Hi all

I am rather new in Armada but are working my way in. A dilemma i keep facing when building list is that i almost always seem to go for quantity when building the list. It seems that a few upgrades quickly amounts to the same as the price of, say another Nebulon - giving me another ship and thus more flexibility and staying power. Some upgrades (Demolisher!) are too good to pass on but others amount to a large portion of the ships value even if they provide for some extra goodness and combo power...

What is your experiences in using a fat list with lots of upgrades on a few ships vs a thin list with more (almost) naked ships.

Best Svend

Yes.

The interesting thing about this game is how the points interact. due to the large buy-in of ships, and low cost of powerful upgrades, a fraction of their points can multiply their power. If I took my list and wanted to add a second gladiator I'd have to dump all my upgrades and some of my squads...is the extra ship that just took all my upgrades away able to provide as much power as said upgrades and fighters?

Maybe, maybe not. Prob not tbh.

There a defiantly a balance were ships function at "optimal" level without being over costed. For example I find a naked Vic-1 to be a sound investment but if I put about 20 points of upgrades into it if suddenly feels unstoppable. But much more then that and you are always outnumbered and when you die it is very significant.

Generally I find that "optimal" cost of upgrades drastically decreases as ship cost descrese so while I find my Vics to run best when they have 20-30 points of upgrades I consider cr90s to be best with 5-10,

This is perportional to survivability as well.

I don’t think there is too much consensus on this yet (hopefully there never will be). There are plenty of lists floating around the forums with people running a couple of heavily upgraded ships, many basic ones (normally rebel at this point), or a few with minor upgrades.

To some extent it seems to be dependent on the local player base. Some groups swear by squadrons and max them out, some go for two ship builds with all the synergies, some think squadrons are a waste of time and go all ships, some run minimal upgrades to keep the numbers up. Until we see some larger scale tournaments that cause these archetypes to collide in earnest I don’t think you will get much agreement.

Personally I like the minimal upgrades for more stuff approach (I have mostly been using the rebels and am only recently taking up the empire in earnest). I like the advantage of having more activations, and I like not having to worry about losses as much – especially since very few upgrades actually help with the durability of a ship (ECM, and advanced deflectors). I get very nervous indeed when a ship starts having 50% of its base cost in upgrades while being destroyed just as easily.

aye we have no idea yet


personally, I just go by the metric by how much ships improve via upgrades

Nebulons, for example, I feel are too spindly and don't scale too well with upgrades; but they're just fine as they are. Ergo, quantity (just remember to make one Yavaris!). But when I take salvation, I also take Raymus to fish for crits.

Space Whales are something I feel fine loading with upgrades because the upgrades are sexy (both titles, int agents, x17s/EA, electronic counter measures...) and the ship is sturdy enough to not suffer unfortunate accidents

for the empire, I think you'll be seeing tons of demolishers because Demolisher simply does something no other ship in armada can do (move and shoot) and it's quite powerful. The base GSD - 2 honestly doesn't look that bad, though.

As for VSDs, well you don't need to sink much into them to make a carrier VSD (FC and hangar) which is incredibly effective, but at a base level the buggers are incredibly stiff and arc dependent. Toss on Dominator, though...

I'm constantly struggling with this question. Currently, I'm sacrificing fighters to keep my double-double CR90 and NebB list with some upgrades.

Well i find it a very good thing that we still don't know if fatties or spam are the way to go... I know that this game is very different from X-Wing, but in that game we first had a period where swarmy builds dominated, now its rather elite builds. What doesn't work is tossing some upgrades on ships that are not naturally tanky or dodgy...

In Armada my first impression was that spamming big ships, especially imperial with Motti or Tarkin was the way to go. All that hull and shields and tokens can hardly ever be tabled. And that's true, but there are some difficulties to this. Taking down a ship is concentrating firepower in the rifgt spot at the right moment. And if you take down one big ship and run away for the rest of the game it's a win. Even if just 6-4 but it is a win.

So i think my first impression was wrong. With 3 Vics or something alike you are tough to wipe out but you can lose a ship and thus the game. Corvette spam does this pretty well i believe. Flank and kill one, then bug out.

Fighter lists seem to also have a place, but some say they are super effective, others just take none at all and still win. I think they are complicated to use because if you give a squad command too early in the turn they will know where your carrier will be, especially Yavaris or GH. But if you don't give it early enough they will be out of range fir a bomb run or they will have your fighters tied up with theirs. Then your carrier moves away and your expensive sauadrons become useless. I usually run defensive squadrons or multipurpose but hardly any bombers. It just seems to me that you dedicate too manypoints into something that can be mitigated fairly easily. Yes Rhymer Chiraneau can do some work. And if it works Yavaris is pretty great. But i think a smart opponent can play around fighters more easily than against 6 corvettes sniffing his tailpipes...

But i am still a noob in this game really.

And the one thing that is great and that probably allows for the most diversity are the objectives. They can make a list that seems bad suddenly shine while some others seeming unstoppable in a deathmatch just lose to scenario...

You needn't even kill one. Precision strike and an X-wing swarm can rack up shedloads of victory points even on a ship that's still alive, or opening salvo can get you half the points of the fleet with one damage on each.

This is a good question. For me after playing a few games and I run nothing but Rebels. And in the last few games I been running a two ship build and both capital ships had significant upgrades on them and I had 100 points dipped in on squadrons.

The times I played the list I have found out the problems in it, that I invested too many points in upgrades on a capital ship and during game play I end up not using half the upgrades... So it was points I could have been dumping into something else. List builds vary for each player... I do like that no one has found a build to create a meta for this game yet. In my personal experience in playing rebels is that in wave one, we have two squishy ships and one bruiser. We have speed as our advantage. And in my opinion have the best fighter squadrons in the game because most of the rebel fighters can play flexible in roles.

I do feel that rebels shine more in quantity more than quality. I'm not saying go naked ships, but don't go overboard on upgrades because our capital ships are slightly fragile so put what serves your needs the best on your ships and fill out the rest in squadrons. This is just my view on rebels, and I'm very certain other rebel players play style will vary greatly.

When I think about this game and all the variables, it becomes a vast world of possibilities of build types and combinations. The options are endless.