Romulan Gameplay

posted on February 28th, 2013, 9:51 pm

Hey guys.. been playing the Romulan faction extensively. I play with two other players and multiple hard AI's in LAN multilayer and was looking for some advice from anyone who is willing to help and the Devs if possible please.

When we play we have a rule at start of the game your not allowed to attack player home resources but any expansions early at the start are fair game. but when it comes to late game one of the players has 30+ 3 regen and 1 prime spheres (he builds the same everytime) and always seem to lose when going romulans (i would have full complement of romulan ships) i know 30 ships would not be enough but I struggle to get ships with the romulan as they are so bloody expensive (bad bang for buck i would say???)

If we compare for example, the Cehlaer (1036 Di, 336 Tri, 43sup) with the dominion V-13 (566Di,162Tri, 59sup) the V-13 has 4 more attack and 5 more defense for HALF the Di and Tri??? a little bit more supplies but the Dom can mine supplies. i know the DOM have to build the prototype but in the long run that would be outweighed by the price of the Cehlaer....am i missing something here and was looking for some advice in the matter?

i'm not trying to be rude or that but just a bit curious, any ways any help would be greatly appreciated guys!

posted on February 28th, 2013, 10:05 pm

The Romulans are good for hit-and-run attacks, I'm pretty sure their ships get weaker over time.

Remember that all Romulan weapons discharge more rapidly at the onset of battle and fire more slowly over time (+30% at the start and -10% for each volley until the shot delay reaches -10% in total). Your strategy should always revolve around fast hit and run attacks to make the most of your initially superior firepower. It takes 15 seconds without firing to recuperate the lost attack power. Consequently, destroy your opponent’s mining vessels at every chance and retreat to recharge your quick firing capabilities. Losing ships is not an option for a Romulan admiral, so engaging solitary ships to whittle down your opponent’s main battle fleet is far more tactically sound than having large fleet battles.

posted on February 28th, 2013, 10:48 pm

some ships have bonuses against certain types of ships (tho im not sure of whats good against what) my strategy for getting around that is to build a selection of different ships. using the variety of different special weapons will also help.

sometimes its good to have the smaller ships against the large ships as they can have good bonuses for damage resistance. also this means the enemy ships target those that have less powerful weapons meaning your bigger ships with the larger firepower last longer. (if that makes sense)

posted on February 28th, 2013, 11:17 pm

Thanks for reply guys... i still need to figure whats going on with the Romulan because they seem to be really expensive for the amount of damage that the dish out compared with other factions. Unless because the rumluans get 30% more firepower at the start of a battle for about 3 shots before they drop to 100% (normal) maybe because of the increased firepower is that why they are more expensive? also i find that the game goes laggy when i have large cloaking fleets? (20-30 ships)

posted on February 28th, 2013, 11:24 pm

Well, the key issue is that Fleet Ops is not at all balanced for no-rush games. Romulans will have an advantage early game, but you're right in noticing that they can't compete at all in late-game big-fleet combat.

The key thing is ship survival: some ships have less combat ability because they have high survivability. One example is the Borg Sphere vs the scube: if you spent the same amount of resources on each, the scubes would have vastly more damage and hitpoints, but they will be whittled down over time while the sphere can escape with low health and repair.

In the early game, before the Borg player gets his first sphere, the Romulans should be dominating the field, scouting his every move and engaging his scubes whenever possible because the Romulan ships can repair while the scubes can't. If he is able to get enough force (8+ rhienns, 6+ leahvals, etc) then he can snipe a building sphere before it finishes. Once this happens the game is over for the Borg. However, if the sphere finishes and the Romulan doesn't have a good fleet up, he's going to get bullied.

Also, I should mention that Warbirds are...different from other races' Battleships. They sit much lower on the tech tree and as a result have horrible cost efficiency. Only the Norexan and Tavara can compete, unless you build Warbird yard first and even then you will have a tough game ahead of you. I would honestly recommend using another race until the next patch comes out, Romulans are sort of "in transition" right now

posted on February 28th, 2013, 11:39 pm

thanks for reply. i agree the bang for the buck of the romulan warbirds is pretty crap!! but hopefully the new update will sort some of this. anyways i here what you are saying and would good if a Dev could confirm this. but cheers for the reply man!

posted on February 28th, 2013, 11:50 pm

I don't know what you mean by a Dev confirming it...are you hoping for a Dev to give you advice on how to play them? Or to come confirm what I've said?

The Romulan answer to large fleets is to stop the enemy from getting them, that's paraphrasing what a Dev told me over a year ago (I believe it was Optec). If it's a team battle, the Romulans can add firepower to their side with certain ships like Norexans and Disruptor Rhienns, but they have no answer to 30 spheres. If the game ever reaches those epic proportions, Romulans have already lost. Klingons and Feds are in trouble too, only the Borg and Dominion are able to support true Superfleets because of their renewable supply mechanics.

posted on March 1st, 2013, 12:06 am

about the cloaking lag issue.

try to have a few smaller fleets(the less cloaks on screen at once the less lag) to cause distractions and this can force the enemy to split their forces up or start loosing mining ships or stations, which can make it easier to take some ships out. also the price is annoying but fair if you think that those ships can strike anywhere without the enemy knowing, and can cloak out meaning hard to give chase.

posted on March 1st, 2013, 4:28 am

To correct a common misconception: the Romulan Warbirds sitting lower on the techtree does not in fact change their costs - they have the same cost to power ratio as all other Romulan ships . Like Klingons, Romulans have an additional cost due to owning a free cloaking device.

Dominion are an entirely different basket of eggs as their costs are directly tied into their supply system - it's hard to compare factions with different economic models in this manner . Fleet Operations is designed with the assumption that players are fighting in a non-artificial situation - no rush Xminute games, or games that change what starting resources are attackable will understandably drastically affect balance. Certain abilities scale very well, whereas others scale horribly. I.e. Nanites have no cap on affected units, and thus scale very well with large fleets - Disruptor Bombardment on the other hand scales in a completely linear relationship with its targets.

posted on March 1st, 2013, 2:40 pm

Thanks for the reply Dominus noctis... ill take all this on board!
Im just curious as to where Im going wrong with the Romulans, i seem to be missing something and jus want to better myself with the romulans?
when i play i seem to struggle to get large warbirds but find my small ships always being beat? i also find my self buying supplies 4-5 times before I get a full complement of romulan ships (30 ships of mixture large and small)
any advice Domnius?

also what strategy's are best for the Romulans?
as usual any help greatly appreciated!

posted on March 1st, 2013, 3:55 pm

Thanks for the reply Dominus noctis... ill take all this on board!
Im just curious as to where Im going wrong with the Romulans, i seem to be missing something and jus want to better myself with the romulans?
when i play i seem to struggle to get large warbirds but find my small ships always being beat? i also find my self buying supplies 4-5 times before I get a full complement of romulan ships (30 ships of mixture large and small)
any advice Domnius?

also what strategy's are best for the Romulans?
as usual any help greatly appreciated!

30 ships is a massive fleet in this game.

even big team games don't end up with fleets that big. you shouldn't let a game get that big for any race, but doubly so for romulans. romulans have several advantages:
1) good system values - hence special weapons are important for them
2) cloak/scouting
3) ambush power as they do more damage when starting combat

the disadvantage to balance this is that they don't last in a straight up fleet battle.

as fleets get bigger it gets much harder to use all 3 of those advantages i listed. special weapons require micromanagement, having a huge fleet makes micro harder as you have more ships to control. cloaking away becomes more and more difficult as the fleets get larger, big fleets will destroy your unshielded ship before it can finish cloaking. and ambushing as a tactic weakens with 30 ships.

if you're gonna play games with nonstandard rules then you have to accept that the game will be imbalanced. and games with huge fleets will leave romulans at a disadvantage.

my advice, play standard fleetops. no additional rules. and attack more. get 3 ships, then attack. in the early game with less than 5 ships, your cloak will be much more useful. learn all the specials and how to use them. phase plates is a particularly useful special. meta D on the leahval gives you the ability to quickly kill a ship before it can run away. auto repair makes the leahval tank a bit better. sensor jammer on the griffin can be used for attack or defence. romulan ships are great at special weapons.

don't get involved in long battles. kill a couple of ships and then cloak and leave. you have to be out of combat for 15 seconds to get the ambush bonus to reset. only stick around if you're winning and can flatten them.

if a game drags on and fleets are getting too big, start picking fights. even if you and your enemy draw every battle and lose similar amounts of stuff, you'll benefit more from the fleets being smaller, as romulans benefit from extra micromanagement more.

be devious, honour is for klingons.

posted on December 28th, 2013, 12:17 pm

I guess one solution for the Romulan player could be a direct tech-refit. As romulans rely much on refits, the key to make romulans late-game viable (esp. with bigger fleets) could be a tech-upgrade via refit.

So, while you can build your warbird early on, you can also invest a huge amount of resources (similar to the large scale cloaking device for the klingons) to make a tech-update for your ships. This way, if you played well early and mid game with your romulan fleet, you should at least have the chance to compete later on. While the ships are still as expensive as their original designs (thus having fewer numbers compared to klingons or dominion), the romulan ships use their doctrine of overwhelming firepower and superiority.

Similar to the borg cube (which is rarely seen in a live-battle), the romulans wield fewer, but more powerful ships. The key to balance should be, that the romulans should still be able to compete in late game with the same basic tactics - meaning: Decloak, snipe out a ship or two in the initial volley(s), cloak again and slowly but consistently win the battles.

The primary method on NOT losing ships is right now quite impossible for romulan players in late games, as the critical mass will just take out the romulan ships without the option to either retreat or to deal a significant attack. I've found, that the romulan ships lack quite some firepower, despite being the sneaky ambushers they used to be.

So my suggestion for game balance would be to take the romulan doctrine into the gameplay, enabling the romulans to get an advantage when the player played intelligent. Right now, in late game the romulans just get overrun by the mass of the enemy.

So, to summarize:
- If losing a ship is not an option, Romulans should be able to refit their ships more than once, to have in late game a fleet to compete (Maybe once by tech-update, once by science update and once via direct-ship/yard update)
- If losing a ship is not an option, give the player a present if he manages to perform that way with having a higher stat-increase via rank-level up and hurt him for losing a ship for having high initial costs for building ships. This way, the player will try to preserve his ships, while other players like dominion or klingons don't care that much if they lost a ship or two

I guess, this could be the way to go for late game on the romulan side.

Edit: This could also bring forth a larger diversity in gameplay. Right now, many species have the same approach on how to play the battle:
1) Build up your initial economy
2) Build a small task force to either defend or to raid the enemy
3) Expand
4) After having a stable economy, you build your final task force to go into the final battle - depending on how you performed early and mid game, you either have the edge on resources to build more ships than the enemy or you destroyed enough enemy ships mid game to still have the advantage

Romulan players have, as far as I see it a more borg-like gameplay for their economy. They expand slowly, but steady. In contrary to the Klingons or the Federation, they are not able to amass a large fleet like the klingons do or to spam the field with warp-ins and self build ships like the federation. Thus they need some kind of progressive evolution.

So, here is the idea:
The romulans build their bases hidden. Stealth, intelligence and superiority - they don't want to lose their ships, thus they should be able to use the ships build at the beginning also late game - as they do not lose them (when played "correctly")
As they lack numbers, they get better stats - but in contrary to the borg, they can löevel up. Where the kilingons use destroyed enemies to build up supplies, the romulans use destroyed enemies to gain ranks, which should be more precious to the romulan player than to any other species. The klingons use their supplies from destroyed enemies to build new ships, the romulans use their ranks to grow.

After a certain rank is gained (double silver, double gold) each time on those levels, the romulan ships are getting the option for a small refit, adding an additional system. This can result in active or passive abilities, better stats etc

(side note: The refit on double gold is not the veteran promotion, you can do that on top of it)

Those refits will cost some resources and as a logical step, you don't want to lose those ships - as you invested time, level-ups, refits-resources and a high amount of initial buildup-resources for those ships.

As the romulan player will only wield a handful of ships, he must decide on proper synergies for his fleet. With the upcoming D'deridex to help staryard vessels to regenerate shields and staryard vessels being able to disable enemy weapon systems, as small romulan fleet can strike terror into the heart of the enemy. They deny answer fire, take out a ship or two and cloak again. If micro management is made well, they could do this also to a larger fleet without the imminent fear to lose a ship.

Still, the romulans must attack to succeed. As the price-to-power value is higher for enemy players, they cannot sit in their base and wait until they have a critical mass, like the dominion does.

Thoughts?

posted on December 29th, 2013, 1:20 am

The single biggest issue with Romulans is that they have no base defenses to speak of. Unlike the Dominion who build turrets and outposts and starbases up the whaazoo the Romulans have useless base defenses which make it easy to take out their facilities compared to taking out a Dominion or Fed or Klingon outpost.

The starbases are very easily destroyed and the turrets are pretty much a joke. The Dominon turrets also suck but they compensate by having those outposts and also the star bases are tougher.

Offense wise I pretty much build mostly Norexans and then use that multip disruptor thingy. The Dderidex make useful bullet sponges shouth so sometimes I decloak them first and let them aborb some of the firepower and specials from the enemy ships and then decloack the Norexans and let them rip. Offensivly I find the Romulasn just fine certianly compared to races like the Feds who just plain suck if you play with anything other than Defiants.

The Dominion do have ridiculously cheap ships adn build times though. THat definitely needs to be addressed as I can spam two fleets of Dominion ships (once I build the prototype of course) in the time it takes to make one fleet of any other race.

posted on February 21st, 2014, 6:50 am

Personally i'd say focus on early game aggression / hit and runs and as always make sure you don't lose any ships lol. Iv just started playing Romulan myself but I find their play style really enjoyable.

posted on February 21st, 2014, 9:30 pm

For Romulans, the key is to make best use of the information gap the cloak can give. Scout everything--their bases, their fleets, what they're building--and try to create the feeling in your opponent that they can't leave a ship to travel solo, or they can't expand, or they can't attack one of your expansions without well-timed retaliation on your part. Harass, raid, try to make it feel like if they can't see you, and so they can't predict where you'll be next.