I have been playing since closed beta of STO, so I have a good grasp of tactics.
Those of you who find it easy, what level did you do it at?? Lvl 50?? Above the intended level??
Between 29-32 or so is when you usually hit it first.
Then usually hit it again at 40.
Then hit it again at 50.
One of those wanting the Singularity Core Mk to match even though the stats don't change. Some of us are quirky that way, lol.
So I've probably done it 12-14 times now, including what I did for that post.
Done it in the following ships: Mogai, D'deridex, Ha'nom, and Ha'feh.
Done it with the following careers: Tac, Eng, and Sci.
also lvl 50 closed beta tester, and have the legacy pack but all refits/retrofits are locked in c-store with buy button greyed out so how are you flying the T'varo retrofit?
I'm a 1000-day veteran. Those accolades transferred to Tribble. At 600-days, you get a free vice-admiral ship token. I used mine to purchase the T'varo Retrofit.
is this a lesson on how to do your mission or are you able to do it yourself without the help as you are supposed to??? since the latter is impossible it just shows that you need to get help from others to try beat the damn thing which only proves the point that you have to grind em down before they kill you which is the whole point of what the op is going on about. again if there was a balance adjustment you wouldnt need to jump through 6 different hoops just to beat it and every other mission you do on your own is not this much trouble, so why start now?
heck the easier and slower way out is to cloak or die and wait for the allied god mode ships to deal with the trouble and that can take upto 30 minutes or longer before you can come out. but why should you have to do that? you are supposed to be destroying the fleet.
Easiest way is to kite (it's not hard) and to have the damage to kill it...which even with the scrap gear we have is easy enough to do.
that should not be happening at all if you are completely reliant on the god mode allies to do your job for you which only proves someone messed up with the map design, quite badly. i am amazed there is no official line if this is the way it shall be on launch and if it is like this officially, then i will give up and watch the nerd rage hit general within a few days...
Consider the number of people that have gone through this particular mission. Consider the number of people that are leaving feedback from testing. Consider the numbers of the people complaining...and the numbers of the people not complaining.
I've never experienced that. Did you bug report it?
Yes, I did bug it, but I keep getting that error that says it can't connect, so who knows if they got it.
The post you quoted was my actually typing as I was doing the mission and making notes.
Ah I see.
Between 29-32 or so is when you usually hit it first.
Then usually hit it again at 40.
Then hit it again at 50.
One of those wanting the Singularity Core Mk to match even though the stats don't change. Some of us are quirky that way, lol.
So I've probably done it 12-14 times now, including what I did for that post.
Done it in the following ships: Mogai, D'deridex, Ha'nom, and Ha'feh.
Done it with the following careers: Tac, Eng, and Sci.
Mobs scale. But you know that.
Yup
It would be one thing if a 50 w/ Rep/Fleet gear, passives, etc, etc, etc were saying it were easy...but I don't think that's the case.
That was the point of my post there...to try to point out where folks might be having issues.
Answers in red.
And it might be tactics, but I have exhausted all mine at this point, unless I'm missing something obvious, but I do not think I am...
Can only hope this will get looked at before it goes live...
is this a lesson on how to do your mission or are you able to do it yourself without the help as you are supposed to??? since the latter is impossible it just shows that you need to get help from others to try beat the damn thing which only proves the point that you have to grind em down before they kill you which is the whole point of what the op is going on about. again if there was a balance adjustment you wouldnt need to jump through 6 different hoops just to beat it and every other mission you do on your own is not this much trouble, so why start now?
call the above what you will i dont care, but it should not be like that at all.
heck the easier and slower way out is to cloak or die and wait for the allied god mode ships to deal with the trouble and that can take upto 30 minutes or longer before you can come out. but why should you have to do that? you are supposed to be destroying the fleet.
that should not be happening at all if you are completely reliant on the god mode allies to do your job for you which only proves someone messed up with the map design, quite badly. i am amazed there is no official line if this is the way it shall be on launch and if it is like this officially, then i will give up and watch the nerd rage hit general within a few days...
Its not impossible, infact my recluse live on my fed engi could probly disrespect the whole pack like I do borg Tac cubes, and still be sitting still to do it.
I did it in my D'd', I died a lot, I found my self the focus of everything as so as I got near the fighting once all the npc's were in a endless repair cycle. my elachi warped in in a tight formation.
I do belive it could use some tweaking, im lucky, the fighting was 48km away form were I was respawning, so I could try a few different tactics. the fighting didn't move on top of my spawn.
Some people are having a easy time with it, and it could be flaws in how the ships are coming in.
If you add up this whole thread though a couple things are very evident. the 3rd wave does have the ability to annihilate the NPC's in short order and put the unkillable ones in almost perma repair cycle. and that once that happens the player becomes the focus of their attention. another is that the repair and support abilities can make the task of taking down the command ship very difficult if they get clumped up.
If you've found methods to take down the fight that's good, consistently, great, but that really dosnt say if 3rd wave needs to be tweaked or not. arguably a enhanced battle cloak ship could sit and just torp the command ship to death, it would work, but it wouldn't mean that the fight is too easy.
I still belive the ship numbers for the final wave just need a bit of tweaking, mostly to bring down their possible, wipe out whole npc fleet in one shot, well a volley of green cones, and but at least they arnt orange ones.
Its also possible other thins are going on, my 3rd wave wasn't really spread out, is was close, my command ship was nestled in it, which is why the cone volley murdered the npc fleet so well. So there is the possibility that something's causing odd spawn ins, as has been suggested, something about how wave 1 and 2 are handled. Personally I murdered them to the last man, both waves, even though the npc's called a retreat while fighting.
And it might be tactics, but I have exhausted all mine at this point, unless I'm missing something obvious, but I do not think I am...
Can only hope this will get looked at before it goes live...
Like I said in that post...it appears that there is a sweet spot. If you miss it, yep - it's going to be a somewhat long affair.
I'm not saying that it doesn't likely need tweaking. But there's a difference between needing tweaking and impossible, eh?
To be honest though, I died more and wanted to give up on the stage right before the commander in the station. Even the commander isn't an issue compared to that stage. Mission leading up to that's fine as well. Then it's like getting hit by an invisitorp lovefest and out of the blue everybody's dead...lol. Kind of reminds me of Skirmish. Been going along your merry way and next thing you know - you've got 5-6 guys all tossing their grenades at the same time. Boom - dead. Respawn - doesn't happen again. Heck, doesn't even always happen.
No, it's not Last Stand. Last Stand can be rough, but it's no big deal.
"The Defense of Romulus" is the final part of Devil's Choice. Once you manage to destroy the big elachi station, you learn that the armada that you sneaked through was actually bound to attack New Romulus, and you fight there. It's three waves too, but it's not the same thing. Most of the concerns raised here concern the third wave during "The Defense of Romulus" objective which by many account is difficult to the point of futility.
are you guys talking about this 'last stand' mission where you defend space station against three waves of elachi?
Devil's Choice...where you return to New Romulus to defend against the three waves of Elachi. Fast attack, move back, Cruisers, move back, Command/Dreads...
I'm a 1000-day veteran. Those accolades transferred to Tribble. At 600-days, you get a free vice-admiral ship token. I used mine to purchase the T'varo Retrofit.
odd I'm lifetime subscriber and have received all the other LTS rewards, maybe a bug for me then on the ship token.
well, I just did last stand
I was flying kamarag with skeleton crew - ie. not all abilities, using crappy reward mk IV-VI guns and shield... just killed them all, yep they did reduced me to 13-17% hull twice, but only because I was sloppy, no death btw and looking forward to Defense of Romuls in that case
"The Defense of New Romulus" is the last objective in the "Devil's Choice" mission. An entirely different animal, and just one of the easier wave in "The Defense of New Romulus" makes anything in Last Stand look trivial.
"The Defense of New Romulus" is the last objective in the "Devil's Choice" mission. An entirely different animal, and just one of the easier wave in "The Defense of New Romulus" makes anything in Last Stand look trivial.
Idk if they comprehend subtly of the fact you just said.
well, I just did last stand
I was flying kamarag with skeleton crew - ie. not all abilities, using crappy reward mk IV-VI guns and shield... just killed them all, yep they did reduced me to 13-17% hull twice, but only because I was sloppy, no death btw and looking forward to Defense of Romuls in that case
Last Stand isn't difficult. If you are careful with your aggro, you can only fight one ship at a time. It's tedious that way, but not hard. Even fighting an entire group, it's just like any other nomral Elachi spawn. It's nothing compared to Defense of New Romulus.
Dunno if I'd say that. Last Stand has lots of 'upgraded' escorts flying around. Didn't notice any 'upgraded' ships in The Defense of New Romulus... swarms and swarms of ships, yes, but all standard grade.
Not that it made much of a difference in that final wave. Ally ships ended up constantly repairing themselves, but still somehow managed to fight and thus continue to draw aggro. Which is probably the only reason I managed to whittle the command ship down over the course of quite a few deaths.
A mission should NOT turn into 'decloak, fire off a few shots, get blown to bits before your can recloak' over and over again... but it did. Because apparently every ship in the Elachi fleet has decided to stop what they were doing and crescent blast my d'deridex out of the void whenever I pop in to take pot shots at... well, anything. And before any of you say anything, no, I was not AoE'ing and thus drawing unnecessary aggro. I was focusing my fire and still having everything pissed at me.
On the whole they're not bad, except that disco light thing they use tends to be a bit annoying. The only thing that really PO's me is that (expletive deleted) crescent power shot thing that completely wipes out your shield and 20% of your hull, that tickes me off to no end.
VADM William "Darkshadow" Shadow | Join Date: Apr 2009 | USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser) VADM RogueshadowIRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit) LT General MorboIKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser) LT General PosuIKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
I have been playing since closed beta of STO, so I have a good grasp of tactics.
Those of you who find it easy, what level did you do it at?? Lvl 50?? Above the intended level??
If so, it should be a bit easier, since you get better ships and equipment...
If not, then I have no clue as to how some finds it to be a cake walk, and others are being ground into tiny little pieces...
Ramming Speed is how I ended up resolving it to be honest. Picked off a few stragglers then when I got the big ships attention blew up in their face. Just got frustrated with waiting for a ship to recover to try to have some focused fire going on.
I really think the bulk of the problem is the vast majority of the support gets vaped immediately by the cones.
I just had my first encounter in "Last Stand" with the Elachi Battleship-Control Ship-Support Ship combo. When I saw the battleship I knew it would be a good fight, but it really was an irritatingly long fight.
I thought I saw the key to ending the engagement; take out the control and support ships and leave the battleship exposed. I took out the support ship quickly and was about to take out the control ship when the battleship repaired it to 50% (no problem, I thought), but no sooner than taking it back down again, the same thing happens. I finally just continued to pound the control ship until it was gone.
Now the battleship was exposed and... it was still able to take damage to make the fight too long, and then... its timer for regenerating more control/support ship rang. I finally decided to settle in for a long drawn out fight (took out the support ship and then just focused on the battleship until I wore it down).
The control ship was pumping out tractor beams mines like a machine gun (the first set seemed to drain away my hull strength (but I was able to recover or the system was bugging out and was giving a false reading).
Overall, I think the fight is OK, but the timers on the abilities are too short (especially the jump ability of the battleship which was able to jump almost every time I tried to use eject warp plasma on it). The fight takes forever to complete with the current setup.
The mentioned Elachi mission(s) are not too difficult for the average player. It just shows that PvE was so easy so far that some never ever learned to play better than that.
This applies to "Last Stand" and "Defense of New Romulus", the latter being much harder.
Both missions are very much doable in a white-geared, one Mk lower than possible stuff equipped D'deridex which isn't a great ship to begin with. Yes, I got killed twice, big deal...?
I actually found Last Stand more difficult as my ship was a total underperformer.
Defense of New Romulus will certainly get toned down. I hope it doesn't become totally nerfed in the process. It is only difficult for players who also find shooting the asteroids in "Night of the Comet" too hard. This means players who don't even try harder but rather cry wolf and nerf nerf here instead of bothering to improve their own ship and their understanding and skill at playing the game.
No worries, it will get nerfed. In the meantime people can work on their BOFF layout, weapon and console setup and maybe this will open them an entirely new dimension of gameplay rather than just putting randomly putting stuff on their ship and believing that it is effective. How about that.
ok, finally I got to this infamous "Defense of New Romulus", sure I died, seven times I beleve, but difficulty is not an issue here, the AI setup is and I can understand how playing it through could be annoying - being only viable target on map gives you life expectancy of a fish out of water, but seriously, I totally agree with longasc, just use brains instead of whining it's all that is required here, learning the basics of a game also should help
The mentioned Elachi mission(s) are not too difficult for the average player. It just shows that PvE was so easy so far that some never ever learned to play better than that.
This applies to "Last Stand" and "Defense of New Romulus", the latter being much harder.
Both missions are very much doable in a white-geared, one Mk lower than possible stuff equipped D'deridex which isn't a great ship to begin with. Yes, I got killed twice, big deal...?
I actually found Last Stand more difficult as my ship was a total underperformer.
Defense of New Romulus will certainly get toned down. I hope it doesn't become totally nerfed in the process. It is only difficult for players who also find shooting the asteroids in "Night of the Comet" too hard. This means players who don't even try harder but rather cry wolf and nerf nerf here instead of bothering to improve their own ship and their understanding and skill at playing the game.
No worries, it will get nerfed. In the meantime people can work on their BOFF layout, weapon and console setup and maybe this will open them an entirely new dimension of gameplay rather than just putting randomly putting stuff on their ship and believing that it is effective. How about that.
ok, finally I got to this infamous "Defense of New Romulus", sure I died, seven times I beleve, but difficulty is not an issue here, the AI setup is and I can understand how playing it through could be annoying - being only viable target on map gives you life expectancy of a fish out of water, but seriously, I totally agree with longasc, just use brains instead of whining it's all that is required here, learning the basics of a game also should help
Now look, I find the tone is these two posts a bit down putting.
Sure learning the game/tactics is important, but a good deal of the players in this thread have been here from closed beta or shortly after launch. I think it is safe to say that those of us who have been with the game a long time, knows what works and what does not.
So, the romulan ships might take some getting used to, but they are not that different from the existing ships currently in-game.
Problem is that up until "Defense of New Romulus", the missions are do able, with some being more of a challenge that others. But the final wave in this mission is a leap in difficulty unlike any other mission I have seen in this game, with the exception of "Into the Hive " STF missions, but these are meant to be hard being STF with 5 players.. In "Defense of New Romulus" you are alone in a mission that is toeing the STF teritory in terms of difficulty as it sits now on Tribble.
So this mission needs looking at, but do not get me wrong, I do not want it on a silver platter. This is the last mission in the Vengeance story line, and it should be a bit of a challenge, but not borderline impossible. New players will no doubt feel like it's utterly impossible, since nothing can really prepare you for the leap in difficulty.
Is it the NPC AI?? Possibly, but I also think it's the total number of Elachi ships that is the main problem we are seeing. You have dreadnoughts, battleships, escort ships and fighters.
The dreadnought is as mentiond in this thread bad enough alone, but all the other ships with abilities fiering of like fireworks, means the player is getting mauled.
And the fact that some are finding this mission easy-ish, and some are finding it to be nearly impossible, means that a balance pass is needed. I'm not asking for a nerf, but rather a balance pass being made to the Elachi ships in the final wave.
This mission should as I said above still be a challenge, being the final mission in the Vengeance arc and all, but it should not be almost STF like in difficulty level...
I entirely concur with Otowi. I'm also kind of offended that the feedback we give it interpreted as whining, rather than us giving our feedback on testing.
You think getting blown up several times in the last leg of a mission offering grueling difficulty in this one spot would have me whine? Think again. If I'd have anything to whine about, it's giving my feedback and not being taken seriously, and being made light of.
What makes your opinion so much better than ours? How about some respect for your fellow posters whom - just like you - enjoy this game and want it to be good; rather than shove them down and deride them to give your opinion more relevancy?
I do think this needs to be fixed, but I don't want it to get too easy either. I think the way to do that is change the non-dying mechanic of the allied ships to the "eternal-1-hit-point" rather than place them in a repair cycle, and have some ships in the Romulan Republic force also be replaced with named unkillable ships such as the R.R.W. Deihu.
The trick here is not to detract from the big space battle and its dangers, so much as preventing the player to be overwhelmed.
well take a look at the first post in this thread, this is the attitude I call whining
about experience and stuff a year ago I was as clueless as most "rainbow&skittles" builds that fly around, but I did take effort and read about tactics, about mechanics etc. plus I didn't post a single comment about stuff I was green about, not until I got my main character up to 100% STF Elite achievements, because that's basically what separates good player from average, and IMO if someone should be qualified to have opinion about stuff like nerfing is experienced player not a newbie who don't see the whole picture
PS if you took offence in what I said it's entirely you choice
My assessment of the Defense of New Romuls mission is that it's not working as intended. I'm sure it's quite possible to beat the mission, since some around here have done so. I don't care. It can't be intended that the allies show up and are promptly wiped out so fast that they're completely useless. Oh, yes, there are still technically a few allied ships left, but they're all constantly in repair mode. It can't be intended that I somehow have to take out a control ship that's surrounded by a sea of powerful ships all by myself.
It doesn't matter what my build or fighting tactics are. That's not the issue. The mission is currently broken, and it needs to be fixed.
I still firmly belive its a just a number of ships adjustment.
There are not tactics the elachi use that arn't counterable, unlike say, invisible borg death torps, which I havnt seen in awhile, and even the spider tanking can be gotten around.
I really do think this is more about the shear number of ships and how easy it is for them to wipe the npc's and then focus the player. and that adjusting how large the wave is, or even possibly how it comes in, spreading it out a bit more, might solve most of the problems.
A story line mission shouldn't feel like I'm in a elite hive, an this has the ability to quickly slide into that area.
I entirely concur with Otowi. I'm also kind of offended that the feedback we give it interpreted as whining, rather than us giving our feedback on testing.
You think getting blown up several times in the last leg of a mission offering grueling difficulty in this one spot would have me whine? Think again. If I'd have anything to whine about, it's giving my feedback and not being taken seriously, and being made light of.
What makes your opinion so much better than ours? How about some respect for your fellow posters whom - just like you - enjoy this game and want it to be good; rather than shove them down and deride them to give your opinion more relevancy?
I do think this needs to be fixed, but I don't want it to get too easy either. I think the way to do that is change the non-dying mechanic of the allied ships to the "eternal-1-hit-point" rather than place them in a repair cycle, and have some ships in the Romulan Republic force also be replaced with named unkillable ships such as the R.R.W. Deihu.
The trick here is not to detract from the big space battle and its dangers, so much as preventing the player to be overwhelmed.
The purpose of my previous posts was to explain how this mission is beatable. Yes, I think that many of the people who posted about dying repeatedly were doing it wrong. the purpose of my posts was to explain how to do it RIGHT.
But that being said, I do think this mission is a little too hard. Not a LOT just a little.
I get on STO 2 to 4 times a week and the third wave of Elachi in Defense of New Romulus kept me in respawn limbo to the point I considered skipping the mission out of frustration. For the people who got by the mission congrats I salute you but when I did the mission I managed to get 1 command ship down to 88% hull then died the first time and the ship had completely healed by the time I had respawned and as I do not consider myself a casual player (I play too often imho) this portion of the mission is too difficult for casual players. I am not asking for the mission to be handed to us on a dilithium platter but making the flotilla unkillible may be just the thing to balance this mission giving the Elachi more targets than just the player because who wants to get VM'd then hit by 5 cone weapons (what is the name of that weapon) because the VM took your engines off line and to stay alive you had used your engineering team or science team before hand.
When we hit it on live we are planning on bringing along Fleet support (specifically a mine layer and torpedo destroyer)
Teams can rock their socks off
Comments
I've never experienced that. Did you bug report it?
The post you quoted was my actually typing as I was doing the mission and making notes.
Between 29-32 or so is when you usually hit it first.
Then usually hit it again at 40.
Then hit it again at 50.
One of those wanting the Singularity Core Mk to match even though the stats don't change. Some of us are quirky that way, lol.
So I've probably done it 12-14 times now, including what I did for that post.
Done it in the following ships: Mogai, D'deridex, Ha'nom, and Ha'feh.
Done it with the following careers: Tac, Eng, and Sci.
Mobs scale. But you know that.
It would be one thing if a 50 w/ Rep/Fleet gear, passives, etc, etc, etc were saying it were easy...but I don't think that's the case.
That was the point of my post there...to try to point out where folks might be having issues.
I'm a 1000-day veteran. Those accolades transferred to Tribble. At 600-days, you get a free vice-admiral ship token. I used mine to purchase the T'varo Retrofit.
I've had more difficulty with other missions.
I'd call it opinion. Since opinions vary, whether it should or should not be something like that will vary as well.
Easiest way is to kite (it's not hard) and to have the damage to kill it...which even with the scrap gear we have is easy enough to do.
Consider the number of people that have gone through this particular mission. Consider the number of people that are leaving feedback from testing. Consider the numbers of the people complaining...and the numbers of the people not complaining.
Just saying...
Answers in red.
And it might be tactics, but I have exhausted all mine at this point, unless I'm missing something obvious, but I do not think I am...
Can only hope this will get looked at before it goes live...
Its not impossible, infact my recluse live on my fed engi could probly disrespect the whole pack like I do borg Tac cubes, and still be sitting still to do it.
I did it in my D'd', I died a lot, I found my self the focus of everything as so as I got near the fighting once all the npc's were in a endless repair cycle. my elachi warped in in a tight formation.
I do belive it could use some tweaking, im lucky, the fighting was 48km away form were I was respawning, so I could try a few different tactics. the fighting didn't move on top of my spawn.
Some people are having a easy time with it, and it could be flaws in how the ships are coming in.
If you add up this whole thread though a couple things are very evident. the 3rd wave does have the ability to annihilate the NPC's in short order and put the unkillable ones in almost perma repair cycle. and that once that happens the player becomes the focus of their attention. another is that the repair and support abilities can make the task of taking down the command ship very difficult if they get clumped up.
If you've found methods to take down the fight that's good, consistently, great, but that really dosnt say if 3rd wave needs to be tweaked or not. arguably a enhanced battle cloak ship could sit and just torp the command ship to death, it would work, but it wouldn't mean that the fight is too easy.
I still belive the ship numbers for the final wave just need a bit of tweaking, mostly to bring down their possible, wipe out whole npc fleet in one shot, well a volley of green cones, and but at least they arnt orange ones.
Its also possible other thins are going on, my 3rd wave wasn't really spread out, is was close, my command ship was nestled in it, which is why the cone volley murdered the npc fleet so well. So there is the possibility that something's causing odd spawn ins, as has been suggested, something about how wave 1 and 2 are handled. Personally I murdered them to the last man, both waves, even though the npc's called a retreat while fighting.
Like I said in that post...it appears that there is a sweet spot. If you miss it, yep - it's going to be a somewhat long affair.
I'm not saying that it doesn't likely need tweaking. But there's a difference between needing tweaking and impossible, eh?
To be honest though, I died more and wanted to give up on the stage right before the commander in the station. Even the commander isn't an issue compared to that stage. Mission leading up to that's fine as well. Then it's like getting hit by an invisitorp lovefest and out of the blue everybody's dead...lol. Kind of reminds me of Skirmish. Been going along your merry way and next thing you know - you've got 5-6 guys all tossing their grenades at the same time. Boom - dead. Respawn - doesn't happen again. Heck, doesn't even always happen.
Yes that's the one
"The Defense of Romulus" is the final part of Devil's Choice. Once you manage to destroy the big elachi station, you learn that the armada that you sneaked through was actually bound to attack New Romulus, and you fight there. It's three waves too, but it's not the same thing. Most of the concerns raised here concern the third wave during "The Defense of Romulus" objective which by many account is difficult to the point of futility.
Devil's Choice...where you return to New Romulus to defend against the three waves of Elachi. Fast attack, move back, Cruisers, move back, Command/Dreads...
odd I'm lifetime subscriber and have received all the other LTS rewards, maybe a bug for me then on the ship token.
I was flying kamarag with skeleton crew - ie. not all abilities, using crappy reward mk IV-VI guns and shield... just killed them all, yep they did reduced me to 13-17% hull twice, but only because I was sloppy, no death btw and looking forward to Defense of Romuls in that case
"The Defense of New Romulus" is the last objective in the "Devil's Choice" mission. An entirely different animal, and just one of the easier wave in "The Defense of New Romulus" makes anything in Last Stand look trivial.
Idk if they comprehend subtly of the fact you just said.
so i will give it a go
THIS IS NOT LAST STAND!!!!
Ok lets see if the point gets across now
Last Stand isn't difficult. If you are careful with your aggro, you can only fight one ship at a time. It's tedious that way, but not hard. Even fighting an entire group, it's just like any other nomral Elachi spawn. It's nothing compared to Defense of New Romulus.
Not that it made much of a difference in that final wave. Ally ships ended up constantly repairing themselves, but still somehow managed to fight and thus continue to draw aggro. Which is probably the only reason I managed to whittle the command ship down over the course of quite a few deaths.
A mission should NOT turn into 'decloak, fire off a few shots, get blown to bits before your can recloak' over and over again... but it did. Because apparently every ship in the Elachi fleet has decided to stop what they were doing and crescent blast my d'deridex out of the void whenever I pop in to take pot shots at... well, anything. And before any of you say anything, no, I was not AoE'ing and thus drawing unnecessary aggro. I was focusing my fire and still having everything pissed at me.
USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser)
VADM Rogueshadow IRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit)
LT General Morbo IKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser)
LT General Posu IKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
Ramming Speed is how I ended up resolving it to be honest. Picked off a few stragglers then when I got the big ships attention blew up in their face. Just got frustrated with waiting for a ship to recover to try to have some focused fire going on.
I really think the bulk of the problem is the vast majority of the support gets vaped immediately by the cones.
I thought I saw the key to ending the engagement; take out the control and support ships and leave the battleship exposed. I took out the support ship quickly and was about to take out the control ship when the battleship repaired it to 50% (no problem, I thought), but no sooner than taking it back down again, the same thing happens. I finally just continued to pound the control ship until it was gone.
Now the battleship was exposed and... it was still able to take damage to make the fight too long, and then... its timer for regenerating more control/support ship rang. I finally decided to settle in for a long drawn out fight (took out the support ship and then just focused on the battleship until I wore it down).
The control ship was pumping out tractor beams mines like a machine gun (the first set seemed to drain away my hull strength (but I was able to recover or the system was bugging out and was giving a false reading).
Overall, I think the fight is OK, but the timers on the abilities are too short (especially the jump ability of the battleship which was able to jump almost every time I tried to use eject warp plasma on it). The fight takes forever to complete with the current setup.
This applies to "Last Stand" and "Defense of New Romulus", the latter being much harder.
Both missions are very much doable in a white-geared, one Mk lower than possible stuff equipped D'deridex which isn't a great ship to begin with. Yes, I got killed twice, big deal...?
I actually found Last Stand more difficult as my ship was a total underperformer.
Defense of New Romulus will certainly get toned down. I hope it doesn't become totally nerfed in the process. It is only difficult for players who also find shooting the asteroids in "Night of the Comet" too hard. This means players who don't even try harder but rather cry wolf and nerf nerf here instead of bothering to improve their own ship and their understanding and skill at playing the game.
No worries, it will get nerfed. In the meantime people can work on their BOFF layout, weapon and console setup and maybe this will open them an entirely new dimension of gameplay rather than just putting randomly putting stuff on their ship and believing that it is effective. How about that.
Now look, I find the tone is these two posts a bit down putting.
Sure learning the game/tactics is important, but a good deal of the players in this thread have been here from closed beta or shortly after launch. I think it is safe to say that those of us who have been with the game a long time, knows what works and what does not.
So, the romulan ships might take some getting used to, but they are not that different from the existing ships currently in-game.
Problem is that up until "Defense of New Romulus", the missions are do able, with some being more of a challenge that others. But the final wave in this mission is a leap in difficulty unlike any other mission I have seen in this game, with the exception of "Into the Hive " STF missions, but these are meant to be hard being STF with 5 players.. In "Defense of New Romulus" you are alone in a mission that is toeing the STF teritory in terms of difficulty as it sits now on Tribble.
So this mission needs looking at, but do not get me wrong, I do not want it on a silver platter. This is the last mission in the Vengeance story line, and it should be a bit of a challenge, but not borderline impossible. New players will no doubt feel like it's utterly impossible, since nothing can really prepare you for the leap in difficulty.
Is it the NPC AI?? Possibly, but I also think it's the total number of Elachi ships that is the main problem we are seeing. You have dreadnoughts, battleships, escort ships and fighters.
The dreadnought is as mentiond in this thread bad enough alone, but all the other ships with abilities fiering of like fireworks, means the player is getting mauled.
And the fact that some are finding this mission easy-ish, and some are finding it to be nearly impossible, means that a balance pass is needed. I'm not asking for a nerf, but rather a balance pass being made to the Elachi ships in the final wave.
This mission should as I said above still be a challenge, being the final mission in the Vengeance arc and all, but it should not be almost STF like in difficulty level...
I entirely concur with Otowi. I'm also kind of offended that the feedback we give it interpreted as whining, rather than us giving our feedback on testing.
You think getting blown up several times in the last leg of a mission offering grueling difficulty in this one spot would have me whine? Think again. If I'd have anything to whine about, it's giving my feedback and not being taken seriously, and being made light of.
What makes your opinion so much better than ours? How about some respect for your fellow posters whom - just like you - enjoy this game and want it to be good; rather than shove them down and deride them to give your opinion more relevancy?
I do think this needs to be fixed, but I don't want it to get too easy either. I think the way to do that is change the non-dying mechanic of the allied ships to the "eternal-1-hit-point" rather than place them in a repair cycle, and have some ships in the Romulan Republic force also be replaced with named unkillable ships such as the R.R.W. Deihu.
The trick here is not to detract from the big space battle and its dangers, so much as preventing the player to be overwhelmed.
about experience and stuff a year ago I was as clueless as most "rainbow&skittles" builds that fly around, but I did take effort and read about tactics, about mechanics etc. plus I didn't post a single comment about stuff I was green about, not until I got my main character up to 100% STF Elite achievements, because that's basically what separates good player from average, and IMO if someone should be qualified to have opinion about stuff like nerfing is experienced player not a newbie who don't see the whole picture
PS if you took offence in what I said it's entirely you choice
It doesn't matter what my build or fighting tactics are. That's not the issue. The mission is currently broken, and it needs to be fixed.
There are not tactics the elachi use that arn't counterable, unlike say, invisible borg death torps, which I havnt seen in awhile, and even the spider tanking can be gotten around.
I really do think this is more about the shear number of ships and how easy it is for them to wipe the npc's and then focus the player. and that adjusting how large the wave is, or even possibly how it comes in, spreading it out a bit more, might solve most of the problems.
A story line mission shouldn't feel like I'm in a elite hive, an this has the ability to quickly slide into that area.
But that being said, I do think this mission is a little too hard. Not a LOT just a little.
My character Tsin'xing
Teams can rock their socks off