Wave Defense

Wave Defense

Wave defense is a group starbase defense game within Star Trek Fleet Command. It basically involved a star base a the center of the map, with ten successive waves of ships coming from the edges of the system to attack it. Five defenders with two ships each will attempt to destroy all the waves coming into the system.

Each wave gets succesively more difficult, so while lower level ops will find the first few waves doable, it is nearly impossible to progress past them at this point. As an ops 49 at release, in a group with four 55+ ships, we were able to do the “easy” wave defense up to round ten, where in round ten only the ops 58 was still alive. Within my alliance, no one has finished all ten waves as yet. The assumption is that once people level up reputation and start to get all the research, these should become much easier. The big wave defenses are almost impossible at this point for anyone under Ops 56 with the rare g5 ships, and even then only go a few rounds.

These waves include all the specialty ship hostiles, such as Swarm Ships, Hirogen Hunters, Borg Probes, Apex Hostiles, and Texas Class vessels. It may be useful to have one of each specialty ship in a group, when possible, but again this is potentially more for the future once research is more available.

Here is a quick breakdown of the smaller wave hostiles (this image was randomly sent to me, it looks like JulesVern’s work, but not I’m not sure exactly who has made it.). These hostiles are considerably stronger than normal hostiles of those levels, so take the level with a grain of salt.

Strategy

There are currently many thoughts as to the best strategy. What we have been doing so far is this, though it may change over time:

1. The biggest players (ops 53+ with g5 ships) crew speed crews to wipe as many as quickly as possible.
2. Everyone else crews hostile crews, and goes to the lanes which match their ship in the battle triangle (i.e. battleships killing explorers, interceptors killing battleships, and explorers killing interceptors).
3. If anyone has a specialty ship in there, they go for those specialty hostiles. (i.e. Vi’dar Talios goes after the Borg Probes), if no one has a specialty ship let the biggest player(s) smash them.
4. In later rounds, if we have enough bigger ships to progress, we try to keep the smaller ships alive and still useful by having them only hit transports.

In the preliminary stage, you can change ships as many times as you want before it starts. So you can bring in a Cerritos, buff your biggest ship, then have it warp home and bring in another big ship. You can also use this to give everyone in your alliance the buff from Titan-A.

If you are trying to get a full alliance group, you can leave a wave WITHOUT losing directives from the preliminary stage. So just leave and start another with your alliance mates till you fill it if you like.

Crewing

Wave defense hostiles are normal hostiles, and so you can use the standard hostile crews on them. If you are low level, you must use these crews on them. At higher levels, it is more important that you are speedy to kill as many hostiles as possible, as there isn’t enough time to catch them all when you have normal hostile crews on. So higher levels should be using Pan, Klaa, Una, Kuron, and Ent-E Riker to make your ships speedy. It is also quite clear that Ent-E Riker with two side officers is going to be one of the ideal crews for Wave Defense, so these officers will become a priority with this arc.

Research

The research isn’t research as in the research trees, but is instead within the faction store of Section 31. This research is very strong, increasing base mitigation stats by up to 500%, hull health by 1000%, movement speed, etc. WHILE in a wave. So as this adds up, it should make the wave defenses significantly easier.