Armada Battlescribe files v1.0

By Brian_Black, in Star Wars: Armada

Hi all, I posted this over on BGG, but figured I'd send it out to you all as well to fish for more feedback-

I have the utmost respect for Fab's squadron builder, as my capability of building something similar would have a success chance slightly below 0.01%. However, I have a hard time using his site on my phone, which is where I find myself building many of my lists.

To that end, I put together an initial battlescribe file for Armada; it only includes the core set, but I should be able to easily expand it with cards from the known Wave 1 stuff. I didn't add them because I wanted proof that I could get the core set off the ground. Here's the link to put into battlescribe to sync up:

http://battlescribedata.appspot.com/repos/star-wars-armada/index.bsi <-- This is the updated file link! Please be sure that your file doesn't point to a dropbox folder, as that set will not continue to be updated henceforth!

Some things I'm pleased with:

I got objectives working to the point that the app will tell you that you're missing them if you don't have one of each. Same for a Commander, if you haven't got one on any of your ships, battlescribe will report your list as invalid.

Here's some things I haven't figured out yet:

- How to calculate squadron points to ensure they are less than or equal to 33% of the total Roster points. Probably due to my own incompetence with battlescribe.

** Update : Still waiting to hear back from the battlescribe dev on this one, currently I've hard set it to 100 points of squadrons, as it seems most people are jonesing for the 300pt fleets.

- How to enforce one Modification per ship. Currently, there's only Enhanced Armament, but it's also a Turbolasers upgrade , so I'm not sure how to handle 1 modification per ship that may be in different upgrade slots... Probably due to my own incompetence with battlescribe.

** Update : Blue Seven has a fix for this, but due to my pre-declared ineptitude, I've yet to incorporate this.

- No speed chart. Because I'm struggling to think of a way to visually represent that in a way that doesn't suck. Probably due to my own incompetence with battlescribe?

Send me feedback :

I threw this together over the last 4-5 hours, so undoubtedly there will be all sorts of little errors.

Not familiar with Battlescribe?

http://www.battlescribe.net/

It's free on all platforms. I didn't make it. It goes on your phone/pc/cat and lets you build lists out of any game you have the data files for.

Update: I've moved the files to the battlescribe.appspot.com site after getting some general setup assistance from the very nice people on their GitHub site. If you find errors and don't want to post them here, please submit them here https://github.com/BSData/star-wars-armada/issues and I solemly swear that I will work on them.

If you want to contribute, put in a request by creating a new issue here: https://github.com/BSData/bsdata/issues and ask for developer permissions to the star-wars-armada repository.

Edited by Brian_Black

Awesome. I was hoping someone would do this. I had a look at it yesterday, but small children don't aid programming...

One thing I noticed is that you can set max and min points requirements on various things like categories of entries in forces. Maybe this is how to do the squadron thing?

Updates as I find stuff:

General

The objectives category has a limit of 1 set. This invalidates it when you try to select one of each type as correctly required.

Imp Squadrons are currently under 'no category', rebs under 'x-wing squadrons'. If they are put in a general category, say 'squadrons', maybe it could have a max points percentage set?

Defence liason currently costs zero points.

Imperial

Vic1 and vic2 currently both have ordnance upgrades. Vic2 should have ion cannons instead.

Rebels

Description for cr90a upgrades should be turbos rather than ions. Actual selectable upgrades are correct though.

Again, this is great. Thanks for doing it. Maybe you could get the battlescribe guys to put it on the central repository?

Edited by Blue Seven

I never used this before. Is there a way to LIMIT the amount of ships in a fleet to the number of ships available. For instance - its letting me add as many frigates as I want. I managed to change a parameter int he game system editor to give me a warning. Is there a way to full stop not all more than a certain number o something to b added to the roster?

Going forward, all the squadrons should be under Squadrons - so a 33% point limit can be set when multi variants of fighters are included from Wave 1. I do not believe a commander is required, just a flagship to be selected.

Edited by wjgo

I never used this before. Is there a way to LIMIT the amount of ships in a fleet to the number of ships available. For instance - its letting me add as many frigates as I want. I managed to change a parameter int he game system editor to give me a warning. Is there a way to full stop not all more than a certain number o something to b added to the roster?

Going forward, all the squadrons should be under Squadrons - so a 33% point limit can be set when multi variants of fighters are included from Wave 1. I do not believe a commander is required, just a flagship to be selected.

A Flagship is a ship equipped with a commander card. You cannot have a flagship without a commander.

Awesome. I was hoping someone would do this. I had a look at it yesterday, but small children don't aid programming...

One thing I noticed is that you can set max and min points requirements on various things like categories of entries in forces. Maybe this is how to do the squadron thing?

Yep, listing them all as squadrons as you both suggested below turned out to be the best way- I was struggling because I could set limits, but since I had broken them out by the type (x-wing, TIE fighter) I knew I'd have problems as soon as you could select multiple types of fighters. With them all grouped as "squadrons", that should be fixed.

Updates as I find stuff:

General

The objectives category has a limit of 1 set. This invalidates it when you try to select one of each type as correctly required.

Fixed!

Imp Squadrons are currently under 'no category', rebs under 'x-wing squadrons'. If they are put in a general category, say 'squadrons', maybe it could have a max points percentage set?

Fixed!

Defence liason currently costs zero points.

Fixed! Repeatedly! (took me a while to figure out why my edit wasn't sticking.)

Imperial

Vic1 and vic2 currently both have ordnance upgrades. Vic2 should have ion cannons instead.

Fixed

Rebels

Description for cr90a upgrades should be turbos rather than ions. Actual selectable upgrades are correct though.

Fixed

Again, this is great. Thanks for doing it. Maybe you could get the battlescribe guys to put it on the central repository?

Thanks for the bug report, lemme know if I've missed anything else! I also suffer from mynock syndrome, so my windows for doing this are tight... If I hadn't been familiar with it from attempting one for X-Wing I probably wouldn't have bothered.

I never used this before. Is there a way to LIMIT the amount of ships in a fleet to the number of ships available. For instance - its letting me add as many frigates as I want. I managed to change a parameter int he game system editor to give me a warning. Is there a way to full stop not all more than a certain number o something to b added to the roster?

You're looking for something similar to Fab's tracking of what you own, so as to keep you from building fleets you couldn't field, right? To my knowledge, there isn't a way to limit that on a user by user basis- I could make a change, but it would impact everyone who used the data files. There may be a way to do it, but my knowledge is fairly limited.

Going forward, all the squadrons should be under Squadrons - so a 33% point limit can be set when multi variants of fighters are included from Wave 1. I do not believe a commander is required, just a flagship to be selected.

That was the way to go, clarified things a bit, and also permitted the thresholding that we needed.

Thanks guys! I'm debating on adding wave 1 stuff, it'd be a lot of *unreleased stuff to sift through when you're building lists in the meantime. I'll take general consensus though.

Edited by Brian_Black

Thanks guys! I'm debating on adding wave 1 stuff, it'd be a lot of *unreleased stuff to sift through when you're building lists in the meantime. I'll take general consensus though.

Are you going to create this game system and keep it up to date with future waves when they are available for the public, or were you just presenting it?

I'd like to figure out how to change list orders and things like that. One thing bothers me is when you hover over a ship type - it takes a bit for the popup window to appear with the data on the available ship types - and then, one needs to scroll to see just two. I wish the window could be resized. I am going to try to ask the creator if that window can be manually made larger.

*as someone pointed out - a commander is required to be assigned to one ship, and that ship becomes flagship. I think I was confused on that because a player can select alternative objective ships I believe if an objective requires it.

Edited by wjgo

I'll be doing my best to keep it up to date. Really, I use it almost exclusively on my phone except for testing changes I've made to the files. It's not the best app, but for phones, it's the only one I'm aware of that doesn't require an Internet connection to use.

Thanks for the fixes. I'll give it a run through once bs has updated.

Personally, I'd like the unreleased stuff added with a symbol to mark it as such as and when it's known. This is how the x-wing version is done so it's what I'm used to.

There should be a way to toggle showing unreleased stuff from the roster though.

Update:

It looks good. The only thing I'd ask is if the squadron percentage limit could be set to more significant figures, 33.34% for example as 33% sets it to 99 of 300 points rather than 100.

Ah. X-wings now cost zero points.

Edited by Blue Seven

It might be better to separate the fighters entirely into a different Force Type. Down the road in Wave two - there will be Scum an Villainy expansion pack. They will probably be non-aligned and available to any force. But - I see a Falcon in there so maybe some pieces may be factions aligned.

I have been creating a roster, loading up a rebel fleet, then a Fighter Force Type. Have to drop and click twice through. Then, in Fighter force type, I have subcategories for Bombers, Fighter-Bomber, Interceptor, and Heavy Bomber (Or just be made into Y-Wings, X-Wings, A-Wings, B-Wings). So in the Future, all 8 of the Scum an villainy will have its own category, and I would add that to the Fighter Force Type.

You you editing the dropbox file itself right now? When I update my stuff with it to return to your original- it looks different and I have various errors now.

Edited by wjgo

Thanks for the fixes. I'll give it a run through once bs has updated.

Personally, I'd like the unreleased stuff added with a symbol to mark it as such as and when it's known. This is how the x-wing version is done so it's what I'm used to.

There should be a way to toggle showing unreleased stuff from the roster though.

Update:

It looks good. The only thing I'd ask is if the squadron percentage limit could be set to more significant figures, 33.34% for example as 33% sets it to 99 of 300 points rather than 100.

Couldn't get better accuracy, so I set it to a hard limit of 100 points.

Ah. X-wings now cost zero points.

They're not supposed to be free? Fixed. Also added all other spoiled Rebel squadrons (unique and non) as a bonus.

It might be better to separate the fighters entirely into a different Force Type. Down the road in Wave two - there will be Scum an Villainy expansion pack. They will probably be non-aligned and available to any force. But - I see a Falcon in there so maybe some pieces may be factions aligned.

I have been creating a roster, loading up a rebel fleet, then a Fighter Force Type. Have to drop and click twice through. Then, in Fighter force type, I have subcategories for Bombers, Fighter-Bomber, Interceptor, and Heavy Bomber (Or just be made into Y-Wings, X-Wings, A-Wings, B-Wings). So in the Future, all 8 of the Scum an villainy will have its own category, and I would add that to the Fighter Force Type.

You you editing the dropbox file itself right now? When I update my stuff with it to return to your original- it looks different and I have various errors now.

I'm hard pressed to believe they'll introduce a separate faction or even cross faction ships as early as wave 2, but in either case that sounds like something I can figure out later.

I'm not sure how best to handle squadrons, right now it seems 'ok' to have them clumped up together as one big 'squadron' pile, but it might get to the point where further subdivisions would be better.

I was editing it literally just now. You might get errors if you're trying to open up a saved force as I've been editing the base game system file, which tends to poo on everything previously built.

Images of Wave 2 have already been released. The "Fighter Pack"is titled Rogues and Villains. From images, the 8 ships will be the equivalents of fighter squadrons, and each ship will have two variants, and each variant will have different faction alignment.

Images of Wave 2 have already been released. The "Fighter Pack"is titled Rogues and Villains. From images, the 8 ships will be the equivalents of fighter squadrons, and each ship will have two variants, and each variant will have different faction alignment.

I agree. If you look at those photos, you can see that there are 4 light coloured ships (same as xwings) and 4 dark ships (same as ties). This makes it pretty clear that they are faction specific.

I think the squadron limit is going to have to be 34% since slightly over will probably be better. It won't invalidate valid rosters at least.

The hard limit is going to cause problems. There are already two fleet sizes in general use (180 and 300) and the RRG says 'players can build fleets of any points size provided they both agree'.

Maybe we could ask on the BS forums for a change to the program? Maybe they can add '1/3, round up' to the limit options.

The Rogues and Villains has imperial and rebel ships only. You can see the faction icons on the squadron cards in the image. One generic and one hero card for each.

http://starwars-armada.wikia.com/wiki/Rogues_and_Villains_Expansion_Pack

Images of Wave 2 have already been released. The "Fighter Pack"is titled Rogues and Villains. From images, the 8 ships will be the equivalents of fighter squadrons, and each ship will have two variants, and each variant will have different faction alignment.

I agree. If you look at those photos, you can see that there are 4 light coloured ships (same as xwings) and 4 dark ships (same as ties). This makes it pretty clear that they are faction specific.

Just off my initial read, it doesn't look like the two of you are saying the same thing; wjgo I believe is arguing that there is (for example) a Rebel and Imperial YT-1300.

I think the squadron limit is going to have to be 34% since slightly over will probably be better. It won't invalidate valid rosters at least.

The hard limit is going to cause problems. There are already two fleet sizes in general use (180 and 300) and the RRG says 'players can build fleets of any points size provided they both agree'.

Maybe we could ask on the BS forums for a change to the program? Maybe they can add '1/3, round up' to the limit options.

I'd rather have it falsely flag that I'm over a limit that's too low than not flag an invalid fleet because the limit is too high; the first prompts the user to look into the issue, while with the second they may not realize their list is invalid. I'll put in a request for the dev to look into improving the accuracy of the percentage while I look to see if there's an alternative solution that's already available.

Fair enough. I see your point.

.

Images of Wave 2 have already been released. The "Fighter Pack"is titled Rogues and Villains. From images, the 8 ships will be the equivalents of fighter squadrons, and each ship will have two variants, and each variant will have different faction alignment.

I agree. If you look at those photos, you can see that there are 4 light coloured ships (same as xwings) and 4 dark ships (same as ties). This makes it pretty clear that they are faction specific.

I didn't notice the ship color - I was just looking at the cards - but the cards might have two variants of each ship and each variant could be faction aligned instead.

Images of Wave 2 have already been released. The "Fighter Pack"is titled Rogues and Villains. From images, the 8 ships will be the equivalents of fighter squadrons, and each ship will have two variants, and each variant will have different faction alignment.

I agree. If you look at those photos, you can see that there are 4 light coloured ships (same as xwings) and 4 dark ships (same as ties). This makes it pretty clear that they are faction specific.

I didn't notice the ship color - I was just looking at the cards - but the cards might have two variants of each ship and each variant could be faction aligned instead.

you can see the faction and ship icons on the lower spread. there are two for each of 4 ships and all are rebel aligned. The upper spread are all imperial, though you can't see the ship icon there are 8 of them, again two for each dark coloured ship.

They might do something else in the future, but right now it seems that there are 4 ships for each faction each with a hero and a generic card.

Just off my initial read, it doesn't look like the two of you are saying the same thing; wjgo I believe is arguing that there is (for example) a Rebel and Imperial YT-1300.

You are correct sir, I didn't read wjgo's post properly.

Files updated with Imperial Wave 1 goods, courtesy of changes sent by Blue Seven. Hoping to get his Rebel wave 1 file added tomorrow. Still looking into the Github repository for getting added to the battlescribe datafiles app page, which would also make it easier for multiple contributors to work simultaneously.

Couple of problems:

GSD2 currently costs zero pts

Neither force requires at least 1 commander for validation

Bleh, thought I'd gotten everything.. Had trouble copying the ships over directly, it made battlescribe mad.

Ok, fixes AND Rebels tonight optimistically. Also waiting to hear back from the GitHub folks to get added to the battlescribe datafiles app site.

yeah it breaks all the links.

There's a folder called sameID I put up with catalogues which should have the same game system uniqueID as your files. It might make it easier to use them. You need to have the same ID for the GSD and AF2 categories in the game system though (in the readme.txt file).

Actually, give me 10 minutes and I'll update them to use the same category IDs as yours...

...Done.

Edited by Blue Seven

Updated the files again, with the remainder of the unreleased Wave 1 goods. Also corrected the GSD2 being 0 points and the commander validation. I think my issue with the points not picking up is that I don't click off the field I'm updating, which means the editor doesn't register the change? Ah well.

Still no update from the GitHub folks, which is probably a good thing, as the dabbling I've been attempting has not been productive. Also no update from the battlescribe dev on the points rounding issue, which is vexing- I don't like the hard limits.