I'm mulling over some various ideas for a campaign system you use if I can get something reasonable cobbled together for a local campaign.

My initial thought is a campaign system where each participant can bring roughly a 150pt fleet as their starting fleet. These starting lists will be static and remain locked until the cycle ends but players will get the option to reset their lists at the cost of losing their history of objectives won (say you got a bad setup and realize it you can rethink your list but you will basically be starting over as a new player) A set of objectives will be available for people to fight over with winners getting some minor to modest reward that will impact future battles. I'm thinking 3 objectives per expected participant so each player will average 6 matches a cycle. After all the initial objectives have been fought over the first cycle ends.

I'm thinking victory bonuses for the battles will vary but be primarily in the form of 1 time use armament upgrades, one time use extra squadrons, one time use benefit for determining initiative which will also factor into determing objective, and optional objectives (as in if imp wins a hypothetical intel objective he could then conduct an assault of a rebel deep space base, or rebel wins it and gets to run the same objective, but with reinforcements so they can ambush the imps). All battles will result in a turn in sheet filled out so a running tally of points lost, points destroyed, margin of victory can be maintained.

Once a cycle ends the fleet size goes up for the next cycle. To allow for new players objectives for additional cycles will remain playable at the 150ish point limit with larger battles netting larger rewards. Additionally any ships that survived a cycle without being destroyed in a minimum of 3 battles it participated in will get a bonus. I'm thinking this will be in the form of giving these ships a lower cost when calculating initiative or maybe reducing the cost of their total upgrades by a few points. Whatever bonus a ship gets it will be lost if the ship is ever destroyed so people will start getting a small incentive to protect these ships. Bonuses will not accrue beyond a single level, on the thought that anything beyond that will drastically throw the game out of balance.

The objectives for the campaign will be thematic but based upon the basic objectives normal Armada games will have. To keep things running smoothly a folder with available objectives will remain at flgs. Players participating would agree to a match find an objective by first determining battle size, then initiative, then loser of initiative get to pick 3 objectives for the winner to pick from. Alternatively if the initiative winner has a bonus objective banked he can simply opt to play that. Each objective sheet in the folder will list objective, setup, victory conditions, reward for winning, and a slip on the bottom for recording the results.

Once a suitable number of cycles have passed tbd by participants the grand battle will be scheduled. All participants who want to be in the final battle will be asked to provide a list they use for the battle. An overall commander for the final battle will be determined for each faction and they will get the lists from their players, a list of objectives for each table, and will then take turns assigning people to tables. Each table will be a 2v2 matchup due to size limitations.

On the day of the final battle players will go to their respective battles and fight for the objectives. All ships eliminated and all damage taken will carry on to following round with the caveat that shields will regen. The following rounds will reduce the number of tables as the forces get winnowed down with ideally 3 rounds total being played. The goal of this winnowing process is that each player has the potential to stagger into the final battle with a capital ship. To give eliminated players something at the final table eliminated players will be given the option to bring a limited number of points to use to bring squadrons with. This will also help the losing side of early battles to have a potential for a comeback in later battles as they increase their squadrons. Campaign victory will the the faction with the last capital ships still flying.

After the campaign ends rewards, prizes etc will be handed out and a brief review of notable events of the campaign will mentioned. A final writeup for the campaign will be generated posted to the the facebook group along with the photos taken throughout the campaign.

**So thats the idea I have. Its based upon past experience playing battletech and battlefleet gothic campaigns with the goal being to create a narrative, have late entry be possible and have a scenario driven series of battles. If anyone has any comments, suggestions, or alternatives, please let me know.**

Instead of single use upgrades and squadrons as victory rewards, players should keep them until that unit is destroyed, at which point it is replaced with a stock standard moodel

I want a system involving a galactic map, Basically a conquest game

I haven't thought up Details yet but I would have every player that wants to join reprecent a standard fleet of 250pts and for example every meeting they get a sertain number of moves(something like they can move up to 3 star systems or something like that) and then when the engage a enemy fleet they play it out, the victor gets some bonus (we would also need some sort of hyperspace mechanic for retreat s)

I would say that if a cap ship survives 2 or more engagements it would gain notoriety(it becomes famous) so then it gets a title upgrade (and titles would be banned from the origanal fleet) if it does this resets etc.

Play this out and hopefully one team gets widdled down to one planet with all of there fleets there and then a massive final battle can insue with epic theme music and the deathstar, jk, but you get the point

Have a galactic map like Clontroper5 says but break the map down into sectors. Then assign a point cost for each sector you would own giving extra points for special spots like shipyards or known critical worlds. Then with these points the player can save up to buy new ships and defenses. So like a Gladiator might be 4 points once you buy it you place it in one of your sectors that has a shipyard. Then your off to go clobber bad guys! For a big game the kiss(Keep It Simple Stuiped) principle is probably the smartest way to go.

From there you can either just build up fleets and smash each other or set it up so if you capture so many critical worlds you win.

If you've done this with Battletech and Battlefleet Gothic, then you're probably already a step ahead of me.

I've been thinking about campaigns for X-Wing, and now Armada, but I've been struggling with how to really implement it. On the one hand, I would really like to do something with deep narrative content, and I worked much of the summer on an online system for X-Wing, which would give you a series of missions and the outcome of the mission would determine what the next mission would be. Also, it would keep track of your downed pilots and procured upgrades.

Eventually, I gave up on it because of limited interest from the community and a lack of time on my part to continue it.

On the flip side, a friend of mine has a campaign that 'campaignifies' in a different direction. Instead of there being a story that sets the constraints, he simply takes battle results and plugs them into a map, which then reflects the balance of power in the galaxy or a sector (see here ).

His campaign is a success because it requires his players to not really change their behavior, but just send him the battle reports, whereas mine requires too much motivational buy-in from the participants, and I'm simply not able to get that (or have the energy to recruit for it).

The moral of this is that you need to know your community. How deeply narrative do they want to go? How much will they allow their normal behavior to be changed in order to be a part of the campaign?