Borg vs Romulan

posted on April 5th, 2010, 5:47 pm

You know, since most people use regen3/prime1 or regen3/torp1, beams will work fine and dandy.  Unless they do beam3/regen1 or beam3/prime1, the beams will not suffer borg damage reduction, and can't miss, even against the Detector.

I'm personally a fan of adding a couple Beam1/Prime3 spheres to a battle group, or occasionally a Beam3/Torp1 sphere.  Or even a Torp1/Prime3 sphere just to max out it's offense.

posted on April 5th, 2010, 5:56 pm

i personally never use multi beams, it splits its damage so much. i love prime spheres though, after the new patch, when romulans become special weapon oriented, the prime sphere will be very useful against them.

posted on April 5th, 2010, 8:02 pm

Aye Myles - in addition, the beam modules should get a bit more attractive soon

posted on April 5th, 2010, 8:13 pm

i would love a beam sphere to om nom nom some small ships, just i dont think multi firing as it is now is the answer.

if you split fire so much then nothing gets damaged heavily, and ur enemy escapes. but maybe beam heavy spheres could have a toggle:

im thinking of two modes, first mode has all the beams fire on one target, for when u need to dish out a lot of damage to one target.

second mode would have beam splitting into max 3 targets, for when you're being swamped by little annoying ships. this would work best when u have already dealt heavy damage, and maybe your fleet (of like 2 other borg ships ) is with you and the splitting dont matter too much.

thing with that is, i would rarely use the second mode.

posted on April 5th, 2010, 8:23 pm

Well, I think split damage is fine - in fact, the full beam module sphere does the same damage as a 3x regen 1x prime sphere . Split damage is really a double edged sword though. On the one hand, you are killing units less quickly over time, and a 'bouncing beam' means you are not even able to kill one unit at a time. However, in longer battles and with fewer units, a multi-beam wears down enemy fleets and forces them to all retreat, or all risk hull damage. It's the damage reduction that was more of a concern to me however, and that should be fixed 

posted on April 5th, 2010, 8:29 pm

I hope the beam module gets more interesting, but I still feel that it is the lack of special weapons that makes the other configurations unattractive.  3 Regen Prime is so nice because it allows you to use a special weapon right away, so you're not wasting all that special energy.  Ships with unresearched specials lose a great deal of effectiveness, and the Borg are no different.

One thought I've just had would be to scrap the transmission matrix, and put all the specials into the conduction matrix.  Along with the cap, they would also cost Collective Connections to research them, at various amounts.  For example, Devastating attack might cost 20 CC, but it would allow scubes to have a special, and thus be more useful.  The money you would spend on the transmission matrix would eventually go into purchasing the CC upgrades, perhaps even the 4th and 5th level upgrades, which no one buys.   Having at least one early ability available to all borg ships would be a plus, even if it wasn't amazing like regeneration.  Perhaps a wave like the remore's ECM, that would reduce damage taken by 10% or whatever.  Then any combination would be theoretically fine, because you're getting all your money's worth when you build a borg vessel.

I still say borg mixed tech should involve adding some cool new specials for their ships, as the borg would add other race's technological distinctiveness to their own.

posted on April 5th, 2010, 11:46 pm

maybe the beam spam sphere would enjoy a nice special weapon? maybe it could do picard's decloaking phaser sweep from nemesis? remember when picard caused a temporary decloak using a phaser sweep in many directions? a beam spam sphere would have enough beams to quick fire them like that:

having more than 1 beam module grants the ability

more beam modules makes it more likely to decloak targets nearby

around 25% chance of failure with 3 beam modules.

decloak would be for small amount of time, and do nearly no damage, allowing nearby units a brief chance to fire at the enemy

posted on April 6th, 2010, 1:03 am

One thought I've just had would be to scrap the transmission matrix, and put all the specials into the conduction matrix.  Along with the cap, they would also cost Collective Connections to research them, at various amounts. 

  THAT ... is a great idea

posted on April 6th, 2010, 3:25 am

i think you forgot the support refit. i will only say "plasma torpedo"
with some decent micromanagement, some supports can effectively disarm a sphere until  is dies.

this is exactly what i tried in a game yesterday against stardust...the result is...not even a single sphere can be kept disarmed because of the high system value...my plasma torps could only disable the weapons in (it felt like) less than 50%...so beside a leavhal spam against Borg i see no real strategy atm.

posted on April 6th, 2010, 4:01 am

Support refits can indeed do well keep a Sphere's weapons offline for a bit, but frankly the Romulans have too much pulse Weaponry early on to actually do the damage necessary to kill a Sphere.  Frigates and Spectres are too dependent on pulse weapons.  Griffins are indeed more heavily armed but really they are just so fragile and expensive.  Leahvals are still the best way because Meta can dish out SO much damage so fast.  Rhienn Torp Refits will get smashed by a Sphere sooooo ....  Big D's are really the only torp-armed Rommie vessel capable of handling Spheres.

posted on April 6th, 2010, 5:05 am

The key to use of Beam3/Prime1 spheres is to use them in groups of no less than 3, in support of other vessels.  Then, the multitargetted beams in such number will kill things, swiftly eliminating the opponent's light ship complement.

That little thing is a huge bonus when facing Dominion and Klingons.

From the Romulan side of things, sadly, it's Griffin, Leahval, and Cehlear that are the most reliable ships you can produce in numbers to face the Borg.  And the Griffin isn't about the Sensor Jammer for that.  You're looking for the fact that 100% of its damage is beam, and is thus reliable against everything.

posted on April 6th, 2010, 5:21 pm

im thinking of two modes, first mode has all the beams fire on one target, for when u need to dish out a lot of damage to one target.

second mode would have beam splitting into max 3 targets, for when you're being swamped by little annoying ships. this would work best when u have already dealt heavy damage, and maybe your fleet (of like 2 other borg ships Tongue ) is with you and the splitting dont matter too much.

I like this idea, a lot.

posted on April 11th, 2010, 10:19 pm

When talking about the beam modules, why not just add another module type:

you can have the standard beam module that just increases the single beam in damage for one target.

Multiple beam modulescan add to the number of targets possible but splitting the damage between each beam.

Rather than have the toggle which gives the player the ability to interchange for what's needed, I'd prefer that players have to be selective at time of construction.

I'm not sure about balance but I'm sure the debs could iron this out much better than I've explained, as long the dps stays the same it should work out just fine.