Just had an interesting though about Imperial and Rebel squadron practices. I know we see at the moment that we get a lot of mixed ship lists. But that isn't how squadrons would work. Squadrons usually fly the same hull to ease maintenance.

So what would people say to adding an rule for fluff based missions which gave squad points benefits for every additional identical ship you field.

So run 4 Rookies and each one after the first costs 1 (or more) fewer squad points than listed. (So 81 points for the lot instead of 84).

You would have to rule that no more than 8 of any ship in a squad (to stop you running 9 tie fighters at exactly 100 points).

Now I've not decided whether the benefit would apply to matching: pilots and all upgrades, pilots alone (so anything equipped is ignored), pilots/mods/cannons/turrets (so we ignore munitions, bombs, system slots, crew, and titles), hull type (so only matching on the ship not who is flying it), hull type/mods/cannons/turrets. But I'm not going to really dig into this unless people are interested.

What does everyone think - it is worth spending some time looking into this more thoroughly?

I think that if people are really concerned about approaching the game 'realistically' and doing things like this, they are probably going to do it without incentives. I know I like to fly mono-ship squads from time to time to feel thematic.

If the scenario is supposed to be 'historical' or thematic, then it is probably a good idea to go ahead and mandate that squadrons use the same ship class. You even have the option of specifying pilots and ships in Mission Control, although I feel that takes away part of the fun of the game.

There are also exceptions to the mono-ship rule in the fluff, of course. The most prominent example being Darth Vader flying his fancy TIE/x1 alongside all his TIE/ln buddies. We also see lots of examples of different ships working together in the heat of battle - the Battle of Endor is a great example of that. So it's not exactly a hard and fast rule in-universe.

Handing out benefits could also make some powerful builds even better, unintentionally. I'm thinking TIE swarms and Blue squadron builds. So it could also be dangerous to promote homogeneous builds.

It sounds thematic sure, but the thing is that every squadron has support in one form or another. You may see squads of Naval fighters flying F-18's, but you'll also likely see an F-35 or 2 in the mix. You may see Air Force F-15's mixed with F-22's or F-16's. You may see fighters escorting bombers (you likely would see that actually).

Most squadrons you think about are broken into flights - a much smaller contingent with a much more specialized role. Ground attack craft, long range interceptors, multi-role fighters, electronic intelligence/warfare etc. In Star Wars you rarely saw mixed ships fighting alongside each other - though that isn't necessarily true either. I can think of a few different circumstances..

Episode 3 had ARC-170's flying alongside V-Wings and Aethersprites. Episode 4 had Y-Wings and X-Wings, as well as Ties and Vaders Tie Advanced. Episode 5 had Ties escorting Bombers through the asteroid field after the Falcon. Episode 6 had A's, B's, X's and Y's battling Ties, and Squints..

Thematically, a large portion of ships probably make up a certain contingent, but there are almost always support ships helping them out.

I'm all for making cool mono-culture builds too. Or applicable use builds (Ties escorting Bombers) too.

I like it more in campaign games though, where the whole point is to do something fun and flavorful.

To that end I have just the right number of ships to usually make a good squad:

5 Ints

5 Bombers

4 X

Looking to get 5 Ties and 5 Zs

The rest of the ships tend to be more singles or doubles for roles.