During my game with my girlfriend she asked the following -

"If your flotilla can scatter to avoid an attack why can't it scatter to avoid being rammed after all avoiding an attack that travels at the speed of light should be harder than avoiding a ramming ship travelling a lot slower?"

I think it would make a good tactic to ram a flotilla to make it decide between exhausting its scatter token or take the damage.

I'm thinking of house ruling this to see how it plays out.

What do you Jedi and Sith Lords think about this idea?

Might make them too good at blocking, which isn't something I'd like to see.

I don't think scatter is supposed to work on ramming.

I don't think scatter or other tokens and actions represent capabilities per se but more mechanics to make the game work and the resulting flow of the game is what you put through your imagination to show you the space battle.

but hey, if it works for you house rule that stuff. house rule that stuff and be proud of it.

...stuff...

What do you Jedi and Sith Lords think about this idea?

To answer your question, I think it's a bad idea. Not because conceptually I think it's a bad idea, but I just think you're going to see some really bad unintended consequences. It won't be long before you and your girlfriend start asking yourself "how can a couple of 75 meter long small cargo ships block a 1200 meter 500,000 gross tonnes battleship??"

The ramming mechanics have left me scratching my head a few times in this game. Unfortunately, it's a game...and one that plays reasonably quickly and smoothely. Better to just make like Elsa and let it go.

I don't think Scatter is meant to represent a ship seeing an attack and 'dodging' it. I think it is more of the idea of a group of fighters, or a flotilla of small ships, varying flight patterns and essentially 'flying defensively' in a way to make it hard for gunners to fire remotely accurate shots. They aren't dodging, the are providing a constantly moving target.

Also, collisions in this game have to be looked at as a game mechanic. It has been stated many times by many people that collisions don't make sense, per se. But then again, neither does a space battle taking place on a 2 dimensional battlefield. Collisions are a mechanic which helps to deal with 2 dimensional space combat and 2 ships not being able to occupy that same space on the table.

Furthermore, Flotillas were specifically given the disadvantage of not dealing damage when they collide like all other ships for a purpose. For one thing, it weakens their effect as blockers. Allowing them to use scatter to avoid the damage would effectively reverse that trend and make them one of the best blockers out there for a pittance of fleet points.

The point is, I don't think it's a good idea. It will significantly change the way aspects of the game works, and all to try to add some logic (questionable logic at beast) to part of them game that is in place more as a mechanic for making the game run smoothly and easily, and less to create a 'logical' outcome to ship collisions.

Plus if you used a scatter this way, wouldn't it make sense to have the flotilla end up behind the ship, signifying that the flotilla scattered above/below/around the ship and fly around it?

The gamey reason you can't is that there's no "spend defense tokens" step during movement. If you want to house rule it that's up to you, but there are gamey reasons for a lot of things in Armada to keep it from breaking.

Also, I think the "lasers" are encapsulated plasma, or some such other nonsense. They don't travel at the speed of light, they travel at the speed of looking good in movies.

Try not thinking of ramming as physical ramming. Think of it as being so close that their weapons can't help but score extra hits at that range. They may even be firing close range anti-squad weapons or extra weapons designed to deter ships from attempting to board. Shooting from so close that the attack has hit before a ship can evade, before it can scatter, before they can redirect the damage to other shields, etc.

Try not thinking of ramming as physical ramming. Think of it as being so close that their weapons can't help but score extra hits at that range. They may even be firing close range anti-squad weapons or extra weapons designed to deter ships from attempting to board. Shooting from so close that the attack has hit before a ship can evade, before it can scatter, before they can redirect the damage to other shields, etc.

I like this. Fits the theme/movie going on in my head better. Mmmmm giant space battles... Yum

I tend to imagine the ram damage as being inflicted by the ships manovering at well beyond their design limits to avoid physical contact.

The kinetic energy release if any craft the size and speed of Star Wars ships hit would lead to mutual destruction, hence the game mechanics, which would make sense if you look at two ships redlining everything to prevent impact (an impact would/should collapse the shields first then blow the ship, not just dent the hull)

It also explains what they have done with flotillas, we can assume these ships don't have the kinetic energy to kill/collapse the shields of the big ships if they hit so the big boys don't bother with the red line manouvers (hence no damage), but the floats need to prevent the impact so redline and damage themselves.

That's how I see the whole mechanics of it.

Also, I think the "lasers" are encapsulated plasma, or some such other nonsense. They don't travel at the speed of light, they travel at the speed of looking good in movies.

I'm going to need to find ways to work "the speed of looking good in movies" into conversation.

The ramming mechanics have left me scratching my head a few times in this game. Unfortunately, it's a game...and one that plays reasonably quickly and smoothely. Better to just make like Elsa and let it go.

To be fair, the general scaling and mechanics really seem to be more representative of a WW1/WW2 naval combat versus a space game. As we know, the scale between the ships is off, and it's even worse with the squadrons. When you compare the size of a Yamato Class battleship (263 meters) to a Japanese Zero fighter (11 meters wingspan), it would only require 24 of the latter side by side to have the length of the battleship. I'm pretty sure 24 Armada X-Wing wingspan are going to be close to the length of the MC80

Much like X-Wing was derivated from a WW1 plane combat game, I wouldn't be surprised if Armada was using prototype WW2 naval combat rules !