"Not only must your target be within the range and firing arc of the hull zone from which you choose to launch your attack, you must have line of sight to the hull zone you want to target. To determine whether or not you have line of sight, you trace a straight line from your hull zone’s yellow targeting point to the targeting point of the defending hull zone. If this line is traced through any hull zone on the defending ship other than the defending hull zone, you do not have line of sight to that hull zone and must declare another target."

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5147

that means that you can draw a line from i.e. the victory front zones yellow dot to the each of the 2 spaces where the green lines of its front firing arc stop (leave its base). in order to see from which directions you can be hit in the front as the victory class. so from this picture the vic can be hit on the front side from far more then 180°. about 240° i would say. same with the back side. the sides on the other hand have hitable angles far smaller then 180° as their yellow dot is INSIDE the triangle formed by the middle of the X forming the firing arcs (green and red lines) and the 2 corners where the corresponding firing arc lines leave the base. in the front and rear section that yellow dot is outside of that triangle meaning its hitable from more then 180°. or you could say in general.: the closer the yellow dot in each hull zone to the center of the X formed by the firing arc lines the better.

example for back "hitable arc".:

so although the green firing lines look almost like seperating the base by 90° angles (front beeing bit larger in this case) the "hitable arcs" for each 4 zones are shaped very differently. this will have large effect in game. i.e. the nebulon b has very large side "hitable arcs" while at the same time haveing weak shields there.

interesting balancing aspect where to place the yellow dot.

just some details i noticed. maybe someone wants to do a table based on measuring out images of all ships ? .

before i had the assumtion that if you can shoot your front at my front i could shoot my front at yours. this is not the case.

Good find on the VSD's back arc, I knew something like this could happen, but didn't know where the yellow dot was.

Our future conversations about arcs and yellow dots are going to sound wonderfully obtuse. The mechanic allows for making ships more unique, and defining their role and movment. The Neb-b being the most obvious as you mentioned.

If you notice, it's the same for the front arc, too. Basically, ships whose arcs don't go the corners are more vulnerable than those whose arcs do.

If you notice, it's the same for the front arc, too. Basically, ships whose arcs don't go the corners are more vulnerable than those whose arcs do.

I wonder if this was a deliberate decision, as all of the yellow dots are located above the shield values...

ofc it was. it was "brillian design"^tm! its sometimes sad that its not so easy to patch this kind of things if they mess it up in the first run. balance is key. probably glad that they took out the 2 blue anti squadron dice from the CR90. game would have been a whole lot different with them.

so bottom line is that the VSD has a large but .

If you notice, it's the same for the front arc, too. Basically, ships whose arcs don't go the corners are more vulnerable than those whose arcs do.

Depends on shield layout. The Nebulon is more vulnerable BECAUSE it's arcs go to the corners....it means it's easier to hit those flimsy side shields.

Well spotted madtulip. Makes sense that bigger ships are easier to hit in multiple locations.

Just to make sure I understand, do you measure from the yellow dot to see if you can hit someone without crossing the imaginary green line created (eg the red zone in the image in te op)by the weapon arcs?

However when measuring to hit, you ignore the imaginary green lines created by the weapon arcs?

It seems weird to have an inconsistency like that in a game...

Just to make sure I understand, do you measure from the yellow dot to see if you can hit someone without crossing the imaginary green line created (eg the red zone in the image in te op)by the weapon arcs?

However when measuring to hit, you ignore the imaginary green lines created by the weapon arcs?

It seems weird to have an inconsistency like that in a game...

Not quite

The yellow dot is used to line up your target, and check line of sight to the opposing hull zone. The printed lines on the bases determine if you have line of sight or not, ie if you cross a printed line when drawing that line between yellow dots, you don't have line of sight.

When you fire at someone, the opposing hull zone has to be in line of sight, and it has to be in your weapon arc.

@madtulip, many months ago I posted a VERY preliminary thought exercise about this geometry for the zones and how it might affect vulnerability. I think a few takeaways were that the aft portion of the victory was super vulnerable, and the rear of the CR90 was much less vulnerable than the front.

There was also something about overlapping the zones of vulnerabilty for each hull zone and some very initial ruminations on how that might be beneficial for helping to avoid 2 shots on the same hull zone. basically placing a ship in the "area of overlap" of two zones of vulnerabilty would be a bad plan.

Its been a while since i've looked at the article, but its at least worth a quick perusal to get the juices flowing here.

ah, nice read. not sure if they changed the example rules in the meantime but i believe the ruling here is quite obvious.

im also curious if this is realy intended by design as megamen were saying. it does seem kinda weired that the yellow dots are just in the same distance above the shield wheels. gives the impression that nobody did put any thought into that but instead only the firing arc line angles where slightly adjusted and just printed on whatever size of base would hold the model physically. that the ratio of the base dimensions directly influences the "hitable arcs" if the firing arc line angles are fixed.

the VSD which is already a slow bucket will have serious trouble with this 240° arc i believe.

so if they want to errata this later it would be easiest to rule that the defenders firing act lines (printed on the base) are to be interpreted as beeing of infinite length instead of just the length printed. the original example picture in the first pic clearly shows with the top most yellow line that this is currently not an inteded rule. on the other hand the locations of the yellow dots coult be re printed which is far more efford.

im curious how this will turn out. how the VSD will even be playble. i dont see it getting anyone in his front arc range 1 or 2 for the whole game if you play with just the core box on a 6´x3´ table at a maximum turn rate per turn of 45°. maybe the 6 turn game length somehow enforces you to charge in from the front earlier ? which also brings me to the thought that i dislike table edges and turn limits in this context.

but yea. would like to see this played out instead of theory crafting it.

I highly doubt that anything in Armada just slipped through the cracks without going through the designers. You're probably better off assuming that everything that was printed on the ships was as designed. This is not to say that the designers don't make mistakes, but it just seems very unlikely that they didn't put thought into it.

ah, nice read. not sure if they changed the example rules in the meantime but i believe the ruling here is quite obvious.

im also curious if this is realy intended by design as megamen were saying. it does seem kinda weired that the yellow dots are just in the same distance above the shield wheels. gives the impression that nobody did put any thought into that but instead only the firing arc line angles where slightly adjusted and just printed on whatever size of base would hold the model physically. that the ratio of the base dimensions directly influences the "hitable arcs" if the firing arc line angles are fixed.

the VSD which is already a slow bucket will have serious trouble with this 240° arc i believe.

so if they want to errata this later it would be easiest to rule that the defenders firing act lines (printed on the base) are to be interpreted as beeing of infinite length instead of just the length printed. the original example picture in the first pic clearly shows with the top most yellow line that this is currently not an inteded rule. on the other hand the locations of the yellow dots coult be re printed which is far more efford.

im curious how this will turn out. how the VSD will even be playble. i dont see it getting anyone in his front arc range 1 or 2 for the whole game if you play with just the core box on a 6´x3´ table at a maximum turn rate per turn of 45°. maybe the 6 turn game length somehow enforces you to charge in from the front earlier ? which also brings me to the thought that i dislike table edges and turn limits in this context.

but yea. would like to see this played out instead of theory crafting it.

Well sure, if you put artificial limitations on the VSD it won't perform well. Never taking a navigation command is certainly going to hurt any ship, but especially the slow ones.

It seems the whole point of this setup was to make firing arcs easier to hit than to hit from, forcing you to make tactical decisions.

As for the VSDs efficacy, well it can hold back and launch 6 dice at opponents from a single arc, if you don't balance that with something then you have a clearly OP ship. AFII gets to turn better because it has 4 Dice in its best arc. We need to look at the whole picture to see how things work, rather than zooming in on a single aspect and pointing out how one ship is at a disadvantage there.

ah, nice read. not sure if they changed the example rules in the meantime but i believe the ruling here is quite obvious.

im also curious if this is realy intended by design as megamen were saying. it does seem kinda weired that the yellow dots are just in the same distance above the shield wheels. gives the impression that nobody did put any thought into that but instead only the firing arc line angles where slightly adjusted and just printed on whatever size of base would hold the model physically. that the ratio of the base dimensions directly influences the "hitable arcs" if the firing arc line angles are fixed.

the VSD which is already a slow bucket will have serious trouble with this 240° arc i believe.

so if they want to errata this later it would be easiest to rule that the defenders firing act lines (printed on the base) are to be interpreted as beeing of infinite length instead of just the length printed. the original example picture in the first pic clearly shows with the top most yellow line that this is currently not an inteded rule. on the other hand the locations of the yellow dots coult be re printed which is far more efford.

im curious how this will turn out. how the VSD will even be playble. i dont see it getting anyone in his front arc range 1 or 2 for the whole game if you play with just the core box on a 6´x3´ table at a maximum turn rate per turn of 45°. maybe the 6 turn game length somehow enforces you to charge in from the front earlier ? which also brings me to the thought that i dislike table edges and turn limits in this context.

but yea. would like to see this played out instead of theory crafting it.

Well sure, if you put artificial limitations on the VSD it won't perform well. Never taking a navigation command is certainly going to hurt any ship, but especially the slow ones.

It seems the whole point of this setup was to make firing arcs easier to hit than to hit from, forcing you to make tactical decisions.

As for the VSDs efficacy, well it can hold back and launch 6 dice at opponents from a single arc, if you don't balance that with something then you have a clearly OP ship. AFII gets to turn better because it has 4 Dice in its best arc. We need to look at the whole picture to see how things work, rather than zooming in on a single aspect and pointing out how one ship is at a disadvantage there.

45° included taking an extra click from navigation. so with a VSD front firing angle of about 100° you are save from his front fire if you end you movement in his back 170° even if he can still move on this turn and uses navigation. that just sounds pretty simple without taking the board edges into account which are no nice game elements imo. so i guess a 2nd VSD and the table edges will allow to play same back to back or similar maneuvers and thus use one of the front arcs at all.

one point beeing that base box would then be hard to play standalone. other point would be tables edges which help deniing fast ship movement space are not fun imo. im actually thinking about getting a 6*3 board made of 18 squares so that i can just remove a full row on the one end and place it on the other if space needs to be shifted so that ships can continiue to fly in one direction.

I highly doubt that anything in Armada just slipped through the cracks without going through the designers. You're probably better off assuming that everything that was printed on the ships was as designed. This is not to say that the designers don't make mistakes, but it just seems very unlikely that they didn't put thought into it.

yea. most probably .

but yea your probably right. it will be balanced .

Made a small assumption (front arc has the same angle as the back), and I think this means there is a sweet spot on the Vic's where attackers can choose from three different arcs, of roughly 60 degrees.

Regarding my statement about this not being taken into account during design. I am basing that on my experience with the Tantive for xwing. The Tantive has a blind spot from the forward section where measuring distance from the printed secondary arc shows range 3, whereas measuring from the edge of the fore section card is range 2. This creates the infuriating situation where the measurement rules trumped logical rules (too far for quads, too close for primary attack) It looks like FFG fixed this wih the raider fire arcs, as measurements are made from the same spot.

My assumption is FFG put in the dot in to prevent people from trying to measure LOS from anywhere along the edge of rectangle. This provides a standard point of reference. My additional guess is the no one thought to move the yellow dot around on the card, as there is zero variation in yellow dot location.

Plus I think it is kinda weird that you can shoot at my back while you are still in front of me.

Either way, it would be cool to see a photoshop image wih all the hit-able arcs shown.

Here is some astonishingly bad MS Paint work showing the hittable arcs of the CR90 and VSD. If anyone can find top down views of the AF and Neb bases, i can do those too

Green = Shooter can hit front only

Brown = Shooter can hit front or side

Red = Shooter can hit side only

Orange = Shooter can hit side or rear

Yellow = Shooter can hit rear only.

Thin black lines are firing arcs for comparison.

You will see that the front arc of the Corvette is even worse....that thing is going to have to be incredibly careful.

by the look of the converging lines on the sides there will be a long range sweet spot where all 3 zones can be targeted

Nice! Good job at MS Paint. Those are definitely useful diagrams.

And the 3 arc sweet spot may even be at range 2...

Good job everyone!

Nice! Good job at MS Paint. Those are definitely useful diagrams.

And the 3 arc sweet spot may even be at range 2...

Good job everyone!

Yeah, there will be a few sweet spots. Later on i'll expand these if there's interest to show a full circle around them, allowing us to see the zone overlaps.

Yeah, there will be a few sweet spots. Later on i'll expand these if there's interest to show a full circle around them, allowing us to see the zone overlaps.

Most definately. If you can somehow include the range bands (probably not until after release) that would be phenomenal. But the way they currently are is quite a useful image.

Range bands are possible, but will take more work...the source image does have a range rule in it for reference purposes. I'll see what i can do, might take a day or two due to work.

Range bands are possible, but will take more work...the source image does have a range rule in it for reference purposes. I'll see what i can do, might take a day or two due to work.

It may just be worth waiting until we actually have physical measurements of the game components (instead of pixels), as we don't know the lengths of the movement tool compared to the range ruler.

However, these diagrams will be critical for power-gamers / tourny players to determine ideal approach and movement speeds.

Plus, if you were playing in Vassal, it would be useful to have an overlay (Note, I have never actually played a game in Vassal as I have never gotten it to work, so I could be completely off base)