A few comments about the Romulan

[Master Belisarius]

First all God Emperor, I want to say that I really liked your work with the Romulan and the Klingon. Both are great races and usually, are fighting the first places in my test games.

I have tested mostly the Romulan, and I believe that you could improve some things, for games with full tech from the start.

1) The small attack ships are useless in games with full tech from the start. A frigate without Combat Sensors and without ECM, can do anything fighting against other ships.

2) The large attack ships (Dreadnought), only have 2 Wave-Motion Gun III, but too many shields and too many Point Defense Cannons.

3)A similar problem with the Weapon Platforms: a lot of shields and PDC, but only one Wave-Motion Gun III.

Usually the Romulan in games with full tech, can create really large fleets, but the problem (in my view), is that their ships have not enough fire power.

[PsychoTechFreak]

I have seen no Romulan ship equipped with self destruct devices. This makes them very vulnerable, because they are easy to enter.

[God Emperor]

Master Belisarius,
I am unsure of what you mean by full tech from the start. What techs does this include?
I appreciate your comments and have been working to up the offensive power of Romulan and Klingon ships by cutting back on Shields primarily. I may have to create a large class ship to get the equip out right though.

PsychoTechFreak,
Thanks for your observation, I have never really been sure whether inclusion of self destruct devices is a good tactic - do they only detonate if a ship is captured, or if it is boarded? Look forward to your advice.

Regards,
GE

[Suicide Junkie]

Self-destruct only kicks in if you lose in a boarding party battle.

And, if you have a SDD, i think the AI will not attempt to board a ship.

Against wily humans, the SDD may be used to trade a Boarding frigate for the enemy dreadnaught's destruction

[God Emperor]

Thanks for that.
Will update my ship designs....

[dominion]

Full tech from start includes all technology. I was building Battle Cruisers during my initial turns while the Romulan was sending frigates against me.

------------------
"Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges"

[PsychoTechFreak]

quote:

---

Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Self-destruct only kicks in if you lose in a boarding party battle.

[/b]

---

???

I have never lost any boarding party battles, even with the lowest level boarding party. But every time when I have forgotten to observe the enemy ship for SDD then both ships exploded, so I think SDD always kicks in if you board another ship.

The difficulty with SDD is this: I shoot a ship down until the SDD is destroyed randomly, then I do boarding. Oftentimes the important devices are destroyed after that, so you can't analyze anything new.

SJ, I see the human strategy problem with the Dreadnought against frigate destruction, but it's better to die than to get captured in this case. Also I think especially the bigger AI ships should be better prepared against boarding: More phased shields (I can bring them down easily with shield depleters, everyone of my battle ships is equipped with one large scale shield depleter and ONE boarding party, which is enough to capture almost every ship in one or two turns!), and security troops...

BTW, what about security parties (I don't know the right name for the boarding defense), I have never seen that on AI ships, maybe because of the research area which might be excluded due to boarding difficulties for the AI ?



[This message has been edited by PsychoTechFreak (edited 28 May 2001).]

[jc173]

The AI can use security stations, but most don't because the ability isn't included as one for their ship designs. It's easy enough to fix if you want to though. It's probably not included because the AI hasn't quite gotten the hang of boarding enemy ships so the tonnage used on a security station is wasted unless they run into a human fleet.

[God Emperor]

dominion,
Sounds like you were using the "basic_KlingRom" mod which incorporates small and large attack and defence ships (this was done to ensure that early on the races used missile weapons only).
Unfortunately the AI builds a lot of the small ships early on for some reason with this setup (which doesnt manifest itself so much in a standard/basic game).
If you use the Romulan_DesignCreation file from my "KlingRom" mod though (which only has one type of attack and defence ship) they will build whatever the largest ship is that is available to them.

General;
I'm not sure that its possible to design a decent AI ship to counter many of the tricks mentioned in this thread - putting lots of shields or security stations sucks up space that could be used for weapons (see Master Belisarius's early comment on firepower).
At the end of the day, I think we all have to restrain ourselves a little in using some of the tricks available.....


[This message has been edited by God Emperor (edited 28 May 2001).]

[Master Belisarius]

Hi God Emperor.
I can say it in a different way: games where you don't need to research! When you have available all the tech from the start.