Who said they were naked? All the GSDs have ACMs on them , one has the Demolisher title. The flagship has Intel officer on board.

Mind you I have not tested this yet. My current fav 400 point list has a VSD, three GSDs and eight squadrons, all antifighter.

Interesting...that does, indeed, look scary. Objectives and final points? Of course, my issue is that I need raider and bounty hunter details to know what i'll have to counter you at 400 points.

That's another thing i've noticed: people like to build scary lists and don't even bother adding objectives...objectives are utterly paramount to how you play: as is your bid idea. I run with 1-2 points bid at most..as I want to be good enough to roll with first or second player. However, I stack up my objectives to compliment my list. Of course you can big high and tailor to your own objectives to an absurd degree, but if someone is crazier than you and bids more you're up the creek potentially.

...

Of course...this is just from a theoretical framework. Perhaps rolling out 5 imp ships vs my 3 will prove too much dice to handle? Perhaps you'll obliterate my ships fast enough that the withering fire of TRD doesn't matter that much...I'd love to test that though. Armada is, imo, one of the best balanced wargame/miniaturegames ever made. So I want to play infinity games to learn all the fun stuff that's possible, effective, and silly.

On the topic of ship spam lists, I will ask two leading questions that begin to hint at my personal experience with this:

1 - Is there a level of numerical advantage at which having more ships becomes better? As in, do 4v3 and 5v3 and 6v3 all produce the same dynamic, or is there some kind of break point thanks to the nature of an alternating activation system between players where outnumbering snowballs?

2 - Are there certain characteristics ships might have that make them a better bet to take in an all-ship list, even accepting sometimes you might run into bomber lists or some such?

1 - Interesting point. It harkens back to the idea of concentrate fire and divide and conquer.

If I go up against a 4 ship list now, with my two, it's a LOT more painful to me to lose a ship..that's half my ships! Only a quarter of yours.

The problem is double arcs and gunnery teams, and staggered activation. The the above is more of an issue in TURN based wargames; but here even if you, like Lyraeus just mentioned, have 3 activations after i'm done...my two activations BEFORE your three uncontested ones might actually not happen if I kill you.

So, there are upgrades to make smaller forces more powerful even against large enemies. For example, my plan for my VSD-1 at 400 points is going to be set up in such a way that i'm confident it can tango toe-to-toe with 2 "more or less" naked ISDs...upgrades in Armada are THAT powerful for a fraction of the cost of a new ship.

2 - So far, I don't personally think so. Even the 2-dice AA ships aren't sufficient to actually "deal with" fighters, they should be considered supplemental. If you have a nebulon B escort, you might justify spending half the points on fighters you normally would which can net you an extra CR-90 in your list or some killer upgrades for a bigger ship.

The only point I see this happening, as if they add "lancer-frigate" like ships..which supposedly the Imp Raider is supposed to be. I would, honestly, consider an Imp list that ran 2-3 raiders as their anti-squadron defense AND bombers/line ships as more viable than most all-ship lists today, but I'm still not convinced since enemy squads would still be free to shoot at you till you finally kill them.

So you'll need SOME fighters to tie them up to not shoot you, and if you go half-assed on squadrons you're more-often-than not throwing points away for ZERO gain. Which means you should invest MORE into squadrons to make them not useless, which again leads us back to a balanced fighter wing that I run. Cyclical feedback loop that essentially points out, to me at least, that no-squadron lists are doomed to not be as good.

Of course they can roll up against a scissor and smash it to pieces and seem amazing...so there's that.

A few more quick thoughts:

1 - On the topic of activations, the layering is also interesting. Take 6v3, which is commonly what I end up with right now. Activations are either me-you-me-you-me-you-me-me-me or you-me-you-me-you-me-me-me-me.

Either way, in the starting state, you notice a few things:

• You have to kill more than one of my ships in the first state to break the issue with me being able to shoot it, move the ship, then activate it first next time around so that I get to shoot and then move again before you do anything. (This can be a hugely powerful advantage; imagine lining up a corvette at close range with 2 arcs on a star destroyer with your last move in one turn, then activating it first on the next turn, broadsiding twice, and then running out of range or at least far into the rear arc, and the SD has moved a grand total of zero times while this happens; now imagine this might be a CR90B with Overload Pulse).
• Any ship you lose makes this chain far more heavily loaded towards me at the back end, where essentially I can plan 3+ activations with zero uncertainty.
• Certain objectives that reward volume of activations will heavily reward this.

2 - Are there objectives that disproportionately favor numbers?

3 - Do you have to kill the fighters to "deal" with them?

4 - If so, are 1 AA ships a problem if you can reliably fire 5-6 of them at fighters in the first and/or second turn of the game to wipe out the majority of non-aces? How do you balance this against killing ships?

This list is not for wave two, it's for wave one, the local flgs is running a tourney at that point level next month, plus my pick up games are at 400 also. Once wave two hits, I'll be altering this to add Raiders myself, and possibly an ISD, because of course I am.

Currently I'm going with Opening Salvo, Mines, and Hyperspace Assault. Bear in mind I've not tried the list in combat yet, but will possibly do so this weekend. I'll let you know how it performs.

Also, this is exactly 400 points, so I expect I'll be going first...which plays to the high ship count.

Have to say I can't imaging playing essentially only half the game

Apart from that, though, I think bith hit it on the nose. You don't need dedicated bombers to absolutely savage unescorted ships, and avoiding going bomber heavy let's you better react to balanced lists.

From what I've played, a ship can only hope to outrun squadrons. Cr-90s and tech demolisher can outpace Unsupported squadrons or the slower rebel bombers if they do not position properly.

Squadronless vsds are hosed. It's almost tragic to watch them continuously overlap or attempt a speed 2 overshoot only to expose their rear

Played a game just this Monday with 2 vsds and fighter support against ysvaris + haven with As and Ys. After knocking out the ties with far superior squadron support, my opponent just sat the squadrons on poor motti and tore him to pieces. The rebel cap ships, meanwhile, had cranked up to speed 3 and just ran.

It sucks to feel so useless, but he played it perfectly by exploiting the vsds weaknesses and avoiding their strengths by just avoiding them altogether

That was something I should have done in a tournament game pitting my 3 NEB's against 2 gsds and a vsd, but I misplayed horribly and we had ourselves the biggest flustercluck I had ever seen.

The NEB's, rather predictably were devoured down to just salvation with 3as and 1 b facing off against an untouched vsd and gsd. The following 3 rounds saw salvation roll 0 damage on an overlapping rear and side shot while the As just piranhaed the big bastard.

In the end, salvation's horrid whiff cost me the game as he came around for his only decently rolled shot (6 DMG braced to 3) and the squadrons tearing the flagship down to 0 shields and 1 bloody hull

It's interesting to think that tossing NEB's into the lion's den doesn't stop uncontested squadrons from carrying the game regardless, only rngesus can do that.

Also, this is exactly 400 points, so I expect I'll be going first...which plays to the high ship count.

This is funny, as objectives were added to mitigate the drawbacks of going second...yet they seem to have created a world where everyone wants their objectives picked, so you go max points to go first now.

People evaluate the value of objectives poorly.

A few more quick thoughts:

1 - On the topic of activations, the layering is also interesting. Take 6v3, which is commonly what I end up with right now. Activations are either me-you-me-you-me-you-me-me-me or you-me-you-me-you-me-me-me-me.

Either way, in the starting state, you notice a few things:

• You have to kill more than one of my ships in the first state to break the issue with me being able to shoot it, move the ship, then activate it first next time around so that I get to shoot and then move again before you do anything. (This can be a hugely powerful advantage; imagine lining up a corvette at close range with 2 arcs on a star destroyer with your last move in one turn, then activating it first on the next turn, broadsiding twice, and then running out of range or at least far into the rear arc, and the SD has moved a grand total of zero times while this happens; now imagine this might be a CR90B with Overload Pulse).
• Any ship you lose makes this chain far more heavily loaded towards me at the back end, where essentially I can plan 3+ activations with zero uncertainty.
• Certain objectives that reward volume of activations will heavily reward this.

2 - Are there objectives that disproportionately favor numbers?

3 - Do you have to kill the fighters to "deal" with them?

4 - If so, are 1 AA ships a problem if you can reliably fire 5-6 of them at fighters in the first and/or second turn of the game to wipe out the majority of non-aces? How do you balance this against killing ships?

1- that's the intrinsic value of first player in this system; the cr-90 example. That's why second player is favored heavily in objectives.

Also, there's a lot more going on in a large ship list. If I can kill those last few ships before they activate then you lose that advantage.

2- some do. The most obvious are most wanted and superior positions...though SupPos is better with a squad heavy list by far

3- fighters that aren't engaged can do massive damage, and it'll often take a while to kill them with AA fire. Tying them up with your squads is simply the best option by a long shot.

4- you'd have to get you ships near the enemy ships since the squads aren't gunna go way far from their own ships...so that's really not practice either.

It helped that he picked the objective that lets each player roll an extra die when attacking the opponent's objective ship. Note that that includes attacks made by squadrons.

This has been errata'd and is no longer correct, just a heads up.

Correct. Most Wanted no longer effects squadrons

This is turning into an epic and epically useful thread for dealing with all shop fleets thanks all.

If ou have a concrete strategy with examples of tactics, what to move, when, in response to what, especially regarding rebel all ship fleets (we have concentrated a lot on empire ship only builds) then that would be really useful to all of us I think.

Any takers?

This game is not like that though. There is no, do A then B then C, it is fluid

This game is not like that though. There is no, do A then B then C, it is fluid

Of course not - but there are recurring themes and tactics which crop up, some of us(me) are looking for concrete strategic principles

Those are different for the most part for each person. You will develop different tactics then I will to handle a situation.