Guardian Cruiser

"The Guardian Cruiser is fitted with extra shields to protect its fleet between combat, so the rest of the fleet may do their job more efficiently."

General
The Guardian Cruiser is a Tier 6 hull with the ability to resist both Alien and Plasma Damage. It provides the Harmonic Shield bonus which increases the shield capacity of your entire fleet.

As a cruiser, this ship has great defensive capability and is designed to soak up damage.

Advantages
The Guardian Cruiser's triple shield slots allow it to absorb a massive amount of damage before direct armor damage is applied. Using the Harmonic Exophase Shield and its Harmonic Shield bonus, this ship can have almost 32,000 effective shield energy. Even when the shields are depleted, you can have up to 5 pieces of armor at Mk I, further enhancing the ship's survivability.

With innate Alien and Plasma resistance, the Guardian Cruiser is the best tank you can use against the various Tier 6 Alien Event Targets, which predominantly deal the aforementioned damage types. Resistance against the 3 traditional damage types (Energy, Explosive, Kinetic) can be achieved through its extra resistor slot and/or using resistance armor such as EN Tungsten Armor.

Disadvantages
Although the Guardian Cruiser can equip the best A.X.I.S. Ship Weapon, the Pulse Cannon, it is counteracted by the fact that this ship only has 4 weapon slots. To make the most out of this ship, stack on armor as much as possible, then fill up the remaining mass with weapons and specials.

A common setup is to use Guardian Cruisers as pure tanks, with other high-damage ships such as Liberator Destroyers responsible for destroying the enemy fleet.

Trivia

 * The Guardian Cruiser is technically the first of the many A.X.I.S. Hulls as the Paladin Carrier was originally supposed to be part of the Xeno Division Hulls. It is also the first that has built-in Plasma resistance and Harmonic Bonuses.
 * The Guardian Cruiser is the first hull with 3 shield slots.
 * The Guardian Cruiser Elite originally had 360 AU/h sector speed, this has been changed to 390 AU/h.
 * A bonus to weapon speed was added to cruiser mark upgrades towards the end of 2017.
 * All player ships had their Resurgence values modified as a result of the late February 2020 update.
 * The repair time of all Tier 5-6 ships was standardized in the early February 2021 update.