Cho'naQ firepower

[Falaffelboy]

posted on December 4th, 2011, 11:51 pm

Last edited by Falaffelboy on December 4th, 2011, 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hello dear community.

Can someone help me with the following issue?
I have been playing Klingons a lot lately.

And i tried to use the Cho'naQ ship more often. E.G as a backup for any defense line and it didn't work pretty well (i had build at least 25 ships).

On the other hand i tried to use it against enemy structures but i've found out that other klingon ships are more capable of doing that job like the Veqlaragh or the neghvar.

Is there some synergy with other units with make that ship more usefull?

I think the concept of having a dedicated ship for long range barrage is nice but it takes quite a long time before the assault disruptor of the Cho'naQ deals the required damage.

But maybe I'm not using that ship right?

I have to admit that until now i haven't used that ship for active fleetsupport because it is relatively slow

Just in general, is there something planned to update this vessel in upcomming patches??

posted on December 5th, 2011, 12:03 am

i find that it does pretty nice damage.

maybe in sp it's not as good as the enemy has loads more ships than you. but in mp a couple chonaqs can help repel an attack at a yard.

its not really the best choice for killing structurs imo, turrets should be outranged by veqs and sangs in general are the dps dealers against anything big.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 12:04 am

I often had the impression that the Cho'naQ was there to show off the concept of having a beam-weapon that burns off the entire special weapons power and deals the damage sort of equally. In practice however it's not working as it should (in my view).
The only advantages of the Cho'naQ are:

1. Is one of three klingon vessels (S'ang, Cho'naQ and veteran Bortas) with long-ranged weapons.
2. Has a beam that easily kills off vessels with low defense value and moderately helps weakening strong targets.
3. Can be grouped seperately to bring in support fire from some distance to your short- and medium-ranged engagements with your opponent(s).

posted on December 5th, 2011, 12:19 am

Well I guess I have to try the third option.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 12:21 am

#2 is a big use for it imo. against weak and small ships it will never miss. so you can quickly force these ships to either leave en masse, or start taking painful losses. the penalty is loss of mobility, so you have to think about where they will be more often.

[Tryptic]

posted on December 5th, 2011, 12:54 am

Last edited by Tryptic on December 5th, 2011, 1:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think the Chonaq stands to benefit a LOT if/when the large-sized cloak research is made cheaper.  Its main problem is the fact that it doesn't synergize with anything else in the Klingon fleet.  It's not even a bad ship, in fact its damage is excellent...

Okay I just checked my Excel document of awesomeness, and the Excelsior II deals more damage than the Chonaq!  What gives!?

The Chonaq has the same range, speed, and similar offensive value, PLUS it has a hefty drawback AND a higher tech-cost than the E2.  Why would it deal less damage?

This is AFTER the torpedo miss rate, by the way.  I think this is unacceptable; if nothing else the offensive value of the E2 should be raised to better represent its DPS.

/rant

Anyway, the nice thing about the Chonaq is that nothing really hard-counters it.  The trick is that you have to fast-tech to them at just the right time in order to get critical mass, and doing so will completely change your playstyle for the rest of the game.  "Hey guys, I'm actually going to fedroll you now" I would almost recommend double Imperial yards to get the job done, since you'll be stuck between two fleet compositions for a while.  Remember they can't retreat though.

Once you have 5 or more they function pretty much like E2's but even better because NOTHING gets away from them.  The beam locks on, but doesn't deal damage until the end of each cycle, so the target is guaranteed to die one second before it actually blows up.  This damage-lag makes it nearly impossible for the enemy to identify their ships taking fire and get them out in time.  Of course, this can also cause you to lose 2-3 ticks of damage when the ship drifts for a few seconds before exploding.  You need to learn to order your Chonaqs to attack a new target one tick BEFORE their current one dies in order to maximize their firepower.

Unfortunately, this also means that if you use any other ship along with Chonaqs, including the wide variety of Klingon damage specials, you almost always waste a few seconds of Chonaq fire.  They synchronize perfectly with other Chonaq, but adding them to regular ships will result in a very chaotic damage pattern.  Basically you have to practice with them so the chaos messes up your opponent's micro more than it messes up your own.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 2:00 am

Yeah the Cho'naq is kinda the red-headed stepchild of the Klingons.  When that major redo into 3.1 made a lot of Klink ships more precise, the Cho'naq really got ignored.  Nowadays Cloak is such an integral part of keeping your precious supplies locked into your vessels and Cho'naq don't have it , Makin their use harder and less obvious.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 2:10 am

Unless I'm mistaken, a quick calculation shows that a basic Excelsior II does
Phaser: 7.651 damage / 2 sec = 3.83 dps
Torpedo: 42.8 damage / 4.25 sec = 10.07 dps

and a basic Cho'naQ does
Disruptor: 19.592 damage / 1 sec = 19.592 dps

Because of the special energy cost, a Cho'naQ does roughly 2x as much DPS as a comparable ship with no cost. For instance, a Negh'var with an Offensive Value of 50 does 24.361 damage per second.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 3:56 am

Ah, my bad.  I had calculated using 2 torpedo bays on the E2.  Also, I was using 4 seconds for the total firing cycle but that may be incorrect.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 10:48 am

yeah i dont think chonaq damage is the problem, it puts out serious pain. the difference is that it is the most unique klingon combat (not support) ship, it behaves differently from all the others and forces you to do strats that the klinks would rarely do otherwise.

i personally wouldnt advocate building strats around chonaq or chonaq rushes, but seeing as the chonaq only needs the yard, its "along the way" for the neggie/bortas strat. so you can easily find a little room for a handful of them to add to your fleet, they arent even very expensive, costing less dil/tri/time than the e2. they cost less than vorchas, so can be mixed with vorchas, they wont tank via defensive value so they need to be kept at long range and the vorchas need to be pushed right up in the face of the enemy to make the vorchas take more fire.

i think they are good against small ships, while the e2 is good against big. even though the chonaq cant catch the little ones, if they get close and tangle with the chonaq, they will take huge damage from the never miss beam. a few chonaqs can act as a mobile turret of sorts.

about making big cloak cheaper: chonaq cloak would be quite a boon for it. it already does high damage, and its disadvantage is like the e2, it cant run away. cloaking mitigates that speed issue quite a bit, as once it's cloaked it can saunter away at leisure. so i think it could easily become too much if the cost is slightly too low.

neggie cloak would be insane, the romulans are the masters of big ships cloaking in warbirds. neggies do insanely high damage and have the hull strength you would expect from a late game ship, and once you get the tech requirements up, they arent very expensive either. if they could cloak, almost no mining would be safe, a trio could run around the map ending resource collection easily. its like cloaky defiants. i know the big ship cloak is expensive and rarely used, but its also something that would give the klingons a really big advantage.

a bigger role for big ship cloak could be matched with the cloak having other drawbacks, normal cloak is free, what if big cloak took energy per second, as klinks arent the master of cloak yet. it would need something to balance out the awesomeness of neggies cloaking away.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 6:58 pm

You know I feel that a big part of it is that the Cho'naq doesn't quite have it's niche in an already very strong and precise tech tree.  The lack of cloak means also that offensively it gives away it's allies and renders a lot of their strengths kinda moot.

  I'm sure that as Flops evolves the Cho'naq will be refurbished and better-focused.  I could see it being a candidate for Fast-Trackig computers or a cloak that requires nearly 100% of it's special energy to avoid abusing it's comparably high DPS with cloak.

posted on December 5th, 2011, 7:08 pm

I could see it being a candidate for Fast-Trackig computers or a cloak that requires nearly 100% of it's special energy to avoid abusing it's comparably high DPS with cloak.

FTC would be fine, but a cloak that soaks up the Cho'naQ's entire energy would make it useless when you eventually decloak and open fire (unless it would get a cloak that doesn't hamper special energy regeneration, but this would be really unfair).

How about giving large-scale cloak a position in the ordnance depot with a 25% reduction of costs? And the Cho'naQ's beam could be disabled for 15 seconds after decloaking due to a need of power-rerouting... the beast has to feast first

posted on December 5th, 2011, 7:14 pm

maybe make the clock for big ships an upgrade so you will have to pay for each cloack seperately on those ships?

then the cho'naq could have a cheaper clock while the neghvar could be more expensive

posted on December 5th, 2011, 7:29 pm

I'm really starting to think that slow, lategame ships with cloak wouldn't be as overpowered as it seems.  By all rights, at that point in the game the opponent SHOULD have cloak detect.  If he's doing his job correctly, it should be nearly impossible to retreat a slow, low-defense ship even with cloak.

The Borg and dominion can blanket an area with cloak-detect for the entire duration of the battle, only the feds have a bit of trouble doing this in the lategame but their scouts still won't be auto-targeted.  The Roms aren't far behind, while the Klingons deal enough spike damage to overwhelm a cloaking ship.  Basically, I believe that people could counter large-scale cloak if they tried.

I think the research should still take a super long time, I just think it should cost way less.

[godsvoice]

posted on December 6th, 2011, 4:41 am

Last edited by godsvoice on December 6th, 2011, 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

In single player I have not found the chonaq to be of much use.

However, I do use the veqlaragh for a couple things.

It is very good for sniping structures. With 5-8 of them. Build a fleet of Kvorts and drain AI and his ships. With 24 kvorts for example, and 8 Veglaragh. The kvorts go in and target all the ships. The V's target the turrets from far off. They do some decent damage I find. Don't build Kbeajq. But they are rather weak (V's), so make sure the Kvorts target the ships that try and go out to get them.

Chonaq... yeah, I think it is like the brel. Just not much for it against AI.

Now, for Taq at least. I have no idea what the use for chonaq is, Martok maybe because it is longer range above sang. But for taq she has the artillery range V that can be built from field yard, way before imperial yard, so... yeah. Not sure what chonaq does for her.