Under the Warbird’s Wing

posted on June 23rd, 2013, 9:44 pm

Join us to talk about the yin and yang of the Romulan Star Empire!

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posted on June 24th, 2013, 6:23 am

Interesting. My gut reaction is to be very dubious about such early access to powerful ships, with all the advantages that cloak affords. I know I don't have the full picture, but this looks like a balance nightmare.

Will these passives be completely inert without Staryard ships presence? If not, then the D'deridex's passive will be great even without allies to heal, especially if the effect stacks with the number of D'deridexes present.

posted on June 24th, 2013, 8:15 am

about shield inverter, it drains enemy shields, what does it give the staryard vessels? more shields or more special weapon energy?

posted on June 24th, 2013, 2:20 pm

I liked the D'deridex but now with this special synergy thing, I like it even more and can't wait to use it but you didn't tell us if the active special remain the same or maybe there are changes there too?

How romulan of them not to share the stolen energy, typical romulan

posted on June 24th, 2013, 4:15 pm

Interesting. My gut reaction is to be very dubious about such early access to powerful ships, with all the advantages that cloak affords. I know I don't have the full picture, but this looks like a balance nightmare.

It's probably not as difficult to balance as you think. Give the early warbirds potentially crippling disadvantages and you're set. For instance, you could make them only fire forward and turn very slowly, making them vulnerable to flanking by smaller, faster ships. A ship like that would be effective against stations and battleships, but a sitting duck against destroyers.

posted on June 24th, 2013, 6:41 pm

Cool idea guys! I would love to know what the active ability is - I mean, the 'sensor scrambling' thing was cool and all, but I would love to have something more flashy for the original warbird.

As far as balancing goes, along with the passives, I feel like the warbirds would simply be balanced by their cost - yes, you can get them out quickly and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies, but they are also slow, expensive, and, unlike an armada of smaller vessels, cannot be in multiple places at the same time.

posted on June 25th, 2013, 3:55 pm

Can be produced as Qaw'Duj by the Starbase, but the early spam at the snail's speed can not be done, so D'dederix can be used only in defense and "under the warbird wing" will only be attacked faikaru, led it behind Starbase for protection.

posted on June 28th, 2013, 3:43 pm

As a Romulan player myself i really like this concept and as the big D (as i call her) is my favorite of all the romulan ships i really look forward to implementing this into my strategy!
when will all of these changes to fleet ops be available?

posted on June 29th, 2013, 2:57 pm

But the question remains: it warbird only possible or is it so ineffective or inferior that you are just wasting too much resources for not enough power?

posted on July 1st, 2013, 7:25 pm

So I guess you can skip the small yard as an option?

posted on July 1st, 2013, 9:09 pm

Sounds like a balance nightmare, Will this patch be out in my lifetime? will your kids be finishing development?

posted on July 1st, 2013, 10:53 pm

This sounds perfect. The goal is for the Roms to have a tech tree that allows them to build either a Staryard or a Warbird yard in the beginning, and then tech up later by building the other yard. Right now both yards are balanced as a first yard, but once you have a Staryard fleet it's not worth the high cost of a warbird yard to get ships that are about the same tech level as what you have already.

But with this, a single D'Deridex added to your fleet will become a large force multiplier, something that's worth teching up to. Getting both yards at once will allow access to Romulan late-game strategies that allow their mid-game ships to stay useful.

I would like to see some sort of percentage based repair ability from a Staryard ship, something that is useful for Staryard ships but downright powerful when used on a Warbird

posted on July 2nd, 2013, 8:37 pm

i suppose this will be interesting to see how these can work out with the tech levels of cloak as well. you wont be able to just place down a sensor array and make the ships useless,
if you keep ahead of the cloak tech and build some warbirds you can hit some targets pretty hard without worrying they can see you comming

posted on July 3rd, 2013, 8:41 pm

What is to stop someone from parking their new warbird next to one of the other guys mining stations or near the main starbase and taking out any construction that might start? They won't have any ships capable of defeating it for some time and by that time the Romulan player will have also built up more ships.

How it will be implemented? Will it be like the Feds warp ins where you have to build at least four structures before you get access to the ships?

posted on July 4th, 2013, 5:57 am

The thing is, there's the size of a ship and there's the tech level. If a ship has a low tech level, its stats will be low compared to the cost of the ship, while a high tech level means a more powerful ship for the same cost.

It's possible to have a high-tech small ship or a low-tech large ship, it just hasn't been done very much before because large ships have the advantage of better survivability against large fleets, which tends to be more valuable in the late game. But if you compare a low-tech large ship, like the Cehlaer to a high-tech large ship, like the Neghvar, you can clearly see the difference:

Cehlaer
Tech Cost: 2040/660 (Research Institute + Warbird Yard)
Ship Cost: 1036/336/43
Offense/Defense/System: 37/31/19

Neghvar
Tech Cost: 3660/1065 Tak'roja or 2742/836 Martok (Field+Battle+Imperial+Ordnance Depot)
Ship Cost: 877/266/34
Offense/Defense/System: 50/36/16

As you can see, the Neghvar is clearly superior to the Cehlaer because it costs more to reach it in the tech tree. Warbirds may be bigger than other starting ships, which allows them to fight without taking any losses in the early game, just like certain other ships like the Leahval. But since they are so expensive and come in such small numbers, they are balanced just fine with the starting ships of other races. They certainly can't stand up to the large ships of other races given an equal amount of resources on each side, and once there is enough firepower on the board to kill a Warbird before it can cloak, they become downright fragile. It was the old Generix Specter and Generix Support that allowed them to stay alive in the lategame, and without those two ships the current Warbirds are completely ineffective. A new targeted healing ability would go a long way to making them competitive with other races in both the early game and the late game.