Changes made to Thargoid behavior made during the War have unfortunately kinda broken the Guardian fighters. Before, the Thargoids themselves would never actually target the fighter, only the swarm would, so if you killed the swarm the fighter could operate in relative impunity. They still had problems like dying to caustic clouds, but they were at least tolerable.
But now, Thargoids attack them directly, which basically makes them useless. A single round from thargoid blows them to kingdom come, and since they have no real way to go cold, they can't avoid it either. The also suffer from caustic clouds like before, too, so in practice even for someone who likes them like me, they're not really useful.
To solve this, I'd like to propose a new guardian module, which resolves both issues at once.
Guardian Shield Overcharger
This module only works on fighters, and what it does is give a brief moment of invulnerability, also clearing caustic damage, every 30 seconds or so. 3-5 seconds is all.
Case 1: A fighter accidentally wanders into a caustic cloud. The pilot pops the overcharge and boosts away, with the overcharge buying them enough time to escape.
Case 2: A fighter gets targeted by a thargoid. The pilot pops the overcharge and boosts away, buying enough time for them to escape.
Case 3: The mothership is about to be destroyed. The fighter attacks the thargoid full-on and pops the overcharge to soak up damage for 5 seconds, giving the mothership a chance to get away.
But because this has a 30 second cooldown, it's not outright invulnerability. While this module is on cooldown, they'll need to fly carefully.
This offers a nice lore-compliant way to allow these fighters to be more useful and reward player skill, without being overpowered! Thoughts?
But now, Thargoids attack them directly, which basically makes them useless. A single round from thargoid blows them to kingdom come, and since they have no real way to go cold, they can't avoid it either. The also suffer from caustic clouds like before, too, so in practice even for someone who likes them like me, they're not really useful.
To solve this, I'd like to propose a new guardian module, which resolves both issues at once.
Guardian Shield Overcharger
This module only works on fighters, and what it does is give a brief moment of invulnerability, also clearing caustic damage, every 30 seconds or so. 3-5 seconds is all.
Case 1: A fighter accidentally wanders into a caustic cloud. The pilot pops the overcharge and boosts away, with the overcharge buying them enough time to escape.
Case 2: A fighter gets targeted by a thargoid. The pilot pops the overcharge and boosts away, buying enough time for them to escape.
Case 3: The mothership is about to be destroyed. The fighter attacks the thargoid full-on and pops the overcharge to soak up damage for 5 seconds, giving the mothership a chance to get away.
But because this has a 30 second cooldown, it's not outright invulnerability. While this module is on cooldown, they'll need to fly carefully.
This offers a nice lore-compliant way to allow these fighters to be more useful and reward player skill, without being overpowered! Thoughts?
