Dominion vs Klingons and Federation

posted on February 17th, 2010, 3:24 pm

I have been trying to test my skills in becoming successful in the Dominion. Though I have been a bit stumped lately on a good strategy vs the Feds and Klingons. This is what I got so far.

- Always have no less than 8 bugs in a task force to ram small destroyers and light cruisers
- Have Breen Cruisers clear up any small ships that have not been entirely P0WN3D.
- Make sure that Breen Cruisers have cloak (usually its my first thing to research)
- Have Bombers defend expansions until a decent amount of turrets are up (I find those good for cheap defense)

Once I get to the mid-late game ships I start having trouble. Especially when LuSpets and Vorchas are flying around. Plus the other problem is when those Excel IIs start coming out. I cannot find a successful counter to these mixed masses. Because The LuSpets do hull damage making weak hulled ships wasted quickly. Vorchas disable systems easily fending off shout ranged ships, and Excel IIs counteract the Breen Cruiser mass thanks to its long range (Artillery if ranked up).

posted on February 18th, 2010, 5:06 pm

Breen Avatar:

  Make some S-2's right from the get-go and spam spam spam those Breen Cruisers.
  If you DON'T want to be a spamming chump, mix S-2's with Bugs and move up to V-13's or Breen Battleships while keeping a healthy Breen Cruiser fleet.

Puretech:

  Bugs and / or S-2's with Alpha will be your early game force.  To be honest if you survive early game you can start blasting out V-13's with some T-15 to support.  We've seen T-15's support Bugs and S-2's very well as they can essentially target and destroy a single support ship like a Canaveral very quickly and from long range.

    Sadly the Dominion on either avatar do rely on a bit of spam now.  V-13's and Breen Cruisers are just too easy to spam once they are ready.  But if you want to play rough, then keep your Bug / S-2 fleets safe and move up to C-17's as well.  If you can hit an enemy fleet with an ECM (I think) then you're in fields of gold.

posted on February 18th, 2010, 5:21 pm

- Always have no less than 8 bugs in a task force to ram small destroyers and light cruisers

I'm sure that will make you unpopular, people don't seem to like the ram spam.

posted on February 18th, 2010, 5:25 pm

Ram spam is fine now because Bugs really don't do that much damage on average when they ram. 


  Ram-spam is really not worth it in terms of resources.  However it is TOTALLY worth it to ram something the second your Bug is in danger of dieing.  In fact it's one of the only ways Dominion can compete early game.

  A bug will almost always destroy a B'rel.  That's good because B'rels come out WAY faster than Bugs.

posted on February 18th, 2010, 7:50 pm

Personally with Pure I prefer 1 construct yard right now, then tech center plus 8 bugs, with a Ket White center in there after supplies run to about 120. I go for large yard as soon as I have the funds (stop bug production if necessary) and then make my 5 fighter carriers. At the same time I go for S-2 with Alpha, and Seige Cruisers (about 8-10 of each). Then I make V-13's + Bombers etc.

posted on February 18th, 2010, 8:09 pm

Lol crap I forgot completely about the B-5!

posted on March 15th, 2010, 12:34 am

The best early stage strategy I've found is to slam out 4 bugs and 4 bombers fast. then build your tech tree to the point you can start cranking out siege cruisers with their full artillery ability. I have huge luck spamming siege cruisers since they can soften up any fleet or base from a distance and then you can send in your slower and/or smaller units to polish them off (try this with some teched-up fighter carriers as a great way for a small force to wipe out an enemy mining base fast). Plus they can pretty much vaporize smaller units like Brels and Kvorts. Keeping a few of those fragile Dominion science vessels (name escapes me ATM) at your base can really up your defense as well, allowing your turrets to massively increase their range and thus lowering the amount of ships you need to keep nearby for defense.

Personally I have found very little use of ramming attacks, even with dieing bugs, because of the chance of fails, and just gifting your enemies with units. the one time I have used it was towards an end game, i had a fleet of almost entirely bugs and bombers, and I surrounded the enemy starbase, rammed it with like ten bugs, and then used the bombers to polish it off, but that was a real one-off situation.

posted on April 21st, 2010, 2:35 am

I find that I mostly move to T-15 as quickly as I can, and it becomes the backbone of my fleet, supported by S-2 and C-11 ships.  I eventually start mixing in V-13s, and I keep a bug-fleet on hand to deal with Canaveral, and the Klingon support ship with it's AOE system disabler.  The bugs are also good at getting those Generix Support and Repair ships OUT of the fight, or to stop that Sovereign that is chasing your fleet that's going home for repairs.  Nothing worse than already damaged ships getting their engines shut down to be killed by the Sovvie and it's friends.  Show the same ramplate-lovin to Serkas, and Velaruqh.

They're less impressive vs Borg, but still useful for reducing applied firepower or ending pursuit.

The bug-ram is also invaluable for disrupting expansions.  Send a few bugs to harrass mining, and the moment the enemy sends a force powerful enough to stop the bugs?  Ram their miners and finish the job.  Kind of a scorched earth policy.