Okay just my critiques on Armada, I know many people here already have Armada and love it and I am not here to say it is a bad game. But I do have my criticisms of the game. Mainly with the star fighters. Now I understand that the fighters is NOT the focus of the game and it does a good job with the big ships, but still the way starfighters were implemented hits some of my quirks and that really all this post is a rant on some small quirks.

First the first thing I noticed, the starfighters were all unpainted. No paint what so ever, Now I understand the models were tiny and I didn't expect a full detailed paint job but simply painting the wings of the tie black and adding a red stripe on the X-wings could have gone a long way. Again this is only an aesthetic gripe and not a real one.

Now on to the mechanics. The health system, to me, represents more of a single ship instead of a squadron. Tie fighters only have 3 health and X-wings have 5. This should have been changed completely. IMHO 1 health should equal 1 fighter so Tie Fighters should have 8 health and X-wings should have 4. now for the defenses the Ties should have been given evade action tokens to represent the agility of the tie fighters and X-wing should have had a brace to represent the shields absorbing the damage.

Attacks, I think the attacks should have been done per health tick instead of simply the entire card or squadron. The 8 Tie fighters would have 1 attack per health and the X-wing would have had 2 per health. That way they both start out as 8 attack but then go down as they loose fighters. Also a long range (2 range) fighter combat should have been given but adjust the values to say 1 per ship for range 2 attacks.

Last but not least Pilot upgrades. Seriously it should not have been 1 pilot per squad (again making the squadrons seem like a single ship instead of a squadron). There should have been some ace slots with a rule that there can not be any more upgrades than there is health so as health goes down to the last ship upgrades would have to be discarded (chosen by the squadron's player) to represent casualties.

Again these are just minor gripes and yes starfighters are not the main focus. Now it is way too late to change the rules now so we are stuck with them. I will admit they are way better than BFG's fighter/bomber mechanics. Still the fighters act more like a 40K space marine model on the board than an actual squadron.

I'm confused...why on earth should a TIE squadron have twice the health of X-Wings?

I'm confused...why on earth should a TIE squadron have twice the health of X-Wings?

Twice as many ships. IMHO it should have been 1 health = 1 ship. Use defensive abilities to represent stuff like shields or evasion.

But yes it could have been different with say the number of attack dice printed on the health ticker. So for Tie Fighters each health they go down they would lose 1 attack and for X-wing it could be every 2 ticks but if it were not for shields X-wings can only take as many hits as a Tie Fighter. In Episode 4 I counted more X-wing and Y-wings crashing then I did Tie Fighters.

Probably because there were so many of them, but that's just my guess, no idea what exactly OP meant.

To be honest I am happy that fighters are so far from being the focus of this game. Sure, some of the things could've been implemented better, like attack per hp ratio (less fighters in squadron -should- equal less firepower after all), but they're okay. I'm here to watch big ships blow other big ships to bits, rather than focus on stuff like fighter squadrons. Never been a fan of fighters in big starship games so if we get half-decent anti-squadron ships I will try to ditch fighters altogether in my imperial fleets.

Exept that a squadron is 12 ships for both factions...

While this System might be good (balanced is debatable) for Ties and X's its **** hard to build other fighters into the game with attack values between one and two and much easier to just tick health down and die than keep track of upward 130 points of fighters per sides stats.
Range Two Combat is just silly what would be the point in moving the fighter, not that you could because you would always be engaged.

The Ace slot thing sounds intersting but, I don't think fighters needed that much combination.

Well... just my 2 cents but I completely disagree with just about everything you said. The one thing you said that is correct is that the focus of the game is NOT on the squadrons, if you start overcomplicating the squadron mechanics it will take away from the capital ship combat. Everything you want would add more focus to the squadrons and bog the game down. The fighter mechanics to me are simple and concise and don't need to be changed at all.

Painting the fighters would have caused the box set to be at least $30-50 more. No thank you.

The player in Armada is at least a task force Captain, probably a Commodore or Read Admiral. Officers high enough in rank that they shouldn't be worrying about individual fighter craft. What you are proposing would require way more record keeping, rules, complications, and play time to a game that is not about fighters.

While this System might be good (balanced is debatable) for Ties and X's its **** hard to build other fighters into the game with attack values between one and two and much easier to just tick health down and die than keep track of upward 130 points of fighters per sides stats.

Range Two Combat is just silly what would be the point in moving the fighter, not that you could because you would always be engaged.

The Ace slot thing sounds intersting but, I don't think fighters needed that much combination.

Well the attack dice could have been built in the tick track with the health. Fewer ships means less attacks. Every tick or 2 it goes down it looses 1 or 2 attack dice.

But as other Armada players have said the fighters are not the focus and it needs to stay that way.

I don't agree with the OP for a couple reasons. One the game would only be complicated and harder to balance if you over did the mechanics of the Squadrons and as you said it is not the main focus of the game. Also as NewTroski pointed out the cost of painting such a small small model would be nuts. And even if they did people like you would then complain becuase it wasn't done good enough.

Seriously, those squadrons are small models and painting them in volume would be the biggest nightmare for a manufacturer to work out and still be cost effective.

But not everyone is going to love everything about Armada or any other game for that matter. So we disagree.

Agreed, the attack dice could go down wih damage, however it would fanatically (kept that auto correct from dramatically) increase the amount of time needed to figure out how many dice to role. And adding defence tokens would do the same and diminish the current value of acrs. Unless they went with some sort of heroclix system.

Id be happy to paint anybodys fighters for them XD for a price of course.

as per your argumet i disagree. Its not stated specifically what a 'squadron' is an abstarction of in the game, wether it be 4,6,8, or 12 fighters. Or as i see it 1 for 1 it really doesnt matter because its just supposed to be an abstraction.

Now you could say 'yea but Lurtz thats lame i want uber realism and uber awesome logistics value' and for a true strategy game where force composition is more important on a larger scale id agree. But this isnt that this is tactical, larger tactical granted but still tactical. As someone who has always considered himself more of a hardcore wargamer than a 'gamer' i can say this system is excellent and what you ask for (large scale strategic, with small scale tactical RPG elements, and tactical logistics booking) would be extremely hard to pull off.

Kind of agree about losing attack dice as health goes down. A system like that is used in Firestorm Armada and I like how it works. In it a 6 fighter wing has 2 AD each craft. As they blow up they get less and less useful.

Keep Things Simple Enough.

The game is not aimed as a complete wargame, if that's what you were expecting.

If not...

Why don't we lower capital ship damage when they suffer damage ? turrets are being destroyed for sure.

And why don't we make ships lose movement when you are shooting them from behind ?

And why do these silly ships move in turns?

etc

etc

Rules are abstract representations, where do we draw the line about realism vs fun mechanics ?

Yes, they work as single models, is it that big of a deal ? I mean, you wrote a very lengthy post, because i am sure you are passionate about what you play, but sometimes we need to sit down a little bit and breath before posting a rant in something which is quite minor.

If you want another gripe with squadrons, is that the move or shoot rule makes squadron too dependant on regular ships to perform decently, working more as "upgrades" for those ships, than as fighters on their own, which may or may not in the future suffer because they are too expensive for how much they rely on ships spamming their command.

the starfighters were all unpainted.

The health system, to me, represents more of a single ship instead of a squadron.

IMHO 1 health should equal 1 fighter so Tie Fighters should have 8 health and X-wings should have 4.

Ties should have been given evade action tokens to represent the agility of the tie fighters and X-wing should have had a brace to represent the shields absorbing the damage.

I think the attacks should have been done per health tick instead of simply the entire card or squadron.

Last but not least Pilot upgrades.(...)

the starfighters were all unpainted.

Yep, that's an issue, especially in case of the rebel fighters (for me painted eyeballs look as unimpressive as the painted ones ).

The health system, to me, represents more of a single ship instead of a squadron.

True, it's abstracted.

IMHO 1 health should equal 1 fighter so Tie Fighters should have 8 health and X-wings should have 4.

...wait, what? I don't get it. Can you explain it a bit more? I see 3 miniatures in every squadron, so according to 1 health - 1 fighter paradigm every squadron should have 3 health, right?

Ties should have been given evade action tokens to represent the agility of the tie fighters and X-wing should have had a brace to represent the shields absorbing the damage.

You know evade token would be useless for starfighters, just like redirect token. Starfighters can only use brace and scatter tokens. I agree with you though, the game would be more interesting if regular squadrons have their defence tokens. That would make game more complex, too. Imagine Swarm of 12 TIE squadrons attacked by AA fire. I think the designers had reasons to give defense tokens to aces only.

I think the attacks should have been done per health tick instead of simply the entire card or squadron.

I understand your need to implement a mechanism simulating shrinking squadron strength, but I'm happy the designers didn't add a rule like that. First of all, that would add a lot more complexity to the game without significant improvement of the gameplay. Secondly, even Capital ships don't have the rule simulating crippling damage: Star Destroyer with 7 damage cards is as effective as undamaged one. Finally, it's more cinematic: all the great feats in the movies were done by pilots with their squadmates dead or absent: destruction of the Death Star and the Executor, not to mention the Millenium Falcon trolling multiple Star Destroyers.

Last but not least Pilot upgrades.(...)

Slots. Complexity. No. You wanted TIE Fighter squadron to have 8 health. So it would also have 8 slots for ace pilots. Each ace pilot would have at least one special rule. No. Just no.

Summing up, I do agree with you that the miniatures should be painted and the squadron feels more like single ship. The former is a minor technical issue. The latter is a more serious one couse for me it's a major flavour flaw. I developed the way to deal with it: for me, the squadron base is not a representation of large group of fighters: it's just that three starfighters and each provides one health to the base. Rest of health are shields. I.e. First two damage to X-Wing base are absorbed by their shields, the following damage destroys the starfighter. To be honest I don't like your rules design - they bring too much complexity giving too little fun from theme and gameplay features. I still don't understand one of your suggestions about health value. Also I have an impression that you're a TIE fan and most of your critical opinions are caused by your belief that in Armada TIEs are too weak. IMHO TIEs are great.

My advice: wait till wave 1, then play with someone who owns the game and has fighter expansions. Build a fighter-heavy list and play. Maybe you'll change your mind.

NOTE: I noticed that you guys posted a gazillion of replies but I will read them AFTER finishing this post.

You know, I never really thought about it that way, but Han really was trolling the Empire wasn't he?

When you're at the command level the game represents, the squadron pretty much is a single ship. Rarely at commander level and above are you saying, "Red Five go do this thing." That's the squadron leaders job. You're saying, "Red squadron go do this thing."

Thus, for me at least, the abstraction works.

It sounds like you want X-Wing Armada.

the starfighters were all unpainted.

Yep, that's an issue, especially in case of the rebel fighters (for me painted eyeballs look as unimpressive as the painted ones ).

The health system, to me, represents more of a single ship instead of a squadron.

True, it's abstracted.

IMHO 1 health should equal 1 fighter so Tie Fighters should have 8 health and X-wings should have 4.

...wait, what? I don't get it. Can you explain it a bit more? I see 3 miniatures in every squadron, so according to 1 health - 1 fighter paradigm every squadron should have 3 health, right?

Ties should have been given evade action tokens to represent the agility of the tie fighters and X-wing should have had a brace to represent the shields absorbing the damage.

You know evade token would be useless for starfighters, just like redirect token. Starfighters can only use brace and scatter tokens. I agree with you though, the game would be more interesting if regular squadrons have their defence tokens. That would make game more complex, too. Imagine Swarm of 12 TIE squadrons attacked by AA fire. I think the designers had reasons to give defense tokens to aces only.

I think the attacks should have been done per health tick instead of simply the entire card or squadron.

I understand your need to implement a mechanism simulating shrinking squadron strength, but I'm happy the designers didn't add a rule like that. First of all, that would add a lot more complexity to the game without significant improvement of the gameplay. Secondly, even Capital ships don't have the rule simulating crippling damage: Star Destroyer with 7 damage cards is as effective as undamaged one. Finally, it's more cinematic: all the great feats in the movies were done by pilots with their squadmates dead or absent: destruction of the Death Star and the Executor, not to mention the Millenium Falcon trolling multiple Star Destroyers.

Last but not least Pilot upgrades.(...)

Slots. Complexity. No. You wanted TIE Fighter squadron to have 8 health. So it would also have 8 slots for ace pilots. Each ace pilot would have at least one special rule. No. Just no.

...

You got a point there is only 3 per ship. So I guess the 3 would be more accurate for the tie fighter. So just every click down the Tie squadron health it would lose 1 attack Essentially making each mini-ship 1 blue firepower and 1 hit-point. For the X-wings sure you can make it 6 but every 2 clicks it goes down 2 attack making each ship 2 blue firepower and 2 hit-points. Of course this essentially gives it 1 more health then it has now. But you are right the slot system won't work because how could one define which click is a mini-ship destroyed.

As for Star Destroyers they do get less effective with damage thanks to the critical damage mechanics but the repair abilities does make critical damage less impactful in Armada than in X-wing.

I felt the abstraction was partly due to model size limitations as well as function. I look at it like this, this is the only Star Wars fleet game you will see made for some time. It will be supported and have some great expansions. Fighter combat quirks can't take a back seat to that?

i agree about the Ties not avoiding damage and the X-wings not being robust enough, but everything else i don't agree with.

TIEs avoid damage by not getting into the dogfight in the first place until they've got a squadron command sending them in with guns blazing. And how are X-Wings not robust? 5 health is a ton.

trying to create a simple combat system where armor, hull strength, shields is represented by ONE number is going to be abstract as best.

as a playtester, and knowing a few game designers, something has to give, and not everyone is going to be happy, and they think LONG AND HARD before making it too simple. They cannot make it like Air War: Modern Tactical Air Combat where you keep track of such things as prop torque, air drag, and weight of the fuel. No one really wants to play a pen and paper simulation anymore, unless you LIKE that kind of stuff in the late 70s.

you welcome to design your own game that has that level of detail. until then I will be looking forward to what the game has to offer and giving it a good hard look after Wave 2 before i make a judgement

Having squadrons lose firepower when damaged would make the first strike too powerful. As it is now, if a squadron moves to engage another he'll probably get shot at first but he'll be able to counter attack with full dice. If a squadron lost dice with damage, it would make it a bad idea to be the first one to move, meaning there'll be more turns with fighters just sitting around, afraid to engage.

So what the OP wants is a Squadron that takes 8 turns of perfect shooting for a capital ship to destroy? Sounds legit.

trying to create a simple combat system where armor, hull strength, shields is represented by ONE number is going to be abstract as best.

as a playtester, and knowing a few game designers, something has to give, and not everyone is going to be happy, and they think LONG AND HARD before making it too simple. They cannot make it like Air War: Modern Tactical Air Combat where you keep track of such things as prop torque, air drag, and weight of the fuel. No one really wants to play a pen and paper simulation anymore, unless you LIKE that kind of stuff in the late 70s.

you welcome to design your own game that has that level of detail. until then I will be looking forward to what the game has to offer and giving it a good hard look after Wave 2 before i make a judgement

Agreed, my friend.

I think with the arrival of Wave 2, we're going to see a whole new dynamic when it comes to Starfighter engagement and tactics. Simply put, the Starfighters will truly shine and take on a life of their own - sort of like a 'Sub-game'.

Which fighters will you deploy?

How will you deploy them?

Will you deploy them with escorts?

Will you attempt to run a pincer movement without escorts?

It's going to be SO awesome. I can't wait! Hehe. :D