It's my one great annoyance with Armada. Why do we have three different forms of measurement? Range, Speed, and Distance. Why not just use centimeters?

To make it harder to estimate with precision more than one measurement at a time with only one ruler. If Distance 1 is X cm, I'll always know if my fighter can engage an enemy (except for Speed 5 squadrons) because I can measure the Y cm movement distance, and plainly see the remaining X cm.

Similarly, if each movement tick distance was Z cm, I could use the range ruler to estimate the distance I can travel (and the range bands from that point) with much higher accuracy.

By making every unit of measure a slightly different standard they reward people with excellent visual awarenesses.

Yeah, far from an annoyance, this is something that actually really impresses me about the game: the depth that is generated by the irregularity between and within the sizes of the three measurement scales. They are very precisely implemented and add a lot to the fog of war in executing your battle plan.

Hmm, I did a 1500 point per side game on a 6x3 and hardly had any bumping. I think Lord nelson needs driving lessons lol.

How ridiculous is it to complain that a mechanic in a GAME is GAMEY? Say, you know what? When I shoot my space lasers at the 3D models there aren't even real deflector shields and they hardly ever catch on fire!

Hey did you know a "real asteroid field" in real life you can drive a fleet of star destroyers through the spaces between objects and never see 2 asteroids at the same time? You should probably throw your asteroid field tokens in the trash right now as they are clearly just a GAMEY contrivance hahahaha.

How preposterously self important to think you can decide which aspects of a game are too abstract. If you don't like the bumping rule, you and your 1 friend who plays with you can play it any way you like. 80% of the people on here couldn't give a flying fig if/how you do it and about 99% of people who play competitively understand that a GAME is a GAME, you play the GAME according to the RULES OF THE GAME. It is NOT a SIMULATION of imaginary space wizards driving preposterously absurd ships around shooting pew pew lasers. I would direct you to computer games if you want something more akin to that.

Please someone tell me more about how in real life imaginary space ships would deflect off each other, or please calculate the force (in Newtons) that an imaginary ISD flying at an imaginary speed would exert on an imaginary corvette and how many actual damage cards that would translate into "in real life". Once you are done doing all that have a cold shower and try and remember we are mostly grown people pushing expensive hunks of plastic around on tables and not arbiters of how imaginary things happen in "real life" because when you start down that road soon you will be typing in ALL CAPS and wearing a tinfoil hat.

I have a friend that makes the same complaint. I just ask him, "There were no collisions in any of the movies were there?"

The problem is, what is the alternative without adding in some other overcomplicated and time consuming rule?

But that describes most of Armada.

I saw leave it as it is.

It's not perfect as (as has been mentioned) this is a 2D game version of a 3D environment.

My own thoughts:

1. It has relatively simple rules at the moment
2. To make it work (especially with a swarm) takes planing and careful maneuvering - which is what a lot of the game is actually about
3. It's quite cinematic

Were you to replace it with something that tried to represent a glancing blow, you could end up with other "gamey" mechanics available. The first one that comes to mind is where to position the ships after a collision?

At the moment you leave them where they stop based on a temporary speed drop (which is sort of representing a glancing hit) and then they move off again when they can.

Or, you could allow one ship to "pop" out on the other side of the base of the ship that it is ramming so it can continue it's move. On the face of it this sounds good, but it would grant free movement to the ramming ship - that could be very beneficial when ramming ships on large bases.

If you really wanted to modify the rules though, maybe limit the number of damage cards per turn - e.g. ships hit once and then move off?

The problem is, what is the alternative without adding in some other overcomplicated and time consuming rule?

But that describes most of Armada.

That describes every game that ever tried to model an aspect of reality. It's always about striking a balance between functional abstraction and complex realism.

I say leave it as is... but if I was to change anything, it would be to stack obstructions.

Naboobo2000

No, your crap is trolling. I make an aurgument using several sentences. You don't agree...ah too bad baby boy. You put up a poster because you're too lazy too formulate a real response because you communicate using the equivent of modern day Neanderthal grunts....specialized in just innuendo--nothing more. Leaving others to do your dirty work you lazy coward. You are the troll sir. A pathetic, lazy one at best. You sit back and let the other crows pick my bones while you watch.

Says the man too lazy to use line breaks or punctuation or to proof read his own posts before submitting them.

There's the root of your problem right there: you're playing a different game than all the rest of us. What you're doing here is like showing up on a chess forum claiming that pawns are OP because you start your pieces at point-blank range. If you're already making your own house rules (600-point limit is a house rule), you might as well house rule this too and move on.

You're big on telling us all how we shouldn't be playing only 400-point games and the game still works at higher points (which I'm not disputing, it sounds like fun), but then you come into a discussion like this and your position is predicated on your non-standard games. But the scale of your game definitely has an impact on this issue in particular, and is probably part of why it's proving to be a big deal for you and not for most of us.

So, my suggestion would be to play test your side-slipping house rule in your bigger games and see if it works well for you. If so, great! Then come back and present it as a solution to an issue you've identified with scaling the game up, not as qqing about a "broken" rule that's only broken in non-standard games.

I think that's a little unfair; using a points total other than the tournament standard isn't house ruling, the games have always been you can use whatever total you and your opponent want, but there's a standard for official tournaments. The complaint is basically that the ramming mechanic is unfluffy, isn't it?

I have a friend that makes the same complaint. I just ask him, "There were no collisions in any of the movies were there?"

I think that's a rather silly argument. Is there a point in the films where a ship collides with an object several orders of magnitude less massive that itself and is brought to an abrupt halt by it?

I agree, it doesn't make much sense, but I haven't seen a better solution suggested, and as has been pointed out, it's built into the points values of the ships (unless FFG didn't anticipate it).

In this thread: some people complaining about a specific part of the game, some people countering their complaints with their own take on the matter, and some people whinging vehemently about the inadequacy of a game they willingly choose to keep playing.

Not featured in this thread: enough posts about the lack of Wave 3 announcements.

Ramming is a bad description. Avoiding collision results in going too close to your opponent and your shields become ineffective. Weapons to the face always hurt, the real question is why only a single hull damage.

Ramming is a bad description. Avoiding collision results in going too close to your opponent and your shields become ineffective. Weapons to the face always hurt, the real question is why only a single hull damage.

I was thinking maybe it would make sense for smaller ships to suffer more damage when they hit larger ones, but of course proportionally they already do.

In one fun and brutal game

My opponent used my MC80 as a stop block for his VSD, else the VSD would have sailed of the edge.

And as my MC80 could not move around the VSD, due to the close proximity of the edge, both ships was locked together for two to three rounds, until my MC80 blasted its way through the VSD

Basically it was one massive trafic jam, envolving at least 3-4 ships, where everybody was shooting at each other at point blank range, a rule of friendly fire could easily have been applied in this case

Ramming is a bad description. Avoiding collision results in going too close to your opponent and your shields become ineffective. Weapons to the face always hurt, the real question is why only a single hull damage.

I was thinking maybe it would make sense for smaller ships to suffer more damage when they hit larger ones, but of course proportionally they already do.

Except that small ships dont expose themselves to the full arnament of a large ship at close quarters. In effect they can both do about the same amount of damage to each other.

The current way ramming is implemented + the lack of any boarding actions are the weakest aspects of armada imho. I would personally like to see ramming changed/tweaked into something more interesting. Small ships taking 2 damage from ramming larger ships would go a long way, plus a way for ships to spend an evade token to, well, evade a ram. Not everything needs to be streamlined into abstraction.

Why? When a small object hits a large object is the damage proportionally on the small object?

When a small cannonball hits a large frigate which takes the greater damage?

A lot of you need basic physics lessons.

Why? When a small object hits a large object is the damage proportionally on the small object?

When a small cannonball hits a large frigate which takes the greater damage?

A lot of you need basic physics lessons.

The difference is the ships both move, its not a stationary vs moving object, and the ships (we can assume) are made from materials with roughly the same density (though the large ships have much thicker armour proportionally than small civilian ships like the corvette). A corvette also has like 1/100th of the mass of a VSD.

Your example would be better if it was a small cannonball colliding with another cannonball with 100 times the mass midflight.

Why? When a small object hits a large object is the damage proportionally on the small object?

When a small cannonball hits a large frigate which takes the greater damage?

A lot of you need basic physics lessons.

As one pointed out in another thread.

A corvette sized dent on a ISD is bad

But a corvette sized dent on a corvette, is kind of fatal.

Just another Ewok snowball from the Kiwi Rat

Ramming is a bad description. Avoiding collision results in going too close to your opponent and your shields become ineffective. Weapons to the face always hurt, the real question is why only a single hull damage.

I was thinking maybe it would make sense for smaller ships to suffer more damage when they hit larger ones, but of course proportionally they already do.

Besides, they already take more damage proportionally. A corvette rams and takes 25% damage and deals 9.09% to the ISD. Lucky both amounts of damage are represented by the same unit of measurement: One damage card.

Why? When a small object hits a large object is the damage proportionally on the small object?

When a small cannonball hits a large frigate which takes the greater damage?

A lot of you need basic physics lessons.

As one pointed out in another thread.

A corvette sized dent on a ISD is bad

But a corvette sized dent on a corvette, is kind of fatal.

Just another Ewok snowball from the Kiwi Rat

Four damage cards is fatal to a corvette and only bad to an ISD.

Why? When a small object hits a large object is the damage proportionally on the small object?

When a small cannonball hits a large frigate which takes the greater damage?

A lot of you need basic physics lessons.

As one pointed out in another thread.

A corvette sized dent on a ISD is bad

But a corvette sized dent on a corvette, is kind of fatal.

Just another Ewok snowball from the Kiwi Rat

Except that small ships dont expose themselves to the full arnament of a large ship at close quarters. In effect they can both do about the same amount of damage to each other.

You've lost me. They don't, but they do? What?

I was thinking maybe it would make sense for smaller ships to suffer more damage when they hit larger ones, but of course proportionally they already do.

That would be a violation of the third law of Newtonian physics.

Besides, they already take more damage proportionally. A corvette rams and takes 25% damage and deals 9.09% to the ISD. Lucky both amounts of damage are represented by the same unit of measurement: One damage card.

You seem to be agreeing with me, unless you stopped reading my post at the comma.

Except that small ships dont expose themselves to the full arnament of a large ship at close quarters. In effect they can both do about the same amount of damage to each other.

You've lost me. They don't, but they do? What?

I was thinking maybe it would make sense for smaller ships to suffer more damage when they hit larger ones, but of course proportionally they already do.

That would be a violation of the third law of Newtonian physics.

Besides, they already take more damage proportionally. A corvette rams and takes 25% damage and deals 9.09% to the ISD. Lucky both amounts of damage are represented by the same unit of measurement: One damage card.

You seem to be agreeing with me, unless you stopped reading my post at the comma.

I'm tired. It's early.

You should go back to bed. The world looks best from bed.

Ramming is a bad description. Avoiding collision results in going too close to your opponent and your shields become ineffective. Weapons to the face always hurt, the real question is why only a single hull damage.

I was thinking maybe it would make sense for smaller ships to suffer more damage when they hit larger ones, but of course proportionally they already do.

Except that small ships dont expose themselves to the full arnament of a large ship at close quarters. In effect they can both do about the same amount of damage to each other.

Clearly, you've never driven a Corvette into the gaping maw of a Star Destroyer. Spoiler alert: the Corvette was dead the whole time.

Not everything needs to be streamlined into abstraction.

The sole purpose of streamlining is to make something go faster. I believe Armada's game mechanics achieve the optimum balance between realistic fleet action simulation and engaging, well-paced, complex-but-not-complicated gaming.