Romulan game balance

posted on April 26th, 2011, 10:00 pm

I think we need more testing before we can make any conclusion, wether op up or pp.

posted on April 26th, 2011, 10:19 pm

I like the new generix because its really cheap and so finally the romulans have a great throw away ship especially against borg

posted on April 26th, 2011, 10:30 pm

I like it too. The Romulans needed a heavier early game torp cruiser, as the rhienn was too expensive and hard to get, and died too easy. Not only that, but the new Generix is just bad-ass looking too! Real mean and Romulan and aggressive looking. I can't wait for more refits. If there is a late game refit, it could be my new mainline ship.

posted on April 28th, 2011, 4:15 am

Ma-aaaaal! Don't tell him that - after all, it's not like YOU'D not want to face dual yard stock Generix or something, riiiight? I mean, common, everybody knows that torpedoes from a fast building cloaking ship are terrible against the Borg  :fish: . What were you thinking 

Double-yarding a 500+ dilithium ship isn't all that easy, especially when anything that it can kill can outrun it. Borg vs Rom comes down to a pair of scubes with a few probes, and an immediate win. Early game torpedo-only is overall useless, even against Borg. Their early ships still get a miss chance.

I understand that every faction has their owns strengths and weaknesses, but the balance needs to be adjusted so that the Romulan strategy doesn't come down to "scare your opponent into never leaving his base or you lose." Paper tigers might work against a new player, but anyone who has been around a while can just shrug, make a good mining hit or two, and win. Rom miners might be cheap and fast-building, but given the cost of the ships, you don't really have much spare cash to replace them.

posted on April 28th, 2011, 4:34 am

Primi's back!!!

Actually, for vs borg especially in 1v1 on something like duel II, being able to field 2 yards is totally doable, because there's no tech buildings involved.  You might not be able to do full, two yard production, but you'd be surprised at how many of these little jewels you can get out.  And with 2 second cloak, it's a pretty sweet deal.

The 20 defense will surprise you, this ship is basically an intrepid that can cloak and has better all regen, with a killer special.  But the double yarding now allows the roms to defend much better against the borg at the rom expansion, and hold of borg advances quite well.  The Borg might have better regen options with a perph scube and some regen scubes, "but it still aint no yard."

And the new placement creates a TON of new strategy options for the roms.  Raise your hand if you noticed that the generix is one defense value lower than the griffin, making it a great tanking alternative to the rhienn.  And anyone who techs up some spectres becomes a force to be reckoned with.

Right now the Tal'shiar acadamy is pretty lackluster.  Only a few vessels require it, and you need it for certain specials, but that's about it.  But that will change when the new rom vessels come in.  I think the dev team did a great job introducing what they have now, and the roms only get stronger from here on once they get their new toys.

posted on April 28th, 2011, 5:05 am

I think it's pretty clear that Romulans are underpowered in this patch.  They're going through some growing pains, and I'm sure they'll be awesome when it's all said and done, but right now they're weak.  The interesting idea of having a cheap ship that's good against late-game ships upgrade into an expensive ship that's good against early-game ships just doesn't work, especially when you need two tech buildings to get the refit and a third to get its special.  By then your enemy will long since have stopped using small ships.

The separation of ship upgrades in one tech building and ship specials in another works for the feds because their tech stations cost 400/200.  Romulan tech stations are 600/300 because traditionally you've had to choose one or the other.  If you are going to make our technology like the feds, you have to make our stations cheaper so we can1 afford to build both.  I would prefer things go back to the way they were, with some Romulan ships based out of the upgrade facility and some based out of Tal'shiar.

What if you based a torpedo generix refit out of the upgrade facility along with the disruptor rhienn, and the current specter refit out of the Tal'shiar along with the torp rhienn?  That way Roms can have either anti-small rhienns and anti-large generix or anti-small generix and anti-large rhienns?  Instead of trying to merge the two tech building strats, you should be making them able to stand on their own.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on April 28th, 2011, 5:50 am

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on April 28th, 2011, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think having stock Generix use beams, while the specter gets torps would be a better idea than the current setup (which I agree with Tryptic about the whole mismatch of an early torp but a late pulse-like ship.)
As for the tech tree: I think it would be nice to make the refit not require research, but just the station (Acheron thought up this, and I agree since I think that refitting should be a choice where neither decision should be too much better than the other.)

As for specific Romulan matchups:
Feds:Haven't seen yet, but please remind me what Romulan counters there are to Monsoons? (I'm pretty sure the answer used to be Frigates...) Roms probably UP.
Klingons:I hate going up against the Talon refit, but if it is destroyed then Roms lose so badly. Roms close to balance, but it's often luck with that damn Talon.
Borg:With a peri scube, Probes can cloak detect. Then you add on the now combat-ready EM scube and an Adaptor that can even detect the Rom scout. Roms just can't sneak around. I think the Borg cloak detect might be a little too easy to get (and too easy to pile up, I've seen two probes with peri plus an EM scube plus two double EM adaptors) right now.  Roms UP
Dominion:I'm pretty sure the Roms can still do the same cheapness against Dom early game ships (except B8s), and now Dom large yard has been nerfed a little. Roms OP.
Roms: never seen it, but I would expect that phase plate Rhienns would run rampant until the warbird stage. Then they run rampant some more after being refitted with torps and from there I have no idea.

EDIT: updated stuff about tech tree.

posted on April 28th, 2011, 6:14 am

Well the counter to monsoons is leahvals, since monsoons are bad against short range especially with their third special.
The borg are bad against leahvals already and if they go adapters you just use leahvals and generix and there you go. Personally I have never had a problem against klingons as romulans, I mean normal generix might not be the greatest against them but most klingons stay with small yard ships or get vorchas and can get taken down by specters in the late game.

posted on April 28th, 2011, 6:21 am

Wait, what?

Nothing really changed except that fact that you no longer need the tal'shiar academy to build a generix.  The tal'shiar acadamy is somewhat out of the picture for right now, so the roms only need to really think about two stations.  Remember, this ship can be built right out the game, improving upon the research institute --> upgrade facility route.  This also gives the romulans a much needed counter to all those large sized warp ins, which still come in the early game.  In fact, here's a list of all this did for the romulans.

1)  The romulans now have a viable double yard strategy in 1v1 vs the borg.  The did not have this before.  In fact, you can practically spam the things with impunity, and the borg will have to use some of their new tricks to even things up.

2)  Before, early warp could be difficult for the romulan player.  You really needed leahvals to strongly counter the warp ins, and losing a leahval was super costly.  Now you can build an anti warp in ship right from the get-go.

3)  The spectre does more than just take out early game ships.  The defiant, Negh'var, Breen B-5, federation fighters, ambassador.  Plus, when we're talking about early game ships, we're talking about nearly every early game ship being vulnerable in some way, not just a few ships here and there.  Fast tracking weapons makes this thing beastly to a lot of the vessels out there.

4) The bullet weapons are like pulses that never do reduced damage ever.  It's 100% vs large ships and stations.  You're never getting cheated out of dps.

5)  In terms of dilithium cost to tech up, we're only talking one extra station, so 600 extra dilithium.  Before in a normal "tech to frigates" build, you'd build 2 rhienns to have some ships up.  Each one cost over 400 dilithium, so 800 dilithium total.  Now you'd build stock generixes in their place, and they'd eventually become spectres.  So disregarding the new spectre's extra cost (it's more expensive because it's more powerful), it's actually over 200 dilithium cheaper  to tech up to spectres!!!   Does this thing need to one-shot cubes to make you happy?  

I'm having such a good time that I'll respond to Neb.

Haven't seen yet, but please remind me what Romulan counters there are to Monsoons?

You mean besides the shrike, or leahvals with advanced energy reeling (so that you could burn the monsoon numbers down before you started facing too many proxy torps if they double yard)?  Remember, the frigate only did will against Risner's monsoon.  Not mayson's.  Guess which avatar you choose if you monsoon spam.

Klingons:  Um, don't lose your talon?  And shrikes and rhienns with phase plates still do wonders against most early klingon ships.  And once you do reach spectres, it's all over but the cryin'.   They can go sang to take on your spectres, at which point you actually tech down back into rhienns....or switch to rhienn refits since you've already built the upgrade facility for the spectre tech.

Borg:  You can now build a yard at your expansion and still have plenty of generix to handle the borg, with a cool special to boot.  Sure, peripheral scube creates cloak detect possibilities.  What might be a good first target for the romulans?

Dominion:  Yep, you're right.  The Dominion have no way of defending themselves against romulans.  Might as well throw in the towel.   No way of ever defending themselves ever ever.  Poor Dominion.

So whose all for one-shotting cubes with spectres?

posted on April 28th, 2011, 12:32 pm

4) The bullet weapons are like pulses that never do reduced damage ever.  It's 100% vs large ships and stations.  You're never getting cheated out of dps.

Also, they still do increased damage to ships with less than 20 defense 

posted on April 28th, 2011, 12:39 pm

Gotta agree with Mal here.  Romulans have to use their cloak to win, you have to adjust your playstyle accordingly.  Romulans have to be very careful about when to engage and how.  You can't just frig spam and know you'll be ok.

TBH, the Leahval is still super awesome and effective against almost everything in the early games (particularly against the factions people seem to be concerned with).  In 3v3, 4v4, I have been able to mix leahval and genss quite well making it easy to tech later to specs which are incredibly powerful against of what you face until late-late game ships appear.

posted on April 28th, 2011, 2:25 pm

If anything, the changes to the generix and its placement in the tech tree make the Romulans even better than they were against the borg.

I have to agree with this. 

Since the new patch, I'd say the Borg now have to respect early-game Romulans.  A Leahval and two or three Generix are a serious threat to the Scube Rush strategy, and the nerfed early Auto-Asims blue beam.

Was playing an AI game yesterday evening, and was able to hold-back the Merciless Borg AI (no modifiers) with a small fleet of 3 Leahvals and 6 Generix.  It was essentially a stalemate, until I got enough resources for a Proxy Yard at my expansion.

[Redshirt]

posted on April 30th, 2011, 8:46 am

Last edited by Redshirt on April 30th, 2011, 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know what alternate reality Mal has been dwelling in lately, but I've seen the Romulans get ground into dust over and over again this last patch, even in the hands of typically scary-competant Romulan players. That is not balanced, nor is it "good enough".

I have no doubt that the best players in the game can pull off a viable Romulan strat, but the fact is that I have yet to see a Romulan player pull off a victory without relying entirely on their teammates for support.

Something is very wrong. That is beyond debate at this point.

Addendum towards the anti-borg angle: the Generix is poor against scout cubes (gets outmaneuvered regularly, torp attack misses, too few in number) and is absolute rubbish against a sphere. Maybe in the hands of a skilled player they could pull something fancy, but I have yet to see them used as an effective tool in 1v1. At all.

posted on April 30th, 2011, 9:27 am

I'm living in the alternate reality where after every single patch, people complain about the balance before even a week has transpired, passing judgement without thinking things through.  Do you know why certain people are losing games?  It's because their pet strategy was taken away from them.  It was easy to just spam teh generix, because you really didn't have to think about what you were doing and really didn't have to try.  You forced the other player to work around what you were doing, and it wasn't as easy for some races.

I'm living in the same alternate reality that Dom, Clintsat, Boggz, and a host of other folks are living in because we understand that going with research institute ships could do the same job, and can now do that job better, because ships were added to that tech route, not taken away.

I'm living in the same alternate reality where NeroDan goes, "Hey, I'm trying to figure out the romulans" and we say, "Don't spam teh generix", and then he says, "Hey, I'm figuring it out!!!" , and we say, "Hurray!"

Again, it's not about "skilled players pulling something fancy", but about some players only going the easy route and not willing to try something new.  There are entire replays average joe players just having a good time using strategies other than generix spam and doing very well with it.  None of these strategies have changed.

I'm not trying to be too antagonistic my friend , as I know this kind of stuff is serious business, but I have good reasons for why I say what I do, and my ideas are not mine alone.

posted on April 30th, 2011, 10:29 am

Something is very wrong. That is beyond debate at this point.

you should know that nothing on the internet is beyond debatable.

and agree with mal on the roms.

im happier with the generix, i actually build them now. i didnt before, i hated them.