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Romulan Endgame Ships
gerrick222
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
in The Academy
Ok, so relatively 'new' in that I'm coming back after being away since 2012. Been working on a TOS temporal agent character, but want to get around to seeing the new Romulan content, which I have been told is amazing.
The one drawback, that I am seeing, is that Romulan characters seem "stuck" on ships once they get past 40. Everything T5, T5U or T6 for Fed or Klingon is not available to them.
So what I'm curious about, is, is there any advice on ships? For a player who is very unlikely to spend a fortune on the C-Store, and would rather arrange to get ships in game whenever possible. Assuming that, from what it sounds like, Romulans do -really- want to keep running Warbirds if they can for the cloak and singularity drives? or does that stop mattering after a point?
The one drawback, that I am seeing, is that Romulan characters seem "stuck" on ships once they get past 40. Everything T5, T5U or T6 for Fed or Klingon is not available to them.
So what I'm curious about, is, is there any advice on ships? For a player who is very unlikely to spend a fortune on the C-Store, and would rather arrange to get ships in game whenever possible. Assuming that, from what it sounds like, Romulans do -really- want to keep running Warbirds if they can for the cloak and singularity drives? or does that stop mattering after a point?
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Personally, I don't see the point in rolling a Romulan if you're not going to go all in and fly Warbirds outside of min/maxing for (pointless) DPS chasing but YMMV. They do have abilities that make them ideal for hit and fade sneak attacks.
Generally speaking, the Romulan Faction has two weakness:
#1 - Lack of science ships - Similar to the KDF, the Romulans do not really have any faction specific science ship to use. There is the free T5 Ha'nom Warbird in a fleet variant, but that is basically the first and only Romulan science ship a free to play player will get. However, there is the T5 Dyson Science Destroyer released in early 2014 and that's about... Until just recently, when the 31st century cross-faction T6 Eternal science ship was made available. Buy this ship once and all factions can use it.
My 1st Romulan is a scientist, and I did not realize the lack of faction specific science ships for the Romulans until I was level 40.... almost decided to delete that captain in late 2014. I got by using science ships that were rewarded in past events. The T6 Eternal will be the first science ship from the C-Store for my Romulan.
#2 - Available Power - Singularity Core Engines provides some interesting, but situational ship abilities. Whether you use them or not you are giving up 40 points of power simply to have them. A warp core engine provides a ship with 200 points of power to distribute. A singularity core engine only provides you with 160 points of power to distribute. That's a pretty significant difference. That means a Plasmonic Leech is pretty much mandatory on a Romulan ship. Fortunately the price of a Plasmonic Leech on the Exchange has dropped significantly when the Infinity Lock Box was released. Before those lock boxes were introduced the Leech sold for around 70m EC... now you can buy one for only 10m EC. The box that awards the Plasmonic Leech will only give it to Federation captains or Romulans that sided with the Federation. Everyone else get something else that I cannot even remember. For the KDF and KDF aligned Romulans purchasing the T3 Vandal Destroyer is a means to obtain an unlimited number of Plasmonic Leeches (which cannot be sold on the Exchange). The T6 Eternal uses a standard warp core since it is a cross-faction ship.
The ship you purchase should depend on the captain class. My science captain is currently flying the 2016 Anniversary Event T6 Krenim Science Ship and will be switching soon to the T6 Eternal. My Romulan Tactical captain was recently flying the T6 Faeht Warbird ever since December 2014. I suppose it is currently the longest serving C-Store starship I have. It is a pretty fun ship to fly and I have to admit I was a little reluctant to move on another ship over this past weekend.... The T6 Morrigu Heavy Warbird.
The Morrigu is sturdier but not as nimble as the Faeht; 14 turn rate vs. 19 turn rate. However, it has a much more desirable ship trait, Emergency Weapon Cycle which basically means whenever you use Emergency Power to Weapons, your energy weapons uses 25% less power (but same damage) and it gets a 20% boost to the firing cycle for 30 seconds. Meaning you fire energy weapons faster. For tactical captains, that is one of the best ship trait to have. In a way that trait makes this ship more desirable than the T6 version of the Scimitars (the T6 Dreadnought Warbirds) which I am considering purchasing next year to get the ship traits from those ships.
Overall, the Morrigu seems to be a fine ship, but I have not fully geared up that ship yet. Sure I can pull gear off the Faeht (which I am still upgrading), but I want the Morrigu to have a different set of gear. It will take time since I am upgrading gear for all 10 of my captains... nothing less than epic Mk XIV gear and at least 2 different full sets (weapons, consoles, engines, shields, etc) for each captain.
Lots of people have good things to say about the Morrigu and if player Fed and KDF as well, then I highly recommend you purchase the T6 Battlecruiser Cross-Faction Pack for 6,000 Zen; you get the Fed Arbiter, the KDF Kurak and of course the Romulan Morrigu. Otherwise, you are looking at 3,000 Zen per ship if you by them individually. The Arbiter and Kurak are sturdier, but less nimble than the Morrigu; they have a turn rate of 9 instead of 14.
I burned a pile of dil to acquire the T6 Battlecruiser pack and the 31c Temporal ship pack during the last sale. I haven't used any of the temporal ships yet, but I'm enjoying the Morrigu more than I thought I would. I wasn't too fond of the Mogai look, but it's a very nimble ship with good potential. It's a shame it has to trade a weapon slot for that maneuverability compared to the other battlecruisers, but I had fun with it in the Badlands.
I also own a Jhuhael carrier warbird, basically the equivalent of the Alita Heavy Escort Carrier, and got the other Ar'kif variants through giveaways last year. Nice escort with a good trait if you like hanger pets. Annihilation Mode is a useful boost to weapon power and wave motion gun-type abilities are always fun.
Power management is more difficult for Romulans, but the Plasmonic Leech isn't as necessary as some people say it is. I've never bought one and I've done just fine, though I generally stick to normal difficulty. Piling on bonus power from gear will get you a fair ways without a leech, skills and traits can provide a little more, and emergency power to X or Aux2Bat can paper over the gaps.
Unless you have your heart set on a science vessel, there's probably a Romulan T5(U) or T6 ship that'll suit you. What do you like to play?
Warbirds are still powerful ships, and some of the singularity abilities still have their uses even at the endgame. All in all, it doesn't matter if you want a Singularity Core or a Warp Core.
For my paid account the faeht is cool, I enjoy the pilot sci ship but don't fly it near enough, and just got me a t6 red plasma ball o doom ship.
This..
All of this.
Tier 5 Upgradable and Tier 6 are C-Store or Fleet ships mostly, though. (But that is true on all factions, I think. The free ships you get from levelling are not upgradeable.)
Remember: Level 40 ships are already Tier 5. But Tier 5 has basically 4 "subtiers" - Free/Dilithium, C-Store or Fleet Credit Retrofits, C-Store or Fleet Credit + Fleet Module Retrofits, and finally the Upgrade version of the latter two.
It hsouldn't be impossible to grind the Dilithium for one ship at some point.
But if you're mostly interested in the story, the Level 40 Tier 5 ships will suffice- the Romulan-specific story arc ends earlier than that and then the story moves into the faction-agnostic content.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
If you are poor and got no zen, get a Malon or other crossfaction T5
Mirror Rom ships are good, but only as shipcards for admiral system
I used a shipupgradetoken on Kazon and Malon
T5U account unlock for rom,kdf and fed
Kazon was fun but it blew up too often when there are too many NPC
It happens too often in episode against vaadwuar or Iconians
Malon has 4 sci slot for embassy or lab consoles
it is the perfect budget FAW ship with a strong hull
it has a lt Cm sci slot for GW1
I flew Kazon/Malon for months and saved up for CommandCruisers
Better start saving now and then pick your dreamship in a sale.
I think you will have time untill x-mas
You can save at least 1800 zen per toon (400dili/zen)
Still very possible for any F2P account with 5 toons to get a good zenship bundle and a Merry x-mas
Definitely appreciated!
I hated the lvl 40 Romulan ships, the were horrible. I ended up flying the MIrror Moghai for a while until I bit the bullet and bought the T6 Morrigu. I have not regretted it, she is an awesome ship.
This changed when two things happened: the first was a bug just after Delta Rising came into being and all his skill points reset. The second was last year when the ar'kif retrofit was a prize in the end of summer giveaway.
I respecced him as a pseudo tactical build and haven't looked back. I bought the dreadnaught pack a while ago, gave him the T6 Kara (and the haakona for the sep console) and have tremendous fun with the multivector ability. He'll never be in the DPS leagues but then he was never intended to be.
Oh well, another thing I missed out on when I decided to take a break from STO after the 2015 Risa Summer Event.
At least I have the T6 Eternal for both my KDF and RR Sci captains. I'll get around to switching them to the T6 Eternal by sometime next month. I actually just started to switch things around for all 10 of my captains. It will be a gradual change so hopefully before the end of next month they will be switched into their new ships.
Then I just need to wait for yet another Double Tech Point Uppgrade Weekend to pickup where I left off on my gear.
So, there might be a point in rolling a Romulan and playing him/her through some content now (which is indeeed very good.)
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Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
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STO player since November 2013
What I think I'm reading is that if I go this rout I'm not getting a new ship, but upgrading my old favorite via something I can get in the C store. Is my understanding correct? If I am correct, as a follow-on question, how big a difference is there between a 5U and a tier 6 ship? Can I (and should I) instead just get a Jhu'ael Tactical Warbird Carrier?
From level 40 to 50 there should be no difference in difficulty. After level 50 your enemies starts to become more deadly (more HP, more shields, more damage dealt). It does not become noticeable to me until I reach level 56. It will become more difficult to kill enemies, but it is still possible and at least for me I can rely on previous experience to do what is necessary in order to survive using only very rare Mk XII gear that can be purchased from the Exchange.
I can even do some of the Advanced difficulty level end game queue missions generally referred to as STFs (Special Task Force) without the need to rely on reputation gear from the Reputation System the opens up at level 50. You basically need to develop strategies, hone your combat skills, have situational awareness. Unfortunately, you cannot buy those things with in game currency or even with real money. The true cost is time and your ability develop those skills.
The Ar'Kif is a pretty good T4 ship. You can purchase the T5 C-Store version for 2,000 Zen and further improve to T5U with an upgrade token that is only applicable T5 starships purchased from the C-Store; I think they cost 500 Zen. I am actually not into carriers, but if you want something similar to the Ar'kif, then I suggest you look at the T6 Jhu'ael Tactical Carrier Warbird for 3,000 Zen. If you can wait for a 20% off ship sale to get it for 2,400 Zen. When Black Friday hits there will be a 20% off everything sale in the C-Store for 1 day. But I am not sure when the next ship sale will be since we had on recently. Also, I am pretty sure when you purchase a T5 ship during a ship sale you also get a free Upgrade Token. Below are links to the T5 Ar'Kif Tactical Carrier Warbird Retrofit and the T6 Jhu'ael Tactical Carrier Warbird.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Ar'Kif_Tactical_Carrier_Warbird_Retrofit
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Jhu'ael_Tactical_Carrier_Warbird
The basic difference between T5U and T6 ships are:
#1 - 0 Zen or 500 Zen price difference (when not on sale). Some T5 C-Store ships costs 2,000 Zen while others costs 2,500 Zen, then add in the cost of the Upgrade Token.
#2 - T6 starships have a special ship trait that can be unlocked. Some T6 starships have lackluster ship traits though. The T6 Jhu'ael has the Coordinated Assault ship trait that allows the hanger pets to use Beam Overload I / Cannon Rapid Fire I when you activate similar abilities on your ship. That is a pretty good trait since it allows your pet to do more damage... once you unlock it.
#3 - T6 starships can make use of Boff (Bridge Officer) specializations that were introduced when T6 ships were released. The T6 Jhu'ael has a Lt Commander Science station that also supports Boffs with the Pilot specialization abilities.
I guess I have one final question about process. For the Ar'kif carrier, is the process to buy a new Arkif carrier (2000Z) plus an upgrade token, or does the upgrade token get applied to my existing Ar'Kala thereby upgrading it to a T5 carrier? Dropping 25 bucks on a ship just to rip the console out of it seems wasteful.
If you plan to fly the Jhu'ael as your "final" ship, you may be better off skipping the Ar'kif carrier (or at least the upgrade). I was lucky enough to be around last year when they gave away the T5 Ar'kif and I can say the Focused Singularity Modulator is a fun console that gives a good toggled weapon power bonus and giant beam cannon, but probably not worth 20 bucks unless you absolutely must have the full set of special gear for the Ar'kif series.
The two console piece set bonus will give you +10% plasma damage and +30 Starship Energy Weapon which should increase the base damage of all energy weapons. It's a passive ability which means it is always active. It's definitely a nice bonus, but you need to determine for yourself if it is worth 1,600/2,000 Zen and worth taking up a console slot that could be used to for another console that may be better overall for your ship (not necessarily more DPS).
My advice is to simply get the T6 Jhu'ael and have fun with it. Then down later on determine if it is worth buying the T5 ship to get the console.
As for the upgrade token, they can only be used on T5 ships purchased from the C-Store. So if you want the T5 Ar'kif Retro, then you will need to purchase it from the C-Store.
Since you already have the Ar'kala, buying the Jhu'ael will give you the two-piece bonus if you equip the quad cannon from the Ar'kala. I personally prefer beam escorts, but you'll need at least one cannon-type weapon if you want to take advantage of the Jhu'ael's trait with hanger pets that have cannons equipped. Or am I misreading something?
The three-piece bonus is extra critical chance and accuracy, along with cooldown reduction for Pilot boff abilities. Good, but not necessarily buy-another-ship good.