Romulan Tactics

[gord314]

To start with lets keep this friendly. I think Romulans are under powered. Matt has said they should get better as people learn to play them, but from my experience they have gotten worse as we have learned to beat them. So I'm playing federation with the following 1000 pt fleet:

3xBCH
1xNCL
1xDW

What do you do about it?

 

[Iron Domokun]

"Thomas, stop being a munchkin and flying cheesy fleets against your opponent," said the Fat Troll. "You are a very naughty warp engine."

 

[gord314]

You'll have to excuse me, I realized Kirovs were good, but I didn't realize they were cheesy. If you look at the Federation fleet breakdown based on the boxed sets being published (I'm not a SFB/FC player, so its what I have) there are four Kirovs between the Squadron box, the fleet box, and the reinforcements, more then any other cruiser, so I assumed they were the Federation ship of the line so to speak. So what fleets aren't cheesy?

 

[McKinstry]

I wouldn't call it cheesey but it is clearly absolutely maxed out to shaft Romulans (or Gorns) in that it is clearly drone heavy. Most folks have acknowledged that something has to be done about drones but it is not unreasonable to wait and let a number of games get played and possibly an incremental slight fix or two experimented with.

In the interim, if you really want a more interesting set of battles between the Federation and Romulans, lose two of the Battlecruisers, the NCL and the DW and add in some plain vanilla frigates and a couple of Constitution class Fed CA's. Call it an early war scenario. Even if the Romulans stick to mostly early war Kestrel and Eagle designs, you will still get a more even game.

 

[gord314]

If I was going drone heavy I wouldn't take the NCL (1 drone) and I would replace the DW with the DWD, but I can see what you are getting at. What if we say

3x BCJ
3x DW (not DWD)

or

3x BCJ
2x NCL

The constitution is sadly pretty bad.

 

[McKinstry]

The constitution is sadly pretty bad.

Not if you aren't worried about drones. Solid firepower, robust damage capacity, good shields and adequate manueverability. If you want a good, interesting and ideally competitive game with the Romulans, go early war and forget more than one BC. Use the iconic CA, the OCL, the FF's, the basic fast CA or even an FFB (all that otherwise neglected Fed hardware) and the Romulans will still have to deal with drones but at a bothersome rather than a fatal level.

 

[TJHairball]

I wouldn't call it cheesey but it is clearly absolutely maxed out to shaft Romulans (or Gorns) in that it is clearly drone heavy. Most folks have acknowledged that something has to be done about drones but it is not unreasonable to wait and let a number of games get played and possibly an incremental slight fix or two experimented with.

In the interim, if you really want a more interesting set of battles between the Federation and Romulans, lose two of the Battlecruisers, the NCL and the DW and add in some plain vanilla frigates and a couple of Constitution class Fed CA's. Call it an early war scenario. Even if the Romulans stick to mostly early war Kestrel and Eagle designs, you will still get a more even game.

Taking drones isn't just a tactic that works against Romulans. I've been playing as Klingons against gord314, and he never regrets taking Kirovs, or the drone variant of the Ortega (which is a drone delivery system the Kzinti might envy). The Kirovs' supply of drones allows them to defend themselves (and each other) from Klingon drones.

The list he's given - with stock variants - has a total of 14 drones. "Downgrading" the war destroyer to a 990 point list increases that to 17 drones. There are actually cheesier lists for him to bring - if he packed nothing but DWDs, for example, that's an absurd 36 drones to chuck downrange, and they have six phasers each for defensive fire against the plasma torpedoes.

If I just take a normal Klingon list right down the middle of the line, not especially optimized, I'll have around a dozen drones - I get one per "light" ship, two per medium ship, and 4 per heavy command ship. The degree to which gord314's list in the OP is "drone-heavy" is perfectly normal for Klingons (and light for Kzinti).

It's also ideally suited for dealing with Klingons and Kzinti for exactly that reason. Ships well supplied with drones are well equipped for dealing with drones while at long range; not just hitting Gorn and Romulans. Until he can close the

And to provide another list for "what do the Romulans do to beat this," here's a basic Klingon conundrum, also at 1000 points:

2xD7 (1 command)
2xD6
2xD5

No big initiative sinks (the little ships), none of the 4-drone command ships, not especially focused against Romulans in particular.

 

[gord314]

Let me start of by saying I really like phaser-1s, and when I talk about firepower, that is mostly what I am talking about. I would trade drones and photon torpedoes one for one for phaser-1s in nice arcs any day I'm not fighting Kzinti. I heard there is a SFU faction that only uses phasers, that's who I'm playing if they are introduced to ACTA:SF.

So my problem with the Constitution isn't drone related, my problem with it is phaser firepower and maneuverability. It has the same forward firepower as the less expensive and more maneuverable NCL, and only a slight advantage (2 more photon torpedoes) over the much cheaper and more maneuverable OCL. Against the markedly more expensive Kirov it has to few phasers. Bore sighted, its 6 vs 10, but worse, without a bore sight the constitution can only put a measly 4 phaser-1s on a target. Sure the constitution is durable, but that only helps if your whole fleet is, otherwise your opponent will just shoot something else since the constitution probably doesn't have them quaking in their boots.

The old fast cruiser is another ship I really like since it has a lot of phasers in nice arcs.

 

[Iain McGhee]

There's only three Kirov class (and about a dozen BCs in total) listed in the whole of Star Fleet, so no wonder an SFB player might think of it as cheesy. There isn't any restriction on ship selection in ACTA:SF so I'd say use what you like.

The list's here if you're interested:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/Fed_NCC_Numbers.pdf

Anyway, against that list I'd go with:

1x KRC
3x KR
2x SKH

The KR types work fairly well against drone heavy fleets even disregarding their cloaking devices (I prefer Hawks otherwise): decent number of phasers and tractors plus the same reinforced forward shields as native Klingon ships to soak up any that get through their defences (and the KRC also has it's ADD mode Plasma-D).

Ideally, I'd approach under cloak and wait until I had initiative to alpha strike one or two of the BCHs. Few scenarios allow the Feds to stand off if they want to do better than draw, barring the odd lucky shot that gets past cloak and shields. Depending on the terrain it might be possible to close at high speed and then cloak.

 

[gord314]

The KRs are really good if their target is in front and their shields are up. I'd send one of the Kirovs around to flank. Moving it ahead, possibly all ahead full, would be my last move on a turn so the Romulans couldn't de-cloak much to shoot at it. If the Romulans did decloak to deal with the flanker, they would be uncloaked outside of torpedo range of the rest of my fleet, and most of my fleet could probably get out of their front arc. In the meantime I'd be getting about 40 phaser shots a turn while closing, plus photons if I thought I could get them off and still have time to reload (15 inch range, then reload and move back 4 inches the next turn). Once the flanking Kirov got in position it would be in kill zone for its phaser-1s. Once the Romulans decloaked I'd move one or both of the small ships up to point blank, use them and the flanking Kirov to take down the shields from outside the front arc, and maybe overload photons besides.

 

[Red-24]

I've only played two games so far and haven't yet involved Romulans, yet in reading the forums daily for almost two months, it seems that Drones vs. a cloaking ship is one of the big issues.

I'm not convinced that the drone rules are really a problem in this game (just an obstacle for all fleets to overcome). But a thought came to me for a house rule that might beef up Romulans without over-powering them.

What if the Engage Cloaking Device! special action allowed for defensive fire only?

Discuss... ;-)

 

[MongooseMatt]

What do you do about it?

Honestly? From what I have read, swap fleets. You try Romulans for a few games. See if there is a difference.

 

[mojo]

I don't think drones are a problem to a cloaked ship- it says weapons with the seeking trait cannot be used against a fully cloaked ship-whats the definition of "fully cloaked?" when it has its 2+ stealth save?

 

[Da Boss]

As I understand it the problem is when they are attempting to recloak and only have the 4+ save (but no defensive weaponry), they are completely immune to drones when cloaked.

 

[storeylf]

To be honest I think the stealth 4+ vs drones issue is over stated. It is an issue in small games maybe, where defensive fire might be able to handle 4-8 drones fired at you, but in larger games stealth 4+ is actually better as it scales to however many drones come at you. It may be a moot point by the time you are looking at large number of drones, but if defensive fire allows you to nobble 4 or 5 drones before they all start getting through then 4+ stealth is as good at 8-10 drones and better after that.

Not sure how many phasers some of the rom ships have, but the ones I played (the older gen) only have 4 phaser 1s and a couple of phaser 3s. Add in a tractor or 2 and you can't stop many drones with that, so stealth 4 look pretty good.

The issue that I have is the inability to repair shields whilst cloaked. If I could boost shields after cloaking then you can repair a lot of drone damage before uncloaking again. With 30 shields and stealth 4 it takes an average 18 drones to de-shield a king eagle, that is pretty good going, many ships with defensive fire can't handle a drone attack like that as well.

 

[McKinstry]

A ship using the engage cloak special action has only a 4+ save and no defensive fire of any kind so however many drones are fired, essentially 50% will hit. Add in that some phasers and other weaponry are likely in range and recloaking within 18" of another fleet, in particular one with plenty of drones, is a form of suicide unless you can keep the other ships busy shooting at another of yours.

 

[storeylf]

A ship using the engage cloak special action has only a 4+ save and no defensive fire of any kind so however many drones are fired, essentially 50% will hit. Add in that some phasers and other weaponry are likely in range and recloaking within 18" of another fleet, in particular one with plenty of drones, is a form of suicide unless you can keep the other ships busy shooting at another of yours.

But what are you comparing to? All fleets have to put up with getting hammered by other weapons etc, that isn't some unique romulan disadvantage.

If you don't recloak and use your defensive fire you take even more damage in many cases. If you are looking to survive then recloaking is better not worse, or at least no worse than just having defensive fire. People seem to be talking about the drones and recloak. Everyone has to take all those other weapons hitting them no matter what they do, but hang on, the stealth 4 actually helps there as well, so compared to a ship not recloaking normal weapons fire is far less effective against the recloaking ship.

If someone hits a recloaking ships with enough to kill it or render it out of action (i.e. be 'a form of suicide') then how on earth were you expecting a ship with no such option to not be commiting suicide by simply being in the area?



A king eagle can stop about 4 or 5 drones through the front if it doesn't recloak. At that point any further drones hit for full damage. So after about 13-14 drones it has no shields.

If it does recloak it takes damage it wouldn't have done on the first few drones, but it is taking half damage on all subsequent drones as well, so it requires ~18 drones to knock its shields out. That may well have killed if it hadn't recloaked. If someone wants to finish it off they have to put in more fire than if it hadn't recloaked.

A similiar pointed Fed CA is looking at a similiar result, it stops more from defensive fire but after 18 odd drones is still looking at probably being shields down as well (drone volley size and ADD dice may result in different numbers either way though).

The poor Gorn CL (points = KE) is probably just plain dead.


Non of that is to say I can see (and felt when I played them) that romulans have some possible issues, but I really don't get this 'suicidal recloak because of no defensive fire'. Recloaking may be bad for a variety of reasons, but it isn't particularly bad because of that except in rare cases.

 

[tneva82]

But what are you comparing to? All fleets have to put up with getting hammered by other weapons etc, that isn't some unique romulan disadvantage.

Shh. Don't go spoiling ever-popular romulan-complaining by actually pointing out flaws in the arquments

 

[McKinstry]

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

 

[archon96]

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