Romulans at the moment

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 12:05 am

Every ship has a stage of the game, where it is applicable & available. Later stage ships have a better cost-benefit-ratio. The player is forced do change ships during game and not just spam tier one destroyers. Good thory for ships that are destined to occur mainly in one stage of the game. This is true for most every ship in FO.

But the ambition of the devs to create ship-classes that are utilizable throughout the whole game (The d'deridex is available quite early for a late-game-ship,the rhienn-refits are quite late for an early-game-ship) get in trouble with the law. You can either balance for short-term effects in the game or long term effects using fixed prices only. Using a price that adapts (once a research like for the turrets, as i discribed before) to the stage of the game you can short-term and long-term-balance a ship class.

Noone wants a D'Deridex thats overpowered in early game but balanced in endgame. Equally we dont want a balanced warbird in early game, that gets obsolete in lategame. Please gimme a good solution that grants balanced prices in early and lategame. 

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 12:21 am

I think that's an admirably good way to look at it. Since we can produce D'deridex, Eresis, Cehlaer early on, but they are currently not really worth it later in the game (and so right now are not strong early OR late game as well due to balancing ...    ), it would be nice if the current cost and/or buildtime of the Big D, Eresis, and Cehlaer was decreased with a research at the Tal'Shiar or Research Institute. In other words, when you go Big D/Cehlaer/Eresis early route, you get strong but balanced early Birds. When you choose to tech up normally, you can research this cheap special "Prefined Warbird Parts" ability, and get cheaper and finally cost effective late game Warbirds.

This should allow the early Warbird Strat some oomph, as well as give the Romies some late game strength as well (which is not just in the form of the Tavara).

[Jamess14]

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 12:50 am

Last edited by Jamess14 on January 23rd, 2010, 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Because we only ever saw Warbirds in the Shows and because it makes them more unique compared to the other races.    Where's the logic missing?

Actually I was talking about the logic in ppl thinking it's early available, I was listing requirements to prove they're not early available considering all the buildings, expensive research and expensive war birds. 5 buildings and a 600 trit research is not early game availability There's also a meta factor involved, none of this is possible without aggressive undefended expanding, since you conserve money for the birds you have no small ships available.

@gamer: Tavara is one or at most two ships. For me 1 because I can't justify Mijural's huge costs. And you need to consider the money spent upgrading it. Another 1050 dil and 1050 trit. And you want those upgrades.

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 1:07 am

It isn't five buildings . It's just one . Build a Research Institute, then build the Warbird Yard. There ya go, Warbirds out the wazoooo . Still doesn't help that this is easily countered by every faction and avatar in the game right now 

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 1:20 am

There ya go, Warbirds out the wazoooo .

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 1:54 am

For Cehlaer and Eresis sure..not sure you'd want those, especially the 'better' avatars Eresis. If you want Norexan it's add staryard and talshiar facility + mpw research.

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 2:00 am

Since when are the the Cehlaer and Eresis not useful?  . Helev may be early game, but Mijural gets the Warbird bonuses and better turrets. I wouldn't call either one better than the other.

D'deridex requires an Upgrade Center, and that is the foremost Warbird, right? 

Consequently, at worst, 50% of the Warbirds require only 1-2 additional stations. Norexan isn't the end all 

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 2:07 am

Since when are the the Cehlaer and Eresis not useful?

Cehlaers' Top 5 uses:
1] Annoy the crap out of 1337 64M3R
2] Quickly dispose of destroyers
3] Defend poorly defended mining expansions
4] Eliminate the annoying Excel IIs  :guns:
5] Destroy enemy Artillery ships

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 2:14 am

The Cehlear is a good ship all in all, and a terror for every borgie 

I could never really get warm with the Eresis though.

[Jamess14]

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 2:21 am

Last edited by Jamess14 on January 23rd, 2010, 2:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

I agree Cehlaer is useful, I'd use it as well. But that means weaking already tough early game rommies have and I use griffins which I like. Shrikes at the moment. I dont like them. Short forward firing range, weak armor and Mijural supply costs are overwhelming. I don't know, I'm sure there are tons of you better at this game than me, but doing early warbirds leaves me really vulnerable at all expansions. How do you usually play rommies Dominus?

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 3:45 am

As of this patch? Oooh, I really shouldn't be answering that question  . Wait a week or two and ask me that again  . Straight to the point though, early Warbird strat was valid in 3.0.7 (and I'm not talking about the Norexan loophole - I'm talking about going to Cehlaer and D'deridex) for multiplayer (2v2 etc), but was more an all or nothing strategy in 1v1 - a bit weaker than the Borg strat. Right now the way I play Romulans is very timidly. Can't use the early Warbird strat - potentially in 2v2 etc, but it still strikes me as much too weak now as it is very easily defeated in 1v1 due to the passives. I've also tried a combination of a few Rhienns, then to Leahval spam, or instead of that beginning, going straight to Generix spam. By far, the Leahval spam takes gold because of their speed and quickness of production teamed with good abilities. Rhienns can still be very easily outproduced and spammed despite the damage reduction right now... and they are too slow to catch their prey. However, the Leahval spam is still not a great matchup, except against Risner and Breen. Some nice changes should be headed our way shortly however, so I don't think any great cry is going to be needed right now - Romulans are just in a transition phase into their redo, which makes things a bit tentative .

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 4:01 am

early warbird is a very deadly tactic in 3.1.1, especially with the quick acess tavaras which can pwn a descent  so quick you don't have time to hit the shield reset

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 4:02 am

I've read this entire thread again, and I must say that James makes some valid points.  I want to first give my opinion on cost hikes.  Why am I so against them?  My reasons are mainly economic.  I'm not sure if this is considered in the balancing formulae, but each race mines at about 435 dilithium per minute.  And most maps offer you 2 moon pairs, or a total of 870 dilithium per minute is yours to do with as you please.  All the strategies in the guide are created based on this assumption of two moon pairs.  Any more is a bonus. 

Now, if you look at the rates per minute (I'll eventually make a new one up) for each ship, that's how many resources per minute you can divert to ship building.  The rest goes into teching up, or saving a few dollars for when you need to purchase supply, something that romies have to do frequently because of their high cost.  I really liked 3.0.5 costs because each race could eventually tech up to battleships, while still producing ships from your lower yard.  There was definitely a lot of spam, because there were so many ships in play.  Ships were thrown away pretty easily.  You could recover if you lost a lot of ships, however.

3.0.7 brought in cost increases.  While not thrilled, I learned to adapt.   These cost hikes seem percentage based, as lower tier increases were small and not as noticeable, and increases to battleship class vessels were much more noticeable.  The increased cost means there is less money accrued for teching up, chiefly for top tier research, which was most expensive.  Now, you could justify this by buying the tech and "shifting up" (I'm thinking about a manual transmission in a car) in your large yard to battleships, and then "shift down" to destroyers to allocate the resources needed to produce battleships.

But what usually happened was you'd build your strongest cruiser from your low yard (like the Akira), and build your lowest or close to lowest from your large yard (Excel-II, Remore).  This was just as effective, if not more so, and you didn't have to pay the extreme price to make battleships.

What this has to do with the Romulans is that as the most expensive non-borg race, cost hikes seem to affect them more deeply.  In 3.0.7, you could basically only produce battleships, and your staryard just sat there.  You might have the money to build generix support every now and then, which would support your cap ships.

But in 3.1.1, you really only can produce battleships (if you go that route.  There are other ways to play romulan, but this helps condense what I have to say on play style and general costs.  I'm killing two birds with one stone ), which means that the staryard sits there useless.  Or you make ships from it and not from the warbird yard.  Either way, one of the yards is wasted and does nothing.

The changes in the patch show how much Romulans relied on certain setups to stay competetive with other races.  Dom's "rule of 10" refitted rhienns and then tech up worked well.  Any more and you lose too many supplies.  Any less and you didn't have enough firepower before you teched up.  As powerful as rhienn refits were, they were pretty close to the other race's early games, save maybe klingons, who had their own specific issues.  Once refits were taken out of the early game, we saw how vulnerable the Romulans were without it.  The next step was basically to build generix support and then add battleships, who would get their shields recharged.  This made them strong late game, as you had to kill most of the support before taking on the warbirds.

Bah, this post is too long.  I've got more things to say, but I'll see if I can condense them and maybe come up with some suggestions for next patch.  I hope Dominus is right and that they're in transition, and by all means, suggest changes as they love ideas.

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 4:08 am

Well said, and I think quite accurate to what we've had going Mal . I just hope a nice cozy balance between the "eh, who cares whether I lost that destroyer", and not too "spamtastic cruiser alert" style patches will be found - and I'm sure it can. Of course, you already knew I'd say that . By all means, don't stop throwing ideas out there folks as that's what drives stuff forward 

posted on January 23rd, 2010, 6:45 am

Hmm ...

That's pretty well thought-out, Mal ...

  I have to say though, and maybe I'm the only person online who has been doing this, but I've really found the extra costs of battleships in stride.  I now end up having fleets composed mostly of Medium cruisers by mid-game, back up by destroyers with a sprinkling of a few battleships.  I LOVE this as it feels the most realistic to me.

  The only real drawback is that researching the special for that One battleship you've got is a very costly venture for a single ship.  The cheaper specials for early vessels that get heavy numbers used is much more cost effective. 


  I'd really like to keep the costs in place, but just have Battleships be stronger all around, so that when that first battleship arrives on the battlefield surrounded by cruisers, it's a great big Boon to it's fleet.  Right now a D'deridex is still gonna get blown away by a small group of interceptors due to it's miss-rate and slower speed.  Fielding something like a sovereign amongst your cruisers and destroyers should really be a strong addition!