Hi guys,
I'm a game design graduate from the Queensland University of Technology.
I've fallen in love with Armada, it's a fantastic game but I have a question/suggestion about a fundamental aspect of the game - it may be a question for the devs.
As we know, ship activation is, player with initiative chooses a ship to activate and performs:
1. Reveal command.
2. Attack.
3. Execute Maneuvre.
Then, the players take turns activating the rest of their ships.
In the core set a situation arises. With the Victory Class Star Destroyer vs the Corellian Corvette and Nebulon B Frigate, a clever rebel player can use the speed of his ships and the fact that he has two ship activations to get two volleys in while the imperial player can't even respond.
That situation would go like this:
Rebel player activates his corvette which is well out of range of all other ships. Imperial player activates star destroyer with no targets and skips his attack, then moves at speed 2 attempting to get a volley off on the Nebulon b which sits in front of it, after the maneuvre the star destroyer is now within long range of the Nebulon B frigate. Then the rebel player activates the Nebulon B, now in range of the Star Destroyer, and fires a volley before moving to the side but remaining in range. Squadrons move and players plan their commands. Then the player with Initiative, the rebel admiral, activates his Nebulon b and fires again, then executes a maneuvre to get out of range of the star destroyer who now activates with no targets in range again after receiving two volleys of fire.
Was this an intentional design choice or something that should potentially be looked at for balance issues? And what are the design reasons for ships firing before moving?
The other issues that I see arising from the current activation is that some ships (due to initiative) seem to arbitrarily get to fire before other ships, and in close situations if this results in a ship being destroyed before it can return fire.
In my games I've already implemented a house rule where ships that were destroyed in this round still get to fire one last time and execute a maneuvre (aka the old "well if I'm going down you're going down with me!" suicidal collision course.) before they are removed, which I think not only makes sense but is kinda fun.
I'm curious.
What are peoples opinions on the pro's and con's of moving armada's ship activation rules to something different and more conventional.
Perhaps, like X-wing but with the "fire-before-moving" armada twist. All ships activate one at a time, then all ships fire one at a time but "simultaneously", then all ships execute a maneuvre.
Or simply firing after executing a maneuvre.