On 11/1/2018 at 8:01 AM, Blail Blerg said:

What I mean was that if you take a large ship down to more than half it’s hull you score half it’s points at end of game. It’s a direct nerf to scoring for large ships. This is based off impressions that in certain cases it seemed very hard to kill a large ship.

I agree the current meta also skews towards large ships being strong. But in task force that can make games have a singular focus: can you kill the big ship or lose?

Asking for more opinions and test data

One test case: yavaris bombers vs ISD and fitesprays.

Dunno if this had been thrown out before, but instead of introducing a half-points rule, how about expanding the play area, say to 3 x 4? Since it seems that large ships win both by locking up points as well as larger real estate coverage, slightly more room might allow smaller ships the space to maneuver.

29 minutes ago, Muelmuel said:

Dunno if this had been thrown out before, but instead of introducing a half-points rule, how about expanding the play area, say to 3 x 4? Since it seems that large ships win both by locking up points as well as larger real estate coverage, slightly more room might allow smaller ships the space to maneuver.

its just irritating to have to have a 3x4 mat. And I have all 3x3 mats. Also half rule is cleaner. I've never tried this. Perhaps some people can test it?

Its really not the room that's the issue, like, I mean to test CR90s vs ISD and squads, but its just generally that the small ship user has to go "all-in" every game vs a large ship + squads. The really boils the strategy choices away to something very uneven in difficulty and lack of options is a big problem that is solvable from other games historically.
(The issue involves something like Hammerheads or raiders or Cr90s + squads vs ISD + squads.)
Issue isn't as much locking up space as it is locking up points. Not an issue of constrainment of movement but of strategy choices, there become very few options other than all in.

(Might be good to move this to the TF balance thread)

Proposed Balance Changes to the Taskforce 200pt Format:

May 1, 2020.

Revisiting this thread, because its the way I get short games of Armada in and its very effective for story-telling and campaigns and introducing new players to the whole game of Armada without changes nor simplification.

Policy Change and Goal:

Considering that RITR has stolen much from this Taskforce concept, I'm now going to be more aggressive with experimentation and balance tuning in this format - for the explicit goal of increasing choice diversity as much as possible (a la Starcraft2 LOTV balance policy style), maybe with less often changes. Won't be changing things for the sake of change, but rather to find some really good simple obvious rules that make this game a deeper creative puzzle.
If the general meta of 200pt and 400pt Armada begins to show that a Special Rule is not required, it will be proposed to remove that rule.

Two policies govern the change management of the Taskforce Format Rule Set:
1. Keep things as simple as possible, avoid adding new rules if not necessary, especially avoid additional complexity.
- Seek to remove add rules when they become not necessary.
- New Special Rules may be added when reasoning indicates playability or diversity-balance suffers without the addition.
2. The basic tenet of the Taskforce Format is "Keep the larger half where reasonable"

The first new Special Rule to be employed will be this:

1. "The Large Ship Half Scoring Rule" --- At the end of the game, if a LARGE SHIP's remaining hull and shields are not higher than its printed hull value, the opposing player(s) earn the larger half of its total fleet point cost, including upgrades (divided by the total number of opposing players who contributed to damaging the large ship) .
- it seems that people generally are ok with a "large ship half point scoring" rule.
- Currently in 2020, it seems, that data-wise, large ships are generally directly correlated to a higher win rate. This nerf is a partial nerf as it create the ability to avoid turning games into a "kill the large ship or else" binary game decision state AND contributes to fairness in scoring and avoiding point fortressing. Where it does not nerf a large ship is that a damaged large ship continues to attack at relatively the same efficacy as a full health large ship.

Two other Special Rules/Changes to be proposed for testing stage:

1. Fleet Commanders will also be subject to a "keep the larger half" fleet point value also. So, Motti will be 20->10pts, and Moffy J will be 23->12pts.
- the pros of this are to allow players more creativity with the points they have.
- the cons are: A. In most fleet builders, you will have to do some manual toggling to give yourself back the change in points (ex, in Warlords you can add a custom blank commander (this will become the Taskforce Tournament Rule), or you can do some math and add some points to your fleet total, ex. for Moffy J, your total becomes 200->212pts.
Impact Analysis: Relatively minimal for competitive balance. This is a change of 10-20pts out of 200, which is 5-10%. Games have been tested with +10 +12 +25 more points, and it did not make that much difference. For Commanders like Tarkin, Vader, this should be a strong buff to usefulness.

2. Squadron point cap increased to 75pts/200pts or 3/8-37.5% which is up from from normal 1/3~34%.
- the legal precedent for this is Sector Fleet battles using 150/600, which is 1/4-25%. In Sector Fleet, reduced squadrons also play into the multiplicative effect of squadrons. The more there are for focus fire, the more effective they are in a multiplicative effect instead of additive effect.
- In Taskforce, it goes the other way: 67pts (the original 1/3 rule) reduces the multiplicative effect and Yavaris/squad fleets are generally not as strong as their 400pt Armada counterparts have been data-wise, tournament-historically. They also suffer from binary game outcomes when faced against large ship + mass squad fleets, ex ISD Motti + 3.5 Firesprays.
- Therefore, a minor increase from 34% to 37.5% along with the "large ship half scoring rule" should encourage more efficacy when these fleets are played wisely.
- this may also require some toggling in certain fleet builders.
Impact Analysis: Medium/Visible for competitive balance. This is a change of 8 points but in relation to 67 squadron points allowance, which is 12%. This allows for considerably more powerful aces to be fit into a list, such as Wedge. The impact of this balance change would likely mean that small ship + mass squads will look closer the medium tier mass squad lists of 400pt Armada, while avoiding the runaway multiplicative effect. This may encourage more ace-heavy lists, similar to 400pt Armada. This buff does not address that inequity (yet). The half point Commander Rule will likely offset this in some ways to allow ship-based fleets more concentration of firepower also.

(WIP with very low priority, "we'll just talk it out") Balance/Meta Assessment of Inequities
WIP

The Balance Team will now receive reasoning and data driven feedback.

I'll be writing down some rules for modifying to other sizes too, such as 100pt for campaign games. It'll be basically the same concept, "keep the larger (choice_of_size/percentage) where reasonable". This will likely affect objective's scaling-to-size and tournament/MOV scoring.

For 600pt, likely best to just use Sector Fleet Battles. For 600+, it may be recommended to combine Sector Fleet rules plus the rules-modifications also (again for things like objective-scaling-to-size, where you want objectives to play a part in the game. If you don't, then don't. Casual game likely anyway).

Added half-scoring rule for large base ships consistent with Huge-ship half-scoring rules for SSD in standard matches.

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