Romulan Tactics

[Da Boss]

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:

If there is terrain you may not haev to be under cloak and can far easier dash form cover to cover - ALL power gives you a huge range of places you can be.

re 120pts not doing alot - you can nulify a ship of equal or higher cost by making it move first and hence have massively reduced firepower - its paying for itself IMO.

 

[MongooseMatt]

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.

Yes but, a) _any_ small ship will have problems in a 1,000 point game unless it is on the flank and b) in a 1,000 point game, you opponent will not be lacking for anything else to shoot at!

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

So from the looks of it the Snipe serves a similar purpose to the lighter armed, higher speed ships of the Centauri in previous editions like the Darkner or the Vorchan/Demos - swinging in and 'sniping' at the big ships in larger games, outmanuevering them and out-sinking them. So it earns its worth not necessarily in pure kill count or victory points but also in allowing your other ships to do the job they need to by drawing away the enemy's attention and guns.

 

[sanguisaevum]

So it earns its worth not necessarily in pure kill count or victory points but also in allowing your other ships to do the job they need to by drawing away the enemy's attention and guns.

This, in my fairly limited experience so far, is exactly the case. Do not underestimate how much an opponent can be affected by the mere threat of several dice worth of plasma torps... it is often enough to force a discision that would not have been made in the same way wthout that threat present. This can be used to gain advantage.

In my mind at least, the smaller ships are there to escort the bigger ones, and so should focus less on "KILLS!" and more on preventing the enemy escorts from tailing your bigger ships whilst they dogfight with the enemy big guns.

Then again... i have only 6 games under my belt

Time will tell

 

[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.

Yes but, a) _any_ small ship will have problems in a 1,000 point game unless it is on the flank and b) in a 1,000 point game, you opponent will not be lacking for anything else to shoot at!

Since it takes on average 36 AD (without multi hit) to deal one point of damage through the shields on a cloaked target, except for the snipe even small ships are unlikely to be crippled before they de-cloak in a thousand point game. This means that snipes are the best target in an entirely cloaked fleet since crippling one might destroy its cloaking device and reduces the number of torpedoes it can fire.

Its true that there will be other tempting targets in a thousand point game, but few of them that you can destroy with a single ship. If the snipe has fired, certainly shoot something else, but if it hasn't there is a good chance you can put enough damage through the shields to either destroy it outright or prevent it from firing to full effect. Yes you will likely need to use a more expensive ship to do this, but preventing a ship from firing at all is usually worth it.

Finally, I just can't see cloaking part of your fleet but not the rest. You will either need to hang back with the cloaked ships or split up your fleet. If you hang back, you might as well just be cloaked. If you split up your fleet you end up facing the whole of the enemy fleet with only part of yours. Worse if you split your plasma torpedo fire over several turns, it makes it much easier to use defensive fire against them and rebuild shields in between shots.

 

[Da Boss]

Still have not a chance to play the game against or with the Romulans but the principles of previous versions of ACTA should still apply and seem to have worked for others.

As I mentioned before the game must work very differently if In sinkling is not as important - more and the more agile romulan ships (when uncloaked) should be able dictate the the movement and firing of less agile opponents.

 

[gord314]

I haven't played any other version of ACTA, but initiative sinking in this ACTA:SF doesn't seem worthwhile for a number of reasons. Disclaimer, this is talking about Federation vs. Romulans primarily.

1) Even small ships tend to be expensive, the snipe is half the price of a battle cruiser and more than a third the price of the most expensive ship (not base) in the game. By keeping a snipe behind cover, you are losing half a battle battle cruiser that could be in the thick of it.

2) Phasers tend to have nice arcs so you don't need to line up a shot perfectly. Many federation ships have equal numbers of phasers in any arc, sure getting a perfectly lined up shot is better, but having a better ship in the fight is better still. The rest of them just need to keep the enemy in their front halves, which isn't to hard with a little planning.

3) There are other things to do aside from firing photon torpedoes. I usually fire off all my photon torpedoes the turn the Romulans de-cloak, and with 6 movement there is no way I'm letting them out of my front arc. After that I usually rebuild shields rather than reload since the turn after the de-cloak tends to be decisive, so again keeping the enemy in my front arc isn't a huge priority.

For the Romulans its not worth it for pretty much the same reason, that is if the Federation doesn't care about being outmaneuvered, than the Romulans don't care that much about out maneuvering them.

Finally, people keep mentioning running behind cover. Cover is great if you can hide your entire fleet behind it, otherwise you are just dooming whatever ships can't get away, and in games with 5-6 ships per side, that's not something most fleets can afford.

 

[JohnDW]

Its interesting to see how much drones were a threat before the last errata. How has the change in 3 ship's drones max for each target effected the Romulans I wonder? Have there been any advances in understanding the best way to use the Roms?

 

[McKinstry]

Has anyone had to deal with a suicide shuttle cloud yet? Our last game (with Roms) I took a Fed drone heavy fleet and the Romulan player chose to approach fully in cloak. I spent three turns either backing up or sitting still launching suicide shuttles and as as result, had a cloud of suicide shuttles between me and the cloaked Romulans. It kept him at arms length and completely channeled his approach.

Has anyone tried this or come up with a counter?

 

[TJHairball]

Our experience is that suicide shuttles may be safely ignored.

 

[McKinstry]

Our experience is that suicide shuttles may be safely ignored.

Why?

 

[gord314]

While you are cloaked stealth 2+ is good enough that you will take minimal damage from the shuttles. The turn you de-cloak you cannot use IDF so many of your phaser-3s (and 2s on the KR) will not be needed to stop drones, so you shoot these at the suicide shuttles. This usually clears enough of them that they don't pose that serious a threat. However we are using alternate cloaking rules which don't allow for as much time to build up a shuttle swarm and make it easier to avoid them, so our experience may not apply to this situation.