Supply costs for warbirds

posted on April 16th, 2011, 5:26 pm

Hello,

i would like to hear your opinion about the following issue:

Recently i often played with warbirds and got the feeling that they are really supply-heavy

Eresis - 60 supplies -- ADAI
Big D - 47 supplies
cehlear - 42 supplies
Norexan - 40 supplies

compared to the large ships of the other factions (except Dominion and Borg which can mine/build supplies)

(Avalon - 50 supplies) -- carrier
Defiant - 29 supplies
Sovereign - 29 supplies
Phalanx - 38 supplies
LuSpet - 45 supplies -- ADAI
Negvar - 34 supplies

As Romulan player you have to buy supplies every 4-6 warbirds compared to the Federation/Klingons which can build about 7-8 battleships with 250 supplies. This makes warbirds even more expensive as they already are (although i think dilithium/tritanium costs are justified).

Personally, i would like to see a small supply cost reduction for the warbirds of about 20% maybe.

posted on April 16th, 2011, 5:28 pm

remember that the warbirds cost more of every resource cos they are so useful and all come with 2 second cloaks.

posted on April 16th, 2011, 5:35 pm

The Phalanx costs more dilthium and tritanium but less supplies so this can also be done for warbirds.

posted on April 16th, 2011, 5:37 pm

The Phalanx costs more dilthium and tritanium but less supplies so this can also be done for warbirds.

the phalanx isnt comparable to most warbirds, only seriously the tavara.

posted on April 16th, 2011, 5:41 pm

the phalanx isnt comparable to most warbirds, only seriously the tavara.

....what.... is phalan isnt anywhere near comparable to a tavara its more on the lines of a big D

posted on April 16th, 2011, 5:43 pm

....what.... is phalan isnt anywhere near comparable to a tavara its more on the lines of a big D

not stats wise, tech level wise. they are top of the tech tree and capped, the big D is a mainstream bird, the phalanx is never mainstream.

posted on April 17th, 2011, 5:12 am

Big D deffinitly (due to its age if nothing else) needs to be a little cheaper, but prehaps lower on stats, as it should be the 'go to' ship for massed warbirds.

posted on April 17th, 2011, 9:47 am

A big part of it is because Warbirds are all equipped with 2 second cloaks and very strong hulls.  This means they are MUCH more likely to survive a battle to fight again than their Federation Counterparts.

  Negh'var's don't cost so much in supply or other res (for their strength) because they are not equipped with cloaks as standard .

posted on April 17th, 2011, 10:04 am

I thought only the Big D has a really strong hull. In my opinion the 2 second cloak projects you only until the mid game, later you can not cloak out and this coincides with the stage of the game where one is probably continuously producing warbirds (when following that strategy) and the supply issue comes into play.

Maybe there can be a research that lowers the supply cost for the warbirds later in the game?

posted on April 17th, 2011, 11:02 am

all the birds have reasonably strong hulls, just the big d has even stronger. any warbird is likely to survive quite a bit of hull punishment in the 2 seconds cloak. they all get this by default, which is quite a boon, they are very hard to kill.

posted on April 18th, 2011, 4:53 am

If a warbird gets killed trying to cloak out, either the enemy focused all fire on it, in which case the rest of your fleet doesnt get hit, or you cloaked it way too late.

posted on April 18th, 2011, 5:24 am

It is a problem, though, that Warbirds have a strange effectiveness.  The other races use their large ships to be more effective in large engagements when smaller ships get taken apart.  Warbirds, on the other hand, are balanced to be effective in the very beginning of the game but they become useless in the late game.  As demonstrated in the last 2v2 replay with Fallout, when the game reaches a certain size Romulans have to stop building warbirds and go back to smaller ships.  A tech tree probably shouldn't do that.

Perhaps warbirds need a prefine components tech like Romulan turrets have: a way to make them less expensive (or have higher stats) in the endgame.  Whatever balance works for early game will never work well in the endgame, and a successful endgame balance will never work in early game.  The answer is to use 2 different systems.  I would recommend making warbird cloak require research or even the Cloaking Generator, but that doesn't hold with canon and Klingons have already done it.

Here's an idea!  What if Warbird yards could gain experience and level up to produce warbirds for cheaper?  So the first 2-3 warbirds still cost a ton in the beginning but when you go into full production later you can compete with the ultimate spam of the other races.  If you get enough resources to double-yard you'll need to "train" a new Warbird yard so they're still behind the other races in mass-production.  You could say that Romulans like to field prototype designs in battle to test them, then refine their techniques and make them better over time.  Also it fits with Romulans having the most fragile infrastructure: the enemy could snipe an officer yard and set you back.  Also the cloaking generator becomes more useful.

(I do NOT recommend giving this to the small yard.  Yikes. )

posted on April 18th, 2011, 9:56 am

if you only have warbirds later on then you're likely to get controlled by specials. but i would suggest not having warbirds unless you have something lower to tank for them. leahvals can work if you are quick to hit auto repair. of course generix, particularly specs, work too, they are little tanks.

i think birds are effective late game, just dont leave them on their own to get gang raped by a load of little ships with specials that disable engines/weapons.

posted on April 18th, 2011, 10:08 am

I still like the idea of refits. Be able to refit the warbirds like smaller ships. There's no reason that there can't be a couple of refits for the D'deridex that would make it more multi purpose and strong in late game.

posted on April 18th, 2011, 10:11 am

i like refits for the big d too. theres loads of space between the wings to fit some simple big stuff.