Balancing the Romulan faction

posted on October 31st, 2011, 3:28 am

I know I've said volumes on this subject, but talking to some other people on teamspeak has given me some new ideas (also they agreed that Romulans need to be fixed which encouraged me to write this)

My first suggestion is to make Romulan production more flexible by reworking the Staryard: make the yard cost 1/2 what it does now and increase the build times of all its ships by 50% or more.  Also, make the Warbird yard require it instead of the Research Facility, but make the Eresis and Cehlaer require the RF.  This will have a couple effects on Romulan gameplay:

1. A repair yard at the expansion.  The current Romulans are the only yard-building race whose starting build doesn't allow them to defend their natural expand.  The feds have turrets, while Klingons and Dominion will always have at least 2 yards.  I know that they're meant to have inferior map control, but it's becoming too big of a handicap.

2. Warbird transition.  Warbird rushes are bad for Romulan balance.  I like the concept, but in reality the Eresis, Cehlaer, and to some extent the D'Deridex aren't worth transitioning up from the Staryard because they're balanced with a Warbird rush in mind.  That leaves the Tavara, which takes over 2 minutes to build, and the Norexan which is easily countered.

3. Better early-game balance.  Obviously the numbers would need to be reworked a bit to make them balanced, but in general it would delay rhienn spam and early leahval, then speed up production with a single expansion.  With this change the cost of the ships would be the same as it is now but without the hard gap between one yard and two.

By making the Staryard cheaper, Romulans will face a similar choice to the other races: build a second small yard at the expansion or slow down your production to go for something bigger.  The difference will be that the transition is faster than the Dominion and goes straight to large-size ships unlike the Feds and Klingons.  Even though the yard itself can be rushed it won't actually be able to build anything until the Research Facility is finished.  This does open up the possibility of a nasty Norexan rush; if you don't like that then the Norexan could also require the RF, or it could have an "advanced warbird design" tech at the TA that unlocks it.

As for the Warbirds themselves, I think it makes sense to give them some cloaking-related drawbacks.  Here are some of the things I had in mind:

-Reduce all warbird speeds by 10, and make it so their speed increases by 20 while cloaked.  This would make them easier to keep with the fleet, but extra vulnerable to ambushes and cloak detect.  If your cloaked fleet gets pinged by an enemy fleet, you can either run and take some losses or decloak and fight, but you can't retreat with shields up.  After all, that just isn't the Romulan style.  Like the Queen in chess, Warbirds should be powerful tools but also require extra effort to keep them safe.

-Increase the energy cost for cloaking warbirds to 25, maybe 30.  Like I said, these are high-maintenance ships.

-Increase the effect of Stealth Field to 20% or 25% and make it affect unlimited targets.  Move the research to the Upgrade Facility, then increase its energy cost to nearly all the D'Deridex's energy so it can't be used right after decloaking and the ship cannot cloak right after using it unless the Romulan player has access to singularity generators.  Of course, with their small system boost ranked ships would be able to use it immediately, making them 37.5% more awesome than unranked ships.

The way it is right now, if the enemy is attacking you with 10 or more ships and you use the ability, you'll negate the firepower of 1.5 ships for 10 seconds; that's not really worth it.  Yes it's on a combat ship, but the Romulans have no conventional support ships; instead their special abilities are spread out among their ships while the "support" ship allows them to use the abilities more often.  So these abilities should be balanced in comparison with the support ships of other races instead of their combat ship abilities.

-Increase the damage and energy cost of Radiation Array.  It's a cool ability with the tech cost being so much higher than the ship and the randomly distributed damage, but for almost the same tech cost the other races will have nanites, HSA, Ion Storm... much better abilities.  Make it like Stealth Field, so expensive that it can't be used just before/after cloaking.

What do you guys think?  I want to debate these points in case somebody sees a flaw that I didn't think of.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 4:27 am

What do you guys think?  I want to debate these points in case somebody sees a flaw that I didn't think of.

Well ...  If you'd like me to go point by point and say what things make me wince ( ) and what things don't - I will.


  If not, I'll just say that the things you want changed lead me to believe you don't play Romulans the way Romulans are intended to be played .  No offense intended, of course.  I sometimes wanna play Feds like the Klingons and it makes me lose .

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 31st, 2011, 5:08 am

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 31st, 2011, 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

A repair-only yard? Sounds good. Sounds like the Romulan thing to do actually, since an enemy would be able to learn more at a construction yard than a repair one.
More Warbirds earlier is definitely something Romulans would be more interesting with (since right now their ship progression of size is basically same as Feds, Dominion, Klingons, and Borg.) Right now their fleets are generally full of small ships, yet in the shows they were all bout the big birds.
Stealth field? I think it should be scrapped entirely. It's just not that interesting, and you hardly ever see the Big D (unless players have completely changed strats as Roms since last I played.)

The rest of your ideas I strongly reject. Staryard being expensive is for balance. Roms are well-balanced in early game. Cloaking costing too much initial energy will cripple Warbird retreats. The speed thing makes no sense with a cloak logically (cloak drains energy, they would be faster uncloaked if anything) and would make Warbirds overpowered since they would rape expansions and fleets and be home in time to defend.
Romulan support ships are not like Fed support ships. The Leahval is one I agree needs its specials changed to fit its title of support, but those and Stealth Field are the only ones I'm not satisfied with.

[Tryptic]

posted on October 31st, 2011, 5:18 am

Last edited by Tryptic on October 31st, 2011, 5:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'll admit that my micro has been terrible lately which makes it hard for me to test the balance myself, but at the same time I don't see a single person playing Roms the way they're "intended to be played."  If there's a way to beat a scube rush on duel II with only one repair yard, I'd love to hear about it.

I think I understand how Romulans are supposed to be played, but right now their ability to raid and control the map is significantly weaker than it was with the old generix and I haven't seen warbirds on the winning side of a fight since sometime in July.  If it can be done, I'm just not seeing it.  What am I doing wrong?

@Nebula:

the problem with the expensive staryard is that it isn't balanced for different map types.  It works very well on some but on my Plasma Conduit map it's a serious drawback.  Although I can see how a new, repair-only yard would be a tremendous help, and warbirds could be rebalanced separately.  One thing is obvious, though, the ability to build the Warbird yard without the small yard isn't working.

p.s. as for the warbird-cloak-speed-increase, it makes sense because the shields go down when the cloak goes up.  The show never said that the cloak takes up more energy than the shields.

I was thinking of the greatly successful Wind Walk ability from Warcraft III and Dota: combining invisibility and a speed boost turned out to be a brilliant idea.  The whole point of being invisible is to sneak attack people, which presents a tough balance problem: you're stuck between making the unit too slow and having it be unable to ambush a moving target, or making it too fast and having it be overpowered because it can escape even when it can't turn invisible.  Windwalk has been tested pretty heavily in those arenas and I think it could be a fun ability in Fleet Ops as well.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 5:32 am

Well, I personally never bothered with Generix. The Leahval is an excellent counter to common ships and its own counters are rather weak.

Good Romulan fleet compositon early to mid game:
2+ Rhienns for raiding/counters
3+ Leahvals for general awesomeness (strong counters some common annoyances and its own counters tend to be weak, plus it can fry miners if it can get in close.)
1+ Shrike or Griffin to prevent being badly countered

Late Game:
add some warbirds, honestly I hav no clue because Warbirds are too uncommon and usually a winning Rom isn't losing ships (so fleet gts stuck in midgame composition, scaled up.)


The warbird without small? Oh those silly research buildings. You can still do warbirds without small yard and win. Just remember that Warbirds are extremely easily countered by ships available at lower tech levels, so generally you need an ally or two.


Scube rush? Well that's hard to stop no matter what race you play. Rhienns can almost do it, but then a Sphere comes in. Try Leahvals and apply metaphasic disruptor beamage liberally to the affected areas.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 6:08 am

Agreed with Nebbie.

  While Scube rush on Duel II is very difficult for Romulans to handle, keep in mind that Leahval spam in general is very difficult for Borg to stop.  Hopefully all matchups as difficult as that will be 'softened' as time goes on.  Rhienn spam is also incredibly difficult for Klingons to stop (especially Taqroja) just as Warpin-rush is incredibly difficult for Borg to stop.  These kinds of builds will just have to be softened up a bit as the game evolves.


Regarding the Warbirds -

  While I agree that they really don't show up in 1v1 matches any more, Warbirds are still unique in a lot of ways and can make a big difference.  The biggest in my opinion are the defensive counters offered by Eresis/Cehlaer and the steady torp firepower of the Big D.  While it's a big resource leap to move up to the WB's, sometimes it's a great way to make your fleet varied enough that you just can't get hard-countered.
  Specifically about the Stealth field - it's actually an awesome ability that will really make it's presence felt.  Big D's are already hard to kill when they cloak unless you've got a decloak handy.  SF reduces the incoming fire and makes cloaking out easier.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 6:15 am

This isnt meant to be off topic, but when you talk about these spams being difficult to counter, remeber its only on Duel II.  And however good that map may be...... were only testing these things on one map.....

posted on October 31st, 2011, 6:35 am

I was talking about general 1v1 maps. Extra distance doesn't do much to the 140 (IIRC) speed of Scubes. Duel II is just a special case from the nebulae, which just means a little extra scouting and a little more risk-taking to take out the Scubes.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 6:38 am

True but i feel like too much balance is placed on testing out stuff on duel 2.  Sure it may be the most balanced map, but we need to find a few others we can generally agree are balanced, to have a few different maps to test things on, to maybe yield more accurate results.

[Tryptic]

posted on October 31st, 2011, 6:46 am

Last edited by Tryptic on October 31st, 2011, 6:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

I just feel like every game is leahval spam or die.  I mean, I know the openings for other races are limited as well, but with the fast generix gone there really is no choice in the matter.  Nebula mentioned being able to go raid the enemy and make it home in time to defend yourself, but that's EXACTLY what the Roms have to do every game.  If two players attack each other and one is Romulan, he is guaranteed to take more damage than his opponent.  At the same time, his industry is such that if the two players don't fight, he won't be able to outmass the enemy.  Finally, he can't put static defenses at both his main and his expansion, which means a good player can simply outmaneuver his fleet and slaughter his miners.  The only ships that can even engage the enemy are rhienns, leahvals, and shrikes.

No matter what he does, a Romulan player is stuck on defense until he gets his first ship-kill.  If he's in a team game against coordinated enemies, both he and his friends are stuck on defense until his first couple of kills because two scubes can do more damage to his base than his fleet combined with an ally's can do to the enemy base.

Ahem.  It's getting pretty late here and I'm starting to sound cranky, I apologize.  I think I would be happy if the Romulans simply got another early, fast ship besides the Leahval because for a while now I've just been getting tired of it.  I keep trying to win without using Leahvals and it never works out.  The new Generix and its refits are simply too slow for a race that needs to be able to fly home and defend their base every few minutes.  It's the same with the Griffin, while the Rhienn and Shrike can't get more than a single miner kill unless you have more than 6 of them.  You have no other choices besides early Leahval and Rhienn spam, and none of your tech options are good unless you rush straight for them.

I almost want to suggest the Windwalk cloak for ALL Romulan ships.  A slow Romulan ship just can't be used for base defense, but the Romulans need to use all their ships to defend their base.  On the other hand, I don't think we want to make all the Rom ships faster than other races' ships.  Allowing them to move faster when they're not fighting seems like a good compromise, unless the devs feel like implementing my dream ship with the AOE-speed-boost ability

posted on October 31st, 2011, 7:05 am

well ray320 once  watched a game with me and robe. we are of similar skill level and it was a very close game with many engagements and all i built was Rhienns and Shrike and robe was fed's so from that game i would say people build the Leahval because its a  "safe/easy" ship to play with.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 7:19 am

I just feel like every game is leahval spam or die.

  Hey don't feel too bad .  Just keep in mind that Optec just recently said the Leahval will change eventually as the redoes progress.

  The Leahval just has the benefit of being one of the most powerful early game vessels due to the fact that auto-repair is SO good at keeping a ship alive until firepower beats micro.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 8:43 am

Haha would it be too much, after all that, if I said I actually like the Leahval the way it is?  Of course it can probably be improved, but I don't have a problem with the ship at all.  I just don't like the way the Romulan early game revolves around it, if it was one option out of many I would be happy.  I just needed to get away from it for a while, pretty soon I'll go back to using them and my performance will probably improve drastically.

By the way I know it's off topic, but can somebody tell me what the speed of the old Generix was?  I thought it was 130 with the spectre doing 110, but that would mean they were the same speed as the Leahval so I'm not sure...

posted on October 31st, 2011, 9:24 am

There are some interesting points here, but:

you can't reduce the yard costs by half AND increase the build time. Every Romulan ship but the shrike can easily be saved in early game as long as there is no cloak detection. And even afterwards you have the incredible Rhienn phase plates to tank everything.
I do see the point though, Rom expansions are mostly undefended and your only yard is situated at the main base - when you're raided you either have some ships for defense at every expansion(reducing your own raiding force/main fleet roughly by half) or you give away all your freighters every now and then and rebuild, which gives your opponent a strong bonus. Romulan build times are already quite fast, so I could rather imagine a split of build/repair for Roms as something unique. That way you may build your staryard at home and build a repair facility at your exp.
Another idea: Enable the Romulan mining station to build freighters for an increased amount of money after a research. Or to repair freighters.
Another idea: enable cloak for all freighters without cloaking generator.

I don't like the idea of killing the warbird rush strategy, it's something unique, it seems very canon, it just needs tweaking since usual staryard strategies are much easier and don't leavy you crippled and limited. The warbird strategy leaves you with few rather slow ships, whcih means you either have to defend until you have enough warbirds, which is tough since a single Cehler doesn't have the firepower to keep your opponent from killing your freihters, or you go on the offense, which is even worse, since ypur opponent with his small fast ships can kill your freighters and then come bck to his home to defend. I do like the idea of speed increase when cloaked. Nebbie pointed out it wouldn't make sense, however one may assume that shields need much more energy than a little speed increase and due to larger quantum singularity generators on warbirds it is possible to increase speed AND use cloaking device.

posted on October 31st, 2011, 4:51 pm

My first suggestion is to make Romulan production more flexible by reworking the Staryard: make the yard cost 1/2 what it does now and increase the build times of all its ships by 50% or more.  Also, make the Warbird yard require it instead of the Research Facility, but make the Eresis and Cehlaer require the RF.  This will have a couple effects on Romulan gameplay:

Reading your first suggestion made me stop reading and not take this topic seriously.