Spread Your Wings

posted on January 28th, 2012, 1:44 am

I must say that is really bringing the Romulan feel to the Romulan faction. If you guys can achieve this, it will be epic and make the Romulans play so differently that it will feel like the show. Very impressed with what I just read.

posted on January 28th, 2012, 7:57 am

I'm dying to know what's new for the klinks!!!

posted on January 28th, 2012, 11:18 am

if you ask me this didnt tell us anything new really apart from how they pretty much like the romulans to play in the current version, all cloak and dagger with faster fire rates at the beginning of the fight and so on...

all this post really said was "new unit", "mines" and "flat tech tree" (though the tech tree was pretty flat anyway), kinda expected a lot from the post with that opening title

posted on January 28th, 2012, 2:08 pm

Dang, someone's having his period over there.

The new Romulan gameplay looks interesting and it's going to be a challenge playing as Rom especially if you're not an experienced player.

Now where were we before some rude person interrupted us.. o yeah. Making fun of Chelsea fans

posted on January 28th, 2012, 2:33 pm

not really, the new post is not about when might flops be released and then if ever will it be before QPR learns to kick a ball...

It was clearly to tease about changes to the romulans and hence that is the topic of conversation here, that is why we have a thing called "topics", i dont want to have to read through posts that are about completely pointless things in a thread they have nothing to do with...

now back on topic, you already need to be an experienced player to play romulans as their ships require lots of micro and usually few numbers. They would made to be cloak and dagger in this version already so i don't see much of a difference. In the current version romulans rely heavily on popping miners and attacking small ships to starve the other race till they can fill out their ranks to take on the bulk of the enemy base.

all this post has really told me is, Romualns will be pretty much they same but they now have a new unit and mines... As to be honest if you make the wrong build choices with current roms you are usually screwed

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on January 28th, 2012, 4:06 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on January 28th, 2012, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Had to get rid of some offtopic posts... please keep it on track guys

EDIT: it's important to read between the lines for Romulan posts - perhaps you did not see the famous "false sensor readings....sabotage hostile mining operations, or disrupt fleet movement" or did not think too much about a "new tal'shiar command ship" . There are a lot of new abilities and mechanics in play for the Romulan Star Empire. Gameplay examples will be shown in future posts 

Currently we have gameplay which is a lot about brute force (including burst damage) applied at specific points. We would like to move away from that aspect, and have you control battles and the psychology of your enemy with your special weapons.

posted on January 28th, 2012, 6:41 pm

mmmm, burst damage. 

Even when I have things to say about it, I can tell from the dev posts that they have a good idea of the balance and know where they're going.

The thing I'm worried about is this:

Imagine a 2v2 game where one team is double Feds/Dom/Borg, doing standard build-up strategies and the other team is 1 Fed and 1 Rom.  The Romulan player tries to shut down his opponent, but the other enemy comes to help and drives him off.  Turrets go up, and his ability to raid is diminished.

If he goes to raid the other enemy, he will be overextended and his opponent can raid his mining, which will die much faster than he can kill the enemy's mining.  If the enemies combine their fleets and move on his ally's forward expansion, he will be unable to help out very well as his ships lose effectiveness the larger the battle.  In some cases it's simply unavoidable, and the only strategy that will work involves a strong, fast ship that can both raid the enemy and stay alive in these fleet fights - the Leahval spam.

The old Support refit was perfect for this role, as it could both hold ground and provide a LARGE boost to allied forces.  The new singularity refit tries to fill this role, but is too slow and too high on the tech-tree.  A flatter tech-tree will allow Romulans to quickly pump out a few ships to help their allies without breaking stride on their harrassment efforts.

I am totally looking forward to these anti-mobility mechanics that will finally give the Romulans a unique, competitive form of map control to discourage counter-raids against them.  Sabotage sounds good, in that you won't have to pull as many vessels from the front-line in order to deal economic damage.  False sensor readings are okay, but will only be useful in some situations as a skilled player won't move until he KNOWS where your fleet is because you're attacking him somewhere.

I'm all for psychadelic attacks.  I want a special ability that you use on the enemy starbase and Nyan cat flies across their screen for 10 seconds.

posted on January 28th, 2012, 7:01 pm

Tryptic makes a good point however I feel that scenario is flawed. I'd expect the romulan players ally should take advantage of his opponent aiding his ally and strike while the fleet is away. That should level the field and allow the romulan reassert his efforts on raidingx

posted on January 28th, 2012, 7:37 pm

Of course that's what he should do, but it adds a new requirement to the game, being that the ally of a Romulan must build fast raiding ships and play an aggressive raiding style alongside the Romulans.  The option of building slow, fleet-backbone ships isn't available to him as this would leave his Romulan ally in a tough spot.

It should be possible for Romulans to be an effective ally in a situation where both sides are digging in and building up, and that means ships and abilities that can affect large battles.

Another situation is the one where a cloaky race and a non-cloaky race are attacking together, and it comes time to bug out.  If the cloaker cloaks out his fleet, his ally will take serious casualties unless the non-cloaky player gets his ships out before the mass-cloak.  In this situation some Romulan engine disables or minefields would be VERY useful.  They can't just be balanced for use with cloaking ships, they need to be broader and allow for teamwork with non-cloaking fleets.

posted on January 28th, 2012, 8:06 pm

You are all however speculating about a patch thaet no-one has played yet

We really will have no idea how balance plays out until  it's released. I don't think the point of these news posts is so that we can dissect every bit of information and form opinions from it, rather they are just teasers of what to expect.

posted on January 28th, 2012, 8:51 pm

What can I say? It's how we roll 

posted on January 28th, 2012, 8:53 pm

There's something you rarely see on forums; a voice of logic and reason. Probably because they always die out...

posted on January 28th, 2012, 9:12 pm

It's not that no one is playing it; several players are playing nothing but the next patch. If there's a major balance issue in team games, I'm sure it'll come up sooner rather than later and be fixed promptly. In all likelihood you'll never even know that it happened... just like QPR's 11-0 victory over Tavistock last July.

posted on January 29th, 2012, 6:24 am

I can't wait to see my favorite race get some neat new toys and a major redirection towards their trek lore. I hope this brings some much needed new special weapons to the otherwise sometimes dull Romulan arsenal. Being able to go up to the larger vessels quicker should bring some guns to the show too!

I would love to play with a Romulan fleet that was more subversive and predatorial.

posted on January 29th, 2012, 12:26 pm

I hope this means an end to laheval spam.