Alrighty then, (if I remember the title of this particular Romulan episode correctly), this is my short review of the episode I just played yesterday from the
Romulan faction called "Last Stand".
Now I have enjoyed EVERY single episode so far , up to this point in the game, for the Romulan faction.
This one was wayyyy to hard, and wayy too long to play. It took me near an hour and a half I think? Nothing but fighting space battles after space battles, which is nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn't take tooo long.
the Elachi escort ships took soo much to defeat, and they just kept arriving.
Also there was no story at all to this , except fighting the ships...
So out of 10, I'd give this episode -90....
I'm the kind of person who enjoys a good Story rather than just continuous fighting... That's why I prefer RPG's than just straight action games.
That's my short review about that episode. Too difficult, too long, too boring, and no story.
Yet all the other episodes are great! And I hope the next ones are , also.
I could not be bothered doing it on my own so I drafted a fleet mate in and we cleared it relatively quick. I've tried it solo and it's a long drawn out ordeal.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
First, the story is there. Basically the Elachi are abducting romulans and you're trying to stop them. Those first two systems you go to...you get there late. The third system is where you arrive first and have a chance to defeat them. I've done this mission four times so far. The first time was difficult. Two hours and two respawns. Second time took 1 hour, 26 minutes. No respawn. Third time took 1 hour, 13 minutes. No respawn. Those were done in the basic D'deridex at mid-30th level. The fourth time I was 43rd level in a Ha'afeh, and I was done in 32 minutes with no respawn. It gets easier. And, it's good practice.
I just replayed this mission and while in the first part, there was a message that the Shard would come down in 30 minutes. Well I finished it in the last minute.
The issues. The Eleachi escorts have about 38.000 hp, the bigger ships abour 48.000 as I remember. Well, you have to eat through that and at the same time not being eaten. With my Mogai, subcommander Sci, it took a long time to complete the mission. I didn't have much difficulties, because I used and old and well known RPG trick, aggro pulling. I flew out of aggro range, targetted a ship, flew in 10 km range, say 9,6, and opened fire. Then I reversed trusted pull the target out of his group.
Another thing. The Eleachi ships are vulnerable to kinetic damage. This or the fact that your torpedoes can eat more chunks out of that 38.000 hull. Anyway, I also use this new (perhaps) tactic to put a mine layer in the aft and set it to autofire. This will lead to an area saturated with mines where the ship at some point will fly into.
The 30 minute replay I did with the same Sci character but now at commander level and I have the Draguas support vessel. This ship is just awesome in this mission. You have the aceton assimilator and I also have the bioneural warhead. I just flew into a group, threw in a gravity well, mines and torpedoes spamming, the extra stuff, things popped al around me.
Gravity well is a real killer for the Eleachi, the special consoles are nice of course, but I think you can do well with non-zen stuff. The classic escort setup or a heavy beam build will probably not work that well, given the fact that at this level you cannot give it the boost you can at max level.
Well, I decided to give this one a try on my level 31 Romulan Science Commander. I just got the D'D and outfitted it with just the stuff I'd picked up from missions.
Fore: 3 Plasma Beams, 1 Quantum torpedo
Aft: 1 Plasma beam, 1 Plasma Turret (it came with the ship and I didn't have any other bright ideas), 1 Mine Launcher
I had all the universal consoles so far and an RCS, too, so my turn radius was 7.7.
I managed to get through the entire mission without any deaths (not too close to any either!), but it took me 1.5 hours. I'm exhausted!
The mine launcher was the way to go on this. I launched them each time they were up and they were incredibly effective. As a Sci, I was also constantly using Sensor Scan and the other one (can't remember the name) to weaken enemies. Also, Aceton Beam from my Eng BOff. Eject Warp Plasma wasn't as effective as I'd seen in the past with other characters I play, as it was tough to manuever my ship so it could spew onto my enemies.
Evasive Manuevers every time that cone thing started up. I took a distant blow from one of these towards the end of the final assault, and it really hit hard, even from far away.
For strategy, the first 2 maps were easy--go in and blow stuff up. The final map, where you have the 3 waves of enemies, is tougher (but a little more fun). There I flew in just close enought to target one ship, shot him, and flew away. He'd follow (usually alone), and I'd fight mano-a-mano. When I got swarmed, I hit Evasive Manuevers and got out of there.
Despite my "win", I really don't want to do this mission again. It was way too long and not a lot of fun after the first hour or so. By that point, you're really committed to finishing this thing, so you can't really break away and "return to it later".
I'm all for a challenge every now and then, but a single leg of an episode that takes this long to finish? No thank you. On my next toon I will be skipping this until they decide to nerf it.
The payout is not worth all the time that you spend in this one branch. I will have plenty of time for grinding when I hit 45, there's no reason I have to do it at 29.
For me, I would give the overall episode a 3 out of 10. Fix this battle setup and it would be a 7.
I'm all for a challenge every now and then, but a single leg of an episode that takes this long to finish? No thank you. On my next toon I will be skipping this until they decide to nerf it.
The payout is not worth all the time that you spend in this one branch. I will have plenty of time for grinding when I hit 45, there's no reason I have to do it at 29.
For me, I would give the overall episode a 3 out of 10. Fix this battle setup and it would be a 7.
Then you're in luck, they nerfed it a few days ago with the last patch (07JUN13, I think). I did it post-patch/nerf and didn't work up a sweat doing so.
The Elachi/Elachi missions are just in general awful. These things have me wondering, just how bad can you be and still get work in the game industry ?
Look at the "Features"
1. It's the main Romulan storyline you are stuck with it.
2. The monbosh battle ships are dps checks you don't get till you are deep into the missions
3. The missions are just plain ludicrous and poorly designed.
Ex. Last stand you have large numbers of ships that are unbelievably op and stupid. Net result a long tedious mission of of pounding down ship after ship while all their friends don't seem to notice that you are there.
Ex. Good Offense: The shuttle battle is singularly lopsided.
I agree with the OP on this one. I just did this mission on my Mogai Warbird Engineer (Damage/Shield/Hull spec) Romulan and it was just divinely long. Never ever ending. Most of the ships were simply the hard type (with the ^ arrow, indicating they're kicka$$) and it took a crapload of time to advance. It just reminded me the old times with the "back in time" mission of the Federation, where you had to try and return to the normal timeline and instead of 1-2 hard-core klingon ships, I encountered 11 of them. And that was a bug as when I played it again, there were 1+1 ships.
I thought this mission would have a similar bug, but since it appeared on other people's monitors, I suppose it is what it is.
I love the Romulan episodes so far, but that mission is just for the trash can. I counted over 36 ships, most of which were elites (with the ^ sign). The """"reinforcements""" the station brought forth, the moment they came out, they only had the time to "hello commander we're here to-POPOPOP"... and that was pretty much it! Most of them barely made it out of the docking bay.
This mission needs an overhaul. Either reduce the insane amount of ships or have them at reduced strength. I really really loved the Romulan storyline, but I do not intend to do another of this race, just because of this mission alone, which is sad.
And no, I had no deaths to annoy me, just veeeeeeeeery very long fights.
I did this pre-nerf and had great fun, sure it took me 1.5 hours or more but I was using a ship made for lvl 20 to lvl 30 missions so I died a few times but that is to be expected when one is fighting every ship at the Elachi's disposal, especially when they have abilities to use on you as well.
Would I rather the ships had lower HP? Yes, but I would ask that they got more abilities to make up for it.
Would I like the mission made shorter? I don't think so actually, it is going to take a while to destroy every ship any race has, especially when their tech is better than yours.
If I had my way the difficulty would be raised in terms of AI improvements and increased skill range while the HP of most NPC ships would be lowered, I would make the ships themselves more player like in their weapon, console and skill layouts and then i would apply the same to endgame.
Comments
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
The issues. The Eleachi escorts have about 38.000 hp, the bigger ships abour 48.000 as I remember. Well, you have to eat through that and at the same time not being eaten. With my Mogai, subcommander Sci, it took a long time to complete the mission. I didn't have much difficulties, because I used and old and well known RPG trick, aggro pulling. I flew out of aggro range, targetted a ship, flew in 10 km range, say 9,6, and opened fire. Then I reversed trusted pull the target out of his group.
Another thing. The Eleachi ships are vulnerable to kinetic damage. This or the fact that your torpedoes can eat more chunks out of that 38.000 hull. Anyway, I also use this new (perhaps) tactic to put a mine layer in the aft and set it to autofire. This will lead to an area saturated with mines where the ship at some point will fly into.
The 30 minute replay I did with the same Sci character but now at commander level and I have the Draguas support vessel. This ship is just awesome in this mission. You have the aceton assimilator and I also have the bioneural warhead. I just flew into a group, threw in a gravity well, mines and torpedoes spamming, the extra stuff, things popped al around me.
Gravity well is a real killer for the Eleachi, the special consoles are nice of course, but I think you can do well with non-zen stuff. The classic escort setup or a heavy beam build will probably not work that well, given the fact that at this level you cannot give it the boost you can at max level.
Fore: 3 Plasma Beams, 1 Quantum torpedo
Aft: 1 Plasma beam, 1 Plasma Turret (it came with the ship and I didn't have any other bright ideas), 1 Mine Launcher
I had all the universal consoles so far and an RCS, too, so my turn radius was 7.7.
I managed to get through the entire mission without any deaths (not too close to any either!), but it took me 1.5 hours. I'm exhausted!
The mine launcher was the way to go on this. I launched them each time they were up and they were incredibly effective. As a Sci, I was also constantly using Sensor Scan and the other one (can't remember the name) to weaken enemies. Also, Aceton Beam from my Eng BOff. Eject Warp Plasma wasn't as effective as I'd seen in the past with other characters I play, as it was tough to manuever my ship so it could spew onto my enemies.
Evasive Manuevers every time that cone thing started up. I took a distant blow from one of these towards the end of the final assault, and it really hit hard, even from far away.
For strategy, the first 2 maps were easy--go in and blow stuff up. The final map, where you have the 3 waves of enemies, is tougher (but a little more fun). There I flew in just close enought to target one ship, shot him, and flew away. He'd follow (usually alone), and I'd fight mano-a-mano. When I got swarmed, I hit Evasive Manuevers and got out of there.
Despite my "win", I really don't want to do this mission again. It was way too long and not a lot of fun after the first hour or so. By that point, you're really committed to finishing this thing, so you can't really break away and "return to it later".
tl;dnr version: doable, but too long
The payout is not worth all the time that you spend in this one branch. I will have plenty of time for grinding when I hit 45, there's no reason I have to do it at 29.
For me, I would give the overall episode a 3 out of 10. Fix this battle setup and it would be a 7.
Then you're in luck, they nerfed it a few days ago with the last patch (07JUN13, I think). I did it post-patch/nerf and didn't work up a sweat doing so.
Look at the "Features"
1. It's the main Romulan storyline you are stuck with it.
2. The monbosh battle ships are dps checks you don't get till you are deep into the missions
3. The missions are just plain ludicrous and poorly designed.
Ex. Last stand you have large numbers of ships that are unbelievably op and stupid. Net result a long tedious mission of of pounding down ship after ship while all their friends don't seem to notice that you are there.
Ex. Good Offense: The shuttle battle is singularly lopsided.
I thought this mission would have a similar bug, but since it appeared on other people's monitors, I suppose it is what it is.
I love the Romulan episodes so far, but that mission is just for the trash can. I counted over 36 ships, most of which were elites (with the ^ sign). The """"reinforcements""" the station brought forth, the moment they came out, they only had the time to "hello commander we're here to-POPOPOP"... and that was pretty much it! Most of them barely made it out of the docking bay.
This mission needs an overhaul. Either reduce the insane amount of ships or have them at reduced strength. I really really loved the Romulan storyline, but I do not intend to do another of this race, just because of this mission alone, which is sad.
And no, I had no deaths to annoy me, just veeeeeeeeery very long fights.
I did this pre-nerf and had great fun, sure it took me 1.5 hours or more but I was using a ship made for lvl 20 to lvl 30 missions so I died a few times but that is to be expected when one is fighting every ship at the Elachi's disposal, especially when they have abilities to use on you as well.
Would I rather the ships had lower HP? Yes, but I would ask that they got more abilities to make up for it.
Would I like the mission made shorter? I don't think so actually, it is going to take a while to destroy every ship any race has, especially when their tech is better than yours.
If I had my way the difficulty would be raised in terms of AI improvements and increased skill range while the HP of most NPC ships would be lowered, I would make the ships themselves more player like in their weapon, console and skill layouts and then i would apply the same to endgame.
Overall, STO is far too easy!