ZOROASTOR'S IMPERIAL ROMULAN TACTICAL GUIDE

In this section we will discuss the Romulan Cloaking Device and how to use it effectively to confuse your opponent as well as gaining a tactical advantage in combat. For the purposes of this discussion, we will be using the Tounament Firehawk Cruiser as a model for this discussion. The SSD for the TFC can be found in Star Fleet Battles Module T.

The Cloaking device is the tertiary system employed by all ships in the Romulan Star Empire. It is a system that bends radiation around the ship, rendering it invisible to the sensors of other starships.

Unfortunately, the cloaking device has many drawbacks. However, we need not be immediately concerned with those here. The purpose of this text is to concentrate on what the cloaking device can do and learning how to use its capabilities effectively. This is a radical departure from most tactical texts, which concentrate on what the cloak cannot do, and invariably teach next to nothing about cloaked combat operations. If you are unfamiliar with the Romulan Cloaking Device or are new to the Star Fleet Battles Game, go to the two links above for a detailed description of how the cloaking device works.

This discussion will focus on these concepts:

1. Shooting and Running.

2. Plotting Movement, Fades, and Power.

3. The Impact of the Cloak on your opponent's decisions.

4. Fading In.

The first thing that you should realize about the Cloaking Device is this: The Cloaking Device allows you to effectively "move" at speed 32 away from your opponent in terms of many direct fire weapons. Weapons that are particularly weak against the Cloaking Device include phasers, fusion beams, tractor repulsor beams, and to a limited degree photon torpedoes.

It is critical to understand this relationship between Plasma Torpedoes and the Cloaking Device. The biggest tactical advantage that your vessel has is that its seeking weapons close on your opponent on every impulse while the Cloaking Device can allow you to "move" away from your opponent on every impulse.

For more information on PLASMA TORPEDO TARGETING go here.

Plotting Movement, Fades, and Power

Here are some things that you can ALWAYS do in cooperation with the Cloaking Device:

1. Launch a Fighter, Shuttle or Wild Weasel (not a Suicide Shuttle)

2. Lay Mines

3. Use Erratic Maneuvers during the Fade Periods.

The above options, of course, are aside from the painfully obvious ones: Recharge weapons and batteries, reinforce shields, employ damage control, power (anti)tractors (as tractors require active fire control which voids the cloak and is not usable anyway), use ECM (or ECCM), etc.

The Cloaking Device allows you to take a "time out" from the battle to do these things with relatively little fear of reprisal, however, it is important to realize that cloaking also allows your opponent a "time out" to do these things as well. While cloaked, your opponent has roughly twice as much power to work with and his weapons usually take less time to arm. Tactical Intelligence (D17.221) can still be used against a cloaked ship, sometimes to devastating effect. An example... a warship can gain the following information.

Range 23: Any down shields. Full or Minimum shield strength.

Range 18: Transporter use.

Range 8: Total warp power generated.

Range 6: # and type of heavy weapons.

Range 5: # of facing phasers.

Range 3: Exact strength of all shields.

Range 2: Total power and damage to power systems.

Using this knowledge and a Captain's best estimates of the cloaked ship's movement, it is possible to place 4 photon torpedoes through a down shield, Cloak or no Cloak.

(transition and discuss movement plots here, speed changes and the cloaking device - how to get more power))

The Impact of the Cloak On Your Opponent's Decisions

On this note, it is important to realize that you do not have to use the Cloaking Device to win. But the Cloaking Device, if used properly, can take two evenly matched ships, and due to its deceptive qualities, make what would normally be a close match a complete route.

The principal psychological advantage of the Cloaking Device is that it is something that your opponent must take into account when planning his strategy.

The very existence of the Cloaking Device will affect your opponents decisions if you create a situation where he does not know if you are going to use it or not. Rushing into combat at speed 17 on the first turn is a nearly dead give away that you do not have power to the Cloaking Device in most cruisers, particularly the TFC, unless you plot a late turn deceleration or use the batteries. And while using late turn deceleration or flushing batteries may be a vialble obtion, sometimes you are going to need that speed or power. In any event, moving at high speeds will give your opponent time to consider whether or not you will allocate energy to the cloak on the next turn based upon your actions during the current turn. For example, if you fly fast, fire a bunch of torpedoes and phasers, and end the turn relatively close to your opponent, cloaking looks like a good option and your opponent knows it. He may plot a high speed course towards your ship and put lots of points into tractor.

But if you plot a speed of 13 (in TFH) on the first turn, your opponent cannot be certain most of the time. This uncertainty will make his energy allocation a difficult task and the more thought he puts into his energy allocation, the less thought he is putting into what you are actually up to.

A good pilot going against a Romulan will always assume the worst case scenario for him and then balance that with the most likely scenario. For your opponent, this will almost always hinge upon whether or not you are using the cloak. Speed is everything in the Star Fleet Battles game, but as has been said earlier, the Cloaking Device can give you a "speed" advantage in retreat.

By losing only five movement in the earlier example, you gain a key psychological advantage because your opponent never knows if that 18 (!!!) points of power is allocated to the cloak, or to other things. (4 Finish arming S-Torp, 2 roll delay S torp, 5 recharge batteries, 3 tractor, 3 arm suicide shuttle, 1 arm wild weasel as an example, although there are many many others.)

To see more information on the PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF THE CLOAKING DEVICE go here.

Fading In

Another important consideration in employing the Cloaking Device effectively is timing, which begs the question: When is the best time to cloak? To properly address this query, however, it is important to understand the answer to the opposite question. When is the worst time to cloak?

This, however, begs yet another question. In order to understand when the worst time to cloak is, we must first understand why we want to cloak in the first place.

The Cloaking Device has the capabilitiy of making your opponent lose lock-on with direct fire and seeking weapons. As a result, when presented with a stack of multiple drones seeking your ship, it is often an attractive idea to use the Cloaking Device. After activating the cloak, the drones lose lock-on and die. Sometimes, due to speed, range, and/or terrain (web and esg) your opponent is able to retain lock-on. Even so, there is a chance that the weapons will do less than full damage. And most direct fire weapons, with overloaded torpedoes being the most significant exception, recieve a range penalty up to five hexes during the fade period and double range plus five hexes when fully cloaked. During the fade period, your opponent will be tempted to take a shot early, to avoid the increasing range penalty as well as losing lock-on completely. This is particularly true against races that cannot hold the energy cost of their heavy weapons - disruptors, fusion beams, and overloaded hellbores come immmediately to mind. The Cloaking Device can also be used to avoid getting sniped at long range by PPD's, Photons, and particularly Disruptors, when closing or retreating. In general then, when disscussing why to cloak, we can conclude that you would want to cloak for the purposes of:

A) trying not to get hit,

B) minimizing the damage when you get hit, and

C) trying to get your opponent to take an early, and presumably worse shot, and

D) to get a better position on your opponent without taking as much damage as you normally would.

After considering the above argument and as you gain experience flying Romulan Starships, you will find that there are some general guidelines concerning when and when not to cloak. There are three key factors in determining this. They are:

1. Your Speed VS. Opponents Speed

2. Range

3. Weapon Status

What is far less obvious, is what to do in those medium ranges at average speeds. You need to plot your opponents energy allocation to make these decisions. Always ask yourself what the worst case scenario is if you cloak. Then take the most likely scenario and decide on your course of action.

When to cloak is without a doubt a situational decision with few general rules. The #1 rule I'd suggest is only cloak when you have to. Many cloakers pay partial cloak cost, and finish it with reserve power (if/when they activate it). If this is the case, then you definitely want to wait as long as possible, since if the enemy chooses to turn away (possibly from your impulse 32 plasma), you may not have to cloak at all, and can therefore leave your batteries full.

One interesting time to cloak is during the last five impulses of a turn. This is because, if you choose to not power the cloak the following turn, you get the fade-in range adjustment for the first few impulses of the following turn, while potentially moving high speed. The late-turn cloak may also convince your opponent that you will be cloaking (and moving slowly) the following turn, and you may 'bait' him into slowing down, while you speed up and run away. However, this works just as well if you were cloaked the entire turn, though you can finesse the fade-in a bit, by not getting fully cloaked by the turn break.

The impulse 32 cloak announcement might work wonders in this regard, since your opponent may get trigger happy and fire on 32, knowing he has to lose a hex of range on impulse 1, and by not powering the cloak, you can be free to run in and wreak havoc during his 8-impulse weapon cycle time.

Cloaking Versus General Shield Reinforcement

Cloaking and the ECM Yo-Yo
Return to the Romulan Imperium home page