Like I said, let's shelve it for now. You got half of what I wanted, which was cheap, if not necessarily throwaway but I'll take 'em as they are, droid officers to complement that the weak cheap commander would be the first non-unique commander. We've got enough of those cards we can leave it as it is. I also like General Kalani, so please keep that wording on something.

You're methodical enough I figured Dooku was intentional but I wanted to check.

If you despise the art style of TCW this may take some doing then. I suggested Rex and Cody since they're well enough known some non-TCW art should exist. Generic clone officers should also exist outside of that art style if you are still looking.

I suppose "despise" is too strong a word. The main problem is that the TCW style just doesn't fit with the rest of the Armada, and I'd very much prefer the looks to remain as homogenous as possible.

I'll look again for images of Rex and Cody in naval uniform, hopefully that will yield something. Anyway, we only really need a couple of faction-specific officers per side as they'll still have access to generic ones (Veteran Captain, Intel Officer, etc).

DA, would it be to much out of your way, to make unique squadron cards, to the existing X-wing, TIE squadrons etc.

Like Blade Squadron (B-wings), Rogue Squadron (X-wing), 181st (TIE Interceptor) etc.

Their point cost should be like in between the vanilla version and the special character version. I.e. 16 pts for the X-wing squadron.

They should have a minor special rule that gives them a slightly better advantage that their vanilla version.

They can have no more than one defence token.

Would that not be the recipe, for some fun squadron cards?

Maybe one day. But I want to finish the Clone Wars stuff first. And then add Mel's new carriers. And then revise some of the currently available ships according to playtest feedback. And then work on an SSD with Wes. And then finish all the missing write-ups on the website. And then prepare everything for professional-grade printing. And then... yeah, maybe then

In naval uniforms will take some doing. I don't know how much luck you'll have. Good shots of either of them in armor, especially Cody, however, should be fairly easy, and those can be the shots used. I can try for TCW screenshots if you want helmetless versions if you really want.

Alright, I have assembled a quick list in excel listing the clone wars cards to date with their costs an abilities. Both printer friendly and easy to make corrections to.

First go (at the squadron template and Droid icon mostly, the keyword text and the related upgrade need some tweaking still):

Unique, may be a bit much, but I do think Modification would be in order. Over all I like your solution, a nice abstract interpretation of the droid control ship that isn't overly complex.

At 5 point a squadron, I am going to need at least 2 of the 12 packs.

I'm not sure if an ace squadron would even be appropriate for Vulture droids, but I suppose you could always do a "Buzz Warhead Vulture Droid" may attack squadrons at range 2. Or come up with something nastier & title the squadron as "Advanced Prototype Vulture Droid"

Happen to be able to create the Rebel Liberator Cruiser?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Liberator_Cruiser

I think DA plans to stick CIS, then move on to all the other models that are yet to get cards. Anything is possible though, and if a model is created, that would definitely move it higher on the priority list. As to when... I will consult with my magic 8-ball

So a playtest was had today. I ran a Venator, Triumphant specifically, and a pair of Arquitens, both with Enhanced Armament and Engineering Teams, six ARC-170s and three V-wings, all led by the esteemed General Skywalker. Myrmecology took two Munificent-class Star Frigates and one Munificent-class Light Carrier, with Chasovoy, Leading Shots, and a T-Series on one Star Frigate, Force of Commerce, XI-7 and another T-Series on the other, while the Light Carrier had Droid Control Array, Nute Gunray, Tide of Progress VII and General Kalani. Oh and twenty-four, let me say it again in case you misread that, twenty-four of the new Vulture droid starfighters. Suffice it to say we reenacted the first six months of the war, which is to say I was mauled to a truly humiliating extent, with only one ARC-170 and a limping Arquitens that turned to flee surviving, with one , count it, it's the number after zero, one damage card on one of the frigates to show for it (the surviving ARC-170 did it after the dead Arquitens fired its second, and last, broadside).

Several things contributed to this horrifying tour-de-force in CIS hardware. First, my positioning was miserable, and my engagement worse. The dead Arquitens and the Venator were focused down in turn, so the Munificents are not really to blame (although adding a couple points to the cost of the Star Frigates wouldn't go amiss methinks). Gunray wasn't too unreasonable either, although he did allow Myrmecology to force me to come to him on one board edge, through that wall of Vultures. He isn't unreasonable, but the tactic he allows is rather vexing if you're used to movement, and the Venators and the Arquitens rely on those gun passes, making it even worse.

The big takeaways, however, were thus, the Vultures, while perfectly willing to die, are hella, hella , hard to get a favorable exchange rate on. An ARC-170 has to kill three. I averaged more like two. Let it also be known those fighter losses were inflicted with only 16 Vultures, after fleetwide squadron command let all but two ARC-170s alpha strike into the wall of Vultures. They then turned on the Republic fighters and savaged them. Upcosting to at least six points, more like seven is in order. That caps Vultures at 22 and 19 on the board respectively, which is still enough fighters you stop worrying about positioning and start moving them en masse. The other balancing thoughts were, a Myrmecology suggestion, making DCA a Lucrehulk-only option, or my idea, capping the number of fighters it affects. Speed 2 isn't a lot, and neither is 2B AS. However, sixteen adds up in a hurry, especially when Counter 2 needs a 1/4 for a kill and Counter 1 can't kill. I never really got to use Skywalker because my fighters were literally buried in droids. Oh, those other eight Vultures? They stripped the shields and dealt two damage cards to the Arquitens that escaped, by themselves in two turns , for which the Arquitens managed to kill like three of them (maybe four, I'm not certain of the count; by then the fleet was shattered and the Arquitens was beating a hasty retreat). No squadron Republic builds are in for a world of hurt, especially since there is no ship on the Republic fleet, save Acclamator-1, with AS worth writing home about.

Other thoughts, Kalani is useful, but only in a mediocre way on a Command 2 ship. Don't expect him in Dooku fleets. The T-Series were useful throwaway dice additions for the CIS, they can be left alone. Chasovoy hits hard, might want to restrict that to one crit, but I was on the receiving end and my pride will smack for days after this. Tide of Progress is good, and not too strong when you remember going from odd to even because of a brace use still leaves you on the same damage value (unless we completely misplayed that card.) Triumphant is ok, bit expensive but it didn't get used much, the Venator was shot to pieces, so I won't rule hard on it. Force of Commerce hurts, but its not that heavy a hitter, especially against relatively durable fighters like the ARCs. Jedi aces will hate it, but that's just life. I think that's everything. Feel free to prod if anything is unclear.

TL;DR: The Vultures are undercosted, and DCA needs to be restricted. Sheer point value won't cut it. Oh and Gunray is a pain. Here's to hoping the Republic's next outing isn't as flat out disastrous (more planning on my part certainly).

I had a feeling Gunray was going to be tough for a new opponent to wrap their head around.

Good report. I will try and take a look at vultures in some small fighter skirmishes of equal points, both with and without the DCA effect.

Wow, I was just thinking "man, I wonder how it'd turn out if you fielded twenty or so Vulture squadrons. They suck and will drop like flies, but... twenty ." And I have my answer right here. Thanks for the report and the detailed feedback!

Two quick questions before I start revising the cards:

1) In retrospect, do you think things would have been any different if Myrm had fielded 15 TIE Fighter squadrons instead?

2) Did you at least enjoy yourselves?

To be clear, I expected horrifying fighter losses but I was hoping for a better exchange rate than 2:1. Against TIEs I probably would have fared moderately better, between lack of Rogue for closing in on my survivors and no Counter 1 when I attacked. My Counter couldn't kill, but it should still slightly balance that back in my favor. It certainly wouldn't have left enough TIEs to maul my spare Arquitens (ironically the one victimized by the Vultures was the farther of the two from the bulk of the fleet; I was surprised it wasn't destroyed but I'll take survivors). As far as enjoying myself, while company was pleasant I'll be satisfied when I avenge my pilots and crew on those godforsaken droids.

In theory, a Jedi or two should be able to mow through vultures. It may just be that arc 170s aren't the best matchup. I will be able to do a few fighter skirmishes in the next few days, with more this weekend. My plan is to see how Republic, Imperial & Rebellion starfighters do against them. I'll let you know.

It is worth a mention that Myrmecology was first player and took Minefields as the objective. Me being me, I did not consider all the implications of such an objective with Nute Gunray, which screwed up my attack runs even further (not that any other objective short a mobility one, Intel Sweep etc, would have gone better for me). Moral of the story: that's why that was my first Minefields game. It is not a mistake I will make twice.

The difference between TIEs and Vultures boils down to a fundamental constraint of Armada: the one attack/per turn rule. Giled's ARCs, powerful as they may be, could only kill one Vulture per turn, while the Vultures could drown him in blue dice and keep him effectively permanently engaged. In addition, something should probably be done about their battery, if possible: 20 blue dice for 100 points is 20 blue dice any day of the week, as that Arquitens found out so neatly.

To be clear, I expected horrifying fighter losses but I was hoping for a better exchange rate than 2:1. Against TIEs I probably would have fared moderately better, between lack of Rogue for closing in on my survivors and no Counter 1 when I attacked. My Counter couldn't kill, but it should still slightly balance that back in my favor. It certainly wouldn't have left enough TIEs to maul my spare Arquitens (ironically the one victimized by the Vultures was the farther of the two from the bulk of the fleet; I was surprised it wasn't destroyed but I'll take survivors). As far as enjoying myself, while company was pleasant I'll be satisfied when I avenge my pilots and crew on those godforsaken droids.

Ha! Alright, point taken

I gotta say, I'm unsure about what to do at this point. While the test feedback is extremely valuable, it's still fairly narrow (you can only test a single set of conditions at at time after all), and bad matchups can cause these horribly one-sided results also in vanilla Armada. So without some further testing it's hard to know just yet how much can be attributed strictly to bad design or costing. I think I'll wait for Cynan's results to come in before touching anything.

Now I do agree with you that I expected a better than 2:1 kill ratio, so there's definitely some tweaking to do there. I'm wondering also what the outcome would've looked like with one or two Jedis in the mix - I'm positive you'll see a massive difference, but then again I also don't want them to be auto-include.

Rather than increasing the cost of the Vultures, I'd prefer to change the efficiency equation by other means, such as dropping Counter or Swarm or, preferably, lowering their base attack value to 1 - which still leaves them with a decent damage output thanks to Swarm and Counter (and makes them more annoying than lethal). Another possibility is to lower their hull value to 1 as originally proposed, which I decided against when making the draft card because of the frustration value of autokills, including Anakin's Eta-2 ability. However, when designing the Republic ships some time ago, I had hull 1 in mind for the droids so did not want to make double AS dice easily available. Giving the Venator a second die might already be more than enough to swing the balance entirely.

As for DCAs, I really wasn't sure how effective Rogue would be with only speed-2. I can see now how it would be just enough to mop up stragglers and replace lost squadrons. That's good - it effectively simulates endless swarms with some co-ordination. So as far as I'm concerned, DCA is working as intended, only requiring changes in availability: primarily cost, of course, but also the Modification trait. I think I'll also remove the Offensive Retrofit icon from either the Munificent Light Carrier or (more probably) the Recusant Light Destroyer, so only a very limited selection of ships (Light Carrier or one of the two upcoming Providence variants) can equip it.

The main point to take home is that it should only be necessary to adjust one of these things (cost, hull, attack dice, counter, DCA, or Republic AS), or at most two. I'd rather not change cost, hull or DCA if possible, so when I start tweaking I'll probably start with attack dice and/or Republic AS. The sad truth, though, is that reaching a solid balance between the fleets is going to be massively difficult. Even FFG, with infinitely more resources than us, didn't get it quite right after years of development and a much smaller set of units. So we may need to moderate our initial expectations

Either way, I don't plan on uploading the droid squadron(s) to Shipyards until I'm a bit more confident that they are playable. We'll get there soon enough! Keep up the great work!

Swinging the balance of power with starship AS isn't actually going to do a lot, sine the bulk of the fighting (and dying, Good Lord that bloodbath) was done before the Venator or the Arquitens with it (not the survivor) entered AS range. That was partially since I didn't expect nearly that stiff resistance, but there is also the consideration that at current cost, you can have more fighters than one or even two ships can engage, let alone kill at 2hp apiece. Further, any ship firing AS can't fire ship to ship, a deficit made stark by a Venator attempting to cross the triple Munificent T without Gunnery Teams. I like the idea of 1 AS per Vulture a lot more than the idea of either one HP, no swarm, or no counter, although the lattermost is quite tempting. Next I get a chance to play, hopefully same time next week, maybe sooner, I will try that. That doesn't solve the battery problem, but that is going to take some cleverness. DCA should be a modification, and limiting it to only a couple ships within the CIS lineup would be very nice.

Further points: You (Diablo) have previously stated you wanted to update the Venator. What aspects are you interested in adjusting and I'll start musing on them. Also, I am saving a copy of every ship card on the Shipyards on my personal computer as a backup. I am also starting a list of everything we get requests for that we can't handle right away. So far we have the Liberator cruiser (not looking forward to it), the Endurance, Nebula and Republic NR warships, the TIE Defender, and the TIE Phantom. What else are we putting off to later so we have a master list?

Ok, had a bit of time during lunch so my son and I ran a few little fighter skirmishes.

My parameters, as close to even points as possible, all fighters within distance 1 to start. While this by definition can't include DCA, or Rogue in the test, it should giv an accurate depiction of antisquadron combat ability without having to factor in player ability.

Test #1: Anakin ace, ETA-2 (25 pts) vs. 5 Vulture Droid Squadrons. (25 pts)

-Anakin as player 1 = all Vultures destroyed, Anakin at 1 hull, both scatter tokens spent and discarded.

-Anakin as player 2 = Anakin destroyed, 4 Vultures destroyed

-Anakin as player 1, Vultures with Counter 1 removed = all Vultures destroyed, Anakin at 2 hull, both scatter tokens spent and 1 discarded.

-Anakin as player 2, Vultures with Counter 1 removed = all Vultures destroyed, Anakin at 3 hull, both scatter tokens spent.

Test #2: 5 V-wing squadrons vs 11 Vulture squadrons

-V-wings as player 1 = all Vultures destroyed 4 V-wings destroyed, las V-wing at 2 hull.

-V-wings as player 2 = all V-wings destroyed,

Test # 3: 3 TIE squadrons vs. 5 Vulture squadrons

-TIEs as player 1 = all Vultures destroyed, all TIEs destroyed, last counter 1 killed last TIE.

-TIEs as player 2 = all TIEs destroyed, 4 Vultures destroyed.

Further skirmishes to come, but figured I would post what I had.

I realise these are occurring in a bubble separated from normal play, but normal play introduces its own variables that may cloud the tests of even point cost in just squadrons.

What else are we putting off to later so we have a master list?

...the SSD

The Venator card was originally designed for the Imperial fleet, to represent an obsolescent ship from another era. Hence the lack of upgrades (it was assumed to have taken Enhanced Armaments and Expanded Hangars already). The Imperial Refit version removes those "built-in" upgrades and opens up some choices, but it's effectively more expensive (you don't get all 15 points back) and has a couple of other, more minor changes. I think for a start I'll reskin the GAR Venator as an alternate Imperial version - in fact I'm not entirely sure why I didn't already do that. That still leaves the Republic fleet without a "contemporary" version. I'm thinking of having a regular version similar to the Imperial Refit, and a command version similar to the current GAR card but with a second Officer icon, two AS dice and probably a Defensive retrofit.

The biggest problem with a single AS die on the Vultures is that they simply cannot touch anything behind an obstruction. So an expensive ARC or ace could, if crippled or simply threatened, hide inside an asteroid field and be entirely immune from droids for the rest of the game. Not a huge problem in terms of balance, but potentially frustrating. It would also interact poorly with an escorted Oddball (you can't shoot at Oddball - but if you shoot at the escort you roll zero dice), though I suppose good positioning can easily get around that.

A different way around this, which would also help with the battery problem, would be to scrap the Droid keyword and replace it with something like this: While attacking, each of your [crit] icons (instead of your [hit] icons) adds 1 damage to the damage total. Of course, it would be possible to add this clause on top of some or both of the current Droid effects, but that would be unwieldy and inelegant.

Wow, cynan, those results are all surprisingly tight.

Spherical cows in a vacuum and all that, but still - it's not all doom and gloom after all

Currently I think the real issue is that DCA is too good, and not because of what it does but the fact that it infinitely scales. It effects the entire board regardless how big, and it effects an infinite number of fighters. It honestly currently scales better then most Admiral abilities, though at least those are unique and can be sniped by killing 1 ship, with DCA it can be on multiple ships and you get Zero benefit of destroying one of them until all of them are dead. I also find it pretty crazy that a single munificent can control huge swaths of fighters.

I personally believe that the DCA should only be able to effect a number of fighters. Such as only a Multiple of the owning ships squadron value or a set value on the card.

With the first I would think it would be like 2 or 3 X the owning ships squadron value in number of fighters it can give Rogue during the squadron phase. While the set value one I would advocate for a number around 6.

Now as for what I think may or may not need to be nerfed on the Vulture droids. Personally I think they need to keep both their 2 anti-squadron dice and need to keep 2 hull. I generally believe it would be quiet unfun to have a fighter with just 1 hull. Where they just instantly pop to a stiff breeze. Personally if anything must be changed I would say is counter, I don't think I really agree with them having it. If tie fighters don't have counter I would say vultures probably shouldn't either. I would generally say counter should be saved for the likes of Tri-fighters.

I agree with dropping Counter, though I believe that the fighter catastrophe in the playtest can be attributed primarily to the ARC-170s being an awful matchup for large swarms and the enemy fighters being fed into the droid wall (literal wall, I should have taken pictures) piecemeal. As for DCA scaling, that's only going to become more of an issue as games get bigger. I personally vote for a multiple of squadron value, so Lucrehulks can coordinate proper swarms (and popping Lucrehulks has the correct effect), while Munificents can serve at best as a backup for small fleets.

Well I have 3D models now (thanks Zenzi, you're awesome), so once I'm done with my tests this week I'll try to inspect the models I have for printing and deployment in the first phase of dreadnought testing. I still haven't decided if that is going in this thread or another one, but I'm not even sure if I have usable models for my finicky excuses for printers yet, so we shall see.

Reskinning the existing GAR card as an Imperial warship seems appropriate. Gives them a carrier to match an Imperial class with EHB, and cheaper to boot, although with a radically different armament profile. For GAR versions I like idea of two models, a command cruiser and a battle cruiser. For the command variant, adding an officer, defensive retrofit, and say a black AS seems appropriate and just leave it there. For the battle cruiser, I suggest some variance from the Imperial refit to keep the ships independent of each other. 3/4/3, or even 3/3/3, C/S/E seems fair, but bulking the firepower, either an additional red or blue forward, and either a black added to the sides or dropping one red and adding two black for an ability to savage starships at close range (Exhibit A Invisible Hand vs Gualara). Especially if we add two black to the broadsides I would be ok with dropping either Turbolasers or Ordnance upgrades, potentially both depending on cost, to keep the ship from running away in stopping power.

I would not describe the fighter engagement as piecemeal, although the V-wings were all dead before all the ARC-170s were engaged. The bigger issue than piecemeal engagement was that the fighters, no matter what the arrangement, simply couldn't kill the Vultures faster than the wall (Myrmecology is right, it was very impressive) could resupply them. The V-wings in particular leaped forward and blasted holes in the wall, but it was like shooting a gun at water; it filled in as fast as you could shoot. Changing the hits on Vultures to crit icons is the same statistical effect as gong to one die, excepting obstructions. I never really use them so that didn't occur to me. Dropping Counter seems about as viable, but definitely requiring a playtest. I second the idea of DCA acting as a Squadron Command multiplier, which simplifies the Droid wording. If we go that route, reducing the non-command speed to 2 should be fair, to keep the fighters paced to the ships.