So I'm sure most of us have been planning out all sorts of different fleet builds that we would take for our initial list in he campaign. I've been centering mine around each commander, so that when I show up for my campaign (hopefully today), I can easily say "which general do you guys want?" and then take my choice from the remainder.

However, and I think it's been mentioned before, I think it would be cool (and highly effective) for each player to take on a particular role with their fleet. I.e., a finisher who is dedicated to taking scarred ships out of the fight or an objective point scorer for defending a non-base location with a high probability of winning via the objective. So I'm going to list a few obvious ones I thought of.

Objective Scorer: this fleet will build around the objectives, both specials on map and normal fleet objectives. Lamdas and VCXs will be crucial parts of these fleets, and they typically will want to be sent to defend a location where they can capitalize on those objectives. This should also be assigned to a player who is comfortable with going second. Fire Lanes, Sensor Net, and Most Wanted with an MSU would probably be the toughest combination to overcome. It's harder to build for the Imperial special Assault objective while also building to score a high volume of points from normal objectives. That will probably be handled more naturally by a Brawler/Finisher for the Imperials.

Base Defender: when the enemy declares their attack and it happens to be your base (which is a high probability), you want something built to take full advantage of all three objectives–it needs a fighter/bomber wing with plenty of Squadron activations available, probably a BCC or 2, it needs lambda/VCX for the Ion Cannon, and it can afford to have lower activations with bigger ships because of the Station activation.

Base attacker: when you know where a base is (either because you're Imperial and you failed the first time, or because you're a rebel and the empire is terrible at OPSEC), you need a fleet designed to deal with 1 of the 3 objectives. Anti-fighter, strategic for the Ion cannons, or enough activations and a lot of firepower for the station.

Brawler/Finisher: this is where you stack all the uniques for the highly destructive builds like Clonisher or Landmonition. More ship focus here with the intent of chasing particular ships. Fighter screen probably, but certain full bomber builds can also do well.

Special Objective Scorer: really this role belongs to the Brawler/Finisher type fleets. Both objectives are going to really be tough to score well against, especially when the Empire can easily place a token on 2 ISDs (pending fleets available) and hide the other 2 objective ships behind them. And vice versa, where the Rebels get a free extra 20 hull for the empire to punch through, in addition to an another healing spot that is denied to the Empire.

And yeah, those are the roles and archetypes I've thought up. Comments? Additions to the list? What role could you see yourself being best at? Does one look more fun than the other? Hardest/easiest role? Am I off my rocker?

I thought about this as well but more based around fleet roles. So in a 3v3...

The meat of the fleet: ISDs, gladiators and the like

The screen: Cruisers, VSDs, etc

The AIRBORNE....squadron heavy focus.

I think for the most part you want to build fleets each player is going to be good with. Obviously you want to build around your admiral, like you would in any fleet. I think if you focus too much on roles you will be too inflexible, especially if one of those fleets gets really smashed. now you can't defend, or attack, or whatever. I think getting too gimmicky is a trap.

I think for the most part you want to build fleets each player is going to be good with. Obviously you want to build around your admiral, like you would in any fleet. I think if you focus too much on roles you will be too inflexible, especially if one of those fleets gets really smashed. now you can't defend, or attack, or whatever. I think getting too gimmicky is a trap.

Not necessarily. In a 2v2, sure, being too gimmicky with only 2 fleets will be a trap, and I'd agree with you. But in a 3v3, you have 3 different players, whose play styles are probably different. You can assign roles based on those differences. "You, you love the squadron game. Think you can build a list to take advantage of the base defense objectives? Good. And you, you like your MSUs? Think you can build something good for objective scoring? Good."

It's not really pigeonholing to the extent that a fleet won't be good in other roles, so much as giving the player a mindset which allows them to embrace their part in the game. "Yeah, I was the base defender in that last campaign. Didn't lose a single base to the enemy. No big deal." I think it adds theme, and it allows a player to specialize in a particular mission set (and not to the detriment of other mission sets), which is beneficial to the team. It may get old if you play multiple campaigns in the same role, and that's when you try new roles.