devils choice Far far too hard (Romulan side)

xevilxmasterx · May 2013

devils choice Far far too hard :mad::mad::mad:
spent the last 2 half hours trying barely made a dent in the dreadnoughts.
in the end i skipped it.
so please can you do something about it PW.
anyone else think its too?

ussdelphin2 · May 2013

It is hard, but it tells you which ship to attack... attack that and only that.... you will die but you will beat it.

erei1 · May 2013

It's broken, it was reported on Tribble several time.
Guess what happened ?
(SPOILER)

To cryptic, and those who don't know, in Devil choice a HUGE fleet attack, 3waves. Usually the first 2 waves are easy to do, but the 3rd include Dreadnought, Battleship and a lot of frigate/cruisers. To help the player, there are a lot of allied ship, fed, kdf and RR.
While the kdf and fed ships repair themselves and can't die, the RR ship are usually destroyed in the very beginning when the Elachi use their big frontal attack. They use it right after the cutscene.
Leaving you, and about 4ship to face 4-5dreadnought, and a dozen of various cruiser/battleship.

Now, how I managed to do it (in about 4 deaths) :
Pick some ships, and lead them away from the main fleet. Your allies will usually stick with the other and act as decoy. Use your cloak and evasive maneuvers a lot.
Destroy your small pack killing the small ship first. Then blow the battleship/dread as fast as you can, so the rest of the fleet don't join them. Use everything you have for a big alpha strike. Warp shadow is a good friend here.

Rinse repeat.

Once the enemy fleet have lost some battleship, and maybe a few dread, the command ship (the real objective, everything else doesn't matter) will probably be wounded by your allies. Take the opportunity to rush him, and alpha strike it hard. As much as you can. Use warp shadow to draw aggro while doing so.
Once destroyed, the cutscene start, you win, everyone's happy.

saltyfennec93308 · May 2013

I just let my AI's do all the work i started the quest did the first two waves then cloaked on the third one flew way back watched the carnage while i ate pizza and watched a movie.. 2 hours later it was all done ;D

wildchild8 · May 2013

saltyfennec93308 wrote: »

I just let my AI's do all the work i started the quest did the first two waves then cloaked on the third one flew way back watched the carnage while i ate pizza and watched a movie.. 2 hours later it was all done ;D

Genius! lols

But i do agree its a toughy. Compounded by the fact you're more then likely limited to a 2 tac console Deridex, if levelling a toon, by the time you hit that mission, which sucks monkey balls and the monkey aint smiling..

I actually went back to the lower level mogai out of frustration, levelled to 40 have my Sub Admiral escort now so will give it a go again i expect to better results.

EDIT: Got there eventually, take out the command ship and you're alright, tough but doable. perhaps too many elachi chargy up weapons (whatever its called) also general question, whats with elachi tractors and hull damage?

couldnt imagine it being possible in the captain/commander level d'deridex not quarter enough dps to get through the command ships shields.

marshalericdavid · May 2013

I played it and completed it 2 times on normal difficulty and it is to hard for normal difficulty. Nothing compares to it on normal difficulty. Make it easier on normal because it is a mission that I can see frustrating newcomers to the game and they might say f this its to hard and stop playing. I have no problem with its difficulty on higher settings but no reason for it to be as hard as it is on normal difficulty.

dragon47 · May 2013

I did this tonight in a D'deridex. Took about 6 or so defeats to get it done.

The first defeat came at the start of wave 3, which is pretty much unavoidable. After that, I cloaked and moved off to the side. Then I started picking off the little ships as I could, watching the hull of the command ship (it may not seem like it at the start, but the reinforcements do managed to whittle it down). Once the command ship was at 4-5% hull, I started focusing on it. Got myself 2-3 deaths just doing that, but it does work out eventually. After that, the Elachi fleet loses cohesion and it's just a mop-up exercise after that. Total time spent...maybe an hour, hour and a half.

It's not an easy mission, especially if you're not flush with patience. You just have to keep at it and pick what you're going to fight carefully.

gavinruneblade · May 2013

ussdelphin2 wrote: »

It is hard, but it tells you which ship to attack... attack that and only that.... you will die but you will beat it.

Actually, if the volume of posts in both test and now live are anything to go by, players accustomed to normal difficulty generally cannot beat it. Players who are used to hard/elite then post insults saying it's easy.

matridunadan1 · May 2013

If this is about about the space battle "Defense of New Romulus", bring a few Vice Admirals/Brigadier Generals from your allied fleet in with you.

This mission is insanely fun for level-capped. :cool:

mirrorchaos · May 2013

discovered a bug exploit in the cloak mechanic a few days ago, i didnt think anything of it towards the ai although i was aware of it. i decided to test it out and have the dreadnaughts the battleships and most of the sgolths parked not moving while i was cloaked about 12k out. it remained like this until the iks varanus destroyed the command ship since the elachi were not doing anything other then getting shot at. i cut down what was a 1 hour+ mission to about 30 minutes because of this cloak mechanic, i will post it in the bug section but really, the cloaking issue also needs to be solved on other matters, especially related to ships that cant see you and yet they can chase you or that hive space mission with the lance shooting out to 20k while cloaked and destroying you in one hit...

anyway, yeah, i can be done by other means and im certain i can adjust though as it doesnt take long to figure out how to adapt to an enemy now i got an idea how the ai behaves in a pack.

ussdelphin2 · May 2013

gavinruneblade wrote: »

Actually, if the volume of posts in both test and now live are anything to go by, players accustomed to normal difficulty generally cannot beat it. Players who are used to hard/elite then post insults saying it's easy.

I always play on normal, I found it hard to do because I was trying to attack the small ships, then moving on to the battle ships when I should have just attacked the command ship from the start, my 30 or so deaths might have been about 10. If someone used to playing on hard/elite found it easy then it just shows they are better players, but if they then insist on firing insults at players who did find it hard... they are most likely just trolling/being idiots.

satinavian · May 2013

It's extremely hard. That is not the same as impossible, but spending around an hour at a single space battle on normal when most elite STFs take 15 minutes is not ok.

Instead of calling people bad players i would focus on some differences

- What is appropriate gear for that mission ?

As a normal story mission i would say, a D'Deridex equipped with ramdom loot => which most probably means, you don't even have matching consoles to your weapon type, and most of the other console slots are filled with junk that is either way under level or some sort of completely irrelevant console

Of course c-store stuff is not required or present. I don't want to hear how well plasmonic leach works in this mission.

Your Boff powers... there is a big chance, you either didn't train them properly yet or have them instead trained for their intended use on some ship that is not the DD. Nearly no one completely changes their boff powers everytime he gets a new ship for very few hours of levelling. It's usually a waste of points and we all know, that starbase and reputation will require lots of them.

There are people playing not tac, maybe not even sci. As the best strategy in this missions revolves around repeated short attacks from cloak, a class, that does with little burst damage potential is considerably less useful here.

And yes, there is still player skill.

But people bragging about how easy and short it was : the frustrated people are talking about their first time in this misssion. Without previous knowledge, what would come. If you did it on tribble or read about it before and prepared a bit (addressing some of the points above), it is not a fair comparison.

conundrumnsa · May 2013

You could have a mission where you exploded as soon as you spawned and some basement dweller would post how much you suck and how easy it is. I generally take what they say with a grain of salt.

It's much like Diablo 3. Inferno was so broken it was insane and the only way to progress was with gear that people managed to exploit and get. Yet...you guessed it, people still posted how easy it was if you have skills.

ironmako · May 2013

I got stuck on this, till I found out the best method, is just go for the command ship, the other escorts will kick your TRIBBLE, but if you get your alpha strike in, and plenty of exploits, you should be able to kill the command ship in a few sittings.

Thank God, thank Allah, thank Buddha that the hit points don't regenerate much on the command ship!

istianis · May 2013

i used suicide tatics on that one.

Go in cloacked till 4-5Km , uncloack attack hit all the skills i have , heal heal heal , and by the time i crashed into it i get destroyed , bonus damage for explosion of me ship

lucianazeta · May 2013

I spend quite a bit of time on it, then noticed how weak the Commander was and went for that alone.

When I blew that one, the rest warped out.

kitsunesnout · May 2013

Most certainly too hard to be fair at all for new players, but just completed it with only one death just now and I had less than 30 mins to do all 3 waves due to scheduled server maintenance. I used my D'Deridex loaded with 4x VII something common vendor plasma torps at level 33 and it worked very well at bypassing the tough Elachi dreadnaught shields when I was picking them off one at a time from outside the ship cluster, worked like a charm, if shields are too tough, just bypass em'!

But still, I wouldn't want to face this as a new player, cause I know the tricks that a newcomer won't and this mission would be a pain otherwise.

vimzul · May 2013

I ignored the advice, got rid of the fighters first, then the escorts because the friendly NPC ships (which can't be destroyed as they just repair up) split their fire too much and the elachi npcs do not respawn so it is just a process of elimination. Once the number of options are diluted you get enough NPC fire on the command ship so even if you have terrible weapons and the basic boffs (like I did) then it is fairly easy.

It is too difficult just shooting the command ship if you are in a D'deridex because that space whale can't turn and can't move it's fat rear end so you will get slaughtered by their funky weapon.

itsthebishop · May 2013

The mission would be fine for a more experienced player, but it's a bit of a trick to do it in the D'deridex with the way Romulan ship progression works.

Reverse Shield Polarity is great for the Elachi death beams.

I got fleetmates to help me out and did it on normal. That made it pretty easy.

Cryptic's idea of the Elachi as a whole seems to be to overwhelm the player with zergs of rather powerful ships with unique mechanics. Once I got kinetic resistance and RSP, the Elachi became tolerable. I was very happy to see the end of the Elachi arc. I was so frustrated with the time-consuming swarms of Elachi I stopped caring about the story toward the middle of the Elachi arc.

praxi5 · May 2013

Easy way: Use EWP 3. Once that's finished doing it's damage, dump your Aux and use TBR.

Focus on the Commander and just the Commander alone.

Or, if you're got the DOffs for it, use Aux to Batt with EWP and TBR. Make sure you've got an RSP, too.

rylanadionysis · May 2013

Now i find myself wanting to play my rom today and blank this mission for my amusement. What level is it?

Bring it on >=/

ajma420 · May 2013

personally, I love that mission. It is difficult, but possible to beat. After a round of mirror invasion, I was >lv40 so I had the Ha'Feh. Yes you will die, but you need to prioritize targets based on their agro and weapons capabilities. Yes the mission is difficult and at times frustrating, but with the right setup and tactics, you can do it... just probably not in a D'Deridex

voodookingsg · May 2013

Died the first time. Grouped up with three other guys and finished it. It was pretty fun though.

elemberq333 · May 2013

The only complaint I have about this battle is that there are to many ships in one area which makes it so that my sound card can not process the sounds properly and consequently all I hear are clicks and static....

Make the battle as difficult as you want to Cryptic I have no problem with that what so ever, just make the battle so that I can hear what is going on in it!

I can not hear my computer saying "enemy shields have failed"....just clicks and static

I can not hear my weapons, or any weapons firing....just clicks and static

I love playing STO and I especially love all the sounds and graphics, but when I come to this battle my previous love of STO is ruined because the developer broke the classic foundry rule 101 ..... NEVER PUT TO MANY SHIPS IN ONE BATTLE.... :rolleyes::mad:

abaddon653 · May 2013

Attack the command ship and lure it away from the rest of the fleet. This is what a few of my fleet mates did and it worked for them.

I went a different way and skimmed the edges of the fleet taking out the weaker ships first. Above all do not get stuck in the middle of the fleet as you WILL dies much to fast. I can understand why a lot of people are having trouble with this mission, but with a few simple tactics it is do able.

I like it because you are not all powerful like you are in the rest of the pve game. It takes some thought to win, not just blindly flying in and kicking the TRIBBLE out of everything in your way.

It's also fun doing it with several friends teamed up.

dalolorn · May 2013

If the mission worked properly in the first place, it might not be so difficult.

Notice how there is a sizable Republic fleet supporting you from the beginning.

Then notice how, shortly after the beginning of wave 3, you are supported only by KDF and Starfleet ships.

This is caused by the fact that the Republic ships suddenly lose their ability to shut down and fix themselves up when taking fatal damage, and simply explode, tipping (or rather, smashing) the balance of the battle in the favor of the Elachi.

Solutions include teaming for this, min-maxing with a lot of skill, or outright skipping it.

tiekosora · May 2013

While this mission was difficult, it wasn't too hard. That is coming from a player that is far from hardcore in terms of tactics and gearing my ship, BO skills, and anything else that would count as a set up. I got killed three times. Once was while cloaking to get away to heal up, after several ships had fired torpedoes after me. Kill the command ship, and the rest is cake.

I also experienced an overload on my sound processor, and couldn't hear things that could be helpful in a fight.

cleve1970 · May 2013

I just suicided the command ship and died about 10 times. Those were some fleet action numbers there. Maybe boost the allied ship number or their toughness, otherwise was a fun mission.

hrisvalar · May 2013

elemberq333 wrote: »

The only complaint I have about this battle is that there are to many ships in one area which makes it so that my sound card can not process the sounds properly and consequently all I hear are clicks and static....

Had the same problem. It's also a very unbalanced match. I just ended up doing five or ten suicide runs at the Command ship, cause the reinforcements vessels were all over the place, and the Romulan ones were all gone. Took forever, though.

psychickitty · May 2013

I never had an issue with this mission....did it once normal and once hard.

On each I saw I was supposed to get waves of enemies......so I would cloak.....go around the enemies and attack from the diagonal rear position.

Since all romulan get a bonus for de-cloaking and attacking I tended to take down shields fast....then I would use my singularity powers.

I used first the power to hit things in a huge radius...then hit my power that lets the singularity build again fast.

On the third battle I noticed I almost died but my singularity charged up fast enough so I could use my heal effect before it happened.

I also had my energy set to weapons primary for what its worth...as I found romulan weapons kind of weak for some reason...but then since I am playing a starting character I guess that is normal at first.

dummyname · May 2013

This mission was annoying for me as a sci captain who wasn't properly setup to deal with Elachi ships. I think the biggest problem for me was all the battleships and escorts that simultaneously use the AoE Devastating cone attack, and the subspace jump maneuver they do. This mission almost feels as bad as going into a pvp match with 5 science captains in a wells or something. Made worse by the fact the opening Elachi salvo pretty much put every allied ship under repair.

I could have gone after the objective but with only EM to get out of the insane coverage all the ships AoE abilities it wasn't feasable so I started coming into the edge and picking off stragglers one by one until finally I could get at the commander ship, which the npc's actually killed on their own....good for them, they needed something to feel good about themselves after that whuppin.

devils choice Far far too hard (Romulan side)

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