Though I am by no means a tactical genius, I have been listening to this conversation for the years I've been playing, and not once has a combatant or strategist ever suggested anything for guards beyond standguard permanent. Players are just too powerful now--anything less than a solid group of 25-30 guards (the number varies depending on who I ask) who stick together will have a 0% chance of being able to do any good.

What would be ideal is if there were a new form of standguard that made them be willing to pursue, but made them stay together as a group when they did.

Anything but standguard permanent is pretty much asking for your guards to get killed by raiders.



That might be a bit much. Roaming death squads of 30+ guards would make prime raiding a whole new level of difficult.

But at the price of meaning your spots-that-need-defending are undefended. Send in one group to lure the guards over thisaway and lead them on a merry goose chase so your main group can make a raid on the other spot. No one can afford enough guards to make that impossible.

Well you clearly keep guards standguard permanent where... you what guards to permanently stand. But being able to have another group that can chase, or even going and on the fly setting a bunch of them to chase together when you know the enemy isn't just trying to lure them away, would be very strong.

Everything does not have to go through the Freedom Council - that's a hindrance that you put on yourselves. If the questions are posed in such a general way as, "What should we do about guards?" rather than "Should we place 30 guards at X location?" then it's no wonder the debate itself becomes frustrating. It seems like the majority of non-comm leaders anywhere would be perfectly happy to have these decisions attended to with a modicum of competence, and it just takes one person to do that, even if the others must still give a final 'Okay, sounds good.'


Without the bard guards you will have to participate more in active defense. You still have statues, and pyromancers have a meld effect to pull people from the sky, as well as geyser and hexagram as you mention. Maybe you do not have the means to secure your prime territories when no one is participating in defense -- but realistically, no one does, even with bard guards. (Yes it's easier, but my point is that even orgs who have every benefit have to resign themselves to off-hours raids.) Gaudiguch and Hallifax are the most defensible prime territories, with the fewest entry points, so you do have that going for you.

If you have locations in mind where you think guards are better placed, well, then place them there - see how it works for you. If it does, great, if not, well, at least you know. Speaking from experience, and as others have noted, guards who are not on standguard permanently tend to be easily picked off by smaller groups of raiders than would be required to take out a consolidated clot of guards. If you allow your guards to be easily targeted, then more frequently the guards themselves will become a target. You shouldn't ever really rely on guards to do all the work of defenders for you, when there are defenders to be had. Even if it's a matter of you leading/ordering guards en masse into the room with enemies, you still want to be participating.

As far as vortex geography goes, all I can say is that you must work with what you've got. The passage along the vortex falls is all unbreakable and will be entered from the valves off balance -- a lot of people would say (and have said) that's not too bad to defend. Most of the comments I've heard on this have been that raiding is the nightmare, less so defending. But yeah, I can offer no advice on changing the layout except talk to your patron.