test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
Advice for a 1st-time Rom Toon?
cancellera
Member Posts: 77 Arc User
Hi folks!
I got tired of my Fed toon and the limits of level-cap cruiser gameplay. Since I've started my Rom toon a few days back, I realised that IT'S BRILLIANT! This is my playing style!
Thing is... I have no idea what I'm doing. Here are a few issues I could use some advice on from more experienced players:
1. Dual beams or h. dual cannons?
Some have told me that beams are the way to go. On the other hand, cannons on rapid fire are frightfully good. What worked for you guys?
2. Plasma or Disruptor? (Or antiproton?)
Both are 'Romulan-typed' with very useful procs. Looking at the Reputation weapon sets, the Singularity Harness set and the CC Ordnance set both give very useful bonuses. Which do you use and why?
3. Turrets or beam arrays behind?
I realised that warbirds are terrible at the side and rear. Beams do far more damage than turrets, but placing beams with cannons up front results in a large 'blind spot' where neither can attack. On the other hand, turrets can help up front too.
4. Torpedoes: Plasma or Photon?
Both have different bonuses in the two aforementioned reputation sets. The plasma burn has been very useful against NPCs. My own experience fighting PvP, however, reveals that high yield plasma torps almost never hit their target unless you're firing at a distance where there's a risk of getting caught in your own blast.
P.s. on my Fed toon, I'm able to lace up different repu. sets to achieve 6000+ kinetic damage on photon torps without any dedicated torp consoles. However, that's only at level-cap playing.
Thanks in advance! Jolan'tru:cool:
I got tired of my Fed toon and the limits of level-cap cruiser gameplay. Since I've started my Rom toon a few days back, I realised that IT'S BRILLIANT! This is my playing style!
Thing is... I have no idea what I'm doing. Here are a few issues I could use some advice on from more experienced players:
1. Dual beams or h. dual cannons?
Some have told me that beams are the way to go. On the other hand, cannons on rapid fire are frightfully good. What worked for you guys?
2. Plasma or Disruptor? (Or antiproton?)
Both are 'Romulan-typed' with very useful procs. Looking at the Reputation weapon sets, the Singularity Harness set and the CC Ordnance set both give very useful bonuses. Which do you use and why?
3. Turrets or beam arrays behind?
I realised that warbirds are terrible at the side and rear. Beams do far more damage than turrets, but placing beams with cannons up front results in a large 'blind spot' where neither can attack. On the other hand, turrets can help up front too.
4. Torpedoes: Plasma or Photon?
Both have different bonuses in the two aforementioned reputation sets. The plasma burn has been very useful against NPCs. My own experience fighting PvP, however, reveals that high yield plasma torps almost never hit their target unless you're firing at a distance where there's a risk of getting caught in your own blast.
P.s. on my Fed toon, I'm able to lace up different repu. sets to achieve 6000+ kinetic damage on photon torps without any dedicated torp consoles. However, that's only at level-cap playing.
Thanks in advance! Jolan'tru:cool:
Post edited by cancellera on
0
Comments
Look into getting the Tier 3 Valdore romulan ship and Vandal Destroyer KDF (if you sided with the KDF) for their consoles. You can Convert Refine Dil into Zen for them if you doesn't want to spend money.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
1. Min-Maxing for PvE you want AP DBBs fore with the Crafted and Ancient Omni Beam Arrays aft with FAW. For PvP in non-Intel ships its usually mix one DBB for Spike Damage using Beam Overload 3 in combo with the rest being DHCs and turrets with CRF3. The Full Intel ship Faeht can mix cannon type weapons with beams more easily as Surgical Strikes works with both, so you can have DBBs fore with turrets aft and be in good shape, and Surgical Strikes is excellent for PvP and solid in single-target PvE damage.
2. Disruptor -- The CC Ordinance set, despite being about the same percent listed as the Singularity Harness set, is a much bigger enhancement due to it being 'bonus' damage that gets calculated with all your buffs factored in.
3. Turrets and/or Omni beams.
4. Rather fond of the Enhanced Bio-Molecular Photon, its green like a Rom torp should be, and it has an un-targetable heavy mode. For Min-Max DPS in PvE, the answer is no torps at all. There's also the option of using torps in Spread (which can't miss) in PvP.
Whatever you end up picking for your weapons, keep in mind that good power management will make them effective. Romulans have a tougher time managing power levels than FEDs/KDFs do, simply due to the nature of how singularity cores work. Make sure to keep weapons power consistently high, and don't forget power in the other subsystems as well. Skill tree specs help greatly in this respect.
https://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
I'm not sure about the end-game ship I want yet - my character is only at tier 3 right now. Based on lessons from flying fed cruisers, I'll be maxing out weapon damage skills and warp core potential. I've realised that power is lacking rom ships compared to the others while science abilities - eg tractor beam or grav well - are essential for maintaining a lock on a particular shield facing. This is especially important against fast escort-like ships that can sometimes fly faster than normal torpedoes. I've fought an avenger who outran my normal torps before and, no, it wasn't even a 'miss'.
If I fly the heavier rom ships, would they come with more power? If they do, is it enough to match a setup with cannons? Rom ships need to focus their firing arc quite narrowly and a larger, slower ship might have problems doing that with 45-deg cannons. Would it make sense to use a mix of single and double cannons then? Or just stick to DBBs throughout?
Mixing beams and weapons does sound tempting but it's not quite my playing style.I like to use rapid fire or fire at will - a mix would compromise the efficiency of both.
Some of you guys have mentioned using Rom or CC ordnance weapons - do they have better DPS than fleet ones? I'm concerned that the lower base damage won't be offset by the procs over the long run. What's your experience like?
Bigger ships don't come with much more subsystem power (you might get two +10 instead of one +15, but that's it). Their benefit is thicker hulls and more shields instead.
Fleet weapons aren't that great anymore, the only thing they really had going for them was the rarity modifier but it's now possible to get Ultra-Rare or even Epic quality of weapons with much better modifiers. [dmg] is actually the worst modifier of the standard ones, even though the tooltip makes it seem like it's one of the best, it's far weaker than crit enhancing ones in practice. On a conventional (I.E. non-Intel) build [acc] build is somewhat helpful in PvP, but being limited to only x2 of it is a major downside, and in PvE [acc] is 'meh' at best as other sources of accuracy are more than enough to hit targets and the 'overflow' of getting past defense is only a tiny amount of crit.
Rom rep weapons are pretty nice with enhancing the damage they do with debuffs and doing a Damage over time burn, at least in PvE. Make sure to get [CrtD]x2 if you're buying them (instead of just getting them in Daily/Hourly project packs) In PvP the burn can get cleared pretty easily, though. Not sure how the resists for Plasma are in PvP currently, but it used to be a major downside since most were running Shields from the Omega Rep that had extra Plamsa Resists, but with all the shields available now, that may no longer be an issue. They do make nice transition weapons from leveling on Plamsa as you can just slowly replace normal Plasma with them without a major jump, and you may get a few for free by doing the Rom Rep.
CC weapons beyond the set pieces are a skip for the most part. If you have the Bio-Molecular torp, the debuff is difficult to get a second stack of, making the lack of a mod for the rarity not a good option on the rest of your weapons. The free drops make good filler until you get better Disruptor weapons if you're going Disruptor, but that's about it. The big deal is the set, which gives (or should, been hearing about bugs with it) additional Disruptor damage.
General advice:
1.no cruiser commands and battlecloak so even the D'deridex is not a 'real' cruiser. thus you could just as easily make a DHC DD if you want to. (battlecloak and park&shoot.)
Thus weapon choice is more what you are comfortable with than a specific template for the ship. (unless you're min-maxing).
2. On low hull ships becareful of battlecloaking when aggro'ed - you have a moment of no shields that the AI can still shoot you with.
3. As i said before minus the DSD's and the ha'nom there are no science ships for roms. always slot aux2bat. (solves the power hit cryptic imposed on singularity cores.. go figure even the sci-fi lore hints at them being better or on par)
This lack of power is what makes a Romulan toon not suitable for a science captain because they need to devote power auxiliary subsystems since the effectiveness of science abilities depends on auxiliary power levels. However, they also need power to weapon subsystems so that energy weapons can do damage. Also, similar to the KDF, the Romulans do not have many faction science ships to choose from.
I've since learned that a cannon build suits me best on the escort-like warbirds. The bigger ships - whole feeling more stately and majestic, suffers from manoeuvrability issues against both big and small craft. It's offensive powers are bearable. It's defenses... Well, I haven't found a way to configure that properly. Too much shield strength is spent going in circles to get the cannons to lock on and the tractor beams aren't enough when fighting multiple hostiles.
Plus with good defense, the lighter craft get hit a lot less.
I would like to return to flagship sized vessels in the future. At tier 4, however, the BOFF and turn/speed gestalt of the Ha'apax is a dream come true.
Do share what your favourite bit ships are and how you made them agile enough for combat yea? I'd like to fly a decent rom command battle cruiser someday!
Only one Conductive RCS Accelerator can be installed on a ship. However, you can still install as many regular RCS Accelerators as you like to increase your base turn rate. An Epic RCS Accelerator MK XIV will give you a 50% increase in your base turn rate.
There is also the Exotic Particle Field Exciter science console that can have the [Turn] modifier. It's primary purpose is to increase your Particle Generator skill (for exotic damage) and increase your Shield Capacity. The Epic Mk XIV [Turn] version will increase your base turn rate by 50% and they likely sell for at least 50 million EC on the Exchange. Again, only one may be installed.
I must admit that i haven't gotten used to craftingn yet. My other toons need so spend so much time levelling up R&D that I wonder if it's really worth the trouble. It'd be great to get 6x an omnidirectional beam on my fed cruiser though!
The Haakona is also an interesting bird. You can basically deploy yourself as a Ha'feh while having your own personal support Ha'nom follow you around, trying to heal you and such. The appearance customizations are quite slick as well. Of course, you can easily build and fly it as a Cruiser or ghetto-Science Vessel if want a change of pace; it can't do everything all at once, but it can focus in any direction.
All that said, if you like the 'attack ship' playstyle more than the pewpewlaserseverywhere style of the Scimitar, the Faeht is one of the meanest strike ships out there. It can be a bit fragile, but it has a very deadly arsenal when you want something dead yesterday.
You know, I just wanted to ask you guys that!
I'm on the Daeinos T5U and I LOVE it's agility and speed. The tactical mode gives extra weapons power and I have 2x LTCMDR tac stations for firepower against single or multiple targets.
Thing is... Repair powers are very limited. If there are many foes, or one powerful guy with a high yield torp, the shields die immediately and take a lot of hull with it. If my shields are red, I know that a high yield torp has good chance of making me instantly KO.
To be fair, I just unlocked the reputation system and only have one piece of ultra rare gear. That might explain the fragility of my current setup.
Despite damage resistance consoles, I feel that a more durable ship is needed. Something tier 6 perhaps, but not the faeht cos that has even less hull HP. Do you have any recommendations?
The ship will be used for:
- escort-style play with a heavy tactical focus.
- Ideally, it'd be able to accommodate a tactical LTCMDR plus at least another LT tactical, if not higher.
- It should have better hull
- And more healing options for BOFFS
Say, what's this about bigger ROM ships getting a cloaked turn buff? It's not on the wiki...
I like the aehal though - you're right; it could work. I don't have the zen for that but yea, it could work. Thanks!
This is unrelated but the plasma lotus on my daeinos and all its cannons are white in colour rather than green. Is this normal? Beams are the right colour.
Last time, on a fed toon created eons ago, I remember cannon volleys taking on the same colour as beams.
Ok - I should have made my reasoning clear to u guys at the start.
Having flown the derideaux at lower tiers, I realised that the primary cause of warbird death is poor manoeuvring. A front-heavy weapons layout means that side and rear defense suffers, especially when fighting against an equally powerful semi-cruiser or cruiser ship with strong hulls/shields. Flying around repeatedly trying to get a good angle wastes a lot of shield HP.
That's why I shifted to DHC weapons on lighter, more agile ships. I can't take as much damage but I usually don't need to - the enemy will be limping or dead before I exhaust my BOFF heals. If not, I can always evasive manoeuvres plus cloak and run.
Then came the enemy high yield torps, which is the problem you guys are kindly helping me with now. I really appreciate it - your advice has probably saved a lot of zen.
So with that in mind, I think I might save up for the fleet mogai since its traits seem most appropriate for my playing style. The fleet daeinos certainly doesn't seem worth the money to me, even before I popped this question to you.
I appeal to our toons' Vulcan ancestry and ask: Is the fleet mogai the most logical option?
--Red Annorax
Jolan'tru!