How Dare You Say That Ship is Useless!

posted on April 1st, 2009, 4:44 pm

I stand corrected by Silent on the Tal Shiar facility. Yet I still disagree with your short range quirp: short range is a death sentence for the Leahval because it is roughly the same in defensive/offensive powers as the refitted Rhienn. Let me explain this further: any other race will kick the crud out of a Leahval with its destroyers. Scout Cubes will eat them alive and they can't retreat (cloaking doesn't help, because those few shots off when shields are down cause big problems), Klingon BoP's outnumber and thus outpower them in close range (hence why you use Rhienn's in the first place). Opposing Rhienn's will also slaughter the Leahval, as by the time you get your first one out, I will already have cloak detect researched plus all the aforementioned advantages. Against the Dominion I have no idea how it'll fair (nobody plays Dominion sadly...), and against the Federation it'll get annihilated by Norways and faster more numerous Sabers. I'll try it though, but could you tell me your strategy so that I can replicate it? (Or perhaps show me in person?)  :sweatdrop:

posted on April 1st, 2009, 5:36 pm

I'm getting some problems with my video card, so I have to delay showing in person.  Shouldn't be a long time before I either get the issue solved, or get the thing replaced, but it won't be right away.  However, here are the key points to using the Leahval in my experience.

First thing first is that you build the first research building immediately after or even at the same time as the shipyard, so you can get the things out ASAP.

Never deploy Leahval in groups of less than 3.  In a group that size, they should be able to get their special weapon into deployment, and it's murder against destroyers.  Later on, if you're feeling a little pressed, research their abilities so that they auto-repair themselves between battles.  The only ship that can turn it's own engines back on in an eyeblink provided it can fire off it's special weapon.

There should be a group of at least 3 Leahval in your base, hiding behind your starbase at all times after you have your first team of them ready and out pummelling mining facilities.  This is so that when the enemy enters your base, they can engage from surprise with fully charged myotronic disruptors.  The Energy Reeling special (#2) is of little value, don't bother with it as anything more than a hurdle before you can get the autorepair.

The Myotronic Disruptor is your bread and butter using a Leahval-based force.  If you are harrassing with them, and a fleet deploys after you've discharged all special weapon power and you aren't just about to have recharged enough to fire again, fall back.  Until officer rank, the Leahval's standard weapons just aren't up to a knock down fight.

Unless you are resource-starved, at least one shipyard should always be building you more Leahval, and the ships once they reach a decent number should be deployed to every single outpost you have unless you need to mount a raid on their base to slow them down.  In which case, it's the Myotronic Disruptor again.  Think of it like a smaller Weapon Overload that you can fire 3-4 times in a row, and on raids, use it to break buildings.  More expensive the better, of course.

That should hold long enough, if you don't end up winning by massed myotronic disruptors (Like some of the Klingon weapons, it hits hard enough that if you get enough of them into range, even a starbase is hosed) that you can then switch production to harder-hitters.  My personal preference is to go from making them try to tear through the 'Myotronic Swarm' to hitting them with D'deridex and Cehlear forces.  But build the Cehlear first, as it's special weapon will let your Leahval kill a Cube with no losses at all.

The Assimilator, Adaptor, and Scout Cube are easy meat for a small group of Leahval.  Sphere is harder, but still you shouldn't take any losses against a single one of them if the Myotronic Disruptor is fully charged.  Diamonds, Pyramids, and Cubes take alot more work.

Note for fighting the Optimize avatar - Sphere Prime is the bane of the Leahval.  The Leahval is highly dependant on special weapon energy, and a Sphere with 2 Prime modules and 2 Beam Modules will reduce Leahval to heaps of space dust in no time as it strips them all of special weapon power quickly enough that it shouldn't take more than one Myotronic hit.

And if you haven't noticed, it's all about the Myotronic Disruptor.  You want that thing firing as much as possible in every engagement, as it is the true source of the Leahval's power.  If you have too many of them, just set them to automatic special weapon use, so you just worry about their cloak status, and positioning.

The most important upgrade to the Leahval is weapon damage, which seems to have a huge effect on that Myotronic Disruptor.

And yes, if that special were on a different ship, that ship could be used for the exact same purposes as the Leahval.  That special is the lynchpin.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 5:41 pm

silent93, you just may be an evil genius.

[Anonymous]

posted on April 1st, 2009, 5:45 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on April 1st, 2009, 5:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

it's easier said than done. This premise is based on the opposite guy allowing the romulan to tech up with a constant flow of resources. Will be stretched if rushed.
also, there are other ships which have stronger shields that can also be reached in the same time as the number of leahvals needed to have an effect..
this will work against someone who is new for sure. but if dealing with more experienced players (and im not one of them sadly ), this will not be as grandiose as it appears atm.

the borg can build pretty fast too. assimilators or scout cubes can come into play b4 the research is completed for the leahval.

klings will hit mining and outnumber the leahvals before they can get built.

Feds - well i justhate them so .... chance of working here.

roms - rhienn rush will put the leahval out of commission as well by sheer range.

doms - Dom special weapon overload is not working correctly atm, but if implemented against leahvals, the special weapons will work against them. so there is a chance to fight back here too.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 5:55 pm

Leahval is A LOT more durable than both the Rhienn and Shrike and also all of its special weapons are combat oriented so that adds a lot as well. Leahval is more of a light cruiser than a destroyer though, so mix it with a few Rhienns (which are quite fragile) and send the Leahvals into the enemy fleet. They will endure the punishment and let rhienns work their magic from long range

Oh and BTW, I play as Dominion online And as it stands IMO bugs are the most useless ships of any race. They dont build as fast that you can trully spam them, nor are they cheap. However they will get solo-ed by any and all other destroyers in the game.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 6:13 pm

Hellooooo? Can anyone say Bugs are cannon fodder?

posted on April 1st, 2009, 6:16 pm

yes - Bugs are cannon fodder. as they should be. But we need to rethink how to make them more useful in numbers. Baron had cool ideas for that.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 6:24 pm

Spam and guard capitial ships. Destroyers are, in essence, picketships.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 7:55 pm

Yep they should be cannon fodder, but why is it then that all other destroyers are not cannon fodder? They either pack a punch (bop, rhienn, shrike) or are they annoyingly durable (sabre). The bug does neither. I know it really shouldnt be a strong ship, but the Dominion had so many of them u'd think they'd be easier to spam. The problem is their long build time and add to that their supply cost and they really are quite useless.
The problem with the dominion right now is how to counter the early rush. For that you only have bugs that are semi-decent and available in early-game, but because of their flaws you really just need to tech up quickly to get the T-15, or if you choose the Breen avatar, get the breen cruiser. But if the Klingons build, say 10 bops and send them to your base, you'd probably need in excess of 16 bugs to fend them off - and bops are easier to spam than bugs lol.
So you see my point. Either make bugs easier to spam or make them stronger or incorporate one of the ideas that was posted in a thread some time ago.

Another thing I'd like to point out is the lack of an all-around cruiser for the Dominion. All other races have them (Akira, Vorcha, Generix, Griffin,...). IMO to compensate for this the Dominion player should try to counter with bug building, the only problem is that they just dont do the job well enough and if you spam them on 2 yards they cost too much supplies for you to be able to build other ships on the third yard. This and the lack of a real early game threat makes the Dominion very hard to play and IMO this is also why people dont play as them often.

I must add that I dont think that this lack of the all-around cruiser is a negative, it is actually quite refreshing and challenging to actually think and adapt to what your enemy is producing, as with the Dominion its a game of counter units. The only problem right now IMO, is with the bugs.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 8:03 pm

Um...maybe give the Dominion a special ability to call in a squadron of bugships via wormhole or somesuch? I agree they should be spam-ships, but giving the Dominion the same strategy the Klingons have seems silly, doesn't it?

posted on April 1st, 2009, 8:08 pm

Indeed it does, but they need to have something to be able to defend themselves equally don't they? Plus the Dominion can spam A LOT better than Klingons can, I think they proved that in the show.

Im not saying make them the same as Klingons, there were some ideas posted a while back in a thread that I started specifically about the bug ships. Look it up, I think any of those ideas would fix the problem.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 8:40 pm

I just got the same problem when checking the Dominion recently. at the moment the Attack Destroyers base attributes increased quite a bit (on a similar level then the B'rel). The Bomber jumped a bit up too and the Escort Cruiser also, but not much, just a few points to get in a better unit profile

posted on April 1st, 2009, 8:56 pm

That should fix it

posted on April 1st, 2009, 9:07 pm

Regarding Dom/Kling comparison, there's a DS9 episode that shows that beautifully.  When the Feds are trying to take back DS9, and facing the massive Dom fleet?  That's when you see classic Klingon methodry.  A flight of B'rel, Kvort, Vorcha, and a Negh'var (I think Martok's personal one with the cloak) suddenly decloak already moving in attack pattern, and begin firing immediately.  The first pass they made was a series of brutal explosions of Dom and Cardie ships as they cut a massive hole that Defiant could easily bypass the battle lines with, and then gleefully engaged.

Realistically, the Dom should spam better than Klingons, but the Klingons hit harder.  However I also suspect that the Klingons subsystems are far more durable because they aren't high-precision, and are frequently unorthodox in configuration due to the Klingon engineers tinkering with them.  Which is why it was the Klingons who figured out how to stop the Breen energy-dissipator weapons while the Romulans and Feds were sputtering and flailing in horror.

posted on April 1st, 2009, 9:15 pm

I'd say Klingon birds of prey are probably not too durable, but their battleships can take a bit more of a beating. Agreed that after the Dominion's polaron beam technology and the Breen's energy-dampening technology were countered, Klingon ships were on the whole superior to Dominion ships.

In fact, the only thing Klingon ships are bad at? Turning around.