Mission: Azure Nebula Rescue/Walkthrough

The team should split their attention over multiple quest objectives. As the travel distances are pretty long drawn out fights with the Tholians have to be avoided. As the Tholian guards despawn (with the exception of potentially spawned Mirror verse Ships) once their guarded ship goes to warp this can be done without even destroying a single ship. 2-3 independently acting player groups can free a lot more ships then all 5 doing one base at a time. Also player should look for the remaining tractor beams and other players interaction bar - instead of having 3-5 trying to disable the final beam, all but one should fly off to the next ship.

Interacting with a Beam is tricky, as the action is interrupted on any shoot received or fired (and even using hangars), it takes about 8 seconds per beam and there are 4 beams per Romulan Ship. To make it harder several Tholian ship types (Battleship and Dreadnaught) are equipped with beam fire at will and/or refracting beams. On the plus side Tholian ships do not deal damage when they explode and the interaction range is several kilometers.

In order to free a ship fast (and thus do the Optional objective and make high points) several approaches exist:
 * Just Nuke Em: This is a tactic for a single DPS build or for 2 ships with good combined DPS. The idea is the wipe out the entire Tholian group so quickly the ship(s) can then free the Romulan ship without any trouble and go on to the next. However if the player(s) need more then about 30 seconds to kill of the foes this way, this is NOT a good idea. Unlike all other tactics it still involves freeing the ship afterwards and even one ship can free it in 32 seconds.
 * Tank + sneak free. A tank engages while another ship sneaks to the emitters and frees the Romulan ships without even engaging. However Tholians Ships tend to have Beam: Fire At Will, which means that tanking alone is often not an option. Inventive use of the environment and maximum interaction range is necessary to have a chance to get this to work. Tank's should look into the push variant if available for their ships. Science Captains might be able to help if they use Subnucleonic beam to interrupt Fire at Will or using push abilities even if they cannot tank.
 * Push + sneak free. A ship equips a BOFF with tractor repulsors and flies straight at the group. Once in range it activates the repulsors, carrying the entire enemy group away. One or more other ships can then free the target while staying totally out of weapon range (and thus Fire At Will effect range). However the pushing ship must be able to withstand the enemy fire until the Tholians despawn. Other physics effects can be used if they can be properly aimed to draw or push the enemies away from the tractor beams.
 * Placate or Confuse: This is a tactic for a single science ship. Fire at will will not target friendly ships or ships that have the user placated. As long as the entire tholian group can be affected this might just allow enough time to free the romulan ship.
 * Other considerations: Carriers can let their pet's deal damage while they themself focus on freeing Romulans. Abilities or weapons that root the enemy in front of the beams are generally a bad idea, unless a DPS approach is taken. Subnucleonic Beam and the Intelligence Equivalent can disrupt fire at will.