lucky and there is no Guardian. It makes sense. Or, on that tangent, stations that are just lucky and already online.

Also, I liked a previous suggesting of having a 'warning' or 'you fell for my trap' message in the static. It will make more sense for people starting early on.

And then, in the outskirts of the sector near the beacons, i'd like to see the peacekeeping command. Just saying

[scrander]

Alternative to the Guardian: three smaller ships one level lower than the station level you are liberating; all of them converging on your position at mach 2 speed, guns a-blazin'.

Also, a 1:300000 chance that the Guardian will spawn and ambush you when you fly close to an inactive station, i.e. ambushing without communicating with the station first. Destroying the Guardian activates the station as usual.

Guardians of Factories that sell specific parts must be armed to the teeth with those parts. e.g. Echo Factory producing Foxtrot Blursts will have an Echo Guardian with mostly Foxtrot Blursts (and maybe a girder weakpoint).

[sfsdfd]

Farbs: One word - crowdsourcing! How about having us submit designs for Guardians, and just build the top 20 or whatever?

[korvash]

I love the idea for a carrier style guardian, that sends out smaller, weak ships to attack you. Meanwhile it has quite a thick coat of armour, meaning you have to wear it down between defeating the 'fighters'.