I'm curious what everyone else thinks about how many squadrons you can push with your ships per round. I have 3 bomber fleets and none of them can push all my squads in a single round. I have a 10 squad Imp build that can activate 9, 10 squad Rebel list that can push 6, and a 6 squad Rebel list that pushes 4.

I know some people say you MUST be able to utilize every squadron if you are going for a bomber/alpha strike. When ever I try to do this, I feel as if I'm over investing in squadrons, and I could have done a navigate or CF instead. Once I start to lose squads, I feel like I wasted points investing in carriers that no longer have squads to activate. I will admit one of my flaws is anticipating when my opponent will try to swat my squads with AA, instead of taking a shot at my ships, and thus I end up with a wasted squad command.

Anyone else run squad heavy lists and intentionally builds so you can't activate all your squads? Or for the people you say you must activate them, how do you maximize your investment in carriers?

I seem to be able to activate all my squads. Especially with floatillas out. However it usuallt not optimal. Like using Demo to push some squads. I do use rogue to fill in @ times. It really depends on your plan.

I've run lists that can't push them all unless they have tokens. For example I've had 2 transports as my pushers with 6 squads. It's usually enough. First turn they are on their own while the transports token up. After that, there's usually some reason why I don't need to activate them all. It does mean reading the situation is more important. You have a bunch of fighters engaged.. which 4 will you activate now and which 2 will you let shoot at the end of the round, etc.

It's only bit me for one or two lost shots in several games where I had to move a squad in the squad phase.

It wasn't ideal, but was also not awful.

In the Corellian Conflict with 500 point games an Imperial can field 22 tie fighters. Good luck activating all of them.

In the Corellian Conflict with 500 point games an Imperial can field 22 tie fighters. Good luck activating all of them.

350 Points of Expanded Hangar Gozantis with Tarkin will do the trick.

I tend to give myself the ability to activate all of my squadrons, even if I do not necessarily need to in every scenario. Flotillas help with this, especially ones that I can repurpose to some other role if they don't need to ship-activate a squadron. A pair of Rogues also helps, as those are then 2 squadrons I can hold in reserve for the squadron phase.

That's the whole point of the Squad activation. There are limits to what any single operator is able to coordinate. You don't have to 'activate' all the fighters. Some just linger to intercept, just like a CAP does on an aircraft carrier today.

I love carrier operations and always max out my fighters and bombers, capital ships are fine and all that, but Star Wars is all about Carrier Ops with swarms of fighters fighting for space superiority.

ISD I with Wulf/Boosted/Expanded Hanger, the best mega carrier that few use!

But between Goz/GR 75, Guppy/VSD, ISD/Home One, you can easily hit 8 squadron command. 10 Requires a bit of token generation imo. If you can't hit the full value s throw in a couple of Rouges. Firesprays for Imp, a couple of YT2400, Dash and or Han for Rebs and you activate 8-10 easily.

Rouges are good in their own right as well because against non-rouges you can punish them for using squadron commands when you shoot them up in the squadron phase.

I subscribe to the "need to be able to activate them all" philosophy, but with a caviat; I think you only need to be able to do it once. Things die fast in the squad fight and things get tied up. So long as you can press in during the initial squadron push, that's all you really need. If that means you bank a token to get there, that's perfectly fine.

My Regionals list from last year did exactly this. I had 8 squads, but only Yavaris and Independence to activate them. I would token up on both (by veteran captain or otherwise), however, and during turn 2 I would push everything.

Good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't activate them all in the same round. I keep finding myself building fleets that have a designated carrier and a tank that forces my opponent to try and kill either one, but not both, so I rarely ever have the oppurtunity to push all the squads. I just got a second GR75 which has allowed me to make the 10 squad list and it really benefits from Boosted Comms, BCC and Toryn Farr.

I'll have to try with more rogues, as I also just got my second pack of that as well.