4Game

Hear me out. I know that Fdev made tech broker items as more of a middle point between non-engineered modules and fully engineered modules. Like the Guardian powerplant and distributor being roughly equal to a G4 overcharged and charge enhanced respectively.

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Guardian Gauss:

• Deals 50% thermal and 50% anti-xeno.
• Higher thermal load
• longer damage falloff start (1,500m vs 1,000m of a normal railgun),
• lower max breach chance,
• higher damage (70 vs 41.53).
• Normal size 2 railgun: 66.66667% thermal and 33.3333% kinetic. Can also have Super Penetrator and long range upgrades so it essentially never has damage falloff.

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Summary: Guardian Gauss seems designed from the ground up to be an anti-thargoid weapon, since human ships have 90% anti-xeno damage resistance.

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Guardian Plasma Charger:

• Faster shot speed
• 50/50 absolute and anti-xeno
• Faster reload time
• Only half the damage falloff from normal PA (1,000m vs 2,000m of the PA).
• 5% less armor piercing than a normal PA. Not like that matters since nothing is at or above 95.

Summary: Guardian Plasma Charger may be designed to take out scouts since you can charge and release when you want, making it easier to hit fast moving ships. Other than that it's not good.

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Guardian Shard Cannon:

• 50/50 thermal and anti-xeno damage
• Higher armor piercing at 60 vs the 45 of normal frag cannon. Meaning the Guardian weapon deals full damage to 12 MORE ships than a normal frag cannon.
• Higher minimum breach chance at 60% vs the 40% of a normal frag.
• Higher clip size (5 vs 3).
• slightly lower damage falloff start.

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Summary: Shard Cannon seems really amazing at first. Higher clip size, armor piercing, breach chance. But the 50% AX damage really hurts it vs human ships. The shard cannon also has a HUMUNGOUS spread, like it's some kind of space net. These weapons have been used very effectively at insta-gibbing interceptors.

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Enzyme Missile Rack:

• 80/20 explosive and caustic damage. This Caustic damage is different from the Anti-Xeno damage type. The only method of gaining caustic damage resistance is through the meta-alloy and guardian hull reinforcement and guardian module reinforcement, which almost nobody uses, preferring instead to use engineered HRF's.
• 80% min breach chance vs a size 2 fixed missile 100%.
• 0% breach damage according to EDSY.
• Both have 60% armor piercing.
• Can apply multiple stacks of caustic DoT damage, or that's how I read it after looking at this post. I'm not sure if they meant it restarts the timer on the caustic effect, or applying ANOTHER DoT on top.
• ONLY applies the DoT effect when shot directly to the hull, meaning you must disable shields first.
• 64 max ammo vs 96 of fixed missile rack.

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Summary: This weapons does do decent damage, at least when compared to normal missiles. Normal missiles, however, can be engineered with the Sturdy upgrade which sends their armor piercing maximum to 96, dealing full damage to all ships. Fixed missiles are difficult to hit with, since the shot speed is only 750m/s, which is the slowest in the game bar the torpedo, which doesn't count because it's homing. I REALLY wanted these weapons to be awesome, but they aren't. The vast majority of their caustic damage applies in the first several seconds of the DoT effect, but even with that it's still not good enough.

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Meta-Alloy Hull Reinforcements:

• only 351 reinforcement value vs a 390 NON-ENGINEERED hull reinforcement. The regular hull reinforcement also includes a 2.5 damage resistance to all weapon types except for caustic, while meta alloy only has a 3% resistance to caustic. Hull reinforcements can further be engineered to further their lead.

Summary: Meta-Alloy hull reinforcements have no place in the game except for dedicated anti-xeno pilots who just friggin hate Caustic damage so much they'd sacrifice total hull health for a little bit of resistance. According to lore:

It is ultra-light and stronger and more versatile than most commercially available alloys. https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Meta-Alloys

The reinforcements should be lighter and offer at least comparable strength including caustic resistance.

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Guardian Hull Reinforcement:

• Roughly equal to a G1 Heavy Duty hull reinforcement.
• Only 2% thermal resistance and 5% caustic resistance.

Summary: These aren't too bad. They do require power, but if you have some to spare and don't want to bother with engineering normal hull reinforcements, they are a competent replacement, adding at least total hull health and some thermal res.

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Guardian Module Reinforcement:

• Higher strength than normal module reinforcements.

Summary: Only objectively better alternative to a normal module. Normal module reinforcements cannot currently be engineered. These do require power, but if you have some to spare, put these guardian ones in instead.

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In short, being on the bleeding edge of technology, using literal alien tech to modify and enhance your ship, usually results in making your ship worse. I do kind of understand where they were going though, from a lore perspective I think. Thargoids attack and humanity needs a way to stop them, so they utilize guardian technology to create weapons/modules combating that priority, since all other weapons proved useless. The IMMEDIATE goal was coming up with an answer to the thargoid threat. The guardian hull reinforcements and module reinforcements were designed with caustic resistance in mind, minimizing thargoid weapon effectiveness. We adapted a single weapon, the Caustic Missile Rack, for use against humanity.

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I'm hoping that further on in development with the current story arc we will get weapons/hardpoints we can use vs normal ships. Because as it stands right now, arming yourself with alien tech you are worse in every way to a normal ship.