Brand new player here just got two cores and a few expansions and been playing with my son for a two weeks and ready to take it up to my FLGS to meet some more folks to play.

One of my questions is how does 100 point ship squad hold up against a squad with less ships but upgrades?

I'm still learning and making mistakes so trying to keep it simple with 100 point all ship builds but wondering if I should back it off a few points and add some upgrades? is 100 points no matter what somewhat balanced?

I'm guessing the right upgrades will have the upper hand but does 100pt all ships stand a chance? thanks for you time

BBBBZ is a very popular build right now and it's all ships, no upgrades.

All ships can be very effective, however if you combine the right pilots with the right upgrades it might be more effective.

On generic pilots no, 1 maybe 2 upgrades can work just fine. But if you play a big/expensive ship (YT-1300/2400, Phantom, Ewing, Decimator) you might want to go all out.

If you could give us your list/collection we can tell you what will work and what are suboptimal choices.

Not running with much right now

4 ties from the cores and one advanced. Was thinking of picking up one more tie and run Vader with squad leader just for fun

rebel side we have the two x wings from cores and Rebel ace expansion (b and a wing)

just been playing with squad builder and coming up with 100 points with this though I'm a little short on Imperial. Need to pick up another something.

Any advise on a good set up to run for simplicity even if I need to pick up one or two more ships. Leaning towards Imperials but I'm open to rebels as well, think I need to leave scum alone for now.

Thanks again

New player

Squads with two ships and a ton of upgrades do well as do squads that are just a swarm of ships. In general, if you are spending 20 points or more on upgrades you might want to make sure that you really need the upgrades.

If you are new to the game there is a good chance that you'll do better with a list that has a high number of ships without a lot of upgrades. Upgrades that you forget to use are wasted points. When an expensive ship loaded with upgrades ends up on an asteroid or badly positioned that can have a huge impact. When X-Wing #3 ends up bumping an enemy and facing the wrong way it's not as big a deal because he's got 3 buddies that still get actions and attacks that round.

Depends entirely on the ship/squad

Tie fighters are pretty swanky without upgrades (not that they have much choice ) because they are costed very well for their stats. Meanwhile, ships such as interceptors are not and require certain upgrades to fully abuse their assets (amazing dial and action bar) which is why push the limit is so popular on them.

Some efficient ships have A ton of upgrade slots (bwings) but they're there to facilitate a variety of builds such as

Naked bwing (just dandy on its own)

FCS bwing (******* scary offense)

Advanced sensor bwings (At home in any asteroid field or hairball)

Tactician bwing (added control elements to help against flighty targets or to dominate jousts)

As a general rule, fewer upgrades are better. You should only ever take an upgrade that gives a significant benefit to the ship and takes advantage of specific abilities. For example, interceptors and a-wings make great use of Push the Limit due to their large number of actions and array of green maneuvers. Soontir Fel is especially good on this count due to his ability where he gains a focus token whenever he gains a stress token.

Also, not all upgrades for a given slot are equal. There are a handful of elite pilot cards that are significantly better than others. Predator is a particularly good upgrade, while marksmanship is of limited utility, except in specific cases.

It helps to decide what you want your ships to do, and that will decide what, if any, upgrades you want to run. When you take an a-wing, it could fill a variety of roles. Do you want an excellent blocker? Run a prototype pilot with chardaan refit. Do you want a cheap alpha strike? Run a prototype pilot with proton rockets. Do you want a super mobile ship? Run a green, jake or tycho with push the limit.

For every upgrade you add, make sure there is a reason to add it, and that it will fill a need in your list. Don't just add a torpedo to a ship because it has the slot, make sure it will improve your list. This is a great place to point out that many types of upgrades, including most ordinance, are not terribly useful.

It completely depends on what upgrades you put on which ships. If you spend a lot of points on upgrades that don't work well with that ship/pilot, rarely get used during the game or are just plain overcosted, you can make a pretty bad squad. This typically includes all missiles and torpedoes that aren't Proton Rockets, Flachette Torpedoes or Ion Pulse Missiles, as well as a laundry list of other upgrades that are pretty much unplayable except for in a handful of niche lists.

If you add upgrades that work well with the ship they're on and make it significantly better at killing other ships, either by increasing your damage-per-turn, giving your ship more turns to attack, or making your opponent's ships significantly less effective, you can make a very effective squad with as little 2 ships, and in fact 2 ship lists are considered a high tier strategy in the competitive metagame right now.

Playing with different upgrades on different ships and seeing how they interact is a fun part of the game. For newer players, you generally want to play with only a few upgrades on your ships, because every upgrade you add to your list adds an extra level of complexity to your gameplay and gives you that many more things to have to remember (and possibly forget). As you get more comfortable with playing the game as-is while remembering just a few upgrades, you'll be able to process more and more additional upgrades in your gameplay.

Don't be afraid to add upgrades to your ships, they can definitely improve the quality of a list when used correctly, just start out gradually and work your way up to lists with fewer ships and more and more upgrades.

However, there are certain upgrades will almost always make your list worse if you add them and that should be avoided by beginner players until they have enough skill evaluating upgrades to know when to use these and when not to (usually the answer for these is not to)

Upgrades to stay away from:

Torpedoes and Missiles that aren't Flachette Torpedoes, Proton Rockets or Ion Pulse Missiles

Expose

Marskmanship

Daredevil (only use on Tycho w/ Experimental interface or Vader with Engine Upgrade)

Ruthlessness

Intimidation

Flight Instructor

Leia Organa

Countermeasures

Tactical Jammer

Mercenary CoPilot

Saboteur

Dash Rendar crew (you still lose your action and have to roll for asteroid damage)

Greedo

Many good points above.

A few things to keep in mind when buying upgrades.

Utility

Most upgrades are fairly useful, while some will make a huge difference and others will be situational at best. With experience you'll figure out which abilities are almost universally worthwhile (Predator), situationally awesome (Push the Limit, Veteran Instincts), or downright bad 99% of the time (Expose).

It's good to know how much of a boost you're actually going to expect from an upgrade. Ships with a lot of durability (through health, agility or the ability to reposition so that you rarely get shot in the first place) will generally get more utility out of an upgrade, simply because they live long enough to use it more than a couple times. Missiles/torpedoes are rarely seen because they are one use only.

Cost Efficiency

This is also important. How much are you actually paying to upgrade a ship? Some things like Shield or Hull Upgrade are a good example of this. They all add exactly the same thing to a ship (it'll take one extra hit to kill them), but based on the agility of a ship and the number of hit points it already has, it will sometimes be a great buy and sometimes be a terrible buy.

Compare a Lambda Shuttle (1 agility, 5 hull, 5 shields, 21 points base). Buying it a Hull or Shield point makes it 10% more durable but 15-20% more expensive. Not a good buy. Soontir Fel with Push the Limit is 30 points for 3 agility, 3 hull, 0 shields. Buying him a shield makes him a lot less vulnerable to critical hits, and gives him 33% more hit points for a 13% price increase. Not so bad, huh? He'll also get a lot more use out of it simply because his agility and action economy are very good. Trying to land that one extra hit to kill him can take a very long time once your ships are dying and their firepower is diminished.

(FYI Autothrusters are also amazing for 2pts on any ship that has boost on its action bar... but not all ships can buy them so it's a terrible comparison)

Overall

There's no single method of making a good list, but with only 100pts to spend you don't want to be wasteful. So don't take more upgrades than you need, because that will result in you fielding something weaker elsewhere in your squad. Even lists with 2 ships are rarely able to take every possible upgrade on their ships, they have to pick and choose.

Hybrid squads can also be very effective, see last year's world championship final match between Morgan (Whisper with all the upgrades, but pretty basic Howlrunner and Academy TIEs) and Paul (with a very heavily upgraded Han Solo and 3 Tala Squadron Z-95s with no upgrades).

Spending a bunch of points to make expensive ace pilots deadly is totally fine, and all together you will probably get more use of those upgrades on a single ship than you would if they were spread around an entire squadron. Generally speaking, expensive but highly capable ships are more likely to see upgrades, whereas cheaper ships usually get their strength from sheer numbers instead (though cheap upgrades are definitely worth considering).

Clear as mud? Good

...

One of my questions is how does 100 point ship squad hold up against a squad with less ships but upgrades?

I'm still learning and making mistakes so trying to keep it simple with 100 point all ship builds but wondering if I should back it off a few points and add some upgrades? is 100 points no matter what somewhat balanced?

I'm guessing the right upgrades will have the upper hand but does 100pt all ships stand a chance? thanks for you time

The answer all depends on how well put together things are and how well you fly them. When you put together the 'right' combination that total 100 points you'll have a 'fair' fight as a whole although some squadrons will do better against others.

At a basic level you could take four Academy Pilots and four Obsidian squadron pilots and have a pretty effective squadron with eight basic TIE Fighters. Conversely there are a number of two ship builds out there now that rely heavily on upgrades from a number of different expansions but which make a pretty strong whole when flown correctly.

A general observation is that it is better to have another ship than it is to just start putting in upgrades that you don't need to use. Basically this means that four TIE Fighters is a much better idea than three TIE Fighters where each has a Shield Upgrade attached to it.

Upgrades are good if they improve the overall efficiency of a ship. If an upgrade would result in more damage, that's good; however, if that upgrade doesn't also increase defense, you can have a problem, since the ship now costs more and is just as easy to kill. Fire Control System, for example, is generally a very good upgrade because it increases your offense by giving you a target lock and increases your defense by letting you take defensive actions instead of offensive ones. Expose, on the other hand, is not very good, because it increases your offense (though not by much, once you account for the lost action) and decreases your defense, making it easier for the enemy to kill of four more points' worth of ship.

Hence, you tend to see a lot of upgrades on defensible ships like the Falcon and the Phantom, but fewer on, say, TIE fighters (which die off too quickly for you to get a lot of mileage out of them).

oh god, its the Wave III meta all over again!
Make it go away-hay-hay :'(

Hey there,

If you want to get the imps working, another tie will get you Howlrunner, a fantastic pilot for a tie swarm. Alternately the Decimator is wonderful fun and comes with pretty much everything you want in the one box. The Slave 1 pack also has great fun toys inside.