does anyone else feel plasma's are too easy to kill.

[SneakyPete]

With Plasma I practice the one-two punch and am always happy with the results. The first volley may get depleted down to nothing but the second rolls in and eviscerates the target.

Also try to maneuver so that you have more than one possible target, with the Plasma R ships I generally shoot between 8-12 inches and take the e-Bleed penalty for strategic reasons. If the enemy rolls a bunch of IDF's in the movement phase I may switch targets to one of those ships that passed its IDF roll instead of the initial target in the attack phase, (who may have been a feint anyway) leaving one less ship to give IDF.

Also if the enemy is picking IDF as their SA they are not choosing a SA that is endangering your ships and that much less phaser is headed your way.

 

[storeylf]

A simpler fix to plasma is

Before fxing anything I prefer some clear cut problem be demonstrated. So far I've read some reports based on very lucky IDF rolling, or playing on totally open tables against good long range forces, but not much else. They don't, in my mind, constitute a problem, anymore than rolling a lot of 1s and claiming phasers need a fix.

 

[scoutdad]

I ran a Gorn fleet at the Nashcon tournament this weekend. I played three games.

Game one was against the Klingons.
This player did not understand the importance of IDF agaist a plasma force adn instead concentrated on Boost Shields. He also allowed me to get in several flanking shots. The end result was that after 6 turns, I had anhialated his fleet atthe cost of several damaged ships.
He was unable to whittle away the incoming plasma, so...

Game two was also played against the Klingons and against the eventual winner of the tournament.
This game was totally different. Mike used the terrain to his advantage, sweeping arounf the outside edge of an asteroid field using it and the map edge to guard his flanks.
his ships were traveling in a loose eschelon with the larger units in the front and the smaller ones in the rear. The smller ships were almost always on IDF, so I had a choice... charge in to face doubled front shields and fire at the larger ships and see me plasmas get whittled away by IDF or fire at the IDF'ing ships and face the firepower of the larger, closer ships.
And to top it all off, Mike usually positioned his ships so that the fields of defensive fire completely overlapped.
Mike handily won this one.

Game three was against the Federation. After 7 turns of manuevering and firing, the Gorn won the game, but only by about 100 victory points.

Oveall, the Plasmas are a little easier to shoot down than in SFB/Fed Comm, but you can fire them every second turn instead of every third turn so in a game of 5 or more turns, it evens out.

 

[archon96]

yes my son is very lucky with idf rols. He also runs with 6 battle frigates in a 1500 point games and holds them back just for idf coverage. His fleet saturday was

6x battle frigates
2x texas
1x kirov
1x dreadnought

the kirov and the dreadnought are his killers and he idf's the shit out of the battle frigates making about 75% of all his idf rolls. im still waiting for him to run out of luck. also my fleet was all kestrel based romulans because my rommy fleet box has not arrived. ill be running alot more hawks when it comes.

 

[Ben2]

yes my son is very lucky with idf rols. He also runs with 6 battle frigates in a 1500 point games and holds them back just for idf coverage. His fleet saturday was

6x battle frigates
2x texas
1x kirov
1x dreadnought

the kirov and the dreadnought are his killers and he idf's the **** out of the battle frigates making about 75% of all his idf rolls. im still waiting for him to run out of luck. also my fleet was all kestrel based romulans because my rommy fleet box has not arrived. ill be running alot more hawks when it comes.

That's a pretty good fleet for fighting Romulans.

The Hawk ships tend to have more phasers in better arcs. You could close and bolt your torpedoes, but then you'd only be doing an average of 7 damage with an S torp at 8" or less.

A mix of Kestrel and Hawk ships should do better. He's still able to throw 26 photons and 16 drones at you (though he can only throw a max of 9 at one ship, everything else is limited to 3), so you can either bolt your torps or use them to soak his phaser fire, accepting that within 8" you'll get hit by about 13 photons, and the Kestrel hulls aren't going to put more damage out going with their phaser suites against his phaser-1s and drones.

Of the top of my head I can't think of a surefire plan. I think a pair of fasthawks getting behind his formation and hitting something big with 16 phaser-1s in the killzone and 8 dice of bolted torps might be a plan, as I imagine the interconnected IDF formation is a big problem because it still throws out so much damage.

No bleed through hits from plasmas hurts you because you aren't picking up as many criticals as your opponent, who has basically built a fortress to lob photons and drones at you. 9 drones on a kestrel hull, particularly if it has already fired off it's in arc phasers, will pretty much strip the shields, and then you're taking photons or phasers to the hull, and Klingon cruiser hulls just aren't tough enough to do that.

However you are significantly more maneuverable than him. Have you had any luck breaking up his formation? Does he carefully keep all his ships just over four inches away from each other?

On the plus side your son understands the game very well, and the importance of fleet formations in maximising your strengths and mitigating your weaknesses, which a lot of players don't remember to do during battles.

 

[archon96]

as we passed each in an attempt by me to get behind, he did wheel move with his entire frigate formation never breaking ranks. i think ive created a monster who has a pretty fair understanding of tactics.

 

[billclo]

as we passed each in an attempt by me to get behind, he did wheel move with his entire frigate formation never breaking ranks. i think ive created a monster who has a pretty fair understanding of tactics.

That can be a good thing, if you learn from your mistakes. When I was learning Star Fleet Battles back in the mid-80s, I had an opponent who was really good. It must have been 40-50 games before I started to beat him, and eventually we got to about 50/50 win/loss ratio.

 

[Ben2]

as we passed each in an attempt by me to get behind, he did wheel move with his entire frigate formation never breaking ranks. i think ive created a monster who has a pretty fair understanding of tactics.

Hmmm.

How do you use your cloaks?

As a Klingon player I wouldn't have too much of an issue fighting this fleet. I'd split off 2 FD7s, take the rest of the fleet and keep trying to slide past him trading long range disruptor fire and phaser-1s for Fed Phaser-1s in return, while using drone attacks to try and reduce his available phasers. If I can get the FD7s behind him, he has to break up his wall of battle (because that's what he's created) or turn and expose his rear to the rest of my fleet, which will be on him if he does.

However I'd have the benefit of disruptors, which are a long range weapon that he can't intercept. Also two Klingon FD7s would still leave me 1100 points for the main body of the fleet, whereas two fasthawks is 470, and even the smallest Romulan ship is 105. While I image the Seahawk and the K4R are in the next supplement the Romulans are paying for the cloak and in this situation it is only of limited utility, unless you want to decloak your entire fleet at point blank range and bolt torpedoes and follow it up with phaser-1s. Your bolted torpedoes will be rolling to hit just like his photons, but unless he's overloaded will cause more damage (but won't automatically go through shields like his photons will on 6s).

It would be a close range knife fight, which isn't exactly the style of the Romulans.

Another option would be to pull a Calrissian maneuver. If his heavier ships are in the rear and the lighter at the front interpenetrate his formation with a couple of KRs, making sure you are within four inches of as many of his ships as possible. They are basically a sacrifice to take out the shields on his BC with bolted S torps, score some criticals with phasers, chip away at the shields on some Battle Frigates with your waist phaser-2s, and get horribly killed by return fire, dying in a fiery conflagration that will cause ten hits on everything within four inches. Using cloaks you could get them in close enough to pull it off, and distract a lot of fire from big hitters while you try to strip the shields off an FFB with phasers and pummel it, or strip more systems from the BC with long range phaser snipes.

It would be a desperate tactic, but you might be able to pull it off once.

What's the exact fleet you are using?

I'd also say if you are getting reamed as Romulans but you have Klingon ships then play as Klingons once in a while to change it up a little.

Or play scenarios.

 

[JohnDW]

Yeah, the klingon ships do have a decent amount of plasma, but the shields leave something to be desired.

I guess there's two ways you can try to play against them, the romulan way of being cloaked at the start, working your way up and unleashing plasma hell on one or two targets to try and cripple or destroy them in one turn. This helps you avoid all the drones and gives you a nice save vs phaser fire.

Or you can try starting off uncloaked like a normal fleet and just try to close the gap quickly to unleash the plasma death.

I still prefer the cloaked deathsquad.

1 KR9C (19/14/6)
3 king eagles (11/8/4)
and a mix of 5 total snipes (7/4/0) or battle hawks(6/4/0) is a decent fleet

up close and personal with the KR9C and 3 KE you can unload 52 AD of plasma, or middle-range can still unload 38. With the snipe/hawk division unloading 20AD at middle range.

As an alpha strike, 52AD up close, 20AD middle range, potential 72 AD on a single target, he could stop 53AD of that plasma and you'd still be able to destroy the kirov out-right with just the plasma, not to mention the phasers. Or if he only stops 44AD of that 72AD its still enough to destroy out-right the dreadnought with just the plasma, not counting the phaser fire.

He may try to avoid this of course, but thats just because no plan survives battle
Its still a good plan I think, and you could work the fleet around a bit.

 

[archon96]

Like i said earlier i didnt have my romulan fleet set so i used my klingons as fill ins and used a complete kestrel fleet. Not ideal in the least. i intially had bypassed his frigate wall and went for the second heavy ships decloaking between them. I tried sacrifing a kdr to split his frigates off but only killed one frigate. I personally dont like cloaking im a gorn player and prefer a straight up fight. However my son and i are going to be teaching the others in my circle how to play so i thought it best to at least learn the rommies. I made some mistakes and this being my second game at romulan i can see some changes also got my romulan fleet box so hopefully by next weekend they will be painted. My son feels he's got the hang of fed and is going to play Klingon next, so this should be interesting. also we did have an asteriod field on the table and i used the terrain as much as possible try and flank him. also my idiocy forgot that all but one of my ships was agile. Also im not sure 1500 points is enough to warrant a dreadnought in a formation but it was interesting.

 

[JohnDW]

Dreadnoughts can be warrented in as small a pts game as it needs to be to fit 1 of them in, in my opinion. Its just another ship like all the rest, and with no 'rules' preventing it, why not.

 

[Ben2]

1500 points is definitely the sort of level you should be throwing in a dreadnought. They're tough, well armed, give you +1 to initiative (which is pretty vital) and your opponent hasn't hesitated to go with a dreadnought+battlecruiser combo.

It's still early days, but the best balance of cost vs firepower vs survivability is cruisers, and the battlecruisers are, not necessarily the most cost effective, but a no brainer upgrade if you have the points. It's only 15 to switch a firehawk to a novahawk or royalhawk, and gain 8 additional damage and the command ability, it's the cheapest CC upgrade there is. If I collect a Romulan fleet, I may never get a Firehawk, instead relying on Fasthawks, Novahawks and Royalhawks. I'd also take a KC9R every chance I had.

 

[tneva82]

It's only 15 to switch a firehawk to a novahawk or royalhawk, and gain 8 additional damage and the command ability, it's the cheapest CC upgrade there is. If I collect a Romulan fleet, I may never get a Firehawk, instead relying on Fasthawks, Novahawks and Royalhawks. I'd also take a KC9R every chance I had.

Mayhap sign of it being too good of an upgrade...Or firehawk being too lousy.

 

[Ben2]

I think the Firehawk points are close to being right. It is significantly better than a Federation CA, but is it 45 points better?

The Romulans have a lot of pricey ships, but if they get Snipe-As and K4Rs in the next supplement then that should sort them out.

 

[Rambler]

I think the Firehawk points are close to being right. It is significantly better than a Federation CA, but is it 45 points better?

The other thing just to bear in mind is Romulans pay roughly a 10% point penalty for the cloaking device.

 

[Ben2]

I think the Firehawk points are close to being right. It is significantly better than a Federation CA, but is it 45 points better?

The other thing just to bear in mind is Romulans pay roughly a 10% point penalty for the cloaking device.

I know. I think it's either right or very close to it.

Will there be updated fleet lists with the battleships supplement with any adjustments included?

 

[McKinstry]

Firehawks feel vaguely too high but I need to play a lot of games with my recently arrived Romulans before I'm willing to fuss about points.

 

[Ben2]

I know, some things seem funny, but after playing with them a few times you're fine with it. The E4 is an example, I thought 70 might be a better cost, but 75 is fine and I'm thinking of running a pack of 4 and then making it up to 6 when the E6 comes out.

 

[McKinstry]

I know, some things seem funny, but after playing with them a few times you're fine with it. The E4 is an example, I thought 70 might be a better cost, but 75 is fine and I'm thinking of running a pack of 4 and then making it up to 6 when the E6 comes out.

Kind of a synergy thing.

Initiative sink ships such as the E4 and the Fed POL have a value beyond the simple pointing out of weapons and defense.

 

[Commander Kretok]

Maybe I'm just a bit too inexperienced at this game, but I find Plasma to be very difficult to deal with.

You can't defend yourself from it as easily as you can defend yourself from Drones.

You have to specifically not offensively fire certain Phaser banks in order to be able to use them to protect yourself from Plasma.

Meanwhile you can defend yourself from Drones with Anti-Drone, Tractor Beams, your own Drones, or defensive fire.

If anything I feel that Plasma should have been nerfed instead of Drones.