Combatting Romulans - Cloaking

posted on February 19th, 2016, 12:56 pm

I'm going to get you! I am... Pew Pew Pew... Oh no you've cloaked you cheeky Minx!

We've all been there, its frustrating but what can we do?!


Unlike Klingons who mainly have ships with 4 second cloaks, the vast majority of Romulan ships have a very fast cloak, of only 2 seconds. As such, as long as they have the energy to cloak, and the subsystem is still functional, a smart AI, or a good human player, will or "should" loose very few ships.

But when you are trying to kill them?! OMG it is a pain. Couple that with the very limited options for detecting cloaked vessels, and your option is to go for stations and resourcing and ignore the ships until they have no option but to fight.

Am I missing a trick - is there a better way to deal with the nasty Romulans? From what I can see, the federation have only 2 options to even detect a cloaked ship - Venture class special ability which is short lived an ranged, or a momentary sensor ping from a sensor platform on the mini-map...

Does any race have passive?

What's the best strategy?

posted on February 19th, 2016, 5:41 pm

Other things come to mind:

1) Burst damage abilities, like the Intrepid's Tricobalt Torpedo, fired after fade out may score a kill. Shields drop at the start of fade-out, so there's that much less to chew through.

2) Cloaks rely on a working Weapons Subsystem. Disable that, and they either can't cloak, or they'll fade back in after the fade out period. A combination of officer Akiras and Defiants is quite brutal for that -- shield bypass damage may ding the Weapon subsystem, and the subsequent disable from the Defiant knocks it completely offline until repaired. This is the best way to neuter / take out Tavaras.

3) There's a minimum period between decloak and recloak. Abilities like the Remora's torpedo barrage can strip shields far faster than the Romulan player may have counted on when making the decision to attack. However, many Romulan ships are as fast or faster than their equivalent Fed classes, so may be able to break contact for long enough to cloak.

posted on February 20th, 2016, 11:32 am

Other things worth mentioning:

4) Certain special weapons, like the refitted Vutpa's Mass Seeking Missiles, track cloaked targets specifically. Numerous other AoE special weapons also hit cloaked targets, so you could aim those special weapons where you think the cloaked fleet will be at the time, possibly landing a few kills, or possibly disabling some of their ship's weapons, forcing them to decloak.

5) The Klingon's manual targeting, and EM module equipped Borg Scout Cubes and Adaptors (with only one EM module, anyway) have passive cloak detection, although they have to have already started fighting the enemy for those passives to work. Even then, there's no guarantee.

6) When fighting Romulans, keep an eye out for any Romulan Talon Class scouts scouting about. If you can capture one and refit it, it refitted variant's graviton-tachyon pings will make tracking cloaked targets easier.

Hopefully this will help.

posted on February 22nd, 2016, 12:27 pm

Thanks!

This is great!

posted on February 26th, 2016, 4:52 pm

Probably the quickest way you can improve your play vs Romulans is to improve your micro-management a little bit.

If you have damage specials, don't leave them on automatic or use them at the start of a fight. When fighting Romulans, save the specials until their shields are getting low and they want to cloak.

Also, Fleet Ops has a unique interface for special abilities: if you hover your mouse over a target and press the hotkey for a special ability, it will use it on that target immediately rather than requiring a click. You can do this with T for boarding, A for attack, and if you are playing Tryptic's Mod I've worked to greatly expand the available hotkeys for special attacks.

posted on February 26th, 2016, 7:45 pm

micro-management is good way kill Roms there ship cost a lot more so do there yards and the miners die very fast so if you micro your ship well in the end you should end up with a better fleet but Roms in the hands of a very good player can't be beat

posted on October 27th, 2021, 6:50 pm

Hello, if you have special damage, do not leave them in automatic mode and as far as I know, it is not worth using them at the beginning of the fight