Archive through November 25, 2009
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: General Tactics Discussion:
Romulan Tactics:
Archive through November 25, 2009
I always liked to maximize my # of ships against web as it's a manuevering nightmare with ECPs, Psuedos etc.
Normally something along the lines of:
KE 140
4 BH 320
This gives you 1 R 2F's 8 G's and 20 p1's to hit a ships hard. Yeah you may degrade fast as ships get injured, but any ships of his becoming injured are torp bait.
Especially as the BH can fastload a torp rather handily so it will hardly ever be waiting for plasma.
Whatever happened to the "Gorn always beats the Klingon" guy? I miss him.
It has been years since I played and I'm sure this has already been answered but my question is if you are cloaked and using hidden movement can you take damage from direct weapons if a lock has been lost?
Yes, you can take damage from direct fire weapons. See (G13.617).
G13.613 and G13.614 refer to units that retained a lock-on. Does 613.617 also apply to units that do not have a lock-on to a cloaked target. What if there is more than one cloaked ship in the same hex. Can you select your target as per C1.62 if you have no lock-on?
Fellow Imperial brothers and sisters I have a nasty battle coming up with an ISC CC. I am flying a Royalhawk. I may have a type R, but overall I believe that I am outgunned. Any pointers on how to take out this ISC invader to Romulan space would be appreciated.
ECM yo-yo to screw with the PPDs or use the cloak to get close.
If you can get under the range of those PPDs, a PL-R and 2xPl-Fs beats 2xPl-S and a Pl-F! But I like the yo-yo option better. With 8! batteries and ECM plasma, you have some nasty options.
What year are you playing in? If early, the ISC ship should not have all those Pl-Fs. If late, you might be eligible for a Sabot refit, which would make that Pl-R a lot nastier.
Any chance you can take a Novahawk instead? I think its the better ship in a lot of cases.
Get Dale McKee in here. He's been making my hair turn grey with Romulan for 4 years now. I can confirm his experience in the Royalhawk.
More importantly... Fixed or Floating map?
Hint: Float == death for plasma races.
Map size, starting range, weapon status and starting speed would all be good to know before I could offer more meaningful advice.
Fixed, At opposite ends of the map, WS3, and for me at least speed 16. This is going to be a toughie. I am already committed to the Royalhawk. If I can whack him once really good, I have a shot at this. Thanks for advice.
I'm assuming since you're asking here, your opponent won't be reading this. Or if he is, you don't mind. 
With that in mind...
Two basic approaches as I see it.
1.) Cloak immediately and close.
2.) Launch ECM plasma, jack your ECM up to 3, and go erratic. This will give you a guarenteed 2-shift. You can drop ECM and raise it again if he does get a lock and play the ECM yo-yo game.
In both cases you should arm at least two weasels. Three can't hurt.
If you go with option 1, you're basically looking to come in on top of him, inside the myopic zone. Decloak, pop a weasel when he launches, anchor him, kill him.
If you go with option 2, in some ways you have more options. If he fires at you as you're coming in, hopefully your ECM will make some of his shots miss. Then you come in, get to r15 or so, launch an R (real or fake), and follow it in or turn off, or cloak. Sit on your F-torps until you're in close.
My first question would be: is this a campaign game of some sort, or a one-off? I ask because he's got about a 25% BPV advantage on you, which is unusual for pick-up games.
If it's a campaign game, I'd say retreat. He's got more plasma, more phasers, and 2 PPDs. His PPDs more than cancel out the distance advantage of the R to his Ss. You're just not likely to win against that, all things being even. Preserve your ship.
If it's a one-off, there's a large BPV disparity. A Killerhawk is a more fit opponent for a ISC CC. The only thing you do that he doesn't do better is cloak. I'd say cloak and corner him if you can. Make battle passes on the oblique, and keep to the edge of the range brackets so you can slip or turn out and force a reroll on the PPDs. The only advantage of having less weapons is that you'll probably be moving faster. Capitolize on that.
It's hard to advise a retreat for a campaign game without knowing the strategic consequenses.
Consider launching an EPT R-torp on turn one.
He may be rattled enough to pop a weasal, and that should give you the initiative.
Don't be afraid to use your R-torp as a phaser absorber....if you can get close enough, your F-torps and phasers can even up the odds.
And don't be afraid to take some PPD fire. PPD's can be dealt with, even without the cloak.
Thanks brothers in arms. Plasma death to all who dare defile Romulan space!
I'm going to sort of disagree with Dale here.
Its not (always) cloak, close, come up and anchor him. Sure that is a GREAT threat.... and unless he is a retard he won't end the turn next to you because exactly that will happen.
What you can do is on T2( after you've been down for a full turn) is start coming up. If he launches enough plasma to hurt you (S+F or S that will hit a sheild that the phasers would then hit) you go back down. Speed changes that change the cloak numbers here are useful. You do this till you get him low on plasma, then you come up with the goal of hurting him bad.
Yeah, he has more plasma... but in 1 turn, you have more really since he can't fire more than 1 F at you and the S's have really crappy arcs. The down side is there is always SOME plasma pointed at you.
If you dork around, he is going to cream you. You can't ballet a ISC CC and expect to live. (You can't even ballet an ISC TC...)
My real question here is:
"WTF is an ISC CC doing by itself?!?!?!?!"
The answere to that is this....My opponent one day said,"I wonder what a Royalhawk would do against an ISC CC." So now we are going to try these two ships out. I'll give you folks a good debrief after the battle.
I need some advice Romulan brothers. What are some basic tactics when dealing with drones. I know plasma races have a more difficult time, especially when scatterpacks are involved. Thanks for the input.
Sidney,
Never forget the power of T-bombs, especially if the drones are in a convenient stack.
The top drone tactic for Romulans is the tactical cloak at a distance. This being a short term cloaking near the end of the turn usually with batteries and a contingency powering during a reload turn. Since plasma relaod is cheap during the first two turns this is drone defense time.
Other tactics are juditious use of shuttles (for the phaser or as a WW (+cloak)).
Naturally the ships own phasers and Pl-F or D's if the ship has them.
I'm assuming you aren't using fighters since they are an obvious drone defense, but if you can buy an MRS (one on a crusier maybe? Up to three in a fleet.), it can take out a few drones (four maybe).
It depends on the situation, obviously. If you're dealing with a few drones, use phasers and/or tractors. If there's more than you can comfortably handle, T-Bombs are a good choice. If you're flying a good cloaker (anything but a large Kestrel), cloaking is often the best maneuver.
I would almost never fire an F-torp at a drone. D-torp, yes.
In a fleet environment, using scout channels to break locks is another good tool.
Sidney,
1) consider having escorts and fighters use K plasma instead of D due to storage space issues.
2) IF you have time and space, the cloak is an impressive shedder of drones.
3) Your PFs come in escort versions that work fairly well.
4) and there is the tactic of sequential handoffs of wild weasels and then a cloak/ weasel. (it was in a past CL).
5) Your CW sized scout is almost unique in that is basically is fully armed and only loses a couple phasers for 4 scout channels. So you can use scout channels for lock on breaking and still fire a torp every turn if you plan on the blinding timings.
For anything besides F drones, there's always speed, and even against F-drone speed can buy you time for phasers to recycle or maneuver drones into a stack for more efficient T-bombing.
Speed's good. When facing Medium-Speed drones, I often try to arrange a lot of time at speed-20, proper. This is because several speeds above 20 but less than, say, 28, have impulses where 20 moves and they do not. There's nothing quite as craptacular as having a speed-20 drone slam into your #4 during a tailchase when you're going speed-23, due to the speed chart.
Speed 26 works fine against speed 20 drones, becuase 26 always moves when 20 moves.