1. The mission is not hard. You can park your ship in a corner and go watch TV, occasionally pressing a key or moving your cursor to prevent the afk timer. Come back after 2.5 hours and it beats itself.
2. The mission is not challenging. There's no mechanical skill involved in beating it, nor much tactical thinking required. You pick away at the blob from the perimeter, occasionally dying, until you whittle the flagship down. You can probably program a bot to do it.
3. The mission does not test your skills. Getting a six digit score in Tetris on grandmaster blind mode is testing your skills. Throwing you in a warehouse and telling you to stack 600 crates while blindfolded is testing your patience.
I did not think this mission was hard. Actually exciting enough to really pay attention, even doing this with the D'Deridex. If you're having issues with the turn rate, which can be a real problem in this massive battle, a few quick things.
1. 1-2 "RCS Accelerator" Consoles. Remember guys, this console got revised heavily for this update, all ships benefit from this console now, not just Escorts, but even slow 5-6 turn rate ships.
NOTE: RCS Accelerators are part of the rewards quite early in the Romulan campaign. I highly suggest to NOT get rid of them until you're done with Commander at least. You can still throw them on the Cmdr level D'Deridex and still reap the rewards of the console for this ship. It may not be the same magnitude as a proper Mk VII-VIII version, but it is still a boost nonetheless.
2. Consider adding Engineering BOFF skill Aux2 Inertial Dampers (Auxiliary to Dampeners). Kinetic resists, disable resists, and large turn rate boost.
3. If not doing a beamboat, and want a more focused forward attack, consider Dual Beam Banks. DBBs have a more restrictive fire arc than Beam Arrays, 90 degrees vs 250 degrees, but have more damage. They have also twice the arc of fire than the higher damaging Dual Heavy Cannons, which have 45 degrees. DHCs are powerful as heck, but the slow ships may have issues bringing these weapons to bear. I feel DBBs are a safer compromise.
I stuffed 2 RCS and A2ID1 (Aux to Inertial Dampeners 1), alongside 3 DBB and 1 Quantum Torpedo for fwd weapons, aft weapons being beam beam arrays. Don't forget to have Starship Impulse Thrusters skilled up, which I always do with any build. Between these things, the D'Deridex will fare far better. A traditional beamboat will work still and will be familiar to most players while not requiring more tweaks in the build. If doing beamboat, then maybe 1 RCS Console will be more than sufficient in this capacity with no A2ID.
Keep your ship moving, even if around 1/4 - 1/2 speed, but do NOT come to a standstill. A motionless ship will always get hit, and there's alot of fire in this mission.
I did not think this mission was hard. Actually exciting enough to really pay attention, even doing this with the D'Deridex. If you're having issues with the turn rate, which can be a real problem in this massive battle, a few quick things.
1. 1-2 RCS Consoles.
2. Consider adding Aux2 Inertial Dampers.
3. If not doing a beamboat, and want a more focused forward attack, consider DBBs.
I stuffed 2 RCS and A2ID1, alongside 3 DBB and 1 Quantum for fwd weapons, aft weapons beam beam arrays. Don't forget to have Impulse Engines skilled up, which I always do with any build. Between these things, the D'Deridex will fare far better. A traditional beamboat will work still and will be familiar to most players while not requiring more tweaks in the build. If doing beamboat, then maybe 1 RCS Console will be more than sufficient in this capacity with no A2ID.
Keep your ship moving, even if around 1/4 - 1/2 speed, but do NOT come to a standstill. A motionless ship will always get hit, and there's alot of fire in this mission.
I wish when you guys post these solutions that you would not use abbreviated terms like RCS, A2ID1, etc. Us newbies have almost no idea what you are talking about unfortunately.
The info of "kill the command ship" was not really that obvious in meaning .... ignore all else, just focus on the command ships, coz the rest will just keep respawning...
Could use some extra info on that part.
Also the incomming allies could use abit of functionality upgrade, i see Heavy Escort Carriers that dont launch fighters for example, so either they dont have them, or just plain dont use their powers.
The "epic" battles around DS9 on the dominion features are alot of fun, even with some deaths, and the arrival of the enterprise in that scenario is truly a helping to the battle.
Unfortunatly it does not feel the same in the defence of Romulus.
In the current setting it is not impossible to complete, but it is very annoying and takes a long time.
Some of the timers also dont seem to work well, retreating to second line while there are still a bucketload of elachi flying about, if u listen to the orders then, u face a fleet of 60+ hostiles , if u ignore the command and "cover the retreat" by killing all Elachi arund u have a much better time for Wave 2.
As for the "romulan reinforcements" that are sent in during the 3rd wave ... could be me ... but i never saw any.
Toughness of this event could be fixxed by getting some Romulan Republic reinforcements comming in as well, and not just Elachi reinforcements.
I wish when you guys post these solutions that you would not use abbreviated terms like RCS, A2ID1, etc. Us newbies have almost no idea what you are talking about unfortunately.
RCS is what it's called in game.
A2ID1 was explained before it was used [Aux2 Structural Integrity] 1.
If the strategy is "bring in overgeared, overleveled friends," that's a pretty good sign something is broken.
It's pretty obvious this mission didn't get correctly tested.
I'm kind of curious if the mission spawns scale to larger groups, or if it just always spawns the triple-fail group due to it being a fleet encounter. If it doesn't scale, I can definitely see how internal testing could have easily failed [that said, this feedback was on Tribble as well].
I'm contemplating repeating it now at VA since it rewards a blue Core, but I'm really hesitant to go through that again.
I finally beat the damn thing through sheer bloody-mindness. I managed to get it (more through luck than anything else) to lurk near a cluster of allied ships. I'd lurk and wait for them to drop a sector, try and zip in cloaked, and the spam torps and cannonfire until it eventually killed me.
Rinse, and repeat!
After I am vaped for the hojillionth time just as I get the Command Ship down to 5% hull and... some IKS "ally" snakes my kill.
Less than epic-feeling as the enemy fleet runs for it before I have made it back to the CZ. I felt so dirty claiming my reward... some Klingon out there knows I stole his bridge officer...
I completed the 1st two waves without issue in a Mogi running Captian level gear, the only issue I ran into was the 3rd wave, died 5 times but came to the following conclusions.
Final Wave with multiple escorts and 3 - 4 Dreadnaughts (Romulan equivalent) is a bit much to solo with the current provided NPC ships for those who are used to "casual" playing.
Issue #1
-The NPC support ships (during my mission) were located far from the warp in point of the 3rd wave.
Issue #2
- The number of "repairable" Federation NPC support ships is fine, however, there needs to be more Tanking, or DPS delivered by them. In Federation missions of similar level, we see the Federation Dreadnaughts or Typhoons, not little cruisers and science ships.
Some Tips for solo play of this mission
- If your final wave warps in far from support, aggro a couple of the ships and have them follow you to the support ships. (yes the support is weak, however you can get them to pose enough threat to start to weed down the small ships)
- Focus on the lead ship only, once it is gone the mission (somewhat) self completes (you will need to complete the 1st tip for this to work, you need the other ships to give attention to the NPC friendly ships so they don't all target you.
(caveat to above you may need to go far out of range of the battle for a little to give the NPC ships time to aggro the other NPC ships)
- Because the shields on the command ship are quite potent, use the strategy similar to the Doomsday device to deal all important hull damage. After it uses it's cone weapon, focus fire on that portion of the ship, the shields will be down for a period after it fires these weapons. I kept Emergency power to engines, Evasive, and an Engines battery on hand to move in and out of range of it's cone effect.
This mission can be done solo, it just takes a little bit of strategy and time.
I did not think this mission was hard. Actually exciting enough to really pay attention, even doing this with the D'Deridex. If you're having issues with the turn rate, which can be a real problem in this massive battle, a few quick things.
1. 1-2 RCS Consoles.
2. Consider adding Aux2 Inertial Dampers.
3. If not doing a beamboat, and want a more focused forward attack, consider DBBs.
I stuffed 2 RCS and A2ID1, alongside 3 DBB and 1 Quantum for fwd weapons, aft weapons beam beam arrays. Don't forget to have Impulse Engines skilled up, which I always do with any build. Between these things, the D'Deridex will fare far better. A traditional beamboat will work still and will be familiar to most players while not requiring more tweaks in the build. If doing beamboat, then maybe 1 RCS Console will be more than sufficient in this capacity with no A2ID.
Keep your ship moving, even if around 1/4 - 1/2 speed, but do NOT come to a standstill. A motionless ship will always get hit, and there's alot of fire in this mission.
Now that's something that didn't get brought up earlier, Speed Tanking. When I did this I kept my ship fying at full throttle(maneaverabiltiy? wazzat?) the entire fight, just for the passive defense bonus.
But yeah, we should test it to see if this mission actually scales to party size. It might be that the issue with Wave 3 is that it's spawning as if you had players helping you(even when you don't).
here are the wonky balance issues i have encountered (i have run this mission a totla of 6 times 2 of those durring beta)
the allied ships are not reliable in there survive ability some times they actually last and help and make a difference (like the mission is balanced for) others they die instantly only leaving you with 4 ships on infinite repair DURING THE CUT SCENE
some times the command ships do not launch any support craft and only the escorts warp in other times the command ships spawn so much support craft spam it over loads the game engine and you stat loosing graphics like weapons warp plasma and the green cone of death becomes invisible
apparently the command ship should not heal i have encountered it healing it's self 4 out of the 6 runs i did completely healing the damage i did before i died
they do not break lock on you when you cloak... ever. even if you come in wile cloaked they will target you and shoot the green cone at you WILE YOU ARE CLOAKED and this is before you have access to the stealth skill so you can not even put points in it
I wish when you guys post these solutions that you would not use abbreviated terms like RCS, A2ID1, etc. Us newbies have almost no idea what you are talking about unfortunately.
they do not break lock on you when you cloak... ever. even if you come in wile cloaked they will target you and shoot the green cone at you WILE YOU ARE CLOAKED and this is before you have access to the stealth skill so you can not even put points in it
Some of the additional ships are actually pets being launched I believe, which is why they restore if you destroy them. As they are pet based, they may be benefiting from the same bug that lets pets keep following Donatra when she cloaks.
A question for people who found this mission easy: how many allied ships did you have with you alive during the final wave?
Not really sure. There was a bunch, that's for sure, and nothing like 1-2 ships left or like that. Now, I did have to respawn once, but that was it. I enjoyed being in a pitch battle.
i played that mission a couple of hours ago - and well.. the final wave was a pain in the youknowwhatimean.. died like 20 times in there too.. needed ~1-1,5 hour for that, was pretty close to skip this entire bull****.
it felt like it switched to hard difficulty without touching it.. or like someone around lvl35+ entered the instance to trigger and left.
its not just that its hard, its just like unbelievable hard out of nowhere.. like a cliff.. like the eve online learning curve.. like the game is going to say "because f*ck you - thats why"...
i seriously had to quit the game for a few hours to calm down after this mission.
this mission needs a high 5... in the face... with a chair..
The mission requires strategy to beat which is probably why some people are having a hard time with it. I had little troubles with the mission using a regular green space whale like most people, and 7 disruptor beam arrays. The few times I died was only because I was hit with those damage scaling torpedo spreads like the Unimatrix has. No real defense against those unless you have brace for impact on a hotkey.
You have to lure the larger ships away from the pack and take them on one on one. You can't out tank them in a regular D'd unless you are doing the mission at a much higher level like lvl 50. You need to cloak to turn that beast in the direction you need to. Also liberal use of Evasive Maneuvers to get you out of the firing cone. But if you are taking them on one on one you shouldn't have too much problem avoiding its special attack.
Some of the additional ships are actually pets being launched I believe, which is why they restore if you destroy them. As they are pet based, they may be benefiting from the same bug that lets pets keep following Donatra when she cloaks.
could be it was hard to see what was what as there was so much TRIBBLE spawned in the game engine was having a fit and dropping graphics so some things where starting to go invisible
I did not find this mission that difficult. Yes those blast that they fire in their cones were highly annoying. But they weren't really that hard to avoid. You have so many abilities at your disposal that it shouldn't be a problem. Yes, even with that big slow tugboat warbird. It just makes you use your head when doing this mission.
The mission requires strategy to beat which is probably why some people are having a hard time with it. I had little troubles with the mission using a regular green space whale like most people, and 7 disruptor beam arrays. The few times I died was only because I was hit with those damage scaling torpedo spreads like the Unimatrix has. No real defense against those unless you have brace for impact on a hotkey.
You have to lure the larger ships away from the pack and take them on one on one. You can't out tank them in a regular D'd unless you are doing the mission at a much higher level like lvl 50. You need to cloak to turn that beast in the direction you need to. Also liberal use of Evasive Maneuvers to get you out of the firing cone. But if you are taking them on one on one you shouldn't have too much problem avoiding its special attack.
oh believe me, i tried.
and im no complete newb at this game. i played a gal-x over a year now in stf runs.
its just that sometimes you cant just lure that bigass ship out of the mob. and if you start to trigger those escorts and the fleet gets wiped, its done. you cant help but die bazillion times..
this was my layout
D'deridex, 3 dualplasma (1 of them beeing the caustic reward, which is first for the overload), highyield1 with a plasmatorp, turret in the back.. 10% beam&15% torp consoles.. 100/30/15/15... basicly everything for an alpha strike (as much as possible with rewards and drops) plus evasive for retreat. (sure not perfect build, but i think its "okayish", at least for mission pve)
i waited for the cone, so that this big f*cker drops the shield and get insta ***** by the support ships cone of death. and when you realize that the ships respawn after you killed most of them, this is where the fun starts...
i got my TRIBBLE handed to me like in elite stfs through tac cubes in the beginning...
First let me admit I didn't read this whole 11 page thread so maybe its been said...
This is indeed the toughest episode in STO so far, the only contender is Doomsday machine for the number of respawns involved. First time completing it without a respawn was with a level 40 romulan.
I would say it needs to be balanced to make it comparable with other episodes.
Not really sure. There was a bunch, that's for sure, and nothing like 1-2 ships left or like that. Now, I did have to respawn once, but that was it. I enjoyed being in a pitch battle.
What people who hate the mission experience is all of the Romulan ships getting immediately vaporized, leaving only the 4 Fed + KDF ships that can't be killed but spend most of their time disabled because they're repairing.
I did it 2 times. (First time i had to give up after 1 hour because i had an appointment), second time took ~20 minutes in total.
What was the difference ?
Gear ? Ok, i actually invested some of my captain skill points which i hadn't done since around lv 10. Also promoted and skilled some boffs.
But still crappy gear, mostly lv 6 common, still DD, still eng captain. Still same player with same player skill.
But :
We killed the first wave. And the second. Not a single problem. Hardly any losses.(maybe no losses, but i didn't count. But have not seen repairs) In the third wave i got the command ship down to 50 percent before i had to actually retreat.
Before :
Second wave spawned while first wave was still fighting both waves utterly destroyed the whole Rom fleet and the 3rd wave came on top of them resulting in most of all waves present at the same time.
So ... one of those runs worked not like intended. And the difference in difficulty is tremendous. It's a difference of several dozens of ships in the pulk. many of them with the cone weapon.
I can see, why some people see this mission as insanely difficult and others as harder than usual for story missions but totally ok for ungeared newcomers. They didn't play the same mission.
And yes, the command ship heals. But it might be some crosshealing as it seems to be in rare jumps of more than one percent.
So I finally got this mission done, but it was not easily done or enjoyable in the least.
The first two waves went ok, took some damage, but no deaths.
Then the dreaded 3rd wave. I counted 4, yes 4 dreadnoughts and the command ship, and a smattering of those annoying Monbosh ships and some other support craft.
I was in the C-Store version of the DD, with some dil store plasma weapons. I tried to come in from the sides as suggested, but I could not do much damage to any ship before going boom.
So, I tried a few other tactics I read about, and some I thought up on the fly, but nothing worked well.
In the end one of the allied ships had dragged the command ship away from the main furball, and I simply zerged the command ship to get this mission over and done with.
This mission is one of those that I will not do again, unless I have to. It's simply not a fun mission, due to the 3rd wave.
There are no R.R.W. ships left, or if there are, they are wiped out by that ton of cone attacks that ALL the Elachi that can fire them, does just that. The allied ships don't fare much better, and are spending most of their time in a repair loop, wich isen't doing much to help the player out.
I did see a few named ships, the Defiant and the Kang, and some others, but even being "hero" ships, they are not doing a good job.
The dreadnoughts are a challenge unto themselves, but the command ship is the worst. And by worst I mean the insane shields and HP the damned thing has. Normally the DD fares well in PvE missions, but here it's like it is a small mosquito, barely doing any damage to the command ship at all. It must have taken me about 10-20 deaths to get the bloody thing killed in the end.
The mission took me a good hour to complete, making it the longest dev made mission I can remember since the original STF's were around...
Something needs to be done about this mission, as it's not fun at all getting numerous wipes, and tons of frustrations along with it. That all the Elachi ships (afaik) has that cone attack is just insane, so maybe limit the number of ships that can fire it off. And maybe reduce the total number of enemy ships, so it's not so crowded...
The idea of the mission is good, but the execution leaves something to be desired...
I did it 2 times. (First time i had to give up after 1 hour because i had an appointment), second time took ~20 minutes in total.
What was the difference ?
Gear ? Ok, i actually invested some of my captain skill points which i hadn't done since around lv 10. Also promoted and skilled some boffs.
But still crappy gear, mostly lv 6 common, still DD, still eng captain. Still same player with same player skill.
But :
We killed the first wave. And the second. Not a single problem. Hardly any losses.(maybe no losses, but i didn't count. But have not seen repairs) In the third wave i got the command ship down to 50 percent before i had to actually retreat.
Before :
Second wave spawned while first wave was still fighting both waves utterly destroyed the whole Rom fleet and the 3rd wave came on top of them resulting in most of all waves present at the same time.
So ... one of those runs worked not like intended. And the difference in difficulty is tremendous. It's a difference of several dozens of ships in the pulk. many of them with the cone weapon.
I can see, why some people see this mission as insanely difficult and others as harder than usual for story missions but totally ok for ungeared newcomers. They didn't play the same mission.
Now that's some good data. This sort of idea ws brought up on the Tribble forum, but got drowned out by the people QQing about dying over and over....
And yes, the command ship heals. But it might be some crosshealing as it seems to be in rare jumps of more than one percent.
I know I've seen Elachi use Hazard Emitters so it might be that.
When people say "It doesn't heal." what they really mean is that it doesn't automatically return to full HP when it leaves red alert. (Which is what most enemies do.)
Fire at Will is probably the most dangerous boff skill u can use on this map, since it seems to instantly gain u a targetinglock of EVERY ship u hit with it, untill u die ... they will keep chasing u by the bunch ...
On that count, Cannon Scatter Volley is probably almost as dangerous, as any ship u hit will target u, instead of the allied/romulan fodder flying about ...
As a sidenote on the amount of ships ... well .. it was the HUGE fleet u were seeing outside the Elachi subspace base , so it does make sense u see those arrive at New Romulus too ..
But what is most needed is the allied ships working as intended, and some better romulan backups in there, at least as long as all the supporting monbosch & dreadnoughts are also still flying about ...
that is the only complaint and fix i think the mission needs the allied ships getting the infinite 1 hitpoint. the mission would be properly balanced still tough but not frustrating and tedious
Fire at Will is probably the most dangerous boff skill u can use on this map, since it seems to instantly gain u a targetinglock of EVERY ship u hit with it, untill u die ... they will keep chasing u by the bunch ...
On that count, Cannon Scatter Volley is probably almost as dangerous, as any ship u hit will target u, instead of the allied/romulan fodder flying about ...
As a sidenote on the amount of ships ... well .. it was the HUGE fleet u were seeing outside the Elachi subspace base , so it does make sense u see those arrive at New Romulus too ..
But what is most needed is the allied ships working as intended, and some better romulan backups in there, at least as long as all the supporting monbosch & dreadnoughts are also still flying about ...
I spammed Fire At Will because I WANTED the Elachi to pay attention to me. As long as they were focused on me, the allied fleet had time to attack the command ship. I was able to tank almost everything the Elachi could throw at me in my D'D. Then again.... I was using an EP/A2B build that was OP vs regular enemies.
Then again.... I was using an EP/A2B build that was OP vs regular enemies.
Grah, I thought about doing that but didn't want to reinvest all the Expertise to retraining my Boffs at that point. Or buying the Technician Doffs for that matter. Would've made the mission a lot easier, but that level of advanced build shouldn't be necessary for Captain-level campaign missions though.
Going to need to get those Techs anyway, I'm planning to test out A2B on the Dhelan Retrofit when I get home.
Comments
2. The mission is not challenging. There's no mechanical skill involved in beating it, nor much tactical thinking required. You pick away at the blob from the perimeter, occasionally dying, until you whittle the flagship down. You can probably program a bot to do it.
3. The mission does not test your skills. Getting a six digit score in Tetris on grandmaster blind mode is testing your skills. Throwing you in a warehouse and telling you to stack 600 crates while blindfolded is testing your patience.
The mission is broken.
It needs to be fixed.
1. 1-2 "RCS Accelerator" Consoles. Remember guys, this console got revised heavily for this update, all ships benefit from this console now, not just Escorts, but even slow 5-6 turn rate ships.
NOTE: RCS Accelerators are part of the rewards quite early in the Romulan campaign. I highly suggest to NOT get rid of them until you're done with Commander at least. You can still throw them on the Cmdr level D'Deridex and still reap the rewards of the console for this ship. It may not be the same magnitude as a proper Mk VII-VIII version, but it is still a boost nonetheless.
2. Consider adding Engineering BOFF skill Aux2 Inertial Dampers (Auxiliary to Dampeners). Kinetic resists, disable resists, and large turn rate boost.
3. If not doing a beamboat, and want a more focused forward attack, consider Dual Beam Banks. DBBs have a more restrictive fire arc than Beam Arrays, 90 degrees vs 250 degrees, but have more damage. They have also twice the arc of fire than the higher damaging Dual Heavy Cannons, which have 45 degrees. DHCs are powerful as heck, but the slow ships may have issues bringing these weapons to bear. I feel DBBs are a safer compromise.
I stuffed 2 RCS and A2ID1 (Aux to Inertial Dampeners 1), alongside 3 DBB and 1 Quantum Torpedo for fwd weapons, aft weapons being beam beam arrays. Don't forget to have Starship Impulse Thrusters skilled up, which I always do with any build. Between these things, the D'Deridex will fare far better. A traditional beamboat will work still and will be familiar to most players while not requiring more tweaks in the build. If doing beamboat, then maybe 1 RCS Console will be more than sufficient in this capacity with no A2ID.
Keep your ship moving, even if around 1/4 - 1/2 speed, but do NOT come to a standstill. A motionless ship will always get hit, and there's alot of fire in this mission.
I wish when you guys post these solutions that you would not use abbreviated terms like RCS, A2ID1, etc. Us newbies have almost no idea what you are talking about unfortunately.
The info of "kill the command ship" was not really that obvious in meaning .... ignore all else, just focus on the command ships, coz the rest will just keep respawning...
Could use some extra info on that part.
Also the incomming allies could use abit of functionality upgrade, i see Heavy Escort Carriers that dont launch fighters for example, so either they dont have them, or just plain dont use their powers.
The "epic" battles around DS9 on the dominion features are alot of fun, even with some deaths, and the arrival of the enterprise in that scenario is truly a helping to the battle.
Unfortunatly it does not feel the same in the defence of Romulus.
In the current setting it is not impossible to complete, but it is very annoying and takes a long time.
Some of the timers also dont seem to work well, retreating to second line while there are still a bucketload of elachi flying about, if u listen to the orders then, u face a fleet of 60+ hostiles , if u ignore the command and "cover the retreat" by killing all Elachi arund u have a much better time for Wave 2.
As for the "romulan reinforcements" that are sent in during the 3rd wave ... could be me ... but i never saw any.
Toughness of this event could be fixxed by getting some Romulan Republic reinforcements comming in as well, and not just Elachi reinforcements.
RCS is what it's called in game.
A2ID1 was explained before it was used [Aux2 Structural Integrity] 1.
I'm kind of curious if the mission spawns scale to larger groups, or if it just always spawns the triple-fail group due to it being a fleet encounter. If it doesn't scale, I can definitely see how internal testing could have easily failed [that said, this feedback was on Tribble as well].
I'm contemplating repeating it now at VA since it rewards a blue Core, but I'm really hesitant to go through that again.
Rinse, and repeat!
After I am vaped for the hojillionth time just as I get the Command Ship down to 5% hull and... some IKS "ally" snakes my kill.
Less than epic-feeling as the enemy fleet runs for it before I have made it back to the CZ. I felt so dirty claiming my reward... some Klingon out there knows I stole his bridge officer...
It was easy?... Dont know what you guys are doing.. Just learn to Play.
this mission has some serious wonky balance issues
Final Wave with multiple escorts and 3 - 4 Dreadnaughts (Romulan equivalent) is a bit much to solo with the current provided NPC ships for those who are used to "casual" playing.
Issue #1
-The NPC support ships (during my mission) were located far from the warp in point of the 3rd wave.
Issue #2
- The number of "repairable" Federation NPC support ships is fine, however, there needs to be more Tanking, or DPS delivered by them. In Federation missions of similar level, we see the Federation Dreadnaughts or Typhoons, not little cruisers and science ships.
Some Tips for solo play of this mission
- If your final wave warps in far from support, aggro a couple of the ships and have them follow you to the support ships. (yes the support is weak, however you can get them to pose enough threat to start to weed down the small ships)
- Focus on the lead ship only, once it is gone the mission (somewhat) self completes (you will need to complete the 1st tip for this to work, you need the other ships to give attention to the NPC friendly ships so they don't all target you.
(caveat to above you may need to go far out of range of the battle for a little to give the NPC ships time to aggro the other NPC ships)
- Because the shields on the command ship are quite potent, use the strategy similar to the Doomsday device to deal all important hull damage. After it uses it's cone weapon, focus fire on that portion of the ship, the shields will be down for a period after it fires these weapons. I kept Emergency power to engines, Evasive, and an Engines battery on hand to move in and out of range of it's cone effect.
This mission can be done solo, it just takes a little bit of strategy and time.
-Spells
| Dues Ex Mechina |
Fleet Leader
But yeah, we should test it to see if this mission actually scales to party size. It might be that the issue with Wave 3 is that it's spawning as if you had players helping you(even when you don't).
My character Tsin'xing
the allied ships are not reliable in there survive ability some times they actually last and help and make a difference (like the mission is balanced for) others they die instantly only leaving you with 4 ships on infinite repair DURING THE CUT SCENE
some times the command ships do not launch any support craft and only the escorts warp in other times the command ships spawn so much support craft spam it over loads the game engine and you stat loosing graphics like weapons warp plasma and the green cone of death becomes invisible
apparently the command ship should not heal i have encountered it healing it's self 4 out of the 6 runs i did completely healing the damage i did before i died
they do not break lock on you when you cloak... ever. even if you come in wile cloaked they will target you and shoot the green cone at you WILE YOU ARE CLOAKED and this is before you have access to the stealth skill so you can not even put points in it
I will revise the post.
Some of the additional ships are actually pets being launched I believe, which is why they restore if you destroy them. As they are pet based, they may be benefiting from the same bug that lets pets keep following Donatra when she cloaks.
Not really sure. There was a bunch, that's for sure, and nothing like 1-2 ships left or like that. Now, I did have to respawn once, but that was it. I enjoyed being in a pitch battle.
it felt like it switched to hard difficulty without touching it.. or like someone around lvl35+ entered the instance to trigger and left.
its not just that its hard, its just like unbelievable hard out of nowhere.. like a cliff.. like the eve online learning curve.. like the game is going to say "because f*ck you - thats why"...
i seriously had to quit the game for a few hours to calm down after this mission.
this mission needs a high 5... in the face... with a chair..
You have to lure the larger ships away from the pack and take them on one on one. You can't out tank them in a regular D'd unless you are doing the mission at a much higher level like lvl 50. You need to cloak to turn that beast in the direction you need to. Also liberal use of Evasive Maneuvers to get you out of the firing cone. But if you are taking them on one on one you shouldn't have too much problem avoiding its special attack.
could be it was hard to see what was what as there was so much TRIBBLE spawned in the game engine was having a fit and dropping graphics so some things where starting to go invisible
oh believe me, i tried.
and im no complete newb at this game. i played a gal-x over a year now in stf runs.
its just that sometimes you cant just lure that bigass ship out of the mob. and if you start to trigger those escorts and the fleet gets wiped, its done. you cant help but die bazillion times..
this was my layout
D'deridex, 3 dualplasma (1 of them beeing the caustic reward, which is first for the overload), highyield1 with a plasmatorp, turret in the back.. 10% beam&15% torp consoles.. 100/30/15/15... basicly everything for an alpha strike (as much as possible with rewards and drops) plus evasive for retreat. (sure not perfect build, but i think its "okayish", at least for mission pve)
i waited for the cone, so that this big f*cker drops the shield and get insta ***** by the support ships cone of death. and when you realize that the ships respawn after you killed most of them, this is where the fun starts...
i got my TRIBBLE handed to me like in elite stfs through tac cubes in the beginning...
This is indeed the toughest episode in STO so far, the only contender is Doomsday machine for the number of respawns involved. First time completing it without a respawn was with a level 40 romulan.
I would say it needs to be balanced to make it comparable with other episodes.
What people who hate the mission experience is all of the Romulan ships getting immediately vaporized, leaving only the 4 Fed + KDF ships that can't be killed but spend most of their time disabled because they're repairing.
I did it 2 times. (First time i had to give up after 1 hour because i had an appointment), second time took ~20 minutes in total.
What was the difference ?
Gear ? Ok, i actually invested some of my captain skill points which i hadn't done since around lv 10. Also promoted and skilled some boffs.
But still crappy gear, mostly lv 6 common, still DD, still eng captain. Still same player with same player skill.
But :
We killed the first wave. And the second. Not a single problem. Hardly any losses.(maybe no losses, but i didn't count. But have not seen repairs) In the third wave i got the command ship down to 50 percent before i had to actually retreat.
Before :
Second wave spawned while first wave was still fighting both waves utterly destroyed the whole Rom fleet and the 3rd wave came on top of them resulting in most of all waves present at the same time.
So ... one of those runs worked not like intended. And the difference in difficulty is tremendous. It's a difference of several dozens of ships in the pulk. many of them with the cone weapon.
I can see, why some people see this mission as insanely difficult and others as harder than usual for story missions but totally ok for ungeared newcomers. They didn't play the same mission.
And yes, the command ship heals. But it might be some crosshealing as it seems to be in rare jumps of more than one percent.
The first two waves went ok, took some damage, but no deaths.
Then the dreaded 3rd wave. I counted 4, yes 4 dreadnoughts and the command ship, and a smattering of those annoying Monbosh ships and some other support craft.
I was in the C-Store version of the DD, with some dil store plasma weapons. I tried to come in from the sides as suggested, but I could not do much damage to any ship before going boom.
So, I tried a few other tactics I read about, and some I thought up on the fly, but nothing worked well.
In the end one of the allied ships had dragged the command ship away from the main furball, and I simply zerged the command ship to get this mission over and done with.
This mission is one of those that I will not do again, unless I have to. It's simply not a fun mission, due to the 3rd wave.
There are no R.R.W. ships left, or if there are, they are wiped out by that ton of cone attacks that ALL the Elachi that can fire them, does just that. The allied ships don't fare much better, and are spending most of their time in a repair loop, wich isen't doing much to help the player out.
I did see a few named ships, the Defiant and the Kang, and some others, but even being "hero" ships, they are not doing a good job.
The dreadnoughts are a challenge unto themselves, but the command ship is the worst. And by worst I mean the insane shields and HP the damned thing has. Normally the DD fares well in PvE missions, but here it's like it is a small mosquito, barely doing any damage to the command ship at all. It must have taken me about 10-20 deaths to get the bloody thing killed in the end.
The mission took me a good hour to complete, making it the longest dev made mission I can remember since the original STF's were around...
Something needs to be done about this mission, as it's not fun at all getting numerous wipes, and tons of frustrations along with it. That all the Elachi ships (afaik) has that cone attack is just insane, so maybe limit the number of ships that can fire it off. And maybe reduce the total number of enemy ships, so it's not so crowded...
The idea of the mission is good, but the execution leaves something to be desired...
When people say "It doesn't heal." what they really mean is that it doesn't automatically return to full HP when it leaves red alert. (Which is what most enemies do.)
My character Tsin'xing
On that count, Cannon Scatter Volley is probably almost as dangerous, as any ship u hit will target u, instead of the allied/romulan fodder flying about ...
As a sidenote on the amount of ships ... well .. it was the HUGE fleet u were seeing outside the Elachi subspace base , so it does make sense u see those arrive at New Romulus too ..
But what is most needed is the allied ships working as intended, and some better romulan backups in there, at least as long as all the supporting monbosch & dreadnoughts are also still flying about ...
My character Tsin'xing
Grah, I thought about doing that but didn't want to reinvest all the Expertise to retraining my Boffs at that point. Or buying the Technician Doffs for that matter. Would've made the mission a lot easier, but that level of advanced build shouldn't be necessary for Captain-level campaign missions though.
Going to need to get those Techs anyway, I'm planning to test out A2B on the Dhelan Retrofit when I get home.