In my opinion, there are some strange design decisions in Star Wars: Armada.
First, the dials on the shields. Why didn't they use tokens on ship cards or some equivalent. Why did they put small round dials built into the stands. It seems like it would become kind of fiddly and handsie to knock shields off your Star Destroyer without accidently moving the model. These shield dials almost mean that the miniatures have to sit on a custom plastic table with legs just so that the dials will fit.
Why? Why? Why?
The same applies for the squadrons. Why push a "tab" to indicate that the squadron has moved? You would have to use two hands -- one to hold it down so that it doesn't move, and another to push the tab through assuming it doesn't stick. As X-wing players, we seem to manage keeping track of how has moved and activated pretty easily. I don't understand the decision to put tabs on the model bases. Seems very fiddly for no good reason.
I've played a few miniatures where stats and such were on the models. Heroclix comes to mind. It was always a pain lifting up your model off the table to mess with it's dial. It seems like we will be getting more of that PITA here.
Kind of disappointed.