Romulan Tactics

[storeylf]

It does not make sense to recloak and suffer the pounding. Better tactics but it kind of loses anything special about the Romulans.

Why doesn't it make sense to recloak, it makes less sense to not do so in many cases. You have presumably just fired your plasma, surely you are not going to stay uncloaked and tickle the enemy with the few phasers alone (or you were going to use them defensively, die even faster and still do nothing to the enemy?). If you thought recloaking against drones was suicide what do you consider not recloaking to be?

Any fleet will be suffering the pounding no matter what they do once they are up that close, and against drones they will be suffering the pounding even before then. At least roms don't suffer that. Again why do you think the eventual pounding in a fleet game is somehow unique to Roms?

Roms were special due to the cloak, that is the unique feature here as well, I don't get the no special feature comment.


The thing that struck me most about the roms was the 6" move meant I couldn't close to a useful enough range to get a chance to uncloak usefully. It is to easy to avoid a force stuck moving at 6" whilst firing pot shots, in the end i just hid behind an asteroid field to avoid them.

 

[TJHairball]

Is it me or are drones becoming a more important weapon system then they were ever intended to be.

It's not just you.

Drones are 36" range, while the next longest range is 24", and ships generally only move 12". They're 360 degree weapons. They don't have the Reload special. Basically, every ship's drones can target every other ship 90+% of the time.

And that means they're rather important and become increasingly so as the size of the engagement increases.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Is it me or are drones becoming a more important weapon system then they were ever intended to be.

It's not just you.

Drones are 36" range, while the next longest range is 24", and ships generally only move 12". They're 360 degree weapons. They don't have the Reload special. Basically, every ship's drones can target every other ship 90+% of the time.

And that means they're rather important and become increasingly so as the size of the engagement increases.

Becoming. Thats good. :roll:

The first look at Drones and the Kzinti fleet started people talking about problems, the more people look at it (and play games) the more clear it seems. When you have one weapon that seriously outranges all others, does more damage than all others(except plasmas which have much shorter ranges AND reloads), needs no reload and is hard to stop then you have an imbalance between those who have it and those who don't.

Add to that the numbers of Drones the Kzinti field as a matter of course, the numbers the Feds can field with BCHs and DWDs and the numbers the Klingons will be able to field if they get drone ships. Oh and look at the Orions as well.

You end up playing hide and seek in space against a drone heavy fleet. Problem comes when you are lumbering or Fed with turn mode 6 and everyone else out there is agile. You have to go round terrain slowly; they just fly round the other side and let you have it from three feet away.

Removing Devastating from Drones will not do it, it’s not the crits that kill you its being hit by 30+ Drones a turn.

Drones in ACTA are the Kzintis main weapon; Disruptors are those things they have to add a bit of firepower if someone gets too close. But having said that Kzinti ships have as many Disruptors as the Klingons do and as someone said a while ago Drones are not supposed to be the main weapon.

So how about we try a few games with all ships able to fire at Drones fired at any friendly within Phaser range and from a distance away as has been suggested. Yes its going to cut down the Kzinti firepower at long ranges, but that makes them come within range of everyone else. Anyone planning any games this weekend. Let’s have a few tests.

A couple of people try 24", some try 18". For myself I think 18" is good but let’s try a few games and see. Bring the Kzinti inside 18” to stop people getting open shots at the drones and now you can fire back (well aside from the plasma races who are still having range problems). :roll:

It doesn't help with the tournaments but we can come up with house rules among ourselves. After all if half the players on the forum are using the same house rule to tone down the killer Drone fleets someone somewhere may pay attention. :lol:

 

[Totenkopf]

I like how this went from Romulan tactics to nerd drones, two things -
1. I believe that the stealth +4 save is applied to hits, not attacks as is with all stealth. Example Fed CA fires photons at Romulan recloaking, rolls a 2, 2, 4, 5. Since it is at 8 inches, the 4 does not score a hit, the 5 does four hits, the Romulan rolls 4 saves for each hit.

2. Or you could reduce the power of drones by requiring a Reload Drone SA with no power drain, and you can fire drones the turn you Reload, but you can do no other special actions while doing Reload Drones. That does not nerf drones too hard, but does take away the ability to All Power to Engines all over the place while firing drones.

 

[storeylf]

I like how this went from Romulan tactics to nerd drones, two things -
1. I believe that the stealth +4 save is applied to hits, not attacks as is with all stealth. Example Fed CA fires photons at Romulan recloaking, rolls a 2, 2, 4, 5. Since it is at 8 inches, the 4 does not score a hit, the 5 does four hits, the Romulan rolls 4 saves for each hit.

It does, but that makes little difference when talking averages, each drone/photon/phaser (or whatever) does half the normal average damage. It affects the distribution as the law of large numbers will be kicking in compared with halving AD, but the average is the same either way.

launch 10AD drones at a KE not re-cloaking, it shoots down/tractors 4 and takes 6AD of hits, average 21.

launch 10AD at a re-cloaking KE, it can't shoot any, it takes 10AD or 35 hits on average, half of which it then goes on to save on 4+, so a total loss of ~18.

 

[Da Boss]

If a Romulan declaoks and fires and there is terrain around could it use the next turn to move into cover to recloak and come back around?

They keep adding phasrs to the Romulan ships so soon they should be immune to drones

 

[McKinstry]

We've been applying the save to the basic weapon hit, not the per hit meaning that 4 Photons fire at a cloaking Romulan at 10" and roll a 2,2,5 & 5. We treat that as two hits subject to the 4+ save. Assuming the Romulan rolls a 2 and a 4 for the save, that is one stopped and one that gets through which does 4 hits.

A Romulan recloaking against a drone fleet has no defenses whereas if you stay and fight, your Phasers can at least fire in defense plus you can reload plasmas that turn. Unless you have just one ship firing, the other fellow may have to split fire to deal with your threats whereas if you are recloaking the whole fleet after an Alpha strike, the other side should simply pick on one ship that everyone within 36" can see and kill it.

I took out two Romulan KR's and chewed up two KFR's with a 1 BC, 2 DWD, 2 NCA fleet plus some frigates and suffered a total damage of 4 shield hits deliberately playing to kill with drones. I fired one FFB's photons once and those were the only photons I used all game. We have a Kzinti v Klingon game at 1300 points each this weekend and that should be interesting but I simply cannot see a Gorn or Romilan fleet doing much of anything against a drone heavy fleet unless they roll up scads of terrain.

Of all the drone nerfs discussed, I like simply making them reload the best and it would seem to be the easiest to implement.

 

[Totenkopf]

We've been applying the save to the basic weapon hit, not the per hit meaning that 4 Photons fire at a cloaking Romulan at 10" and roll a 2,2,5 & 5. We treat that as two hits subject to the 4+ save. Assuming the Romulan rolls a 2 and a 4 for the save, that is one stopped and one that gets through which does 4 hits.

A Romulan recloaking against a drone fleet has no defenses whereas if you stay and fight, your Phasers can at least fire in defense plus you can reload plasmas that turn. Unless you have just one ship firing, the other fellow may have to split fire to deal with your threats whereas if you are recloaking the whole fleet after an Alpha strike, the other side should simply pick on one ship that everyone within 36" can see and kill it.

I took out two Romulan KR's and chewed up two KFR's with a 1 BC, 2 DWD, 2 NCA fleet plus some frigates and suffered a total damage of 4 shield hits deliberately playing to kill with drones. I fired one FFB's photons once and those were the only photons I used all game. We have a Kzinti v Klingon game at 1300 points each this weekend and that should be interesting but I simply cannot see a Gorn or Romilan fleet doing much of anything against a drone heavy fleet unless they roll up scads of terrain.

Of all the drone nerfs discussed, I like simply making them reload the best and it would seem to be the easiest to implement.

Which version of the reload? The one where they can only fire every other turn, or the one where they can fire the same turn, but not do any other special actions? As far as how the save should be applied...it is to the per hit according to Matt in a past forum...meaning an overloaded photon would force a Romulan player to make 8 stealth saves.

 

[tneva82]

We've been applying the save to the basic weapon hit, not the per hit meaning that 4 Photons fire at a cloaking Romulan at 10" and roll a 2,2,5 & 5. We treat that as two hits subject to the 4+ save. Assuming the Romulan rolls a 2 and a 4 for the save, that is one stopped and one that gets through which does 4 hits.

Well a) it's not correct b) in the long run makes no difference anyway Your way just increases variance resulting in games where they either perform ridiculously well or ridiculously badly more likely than by doing it properly.

A Romulan recloaking against a drone fleet has no defenses

4+ save is defence and one that works against unlimited number of drones unlike others.

Unless you have just one ship firing, the other fellow may have to split fire to deal with your threats whereas if you are recloaking the whole fleet after an Alpha strike, the other side should simply pick on one ship that everyone within 36" can see and kill it.

Not a problem unique to Romulan's. Show me fleet which doesn't suffer ship when other side concentrates everything to one ship.

 

[gord314]

A couple of things: First how many people posting in this thread have played many games for or against Romulans? I've played 1 game as them, and about 10 against them. Cloaking is really scary on paper, as are plasma torpedoes.

The problem is that as it stands cloaking isn't really a viable strategy against other close range fighters, like the Federation. Its really hard to uncloak in a position that you can fire plasma torpedoes at under 8 inches, but the federation can't fire a lot of photon torpedoes, some overloaded. Sure the Federation will take a beating that turn, but so will the Romulans, and the next turn the Federation has a lot more phasers and drones to do clean up with. Against the Gorn it seems hopeless, if the Romulans start to outflank them to badly the Gorn can just all power to engines away and wait for a better opportunity, and Romulans engaging Gorn from the front seems like suicide. I haven't played this match up yet, so I could be wrong of course.

 

[storeylf]

A Romulan recloaking against a drone fleet has no defenses whereas if you stay and fight, your Phasers can at least fire in defense plus you can reload plasmas that turn.

As I keep showing, the idea that a few phasers will provide more defense is just wrong and that recloaking is no defense or suicide is even more wrong. If you only face a couple of drone ships then yes a few phasers may be better, but if you are talking half a dozen kzintis then recloaking is a far better defense, not only will you be better off aginst drones you will also be better off against disruptes and phasers.

As I noted earlier there are reasons that recloaking might be a bad idea, wanting to get straight on with reloading could well be one of them situation depending, but lack of defensive fire is usually not going to be a reason for not recloaking. But remember that whilst reloading and using your phasers in defense you will a) Be losing even more ships to enemy fire as you get hit for 100% damage and b) do nothing back in return.

the other fellow may have to split fire to deal with your threats whereas if you are recloaking the whole fleet after an Alpha strike, the other side should simply pick on one ship that everyone within 36" can see and kill it.

And again, how is this unique to romulans, everyone is going to get hammered, everyone is going to lose ships to concentrated fire. Concentrating fire on one ship is usually the idea whether you cloak or not. If you don't recloak after a plasma launch and use phasers defensively then exactly what threats are forcing the enemy to split fire?

but I simply cannot see a Gorn or Romilan fleet doing much of anything against a drone heavy fleet unless they roll up scads of terrain.

<sarcasm>Gorns don't have the option to do a suicidal recloak, therefore they should be fine right? after all getting picked on and hammered by an enemy fleet was unique to reclaoking romulans wasn't it</sarcasm>

Its really hard to uncloak in a position that you can fire plasma torpedoes at under 8 inches,

That was the problem that I felt was the biggest issue, against an enemy that doesn't want to allow you to uncloak close to them then your destiny is almost totally out of your control, unless you just drop your cloak and run in like anyone else. Thats bad because, to borrow a phrase, romulans relying on defensive fire is a form of suicide

I'd have to play more games to get a better idea of just how bad that problem is, but at the moment my thinking is along these lines:

The uncloak has a special move that allows you to shift 6", supposedly representing that the enemy didn't know precisely where you were. I do like that mechanic. However, you are not allowed to move normally as well, why? How does the enemies lack of knowledge on my exact position suddenly render my engines out of action, If I close my eyes briefly can I force all enemy ships to lose their engines? It would be nicer and more fitting the description if you got the 6" special move and then a normal 6" move as well. That should give you the extra reach that makes it a little harder for an enemy fleet to simply retrograde in front of you, then go all powers to engines to shift position as they run out of room.

 

[gord314]

Your right, re-cloaking isn't a problem exactly, the problem is that all Romulan ships pay some amount of points for cloaking devices, and they aren't getting enough use out of them to justify those points, however much that may be. They have the disadvantage of having two of the scariest (but not necessarily most effective) things in the game, cloaks and plasma torpedoes, and scary things tend to cost to many points.

As a side note, I think this is why ships with lots of phasers are so good, phaser-1s are not very scary so they tend to cost less points compared to say photon torpedoes or plasma torpedoes, but this does not make them any less effective.

 

[billclo]

Your right, re-cloaking isn't a problem exactly, the problem is that all Romulan ships pay some amount of points for cloaking devices, and they aren't getting enough use out of them to justify those points, however much that may be. They have the disadvantage of having two of the scariest (but not necessarily most effective) things in the game, cloaks and plasma torpedoes, and scary things tend to cost to many points.

As a side note, I think this is why ships with lots of phasers are so good, phaser-1s are not very scary so they tend to cost less points compared to say photon torpedoes or plasma torpedoes, but this does not make them any less effective.

I believe the Roms pay a 15% increase in point value to have a cloak.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Your right, re-cloaking isn't a problem exactly, the problem is that all Romulan ships pay some amount of points for cloaking devices, and they aren't getting enough use out of them to justify those points, however much that may be. They have the disadvantage of having two of the scariest (but not necessarily most effective) things in the game, cloaks and plasma torpedoes, and scary things tend to cost to many points.

As a side note, I think this is why ships with lots of phasers are so good, phaser-1s are not very scary so they tend to cost less points compared to say photon torpedoes or plasma torpedoes, but this does not make them any less effective.

Why not try the de-cloaking 6" free teleport move after the normal 6" move. It means you are moving that turn and still reflects the uncertainty as to where the cloak actually is.

As regards scary. Erm sorry but nope.

ACTA Plasmas are not scary. Yes 12AD of plasmas from a Cruiser looks good but once half of that has been phasered down the rest is enough to take down the shield. Feds, Klingon’s, Romulan’s have enough Phasers on the nose to drop a plasma salvo down 6-8AD easily. The remainder plus all your Phasers is going to take down an equal sized shield and maybe do some damage. About the same as going head to head with a Flat Top at 6”.

A head to head pass between a Gorn BC/CM and a Klingon D5/6/7 will leave the Klink with roughly half his shield left and a few internals from Phaser penetrations. That Klingon is now behind the lumbering Gorn.

A Gorn or Romulan FLEET getting into range to fire at you is scary. Plasma’s themselves are not so scary. They do some damage but can be shot down and have a short range plus they come on ships with are either small or lumbering or slow under cloaks. A single ships plasma firepower is going to kick in your shield but it’s not worth panicking over. A Fleets worth of plasmas is going to toast something.

So plasmas, not so scary.

With regard to recloaking.

If every ship in the Romulan fleet is free to fire any Phaser in arc and range to defend the cloaking ship against Drones from over 18” suddenly it becomes a waste of drones since you not only get the defensive Phaser fire but also a 4+ stealth save. As long as there are uncloaked ships around they are a much better target.

In effect within a fleet cloaking is a bit risky but then puts you in a safe position to reload and move around a bit. Which is the way I see cloaks working. Rather than the “My whole fleet is cloaked and I want to be able to uncloak 8” behind your ships so I can ambush you” theme.

Cloaks should be defensive, under most circumstances they are. The problem is against Drones you become a target. Not the easiest target but still a target that cannot fire back. With a fleet to cover you cloaking is much safer because there are far easier targets out there. Or is that just me banging on about a need for fleet defences against long range Drones that isn't IDF. :roll:

Really the problem is Drones here. Hum wait a minute, the problem seems to be Drones most places. (Well apart from Lumbering which is a whole other problem )

Wonder if all of this could be because Drones are overpowered in fleet actions, what with ACTA-SFB being a FLEET game with 6-8 ships on each side. Drones going from being a secondary weapon and annoyance in 2-3 ship battles to suddenly become a ship killer in bigger fleets.

Anyone remember this from Msprange:

During playtesting, we found a kind of Mutually Assured Destruction pattern developed when ‘low drone count’ fleets faced one another. If you get attacked by a drone, you can roll some dice for your phasers (this is what your phaser-3s are generally used for!), or simply use your own drone to automatically nullify it, no dice rolled. In fleets where every ship generally has just one drone rack, you often get into situations where no one fires a drone, just in case they get targeted towards the end of the Attack Phase.
The Kirov blows this idea out of the water. With four Attack Dice of drones, it can simply overwhelm most targets. In fact, in ‘civil wars’ we have played with the Federation facing another Federation fleet, people quickly used the Federation’s special rule of turning their drones from an offensive role to the defensive Anti-Drone trait as soon as the Battlecruiser arrives on the field!

4 AD of Drones :lol:

 

[storeylf]

Why not try the de-cloaking 6" free teleport move after the normal 6" move. It means you are moving that turn and still reflects the uncertainty as to where the cloak actually is.

I'll have to check the rule tonight, I was under the impression that if you uncloaked that was all you did that turn. If you can indeed move then uncloak that will make a big difference.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Why not try the de-cloaking 6" free teleport move after the normal 6" move. It means you are moving that turn and still reflects the uncertainty as to where the cloak actually is.

I'll have to check the rule tonight, I was under the impression that if you uncloaked that was all you did that turn. If you can indeed move then uncloak that will make a big difference.

The rule says you get the 6" teleport instead of a normal move. My thinking is you add it after the normal move since as you said earlier the 6" teleport bit is to reflect not knowing exactly where you are and should be independant of actual ships movement.

 

[McKinstry]

I'd like to see some kind of a drone fix before anything else. I suspect much of the other concerns for the plasma races may be alleviated if those weapons are brought into balance with the other weapon types.

 

[storeylf]

Why not try the de-cloaking 6" free teleport move after the normal 6" move. It means you are moving that turn and still reflects the uncertainty as to where the cloak actually is.

I'll have to check the rule tonight, I was under the impression that if you uncloaked that was all you did that turn. If you can indeed move then uncloak that will make a big difference.

The rule says you get the 6" teleport instead of a normal move. My thinking is you add it after the normal move since as you said earlier the 6" teleport bit is to reflect not knowing exactly where you are and should be independant of actual ships movement.

Sorry, I'm lost, are you saying that is how think it currently is meant to be? or that is how it should be changed to be?

 

[scoutdad]

The 6 inch repositioning when decloaking is indeed in lieu of a normal move.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Sorry, I'm lost, are you saying that is how think it currently is meant to be? or that is how it should be changed to be?

That it should be changed to.

Currently when you De-cloak you suddenly lose the ability to use your drives but gain a teleport of up to 6" to reflect the fact that no one knew exactly where you were.

I am thinking that tacticaly the ability to move 6" as normal for being under cloak and then gain the 6" reposition on decloaking helps with the Romulan problems, gives them a better tactical range on the attack/de-cloak turn and is far easier to errata than changing the way cloaks work all together.

Remember that the 6" "teleport" decloak can be used to go through terrain that is less than 6" thick so you can appear on the other side of an asteroid field or planet.