Let's say as an imp player for example. With a VSD and a GSD.

On what turns do you generally do what?

Is concentrate fire on the first firing turn a trap?

When should squad commands be used?

Do you ever use navigate after the first 1 or two turns?

Turn one bank a repair, concentrate fire all other turns.

for rebels, it's almost always navigate for the banked token given the importance of dodging certain "you're ******" zones available through every VSD and GSD

afterwards, it's generally spammed squadrons with a navigate thrown in for the ship being approaching by the bulk of the enemy fleet. Repairs follow turns where overlapping is inevitable or after navigates where I believe a ship will be in a weaker arc or range of an enemy, because a repair being followed up by a GSD broadside or an unloading VSD is basically a wasted resource

I always use either paragon or Salvation, and unless something goes horribly wrong the stack for them is navigate --> concentrate fire --> concentrate fire --> concentrate fire --> concentrate fire --> concentrate fire until kingdom come.

Turn one bank a repair, concentrate fire all other turns.

That suits your forum name well!

In my limited experience, I try to time a concentrate fire to hit in turn 3 or 4 to attempt an alpha strike on an opponent. Other than that, I want my TIEs to pounce ASAP so squadron commands will be in there at or a little after turn 2. Repair spam on any turns left over.

Again. limited experience.

I've never needed concentrate fire.

First turn, engineering to bank token.

Then, it depends on the ship. The VSD is going to squadron commands for the next two turns, then engineering. The last two will be navigate or repair, depending on the situation.

The GSD is always going to be navigate, except maybe the last two, which may be engineering.

Never needed the extra dice or reroll.

Granted, I don't think I've broken more than ten games, but because I suck at driving my Imperial ships (my preference for faction) I basically always do navigate except for on turn two or three when I go for squadron advantage. Turns out, space isn't limitless. It has walls. And those walls are dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

I play rebels and my default commands are navigate, squadron, squadron, constraint fire, repair, repair

if a ship is not taking alot of fire in the last 2 rounds then I switch to constraint fire, constraint fire

I would love to play against someone constraining fire so much....

Think you mean concentrate. Constrain means the opposite.

Turn 1 should always be navigate, on every ship, always, forever.

I used to always think that Engineering was the "no brainer" pick for turn one. However now I know better. Navigate can be very useful to gain the token and in some cases even use on turn one. Never select Concentrate Fire on turn one because (unless a rebel Corvette charges you at speed 4) you will not have any shots at ships. If you are playing a squadron heavy list the squadron command on turn one might allow you get some squadron to squadron action under way at the start of the game, if your opponent cooperates.

By turn two Concentrate Firepower or Squadron commands become useful. Engineering generally starts to become valuable around turn 3. Navigation is something you just have to plan for; look over the field and what your goals are and plan accordingly.

Since initial ship, squadron placement and speed is variable every game so this should influence on what commands you'd set for the first few turns. Did you place your ship near the center? Expect to be fired on so bank an Engineering token early. Are you packing a heavy squadron list? Spam those Activate Squadron orders. Is your opponent expose a weak side to your flanker? Do a Concentrate Fire.

Like the others, I do find the Navigate command to be the safest choice to use or bank especially at the start since ship position affects every aspect of game play from how much damage you give/receive to how you can deploy your squadrons effectively. From the mid-game onwards, your choice of commands depends on the game state.

I personally find that as you improve your game, you tend to choose Engineering less as that usually means you're the aggressor and that your plan is working.

I have 10-20 games experience so far. What I've found after playing Assault Frigate is that I bank a Navigate, and then I put an additional Navigate command for when I know I will pass a star destroyer. I use it exclusively for an extra tick to possibly give me 2 arcs on the star destroyer.

Turn 1 should always be navigate, on every ship, always, forever.

not for life

personally, I don't take navigate on my "hinthint" ship (out of Salvation, Yavaris, and naked escort the last one is the "hinthint" ship) because it suddenly becomes a very attractive target

I find this thread to be very confusing. Isn't your choice of commands going to depend A LOT on the particular ship, the fleet commander, the specific objectives and strategy you plan to use and even the opposing fleet? I don't see how you can make ANY blanket statements on this topic. A 400 point fleet that spent 134 points on fighters is going to make much greater use of the squadron command than one that didn't buy any fighters. A fleet led by Tarkin banks tokens very differently than one that doesn't. Having one of the liasons on a ship changes what commands you plot. An enemy fleet composed entirely of VSDs with speed set to 1 requires different commands to face than if the enemy fleet was nothing but cr-90s.

I would love to play against someone constraining fire so much....

Think you mean concentrate. Constrain means the opposite.

One day I will learn to read what my phone auto calibrates

Turn 1 should always be navigate, on every ship, always, forever.

This.

Turn 1 is always navigate for every ship. Turn two is often engineering. Turn three and four are usually squadron/firepower, and turn five and six are often engineering again to mitigate any damage done. Often I've found myself wanting a navigate order in the closing turns, but I often find it hard to convince myself on turn 4, that I'll need a navigate order on turn 6.

Turn 1 should always be navigate, on every ship, always, forever.

This.

With very few exceptions - bank a nav token on turn 1.

I find this thread to be very confusing. Isn't your choice of commands going to depend A LOT on the particular ship, the fleet commander, the specific objectives and strategy you plan to use and even the opposing fleet? I don't see how you can make ANY blanket statements on this topic. A 400 point fleet that spent 134 points on fighters is going to make much greater use of the squadron command than one that didn't buy any fighters. A fleet led by Tarkin banks tokens very differently than one that doesn't. Having one of the liasons on a ship changes what commands you plot. An enemy fleet composed entirely of VSDs with speed set to 1 requires different commands to face than if the enemy fleet was nothing but cr-90s.

...

and yet here are about 10 people who say they almost always do something like this:

T1: Bank either Nav or Rep

T2: varies Squadron

T3-5: Concentrate fire

T5and6: Repair or Conc fire.

(PS, I think Conc fire is probably meaning you're playing better in T5 and 6, though of course, Repair as you need, better to not die as hard if its obvious.)

I've been banking Nav on turn 1, I haven't found it useful. I'm going to try bank Repair T1.

Since my fighter game is garbage going to try some Squadrons on T 2 3. I'll see how that goes.

Rest of it, sorry, but I love conc fire too much.

T6 Repair just in case.

Tarkin will be giving me navs and conc fire tokens early, and then squads late.

--

The reason I've asked this is to get a little glimpse into what a varied amount of people believe are useful things to do from multiple experiences. This lowers the amount I have to personally test.

This game isn't quite set in stone yet, a meta and stuff hasn't evolved fully.

Second, the importance of a general auto-pilot game plan is actually incredibly useful. It sounds absolutely stupid. And for some cases, it is. But here's how this works: Practice is key, practice gives you the understanding of your general Plan A.

The caveat is you can't follow Plan A all the time. People who do that find quickly that they get read, it stops working, etc.

Plan B then is considered the most powerful and fluid switch from Plan A.

There's also the "Cheese Plan C". Cheese is a tactic that is considered dangerous gambling. It can throw a game into chaos for either side, depending on how well the gamble goes. The best players of Starcraft know what happens next, assuming you haven't won or lost so completely that the game doesn't go on. They know in unusual situations how various game mechanics work to have a full plan to fall back on. They know what the possible counters are and their Plan C builds counter-counters into itself.

When you start being able to consistently pull off that cheese plan C becomes a sort of Plan A.

Last reason why a general game plan is so useful. We would hope that all of our battles are at the best of mind and ability. But that's really not the case. We're still playing a game, its not life and death. Sometimes we get off work and we are frazzled. When you note the game is a normal game, then you have something strong to fall back on while you hopefully mentally wake up in the next few minutes.

In Xwing, you could considering this a strong deployment plan for certain match ups.

Grand Moff Token surely makes a big difference to these strategies too...?

suppose nav isn't terribly important on VSDs which turn like bricks one way or the other (though I find controlling speed to be an immense advantage given the arc and range-dependencies), for everyone else though it just seems essential to avoiding bad scenarios (either being in the painful range/arc of an imperial ship, or the imperial ship not being in side range/arc)

but otherwise, yeah I do love conc fire It's really hard to do much of anything impressive as a rebel anti-ship ship without that command

Not sure why people want to bank a nav token. When it comes to speed, I always, always start at max speed for every single ship, and I've never, never had reason to slow down. Indeed, speed is one of the things I use to run my opponent down. I only use nav dials on my Glads to add that extra yaw and to activate engine techs.

And I've been told I could run out of the table....no, no I'm not. That's simply competent maneuvering. I've never even come close to running a ship off the table.

seems like a GSD only consideration

slowing down is great for position based objectives, for ships that don't want to overshoot (dem vsds), for support of slower squadrons (such as the mighty B-wing), and for heavily arc-dependent ships (VSD again, but also Salvation)

combining a token with a command also leads to some crazy swings in maneuverability

engine tech GSDs are tied with CR-90s as the most maneuverable ship in the game and hit like a ton of bricks in their optimal range with or without CF, so it's no surprise they need the token less

My only objective in any game is to destroy the enemy capital ships as fast as possible. All enemy ships destroyed equals a win, regardless of objectives. As for points, the faster you blow up the enemy the less they can score.....

CF blows up enemies faster, getting to them just puts you in black dice range (hopefully)

haven't seen many games where its come down to a pure wipe, mostly because people know not to run into gladiators

not that nav spamming glads isn't effective, but if it's the only reliable permutation of commands and steamrolling the enemy the only viable strategy then I'd have to say Armada has failed miserably as a game