Dominion Strategy

posted on April 9th, 2009, 9:00 pm

Hello, to all you dominion players!!! I'm wondering what strategy you guys play, because no one seems to like the dominion. I personally believe that the Dominion strategy should be centered around patrol, given the Officer Abilities of many of the ships. For eample: the 2nd to last Battleship of the large shipyard's officer ability increases its movement speed and repair rate. Supplies are high most likely as an indicator of long, boring, redundant missions that are patrol. Special abilities point towards high-intensity patrol missions, the biggest being the Cloak for the Breen Cruiser . The Perimeter is long-ranged and very powerful, and is geared towards early-game spam disabiling (IMO, the Peremiter should be allowed to be build very early on, but thats just me ), and safe havens for patrol vessels.
but, this is just me, and I'm a Fed expert, not a Dom expert. Any different strategies or add-ons to this one are much appreciated.

[The Undying Nephalim]

posted on April 9th, 2009, 9:28 pm

Last edited by The Undying Nephalim on April 9th, 2009, 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In 3.0 I was a big Dominion player. I found that the Breen Battleship and it's energy dampening weapon practically devastated everything, so I would naturally rush to get those into production. Also the A11's (i think that's what they are called) seem to be very effective at soaking up enemy fire, they were usually the last ships to be destroyed in an assault. Of course, fighter carriers are also a good means to soak up damage. It always seems that enemy ships auto target fighters first before going after the main fleet, so I usually launched a good dozen or more fighter craft.  Ever since one of the more recent patches however, the supply cost for everything Dominion seems to have skyrocketed. All my strategies I developed for the Dominion were effectively thrown out the window. I think I'll go as far to say the Dominion are pretty broken now and almost unplayable simply because I and many other players run out of supply in no time flat. In addition, the fighter carrier limit is now 5 instead of seven. On top of that, in the last patch they horribly nerfed the Dampening weapon's effect time, making the Breen Battleship absolutely useless in games played on a speed of 4.

I'm a Borg player now.

posted on April 9th, 2009, 10:37 pm

yup.

The Dominion need some loving.

posted on April 9th, 2009, 10:42 pm

I think once they beef up the bug a little like they plan and get cascade feedback to work again on the c-11 everything will be fine.

posted on April 9th, 2009, 11:16 pm

I usually play as Dominion when playing on MP. First off, my avatar choice is 90% puretech (because I dont need the Breen ships tbh - except against Borg, and thats where that 10% is from ^^) so I get a build-speed bonus on the first yard and an pimped up V-13 and B-5. Plus some other bonuses that arent as important and of course the Defender and Sensor station.

Right away I must point out that the sensor station is basically useless as it stands. Fact of the matter is that its a build-limit station (only 1) and its sensor range is probably less than that of an upgraded Talon or an upgraded Borg probe. I think the team should take a look at that, though it does allow you to scan parts of space that fog is covering - I still dont think its powerful enough though. The Defender on the other hand is an extremely powerful ship, its beam does increased damage to large targets so its ideal for fighting battleships, it also has a powerful defence, but is limited to 7 (I think) and its very very slow. A moving defence platform if you will

Now about the strategy, Im not going to give you my build order as I change it depending on the situation. A must for the Dominion is the supply station (1 per 2 moons with 2 miners), you need at least 2 to be able to build reasonably uniterupted with "your out of supplies" message. The Dominion are also limited in a way that other races arent, you must rely on your Tier 1 ships as your backbone. Those are of course the bugs. Eventhough they are quite sucky right now, it is also true that the Dominion does not have any other ships that could successfully fill their role, all other ships are way to specialised and are only effective against certain ship classes (T-15, S-2, Bomber, Siege Cruiser). The only other ship the Dominion have that could maybe serve as the backbone is the V-13, but that is their main battleship and that in MP is undoable, so your stuck with the bug

Now that you know what your main ship is, just sculpt the rest of your army according to requirements. If your facing the Borg, T-15s are useless - but Bombers, S-2s and especially siege cruisers and defenders become very much "the shit". When your fighting the spam happy Klingons, just go for T-15s and (if Breen avatar) the Breen cruiser.

So while the bug is your workhorse, the V-13s supported by Siege Cruisers (and the Dreadnoughts of course )are your best combo for base assaults and anti-battleship fighting. Those V-13s have an extremely deadly special weapon and all of their stats are buffed (+6 to all) by the puretech avatar, which means they become very powerful.

You might have noticed that I left out the B-5 and the first support ship and the troop cruiser. There's a reason for that. IMO right now Im not very convinced by the Carriers (B-5) ingame. It is expensive to buy and after that you also need to buy the fighters which do very little damage but cost plenty of supplies to field on the battle. If your not careful with that thing, u'll run out of supplies for your main army building-efforts and you'll be fucked. So basically I just skip the B-5.
Next up we have the first support ship. Its specials are nice, make no mistake about it (especially the special energy recharging one ), but with the shield and weapon power of a scout-ship, it just doesnt enter into my fleet. Though, it could be a nice ship if anyone decides to build it, for me personally its just too weak.
And lastly the Troop Carrier. I actually quite like this ship, its powerful and available from the first yard. The only problem with it is that it costs a lot. While it is very powerful if used against single vessles, or against small groups of vessles, that just doesnt happen very often. Right now, if used in a fleet you'll start boarding some ship, which means that the cruisers shields will be down and the other enemy ships will just destroy it. Its weapons are quite similar to the T-15 and its more expensive (yet weaker - fighting wise), so I just go for the Heavy Cruiser instead. Only build this ship if you want to capture the enemy builder (for the Dreadnought), its very good at that, but with fleet engagements it just isnt worth it.

Another thing to mention is the Arty. While it doesnt do a whole lot of damage, it is very useful to clear out groups of destroyers and cruisers, but more skillful players will usually avoid its cannon. However, right now its quite cheap and if nothing else, its a good repelant and it might buy you a bit of time at least. So build it when you can (it also doesnt tie up your shipyards).

A general tip for the Dominion players would also be to not send your prototypes into battle, if they are destroyed you will loose more resources and time than you would with a normal ship, plus they can defend your base if anyone decides for a sneaky attack

Basically you all must remember that playing the Dominion is to play a game of counters, right now they have a counter for everything anyone can send at you. So if you play smart, you should defeat any other race really Though it is also probably true that its harder to play as Dom than any other race in the game currently, it is also true that when you master them you'll be a very formidable opponent

Just a few tips for novice players, but most importantly just experiment with the race and develop your own strategy

posted on April 9th, 2009, 11:21 pm

Excellent advice SIR! 

posted on April 9th, 2009, 11:34 pm

Great advice indeed!  I used to love the Federation, but the Dominion playstyle is so unique.  Nothing's more fun than seeing the siege cruiser's arty beams smash into something. 

posted on April 10th, 2009, 8:01 am

we have made a few tweaks to the Dominion, in order to give them a wider variety of "workhorse" vessels, similar to the other races. The Attack Destroyer and the Bomber will get a small boost in the next patch. The Escort Cruiser got a larger improvement, to be more in line with other cruisers, it still has a larger dependency on torpedoes, but its more durable now. The greatest change was made to the Siege Cruiser. Its now a combat oriented support ship, with a much higher offensive and defensive capability, but reduced system value, so it can serve as a heavy "beam weapon" cruiser along to its siege capability. To preserve its special weapon power, it will get high system values during rankup.

The resources formulas for the Dominion got reevaluated, while the supply costs remain the same, the dilithium and tritanium costs droped slightly. After all we are happy with the Dominion playstyle so far. Our idea is to give every race a unique character, and the Dominion is nasty but we have some ideas to make the Dominion easier for beginners without changing to much of its basestyle. That includes a new vessel for the large yard, and perhaps moving the Heavy Cruiser to the small yard. But that could have freaking performance in the early game stage, poor poor rhienns!
But thats not planned for the next patch, we will have to take a closer look at those. The Interception Destroyer (the shity first support vessel ;D) will get an overhaul in the next patch too, changing its abilities to become more interessting

For the Founders!

[Anonymous]

posted on April 10th, 2009, 8:26 am

Last edited by Anonymous on April 10th, 2009, 8:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thats nice Optec, Im especially looking forward to the bug and the Siege cruiser
Though I dont think they needed a cost decrease, Im certainly not against it Also the Heavy cruiser should remain at the second yard though as the ship would nullify all early destroyers to easily. Plus, the bug got an upgrade so it should do better against other destroyers
I didnt say that the interception destroyer is the shitty ship , its just that its staying power is probably lower than any other ship at the moment and a dead ship is not a good ship Its specials are pretty good in theory, though I have to say that I never saw the cascade feedback do any significant damage to any ships - even if I amassed 16 C-11s together
Looking forward to the new ship as well, I hope it will be a beam based Heavy Cruiser, that would really improve my gamestyle Not to mention add another workhorse to the Dominion army!

For the Patch!

Edit: I wanted to ask if you considered the changes to the Dreadnought I suggested some time ago. The changes being that each Dreadnought has different main weapons and maybe specials as well (all-torp for Klingons, mainly pulses and beam for Roms etc). If I remember correctly you were quite fond of the idea but there has been no mention of it lately, thats why I ask
Another thing Id like to ask is about the Sensor station, seeing as how the Borg probe with data mining has a bigger sensor radius, could the station possibly get some increase in the range? Maybe a special weapon that increases its radius by x% but costs energy while up? I dunno, just something

This is all I have to ask 

For the Founders!

posted on April 10th, 2009, 8:43 am

Yep the dreadnought and the sensor station are on todo for adjustments the changes should make it into the patch, i will take alook at them next week. Cascade feedback will be changed to instead of dealing damage (which did sometimes not work) it will now disable weapons based on the number if special weapons available (the more, the longer they get smashed)

posted on April 10th, 2009, 11:13 am

I find the best tactic versus my brother when I play Dominion is to try and tech up as soon as possible. This does have the problem that you are weak early game to a rush - but if you can start building some of the heavier warships like the V-13 - you can usually overpower most enemy races. I tend to leave the lower tech ship prototypes alone and stick to bugs for the initial stages, since you are better spending the constantly limited supply on the larger stuff later on.

Note: I tend to play as the Breen - but echo the comments of Nephalim re: the Breen Battleship. The energy dampening weaponry isn't half as effective as it used to be - and so takes away one of the Battleship's key advantages versus high-value targets such as Cubes. One of the features that enabled the Breen to wipe the floor with the Feds in the Dominion War was their energy dampening weapons - if the ability is going to be minimised in the Battleship - perhaps could we see some sort of disabling/energy-dampening effect in the smaller Breen cruiser?

posted on April 10th, 2009, 11:40 am

the cruiser is nasty enough as it is, it can take on ships that "should" be stronger than the cruiser.
Actually the energy dampening weapon shouldnt be so big in this game since the feds and roms found a way against it in the dominionwar and then the breen werent any longer the ones that wipe that floor with the feds. The klingons were nevah affected alot. About the rest that was spoken here i can mostly agree.

posted on April 10th, 2009, 2:33 pm

Yep the dreadnought and the sensor station are on todo for adjustments  the changes should make it into the patch, i will take alook at them next week. Cascade feedback will be changed to instead of dealing damage (which did sometimes not work) it will now disable weapons based on the number if special weapons available (the more, the longer they get smashed)

Ah cool. With that out of the way, the Dominion should be just perfect

I find the best tactic versus my brother when I play Dominion is to try and tech up as soon as possible. This does have the problem that you are weak early game to a rush - but if you can start building some of the heavier warships like the V-13 - you can usually overpower most enemy races. I tend to leave the lower tech ship prototypes alone and stick to bugs for the initial stages, since you are better spending the constantly limited supply on the larger stuff later on.

That would most definitly not work against all but the weakest of players, you would be overwhelmed at the beginning with your minings destroyed and its only going downhill from there.

posted on April 11th, 2009, 1:56 pm

'That would most definitly not work against all but the weakest of players, you would be overwhelmed at the beginning with your minings destroyed and its only going downhill from there.'

It wasn't meant to be a rule of thumb. I was just making the point that in general the lower class dominion vessels are not particularly good value for money. This could be something that maybe I should voice in the balancing discussion - but the earlier Dominion ships are not as good as comparable Federation or Romulan vessels (which can be set up for production for far less). The prototpe option is a good concept - but makes it prohibitively expensive for Dominion players who have enough problems with their resources as it is.

The later battleships and heavy cruisers are powerful enough (e.g. the V-13's Excessive Strike can enable a small number of these to wipe the floor with numerically superior forces with the right timing). But the Dominion could definitely do with some attention for their ships early-game.

posted on April 11th, 2009, 6:58 pm

And they shall get attention, as Optec already said

I was just saying that in MP your strategy wouldnt work. This concept of teching up to get battleships and build as much as you can does not work for any race in FO. I didnt mean to insult you, Im just stating a fact