So I've been playing around with a beta fleet builder and I've noticed one thing: you can't really build an armada.

What I personally expect when I hear 'armada' or 'fleet' is at least 3 Vics and a dozen TIEs, with a few upgrades and titles thrown around. What you actually can do is 3 vics and 7 TIEs with the cheapest Admiral and no upgrade, titles, or pilots.

I understand that putting the limit too high or costing too low means that you could potentially end up with a swarm of ships and that could make games last too long, but this is a game about fleets it should be an epic scale.

The core set gives you up to 200 points (60% of the total) worth of ships, upgrades, admirals, and squadrons. As compared to the X-Wing core set which gives up up to 40 points (40% of the total), this game seems a bit smaller.

Maybe I'm just greedy and want super fleets, but what do you all think about what the limit is looking like now and what you think it should be (if they differ)?

I agree. I think that the fleets should be bigger, although time limits probably mean that a 300 point fame will probably be good for tournaments. I expect to use two upgraded vics with lots of TIEs to support or a Vic and a Gladiator.

I am definitely going to play a lot of scenarios. (ex: the Rebels need to strike an imperial station under the protection of a victory class star destroyer and its fighters. The rebels have a nebulon B frigate and a sizable contingent of fighters and bombers.)

As much as I would love to see huge fleets and heck maybe that will be our epic scale for Armada you never know. I think running with what amounts to being a line(1 to 12 ships) is probably better for game play time wise and also ship management look whats involved with just a fleet at 300 points so many cards,rules, ship stands and such. If your fleet gets to big your not gonna be able to control it all with any real combat capability unless you recruit your friends to run parts of the fleet for you.

I think it has been set at the best possible compromise at the moment to get a game that is actually playable in an hour or two, vs losing the sensation of the scale and firepower of these awesome capital ships.

One of my major gripes with Star Trek Attack Wing is that it reduces massive starships to 3-4 shield points total and an equally megre number of hull points. Yes capital ships put out amazing firepower etc, but then lets roll amazing number of dice and have some depth. The more you scale down the miniatures and combat, the less depth there actually is.

The thing I love about Armada is that if we want then we likely can field massive "armadas" in house games where we can stay up all night drinking beer, eating pizza and generally forgetting why the battle even started in the first place

(That and running epic campaign systems where each battle is only a fraction of your wider forces brought to bear).

I'm in agreement with Brigoon , but I get where you're coming from with the name 'Armada'. To be worthy of the name, it should have been at the scale at which an Executor -class is quite viable, and we're talking about Endor-scale battles.

Of course, that would be a different type of game, and it would even more poorly reflect the type of warfare that generally happens in the Galactic Civil War.

So, in all, I think the game is scaled quite well, and even if the name is a bit grand for it, I think the name is cool. So, in my book, it's all good.

I'm in agreement with Brigoon , but I get where you're coming from with the name 'Armada'. To be worthy of the name, it should have been at the scale at which an Executor -class is quite viable, and we're talking about Endor-scale battles.

Of course, that would be a different type of game, and it would even more poorly reflect the type of warfare that generally happens in the Galactic Civil War.

So, in all, I think the game is scaled quite well, and even if the name is a bit grand for it, I think the name is cool. So, in my book, it's all good.

Well that depends on what you mean by Galactic Civil War. Everything up until Ender was indeed pretty small, there were a handful of good sized battles, but few involving Capital Ships. However, post Endor there were tons of fleet vs fleet sized battles, and the vast majority of the Galactic Civil War occured after Endor (Endor was 4 ABY, the truce ending it was 19 ABY).

I think the scale is appropriate, but I think a 50 point bump to 350 would add the ability to go that little extra bit. 6 extra TIE fighters isn't going to add that much time to the game, but will add tons of dynamism. (imo anyway) But if the limit went up to 400 or 500 that would probably push it over to too long (especially for tournament play). It is hard to find that sweet spot between too much and too little.

yes I noticed that as well with the beta fleet builder. three capital ship builds kill the amount of squadrons you can field and if you are playing Empire I would think you would want more fighter squadrons to screen your capital ships.

My thought it is that I'm glad the system in place is what it is. We get to make lists that are still manageable for tournaments, we get a rule system that is detailed enough differentiate ships quite well, and we still have the option to play much bigger battles if we so choose with the understanding that big battles will take substantially longer to play.

As a fan of the occasional "epic game" I am going to push big for my local gaming group to run some form of seasonal campaign format with the epic battle to end the season. I can already see the campaign being a series of small scale battle fought over a few months with participants building up a history for their ships and squadrons.

I also felt that way, initially

My idea of an Armada would be some 4-5 massive star destroyers to slowly lumber through the stars, broadsiding anything they encountered like the Spanish Fleets of yore...

Then I started compiling the rules for "Armada at a Glance," and holy hell I don't think I could handle more than 2

I'm sure we'll get a bigger game format soon (ala epic), but for now I wouldn't mind coming to grips with the game with smaller fleets (also wouldn't mind if the game would hurry up now...)

yes I noticed that as well with the beta fleet builder. three capital ship builds kill the amount of squadrons you can field and if you are playing Empire I would think you would want more fighter squadrons to screen your capital ships.

Yes! I keep seeing people planning on three VSDs in a fleet. Fighters, commanders, and upgrades will not fit in that fleet. Plus, with only two star destroyers, playing those eight TIE Fighter squadrons will be doable, which I think is awesome. Hopefully it will be effective enough to be competitive.

I wanna know why they didn't scale the points to 100.

I wanna know why they didn't scale the points to 100.

for example a 75 of Vic scaled to 100 instead would be 25 but a 8 of tie squad would be 2.65ish so you couldn't have the same point ratio,

Basically the larger scales are more flexible

So I've been playing around with a beta fleet builder and I've noticed one thing: you can't really build an armada.

What I personally expect when I hear 'armada' or 'fleet' is at least 3 Vics and a dozen TIEs, with a few upgrades and titles thrown around. What you actually can do is 3 vics and 7 TIEs with the cheapest Admiral and no upgrade, titles, or pilots.

I understand that putting the limit too high or costing too low means that you could potentially end up with a swarm of ships and that could make games last too long, but this is a game about fleets it should be an epic scale.

The core set gives you up to 200 points (60% of the total) worth of ships, upgrades, admirals, and squadrons. As compared to the X-Wing core set which gives up up to 40 points (40% of the total), this game seems a bit smaller.

Maybe I'm just greedy and want super fleets, but what do you all think about what the limit is looking like now and what you think it should be (if they differ)?

Heh. You aren't greedy, my friend. You're just vocalising what we're all wanting. Hehe.

I suppose though, nothing is stopping us from creating 'house-rules' to accommodate a larger fleet of ships.

Although, deep down, if we were to play Armada at an 'Epic epic' level we'd have to simply the movement and firing somewhat.

I think what Funk Fu was proposing in his "Capital Ship Divisions" thread might help this in some way. By grouping together 'flotillas' of capital ships, resolving their movement together and combining their firepower at a single target or opposing 'flotilla' of capital ships, with damage simply being carried over from the lead ship being destroyed to the next, and so on.

The above IIRC is similar to what BattleFleet Gothic had set for ship 'Squadrons' where you could group up to three ships together to act as a single fighting force. Escorts (smaller destroyers and frigates had to be deployed in squads of at least two ships -unless they loss individual ships due to attrition.).

Ahh, edited to add the link to Funk Fu's thread.

So I've been playing around with a beta fleet builder and I've noticed one thing: you can't really build an armada.

What I personally expect when I hear 'armada' or 'fleet' is at least 3 Vics and a dozen TIEs, with a few upgrades and titles thrown around. What you actually can do is 3 vics and 7 TIEs with the cheapest Admiral and no upgrade, titles, or pilots.

I understand that putting the limit too high or costing too low means that you could potentially end up with a swarm of ships and that could make games last too long, but this is a game about fleets it should be an epic scale.

The core set gives you up to 200 points (60% of the total) worth of ships, upgrades, admirals, and squadrons. As compared to the X-Wing core set which gives up up to 40 points (40% of the total), this game seems a bit smaller.

Maybe I'm just greedy and want super fleets, but what do you all think about what the limit is looking like now and what you think it should be (if they differ)?

Heh. You aren't greedy, my friend. You're just vocalising what we're all wanting. Hehe.

I suppose though, nothing is stopping us from creating 'house-rules' to accommodate a larger fleet of ships.

Although, deep down, if we were to play Armada at an 'Epic epic' level we'd have to simply the movement and firing somewhat.

I think what Funk Fu was proposing in his "Capital Ship Divisions" thread might help this in some way. By grouping together 'flotillas' of capital ships, resolving their movement together and combining their firepower at a single target or opposing 'flotilla' of capital ships, with damage simply being carried over from the lead ship being destroyed to the next, and so on.

The above IIRC is similar to what BattleFleet Gothic had set for ship 'Squadrons' where you could group up to three ships together to act as a single fighting force. Escorts (smaller destroyers and frigates had to be deployed in squads of at least two ships -unless they loss individual ships due to attrition.).

Ahh, edited to add the link to Funk Fu's thread.

Hmm, that would actually make a pretty epic and awesome game mode. Have a 1000 point limit, but require every non-large base ship (which is all of them right now) be taken as part of a squadron of 2-3 ships, all of which move and fire identically. Only squadrons can be targeted, not individual ships, and only a single ship in a squadron can be given a title. That title applies to the entire squadron, but is lost if a single ship from that squadron is destroyed.

Anyway, getting way off-topic, but interesting idea.

This reminds me of X-Wing where you don't build squadrons you build a small fighter wing.

If this game got any larger than 300pts it would be unmanageable, similar to epic play for X-Wing as of yet. FFG doesn't want to turn their games into pay to win. At 300pts this game still poses affordability. By all means play larger games however I don't see the rules changing for larger games. Why have multiple capital ships in a formation all throwing dice at another formation? Basically you find yourself playing Armada again with more damage output, more total hull and shields, and tons more models...or you could have played the base game and been fine.

Just echoing what others have already said. I agree that maybe 'Armada' is a slightly misleading title, but the game appears to be well balanced for matches of 1-2 hours. That said, there is nothing stopping people playing bigger games - I reckon 350-400 points will be viable, but anything more than that will probably require a bigger play area.

Going off topic slightly, where did you get this nugget of info from?

The core set gives you up to 200 points (60% of the total) worth of ships, upgrades, admirals, and squadrons.

From what I've seen it looks to be more like 150 points.

Just echoing what others have already said. I agree that maybe 'Armada' is a slightly misleading title, but the game appears to be well balanced for matches of 1-2 hours. That said, there is nothing stopping people playing bigger games - I reckon 350-400 points will be viable, but anything more than that will probably require a bigger play area.

Going off topic slightly, where did you get this nugget of info from?

The core set gives you up to 200 points (60% of the total) worth of ships, upgrades, admirals, and squadrons.

From what I've seen it looks to be more like 150 points.

I played around with the beta fleet builder and Tarkin plus a Vic 2 and 5 TIE/Ln + 1 Howlrunner and a few upgrades on the Vic end up at a little over 200 points. For the upgrades I am not sure which upgrades are in the core and which are in expansions so it could actually even be more (or maybe a little less).

Ah OK. I guess if there are enough upgrades it could push it to the 200 mark. Wish they would spoil more of the core set ones so we know though.

Edit: Just had a quick play building a rebel fleet, and the max is 167. However, that's not all the upgrade cards and 40+ points of upgrades seem excessive and unlikely in the core alone. I'd say 150-175 is a good amount for core only games.