A Warbird Thread

posted on July 5th, 2011, 3:16 pm

I know I've suggested a number of Warbird changes in the past, which is why I've sat on this one for several days until I'd ironed out all the problems I could think of.

Warbirds are unique for 2 reasons: First, that they can be reached without building a small yard.  Second, they are cloaking large units and thus nearly impossible to kill in the early game.  As a result they are super expensive yadda yadda...

If you play as Helev, you can try an Eresis rush.  While they don't have the stats of a normal large ship, they are wicked fast and can serve as a backbone for your fleet while you tech to the larger birds.  However, most people don't get more warbirds.  They simply get small ships as well.

If you play as Mijurial, you can do a Cehlaer rush.  I've long thought that this strategy was underpowered but recently, I played a 3v3 where our side had a clear advantage until one of our enemies built up critical mass of cehlaers and dominated us.  The problem here is that the Cehlaer is too extreme of a ship to depend on.

Long range is the most extreme of the ranges, since there are more medium and short range ships and more common counters for them.  In the same way, HDSG is the most extreme of the passives.  Ablative armor is the second, but as I said there are more ships that have it so it's less unusual.

If a player attempts to Cehlaer rush against a federation or dominion opponent, monsoons or S2 will shut them down hard.  But the Romulans and Klingons have no early long-range counter.  The borg don't either, but they have very good early cloak detect now so they're fine.  Since these 3 races are forced to raid in response to a Cehlaer rush, the size of the map has a HUGE impact on how powerful the strategy is.  Overall, it's too extreme.

-----End rant, begin idea-----

The Romulans need a Warbird similar to the Generix: a fleet-backbone ship with no tech requirements and no escape mechanic that will allow them to build up a fleet without being overpowered.  I suggest a new, "old" D'Deridex and make the current one a refit.

Both avatars will be able to build normal D'Deridex straight from the Warbird yard with no tech buildings.  It will have lower stats, somewhere around 25-30-15 and some sort of drawback passive.  I'm thinking something like a 3 second cloak and/or -50% subsystem hitpoints, or perhaps -20% resistance against special weapons.  The passive could say "It is not that the systems of this ship are particularly fragile, but its layout is so famous that the gunnery officers of other races are often encouraged to memorize the locations of its critical systems."

Once an upgrade facility is built, these D'Deridex can be refitted to their current level of awesomeness.  the price difference should be stark: Since the "old" D'Deridex will be relatively easy to kill, its cost could be around 800/300 or perhaps less.  The D'Deridex refit process should take a very long time (around 1 minute) and I think the cost should be adjusted from 1062/347 to around 1000/400 to represent the new technology being added.

The Eresis should remain available without any tech buildings, but I suggest the Cehlaer require a Tal'shiar academy.  After all, it's supposed to be a replacement for the D'Deridex and thus higher tech.  The enormous tech difference between requiring just a research/warbird or a staryard/research/talshiar/warbird would mean you could lower the price to around Norexan levels but keep the stats the same.  As it is currently, the Norexan is the only cost-efficient warbird BECAUSE of its insane tech requirements.

With this system in place, players would be able to rush to Warbirds as either avatar if they so choose.  They could build a fleet of D'Deridex as seen in the shows and it would be neither unstoppable nor sadly ineffective.  It would also be viable independent of the map size and which enemies they are facing, which means they don't have the problem of finding out their rush strategy isn't going to work when they scout the enemy base 30 seconds after they've started it.

Also, the high-tech warbirds that are truly dangerous (Cehlaer, Norexan, Tavara) will NOT be rushable and thus won't need to have staggeringly high costs for what they do (only the Cehlaer currently has this problem)

Comments, ideas?

posted on July 5th, 2011, 3:43 pm

There are equal numbers of ships with HDSG and Ablative Armor - 4 each .

Klingons have B'rels, as an excellent counter to Cehlaer - they take 10% less damage, and deal 50% more, also making it impossible for Cehlaer to cloak

Romulans have no 'perfect counter', but that's why you have access to the very fast-to-build Generix, or if you so wish, the Leahval . They also have the Talon Refit to hunt down any Cehlaer as they please 

A Cehlaer build, being a slow strategy, reliant on a vessel that consumes a large amount of resources that make it difficult to expand or help allies, has the same strengths and weaknesses as other tech up strategies. All factions have numerous counter build orders. There is a lot of waffling going on with the Romulan warbirds being considered too weak or too strong, and I believe you've been on both sides of that fence in the past as well. 

I'm personally not a fan of making it easier to get warbirds - even if there were weaker variants - as it makes them quite similar to other factions while taking away the shock value of the Big D a la TNG. I like that the Romulans have two types of styles as it were, with the Refits filling the gap between warbird and early game ship. If a refit of a warbird were considered, I'd rather it change the whole role, as the existing refits do, rather than simply give a stronger variant of the original. This increased stats methodology was used in the past to ill effect, with people usually ignoring the stock or the refit variant - or just upgrading stock to refit when money was available (thus not using the stock after a period of time).

posted on July 5th, 2011, 4:38 pm

i dont think warbirds should be easily rushable tbh. they are battleships, they shouldnt be all you have. im not a fan of rush/spam strats of any kind, and i think warbirds are more than worth the cost if u tech to them sensibly and have them in a calorie controlled fleet. cehlaer have the awesome taser, norexans do massive damage yet still can cloak away under fire, the big d has nice torp damage and has a useful (if not awesome to watch - maybe a new effect would make it more attractive) special and is damn near indestructible, the tavara is a flying castle.

and cehlaer spam is counterable just like other big ship spams, you pointed out easy fed/dom counters, dom pointed out a klink counter (a cehlaer costs more than 3 brels and takes so long to get numbers able kill a brel before it can run away with a speed advantage of 40, no need to cloak the brels even). the brels can outnumber the cehlaer from the start, maybe even get the kill, then just hover around the rom mining preventing them from getting res for more cehlaers. they wont have a yard for phase plates tanking rhienns, so they wont be able to exploit your spam). borg arent terribly worried by big beam ships. have regen scubes and a peri scube to tank, have adaptors (1 em on at least 1 adaptor) to hit hard. they either freeze the adaptors and get overrun by scubes or freeze scubes and get torps in their face from the adaptors. they'll probably freeze scubes as that's what they will be auto targeting and trying to kill. adaptors are 20 faster than cehlaers as well.

as romulans you can double yard base gens, not very fast, but will really hurt the big cehlaer with all those torps. eventually you can get the research and gen special and take down their weapons. i personally would mix levals and gens from 1 yard at start, and tech to auto repair to tank for the gens. then by about 4-8 ships you can afford a second yard and make more of the same, maybe mix in some griffins for sensor jammer.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 5:13 pm

You guys are missing my point.

The devs have balanced the Cehlaer and D'Deridex to be more expensive partly because it's so cheap to tech up to them if you skip the staryard.  As a result, they are ONLY good if you rush DIRECTLY to them and pump them out as fast as you can.  Warbirds are NOT worth adding to an existing fleet unless it's a Norexan, which has a lower cost BECAUSE it costs more to reach.  Right now there is shock value in seeing a D'Deridex because nobody ever builds them!

I first argued that the Warbird yard should require the Staryard, since it's more sensible to build a Staryard first anyway and the tech requirement would mean that these 2 ships could be made cheaper.  I am now proposing this alternative because the Devs want to preserve diversity and like the idea of not requiring the Staryard.

The brel isn't a counter for Cehlaer, the Kbeajq does more damage with its beam.  In any case, the real counter you're talking about is raiding the Romulan player's mining, which people will be able to do just as well with my suggestion.

The Cehlaer is overpowered in some situations and underpowered in others, based directly on what race you are facing, the size of the map, and the distance from your home base to your first expansion.  It is much easier to counter than B5 rush, OR it is much harder to counter than B5 rush depending on the circumstances.

Sorry, got up on a little soap-box there.  All I really mean to say is, if you rush straight to Cehlaer they MAY be useful but if you build a staryard and get some small ships first, it is absolutely not worth it to tech to warbirds unless it's a Norexan.  And even then it's usually not worth it.  For a race that supposedly prefers large ships over small ones, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 6:11 pm

first of all turn caps lock off, you betray your true intelligence that we've seen in your other posts.

As a result, they are ONLY good if you rush DIRECTLY to them and pump them out as fast as you can.  Warbirds are NOT worth adding to an existing fleet unless it's a Norexan, which has a lower cost BECAUSE it costs more to reach.  Right now there is shock value in seeing a D'Deridex because nobody ever builds them!

that's not true. ive both used warbirds and seen warbirds used effectively and not rushed. lets say its late mid game and you have some leahvals and griffins (with full tech), and the enemy is making something vulnerable to torp spam (such as vorchas/birds/borg large ships etc). you want lots of torps. gens are ok, but a bit weak later game, if u turn reeling on then the gens get the auto target, and they die pretty fast. gens need something tanking for them. maybe the enemy fleet is pretty big and you dont even wanna risk losing too many leahvals fighting them, so you dedicate your leahvals to raiding, so gens will be vulnerable. you need torps, big D provides torps, and is bloody hard to kill, so it can wait a bit after the rest of the fleet runs. its special is also useful.

cehlaers, do you really need a reason to include a ship that can stun the enemy? cehlaers always hit and do so from a distance, they dont require much teching up and their special can ensure you get kills even if you cant chase fleets down.

eresis are fast and provide torps without tech. and they can tank medium range ships. they can even raid if u wanna kill some mining stations.

norexans are certainly the best bird to add to a fleet because of their high dps, but others work well too.

just because you can rush to birds, doesnt mean you should.

The brel isn't a counter for Cehlaer, the Kbeajq does more damage with its beam.  In any case, the real counter you're talking about is raiding the Romulan player's mining, which people will be able to do just as well with my suggestion.

yes it is, lets say they cehlaer rush, you will notice this with your cloaked scout before you choose a field yard extension, as they will have research inst and no yard. now you double yard brels. you will outnumber them incredibly. they will kill some of your brels, but when a cehlaer costs 3 times as much as a brel, you only need to kill 1 cehlaer for every 3 brels you lose. which isnt hard as they cant run, and cant hide their cehlaer. and if they leave it at their starbase you wipe all their mining away. no more money for cehlaers. you have all day to build neggies and flatten them. more likely they will just quit once they have no mining.

when you are raiding they cant even defend, when they decloak you can just run away, they will catch only what they can hit with the beam.

martoks brels have a harder time due to pulses, but both still get +50% dmg, taqqy's torps dont suffer at all. and you can also mix brels with susa to keep them decloaked and torp spam them to death. cehlaer cant outrun susa either.

[MrXT]

posted on July 5th, 2011, 6:40 pm

Last edited by MrXT on July 5th, 2011, 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

first of all turn caps lock off, you betray your true intelligence that we've seen in your other posts.

that's not true. ive both used warbirds and seen warbirds used effectively and not rushed. lets say its late mid game and you have some leahvals and griffins (with full tech), and the enemy is making something vulnerable to torp spam (such as vorchas/birds/borg large ships etc). you want lots of torps. gens are ok, but a bit weak later game, if u turn reeling on then the gens get the auto target, and they die pretty fast. gens need something tanking for them. maybe the enemy fleet is pretty big and you dont even wanna risk losing too many leahvals fighting them, so you dedicate your leahvals to raiding, so gens will be vulnerable. you need torps, big D provides torps, and is bloody hard to kill, so it can wait a bit after the rest of the fleet runs. its special is also useful.

cehlaers, do you really need a reason to include a ship that can stun the enemy? cehlaers always hit and do so from a distance, they dont require much teching up and their special can ensure you get kills even if you cant chase fleets down.

eresis are fast and provide torps without tech. and they can tank medium range ships. they can even raid if u wanna kill some mining stations.

norexans are certainly the best bird to add to a fleet because of their high dps, but others work well too.

just because you can rush to birds, doesnt mean you should.

yes it is, lets say they cehlaer rush, you will notice this with your cloaked scout before you choose a field yard extension, as they will have research inst and no yard. now you double yard brels. you will outnumber them incredibly. they will kill some of your brels, but when a cehlaer costs 3 times as much as a brel, you only need to kill 1 cehlaer for every 3 brels you lose. which isnt hard as they cant run, and cant hide their cehlaer. and if they leave it at their starbase you wipe all their mining away. no more money for cehlaers. you have all day to build neggies and flatten them. more likely they will just quit once they have no mining.

when you are raiding they cant even defend, when they decloak you can just run away, they will catch only what they can hit with the beam.

martoks brels have a harder time due to pulses, but both still get +50% dmg, taqqy's torps dont suffer at all. and you can also mix brels with susa to keep them decloaked and torp spam them to death. cehlaer cant outrun susa either.

Briels are no counter to a cehlaer, you will lose more than 3 briels in every engagement and once there 2 you will have to tech up.

I faced fallout or viking one of the two and i used cehlaers and strikes, my strikes attacked his mining and his briels attacked 1 cehlaer that i had attacking his mining station further up, 3 briels were killed before my 2nd cehlaur had even turned up and forced the remaining to retreat. It takes like 4 full shot from the cehlaer to kill a briel and you cant retreat before its destroyed or you would be retreating when you have fired once and that would not be very effective considering the cehlaers range.

Briels are too low down in the tech tree to counter a ship as big and powerful as the cehlaur if you dont tech to something stronger with better defense like the kvort then its over.

You might be able to win that kind of game if you avoided direct conflict with the cehlaers perhaps by raiding the other guy to death with briels but fleet vs fleet.....no way are briels going to come out on top.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 6:52 pm

Briels are no counter to a cehlaer, you will lose more than 3 briels in every engagement and once there 2 you will have to tech up.

I faced fallout or viking one of the two and i used cehlaers and strikes, my strikes attacked his mining and his briels attacked 1 cehlaer that i had attacking his mining station further up, 3 briels were killed before my 2nd cehlaur had even turned up and forced the remaining to retreat. It takes like 4 full shot from the cehlaer to kill a briel and you cant retreat before its destroyed or you would be retreating when you have fired once and that would not be very effective considering the cehlaers range.

Briels are too low down in the tech tree to counter a ship as big and powerful as the cehlaur if you dont tech to something stronger with better defense like the kvort then its over.

You might be able to win that kind of game if you avoided direct conflict with the cehlaers perhaps by raiding the other guy to death with briels but fleet vs fleet.....no way are briels going to come out on top.

if u had shrikes then it wasnt cehlaer rush, shrikes murder brels, brels are destroyers and shrikes pwn short range.

if u notice cehlaer rush then spam brels and attack immediately, they will have to send cehlaer to defend against brels and brels will outnumber and kill the first cehlaer as it cant use cloak. and it fires only 1 beam backwards. if they dont come after the brels, then just raid them, they wont have money for more expensive cehlaers then. then you can tech up to sangs to flatten the big cehlaers.

also susa/veq are useful, susa keep up with them, veq turns off engines.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 6:59 pm

if u had shrikes then it wasnt cehlaer rush, shrikes murder brels, brels are destroyers and shrikes pwn short range.

if u notice cehlaer rush then spam brels and attack immediately, they will have to send cehlaer to defend against brels and brels will outnumber and kill the first cehlaer as it cant use cloak. and it fires only 1 beam backwards. if they dont come after the brels, then just raid them, they wont have money for more expensive cehlaers then. then you can tech up to sangs to flatten the big cehlaers.

also susa/veq are useful, susa keep up with them, veq turns off engines.

Thats not my point, briels do not counter cehlaers theres no good saying they counter them if you spam briels immediatly you dont go into a game knowing what your opponent is going to do (well you shouldnt).

Briels either counter them or they dont and they certainly do not, they struggle with rhiens and their phase plates so they are going to struggle agaisnt cehlaers. if you get lucky and ambush a single cehlear with enough briels that it cant retreat or repair then sure they win but that doesnt mean they counter them does it.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 7:32 pm

first of all turn caps lock off, you betray your true intelligence that we've seen in your other posts.

  Don't be pedantic.  Using capital letters is some people's manner of emphasizing a POINT.  You always take issue with that and it's silly  .


 
  @Tryptic:  I see what you are getting at with your Warbird thread, and I have had similar feelings in the past, but I feel that once I reached a certain level of skill I began to see just how powerful 1 or even 2 Warbirds on the field can be. 

  I really do get where you're coming from with the notion that Warbirds are cost-based on the fact that you can get them without a staryard.  I get it, but it's not just that.  The biggest factor in my opinion in their cost is that they build relatively quickly and can cloak in 2 seconds.  That makes them so powerful that they simply can't cost any less .

  I will grant you that Warbirds end up being targeted pretty quick in big battles - but that's not a bad thing!  They are very strong and 3 of them have defensive passives / abilities.  The Big D's stealth field is truly remarkable now and makes the DPS needed to kill it before it can cloak even higher.

  I'm gonna search for and find a replay where I was able to hold off 2 players by myself for quite a while with a fleet of D'Deridex's with minimal loss.  Gimme a minute

posted on July 5th, 2011, 8:03 pm

   Don't be pedantic.  Using capital letters is some people's manner of emphasizing a POINT.  You always take issue with that and it's silly  .

on the contrary, overuse (6 times in 1 post) of caps makes you either sound angry, or makes you look silly. there are many alternatives to deliver emphasis such as well chosen sentence structure, or italics; overusing caps cheapens points that can stand better on their own.

if you emphasise too many points then nothing is really emphasised at all.

now back to the topic, boggz also identifies a good point about the cloak, people like to target the 1k dil ship and focus fire on it, and when you cloak that bird away they wasted their fire.

they should definitely still cost a lot cos of usefullness. that 2 second cloak extends a bird's life for so long.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 9:12 pm

Sorry if I didn't think through my last post with perfect clarity.  At the same time I was typing, I was trying to get out the door so I could drive 1 hour to a meeting for work, and my printer refused to print out the directions.  Very stressful moment.

What I meant by the brel comment wasn't that you CAN'T counter Cehlaers with brels, just that they're not the best.  Kbeajq do more damage than martok brels (0.6*1.5 = 90% damage).  Also, in any game bigger than a 1v1, spamming brels in that kind of numbers will leave you vulnerable to getting RAPED by the other enemy player.  Pardon my caps 

The suggestion I'm making would weaken warbird rushes and make warbird transitions easier, that's my ultimate goal.  And as much as I want to agree with you guys that warbird transitions are doable, that just hasn't been my experience.  There's just so much more you can do with the 2500 dilithium and 2.5 minutes it takes to get your first Cehlaer or D'Deridex.  If you've beaten your enemy back enough that you can divert that much money for that much time, you've probably won the game already and could have finished it by just building more small ships.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 10:00 pm

What I meant by the brel comment wasn't that you CAN'T counter Cehlaers with brels, just that they're not the best.  Kbeajq do more damage than martok brels (0.6*1.5 = 90% damage).  Also, in any game bigger than a 1v1, spamming brels in that kind of numbers will leave you vulnerable to getting RAPED by the other enemy player.  Pardon my caps 

problem with the kbqs is that they dont have manual targeting, so you need brels to be a big part of your fleet (as small numbers of brels will get auto targeted and die). kbqs wont tank for brels, the brels will always get shot first, so we need kbqs to be better when we count them only on their dps so lets calculate them.

even with the 10% less than base damage, the martok brels still dont do vastly less dps compared to kbqs:

using the numbers from the tooltips in game:

kbq:

1 disruptor doing 17 damage every 2.25 seconds

dps: 17/2.25 = 7.55


brel:

2 disruptors with 2 shots per volley, each shot doing 5 damage, 1 volley every 3 seconds

base damage: 2*2*5 = 20 every 3 seconds

damage to cehlaer: 20*0.9 = 18 every 3 seconds

dps to cehlaer: 18/3 = 6

that means the brel does about 80% of the dps that the kbq does, but costs about 68% (296 vs 432) of the dilithium, and about 75% of the tri (110 vs 145), and exactly half the supply (12 vs 24). tri is rarely an issue for klinks spamming field yard combat ships early on, so you get 80% of the dps but at roughly 70% of the cost. so the brel is the wiser choice. if the kbq did any auto target tanking it would be different, but it never will, so you might as well spam brels.

at least spamming brels gives you a field yard at your expansion, so you only lose miners to the stun beam. and thats if they decide to raid you back, which wouldnt work well for them in the long run as the brel is just plain better at raiding in numbers, you will get loads of supply for ranking your brels, easily allowing you to be ready for other strats later, and you can wipe out all the miners at the rom exp, while your exp will have a yard so you only lose as many miners as they can stun.

and yes we're talking 1v1 balance here. in a 2v2 you and your ally should both play faster strats (stuff from field yard/chassis 1 ships/dominion small yard stuff) that get numbers out early. then roll into the romulan expansion and toast it. the cehlaer might live, let it, raid both enemies into the ground while the cehlaers are badly outnumbered. the resource advantage is yours. cehlaer rush is a really slow strat, slower than vorcha rush/b5 rush, as cehlaer rush is not supported by smaller ships, while vorcha/b5 is usually supported by brels/kbqs/b8/bugs.

The suggestion I'm making would weaken warbird rushes and make warbird transitions easier, that's my ultimate goal.  And as much as I want to agree with you guys that warbird transitions are doable, that just hasn't been my experience.  There's just so much more you can do with the 2500 dilithium and 2.5 minutes it takes to get your first Cehlaer or D'Deridex.  If you've beaten your enemy back enough that you can divert that much money for that much time, you've probably won the game already and could have finished it by just building more small ships.

you are suggesting making battleships a backbone ship (like gens/akira) which i dont think is a good idea. battleships shouldnt be backbone ships, nobody (i bet some cruel person will prove me wrong ) sovvie rushes, or v13 rushes. these ships shouldnt be your backbone. gens do good as backbone ships because they have useful refits for later game, same as rhienns. griffins do ok too imo.

posted on July 5th, 2011, 10:03 pm

heh brels not the best at countering ceahlears? 

What I meant by the brel comment wasn't that you CAN'T counter Cehlaers with brels, just that they're not the best.  Kbeajq do more damage than martok brels (0.6*1.5 = 90% damage).

agains romulan... as klingon its actually really hard not to notice that romulan is going for "big yard"

and even if you tried early battle yard.. then you still should have field yard ready to build brel extension which will also allow you to get kvorts later when big D's are about to come

and klingon not going at least some brels vs romulan who is rushing warbirds is just weird

  Also, in any game bigger than a 1v1, spamming brels in that kind of numbers will leave you vulnerable to getting RAPED by the other enemy player.  Pardon my caps 

thats where your team mate comes in or something like that

posted on July 5th, 2011, 10:13 pm

just to add to what you say mort:

cehlaer rush is something that is visible almost immediately, as the rom player goes research inst without yard. its obvious they want big yard.

you can see the research inst building at the same time as a mining (ive never seen anyone do research inst with a mining then go small yard, its small yard with 1 mining first, then research inst and second mining, or both yard and research at same time for super early leahval), you will see this before you pick your first field yard extension. so can make it a bop yard, then put the second at your exp and make it bop, for brel spam.

so you shouldnt really be caught by cehlaer rush if u have battle yard. and if they for some reason stop building small yard ships and go for cehlaers in the early game then they will have no money for ages (big yard is expensive), and you can just outproduce them any way you like. sangs would be ok to torp spam the birds. kvorts would clean up shrikes. the only danger is pesky phase plate rhienns, but there really isnt money to go small yard, research inst, and big yard all in the early game, without being raided to death.

[Tryptic]

posted on July 5th, 2011, 10:24 pm

Last edited by Tryptic on July 5th, 2011, 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Okay now you're just confusing me.  It sounds like you're trying to disagree with me somehow, but everything you say agrees with my original point: that the Cehlaer rush is not a very good idea.  That a Romulan player should never build Cehlaers unless he has smaller ships already.

I don't see any problem with battleships forming the backbone of a fleet.  They have their own advantages and disadvantages and there are plenty of anti-battleship counters in the game that don't get used often enough.  The Romulans are (at least in the Trek storyline) a race that prefers large ships as their backbone with smaller ships taking a supporting role.

Klingons should build at least a few Brels against Romulans no matter what strategy the Romulan player uses.  Whether they counter Cehlaers is not the issue here, the issue is how to make warbirds more fun to use.

ive both used warbirds and seen warbirds used effectively and not rushed.

When?  In what patch?  On which map?  I'm inclined to think that you're just saying this without an actual case in mind.