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Devil's Choice
ascaladar
Member Posts: 186 Arc User
I was thinking a very long time about how to give feedback without sounding like a lot of flames, therefore I will simply state some 'fun' facts about the second half, the space battle.
- first two waves not easy but doable. third wave can only be described in words that trigger all profanity filters of this forums. A few Elachi 'command ships' with battleship and escort support practically jump on top of your head. Your friendly fleet is overrun and wiped out in less then a minute, the ships send as reinforcement are also disabled for most of the battle, leaving the player to kite and slowly take down an entire fleet.
Bascially the mission is a much fun as a Hive Onslaught Elite camp with 6 cubes waiting at your spawnpoint and I have the feeling the same person was responsible here as well.
- first two waves not easy but doable. third wave can only be described in words that trigger all profanity filters of this forums. A few Elachi 'command ships' with battleship and escort support practically jump on top of your head. Your friendly fleet is overrun and wiped out in less then a minute, the ships send as reinforcement are also disabled for most of the battle, leaving the player to kite and slowly take down an entire fleet.
Bascially the mission is a much fun as a Hive Onslaught Elite camp with 6 cubes waiting at your spawnpoint and I have the feeling the same person was responsible here as well.
Post edited by ascaladar on
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Yes, this is what it was like in testing for most people. Also, dreadnaughts. Mind you, a few players somehow managed to get through it all right.
The mission is currently broken. The allies should be able to stay in the fight to help you out, but they get wiped out very quickly. Hopefully the mission will get properly balanced before long. Until then, well, it's a road block.
Personally, I'm taking my time with the Romulan content. Trying to burn through it quickly might cause you some frustration for now.
In the Tribble forum area, I predicted that this discussion could get lively.
*gets the popcorn ready*
Yes, I have also completed it, but the basic point stands. At the level players are treated to this missions they are still new to the game and most of the time have a less then optimal bridge officer setup and the gear is probably a wild mixture of weapons and consoles.
Perhaps you might remember the threads about the D'deridex ships new players were unable to beat because they use a tractor beam and then fire 3 high yield torpedos? For new players Devil's choice is ten times worse, since even veterans cannot complete it without dieing a lot.
So this mission will be a showstopper for the majority of the players.
All this mission needs is for the Devs to nerf it into something more reasonable...like a third of its current damage output. If it wasn't for every Elachi ship instakilling your NPC allies at the start of the third wave, this mission would actually be pretty fun.
This was just downright frustrating, unlike some other people my fleet decided to fly 50km above my spawn which was just painful to get to. But once I did, I was so lucky to be spammed with viral matrices and hit by invisible hull eaters (I had full shields). But like OP said the Rom fleet is destroyed in less then a minute and the "helping" ships just get locked out of helping because they constantly need repairing. Now Im a decent player, I do Hive no problem, and Im not terrible in pvp either, but nothing can really prepare you for this mission
Suggestion, make the Rom fleet indestructible or dont lock those fed/kdf ships out with repairing (as soon as theyre done theyre destroyed and need to repair again).
This is not a fun fight or a challenge. Its just unfair.
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
really if all the allied ships where just simply made immortal (like the T'varos in the sector patrol daily) instead of only 4 being on infinite repair cycle the mission would be much less aggravating
can it be done with out dieing? yup i did it it was slow and painful to do and i had better luck using the mogai then the D'D as it could use torp spread 3 so i loaded it with a transphasic torpedo and the harg'pang and the caustic plasma dual cannon
It's not so much that, at least not from what I was seeing. it's more that they have so much spam and control, from boarding parties, viral matrix, tractor mines, they jump around a lot to get behind you etc, that if you're in the default Romulan ship at that tier (the D'Deridex) you're screwed because you find yourself constantly in the cone and so slow and cumbersome you won't get out of it in time.
I gave up with the D'Deridex for the same reason (slow and painful, but I don't like Cruisers anyway) so went back to ESD and picked up a Sao Paulo which finished it all within 5 minutes. Even then I spent a lot of time respawning, Mk IV shields don't help, but there's just so much spam on the screen and so many control abilities I just let them destroy me rather than try, and fail, to clear all the holds and debuffs.
If it was difficult I wouldn't mind, it was just really, really annoying.
On holodeck they up and vanish, leaving you with a pitiful npc support team when starfleet and the kdf show up.
No, they really didn't. You might have been very lucky. When I did it on Tribble, my allies were slaughtered as soon as they appeared. Given a fleet that size, luck can change things quite a bit, but just go back to the Tribble forum area and read the threads on the topic. It was just as much of a problem there as it is here.
Try staying on the fringe of the enemy fleet and pick off the smaller ships first. Then work on the Monbosh, or however it's spelled. Finally focus on the two dreadnoughts before finishing off the command ship. Also remember to cloak, cloak, cloak. After you decloak and take out one of the smaller ships pull out, recloak then pick the next target for an attack run. Wittle them down and you can win.
What really bummed me out was the end. You just warped in and saved your new home world from being taken out and all we get is the usual "depart system" and turn in mission. I mean come on you should beam down to NR and there should be a whole crowd waiting for you cheering. You should get a metal and be congratulated by all the big wigs. Instead you report in to the Admiral and he is just blah about you involvement. I just know he is going to take all the credit for himself.
Wave 3: everything I read on the tribble forum about this x10 - what a ridiculous clusterf***!
Yeah, ok, I guess it can be done in some way, some captains found a non-frustrating way.
Anyway, comand ship and dreadnoughts right in the middle of the fleet, a dozen cones, boom, dead support.
My 'solution': cloak, grab aggro of at least one, better both, dreadnoughts, and pull them far away from the command ship. Oddly enough, they followed me even while I was stealthed. After you explode, just cloak and fly near them, they'll start to follow.
After that, your support actually has a chance to destroy that damned thing. Shouldn't take long, 5-10 min I guess, depending on how many other ship are left near the command ship.
I wonder what the desinger of that mission was thinking in terms of how to solve it? I would have utterly hated playing that mission with no former warning - Cryptic, really, is that thing working as intended?
that is how i did it like i said it was slow going and most of the support craft is respawned by the 3 dreadnoughts as soon as you take them out
i had so much TRIBBLE spawned in the game could not even render and show every thing. i had invisible weapons
It was tough. I felt like it scaled in difficulty as if I was in a team of 5. I expect as a level 50 playing that mission might go bette solo. Better gear etc. In a way I'm glad it was difficult but I really thought that cone attack they have was used far too often and/or was far too powerful vs the frequencies of its use by the npcs. I half expected the Borg queen herself to be behind the plot in massive twist. Since it was like being in the hive
I completely ignored all the dreadnaughts and small ships, and focused only on the command ship. At the start I got repeatedly destroyed by all the ships around it, but I eventually managed to lure the command ship away from the centre of the formation so that I could fight it 1v1. After a fair while where I kept, nonetheless, getting killed by it and by 3-4 small ship that could move closer to my position, I managed to destroy it once and for all.
The main problem imo is not the cone of death alone really, but when you have something like 6-7 ship minimum constantly spamming you with several tractor beams, viral matrices, spamming those little green thingies (not sure if just some kind of weird kinetic weapon or simple cannons) that kill your hull very quickly, making the cloak an insta-suicide button, then it gets pretty difficult to avoid the cone, especially if your evasive maneuvers is already on cooldown. At that level you just don't have enough Boff abilities and consoles slots to get out in one piece (not even talking about gear).
maybe since the high number of the ships involved, it could help a stronger allied fleet in a defensive way: your fleet could hold more aggro and have more tanking capability, so that they can provide a little bit more of a target, giving you enough time to soften up the third wave before you're left completely alone vs 30 ships.
the extra console and extra sci boff helped i was able to actually do it with out dieing parking right on top of the command ship and farting out eject warp plasma using direct energy modulation to bypass some of the shields and using the harg'pang basically as much as i could to bypass the shields and putting all my power to shields and 50 to weapons
still took 20 minutes and was tough but using a captain level c-store +1 ship did make a noticeable difference
Guess I'm dialing it back to Normal for this mission?
I managed to get some nice hits on the Dreadnaught, but by the time I respawned and arrived back, it was already healed up...and I couldn't get to it, due to all the crowd control.
I'm thinking of just abandoning my Romulan and playing a Kiingon. Such awfully designed content.
skirt the edges, pull out stragglers and beat them up, but always stay at the edges for a quick get away,
cloak as soon as you've pulled out of range, which drops ag, wait a few, decloak, heal up, let skills recharge, go back in.
play like a romulan, not a fed or klingon, and not like the bogus romulans ds9 eps depicted, be sneaky, cautious, careful.
command ship can be pulled from the main pack, do so, that leaves your npc allies cleaning up and keeping the main horde in one place while you whittle down the command ship.
major skills are epts, HE, rsp, ttx2, warp shadows, evasive, singularity jump, quantum absorption. never use plasma shockwave, useless in that encounter.
going full defensive for boffs helps a lot, i didn't so spent a bit of time out of combat healing, had ab1 and ab2 instead of heals, aux to struct 2 would have been better in the third slot. 4th would have left ab2.
command ship is more of wearing it down, killing it with bleedthrough and plasma fires. only managed to take a facing down for maybe 1 second before it was back up. killed it entirely with plasma and bleedthrough, needless to say it was a long fight.
if you're in a hurry, you're going to die, a lot. that simple. the mission is doable, solo, easily, just don't expect it or try and force it to get done fast.
oh, and am a tac captain, ymmv with other classes.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
While some people can beat that, the majority are getting destroyed repeatedly. If the enemy support ships didn't respawn and the allied fleet just stayed alive instead of triggering their repair cycle, this would be a really entertaining slog. As it is, however, it's pure insanity.
Anyone want to give me a Temporal Heavy Dreadnought pack? I'll be your friend
now some players like those mentioned can get through this because they have the resources to do it with the experience to back it up, for the rest of us, that is not possible.
But seriously, i would like the designer of that mission to come on the forum and answer some questions as to why he/she did it this way and better yet, why it has not be changed yet.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
the ones that die during the cut scene i am not joking after the cut scene was done i only had 4 allies left the belfast, kang, a luna class, and one other KDF ship i think a neg'var. that. was. it.
all on repair cool down. there was no allied ships to take on the rest of the death ball as the the death ball just fallowed
Now its telling me to go to defense of New romulus. but it doesnt start there for me./? I tried to warp in but it just put me in space and no starting point. SO does any1 know where i go on from here ? thx in advance.