Help vs. Na'khul please

captmars2525

Just now getting to try the new featured episode. I am having a heck of a time both in space and ground! Ran it 3 times on two different characters, lvl 60 Fed science and lvl38-39 Klingon Tac. Neither special builds just ships/specs/equip/boffs I enjoy and are able to do most other missions with little to some difficulty.

I don't mind a good challenge occasionally but also found it frustrating with many many team/ship wipes. I can see that there are special tactics needed with these guys but I am getting destroyed before even adjusting.

Seems like lots of DOT grenades I can't escape, immune folks with decoys I can't find fast enough, that giant cone of death in space I can't get away from, and a few other things. Also just the sheer number of foes coming from so many different directions in space and ground make it really chaotic and tricky.

Some of the new system changes may be complicating this I suppose. There is a chance that I have completely messed up my new skill choices. But I tried to focus on survivability there. I don't THINK I have the new Threatening Stance on either.

Are others having this much trouble? I think there must be simple things I can try. Any suggestions are welcome, thanks!

tom61sto

AoEs are the name of the game. Can't find the duplicate? Just hit everything. For space, Fire at Will (FAW) with Beam Arrays rules, and on your Sci-capable ships use Gravity Well to suck everything to together, both the originals and the duplicates. Try to be always moving, the Plasma Waves only point to where you were when they were when started, and most ships have the speed to get out of the cone if you're already moving.

For ground: Plop in an Electro-Gravatic module on your Sci and load up on AoE heals. For your Tacs, I'd go with Grenades of your own and Rally Cry to give your team a buff. To get out of an incoming grenade, double-tap a direction to do a barrel roll it might not register left/right in shooter mode, so double-tap back to roll backwards instead.

markhawkman

Actually cones are easier than you'd think to escape. Fly generally towards the ship launching it, but off to the side. The closer you are to the source of the cone the smaller the area of the cone. This doesn't work as well if you're in a big ship though. These aren't that powerful though, so a decent tanking setup can handle them. TSS, EptS, Aux2SIF, Polarrize hull, hazard emitters too.

For ground... I like AoEs. AoEs can sometimes take out the shadows while you pound the primary.

Na'kuhl actually have a combat pet that explodes like a grenade.

jaguarskx

Regardless of the your ship's abilities I recommend short to medium combat; less than 5km. The closer you are to the Na'Khul ship you are the easier it is to avoid getting blasted by the plasma wave. That's because it's AoE is narrower. You can veer left or right or even fly past the ship and attack it from the rear.

As for ground combat, it's actually a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. I would die a few times, but then again, I am not playing the mission with the same attention I give to advanced ground queue missions. Meaning if I die I do not suffer injuries and there is no timers that would potentially cause the mission to fail. Therefore, I am not overly concerned if I need to respawn in story mission ground combat (or foundry missions).

k20vtec

I replay the mission with enviro-suit, it went better than when I played it without the suit. Not sure if it actually helps though, it is just what I feel.

markhawkman

The Na'kuhl do have a toxic attack that will only immobilize if not in EV suit, but it's not worth forgoing real armor for.

waldotrek

They appear to use a toxic cloud AOE attack. Maybe take respirator along.

captmars2525

Thanks for the suggestions all. Much appreciated!

I'm relieved since I DID try some of those tactics already, just not successfully

Probably need to add heals to kits and buffs though. My lvl 60 Fed Sci did OK in ground and space, just got beat around more than I'm used to. The late 30s Klingon Tac though had it rough. I was flying a raptor so was trying to hit and run, it just feel all apart. Did use grenades and Rally Cry on ground. Maybe too tac heavy on boffs, could add more eng and sci for heals and turrets/drones maybe. Also more AOE.

One reason I'm repeating the mission on him is to upgrade armor and shields too, ironically. Now that he's ready for a new ship, maybe tackle this mission again in a Battle Cruiser?

Feels like my growing pains with the Iconians. Took awhile to figure out what worked. Ended up being fun but really tough at the beginning.

Thanks!!!

glenn

Speed is the answer. I generally slow down in combat to increase my turn rate. Against the na'khul I keep my speed up to avoid their blast.

peqlegh

Ground wise, I'm in agreement - the first couple of times I played this episode I felt like I was spawning to respawn to respawn... I looked over how I have my captain equipped, and didn't change anything. But I have made some significant changes to my away team, and that helped immensely. I was running two tac officers, one engineer, and one sci officer. My Tac are configured to be really offensive, the Engi and Sci was defensive though not specialized in any way. All BOFF's were equipped with expose type weapons (my char equipped with an exploit weapon). I removed a tac, and added a second engi. I reworked both engi's abilities. Both do shield heels now, one does turrets, seeker drones, and shield generators, the other does quantum mortars, seeker drones, and health generators. One engi weapon was changed to have an exploit ability as opposed to an expose. My sci char I changed from being a partial healer to a full healer. The Tac officer I left alone. I then juggled my DOFF's a bit to enhance the tweaked BOFF abilities more so. Now I'm holding up fairly well, but if I'm not watching things carefully or hit the wrong button at the wrong time, then I'll have to call for help or respawn. Might need to tweak my ground skills, but I'm going to try a few other things with ground gear first.

nephitis

The one big mistake I have noticed a lot of players do (and perhaps justified) is that they only gear up their own character and focus significantly less on their ground away team. One important key in having a very strong ground team is giving the AI proper weapons they can work with, and what is useful to you.

First of all, BOFFs are excellent with longer range weapons and in particular secondary fire that is Area of Effect. For example, the old split rifle. They got your sniper range and they have your easy AOE (that does not requre careful positioning). Another good AOE weapon is the standard minigun. However, it has shorter range and requires positioning because of the cone. The soon-to-be released Na'kuhl minigun with its nice dot on secondary fire may be a strong contender among miniguns together with the Lobi store Jemhadar minigun (that hits several targets on primary fire.

You also have the Lockbox Fluidic (Undine) cannon with a splendid secondary fire that arcs or chains. The Dyson rifle is also excellent. It's a hybrid between split rifle and sniper rifle (it changes modes) and has high expose and long range. There is also the Herald staff which I consider the best BOFF and AOE weapon of them all because it chains on primary fire.

Another important matter is finding them proper armor and shield with set bonuses that can yield themselves tremendously... or the entire team. The Borg Omega set is one of the very best equipment you can give them. In particular if you have four BOFFs with you. Each stacking bonus will give them 2.% more crit chance and all of them will have innate 40% dodge (which negates significant amount of damage). They will buff each other and stay alive a lot longer. The only downside is the assault rifle which has short range... but it does have an AOE secondary fire which is better than nothing.

Next we have what kind of class they are. The most versatile class you can have for the away team is a full squad of engineers with mortars and turrets, health or shield generations and possibly chroniton mines (as 1st slot ability). To give them more room you can make them all into Intel and give them the Resonant Tachyon Stream ability which will drain shielded targets and give some of that shield back to them. It helps against bosses and what not.

As for space, get yourself a hyper-impulse engine and stop putting power into shields or aux that so many people do. Go for max power in weapons and then as high as can you can into engines and you will find yourself flying significantly faster and turning significantly tighter. That Power Wave cone is not going to hit you so easily anymore.

peqlegh

I've done a little more tweaking with my traits and moved the weapons around with my crew to better leverage their ground traits (ie: I found a couple dumb (and obvious) things - like I should not have had an officer with the trait that adds +1500% exploit bonus doing exposes - *HIC*). I'm pretty sure I've got things where I want to be at least for the moment - ground battles seem to be going nicely now that I'm demolitioning everything to a pulp.

matthewfelix

Do we know if respirators (When turned on) help against the toxic attacks of the Na'kuhl ground attacks or do only active EV suits help? I do know that photonic bridge officers are immune to toxic damage (which also makes them rather amusing in missions where everyone needs EV suits as the photonic Boffs can still wear normal armor.

I'm rather lazy in that I always keep remodulators (unless they are wearing a full omega rep set) and respirators (unless its a holo boff and immune to toxic) on all my boffs all the time and haven't noticed that much trouble vs the Na'kuhl than I had with the Vaadwar or the Iconians/Heralds which wasn't all that much more than oh a new speed bump. I will admit the crawling mines look fun to play with though.