Yesterday I posted about defence and the problems
and solutions to the problems of defence in the game at the moment. I briefly mentioned
that one way of boosting defence was by cloaking and said I’d cover cloaking as
a tactic later on. This is my follow up post on the problems and benefits of
running a fleet of cloakers in ST:AW.
There are 7 Action Bar Actions in the game, Battle
Stations (BS), Target Lock (TL), Sensor Echo (SE), Scan (S), Cloak (C), Regenerate
(R) and Evade (E). These actions are usually matched together into a set of
actions that defines the type of ship that it is, for example, most
non-cloaking non-borg ships have an action bar of BS, TL, E & S; Borg tend
to be TL, S & R and Cloaked Ships tend to be C, SE, TL & E. There are
ways of getting a cloaking device onto non-native cloaking ships, but most of
the time this is a) expensive and b) action intensive (The USS Defiant’s
cloaking device, for example, costs 4 points, fills the all-important tech slot
and is an action/disable to use). The first problem that cloakers encounter is
that their action bars aren’t really tuned up to get the most out of the cloak
action.
The ‘Cloak’ action gives the ship a massive 4
additional defence dice and, as long as you don’t attack (or have a way of
attacking and keeping it) cloak is one of the few actions in the game that
carries over from one turn to the next. You don’t ‘spend’ the cloak token to
roll those extra dice, you get it on every defence roll you make every turn! In
addition to this, you get the added bonus of being functionally immune to TL on
every turn after the one in which you cloaked. It seems like a pretty awesome
deal, all in all, extra defence, both in terms of dice and denying the opponent
dice quality, great action efficiency (cloak turn one and don’t worry about it
afterwards) and you benefit from this multiple times. The big drawback of
cloaking is that you have to lower your shields in order to cloak, in game
terms this means that you disable all of your shields when you choose to take a
cloak action, and that is a major cost. Disabling shields means that any damage
that you take goes straight to your hull, and since critical hits are cancelled
last, any critical hits that get through your bonus cloaking are going to
damage your hull, and could cause anything from a ‘stunned helmsman’ (no
attacking for you!) to double damage or the dreaded warp core breach. In
addition, you have paid two SP for each shield that you won’t benefit from
whilst cloaked.
The other benefit that being cloaked gives you is
that you can perform the “Sensor Echo” action. Sensor Echo is a fantastic
action that allows you to keep the same facing as you currently have and move
laterally either 1 or 2. Lateral movement is amongst the most difficult things
to come across in the game, and being able to move out of an opponent’s fire
arc whilst keeping them in yours is a sensational ability when used properly.
The issue with sensor echo is that it is an action and as such you can’t use it
on the same turn as the one in which you performed the cloak action, unless you
have some action economy present (best example of this is Klingon fleets with
Martok 8 - most of the time when I fly Klingons, Martok’s additional action is
used to sensor echo).
The major cost of the Cloaker’s action bar, though,
is that you don’t get access to the BS action. Battle Stations is an action
most often used to improve the quality of an attack, but it is ideally suited
to helping cloaked ships get the most out of their 4 extra green dice. To re-cap
from my last post, green dice have a 37.5% chance of success on their own, but
this is boosted to 62.5% when BS conversions are also included. At point of
writing, no ship with Cloak also gains access to BS natively on their action
bar (Cloaked Keldons and the Defiant do have access to BS but only get cloak by
spending SP on a cloaking device). This means that those 4 extra dice are only
averaging out an additional 1.5 successful evades. Klingon ships tend to have 1
agility basic, hence they are rolling 5 dice most of the time (1.875 successes)
and Romulan ships tend to have 2 agility basic, so 6 dice and 2.25 squiggly
tokens (my fiancée calls them “defensive sperm” which is both adorable and
disgusting). A 4 dice attack with BS will average 3 hits (with approximately a
50% chance of one of those die being a Critical Hit). 3 hits vs around 2 evades
means that even at this low level of quality you are facing a hit to your hull
every time you defend. When you consider that there are many ways to get
re-rolls in addition to BS on attack rolls even without a target lock (Klingon
Tactical Officer, Kor 8, Worf 5, Refit Chekov etc.) then you could potentially
be facing 4 clear hits from four dice, and with no way to modify those dice,
your cloaked ship could be taking 2 damage per attack.
There are ways to add quality to the defence roll
of a cloaked ship: Romulans have Admiral Mendak and Romulan Security Officer,
Klingons have Defense (sic) Condition One (DefCon1) and Alexander – but as I
said in my last post, Defence quality is expensive, both in terms of number and
opportunity. Spending that BS token from Mendak on defence means that it isn’t
going on attacking, Alexander only gets BS tokens to use his ability with
*AFTER* his ship is damaged and DefCon1 is a 5 point action/discard. To
re-iterate the conclusions I came to in that last post, it just isn’t worth
spending points trying to improve the efficiency of those green dice.
The other problem with cloaking is that it blows
apart the ideal 4/4 hit point balance that I keep at the centre of my thinking
when list building. When your shields are disabled, a 4/4 balance turns into a
4/0 balance and a one shot kill is a very real danger. If you are looking at
building a cloaked fleet, then you need to throw out the 4/4 paradigm and think
more in terms of Hull=Good, Shields=Bad. Ships like the Vor’Cha class (26 SP),
with 5 Hull and 2 shields are a better (more efficient) points investment than the
PWB Aj’Rmr (30 SP) with 6 Hull and 4 Shields, if you intend to run them
cloaked. Amongst the best cloakers are the Klingon’s Negh’Var Class (28) with 6
hull and 2 shields and the Romulan’s Valdore class (also 28) with 6 hull and 2
shields. Neither is ideal (an 8 hull 1 shield ship would be an ideal, if
unlikely cloaker) but both avoid spending too many points on stats that aren’t
going to be useful.
So if I can’t rely on cloaking as a defence, how do
I make sure my squishy cloakers survive and why should I bother cloaking at
all? The answer to both of these questions is simple: Sensor Echo. Sensor Echo
should be used as much as possible by cloaked ships with one main purpose – to stay
out of your opponent’s firing solution. With a fragile cloaked fleet, you
should only ever stay in arc when you are a) firing first and b) have enough of
your ships in an opponent’s firing arc to ensure that you can reasonably rely
on destroying your opponent’s ship before he has a chance of returning fire.
Let’s imagine 2 cloaked Klingon Vor’chas with a single Cardassian Galor class
in arc. The Galor’s 180 front arc makes it difficult (but not impossible) to
manoeuvre out-of-arc, but in this situation, if the Klingon’s have the right
captains on board (and I can’t stress enough how valuable high captain skill
is) then you can reasonably ensure that with the right combination of upgrades
and actions, the two 5 PWV attacks from the Vor’chas will take down the Galor
before it takes its opportunity to fire, with the added bonus that if it does
get chance to return fire, your cloaks will have stopped the Galor from acquiring
a target lock on you and you’ll be well placed to weather that return fire when
it has little efficiency (perhaps a scan and Breen Aide for an average of 3
hits in return, 2 hits with no efficiency at all).
Which brings me to the elephant in the room (there
are a lot of elephants in the ST:AW room) – the Borg. Tactical Cubes, Spheres
and Diamonds all have a 6 attack primary weapon that fires in 360 degrees at
range 2. If a Borg ship get a cloaker in its sights it has a reasonable chance
of taking out the defending ship in one shot (especially with the 3 SP Tactical
Drone who allows re-rolls without the use of a Target Lock). In this situation
you are better off echoing out of range of the Borg, even if it means losing
your own opportunity to attack. The problem is, that if the Borg player is
toting a Magnetometric Guided Charge to attack at range 3, you are almost
certainly going to take a critical hit to your hull thanks to MGCs’ ability to
convert BS results to Critical Hits. So my advice to Cloaked Admirals when
facing the Borg is quite simple: Don’t Cloak. Cloaking is going to make things
*WORSE* against the Borg and your sensor echoing is at significantly reduced
utility thanks to 360 arcs. You are better off having the shields up to avoid
taking Critical hits to the hull than you are having shields down and failing
to evade the full Borg onslaught. Thankfully, the Borg’s two highest skilled
captains, Queen 9 and Locutus, are rarely used (don’t really know why, I’d
always have to find a pretty good reason NOT to take the highest skilled
captains a faction has to offer, but that’s another story for another day), so
you will probably be firing first and as the game goes on, Borg CS tends to
drop, allowing you a better chance of firing first. Firing first is even more
important to cloaked fleets than it is to fleets more able to weather fire and
respond in kind.
I’ll finish this article by having a go at building
fleets designed to make the most of cloaking, for the two factions most likely
to run all cloaker fleets: Klingons and Romulans. Klingons have very little access
to defensive upgrades, which entirely makes sense given their faction identity,
so would only cloak to benefit from using Sensor Echo to get into position to
make the most of their high number of upgrades that improve attack efficiency.
Klingons
Ship 1:
Negh’Var Class
Kargan
Drex
Kargan’s ability allows a Target Lock to be
acquired after an upgrades action has been taken at the cost of an Auxiliary
Power Token. This gives his ship’s attacks a good quality when paired with
Drex, whose ability works in a functionally similar way to BS, with the added
bonus of converting one of these results to a Critical Hit. On the Negh’var’s 5
Dice attack, this almost guarantees 4 hits and one critical hit every turn.
Ship 2:
IKS Negh’Var
Kor 8
N’Garen
Kunivas
Klag
Kor’s ability allows a re-roll on an attack dice
for each un-disabled crew upgrade on his ship. Whilst not quite as effective as
a full TL, it works on ships that are not cloaked and doesn’t fall into the
trap of Monotanium Armour Plating. Realistically, most of the time, you aren’t
going to need to re-roll all of those dice, and with 3 crew aboard the Negh’var,
3 re-rolls should be sufficient to guarantee great dice efficiency each turn
when coupled with N’Garen and it only requires 1 action each turn. Martok on
this build’s third ship can grant an extra action to this ship allowing a
sensor echo each turn when needed. Klag is on the ship to fill a crew slot
whilst Kunivas is present to first fill a crew slot and second push the damage
from this ship up to a level where it cannot recover. Kor is CS 8.
Ship 3:
Negh’Var Class
Martok 8
Klingon Fleet Captain
Klingon Fleet Captain
Bu’kah
Martok is first CS 8, 10 with the fleet captain meaning that he can hand out his 2 additional actions at the best time, after the other ships have moved. This can be used to allow the sensor
echo on another ship or another action if needed. Since Martok’s value to the
fleet is mainly support, Bu’kah will keep the ship alive a little longer
allowing Martok to hand out free actions. The Klingon fleet captain boosts allows him to take an action from a crew upgrade for free after moving each round. This combines with Kargan’s ability to allow TL, Drex and a sensor echo each turn on that ship.Martok’s own ship can take the Sensor
Echo action to evade firing arcs, or an ‘evade’ to survive an incoming attack a
little better if getting out of arc entirely is not possible.
The whole fleet is designed to hit hard, hit first
and hit often, with Sensor Echoes to avoid any incoming fire. On turn one it
flies forward 1 and cloaks, before engaging. At this stage it almost seems like
the best plan is to allow the shields to come back up rather than re-cloaking
as with Klingons, if the first pass isn’t successful, no amount of cloaking
will save you. This fleet also does not like cloaked mines.
Romulans
Ship 1:
Reman Warbird
Toreth
Massacre
Independent Fleet Captain (Dominion)
Advanced Cloaking
Interphase Generator
Toreth’s CS is boosted by 1 with the fleet captain
which also reduces the cost of Tech and adds the tech slot needed to run both Advanced
Cloaking and Interphase Generator. This Romulan fleet is less manoeuvrable than
the Klingon fleet above, so Interphase Generator helps to reduce the damage
that comes in on one round. The Ship can stay cloaked for the entire game and
then choose to take Target Lock or Sensor Echo depending upon the situation.
With a 7 dice attack, Hit to Crit Conversion and Massacre, the ship can lay
some hurt on opponents when needed.
Ship 2:
Scimitar
Shinzon
Full Stop
Attack Pattern Shinzon Theta
Double Back
Make Them See Us!
Interphase Generator
Shinzon is mainly here for his high CS, but his
talents are chosen to allow versatility in manoeuvring (Full Stop, Double Back),
as well as some bonus damage to opponents (MTSU!, APST). Interphase Generator
is again used to ensure a turn of fire can be weathered relatively unscathed
and each turn either TL or Echo can be chosen based on the situation at hand.
Ship 3:
Romulan Science Vessel
Donatra
Admiral Mendak
Another skill 8 ship, this time in a support role
to follow the two Reman Warbirds around granting an extra attack dice (Donatra)
and one of them a BS (Mendak). If needed, Mendak’s ability can be used as a
fleet action freeing up this ship’s action to sensor echo out of arc. In really
desperate situations, Mendak’s BS token can be placed on this ship to improve
the efficiency of its 6 defence dice.
This fleet hits really hard and has enough tricks
to keep opponents guessing. All three ships have high CS and the two big hitters
can attack head on at least once without fear of reprisals. As with the Klingon
fleet it doesn’t like Cloaked mines, but unlike the Klingon fleet it will
probably spend the entire game cloaked, hence not worrying about Target Locks.
So that’s it as far as cloaking goes, but in case
you’ve skipped to the end of another mammoth post, here are (not) Picard’s tips
for cloaked fleets:
1. High
hull values are your friends
2. Make
the most of Sensor Echo
3. Make
sure your captains have a high CS
4. Know
when to come out of cloak.
Thanks for reading, comments and criticism are
always welcome and…
I’m still not Picard.
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