Returning player. QUestions about factions.

blunted74

Hello,

I just came back to the game, and am going to make a new character. I am having a hard time deciding what faction to go with. While I know the optimal choice is to "play what is most fun", I had a few questions that I am hoping some of the seasoned players might be able to help with?

• Are there any glaring benefits to making a Fed or KDF character, opposed to a Romulan Fed or Romulan KDF?

Just curious as I am leaning Romulan.

• Are pve queues cross faction?

I ask this because I know the population balance is heavily favoured towards the Federation, and if the queues are not cross faction, this would essentially eliminate the KDF as a viable option for me.

• Do Romulan ships stack up well against Fed/KDF?

In all likelihood, I am probably going to make a Romulan engineer and was wondering, from that perspective, how do their ships hold up?

• Is it hard to find a fleet on the KDF side?

I understand that a lot of content is tied up in fleets and do not want to choose KDF if it is a barren wasteland.


That is all I can think of right now. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

noroblad

blunted74 wrote: »

• Are there any glaring benefits to making a Fed or KDF character, opposed to a Romulan Fed or Romulan KDF?

Just curious as I am leaning Romulan.

Only ship choices. Roms are top dog at DPS, and DPS is the most important thing for almost all content (unfortunate, yes, but it is also true). So unless you are in love with some specific ship, there is no real reason to go fed or kdf OVER rom.

• Are pve queues cross faction?

I ask this because I know the population balance is heavily favoured towards the Federation, and if the queues are not cross faction, this would essentially eliminate the KDF as a viable option for me.

They can be. Premade groups xfaction is a pain... gotta have a FULL group to go. Pugs automatically fill, for MOST qs, cross faction. Obviously (or not?) kdf starbase defense is kdf only, fed one is fed only.. etc. But most of the big ones are crossed.

• Do Romulan ships stack up well against Fed/KDF?

In all likelihood, I am probably going to make a Romulan engineer and was wondering, from that perspective, how do their ships hold up?

Yes. Roms are top at damage, as I said. Hold up? The bulk of rom ships are *not* tanks, but you can keep them alive, and its a lot easier with an engineer. The biggest thing about rom ships...
1) even "cruisers" (whatever that means) do not have cruiser commands.
2) they all have significantly less power for all systems than other ships.
3) they all get cloak and singularity powers (includes a damage bonus and a temporary hit point shield among some others)

• Is it hard to find a fleet on the KDF side?

I understand that a lot of content is tied up in fleets and do not want to choose KDF if it is a barren wasteland.

Nope, you can find fleets easily. Now, finding one that has a FULLY complete starbase is a little harder. You would be welcome in my fleet, but its a cross faction fleet mostly feds, and our base is not 100% (t4, roughly, you can get *most* of the good stuff but not all the ships and we lack sci consoles).

That is all I can think of right now. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

I responded inline above ^^
In addition, a quick comparison:

feds have more players. Rom is rom, either faction you join... if you do go fed, they get more ships, and better sci ships. Fed officers stink, they have no useful space abilities (for doing damage). Feds can't farm dil and contra as easily. KDF has easy contraband farming, easy dil farming, a pretty small and not uber set of ships, pirate / decent bridge officer ability, plasma leech console for cheap, warp-behind-target console is cheap, couple of others. Roms can get the kdf perks (IF they go KDF!) of leech, contraband, dil farming, etc, and have the best BO space skill, and they have the best cloaking, and at least 2 of their ships are so grossly OP it is almost sick.

IMHO the ROM-KDF-tac officer is the most potent MIN/MAX char you can create.

darkjeff

blunted74 wrote: »

• Are there any glaring benefits to making a Fed or KDF character, opposed to a Romulan Fed or Romulan KDF?

Just curious as I am leaning Romulan.

Each faction has their own T5 (and up) ships. So a Romulan Fed can't fly the Odyssey, and a Fed can't fly a Scimitar.

Thus the Fed has an advantage in the amount of ships you can fly at endgame.
Romulans (of either allegiance) has the advantage in that Superior Romulan Operative is the best Bridge Officer trait for DPS.
KDF and Romulan KDF (kind of) has the advantage in that the Leech console is from an account-wide C-Store ship unlock as opposed to a per-character Lockbox/Exchange purchase.

If you're leaning Romulan, I'd say go Romulan. Personally I'd recommend Fed-Rom simply because more attention is paid to the Feds.

Also the greatest disadvantage to being KDF (in my opinion) is the bloody First City's layout. I hate it. We need to burn it to the ground and rebuild it, or at the very least knock down a ton of walls with spatial charges.

blunted74 wrote: »

• Are pve queues cross faction?

I ask this because I know the population balance is heavily favoured towards the Federation, and if the queues are not cross faction, this would essentially eliminate the KDF as a viable option for me.

Most of them, yes. There's a few that aren't.

blunted74 wrote: »

• Do Romulan ships stack up well against Fed/KDF?

In all likelihood, I am probably going to make a Romulan engineer and was wondering, from that perspective, how do their ships hold up?

The Scimitar is still one of the best ships out there. Plus the ships look awesome.
There is a lack of Romulan Science Ships, though there's always the Dyson destroyers.

Romulan ships use Singularity cores, which give lower power bonuses than warp cores. Romulan ships also tend to be a bit more fragile than Federation ships. (Not sure how they compare to KDF ships.) Both those downsides are basically countered by being an Engineer.

blunted74 wrote: »

• Is it hard to find a fleet on the KDF side?

I understand that a lot of content is tied up in fleets and do not want to choose KDF if it is a barren wasteland.

I'm in a fleet that spans 3 different Fed fleets and 2 different KDF fleets in-game, using one cross-fleet cross-faction channel to chat. Many players have an alt in one of the KDF fleets, and we have great attendance in our KDF events.

Thus I have no idea how it is out in the wilds, as it were.

blunted74

Thanks for the reply guys! you have alleviated my concerns. I am going to go Rom-KDF. My main concern was a dead endgame for KDF, but since queues are cross faction, that pretty much takes care of that.

darkjeff wrote: »

Also the greatest disadvantage to being KDF (in my opinion) is the bloody First City's layout. I hate it. We need to burn it to the ground and rebuild it, or at the very least knock down a ton of walls with spatial charges.

I already have a lvl 50 KDF char from when I played before, so already know First City like the back of my hand :-)

THanks again for taking the time to reply!

noroblad

blunted74 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply guys! you have alleviated my concerns. I am going to go Rom-KDF. My main concern was a dead endgame for KDF, but since queues are cross faction, that pretty much takes care of that.



I already have a lvl 50 KDF char from when I played before, so already know First City like the back of my hand :-)

THanks again for taking the time to reply!

I think the kdf perks will make up for any minor aggravations of being KDF. Youll be fine, more than fine IMHO.

If you get in a fleet that lacks stores, learn about the nerds of prey channel (ty again guys!). They open a competed store for people, the kdf one is not always open but its open often enough to get your consoles and such. I have been able to buy everything I needed with only minor difficulty arranging it.

I don't get the comment about qonos. Before the new earth dock, sure, it was faster to get to what you needed on old ESD since it was a 10-foot radius circle, everything was within a moments walk. But with the new qonos-like mess of the new esd, you have to walk just as far, and worse, it has invisible walls and other obstacles between areas. Its a tossup which is the least efficient of the two now.

tehbubbaloo

blunted74 wrote: »

Hello,

I just came back to the game, and am going to make a new character. I am having a hard time deciding what faction to go with. While I know the optimal choice is to "play what is most fun", I had a few questions that I am hoping some of the seasoned players might be able to help with?

• Are there any glaring benefits to making a Fed or KDF character, opposed to a Romulan Fed or Romulan KDF?

Just curious as I am leaning Romulan.

the romulans do pretty much everything better than anyone else. cryptic really wanted to cash in big when they launched romulans, so they wasted no time in giving them the best race traits, best boffs, etc. the only possible exception is sci, which may be better served by a vanilla fed.
if you are leaning toward a romulan it is probably a decision you will be happy with.

blunted74 wrote: »

• Are pve queues cross faction?

I ask this because I know the population balance is heavily favoured towards the Federation, and if the queues are not cross faction, this would essentially eliminate the KDF as a viable option for me.

the majority of them are, but queues game-wide are pretty much dying anyway.

blunted74 wrote: »

• Do Romulan ships stack up well against Fed/KDF?

In all likelihood, I am probably going to make a Romulan engineer and was wondering, from that perspective, how do their ships hold up?

romulan ships heavily feature battle-cloak and boff traits that boost dps when decloaking. they also enjoy singularity gimmicks. the only real drawback is the lack of a viable sci ship. the supposed 'subsystem power penalty' is easily overcome (especially by kdf romulans) to the point it is a negligible consideration.

blunted74 wrote: »

• Is it hard to find a fleet on the KDF side?

I understand that a lot of content is tied up in fleets and do not want to choose KDF if it is a barren wasteland.

its not a barren wasteland if it is a real kdf fleet rather than a storage unit for feds to store farming alts. there are plenty of large, active kdf fleets.

blunted74

tehbubbaloo wrote: »

the majority of them are, but queues game-wide are pretty much dying anyway.

What are people doing for endgame these days?

tehbubbaloo

blunted74 wrote: »

What are people doing for endgame these days?

seems like most people are grinding patrols for specialisation points.
the older pug queues (the borg stfs, etc) were already slow due to the pathetic spec xp they granted, and some (blockade, incursion, mine trap, etc) are pretty much dead. but after this patch is finished many of those are going to be even worse off than ever.

there are plenty of threads about that though. i dont want to derail... just pointing out that the queues arent exactly popping left right and centre no matter what faction you are these days.

gavinruneblade

blunted74 wrote: »

What are people doing for endgame these days?

Speaking for myself, I do the battle zones, foundry (gives heaps of dilithium), work on reputation, help new players do early missions and learn the game, get accolades on my main character, complete story missions on my alts, and replay my favorite missions for fun. Also my fleet and some friends runs queues daily.

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noroblad

tehbubbaloo wrote: »

the supposed 'subsystem power penalty' is easily overcome (especially by kdf romulans) to the point it is a negligible consideration.

Yes and no. Yes, you can more or less overcome it. But no, its not really "easy" either. Try to get 125/100 with 75/x 75/x 75/x in the others without giving up something, its *tough*. Even with 6 in all (and 9 in some) of the captain skills that add flat power to systems, even with 9 points in flow caps and leech, even with the gel pack and other power to all console, I am still not at MAX / 75 75 75. I can only manage about 80 (base setting) in weapons instead of 100 if I want 75 in all systems (without OSS running). Since I run p2w almost 100% of the time, it works out sort of, but my weapons power does dip down below 100 sometimes, and any sort of drain (the DR mobs use a lot of siphon and possibly some form of polaron) puts me under again.

P2M trait, I have just put amp aside, moved my power to max weapons, enough to get shields to 75 in combat, and the rest in aux. Aux2damage rep trait + P2M more than make up for losing 3% damage from engines being low.

Even so, a task that is almost trivial on normal ships becomes a serious juggle and balance act on a rom ship. Doable, but it takes a very careful balance of gear and skills to maintain it.

As an engineer, this will be less of an issue, as you have a class power trait that can overcome the problem for a while --- its enough, if used carefully.

I am discounting aux 2 bat as an option, but it can be used as a solution to fix power issues on most warbirds, but not the faeht (one of the best).

darkjeff

Engineers also have EPS Manifold Efficiency, with 3 Ranks in Starship Batteries it's effectively a permanent power boost on Dragon or Drake builds.

My Rom Eng in a Scim (with a Leech, obviously) has no trouble with 125/75/75/75 during her FAWs.

crusty8mac

blunted74 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply guys! you have alleviated my concerns. I am going to go Rom-KDF. My main concern was a dead endgame for KDF, but since queues are cross faction, that pretty much takes care of that.



I already have a lvl 50 KDF char from when I played before, so already know First City like the back of my hand :-)

THanks again for taking the time to reply!

Welcome to the dark side.

blunted74

crusty8mac wrote: »

Welcome to the dark side.

Actually, I decided to go Fed, and not even Romulan. Rolled an Andorian. Patrickngo was right. The ship variety and developer bias for the Fed cannot be denied. Besides, I still have a lvl 50 KDF science guy if Fed gets boring.

darkjeff

I'd recommend making a character of all three factions just to go through the tutorial episode. The quality is better than any of the non-revamped episodes, and worth checking out.

tehbubbaloo

blunted74 wrote: »

Actually, I decided to go Fed, and not even Romulan. Rolled an Andorian. Patrickngo was right. The ship variety and developer bias for the Fed cannot be denied. Besides, I still have a lvl 50 KDF science guy if Fed gets boring.

well, you are feeding it so of course you cant deny it.
i couldnt care less how many ships the feddies get, i almost kdf-main simply to spite cryptic.

davefenestrator

darkjeff wrote: »

I'd recommend making a character of all three factions just to go through the tutorial episode. The quality is better than any of the non-revamped episodes, and worth checking out.

This is good advice. The KDF and Romulan faction stories are both worth playing through, not just the tutorial.

Also, playing all 3 up to 18 lets you do doff missions, more R&D skills, request R&D assistance, get-free-doff requests, and the daily lore 480 dil mission on 3 characters instead of just 1. Even if you don't plan to craft the extra mats from doff missions can be sold for credits.

blunted74

I have flip flopped and gone back to my original inclination. I am going Rom-KDF :-)

grace58

blunted74 wrote: »

I have flip flopped and gone back to my original inclination. I am going Rom-KDF :-)

The KDF story line is funny. At least I thought so :P