Romulan Tactics

[Captain Jonah]

No. No, no, no, you see, you've gone right off the track here...
Seriously, you (and I mean you all ) have to play this game before worrying about whether a fleet fits in or not

For all that gord314 started this thread saying that the Federation clobbers Romulans, it's me - the Klingon player - who has posted an unbroken string of overwhelming victories over the Romulans in two-way matches since we started a three-way campaign. IIRC, I have a higher win percentage with Klingons against Romulans than he does with the Federation against Romulans.

Playing against the same players does lead to playing the same sort of games, we need to look at 100 games spread across 10 Romulan players to say how bad the problem is.

To me there is a problem, as to how bad it really is once people come up with magical solutions to the 6” movement, who can say.

Bit like my Gorn’s really. Once you get a few games in you will develop tactics to overcome the fact that all of your cruisers are Lumbering. Right. So I’m developing tactics that overcome the fact that ALL the Gorn Heavies have one whole 45Degree turn per turn and no HETS. Oh and this tactic will not only overcome the lumbering but also cannot be negated by my opponents.

This may take a while.

I'd really like to take some issue with your comment on drones, though. I think you don't quite understand the tactical reasons why drones are as good as they are.

All weapons scale with numbers and deployability. Larger fleets bring more weapons to the table and can concentrate those weapons to greater effect.

The tourneys are 1000 point games of 6-7 ships. People are playing larger games 1500-2000 points to try out the full fleet battles, after all this is a game of FLEET combat. A Drone Heavy 1000 point fleet is throwing 24-32 AD of Drones. A 2000 point Drone heavy fleet, well the numbers become obscene. 60Ad of Drones for the Kzinti, 30-40 for the Feds and Klingons (once the Klink Drone ships arrive)

Now as TJHairball mentioned, the issue is how easy a weapon is to concentrate in numbers. For the plasmas with an 8” range in order to concentrate the fire of multiple ships on a single target they must all be within 8”. This leaves you with tight groups of plasma ships. The Feds with a 15” photon range can have much larger groups still able to concentrate firepower. The races with 24” Disruptors have a huge area to play with, any Klingon ship within two feet of the target can fire at it.

Then we come to Drones. 36”, three feet. That means to engage a target every Kzinti (or drone heavy Fed/Klink) ship needs to be simply within three feet of that ship. On a board four feet by six. A Drone ship anywhere towards the middle of the map can hit any target on the map except in the corners. Drone ships starting in a 6” deep set up zone can set up against the front edge, move a few inches and take out an enemy ship ON TURN ONE.

Use the terrain I hear. Well with 24 square feet of board and four to six square feet of cover that still leaves a whole lot of open space. Do I want to spend the battle hiding behind a dust cloud, no. Does it help, no. Because those Drone ships with Agile and/or turn 4 just fly to a point well out of my range and flank the terrain getting shots on me again.

As it stands a Fleets ability to attack scales with numbers, this is true. More ships means more firepower. However a Fleets ability to defend does not.

You can use your only special action to go IDF, half of your fleet can then provide Drone cover. While your Drone using enemy go APE and cruise around out of reach, too fast for you to catch them and hurling Drones and insults at your fast shrinking Fleet.

A single ship cannot destroy an equal sized enemy in one go. A dozen can easily do so with heavy weapons. The problem is getting the firepower of a dozen ships onto one target. The longer the range the easier it is and with 36” ranges it becomes trivial.

Drone stats are fine, the ways of engaging Drones are fine.

BUT.

Without the ability to engage Drones fired at other ships The Drone fleets will rule every battlefield. It is easy to say just use IDF, Firstly that is your only special action for the turn, secondly it has a 50% chance for the average crew and it means that you need to sacrifice you ability to accelerate, reload, boost shields or anything else simply to prevent the slaughter of your ships from what is supposed to be a SECONDARY weapon system.

Did every Kzinti play tester charge his fleet into enemy weapon range just to be fair?

Is the expectation that players looking to win games will likewise ignore the ability of Drones to kill at ranges far beyond retaliation and will in fact rush in to Phaser and disruptor range for a few turns of higher firepower ignoring the crushing tactical advantage they have?

Matt says play the fleets, develop the tactics. I’ve been around a while, 30 plus years at the table so to speak. Try as I might, read the rules again and again as I have. I cannot see the way to defend against massed Drones going by the book. :?

The Feds have a fair chance dropping to slight in larger games, the Klingon’s a slight chance in smaller games dropping to snowballs in large games. Romulan’s can wander round all day under cloaks go up like popcorn when they De-cloak. The Gorn, well they just Die.

A FLEET should be able to defend itself against the long range fire of a Drone using fleet. Not just stand there and be unable to do anything. :roll:

Don’t change Drones, the actual Drones are ok. But the ability of Fleets to defend against them at long range needs to be significantly improved. It could be all ships are allowed to fire at any Drone fired beyond a certain range, it could be something else.

Either that or please explain to us all what it is that we are missing, please show us the fantastic tactic that allows us to face Drone heavy fleets with a fair chance. Because so far a lot of us are having trouble seeing it.

 

[McKinstry]

I think I can hold my own against the Kzinti in any size battle as a Fed but the fleet I'd use would be boring with no CA, no OCL, no CC, no NCL and no FCA. I don't want to load up on BCH and DDW since the variety of ships is part of the charm but to fight the kitties with a chance to win, you have to load up on enough ADD to get you close long enough to kick them in the teeth and grab an initiative sink advantage.

 

[billclo]

Capt Jonah, good analysis. How about we just say that the Intensify Defensive Fire action is automatic, for the sake of argument. Do you think that changes the equation enough to allow most Empires to survive long enough to find some way to get into effective range to attack the Kzin?

 

[gord314]

Making IDF automatic hurts the Romulans and Gorn to much.

 

[Captain Jonah]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What he said :lol:

Making IDF automatic will devastate the Plasma races, as it stands a ship can Phaser down up to half of an equal sized ships plasmas. IDF means the plasma races which have t get in close anyway face everyone’s Phaser fire.

No it should be a change to Drone defence, the defensive rules on page 16 NOT the special actions. 18" which is half range, 12" (which would then include long range plasmas), one or the other as the point beyond which Drones are spending so much time in flight anyone can shoot them.

My point is that if your entire fleet can use its in arc Phasers against the Drones fired at a single target then the Drone races ability to do massive harm at long range is greatly diminished. They can still use tactics, spread your fleet out so your ships are out of Phaser range of each other etc and they still have all the other weapons that are left to gather dust because of the overwhelming usefulness of Drones.

If you can volley 30 Drones at an enemy with your fleet spread all over the map and so far away you take little if any return fire why close into range to use your own Disruptors. If on the other hand a fleet which is using defensive tactics and staying tight can cut down your Drone assault to being a secondary concern then you need to get close and actually start fighting.

You are going to find it very hard to pin a Drone heavy fleet in a corner, for one reason that there is no reason to deploy them as a fleet. They move as 6-8 ships all across the map, pin down one and the others power away at 16" slamming yet more Drones into you.

Make them use tactics and actually give them the need to close the range where the Drones are a danger but then so are Disruptors, Photons and Phasers and its a proper ship to ship battle Ala every series. Getting wacked by an enemy on the horizon is a bit like the carrier heavy death by fighter games, good 20/21st century naval stuff but not so much fun for the guys on the receiving end.

 

[billclo]

After doing some more thinking about the drone issue, how about this:

1) Allow automatic IDF to protect a friendly ship within 4"; further away than that and you have to roll for it as normal.

Rationale: From my old SFB days, it was typical for there to be only a 3-5% drone hit rate for drones fired from more than fairly short range. Ships near the perceived target (or within effective weapons range) simply fired their phasers/ADDs/drones at the incoming drones. Only when the launching ships got fairly close (8-10 hexes) did it become more attractive to fire phasers at ships instead of drones. Really, to score enough damage to kill a typical drone, a Phaser-1 needed to be within 3-4 hexes (inches) to have a pretty good chance of a one-shot kill.

Because some folk think this will neuter the plasma races, add #2 OR #3, not both:

2) Increase warhead strength of all plasmas by 50%, ie a Plas-R does 10AD, Plas-S does 6AD, Plas-F does 3 AD.

Rationale: In SFB, a full salvo of plasma torpedoes can normally cripple/nearly destroy an equal sized ship. Normally 2 Plas-S and 2 Plas-4 does close to 100pts damage, which is enough to drop the impacted shield on a cruiser and deal 60-70 internals (crippling damage). Add in some phasers and you have a probable kill. Then the plasma ship has to run away for 3 turns to reload and try again.

Since ACTA:SF only requires the use of the Reload special action (and therefore a 2-turn arming cycle), I can see why plasmas aren't as powerful as they would normally be. BUT phasers are twice as effective as they should be versus plasmas as well.

If you leave the phasers the way they are, then increasing the plasma's warhead seems to be a way to compensate for better IDF special action ships defending the target.

Or 3) require 2 phaser hits to negate 1AD of a plasma's warhead. Simpler than #2, and requires fewer changes overall.

 

[Captain Jonah]

The thing here is I am making a suggestion to deal with what looks to be a big problem but do so in such a way that is doesn't then impact other weapons and other rules and then kick of a whole slew of other changes to balance the changes.

Using IDF impacts plasmas and every other short range seeking weapon to come.

Changing plasma torps to allow them to function after the IDF change then leads to unbalancing in other places.

I have already thought about plasmas requiring 2 AD of Phasers per AD of plasma to stop. That means the average cruiser can stop 3 or 4 AD of plasmas meaning that a plasma cruisers 12AD does 8AD to the ship. That gives a damage impact of approx 28 points. Compared to 16 for overloaded Photons which is the closest the non plasma races can get to. Plasmas have a short range compared to heavy weapons but isn't that much damage too much compared to everyone else.

Likewise a 50% increase in plasma strength has the same effect, after defensive fire the plasmas are doing too much damage in comparison to other races.

Making a change which is specific to long range seeking fire will only impact Drones and other seeking weapons with so great a range. Changes to IDF will affect every seeking weapon, shuttles, fighters, PFs etc. I know some of them are not yet here but you cannot change something now then have to change the change later or make fighters more powerful to compensate for the change that was intended to stop Drones.

WWs are the same problem. They impact too many things on too many levels, as a possible defence against Drones they come with multiple rules, exceptions, limitations and a whole can of worms.

Any change must be carefully considered for what it changes, and then what those change and so on. Hopefully we will get an escort trait later on so ADDs and D-Racks can actually work to defend people but that will be later. For now we must look carefully at anything we want to change and what effect it will have.

 

[billclo]

Capt Jonah, do you have a specific proposal to fix the percieved drone imbalance, now that we have identified some problem areas?

 

[gord314]

I think Captain Jonah is suggesting that seeking weapons fired from beyond a certain range, either 12" or 18" inches (further play testing needed) can be shot at by any ship within range of the target ship. So similar to your suggestion, but have it be based on the range from the ship firing drones to the target ship. This makes sense because drones fired at long range spend a long time in flight, giving the crew of friendly ships plenty of time to fire at them.

 

[Captain Jonah]

I think Captain Jonah is suggesting that seeking weapons fired from beyond a certain range, either 12" or 18" inches (further play testing needed) can be shot at by any ship within range of the target ship. So similar to your suggestion, but have it be based on the range from the ship firing drones to the target ship. This makes sense because drones fired at long range spend a long time in flight, giving the crew of friendly ships plenty of time to fire at them.

Yep, that’s about it.

Drones (and anything that follows them with such huge ranges) should be open to be fired at by any ship in the enemy fleet that has the target in range and arc if the Drones are fired from more than a set distance away. I have been thinking 18" which brings them inside Disruptor and Phaser-1 range and nearly in to Photon range. A few people have said 12" to bring them into the Plasma races range. Some people are trying these now so I will wait and see.

Basically it is either change to the Drone defence or as has been suggested a weapon Trait of "Long Range". Where a seeking weapon has the trait and is fired beyond a range any ship in the enemy fleet with Phasers in arc and range of the target may use defensive Phasers against the weapons. Usual rules for Splitting and defensive fire apply.

 

[sanguisaevum]

I only have 5 or 6 games under my belt with Romulans (all against feds), so take this for what you will.

In my first couple of games I relied far too much on the cloaking device. IE...

starting cloaked,
unloading plasma,
re cloaking,
reloading,
unloading plasma,

Repeat, etc etc

I soon realised that this was costing me the games... as i was giving my opponent 2 full turns of no threat each cycle, during which he punished me with phasers. Enough were sneaking passed the stealth saves to make it matter.

I switched my focus and although i still started in cloak, i manoeuvred for my initial plasma shots, and then focused on reloading whilst using my superior agility to stay in favourable arcs.

This worked MUCH better.

Not only was I launching plasma every other turn instead of every 3 turns, I was also able to use phasers to chip away, and avoid the worst of the enemies big guns at the same time.

I realised that it was the agility of the roms that was helping me win, not the cloak, and the cloak whilst very useful in the correct circumstances, wasn't the extent of the rom tactical doctrine. Indeed, actually using the cloak restricts the agility greatly... 6" isn't much to work with and getting into position to uncloak and unload was much harder than simply flying around uncloaked whilst reloading.

After about the 4th game i also realised that alternating plasma instead of unloading every ship at the same time works quite well, this way you have one set reloading whilst another set can fire... this creates doubt in the enemies mind, instead of being sure that he can just use all phasers for offence, if there is a certainly of plasma each turn, he has to reserve fire-power for defence.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I soon realised that this was costing me the games... as i was giving my opponent 2 full turns of no threat each cycle, during which he punished me with phasers. Enough were sneaking passed the stealth saves to make it matter.

Bingo!

I did mention a while ago that people would come to the Romulan fleet assuming the cloaks were the be all and end all (this is _exactly_ how the playtesters started out!). They just aren't.

There _are_ some very positive uses for cloaks during the battle, but you always have to weigh them against giving your opponent a breather (tip: make sure you don't give him room to breath - CTA is all about keeping your opponent off balance).

Well done, that Romulan!

 

[Finlos]

While I have yet to use it in actual combat, the snipe looks really good. 7AD worth of plasma, cloak, turn 3, and agile. Just hope it avoids enemy retaliation as it truly is a glass cannon.

On a related note, does anyone else suspect Matt may secretly be a Romulan?

 

[gord314]

The snipe does have some pretty serious problems. In thousand point games it is one of the few ships that can be realistically crippled while cloaked. Also, if you have more than one, or you don't fire with it as your first ship, the snipe runs a serious risk of being crippled before it can fire.

 

[Captain Jonah]

While I have yet to use it in actual combat, the snipe looks really good. 7AD worth of plasma, cloak, turn 3, and agile. Just hope it avoids enemy retaliation as it truly is a glass cannon.

On a related note, does anyone else suspect Matt may secretly be a Romulan?

Nope he is clearly a Klingon, he just has a lot of Romulan allies. Mostly standing behind him smiling like they don't plan to stab anyone in the back.

Normal Romulans really :lol:

 

[Da Boss]

The snipe does have some pretty serious problems. In thousand point games it is one of the few ships that can be realistically crippled while cloaked. Also, if you have more than one, or you don't fire with it as your first ship, the snipe runs a serious risk of being crippled before it can fire.

ACTA: SF must work really different to ACTA:B5 cos in the latter ships like this - in sinks would spend alot of time not being shot at and using terrain if possible. Thats how they worked in earlier editions - you got you points worth out of them in this way perhaps more than actually shooting.

 

[Pavlov Grenadier]

I only have 5 or 6 games under my belt with Romulans (all against feds), so take this for what you will.

In my first couple of games I relied far too much on the cloaking device. IE...

starting cloaked,
unloading plasma,
re cloaking,
reloading,
unloading plasma,

Repeat, etc etc

I soon realised that this was costing me the games... as i was giving my opponent 2 full turns of no threat each cycle, during which he punished me with phasers. Enough were sneaking passed the stealth saves to make it matter.

I switched my focus and although i still started in cloak, i manoeuvred for my initial plasma shots, and then focused on reloading whilst using my superior agility to stay in favourable arcs.

This worked MUCH better.

Not only was I launching plasma every other turn instead of every 3 turns, I was also able to use phasers to chip away, and avoid the worst of the enemies big guns at the same time.

I realised that it was the agility of the roms that was helping me win, not the cloak, and the cloak whilst very useful in the correct circumstances, wasn't the extent of the rom tactical doctrine. Indeed, actually using the cloak restricts the agility greatly... 6" isn't much to work with and getting into position to uncloak and unload was much harder than simply flying around uncloaked whilst reloading.

After about the 4th game i also realised that alternating plasma instead of unloading every ship at the same time works quite well, this way you have one set reloading whilst another set can fire... this creates doubt in the enemies mind, instead of being sure that he can just use all phasers for offence, if there is a certainly of plasma each turn, he has to reserve fire-power for defence.

Hi Sanguisaevum! So could you expand a bit on the "winning" games youve had with the Romulans? Im looking at making those guys my second fleet and would love some gameplay tips.

1) So in the typical scenario are you no not starting off in cloak?

2) What ships are you taking (the traditional ships with high shields and very low hull damage or the newer ones)?

3) What size games are you guys playing and which races are you playing against?

To anyone else, what tactics have you seen work?

Thanks!

 

[sanguisaevum]

Morning!

Sure, would love to help, but as I said above, please bare in mind that I have only had about 6 games total, so am still "finding my feet" with both the rules and the Romulans.

1 - It depends really. My first couple of games, I started every ship cloaked. And soon realised that I was sacrificing my agility and finding it difficult to get into a good position to unleash plasma. So after that I started most games with only the smaller ships cloaked. This more often then not, meant that my opponent chose to concentrate fire on the bigger, non cloaked ships as they approached, leaving my smaller ships to flank unscathed. My advice based on my experience so far would be "Do not build your strategy around the cloak ability alone, rather utilise it like any other tool, as part of a wider plan"


2 - A mixture actually. As we were learning the rules, we stuck to 4 or 5 ships. I soon settled on

Snipe
Firehawk
War Eagle
KR

The KR is brilliant in my opinion, able to close head on with its reinforced forward shields, and after the initial pass, more than capable of holding its own in a furball. The Snip and Firehawk are useful little threats, they put out a lot of plasma for small ships and the threat of them uncloaking on his smaller escorts and vaporising them almost certainly forced him to make difficult decisions on how and where to commit. The War eagle i found to be more of a psychological weapon than a useful weapon... again, the threat of the plasma it can unleash had him desperately trying to avoid its front arc... meaning i could force his hand somewhat.


3 - As I said, we never went higher than about 600 - 700 points. and all my games were against Feds. Once I stopped relying on the cloaks as the cornerstone of my tactics, and actually started to try to outmanoeuvre him (Forget about trying to manoeuvrer whilst cloaked... 6" just isn't enough to really get into position on ships that aren't distracted by other targets) things were much more balanced. My agility really shone out and in our closest game and it was a hard fought but satisfying victory, with only his Kirov surviving to warp out of the system with its Naceles between its legs.

Hope that helps.

 

[Captain Jonah]

So basically you are saying that when the Romulan’s come out into the open and fight face to face they do ok whereas hiding under cloaks like a bunch of cowardly backstabbers they do badly :lol:

Re the snipe. Its what, 120 points. One of them lurking off behind cover as an Init sink maybe, two of them is a quarter of your entire 1000 point fleet. In a smaller game that 120 points is a big chunk of a 600 odd point fleet if all it does is hides far away.

They need to be under cloak the whole time or someone will send something at them to try for a few 6s. A single photon, two disruptors or a few Phasers cripples them through the shields. They have good shields and are very good against Plasma races Or long range drones for that matter but against everyone else they are very fragile.

For myself I would have thought that the lower firepower of the K5R was acceptable compared to its vastly stronger front shield allowing it to act as an Init sink but also add its firepower to the edges of the fight. Not that I would ever play Romulans :roll: :wink:

 

[sanguisaevum]

So basically you are saying that when the Romulan’s come out into the open and fight face to face they do ok whereas hiding under cloaks like a bunch of cowardly backstabbers they do badly :lol:

Re the snipe. Its what, 120 points. One of them lurking off behind cover as an Init sink maybe, two of them is a quarter of your entire 1000 point fleet. In a smaller game that 120 points is a big chunk of a 600 odd point fleet if all it does is hides far away.

They need to be under cloak the whole time or someone will send something at them to try for a few 6s. A single photon, two disruptors or a few Phasers cripples them through the shields. They have good shields and are very good against Plasma races Or long range drones for that matter but against everyone else they are very fragile.

For myself I would have thought that the lower firepower of the K5R was acceptable compared to its vastly stronger front shield allowing it to act as an Init sink but also add its firepower to the edges of the fight. Not that I would ever play Romulans :roll: :wink:

Ha!

The entire fleet hiding under cloaks... yeah, not wise (well... not against Fed Phaser boats anyway) might be more viable against a drone fleet for example...

RE the snipe... yes it is extremely fragile, one has to be VERY VERY carefully before committing it. But the Threat of all that plasma in such a nimble delivery system (It was working in tandem with my Firehawk whilst the KR and Eagle were dogfighting with his CA and BCA) kept my opponent worry about positioning HIS smaller escorts as well... this meant my KR and Eagle were able to basically run rings round his slower Cruisers without worrying about a pesky little DD or Frigate tailing them with a centre lined photon / phaser salvo.

Sometimes a ship's contribution to an engagement is far more than just the damage it does, ya know?....

That said... I will put the K5R in next time and see how that works out. As I said... I am still learning, and I want to get at least proficient with the Roms before I start on my second fleet.... All hail the might that is the Kzinti! DRONE POWAH!