To me scale is a virtue, but just one of many. It's good to have a fixed scale where possible. And some times it's not. In xwing it is, and that is great. In a SW cap ship game it isn't, at least not if you want ISDs and corellion corvettes in the same game

But more than physical scale, game mechanics scale is important. More important than physical scale.

The big issue with an ISD in X-Wing isn't necessarily the physical size, but the mechanical scale that couldn't fit into the game.

Long story short, scale is wonderful when possible. In armada it is not, so there would be little point in getting worked up over it. But even if the physical scale slides, mechanical scale should be maintained.

As I sit here drinking from My Tervis Tumbler Star Wars cup...

I suppose I am of two minds. I absolutely love that X-Wing fighters and large ships are the same scale. I enjoy the dogfight and the ability to see fighters as we saw in the movies Bravo FFG. But I long to see the fighters mix it up with capital ships and a sliding scale is the only way to get both in X-Wing. I'll be the first to admit seeing a YT-1300 next to the GR-75 looks foolish, (sorry but true). But that is the only way for me to have my tactical dogfight with larger ships. If FFG made a 3D game board of a sliding scale ISD I'd probably get that too.

Will I get Star Wars Armada? I don't know yet it depends on a lot of things. But for scale there simply is no way to get everything we want in a single game in a fixed scale. I prefer the sliding scale of X-Wing than the scale (I'm really not sure if there is one) that Attack Wing chose. But that is just my preference and not a comment on the game itself.

My hope is that FFG continues with Huge Ships in X-Wing (gotta get that ISD look); I know that won't please everyone but if FFG limits the upgrades it comes with then people won't have to, or feel compelled to, purchase it. Others, like me, will get it for the looks at a minimum and for game play.

Getting back to Star Wars Armada, since this is Armada's forum, I hope it is a fun game and want to try it.

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.

You presume it *is* okay for 'everyone' RE: 'Armada'.

While I *understand* the reason for it...it's pretty off-putting, honestly. I've noted a few times a firm believe FFG is doing it to get us a Super Star Destroyer at the X-Wing-Tantive-IV-size, but...do I *want* a Super Star Destroyer that a Victory-class ship is fully 1/5 the length of? Kinda...no.

The scale issue will all but certainly keep me playing X-Wing, rather than this game. Not that I can see FFG had any other realistic choice, of course, and I don't blame them for the decision! But, when it comes to my gaming budget...I'll stick with the system that keeps things in scale! (And that I prefer the fighters due to affinity with the X-Wing/TIE Fighter PC games, in any case...)

I've noted a few times a firm believe FFG is doing it to get us a Super Star Destroyer at the X-Wing-Tantive-IV-size, but...do I *want* a Super Star Destroyer that a Victory-class ship is fully 1/5 the length of? Kinda...no.

A SSD is no more likely in this game then a ISD is in x-wing.

I'm gonna guess the VSD is about 5-6 inches long. That makes the minimum acceptable size for a isd 9 to 11 inches long. About double the VSD. That would be close to scale. A SSD is 10 times the size of a ISD that means it would have to be 5+ feet to look even close to correct.

I've noted a few times a firm believe FFG is doing it to get us a Super Star Destroyer at the X-Wing-Tantive-IV-size, but...do I *want* a Super Star Destroyer that a Victory-class ship is fully 1/5 the length of? Kinda...no.

A SSD is no more likely in this game then a ISD is in x-wing.

I'm gonna guess the VSD is about 5-6 inches long. That makes the minimum acceptable size for a isd 9 to 11 inches long. About double the VSD. That would be close to scale. A SSD is 10 times the size of a ISD that means it would have to be 5+ feet to look even close to correct.

Let's for a moment, assume that VanorDM's measurements/guesstimates, etc. are dead on (not saying they aren't - I am just at the pool right now drinking beer, and really don't want to think too hard).

Further, let's suppose that FFG ultimately releases a SSD (because it is cool looking, etc.), and the model is effing awesome ... great detail, etc., but only ends up being twice the size of the VSD from the core set.

Even though the size is wrong (and assume it comes with all of the proper attacks, defense, shields, pilots, upgrades, etc.), would you still buy it?

I've noted a few times a firm believe FFG is doing it to get us a Super Star Destroyer at the X-Wing-Tantive-IV-size, but...do I *want* a Super Star Destroyer that a Victory-class ship is fully 1/5 the length of? Kinda...no.

A SSD is no more likely in this game then a ISD is in x-wing.

I'm gonna guess the VSD is about 5-6 inches long. That makes the minimum acceptable size for a isd 9 to 11 inches long. About double the VSD. That would be close to scale. A SSD is 10 times the size of a ISD that means it would have to be 5+ feet to look even close to correct.

Let's for a moment, assume that VanorDM's measurements/guesstimates, etc. are dead on (not saying they aren't - I am just at the pool right now drinking beer, and really don't want to think too hard).

Further, let's suppose that FFG ultimately releases a SSD (because it is cool looking, etc.), and the model is effing awesome ... great detail, etc., but only ends up being twice the size of the VSD from the core set.

Even though the size is wrong (and assume it comes with all of the proper attacks, defense, shields, pilots, upgrades, etc.), would you still buy it?

So, proper attack being like 400 dice? 800 shields?

I actually own a copy of the SSD from the whizkids game, I measured it the other night and it os just a hairnover 7 inches long... it wouldn't look good in the Armada game as it is way too smal..

Though, I did pick up a droid control ship from the prequesls. It's a model rocket and looks pretty cool. Maybe 7 or 8 inches across... that might be a fun addition tomuse in Armada, just for grins..

Scale is important to both games, though I feel with Armada bringing us the capitol ships it will be more forgiving (not SSD forgiving but still). If they had given the scale to the corvette, then the Nebulon would be 2+ times bigger, and that VSD would be a foot long... making a ISD impractical as well, so I figure, we give a little we get a little on this one...

Let's for a moment, assume that VanorDM's measurements/guesstimates, etc. are dead on (not saying they aren't - I am just at the pool right now drinking beer, and really don't want to think too hard).

Further, let's suppose that FFG ultimately releases a SSD (because it is cool looking, etc.), and the model is effing awesome ... great detail, etc., but only ends up being twice the size of the VSD from the core set.

Even though the size is wrong (and assume it comes with all of the proper attacks, defense, shields, pilots, upgrades, etc.), would you still buy it?

I would not buy it, for several reasons.

1) Why are people assuming there will be SSDs? Looking at the points value of the ships, the points value of an SSD will be huge. Lets say an Imperial has one SSD with fighter escorts and that's it. Isn't that going to leave the Rebel player with a huge amounts of points to fill with (potentially) hoards of small ships? Not to mention the financial aspect of that.

2) Size matters. The nature of how a ships fights in part is based on its size. Allowing an SSD to mingle with the smaller ships defeats the strategy and tactical aspects of the game in that you no longer have to think about using the ship with all of its pluses and minuses intact. The same goes for any ship really. I get that this is a fictional universe, but looking to naval history as a guide, battleships didn't go mixing it up with destroyers. They formed battle lines and were used to best advantage by the admiral based on the developing circumstances of the battle. That's a major point for me in deciding if I want to invest in this. If it's a tactical fleet system, I would like the most realism possible, including what assets I can and can't use based on maneuverability in the area allowed.

3) What opportunity would exist for an SSD anyway? Using the movies as a guide (and even the now non-cannon books), the Rebellion never engaged a fully functional SSD purposely. They had a small, nimble fleet conducting hit and run raids. Even the attack on the Death Star in RotJ was not intended as a fleet action. The Rebels went in with the intention of destroying the Death Star and getting back out. I just can't see Rebel players purposefully attacking fleets including an SDD with the likely resources they will have in game.

4) Power lists ruin games. Im already seeing power listers bragging about how they will use their fleets of SSDs to boldly sweep across the table and destroy all that stands before them. No thanks. Power listers kill more games and chase off more players than a bad game will.

All that to get to this: I think the biggest ship in game should be an ISD and it should be in scale with the VSD. For that matter, all ships upwards in size from the corvette up to the ISD should be in one consistent scale. It's a reasonable model expectation, gives Rebel players opportunities for fleet actions in which their ships have a reasonable chance, and finally, does not put undo pressure on Rebel players to purchase massive fleet to fill points values to have equal fleets. And might keep them in the game if they dont have to spend $600 to buy a fleet to face one SSD.

Just my 75 cents. Inflation's a pain, isn't it?

Thanks for the opportunity to sound off. Now, someone please tell me why I'm wrong and help me wrap my mind around a sliding scale with something other than "it's a must."

Anyone remember the old wizards of the coast star wars miniatures. (Yes Is till have mine). The scale had a tie fighter half the size of a star destroyer. I used to joke about the Super Star Destroyer's greatest fear, GIANT A-WINGS!

Well this is (and excuse me for using GW terms) X-Wing Epic. Instead of individual star-fighters and the occasional escort size star-ship there is now the Titans and Super Heavies also known as Capital Ships and Super Star Destroyers. Still as people already asking for star destroyers in X-wing, I am sure you will have people asking for the Death Star in Armada.

would you still buy it?

No I won't, also I won't buy a ISD for Aramda unless it's at least 1.75 as long as a VSD. Scale only matters to me so much as it looks mostly correct on the table. But a 5 inch VSD next to a 7 inch ISD won't look right.

If the ISD's are that 9-11 inches, which means the price would be somewhere in the $60-80 range, so spendy but not completely out of reach...

that means the SSD would have to be at least 5-6 feet long to look correct. That would make it about a $5400-500 dollar model.

For those of us who wasted money on The Wotc SW: Starship Battles game the biggest gripes were the scale and quality of the ships.

The SSD was only about twice the size of the ISD. Fighters were just a bit smaller then FFG ones. The ships came so warped from China that we called ISDs Dorito chips.

I just sold my entire wotc SW ships a few months ago and bought into Sails of Glory. If I had known this gamewas coming out I would have held onto that money.

As a miniatures player scale means everything to me. Miniature players should strive for aesthetics in their games.

So far X-wing has held true to this belief, but I am worried for Armada. I am not happy with the size difference between the Nebulon-B and the CR-90. The Cr-90(150m) should be half the size of the Nebulon-B(300m). To me the CR-90 looks like a more powerful and robust ship then the Nebulon-B.

To play devils advocate here, if they were to make the CR-90 any smaller then it would look really tiny next to the fighters.

I am hoping that the images shown to us are not the final product. It is still early; hopefully there is time fine tune the "sliding scale" to more closely represent the difference in sizes.

Look how rudimentary the playing pieces were at the unveiling demo games at gen-con 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLJXuhd9dus

Nice video.. lol. Glad they went with different models, it might not be so popular with the ones shown. Lol

I was against Star Destroyers in X-Wing just because they would have to be about 700 points and take up most of a table just to be "close enough." The sliding scale isn't perfect but it keeps things sane gameplay-wise and with things at the sizes they are it shouldn't be as noticeable as having a Star Destroyer the size of a CR-90. Seriously, the Corvette in X-Wing is huge. People that honestly thought FFG should make a Star Destroyer for that game are crazy.

Sliding scale in X-Wing doesn't work (beyond a certain extent) because everything about the game starts with the assumption that a single fighter on a 1" base is standard. Movement, ranges, everything starts with that. Skew that too far and the game stops making sense -- you've got 2000m ships zooming around like fighters, fighters scoring kills against other fighters from realistic but hardly cinematic distances, etc. Not to mention firepower -- you go from a couple lasers and a couple dice to either hundreds of lasers and hundreds of dice, or you have to abstract it down so far it ceases to feel like a capital ship.

Armada doesn't start with that assumption. By being inherently more abstract, it's easier to adopt a more flexible scale.

i don't care. in fact i skipped reading the majority of this thread. FFG has gone above and beyond my expectations of making a miniature space battles game, made it relatively cheap compared to about 99% of other minis games, come mostly prepainted with minimal accembly. FFG, just shut up and take my money now!

Scale doesn't bother. It didn't bother me in Rebellion. So give me my Super Star Destroyer and Mon Cal Star Defender.

In X-wing the point cost for Star Destroyers would have to be so insane as to be impractical. Armada is at capital scale and thus ISDs can be shown in their full glory.

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).

Armada has a sliding scale: if the VSD is the size of a Lambda the CR-90 size has enough board presence for an Executor-class: a **** sight more than it did in Starship Battles.

To be the right scale the tantive would be the size of the unpainted x-wings, and you'd never see a super star destroyer on the board as a massive ship.

As long as you have a ISD2 that looks bigger than the victory it'll be fine.

The quality of the game is more important than the scale, look at 40k GW's never done vehicles and infantry to scale but no one complained.

And how gipped would the rebels feel if all they got was ickkle ships while the imps got massive ships.

And how gipped would the rebels feel if all they got was ickkle ships while the imps got massive ships.

As an Imperial X-wing player, quite miffed.

Though the irony of Armada does continue to amuse me.

My first reactive to why its ok is that Armada was announced a couple days ago and we don't have enough information to make a judgement.

My second thought, opinions will be exactly the same as for X-Wing. Dire hard scale warriors will still be the same just like everyone else in between.

As long as we don't have wars over the A-wing size...

I know that I for one am not thrilled about the sliding scale. I would ideally love the ships to be absolute scale to each other rather than a sliding scale. I could possibly make due with a "Class" based sliding scale. (i.e. all ships of a certain length are to scale with each other, while the next size group are all to scale with each other but different from the first group.) After FFG worked so hard to get good scale in X-wing, it is kind of a shame to see them throw it away in Armada. I could live with small corvettes.

If I want out of scale ships, I still have my old Star Wars Starship Battles from WOTC. (Bent pieces and all.)

Still I plan a demo at GenCon this week.

Thanks,
Duncan

I know that I for one am not thrilled about the sliding scale.

For me it depends on how much sliding goes on.

For a ship like a CR-90, it's going to be hard to make it to proper scale. A VSD is 900m long, a CR-90 is 150. So the VSD should be 6 times the size of a CR-90, lets say the VSD is 6 inches long, a CR-90 would be 1 inch... A Y-Wing is 2 inches long, even a A-Wing is like 1.5 inches...

I do think the CR-90 is a bit too big though, I'd prefer to see it a bit smaller then it seems to be.

But if the bigger ships stay mostly true then I'm ok. Like I said above, if the ISD is 9-11 long compared to a 5-6 inch long VSD. I think it will look ok, but if it's much smaller compared to a VSD then I don't know that I'd bother getting one.

From the picture the Nebulon-B looks too small next the the CR-90. I would be OK with the Nebulon-B being beefed up a bit. Look, the engine block for the CR-90 is bigger then the whole aft section of the Nebolun-B, which we know to be false.

First of all, let me say that I am very pumped for this game (to the point that I kinda wish I didn't spend all that money on x-wing. Convincing the minister of war and finace to start another game is going to be a hard sell)

I believe this game, and its sliding scale, is going to appease all those people who want the rediculously large ships in the Star Wars universe to be playable. to a point.

You can directly relate the sliding scale of x-wing's production model to armada.

fighter size - anything VSDish in size and below - frigates, corvettes, gunships, small cruisers. The smaller ships could even come in multiple packs. i.e I see that wave 1 will mainly consist of individual packs of the core set ships with some different characters/uppgrades, So I see say 3xCR-90s or 2xNebulon-Bs in each pack, while only 1 VSD. Maybe bundled with their respective fighters

Large size - ISD, MC-80s etc. big enough to be flag ships but small enough to have several in a fleet.

Epic size - SSD, Home One. FFG has proven that they can make miniatures of this size playable. Remember that these "super" class ships were very rare (and Home One could be considered a "super", its broadsides could match a SSD from the front (ref: X-wing: Solo Command I believe), and could easily take on a ISD or two)

Final point. I see fighters as more as weapon upgrades for capital ships as oposed to separate ships to purchase in your fleet. for instance the nebulon-B card states it has a squadron value of 2. Therefore you can add up to 2 squadron cards to that ship. (or it comes standard with 2 x-wing squadrons, which you can upgrade to the ship alphabet of your choice for points)