So at present how many deployments do you like to play ? My present list is playing with 8 deployments, but I'm using mainly standard ties and bombers ( with ryhmer) to up my fighter numbers.

Good topic! I am almost aways at 7 but it does seem too few now. What fleet are you trying with at the moment? And how important do you personally rate deployments?

I go for a bare minimum of 6, but I prefer 7+. Once you get to 8-9 (or more) you can really delay committing your strongest ships until later.

6-8 is where I normally aim

I like whatever you like :-)

Depends on what kind of fleet I am designing.

All ships, 4-5 deployments (Imperial).

Heavy ship + token squadrons usually 5-6 deployments.

Heavy squadron 7-8 deployments.

Usually Advanced Gunnery doesn't get picked, Fire Lanes means your coming where I want, regardless of how many deployments you have, and I will deploy according to the Token placements, Superior Positions, you have to place your entire fleet before me, so for me playing as player 2, having low deployments is not really an issue.

Being player one however, then I will need to make a real effort to counter my low deployments, usually though I am playing with fast maneuverable ships as player one, and can largely overcome being out deployed.

6-8 is my goal.

I will not play with less than 7. My Pittsburgh Regional list had 7. My Martinsburg list had a glorious 9.

I find that 7 is the sweet spot and is relatively easy to achieve. Six is a real bare minimum. Reaching 8 or 9 depends upon taking lots of cheap ships and/or squadrons. Some ships clearly benefit from last placement more than others. Demolisher and decked-out MC30s love to come in late where they are less exposed to other threats and can quickly pick and eliminate an enemy target.

The ultimate cop-out: it depends.

Some ships really need to go down last (Demo, MC30's, and VSD's, specifically).

The concept of deployments is a little more nuanced than just a flat number, though. I have a concept I work off of that I call deployment curve: basically, a notional measure of how much of my power I'm committing to a given spot on the table with each deployment. It's a function of outright hitting/staying power in each deployment; the ability to each deployed unit to pivot to a different spot on the board if needed; and the amount of your fleet's power that is focused in relatively few units. Generally speaking, he who is able to deploy the preponderance of fleet power later has the advantage.

I noticed this first when I was playing very B-wing-heavy lists. I noticed that, even though I was bringing 8 or 9 deployments, it wasn't helping me as much as you would think that number of deployments would. The reason for this was the B-wings. Everybody deploys squadrons to stall deployments, but my B-wings are the bulk of my fleet's offensive power. In addition, their awful speed means they're pretty much stuck in the area they started in. The upshot is,I was deploying the bulk of my plan as soon as I had to put the first B-wing on the table, because that, obviously, was where my fleet was going to be centered, regardless of where everything else was oriented or which direction they were heading.

This is the real strength of the MSU lists with one/two heavy hitters: they can deploy light, fast, flexible ships, representing a fraction of the fleets offensive power, for a very long time before they're forced to commit to a location on the board. With so much of your fleets offensive power focused into one (Demo) or two (MC30) ships, even if most of your supporting ships are out of position, you can still have get a fantastic setup if you're able to deploy your heavy hitters last.

Similarly, faster squadrons can effectively delay and deceive far better than B-wings or even X-wings and Firesprays can, by virtue of being able to pivot their center of gravity from the center of the table all the way to the center of either side in just one turn.

Incidentally this, more than anything, is what I think is the strength of Independence: the speed increase allows B-wings to be used as delaying deployments without committing them to one location, mitigating their harsh deployment curve.

I prefer having 1 more than my opponent

As Imperial, I like 1 more than my opponent (if only it were that simple!), but usually max out at 7.

As Rebel, I genuinely no longer mind. I like to set up at an angle so that it's obvious where my ships are and where they are going, and then stack nav orders so they won't be there. :ph34r:

I have a concept I work off of that I call deployment curve: basically, a notional measure of how much of my power I'm committing to a given spot on the table with each deployment. It's a function of outright hitting/staying power in each deployment; the ability to each deployed unit to pivot to a different spot on the board if needed; and the amount of your fleet's power that is focused in relatively few units. Generally speaking, he who is able to deploy the preponderance of fleet power later has the advantage.

Thanks for sharing. I knew I had heard this concept before, but couldn't remember the originator on these forums.

1 more than the opponent.

Achived by going second, add more Ties, 4-5 ships.

Not many beat 9.

Yeah 9 is right up there. For my usual fleets 6 is average (4 ships/4squadrons).

My Zen position is 7. My general is 6. The average when we last asked was 6-7.

My Zen is 7 because the most worrying MSU I see is 5 ships, 4 squads. So I try to match this as second player.

However 4 ships and 3 squads is generally too much to fit in, if I want all my ships to be potent, which I do. 6 is achievable, 5 makes me anxious.

However if I am running a heavy squad list I dont really care as we all know where my ships are going from the moment I place the first.

Now I'm in a quandary, I'm thinking of dropping 4 tie bombers and replacing them with 2 fire sprays. this would make my fighter activation easier ( I've only got 4 practical activations and 6 fighters) but drops my deployments to 7 which is making me sweat a bit ( I need to out deploy to make my list sing)..........the stress would be to much to bear if they weren't just plastic space ships ( as my wife puts its so well)

I think deployment very much depends. My favorite list, a Triple Vic Rhymerball, has 8, but deployment on my side doesn't really matter. My fleet will likely castle in one of the corners in a fanned out formation with one flank pointed straight across the table and the other pointed at the diagonally-opposite corner. It makes it easy to shift the entire fleet one way or the other to react to my opponent, and the TIE Bombers are fast enough to respond to threats in any direction. The threat itself is the Rhymerball, and it doesn't so much matter where it deploys, because it just goes where the action is. The ships themselves aren't there to deal most of the damage, so their positioning is rather irrelevant, provided they're within Long Range of the Bombers, which are themselves within Medium Range of your ships. That's a LONG threat radius. The longest threat range in the entire game. The ships need to stick together because of their shortfalls, so once I deploy my first ship, you know where my entire fleet is going.

And with three potential objectives, it's easy to get one as first or second player that doesn't alter your plan. Worst case scenario I can always default to a Blue objective. Superior Positions is not a weak choice for this list, because you know where I'm going to deploy everything as soon as I put my first ship down. Really, you're shooting yourself in the foot, because with ten squadrons I'm very likely to rack up a LOT of tokens.

I'm also toying with CR90 swarms, which average about 8. But again, deployment isn't as key here. Those fleets spread the damage around, so the only key ship is your flagship, which you might want to keep out of trouble (I usually default to a CR90A with Jaina's Light and TRCs for this role). But if you have a single, powerful ship, especially if it's less maneuverable (so pretty much a Medium or Large), then you definitely need as many deployments as possible to stall its location, just to make sure it has plenty of targets.

I would like to have between 7 and 9, but I learned to live with 5. Though being outdeployed requires me to do tricks with objectives to predict the location of opponent's fleet.