Cloaks

[Klingon of Gor]

Savedfromwhat wrote:

You may be looking at this as a Star Fleet Battles player

Not the case. I have not played SFB in many years, rarely played it back then, and never owned it.

Do you have Fedcom online?

No, but that may change.

[Kang]

Klingon of Gor mentions Carronades. The Carronade is a really nasty weapon which goes a fair way towards negating much of the cloak's advantage, for obvious reasons. Sure, it's power-hungry, but in a one-on-one it can be used to pound the Romulan while he's under and recharging. Nice

[Klingon of Gor]

Kang wrote:

Klingon of Gor mentions Carronades. The Carronade is a really nasty weapon which goes a fair way towards negating much of the cloak's advantage, for obvious reasons. Sure, it's power-hungry, but in a one-on-one it can be used to pound the Romulan while he's under and recharging. Nice

Yeah, you pretty much have to try to keep out of carronade range, so speed is life.

[Savedfromwhat]

Klingon of Gor mentions Carronades. The Carronade is a really nasty weapon which goes a fair way towards negating much of the cloak's advantage, for obvious reasons. Sure, it's power-hungry, but in a one-on-one it can be used to pound the Romulan while he's under and recharging. Nice

I am sorry but I don't understand the significance of KoG pointing out the carronade as a nasty weapon against cloak... IT IS DESIGNED TO BE A NASTY WEAPON AGAINST CLOAK. It is even stated in the rulebook. Any Romulan player would either be a fool or just inexperienced if he chose to cloak against a Gorn opponent; I don't believe that is a proposition up for debate.

An equal pointed duel between Gorn and Romulan is going to be incredibly one sided as the Gorn have the distinct advantage of carronades and Federation equivalent phaser suites. If the Star Fleet Universe history was played out with Federation Commander the Romulans would have been a historical footnote wiped out by the Federation and the Gorn a long time before ever getting Klingon Tech.

[Kang]

Klingon of Gor mentions Carronades. The Carronade is a really nasty weapon which goes a fair way towards negating much of the cloak's advantage, for obvious reasons. Sure, it's power-hungry, but in a one-on-one it can be used to pound the Romulan while he's under and recharging. Nice

I am sorry but I don't understand the significance of KoG pointing out the carronade as a nasty weapon against cloak... IT IS DESIGNED TO BE A NASTY WEAPON AGAINST CLOAK. It is even stated in the rulebook.

You are absolutely correct, it is indeed. But the reason it is significant that KoG mentioned it is that perhaps not everyone has considered it - that's the point of a tactical discussion: to air ideas and concepts that maybe not everyone has thought of or considered.

I'm sure that, of the few tactical papers I have had published, someone else has already thought of some of them, or perhaps even didn't think they were worth mentioning because they are so obvious. But perhaps I was the lucky one....

Remember that, even for bigger tactical articles like Pat Doyle's large treatises on Photon Torpedoes or Battleships, these articles almost always include a liberal sprinkling of ideas and concepts gleaned not only from his own play experience, but also from a distillation of other players' ideas. This is such a rich game experience that no one player can think of everything!

[storeylf]

I am sorry but I don't understand the significance of KoG pointing out the carronade as a nasty weapon against cloak... IT IS DESIGNED TO BE A NASTY WEAPON AGAINST CLOAK........

Any Romulan player would either be a fool or just inexperienced if he chose to cloak against a Gorn opponent; I don't believe that is a proposition up for debate.

I was posting about how bad people do or do not find cloaks. How you find them against one of their most obvious opponents is entirely relevant.

As noted earlier in the thread, I'd accept that romulans are balanced against their neighbours even if they struggled against others. Though, ideally they'd be vaguely balanced against others as well.

I think that is part of my problem, Gorns are one of the 'historical' opponents, and hence they ought to be reasonably balanced against them at least. But romulans as a generalisation have not got a chance against Gorns, as they are paying a significant surcharge for something that is bordering on suicidal to use.

Gorns have launched plasma to use - which as with any seeker makes cloaks of dubious value to start with. Then they have carronades which are pretty useful even after the romulan has cloaked.

Feds are not great to play against either, they have drones to make cloaking awkward, then they have carronades, for those ships with plasma, which are romulan border. They also have good phasers and photons. (Even photons are nasty against romulans under cloak as the base damage is not affected by the range adjust, a photon volley can still drop a shield through a cloak.)

ISC have plenty of plasma, so again they are good at punishing the use of cloak mid game, or smacking anything trying to uncloak. PPDs are still quite good throug a cloak.

All 3 neighbours have the ability to neuter the cloak, the Feds are probably the least awakward if only because they have a wide variey of ships and you may not be facing carronades or more than a single drone rack per ship (if you are playing under some sort of agreement on what they will take).

[Kang]

A relevant point here regarding the cloak 'surcharge' might be this:

When I first got Battleships Attack, I compared the Gorn BB with its Romulan counterpart.

In terms of weapons and power, the ships are almost identical. Hull boxes: there's a difference of one box (iirc the Rom has 49, the Gorn has 50).

The Gorn has slightly more control boxes and four more shuttles; the Rom counters this with ten Transporters vs. the Gorn seven, although the Gorn has eight more Marine squads. Romulan Tractors are also slightly better at six vs. four.

So what? Well, the two ships are pretty closely matched - weapons and power, indeed (arguably the most important systems) are as near identical as makes no odds - the Rom has one more battery than the Gorn.

However the point value is 415 for the Rom vs. 376 for the Gorn - a 39-point difference, which I'm sure I'm correct in attributing largely to the cloak. Given also that the Gorn Plas-F's are better than the Rom versions, because they can Carronade, it does appear that the Rom is penalised unduly for the cloak. Except as noted above, for its approach, using the cloak only really gains an initial advantage at the start of the game, and even then only if it is done properly.

The question is then: is the cloak worth the extra 39 points for the Romulan in a fight?

[storeylf]

I think MWest confirmed in a previous thread that the surcharge was 13% or 15% above what it would otherwise be, can't remember which.

[Klingon of Gor]

SavedfromWhat wrote:

I am sorry but I don't understand the significance of KoG pointing out the carronade as a nasty weapon against cloak... IT IS DESIGNED TO BE A NASTY WEAPON AGAINST CLOAK. It is even stated in the rulebook. Any Romulan player would either be a fool or just inexperienced if he chose to cloak against a Gorn opponent; I don't believe that is a proposition up for debate.

I was not complaining, nor was I proposing to debate it. It was merely an observation. I made the remarks in the context of a discussion about the usefulness, or lack thereof, of cloaks. They aren't especially useful against Gorns. Their usefulness against Feds is, in my opinion, limited once the turn 1 impulse 8 volley is off the table.

[Kang]

All 3 neighbours have the ability to neuter the cloak, the Feds are probably the least awakward if only because they have a wide variey of ships and you may not be facing carronades or more than a single drone rack per ship (if you are playing under some sort of agreement on what they will take).

Don't forget the fourth neighbour: the rockheads [Edit: that's the Tholians]. I kicked serious butt using offensive cloaking against these guys. I would qualify this by saying I did it only the once, but having said that we don't play all that often and even when we do, the matchups vary from week to week.

[Klingon of Gor]

Kang wrote:

The question is then: is the cloak worth the extra 39 points for the Romulan in a fight?

My answer would be no. As has been previously discussed, cloaking when there are Gorns on the board is a dubious proposition.

The question then becomes how useful is the cloak against other races. We could confine the discussion to traditinal Romulan enemies, but in a tournament one does not always face the traditional enemies of your race.

My own view is that cloaks are somewhat overpointed. In a duel, that might not be a decisive obstacle. To go back to our hypotheical CA/KE matchup, if we assume that the cloak's actual value is less that 15% of the value of the KE, then the Romulan player's down a bit, but not so much as to render his situation hopeless. In a 450 point squadron game, especially against a race like the Gorns where the cloak is likely unusable, things are much more serious. If the Romluans can't cloak at all, because they'll start eating seeking S torps and carronades, then that's going to represent a 67.5 point deficit for the Romulans. That's a pretty deep hole to try to climb out of. THere are also races, like the Kzin, that can pump put a lot more drones than the Feds. No, they aren't a traditonal enemy, but I'm thinking here of possible tournament play.

We then turn to the issue of how the cloak interacts with the heavy plasma that is the Romulan's main firepower. When you fire seeking plasma, one of two things is going to happen. Either the enemy will keep coming, and take the plasma, or he'll turn and try to run it out. Presumably, if he adopts the latter course, he'll put the pedal to the metal and run at speed 24, and probably buy acceleration on top of that, power permitting. So the enemy has turned his back sheilds to us. We could chase after him, with the intention of getting on his six and delivering phasers. Depending on the relative turn modes, he may have some trouble getting turned back round short of an HET, and if we still have some plasma left, that last option might not be especially attractive. But if we're running speed 16 to facilitate cloaking, then it's going to be hard to stay on his six and take full advantage of the situation. Granted, at speed 16 we may have considerable power to use in buying acceleration, but we we still can't do better than speed 16 + 1, and he may be running speed 24 +1. Is cloaking incompatible with using the best possible plasma tactics? I think it might just be, in at least some cases.

[Savedfromwhat]

Is cloaking incompatible with using the best possible plasma tactics? I think it might just be, in at least some cases.

That is just a bold statement to make. The BEST POSSIBLE plasma tactic is the one that works at the moment, to narrowly declare one of multiple tactics the best will limit your strategy.

I have been trying to produce a broad look at the Romulans as a whole for about 4 years now, I have always found them to be overpointed and undergunned. The Romulans have smaller phaser suites then almost every other empire and on top of that they are more expensive due to the cloak penalty, which is a very difficult system to use well and quite costly (speed 16 limit, no weapons fire, no seeking weapon defense).

We are saying the same thing, in fact you are arguing points that I have already agreed to in this very thread.

In other words I agree with you that fleet engagments are not the time to use the cloak and seeking weapons are very nasty.

Lee I disagree with you that Romulan's are balanced in Federation Commander against their direct neighbors. I am not sure what your last post was saying, because you state that the Romulan's are balanced and then explain how they are distinctly disadvantaged by their surrounding neighbors.

All 3 neighbours have the ability to neuter the cloak

This has been a point I have been trying to raise for quite a long time. Does anyone else agree with it? Why would an Emprie continue to spend the extra cost to equip their ships with an expensive piece of tech that has incredibly minor benefits and lowers the size of their fleets?

[storeylf]

Lee I disagree with you that Romulan's are balanced in Federation Commander against their direct neighbors. I am not sure what your last post was saying, because you state that the Romulan's are balanced and then explain how they are distinctly disadvantaged by their surrounding neighbors.

Sorry I wasn't meaning to say that, I was trying to say that I would accept them being balanced against their neighbours but not others if that was the case, not that they are in fact balanced against their nieghbours.

[mojo jojo]

As discussed previously, 15% is too great of a surcharge for the cloak. A "fair" charge would be about 10%. All you have to do to verify that is to multiply the cost of a Rom ship by .85, .87, or .9 and compare to the corresponding Gorn or ISC plasma ship.

For example, a CNH is 263 pts. At 13% discount, it would cost 229 which is exactly the cost of a Gorn DN. Yet a no-cloak CNH is clearly better than the DN. Thus the discount should be significantly less than 13%.

[Savedfromwhat]

Sorry I wasn't meaning to say that, I was trying to say that I would accept them being balanced against their neighbours but not others if that was the case, not that they are in fact balanced against their nieghbours.

Got it, thanks for the clarification, and I agree with you.