Help With the Haakona

ggg247

I recently got a Haakona ship on my level 50 Science Romulan, as I want her to fly cruisers. I have a level 50 Fed who flies the Ambassador, and its great. However, I'm kind of stuck when playing with with the Haakona, in that I'm just not sure how to fly it.

I play exclusively PvE, and do a lot of Fleet Alert missions for FMs. Typically, I use my cruisers to keep npcs angry with me so they leave Sci and Escorts alone, plus do some nice damage to them. I use a lot of FAW and I like to charge into the middle of a group, hit Eject Warp Plasma, and then open up with FAW to really keep npcs wrapped up.

The Haakona appealed to me because it allows me to break the ship into 2 parts and maneuver around almost like an Escort. This is where I'm stuck.

Do I continue to treat my ship as a cruiser, or do I fly more like an Escort?

Also, my hull has 40,000 as a single ship. Does it stay that way when split up, or does it drop considerably?

Currently, my weapons loadout has 3 beams, 2 DHC, 2 torps, and a single turret. It seems really weird that way. The ship flies like an almost-Escort, but has capabilities of an almost-cruiser.

I'm not looking to min-max or anything, but I just can't seem to feel comfortable flying this thing, and I know the problem is me, not the ship. Any advice on basic strategy for best running this ship would be helpful.

All beams like a cruiser? All cannons like an Escort? This oddball combination I have now?

HELP! lol

marc8219

When you split the Haakona the escort module loses hull and gains maneuverability, but you still keep your boff skills, so you will have all the heals of a cruiser. Use that maneuverability to spread your warp plasma around more.

Better to go all beams or all DHC and turrets though, you lose damage by mixing those weapons. Try both with cheap weapons to see what suits your style best.

reginamala78

With the universal LtCmdr station, the Loadout system, and battlecloak, you can do both fairly easily. A load of beam arrays and an engineer universal when operating like a cruiser, then an alternate loadout for when you separate with a setup of DHCs and tactical universal. You've got a highly flexible ship, so why not take advantage of it?

janus1975

Romulan ships do not fit that easily into the "Escort/cruiser/sci" model of Federation ships. If you avoid trying to make them fit that particular approach and look at them on their own, it becomes easier.

Background: Romulan ships instead come in different sizes from tiny T'Varos to huge Haakonas, and which are all warbirds but "leaning towards" reliance on those different skills (tac/sci/eng). The difference from Federation (or KDF) approach is that they have battle cloak, improved turnrate while cloaked, all can fit cannons, and are designed to be sneaky with lots of 'hit and run' and 'confuse. Note as well, that Romulan toons already have something like 150 points in cloak before you even start.

My setup: I like to play the game in true ST style so I know I limit myself with heal skills and fun science things, rather than focussing on DPS for some sort of "ultimate build". With that in mind, I've set up my Romulan engie to fly the D'Deridex and she also has a lot of fun in the Haakona. To make it work I've got skills and traits which are exclusively space-based. This allows for a turnrate good enough to use a single DHC plus dual beam banks and borg plasma torps front, and three single beams plus rom plasma torp out back. Compared to any of my Fed or KDF setups it's totally bizarre, but what it delivers is the ability to uncloak, go towards the enemy firing away, then using Evasive to spin around, throw a few rom torps and cloak, to get back to start position. Buffed, the DD has a turnrate of about 38 degrees uncloaked and 48 degrees cloaked and IIRC the loaded Haakona was fairly similar. Hull is worse than a comparable Fed/KDF ship so I've found things like Haz Emitters a must to clean off the hull before cloak.

The point is that the Rom Warbird seems to work best if you approach it as a "sneaky aggressive predator" that runs when trouble comes rather than trying to do something like tanky beamboating. They just don't seem to tank very well compared to Fed ships.

noroblad

I like the haakona class. You can do whatever you want with it, up to a point.

My advice is to use the mode that makes the most sense for your current tasks or mood. It excels as an escort: all that engineering feeding power to 8 weapons is significant. It is decent when assembled, as a tank, lacking hull and shields of a true tank but still more than capable of good performance as a broadside ship or dual beam bank frontal assault. It is worst as a sci ship -- 8 weapons and no tac skills to support them if you use ltcmdr as sci -- but it still is reasonably capable.

There are a bunch of things you *could* do. You could have multiple weapon sets, and as many as 4 officers for that (ltcmdr sci, tac-cannon, tac-beam, and maybe tac-projectile) or you could have a generic dual beam bank setup with 2 officers (sci and beam). Or you can forget sci entirely and just run a tac officer.

The one thing I would not do is build it as an escort and always fly it that way: there are better escorts. Its good at it, but you waste a console for the split, and that alone makes other pure ships better. The reason to fly a haakona is either to be a pure 'cruiser' (toss the splitter console in your bank and forget it) or to fly it in all 3 modes as needed for flexibility. And the flexibility thing works best with fleet groups so you can pick your layout/role ahead of time.

dsaris

Put an LC Tac BoFF on it, split it and fly the smaller ship. The upper part becomes a really tanky pet that uses nice healing skills like Extend Shields on your allies. One of my fleetmates has it and when done properly it is a sinister and beautiful thing.

rmy1081

With the new weapon sets system I love my Haakona again. I set up a beam/science, cannon/tac setup with it and I'm planning on building an eng heavy version too. For me it really enhances the gameplay so I cant wait till they get all the bugs out the whole system.