There are just going to be problem if you try to convert X-wing to Armada. X-wing is a dog fighting game, so every ship needs to be able to dog fight, if in their own way. But Armada is much more strategic, not all ships need to be good at dog fighting anymore (fighters killing fighters) TIE Bombers and B-Wings are both examples of ships that are not nearly as good at dog fighting in Armada as they are in X-Wing, but they are really great at attacking ships. There just aren't many "ships" (I mean the Armada definition here) in X-wing. So instead of sucking it up in a dog fight, the B-Wing is actually pretty dang awesome.

I just don't see this as a problem for Armada. If anything forcing all ships to be effective (at least for their cost) dog fighters is a place where X-wing is a little less realistic. (I use the real in realistic in the loosest possible way since Star Wars itself if neither real, nor realistic.)

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.

A squadron is 12 fighters though? Where is an X-wing squadron being four ships and TIE fighter being eight coming from?

The damage per fighter thing is used in Full Thrust, where squadrons start at 6 fighters and roll an attack die for each fighter still alive. It works amazingly there but I'm not sure how well it'd work for Armada.

I was expecting to see criticism of the mechanics, but this reads more like nitpicking small details of the pilot cards rather than actual, fundamental issues.

The only issues I have with SW:A is that -

1) I would have liked the fighters to come pre-painted.

2) The Empire was Xenophobic, racist and sexist so why is there a female T.I.E. pilot?

3) There's no fighter launching and recovery on the ships.

4) You can't enter or exit the map by hyperspace.

1) They're not painted because that would have amped the price.

2) Not true any more. Movie wise, yes, you don't see any women in the Imperial military but that was the case around the world in 1977. The Imperial military's no more sexist than the British or American militaries. As for female Rebels, loads were edited out of RotJ. Racism, you see one Imperial be racist to a Wookiee, and Leia is just as racist if not more a few minutes later. The new canon has dropped the sexism and to an extent the xenophobia, the Empire's full of female humans now (invalidating Daala's backstory but Daala doesn't exist any more so...)

3) Probably because the mechanic played poorly.

4) You can in one of the objectives.

My only gripe with squadrons is the fact that if you go heavy squadrons in your build, it can kinda slow the game down.

I have plenty of GOOD things to say about them too. Like the stands, and that you can face them however you want. You can kinda get creative on how you decide to display your squadrons, which adds a ton of the fluff, which I admit that I love.

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

Yep. 3 flights, with 2 pairs of wingmen each.

Except going by the films Star Wars pilots operate in 3s. Yes, it was dated when the Second World War started, yes it was terrible, but it certainly seems to be how Star Wars fighters are organised.

I'm going off the movies where you don't see one female character in the Imperial forces but you see female characters in the Rebel forces.

I don't like "EU" sources, I mean there's no way Admiral Thawn would have gotten anywhere in the Imperial Navy.

And I definitely don't like the one where Boba Fet donates his bounties to the orphanage because he's actually a nice guy.

But like I said I'll live with it.

Well, to be fair, you don't see any women in the Rebel military forces either. All the pilots and soldiers are male. Yes, they have women in leadership positions, but not as combatants. I think that is more a product of the time it was made than anything else.

While I appreciate Thrawn (even if he is a bit Mary Sue-ish at times), yeah, Boba Fett is the guy who Darth Vader told to cool it, not some honourable law enforcer.

Well, to be fair, you don't see any women in the Rebel military forces either. All the pilots and soldiers are male. Yes, they have women in leadership positions, but not as combatants. I think that is more a product of the time it was made than anything else.

While I appreciate Thrawn (even if he is a bit Mary Sue-ish at times), yeah, Boba Fett is the guy who Darth Vader told to cool it, not some honourable law enforcer.

They had one (female) A-Wing pilot in the last movie but Lucas had a male voice over done.

Well, to be fair, you don't see any women in the Rebel military forces either. All the pilots and soldiers are male. Yes, they have women in leadership positions, but not as combatants. I think that is more a product of the time it was made than anything else.

While I appreciate Thrawn (even if he is a bit Mary Sue-ish at times), yeah, Boba Fett is the guy who Darth Vader told to cool it, not some honourable law enforcer.

They had one (female) A-Wing pilot in the last movie but Lucas had a male voice over done.

Seriously, you can totally tell it's a woman if you look for longer than a second. I actually read somewhere that they were worried at the last second that audiences wouldn't react well to a woman in combat, especially one who is killed, so they dubbed the voice at the last second.

Women combatants are everywhere in the Rebellion book-wise. They're squad commanders, spies, medics, pilots, everything. There's a female A-wing squadron commander, Todra Mayn or some such.

Oddly enough there are women in Imperial forces, largely deployed to safe and boring zones. The few women you do see are the ones who broke the mold, Daala, Isard, Tavaris... Usually by killing people, it must be admitted.

While I agree that fighters in general do feel a bit abstract, I still think FFG is doing good by following the most fundamental rule of boardgaming - dont get too complex on all the minor details. Sure there would be room for a ton of details, energy/crew management on capitals, 3D-aspects of fighting a.s.o, and more detailled fighters are likely fitting the same category for me.. there are some good ideas on how to make it work with x-Wings and TIEs, but then theres the next big wave of fighters coming which would all need a reballancing to fit the less hp less firepower thingy. That being said, I would still be exited to try out any homebrews anybody can come up with!

OK, I wasn't aware there was a female A-wing pilot (dubbed into a man... weird), in the last film, but I am guessing it was a pretty blink and you'll miss it event.I don't think something really counts if you have to be on the look out for it.

Oh, yes, in the expanded universe there are all sorts of female characters on both sides (but the Empire are noted for being more chauvinistic on this regard), but then these were written after the films, by which time attitudes were already changing, and by and for a narrower audience where there is going to be less concern about received attitudes. I am happy enough accepting that in my version of the Star Wars universe, but it isn't really reflected in the films (though I suspect it will be in the upcoming films).

OK, I wasn't aware there was a female A-wing pilot (dubbed into a man... weird), in the last film, but I am guessing it was a pretty blink and you'll miss it event.I don't think something really counts if you have to be on the look out for it.

Oh, yes, in the expanded universe there are all sorts of female characters on both sides (but the Empire are noted for being more chauvinistic on this regard), but then these were written after the films, by which time attitudes were already changing, and by and for a narrower audience where there is going to be less concern about received attitudes. I am happy enough accepting that in my version of the Star Wars universe, but it isn't really reflected in the films (though I suspect it will be in the upcoming films).

I never knew either.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Unidentified_female_A-wing_pilot

This does not, however, revoke my nerd-cred.

Oddly enough there are women in Imperial forces, largely deployed to safe and boring zones. The few women you do see are the ones who broke the mold, Daala, Isard, Tavaris... Usually by killing people, it must be admitted.

New canon dumps that entirely. Tarkin has so many female fleet officers it almost feels like it's making a point of it.

If art continues imitating life maybe we'll see some twerking Twi'lek dancing girls in Ep VII!

Twerking Twi'leks.....kinda rolls off the tongue.

ugh....nevermind....

I can't support this with a proper quote, but I've read that Lucas claimed there were many women in Imperial Army/Navy/Stormtrooper Corps. According to that the whole sexism thing was invented by EU authors (by the way: AAAAANDERSOOON!!! DIIIIIIEEEEE!!!)

I don't understand this demand that squadrons lose firepower as their hit points drop. This game is made on a movie franchise, and movies have very clear rules about fighter squadrons that the more get shot down the awesomer the remaining few, the proud become.

Fighter pilots are like ninjas.

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.

Keep in mind that part of the durability abstraction is to represent both the number of ships in the squad, as well as the individual durability of said ships. That X-Wing squad with 3 damage taken could have had three ships lost. Or it could simple be fighting at full strength, but everyone has lost shields and one or two have taken some minor hull damage. It's a very, very zoomed out view of the dogfight.