While running several Delta Quadrant patrol missions on Normal Difficulty I've noticed that most Vaadwaur Heavy Artillery Vessels spawn with ~900,000 to ~1,300,000 HP.
Screenshot -
http://i.imgur.com/5mhGKfE.jpg
Note the enemy's HP and the mission's difficulty level.
At first I thought these were supposed to be boss-type enemies, but that couldn't be the case, as sometimes other VHAV spawn with proper ~125,000 HP. Most of them though seem to spawn with Elite difficulty stats. As a result it takes forever to defeat them, plus they reward mere ~200 SP upon defeat.
I've stumbled upon these high-HP ships while doing several different patrol missions solo on normal.
Comments
Time will only tell!
I can't imagine what a lone escort would have done considering there were times when the assault cruisers and the artillery vessel pulled out the oh so fun barrage attack. Oh and did I mention it seems to also have the ability to do the Vaadwaur fairy dust (that is what it sounds like) disappearing trick more than once in a 10 second span.
On a lighter note, all the other ships that spawned in the mission were not nearly as annoying as what they have been.
Here's to hoping I won't have to sit through that again.
It took me several minutes to take a single one down. I knew something was wrong, but I just stuck it out to get the mission finished. All the other ships appeared normal, but not the Heavy Artillery Vessel.
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
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Going from melting the usual mobs to suddenly wondering why I was having pre-patch-slogfest flashbacks was not fun. They were tedious enough to deal with pre-patch, now it's just outright painful!
On the other hand I've completed the last story mission today and found no VHAV with such HP values. There were tons of these ships around, but they had about 125k HP as they should.
Edit: I noticed it starting today (Sunday, 9 Nov 2014), only in "Better With Friends," "Revolution," and "Taking Care of Enemies." It did not occur in "Takedown."
I encountered two of them... I cant remember the first one if it was a patrol type story mission or a regular story type mission. But the second one was definately a story mission. It was in the mission "All That Glitters" where Gaul comes in to stop the fight in space and you meet him in the Talaxian mining asteroid and he goes all nutso on the cook. That last fight in that mission Voyager and some Turei NPC ships are "helping" you. The VHAV that came in had 785K health. And another odd thing i noticed is that it seemed to be flying straight and really really fast. My ship that i killed him with is pretty geared out and it took me roughly 4 minutes to kill him. The funny thing was by the time he died Voyager and the Turei ships were trailing behind us at 12-13km. I mostly flew straight as well since i was trying to hammer the ship on the same shield facing. I only noticed very minor difficulty trying to keep up with him, but my engine power in combat is about 86 and i'm in a Faeht which is pretty maneuverable. I didnt pay much attention to how much my attacks were hitting for, so no idea on how his resists were.
target ship and dummy ships were normal ~ 100k hp
2 spawns at the end one normal 100k hp, the other ~ 1 mill hp
focused on the first and took it down easily the other took a while and this was with 2 benthans and 2 hasiri helping me
while it made for an interesting battle (before today I didn't even know that haziri AI will actually buff YOU during a fight) I would never expect an inexperienced player going through the story for the first time to beat something like that
I hope this gets fixed soon, my kdf alts haven't gone through the story yet and some of their builds aren't nearly as good
Three times yesterday I came across these brutes. Took an age to bring each one down and popped a few times in the process.
I'm wondering if this is systemic to DR as I've also come across almost unbeatable Vaadwuar in the Kobali ground zones. I can hammer away at them and their health hardly moves. I originally put that down to lag but now I'm not so sure! lol
EDIT: Both space and ground instances were played on "Normal" setting.
While I was killed the first try.. The second time I beat that ship. It took great flying and using all my consoles and special stuff. Was it hard?? IDK if I call it hard but was it as easy as just flying around and wipping out a squad of 3x lesser enemy ships with very little shield drain and with your eyes closed. No its harder than that.
By far I am not a 10k or whatever dps player. I hate those guys because they always want to post there rankings and im last or second last lol.
(I have a plasma build, with the Romulan rep torpedoes. I just wore the stupid thing down over time. Nothing over mark 12, except for my armor, which is 14. One of my tactical consoles is gold, because I got lucky, though.)
Currently, all I can say is that Hull values that high are not intended to be present when playing content on Normal difficulty.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
The good news is, now you know how well (or not) your current ship fares when facing down an Elite battleship!
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Was the Captain also sneaking into Advanced? I saw one earlier in an Advanced mission (can't recall the name, but it's the one where you save both the Cooperative and Octanti vessels) with 946,553 HP. I only checked it because it seemed to be taking a hell of a lot longer to kill than the one I'd met in the previous mission.
Yes. Also double-dipping into the hitpoint boost on Elite. All of these issues will be fixed with the same data change that was just checked in.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Good to know! Thanks for looking into that.
Great to see this getting fixed.. I ran into VHAV with ~ 540,000 HP during a DQ patrol as part of "Enemies in All the Usual Places", it was the last 'boss' in the last patrol for that mission and with my Dyson Sci Destroyer (KDF version) running Mk XII gear it took me dying four times before I had him down to 9% at which point I gave up and warped out.
That must have been dangerous trying to rake an angry Vaadwaur over the coals. I hope you went in with heavy armor and lots of guns.
But seriously, glad to know I won't have to worry about that if my alt ever makes it to that mission.
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I guess at least till next patch, I won't enter missions against Vaadwaur in science ships, not even on normal. Just to be sure.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
My patrol escort refit is fast enough to get out of the way of most of the barrages, but was still getting swatted down hard.
that is until i tried my breen absolute zero space set. mine set is still the default MK XI, but it provided adequate protection enough for me to swat the heavy artillery ship on my own. It took a little while, but i did not get swatted once. alternatively use the ancient carrier ship. if you got it when it was first released, you should also have a set of very rare swarmers for the hanger. my ancient carrier does not have good weapons, but using both swarmer squadrons and using what little firepower i had, i was able to overwhelm the artillery ship. I have taken on two artillery ships at once using both these methods, and lived to tell the tale
Maybe on tribble, but i ran into a1.2-1.3M one during a patrol on normal difficulty.
Don't remember the system, but it is the one where you work together with the Hirogen hunters against the vaadwaur.
Since it was only fixed internally yesterday, and there hasn't been a patch this morning... no. :P
It'll hopefully be in Thursday's patch. If you really want to run the mission before then, might be worth trying to get somebody in game to team up with who can help you take it down.