Impossible Mission ... one of the many -_-'

avengerkid1993

Hi guys ... once again cryptic guys give us an impossible mission -_-
the one which you must defend new romulus from the elachi fleet


1 - you don' have good weapons to damage enemy dreadnoughts shield
2 - they give us 3 DREADNOUGHTS to face at the same time ...
3 - considering the rank, we cannot have a good ship
4 - feds and kilks reinforcements sucks
5 - romulan ships slowly disappear
6 - you die every 5 seconds

so cryptic guys ... WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING ?
how can we wn this battle ?

velktra

It's tough (and a lot of us think it's at least a little broken), but it's winnable. It just takes a long time to beat it.

1 - People are going to ask what kind of weapons, how rare they are, and what level they are. If you use the piercing tetryon (I think you should have those by now), the beam will do hull damage, essentially bypassing the shields. I used normal plasma and plasma-disruptor hybrids, which took a while but eventually did the job.

2 - Ignore the two that just say "dreadnaught" and go after the command ship. I haven't tried this myself, but a lot of people are reporting better success by ignoring the other ships and only attacking the command ship.

3 - I completed the mission in a Mogai. Don't blame the ship. By the time you get to this mission, you should have the option of using the D'deridex (slow, but powerful). If you have enough dilithium, you can also buy a ship from the faction you're allied with.

4 - You're right. The allied ships are pretty useless. This is one of the problems a lot of us have with the mission.

5 - Right again. Another problem a lot of us have with the mission.

6 - You might die a lot on the mission just due to the huge number of Elachi ships you're facing, especially if you're not up to level 30 yet somehow. But it's possible to complete it if you keep at it. I'm not saying it'll be fun, but it's possible.

markhawkman

1: Caustic plasma works wonders here! Elachi hate plasma fires, their ships have relatively weak hulls. IIRC you get it in one of the previous missions. (In case anyone is wondering Caustic Plasma does the same a mount of damage with the DoT, but the DoT burns faster.)

2: When I did this I just massacred Elachi ships until the command ship finally died.... I think the NPCs killed it for me while I kept the Elachi fleet distracted.

3: define "good"... I did it at 39 in a D'D.

4: my strategy was to keep the Elachi fleet focuesd on me thus keeping the NPC allies in relatively good health... not sure it actually worked, but the Command ship eventually died.

5: only a few of the allied ships are actually unkillable. If you let them get shot up in the first two waves you're gonna have a harder time in wave 3.

6: just keep killing Elachi and the mission will eventually end. Might take a while but it'll get there eventually.

stealthrider

I did this mission earlier today on Elite difficulty at level 47 with common Mk IX gear. I only died from mistakes that I had made (such as battle cloaking with a torpedo on my tail).

It is only difficult if you do not know what you are doing. For example, if you're using the default weapon setup on your ships, if you're using the horrible Boff build the game gives you by default, if you're tryingto take out the command ship while there are still escorts flying around, if you're not using battle cloak and singularity powers effectively, etc.

Here's how to beat this mission reliably.

1) Outfit your ship with Dual heavy Cannons in front and turrets in the rear.

2) Set up your Boffs so that you have the following.
-Tactical Team 1 and Cannon Rapid Fire 1
-Two copies of Emergency Power to Shields and one copy of Emergency to Weapons, Engines or Aux
-Transfer Shield Strength and Hazard Emitters, one at level 1 and one at level 2
-Either Aceton Beam 3 or Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field 3

No, you can't set them up suboptimally for this mission. You can't use beam broadsides with Fire at Will and torpedoes with High Yield. You need Tactical Team to redistribute your shields, you need Emergency to SHields to keep your shield damage resistance up and you need Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength to top yourself off, with Auxiliary to Structural and/or Aceton Beam to keep damage against you low. You may also want Reverse Shield Polarity for the same reason.

3) Set your power levels to 100/15/30/15 or 100/15/15/30. You need the weapon power and either speed/turnrate or heal strength.

4) Use cloak to get into 3km of your target ship, pop Rapid Fire and decloak. Kill the ship quickly, then cloak again and move on to your next target. Use Warp Shadows, Singularity Jump and Quantum Absorbtion if you start to take heavy damage.

5) Focus on escorts first, then battleships, then the command ship. If you see the cone of death, move away. Use Evasive maneuvers, Singularity Jump or Emergency to Engines to help if you need it. It deals energy damage, so do not waste Brace for Impact.

Follow this strategy and the mission is a cakewalk. Even on Elite it isn't so difficult if you play it smart.

quintaris

I had fun doing this mission earlier today. Only died once.

I was flying a Sao Paulo, with the caustic plasma cannons, the piercing tetryon cannons, the quad phasers, and the bio-molecular warhead.

CSV, TS, and APB helped immensely.

warpangel

You have to destroy ONE (1) dreadnought. The mission doesn't make this overly clear. It speaks of "the command ship," but doesn't tell you this really means "any command ship." Make sure you focus on a single one. When you die, find the same one you were shooting before and keep at it, eventually it's going to run out of hitpoints.

The NPC ships are useless in the last battle, the cannon fodder will be wiped out and the invincible named ships will be repairing themselves the whole time.

duaths1

warpangel wrote: »

You have to destroy ONE (1) dreadnought. The mission doesn't make this overly clear. It speaks of "the command ship," but doesn't tell you this really means "any command ship." Make sure you focus on a single one. When you die, find the same one you were shooting before and keep at it, eventually it's going to run out of hitpoints.

The NPC ships are useless in the last battle, the cannon fodder will be wiped out and the invincible named ships will be repairing themselves the whole time.

this. you don't need any special weapons, you'll just die a couple of times. the dmg you did to the capital ship will NOT be healed.

have fun!

gpgtx

it healed when i did

fhicks

I have played this mission and it doesn't matter that you ignore the other ships and go after the command ship the other ships will simply attack you from all sides and your done in less than 30 seconds. I tried that several times this is just as the OP said an impossible mission. Plus the weapons you have don't even put a dent in the command ships shields. What sucks is all your allies and reinforcements get wiped out so fast it doesn't help you with the mission.

velktra

warpangel wrote: »

You have to destroy ONE (1) dreadnought. The mission doesn't make this overly clear. It speaks of "the command ship," but doesn't tell you this really means "any command ship." Make sure you focus on a single one. When you die, find the same one you were shooting before and keep at it, eventually it's going to run out of hitpoints.

The NPC ships are useless in the last battle, the cannon fodder will be wiped out and the invincible named ships will be repairing themselves the whole time.

I wish people would stop spreading this blatantly false information. There is one command ship; the other two are just dreadnaughts. You can tell by looking at the name of the ships. Two of them are named "Elachi Dreadnaught" and the command ship is named "Elachi Command Ship."

Killing one of the ships labeled "Elachi Dreadnaught" does not end the mission. I killed them both before I even found the command ship.

pweistheworst

Although I'm one of the players who thinks the default difficulty on this mission NEEDS to be nerfed so casual players can enjoy it (serious players can always increase the difficulty), there is really only one way to play that level without getting killed a bunch of times:

1) Immediately cloak after the battle begins.

2) Turn port or starboard and move to the flank of the enemy fleet.

3) Target the smaller ships on the outer edge of the fleet and DO NOT engage larger ships or attempt to enter the center of the enemy fleet formation.

4) De-cloak and engage the smaller, outlying ships.

5) Cloak and withdraw when you are damaged, then heal up and repeat steps 3-5 until the fleet has been destroyed.

Yes, there are other tactics to beat the enemy fleet but that seems to be the easiest.

pennstateit

This mission is difficult but in no way impossible. For once this mmo is giving us a challenge instead of feeding us cake. enjoy it, use your brain, and win.

powerpruetz

pweistheworst wrote: »

Yes, there are other tactics to beat the enemy fleet but that seems to be the easiest.

Easiest? Well...

1) Cloak
2) Approach the dreadnoughts until they notice you and start following
3) Draw them sufficiently far away from the command ship
4) Grab a drink and wait until your allies kill the command ship

4) can take a while, depending on how much support is left near the command ship. If the command ship is more or less alone, I'd guess ~10 minutes.

Finished without firing a single shot.

pweistheworst

powerpruetz wrote: »

Finished without firing a single shot.

Okay. You win.

:P

outlaw3066

pennstateit wrote: »

This mission is difficult but in no way impossible. For once this mmo is giving us a challenge instead of feeding us cake. enjoy it, use your brain, and win.

Im sorry if i want a challenge ill go join an elite STF, there is no reason that a storyline mission, one required to advance in rank should be this difficult. The problem is that this mission is so difficult that it will discourage any player who has just installed the game, and has been playing solid for the past few days. I have no issue with challenge, but when you fly into a fight and you are being primaried by about 10 special attacks that not only drop your shields but also decimate your hull, something is incredibly wrong with the mission design. If you ask me its a symptom of cryptic not even testing the content they put in, half a**ing it and saying that it works fine.

stealthrider

It's not the mission design that's the problem, it's the fact that players are stupid. They use default weapons with their default boffs and don't upgrade any of their consoles, shields or anything else.

It is not a difficult mission by any stretch so long as you play intelligently. That means not going in with three different damage types, four different weapon types, default power levels and horribly unoptomized boff setups (see: the default skills your boffs come with). There have been numerous strategies posted in this thread, all of them will work on normal difficulty. Some will even work on Advanced or Elite difficulty, even with common gear.

Rainbow boats and stupid play will of course make the mission impossible.

pweistheworst

stealthrider wrote: »

It's not the mission design that's the problem, it's the fact that players are stupid. They use default weapons with their default boffs and don't upgrade any of their consoles, shields or anything else.

It is not a difficult mission by any stretch so long as you play intelligently. That means not going in with three different damage types, four different weapon types, default power levels and horribly unoptomized boff setups (see: the default skills your boffs come with). There have been numerous strategies posted in this thread, all of them will work on normal difficulty. Some will even work on Advanced or Elite difficulty, even with common gear.

Rainbow boats and stupid play will of course make the mission impossible.

WOW. You made an awful lot of assumptions there about other players.

The first time I played the Defense of Romulus mission I had a very well-equipped Warbird from the Legacy Pack, loaded with every possible singularity console, highest-spec engines/deflector/shields that were available for my rank at the time, all plasma weapons, BOff with skills maxed and DOffs on duty to supplement my tactical abilities. Power was set to weapons for maximum DPS.

That first time I played the mission I went in using the same tactics that I used in ship combat for the previous Romulan levels and I still DIED repeatedly until I changed my tactics ... and frankly, had to change them to what I consider to be BORING game play tactics.

Most of the strategies I've read in this thread and others that have requested the devs nerf this mission are strategies that involve various forms of hanging out at the edges of the fleet and picking off strays or retreating and drawing enemies away so the NPC ships can destroy the command ship so you don't have to do anything.

If those are the primary "winning" strategies then that's just proof that the mission stinks. There's nothing fun about circling the fleet and having limited opportunities to engage enemy ships without being destroyed.

quintaris

I basically used the same set up for dealing with this mission as my level 50s do.

EptS x2
TT
APB
CSVx2
TSx2
A2SIF

HE and TSS for heals. EM for escaping cones. Whenever they came off cool down, pop my various Sci cap powers.

Since I was in Sao Paulo, I didn't have a cloaking device.

Gear was:

Fore: Quad Phasers, Caustic Plasma DHC MK8, Piercing Tetryon DC MK6, Biomolecular Warhead Mk 6
Aft: 1 green Plasma Turret MK6, 1 white Plasma Turret MK6
Deflector: Green Tachyon MK7
Shields: Blue Shield Array MK8
Impulse: Dynamic Reroute Impulse MK6
Warp Core: Generic MK6

Tac Consoles: 1 blue Plasma Infuser MK4, 1 white Plasma Infuser MK7
Sci Consoles: 1 green Shield Emitter Amp MK6
Eng Consoles: 1 white Ablative Armor MK7, 1 green Monotanium Alloy MK7, 1 blue SIF generator MK7

It was time consuming, but could be done without anything fancy.

catrie

I'm trying to do this on a level 36 tac officer. I spent an hour on it, slowly killing the ships. Apparently, I died too many times, because the last time, the enemy ships didn't show up on the map. Instead, I flew to where I had been before, only to find 2 frigates. Every time I killed a frigate, another one would spawn and take it's place.

Eventually, an escort ship showed up. Once again, every time I killed it, another would take it's place. I finally decided to let them kill me, so I could see if the main body of enemies showed up on the map. When I rezzed, the 2 frigates and escort were waiting on me and immediately fired. I cloaked, and flew around the entire map and didn't find the main group.

I spent over an hour on the mission and will now have to attempt it yet again, to try to complete it.

shepard31

I did this in my Mogai (no Fail Whale for me, thank you).

Rommie ships died within seconds, and allied ships died as soon as they repaired.

After about an hour of charging at the command ship, guns blazing, did I kill it. I'd die after about 10 seconds, of course, after about 30 superguns had targeted me.

It's a MAJOR pain in the TRIBBLE mission.