Supply costs for warbirds

posted on April 18th, 2011, 12:45 pm

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.

And why shouldn't a techtree do that?  You aren't supposed to be spamming just large ships - if any faction can do that without getting screwed, there's an issue

posted on April 18th, 2011, 3:43 pm

Yes but the Romulans are a fundamentally warbird-heavy race, or at least that was the Devs' original idea I thought.  In the show they like to show up with large numbers of warbirds whenever possible, to show off their military might.

When the numbers get big and there is going to be a big fleet engagement, when NOTHING matters except for DPS and hitpoints in large amounts, the Romulans have nothing.  With the large nerf of the specter, only 1 ship remains viable: the frigate.  And the frigate is broken to deal full damage to large ships right now, when it gets fixed it will become much less effective against B-5 and other large ships.  The Romulans will be underpowered if they can only produce DPS/Hitpoints in a 1 to 2 ratio to the other races with the same amount of money.  Shield recharge is their only remaining big-fleet option, and it's being removed because it's so OP.

Warbirds need to have a better cost-to-effectiveness ratio in the endgame than they do in the early game.

posted on April 18th, 2011, 4:35 pm

Well that is kinda true, but using specific warbirds for the situation. Like in a game I played last night, a 3v3 where I was going against vorchas and E2s so I went norexans and they did great especially against the E2s. But it can be useful to avoid big D's because the other two warbirds can be very useful in situations against long range, ablative armor and stuff like that 

posted on April 18th, 2011, 4:42 pm

I dunno, man.  I have found that if you tech up to Warbirds effectively while controlling opponents with your small ships the Warbirds will become the extra heavy firepower you need.


Consider this:

In 1v1 - immediate teching to WB can be pretty risky  .  Most races have a good way to counter small numbers of large ships.  However, if you add Warbirds to your techup in a reasonable manner, often times they can be the nail in the coffin that makes your opponent realize you've outplayed and out-teched them.

in 2v2 and higher - Warbirds will be subject to more incoming firepower overall.  They are attractive targets for sure since they're so big and they are so expensive.  Your point does have merit in this situation, but I feel that you really just have to adapt and realize that Romulans in Team Games shouldn't usually be doing the tanking .  Be sneaky sneaky!  Warbirds that are cheaper would REALLY hurt balance in my opinion .

posted on April 18th, 2011, 4:52 pm

Yea boggz is right, the romulans are sneaky and you need to keep the warbirds behind your smaller ships or the ships of your allies so they don't get attacked, because the more special energy you can devote to their specials instead of cloak makes them so much deadlier