Good Idea I like this. I think this would add some nice detail to the battles and maybe some nice unknowns. (Where are the other fighters?) I always wondered why the fighters were not on the ships at the start of the battle, and how non hyper space fighters could jump in out side the big ships when using that card.

This suggestion comes up routinely both here and on the BGG forums, but so far nobody has put up a convincing argument of how it would improve the game. Out of all the proposals I've seen along these lines, this is definitely the tightest and best written, but it's still not clear to me what the gains are, in exchange for the added complexity and game length.

While I like the depth, I'd prefer a more streamlined version. Something like:

"During setup, squadrons lacking hyperdrives must be deployed in the deployment zone within their maximum movement range of a capital ship with a squadron value no less than the amount of squadrons deployed in this fashion. (i.e. an ISD with a squadron value of 4 may deploy 4 hyperdrive-lacking squadrons) Every hyperdrive-lacking squadron that can be deployed in this manner must be deployed. Any hyperdrive-lacking squadrons in excess of the total squadron value of the fleet cannot be deployed during setup. Instead it must be deployed in the subsequent turn, following the same deployment restrictions as listed above. Squadrons deployed in this manner may not act in the turn that they are deployed, but do count as engaging enemy squadrons within range.

Squadrons with hyperdrives ignore the above and follow the normal deployment rules."

This suggestion comes up routinely both here and on the BGG forums, but so far nobody has put up a convincing argument of how it would improve the game. Out of all the proposals I've seen along these lines, this is definitely the tightest and best written, but it's still not clear to me what the gains are, in exchange for the added complexity and game length.

The main benefit I can conceive of is being able to shield squadrons from anti-squadron attacks using your capital ships and then relaunching them at a more favorable moment.

I'm not sure I like distinguishing between internal and external hangars/fighter attachments. It would probably just be easier to say "ships with a squadron value of 1 do not have hangars" and then treat all squadron 2+ ships as having hangars. Streamlines it significantly. I'd also recommend making the landing/launching more straightforward by allowing friendly squadrons to overlap hangar-equipped ships only when the squadron moves (otherwise they get displaced as normal) and then landing them on that ship if they do. Then launching would simply require the squadron to begin its activation completely within the base of the hangar ship and require a move so it ended no longer overlapping.

If you wanted to make the whole mechanic more beneficial, however, I'd add a little extra buff of "any squadron beginning its activation landed in a hangar recovers 1 HP," which would indicate replacement fighters being assigned to the squadron from the carrier's reserves and/or "pit stop" fixes being done while the squadron is temporarily docked.

The main benefit I can conceive of is being able to shield squadrons from anti-squadron attacks using your capital ships and then relaunching them at a more favorable moment.

That's a benefit for the player... I was asking about the benefits for the game. I mean, if you want to avoid getting shot by anti-squadron fire you can simply move your squadrons away from the target (at the exact same cost as docking: one move action). It's not entirely equivalent, as either option will be somewhat preferable depending on circumstances, but it's close enough that adding extra complexity just doesn't seem worth it.

In general, there just seems to be very little reason to keep your squadrons out of the play area - except perhaps deploying the slower ones like B-Wings only when they're in engagement range. But even at speed 2 they'll probably get there at about the same time anyway, the only difference is that they can't be intercepted on their way.

The game is six turns long: do you really want to spend half of them docking and undocking?

seeing as the majority of rebel fighters have hyperdrives, while some ships have hangars its not necessarily for the same reasons the imperials do. If they needed their hangars then why did all the fighters make the jump in RotJ out of the protection of hangars?

The stage of battle that armada represents is both fleets have met and deployed fighters. Its literally why you deploy them within 1-2 distance from a ship. to represent them leaving the hangar. hell i would argue rebel fights and tie advanced could deploy anywhere in the zone or 1-2 from a ship since they have their own hyperdrives.

As point the game lasts 6 rounds, i don't want to lose rounds to embarking/disembarking. also fighters are typically faster and more maneuverable than ships. While its fluffy and cool, we are the beyond the squadrons in hangars phase of engagement for the timeline they want the battles to be.

also look at dubya dubya 2. its not like American or Japanese aircraft returned to their carriers at the first sign of AA fire, they weaved in and out, inspired Bruce Dickinson to make Aces High, and did their jobs, which was establish air supremacy and then bomb the opponent.

remember George Lucas based his original dog fighting scenes off WWII footage. While in WWII you would be a sitting target on the runway, look at it the same way in Armada. if you are in your hangar you are defenseless against opponents bombing your ship.

If you guys like it, play it, in general I personally don't find it fluffy, and am against house rules, but i also try to attend a lot of events.

Oh, I take it all to be just a house rule. I highly doubt FFG would ever add something as potentially major to the rules as mechanics for landing and launching squadrons from carrier ships. I know I wouldn't use the proposed house rules (because I do most of my playing at my FLGS, and that's an environment for using official rules). But if someone wants to give them a go in their own casual games for funsies, I figure no harm done.

I don't much care about tournaments so I don't mind house rules (or custom ships, obviously). But they have to make the game better, not worse!

EDIT: Though, of course, what defines "better" and "worse" is entirely subjective.

What I don't get:

What makes you think these fighters are jumping into the system?

The SHIPS are jumping in, sure, but fighters have to be deployed within distance 2 of a ship, and since there are no squadrons with less than speed 2, that pretty clearly (to me) represents them being rapidly deployed right after the carrier jumps onto the field.

What commander worth his space-salt would have his fighters STILL IN THEIR RACKS by the time his ship was in firing range of the enemy? That's just begging for trouble.

correct. Rebel ships don't have the hangar space (look it up) so their fighters all have hyperdrives. The ISD is a massive 1600m ship, its like a mile long. They are designed like modern day Aircraft Carriers, to be 100% self sufficient for long periods of time. Its why TIEs dont have hyperdrives since they will never be without their carriers.

correct. Rebel ships don't have the hangar space (look it up) so their fighters all have hyperdrives. The ISD is a massive 1600m ship, its like a mile long. They are designed like modern day Aircraft Carriers, to be 100% self sufficient for long periods of time. Its why TIEs dont have hyperdrives since they will never be without their carriers.

Which makes me wonder when we'll be receiving faction-specific non-officer non-title upgrades for ships. You could have a few cards (support or weapons teams or offensive retrofits) to represent a Star Destroyer configured to make the most of its carrier status mid-battle (TIE repair techs? TIE Fighter Reserves?)

Group around Troy and I in the club play for fun and mostly 4 or more players on the table at one time, rules like this are all about fun. and the 6 turn rule is almost never used and nether is the score keeping, the mission/story line is the prime goal most of the time. or its just a teaching the rules game.

Like the battle I will be rerunning next week, with a rebel attack on a space platform where the mission is to land a transport on the platform after hitting it with blue dice and taking out its Command and control take off the data and weapons techs and the empire has to stop them and also land a transport and retrieve their commander. All with out blowing up the platform. we like story driven games. well I do anyway and it seems I always get players.

correct. Rebel ships don't have the hangar space (look it up) so their fighters all have hyperdrives. The ISD is a massive 1600m ship, its like a mile long. They are designed like modern day Aircraft Carriers, to be 100% self sufficient for long periods of time. Its why TIEs dont have hyperdrives since they will never be without their carriers.

Which makes me wonder when we'll be receiving faction-specific non-officer non-title upgrades for ships. You could have a few cards (support or weapons teams or offensive retrofits) to represent a Star Destroyer configured to make the most of its carrier status mid-battle (TIE repair techs? TIE Fighter Reserves?)

totes off topic but.....the carrier capacity of an ISD is 5 squadrons per history. The ISD originally had a squadron command of 5 (squeeeee) now its 4 (booo). The Squadron Commands dont necessary equal how many squadrons it holds but how many squadrons can be ordered and directed in the "timeframe" of an order. I would assume that the real time engagement of an armada battle is maybe 30minutes or so. That means your issuing new orders every 5 minutes roughly. So a commander is simply saying "black, obsidian, alpha, omega, squadrons do this" before his attention is diverted. This is how I view it. Over wise it would be to easy to be like All squadrons, do X. It is hard to remember that a stand of squadrons isn't 3 fighters but 8-12.

also look at dubya dubya 2. its not like American or Japanese aircraft returned to their carriers at the first sign of AA fire, they weaved in and out, inspired Bruce Dickinson to make Aces High, and did their jobs, which was establish air supremacy and then bomb the opponent.

remember George Lucas based his original dog fighting scenes off WWII footage. While in WWII you would be a sitting target on the runway, look at it the same way in Armada. if you are in your hangar you are defenseless against opponents bombing your ship.

If you guys like it, play it, in general I personally don't find it fluffy, and am against house rules, but i also try to attend a lot of events.

Agreed, even in RotJ we see the fighters launch from Home One, then enter hyperspace on their own to assault the Death Star.

Just remeber the reason the sqaudrin arr lunched early is you dont want to take dmg to the hanger bay with a sqaudron of fully armed ship sitting around.

So yes to your idea but dmg need to be factor in. So when the ship is hit each sqaudron take 1 dmg for each hull poiny of dmg.

Also the sqaudron 1st movment should be used with them just forming up.

Would like to see sqaudron with hyperdrives not have to follow the set up rule of being x far from a capital ship

hell lets just throw boarding parties that board through the hangar bay in. Be all thematic with the transport freighter rogues and those custom 3d printed transport squadrons

My suggestion is purely for scripted/scenario play. While I run my own events straight out of the rule book, there are others who tend to run armada events as scenarios so I was inspired to start making a few house rules like Hangars. I like this game a great deal and see the potential beyond the straight up 1V1, 6 turns and done.

The rule is meant to offer more of an option how you can approach a fight with both advantages and disadvantages. I also tried my best to write the hangar rules keeping the methods and language in line with the normal game rules so if people incorporate them it would not be such a stretch to use them. While I want to flesh out options and offer more choices, there is a line I don't want to cross that turns the game more of a hardcore simulation (or as much of one can considering its Star Wars).

To address some other's ideas and suggestions:

I did think about allowing repairing while a squadron is in a hangar but even in scenario play I don't think there would be enough time to really 'fix' a damaged fighter. An idea however is to allow two squadrons of the same type (non named) to 'consolidate' and transfer hits to 'replace losses'. That would be easier to use, if at all but I think that begins to go into simulation territory.

While these rules allow a ship to 'mother' a squadron (Lets keep Luke out of harms way until we can dump him right on top of his target) The disadvantage lies in that the squadron is not active, its not shooting or moving. It can be arbitrarily lost through damage to the carrying ship. Also, who is carrying what is public knowledge. While a squadron is tucked away, other squadrons can be positioned to deal with a squadron in hiding. The moment the squadron comes out and is put into play, that is its entire move (This could also be considered the squad forming up as it launches) and it is subject to engaging/being engaged. It could also be used as a defense tactic. A Star Destroyer moves into position where enemy squadrons are closing. During the squadron phase it activates squadrons it is carrying to launch on top rebel squads trying to get engage it.

I am also toying around with a few other house rules which will tie into the Hangar rules, like assault shuttles (as someone mentioned), raiding parties, sabotage , and using specialized weapons (ion cannons) to cause specific damage.

I am glad people like the rules so far though.

Grendelkitty

Looks interesting but a lot of things to recall.

I have carrier rules in the Armada Grand Campaign if you want to check them out.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/192534-star-wars-armada-grand-campaign/

Basically it is that a ship can carry fighters equal to it's squadron points value, but swarm squadrons only count as 1/2 a point.

(Cause lets face it - the real reason of talking about doubling values is to fit all those TIE fighters in, so lets just hit the nail on the head with swarm).

Also included are basic rules for deploying and retrieving fighters from carrier vessels.

Hangars

The Doctrine Method

Imperial Ships with a hull value of 5 or greater are considered to have hanger bays and are able to carry a maximum number of squadrons equal to two times the ships squadron rating. Imperial ships with a hull value of 4 or lower are considered to have external hookups and are able to carry a maximum number of squadrons equal to the ships squadron rating.

Rebel Ships with a hull value of 7 or greater are considered to have hanger bays and are able to carry a maximum number of squadrons equal to two times the ships squadron rating. Rebel ships with a hull value of 6 or lower are considered to have external hookups and are able to carry a maximum number of squadrons equal to the ships squadron.

Grendelkitty

So the first things that jumps out to me with this is the numbers, if you are one of them who say it is a squadron so it must be 12 fighters, (even though historically fighters were not always, maybe not even normally 12 aircraft).

So lets run the numbers Empire first

Raider it is hull four so it can carry equal to its squadron rating of one or 12 fighters. But as it can have the expanded hanger that makes it squadron rating two or 24 fighters on such a small ship. However if you have Admiral Motti it is now a hull five and it just moved all the fighters inside and doubled the numbers.

Gladiator it is hull five so it can carry equal to twice its squadron rating of two for four squadrons or 48 fighters inside a still small ship.

Next the Victory it also has hull greater than five so doubled its squadron rating of three (four with expanded hanger) letting it carry inside between 72 and 96 fighter

For the Imperial still doubled is squadron rating of four (five with expanded hanger) the Imperial I has two offensive refits can it have two expanded hangers (if so making it a six)? This lest it carry between 96 and 120 (144 if I can have two) fighters.

For the rebel side you have the

CR-90 with a hull of four so it can only carry its squadron value on the outside that gives it 12 fighters.

The MC-30 is the same

The Nebulon-B still does not have the hull seven needed to double letting it carry on the outside between 12 and 24 fighters (depending on version)

The Assault Frigate only has hull six so still carried on the outside but can have the expanded hanger. So it can have between 24 and 36 (48 with expanded hanger) fighters on the outside of its hull.

And last the MC-80 only Rebel ship with hull seven or better letting it carry fighters inside and double its squadron rating. One version can have the expanded hanger this lets it carry inside between 72 and 96 fighters (120 with expanded hanger) inside.

I did some looking and as near as I can tell some of the ships in fiction have had the numbers of small craft (fighters) that it can carry listed. Now with the recent change to what is canon this may no longer be such but what I found was.

CR-90 can carry 1 fighter inside.

MC-30 does not carry any fighters at all (inside or outside)

Nebulon-B can carry 24 fighters inside (remember it was built for the empire first), except for the

Redemption and Yavaris neither one of them carried fighters.

The Assault Frigate everything I saw said it did not carry any fighters, but it is all made up the MC-80

MC-80 each carried 24 fighters, except for

Home One and Defiance carried 120 each.

I could not find anything on the Raider (not surprising as it is new)

Gladiator can carry 24 fighters inside

The Victory I/II can carry 24 fighters inside with the exception of

Warlord it carried 72 fighters inside

The Imperial SD carried 72 fighters inside