Are regenerating ship builds viable?

By Lord Vithiss, in Star Wars: Armada

I was messing around in the Armada Warlords builder, and I was attempting to create some new and interesting builds. I saw the redundant sheild card and thought, with a steady suppy of engineering comands and tokens you could keep healing the damage dealt to you. Effectively each of these ISD's can heal 4 shields a turn or 2 damage cards and a shield

For example the list i just came up with was:

Regenerating ISD's

Points: 399/400

Commander: Grand Moff Tarkin

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Minefields

[ flagship ] Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)
- Grand Moff Tarkin ( 38 points)
- Engineering Captain ( 6 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Redundant Shields ( 8 points)
- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)

Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)
- Engineering Captain ( 6 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Redundant Shields ( 8 points)
- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)

Raider-I Class Corvette (44 points)
- Impetuous ( 4 points)

1 IG-88 ( 21 points)

Edited by Lord Vithiss

I don't know if such a list is viable, but if I were going to try I would run an MC with Raymus, engineering team, redundant shields, Redemption nearby, and a few corvettes with projection experts.

That could get you eight engineering a round on the cruiser, plus the redundant shields and whatever else the corvettes want to pass you. That is a LOT of staying power. Of course, they could always just target your support ships, but then you could run with them and use the cruiser as a bruiser...tactics and counter-tactics engage!

Viable? Probably not. Fun/hilarious? Probably. :)

You need more squadrons.

Drop the Raider and IG-88 and you get 65 points. You have 1 point free.

Bossk, Dengar and 2 TIE Advanced is 67 points and is an absolute meat grinder of anti-squadron firepower that can be activated by either of your ISDs, and will be far more effective against squadrons than what you have now.

Edited by D503

I think the problem with Redundant Shields is that the 1 point of damage you are negating every turn is offset by the 2, 3, or 4 damage that your Brace is no longer able to block due to lack of ECM.

Rithrin got it.

I would love to test Redundant Shields on my ISD but it competes with ECM, which is way too important and negates far more damage compared to the 1 shield that RS regenerates.
And ECM costs 1 point less than RS.

My own experience with Redundant Shields is that they are of much more use later on in the game when a wounded ship is being chased by a Firespray (or similar) as that single shield can make the difference between another damage card or not.

I was messing around in the Armada Warlords builder, and I was attempting to create some new and interesting builds. I saw the redundant sheild card and thought, with a steady suppy of engineering comands and tokens you could keep healing the damage dealt to you. Effectively each of these ISD's can heal 4 shields a turn or 2 damage cards and a shield

For example the list i just came up with was:

Regenerating ISD's

Points: 399/400

Commander: Grand Moff Tarkin

Assault Objective: Most Wanted

Defense Objective: Contested Outpost

Navigation Objective: Minefields

[ flagship ] Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)

- Grand Moff Tarkin ( 38 points)

- Engineering Captain ( 6 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Redundant Shields ( 8 points)

- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)

Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)

- Engineering Captain ( 6 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Redundant Shields ( 8 points)

- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)

Raider-I Class Corvette (44 points)

- Impetuous ( 4 points)

1 IG-88 ( 21 points)

You could maybe get a viable tank build from twin assault cruisers, but not ISDs. If you want to tank, you need ECM.

As a rule of thumb, you're going to be taking damage a lot faster than you'll recover it. You can only have one of a particular type of token at a time (you can't have 3 engineering tokens) so i'm not sure how useful Grand Moff Tarkin will be.

I've yet to see a defensive build anywhere near as successful as an offensive build. With no squadrons to speak of, a bomber wing could easily wipe out an ISD in 2-3 turns on its own.

That said, I would love to see this playtested and what kind of pros/cons you found it to have. Good luck!

As people have said, you really want ECM's on your ISD's, it will save you far more damage in the long game. Tarkin can be very powerful and in this build, I actually think he is preferable to Motti, unless you hide Motti on the Raider and keep it safe. With Enginnering Commands and Tarkin, you have the ability to repair 3 shields or 2 damage cards a turn. Don't forget you can also move shields from other arcs as well for 1 Eng point per shield moved. It can be a very powerful tactic.

The Raider isn't actually of any real use in the list as it is, so I would drop it and IG-88, that is 69 points for a decent squadron build out. My preference would be to go anti-squadron, but with the ability to attack ships so 5 Aggressors works really well and is 70 points, which is perfect as you have 1 point from the ECM swap and one point left.

The reason I like the Aggressors is they are Rogue, have 5 hull each, throw 4 blue anti-squadron and 1 black (non bomber) anti-ship. They are super flexible.

It may not be totally viable now, especially with the shortage of defensive retrofit on the Imperial side, but I hope it eventually is a thing. I think credit needs to go to Steven on the IFF podcast for this sentiment, but it would be great to see truly viable fleets that aren't just chucking *more* dice. I wouldn't want to reach that critical mass with offense in Armada where it starts to feel silly, and I doubt that fantasy flight wants to get there either. While it's not even on my radar yet, if I were a betting man I'd say that wave 3 is going to expand the toolkit in other directions after how explosive wave 2 has felt.

I was playing around with an MC80 projection experts list, and even with the wealth of available defensive retrofit and support team slots, this style of list didn't feel "there" yet for the Rebels either. But this is a young game and I'm confident that they're still striving for better balance and more options.

I did see a build once that instead of using redundant shields used ECM on an ISD and had 2 Glads with projection experts, the glads can feed the ISD shields at range 5 while not wasting the defensive slot. The idea is to use the ISD as a blunt object with tarkin feeding eng tokens to all 3 ships every turn. I tried a variant with a raider and only 1 glad and it did not work very well.

The problem was that it is not very point efficient and very easy to disrupt. Don't even get me started on redundant shields, one instance of Brace you get to use thanks to ECM and redundant shields is already a distant second choice.

Think of it this way, you wont take damage first round so best case scenario you get your first benefit at the start of round three. This means at MOST you will get 4 shield from this upgrade, which is garbage for the slot it is taking. It would have to cost a little more and give 2 shield per proc to be worth ever equipping and even then it would be a second choice.

Everything in this game emphasises the offense, from the objectives to the turn limits and scoring scheme.

It may not be totally viable now, especially with the shortage of defensive retrofit on the Imperial side, but I hope it eventually is a thing. I think credit needs to go to Steven on the IFF podcast for this sentiment, but it would be great to see truly viable fleets that aren't just chucking *more* dice. I wouldn't want to reach that critical mass with offense in Armada where it starts to feel silly, and I doubt that fantasy flight wants to get there either. While it's not even on my radar yet, if I were a betting man I'd say that wave 3 is going to expand the toolkit in other directions after how explosive wave 2 has felt.

I was playing around with an MC80 projection experts list, and even with the wealth of available defensive retrofit and support team slots, this style of list didn't feel "there" yet for the Rebels either. But this is a young game and I'm confident that they're still striving for better balance and more options.

Jumping off this, I feel like building around projection experts instead of redundant shields may be a more effective way (at this stage in the game's development, anyway) to get to the regeneration you're after. They cost less, and are more flexible (redundants don't trigger unless that particular ship has been fired upon and taken shield damage, whereas projection experts can trigger on any ship within distance 1-5 that has taken damage). They also don't take a defensive retrofit slot, so you can have shield regeneration and have ECMs, which is probably going to mitigate more damage over the course of a game than a free shield each round. Unfortunately I took so long typing this that Hastatior ninja'd me, but oh well. :P

The downside is that you still have to regenerate shields some other way so you don't run dry. For IMPs, this is a real problem, as the only ship that can take PEs is the Glad, the very ship that doesn't want to be hanging back to be a shield battery, and needs all the shields it can muster when it closes. For the Rebs, a Support Refit is a much better platform: base engineering of 3, enough to send off a shield and replace it each round, plus it wants to be hanging out in the background anyway. Redemption with an engineering token allows you to send off two shields per turn and regenerate them. CR-90s can get to 3 engineering with a token or Redemption, so that's a cheaper option.

Either rebel choice is more points-efficient than a Glad. If the Raider could take support team, that would open up some cool gameplay mechanics, with Raiders filling an anti-fighter/perimeter combat role, and a medic supporting role. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. :(

It's all about numbers :)

If you can regenerating more damage than you can take per turn, then a regenerating ship is a cool investment A MC80 with ECM (to keep the brace), redundant shields, Engineering Team next to a Redemption with Projection Experts will allow him to gain 6 Engineering points per command (so 3 shields repaired) + get 2 shields from the projection experts + 1 from redundant shields, meaning regenerating a solid 6 damage per turn.

Alternatively, for a cheaper build, you could just go with redundant, ECM and Engineering Team : Recover 2 shields + move 1 from another hull zone + recover one from redundant. You just don't need the medical frigate for that (which can get expensive) although you lose 2 repaired shields per turn.

At long range this is very feasible and you'll be able to reach close to medium range with most of your shields intact. At medium range you'll lose more shields than you can repair though, so don't bank on that.