Iconus Guardian shield needs tech support

I had an assumption on how the shield works, but i think im wrong.

I was under the impression that the area of the ability is where the guardian needs to be for the units affected to get the reduction and does this AoE style. It is not how it works, at least to my testing.

Basically the purple aoe is the range of the ability, but the ability itself is a buff that lingers post leaving range. An issue im noticing is that a lot of times the Guardian doesnt apply the buff to all possible nearby units. Sometimes it happens because it runs our of shield, but ive noticed, at times, one guardian has 6 ships covered(by showing 0 on the ability) while another sits at 0 units affected, or less than 6, while still having half or full shield and is idling, even though there are enough ships to cover, meaning not more than enough guardians. So I think there needs to be some mechanical tweaking to make this unit better at applying its ability.

I think it makes sense to have it apply a shield to all nearby units at the same time and "refresh" that more often. Right now it feels like it operates as a hybrid single target/aoe buff, but it doenst behave very efficiently.

sins of a solar empire ii

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Hey, thanks for sharing the feedback!

In Sins 2 guardians do not have aoe indeed. It's a single target cast, and guardians have 6 charges on the ability. Once the shield is out, they will no longer provide protection.

In terms, why that guardian have some shields but did not use it's casts, I can assume that likely you checked out the guardian the moment it got shield burst (it gives a lot of shields at once), and it did not have time to cast the ability yet

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Hey Zabik, thanks for the reply. Not the case. I just finished another game with the intention to get more data and the buffing itself feels really wonky and quite frankly needs work because its not currently working properly. I can send a replay so you can see for yourself.

Here's whats happening:

1. Entering a battle on a planet, i come in with 5 guardians 2 cap ships(progenitors) and 13 disciples. On paper, 5 Guardians should be able to cover 30 units(5x6), and I have 13 friggates + 2 caps+ the 5 guardians = 20. On paper you would think that it would cover all existing ships and the AoE shield battery would be quite useful. You would think the guardians would even shield each other to help them survive. In reality, there is some random priority of who gets a shield and who doesnt. At first I thought perhaps the guardians wait for someone to get attacked before buffing them to make sure only the damaged ships get the buff to get more use of it, but it is not the case. There also seems to be an even lower priority for them guarding each other. I watched as 5guardians got focus fired, sitting next to each, essentially touching, with each of them having 4+ available buffs, and allowing each other to die from 100% shields without ever buffing them to reduce the incoming damage. At random times, I would see a Guardian blast all 6 buffs in close succession, but I have no idea what prompts that.

This ends ups basically making their actual utility very meaningless as their response time is not adequate at all, that initial burst of damage is also very key before a battle starts as it allows you to reduce damage and heal it from the start with the progenitors / getting more use of the shield burst ability.

I believe a few things need to happen to really see see usefulness of this ship currently:

1. Give them some AI so that they buff ships immediately when in range and BEFORE the battle starts. They seem to be waiting for some special circumstance before they use the buffs, but its not clear what that is. Rewatching the replay they sit like duds for long periods of time, while on full shield while other ships nearby are taking damage and getting destroyed from full shields.

2. Increase priority to have them shield each other, it seems that for some reason they dont like doing that.

3. This point shouldnt be needed, but currently I can manually shield buff from the unit tab on the right, and i need to individually buff each ship in game and cant just multiselect on each ship type's icon on the top right.

Id love to get some dev feedback as this feels like a huge hole from coding or mechanics that heavily affects the main source of defense for Advent.

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Would love to see if anyone else had this issue with them.

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Good catch — your testing lines up with how it feels in practice. The ability behaving like a lingering buff rather than a true persistent AoE explains a lot of the inconsistency, especially when some Guardians sit idle with shield remaining while nearby units go uncovered. slope

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