Several days ago, I created a post which discussed how I felt about the minis, their look, etc. It can be found here:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/112829-how-do-you-feel-about-the-look-of-the-minis/

One of the predominant themes within this thread is the acceptability to most of a "sliding scale" or relative sizes of capital ships - as long as it isn't completely random.

I find this very interesting. And I have a question, one which was indicated in the title of the post.

Why is this sliding scale ok for Armada, but not X-Wing. To be clear, I am not being critical of anyone. I simply am curious, and would like to understand people's thought processes.

I have been playing X-Wing since its inception. I have been an active member and poster of the forum. And one thing I can state with complete accuracy, is that there has been a never ending stream of comments on X-Wing that the game should NEVER EVER EVER have a Star Destroyer (or similar capital ship) released for it because it would be way out of scale.

This has been the primary reason given in dozens of threads and hundreds of posts as to why major capital ships will never be made for X-Wing.

So, given the unbelievable amount of rhetoric and passion and flaming that has gone on in X-Wing about this subject, why is it now acceptable to have a sliding scale in Armada? Note that many of the posters in X-Wing who refused to accept the possibility for X-Wing, are the same posters who say it is fine for Armada.

Again, just trying to spark some debate, and grasp the thought processes being utilized ...

I dunno' about you but... A sliding scale is really the only sensible option here. Capital ships vary in size to a ridiculous extent.

Fighters, no. 6m-25m tops for most fighters, and rarely over 45m for larger ships. A sliding scale was used for the CR-90, if you'll recall.

Capitals vary from 90m-2000m. To get them to all look good, make them usable, and so on, with the system they're using? Next to impossible.

FFG advertised its consistent scale for X-wing rather loudly and as often as they could. "X-wing has a consistent scale" is something drilled into every player's minds as a promise, so any change in that will get reactions.

For Armada, FFG has made no such promises, and has less strong reactions as a result.

I dunno' about you but... A sliding scale is really the only sensible option here. Capital ships vary in size to a ridiculous extent.

Fighters, no. 6m-25m tops for most fighters, and rarely over 45m for larger ships. A sliding scale was used for the CR-90, if you'll recall.

Capitals vary from 90m-2000m. To get them to all look good, make them usable, and so on, with the system they're using? Next to impossible.

I completely agree with you ... and it has forced me to temper my enthusiasm (or lack there of) for how some of the minis look. The very fact that scaling is required will affect design choices for the minis.

I guess what throws me, is not the fact that this has to be done, but the willingness to accept this fact by the majority of people who said "no effing way" in X-Wing.

After all, the same logic could be applied in X-Wing. You could have a VSD made for the game, which was out of scale, simply due to the fact of the size of the play field, the size required to make it in scale, etc. But from what I saw in X-Wing, most people would have rebelled.

And yet, those are the same individuals saying it is fine in Armada ...

FFG advertised its consistent scale for X-wing rather loudly and as often as they could. "X-wing has a consistent scale" is something drilled into every player's minds, so any change in that will get reactions.

For Armada, FFG has made no such promises, and has less strong reactions as a result.

Ummm ... wow. I guess I must have missed this. I must profess that I do not recall reading anywhere, any official promises by FFG to remain in scale for X-Wing. And, quite frankly, they didn't with some of the huge ships.

I'd imagine that it has to do with the ships in question. The fact that a VSD is at the wrong scale to the corvette is probably far less noticeable in Armada for most people than having an out of scale VSD next to starfighter in X-Wing

Ummm ... wow. I guess I must have missed this. I must profess that I do not recall reading anywhere, any official promises by FFG to remain in scale for X-Wing. And, quite frankly, they didn't with some of the huge ships.

It wasn't a direct promise, but by constantly hammering on how they paid such fine attention and dedication to scale, they made it a promise. And they did so often, even dedicating two pages to it in the core set's rulebook.

You'll note that when the Transport and CR90 were first announced, it was specifically mentioned that they changed the scale, and quite a few of the "sky is falling" comments back then were aimed at the change in scale.

In Armada, it looks like they want to cover a wide array of ships. You can't do that very accurately in a universe like Star Wars without bending scale somewhat. My 1:20000 scale Allegiance SD's bridge is nearly larger than my similarly-scaled Carrack cruisers, for instance. So, having experience with true scale, I am willing to put my support behind a sliding scale. It will look better. I'll get photos up sometime when I have my ships on hand.

Why doesn't this work as well in X-Wing? The scale is much larger and there's much greater detail on the ships. If you were playing a game with tanks or individual soldiers, you'd want those in scale, too. They'd look stupid otherwise. Less so the further from human scale we get.

EDIT: I just realized that the Carrack is also about the same size as the bridge on an ISD. And the Carrack is a bigger ship than the Nebulon B...

Well, we DO have a sliding scale in X-Wing to accomodate the huge ships. But X-Wing is about starfighters, and can only really accomodate the smallest capital ships. Larger vessels would have to be scaled down too much.

It's not about not wanting an SD, it's just that I don't think you could make it work realistically in X-wing.

Well, we DO have a sliding scale in X-Wing to accomodate the huge ships. But X-Wing is about starfighters, and can only really accomodate the smallest capital ships. Larger vessels would have to be scaled down too much.

It's not about not wanting an SD, it's just that I don't think you could make it work realistically in X-wing.

I disagree with this statement. Here, you are indicating it is the DEGREE of the scaling which essentially bothers you. And yet, I think you are going to find far worse degrees of scaling in Armada, then you would by adding one capital ship to X-Wing.

Now, obviously, Armada has not even been release yet, so trying to guesstimate as to what expansions will be made for it, etc. is rather pointless at this moment. But I think it is reasonably safe to assume (extrapolating from those minis we have already seen), that scaling is going to be a huge factor in Armada, and I for one don't think it is going to be consistent either.

In fact, I think an argument can already be made for those minis that we currently can see that scaling (and its multipliers/percentages/etc.), are not consistent. And I for one, am guessing that this will only get worse as expansions are released.

I define "worse" by the amount the gradient will change between all of the minis once you have a large enough sample size available for comparison.

EDIT: I just realized that the Carrack is also about the same size as the bridge on an ISD. And the Carrack is a bigger ship than the Nebulon B...

The Carrack has always been an odd one. Design-wise, it doesn't look like the 350 meter long ship the databooks claim it is. Heck, it barely looks Lambda sized, what with its huge front window and sizeable dish.

EDIT: I just realized that the Carrack is also about the same size as the bridge on an ISD. And the Carrack is a bigger ship than the Nebulon B...

The Carrack has always been an odd one. Design-wise, it doesn't look like the 350 meter long ship the databooks claim it is. Heck, it barely looks Lambda sized, what with its huge front window and sizeable dish.

I use it as my example because it's the smallest ship I own in 1:20000 scale, and it's the smallest ship I dare own at that scale. But you're right, it's weird.

Because there is a lot more variation between starfighters than capital ships in volume.

Because there is a lot more variation between starfighters than capital ships in volume.

I would argue exactly the opposite. In terms of size, there's a much larger variance between a CR90 and an Imperial SD (let alone bigger ships) than there would be even between an A-Wing and a Decimator. The CR90 is thirteen times shorter than the ISD, not to say anything of bulk.

This is precisely why it's hard to have the two on the same table without mixing the scale up a bit -- they're very different.

(For reference, the VT-49 is roughly four times longer than an A-Wing.)

I think that's what he meant, he just garbled the order in which to say it.

Yep, language isn't my forte, thanks Keroko.

Ah, sorry. In that case I absolutely agree.

Part of it is that X-Wing is about small fighter dog fights. When you mess with scale in that game, suddenly you have a problem. You jave dog fighting Star Destroyers. Ok. I'm overstating a bit. But the point of X-wing is to focus on the Dog Fight aspect of the universe. Protecting scale in that game is also about protecting the integrity of the game.

You'll notice that when they added huge ships to the game that they got a different game type to boot. That's part of protecting the original game.

Armada is different. It's about massive space battles, fleet level conflict. In star wars a fleet level conflict involves ships of such huge scale differences that already, on the face of it, it is impossible to put them together on the same board in scale. If you stick to scale and make the small fighters big enough to see, then the Star Destroyers are too big to put on a table. If you male the Star destroyer small enough to have interesting movement options on your table, then the fighters will be specs of dust. But both are important to accurately depict a fleet level battle in the Star Wars movies.

I do not think you csn have capital ships to scale. Superstar destroyers will he the huge ship in Armada. Also I do not think the rebels had any capital ship of comparable size, so their capital ships would be dwarfed in scale.

You have to allow FFG some room without overly critising the scale of the models.

For most of us against a ISD in x-wing it's more about appearance the a need to stick to scale. A ISD just can not look right on a table with the current ships and still fit on the table.

In Armada the scale will be off but it will still look mostly correct. A ISD will dwarf a CR-90 even if it's not quite by as much as it should.

Also in this game the ISD can the level of firepower it should. Which wouldn't worked in x-wing.

For most of us against a ISD in x-wing it's more about appearance the a need to stick to scale. A ISD just can not look right on a table with the current ships and still fit on the table.

In Armada the scale will be off but it will still look mostly correct. A ISD will dwarf a CR-90 even if it's not quite by as much as it should.

Also in this game the ISD can the level of firepower it should. Which wouldn't worked in x-wing.

I think this argument probably comes the closest to matching "reality".

We are going to have the same discussion with regard to the Super Star Destroyer in Armada. The simple answer is it's just too **** big to fit in the game. A Imperial Class Star Destroyer is too big to fit in X-Wing. In physical scale or in game play scale. If you change those enough to make a physical model that fits on a table, and works in the game, it's not a Star Destroyer anymore, it's something else. Likewise in Armada a SSD is just too big. If you try and do an version of the executor it's just too out of scale. Likewise the Deathstar (either one).

We are going to have the same discussion with regard to the Super Star Destroyer in Armada. The simple answer is it's just too **** big to fit in the game. A Imperial Class Star Destroyer is too big to fit in X-Wing. In physical scale or in game play scale. If you change those enough to make a physical model that fits on a table, and works in the game, it's not a Star Destroyer anymore, it's something else. Likewise in Armada a SSD is just too big. If you try and do an version of the executor it's just too out of scale. Likewise the Deathstar (either one).

In response to the comment above (and drawing from a post I made in another thread):

Coming Soon:

Star Wars Galaxy

The core set will include:

Death Star

Tatooine

Hoth

Endor

And a debris field for Alderaan

Edit: First Expansion - The Sun Crusher

This way they can have their SSD and Death Star.

I'm not sure I find it more acceptable. I've resigned myself to the sliding scale in X-Wing, and I'll probably resign myself to the sliding scale in Armada.

What I might not resign myself to is if the scaling is arbitrary. A sliding scale suggests that FFG is doing its homework. Strangely, that really matters to me. I just feel ... dirty... giving money to a gaming company that disrespects the gameworld that I love.

I don't think having a sliding scale suggests a lack of respect. As long as things feel right there should be no issue. Now, the Star Trek miniatures are a load of nonsense scales wise, but that isn't a sliding scale, it is just an arbitrary size given to various ships and regardless of their relative size in the tv series. Most ships ended up of a roughly similar size, even if there were vast scale differences. This worked ok for some ships, as the big ones felt about right in comparison to each other, but it ended up that the Klingon Bird of Prey, one of the smallest ships, actually has one of the largest foot prints. Other smaller ships were also oversized (the Defiant etc). They then went and then subsequently did some very strange things with some of the later ships. The original series Enterprise is tiny for some reason. My best guess is that some of the model makers started trying to scale the ships to one of the existing ones as a standard (the Enterprise D is my best guess), but that this was 1) not in fitting with the earlier ships and 2) wasn't applied consistently.

However, from the outset the FFG know what they are attempting to do, and I suspect that it will be 1) consistent so that ships of similar sizes will be similar sizes and 2) comparitively accurate, with ships that are bigger being bigger and smaller ships being smaller. This would be a "sliding scale" method, as distinct from the "there is no scale" method of the Star Trek models.