I've already gone over a little bit about the Romulan Star Empire (in Journal #235), but let me elaborate a bit on their ships. Romulan ships are characterized by three distinct phases in their history. Phase 1 are the Old Romulan ships. Most of them look a lot like the Warbird seen on Star Trek. They are smaller than opposing ships, usually have less or no warp and fewer weapons. Their only saving graces are good rear shields and a cheap cloaking cost.

Later on, the Romulans entered into an alliance with the Klingons. The Klingons sold old ships to the Romulans, and although the Klingons got little in return, they did help make the Romulans a creditable threat for the Federation to deal with. Klingon-Romulan (KR) ships have the disruptors replaced with plasma torpedoes, some phasers upgraded to phaser-1s, and have a cloaking device, although they tend to be quite power-consumptive.

Once the General War started, the Romulans finally started designing their own good ships. They started with the excellent SparrowHawk Light Cruiser and SkyHawk Destroyer classes of modular ships. Due to the scarce resources in the Star Empire, Romulans designed these ships to handle wing modules which could turn these ships into specialed variants (such as minelayers, scouts, carriers, and cargo) as needed by the theater (the process took a month or two).

What this meant is that the Romulans could rebalance their fleets as needed without building new ships, quite handy if you don't have that many ships in the first place. There is also a modular heavy cruiser design, although bigger ships are dedicated.

The Romulan KR "Kestrel" is a standard KR conversion. It has two plasma-S torpedoes on swivel mounts. Unlike the Gorn cruiser, which has to fire its plasma torpedoes either through the #2 or #6 shield (as appropriate), the Romulan can fire its torpedoes through three shields. Since seeking weapons have to move forward in their first move, this really increases the firing flexibility of the torpedoes.

The KR's cloaking cost of 20 means that it can't cloak and move at the same time. In general we shouldn't count on cloaking. Especially against the Hydran, which will just park its fighters over you until you decloak. Your plasma torpedoes are also going to have a hard time against the Hydran with its phaser-Gs which are a fair anti-plasma torpedo defense.

So what do you have against the Hydran? Remember, the Ranger doesn't have that much crunch power on its own, and in a head-on collision it can't bring its phaser-Gs to bear. You can also do some damage with both plasma torpedoes, since it can't shoot them both down unless it's hiding with its fighters. You have a slight range advantage with three phaser-1s and maybe a couple of phaser-2s versus six phaser-2s.

On the down side, he has his fighters, which you can't shoot at with the Cadet Rules outside of range 5. The Hydran ship is also built to take quite a lot of punishment, while your ship is based on the Klingon philosophy of stick-and- move. Try for the long game and whittle down his fighters if possible. Don't get into close range with him, cycle the plasmas so he's constantly running or taking bits of damage. If he launches fighters try to separate them, since the fighters only top out at speed 15.

It's tempting to cloak, since even if he's on top of you, he will only do some 25 points of damage. Come to think of it, that's quite a bit. But if he does fire all that (at range 0-2), uncloak afterwards and blast with with the plasma torps and the phasers since he'll be defenseless. Then hope you can recloak before his weapons cycle, which you should be able to unless he fires towards the end of the turn. Move a bit so he'll have a harder time lining you up for a good shot.