Ethically I'd say you're more obligated to help your team than you are to make every game enjoyable for your opponent.

I see nothing wrong here.

Yes, people could cry "metagamer" with your knowledge of the other battle turning but, there is going to be communication between task forces. It is entirely possible you, as the fleet admiral, received communications indicating the other battle was turning. As for the evasive nature of the battle. It was up to YOU to come at HIM and offer battle? Nonsense.

I heard a comedian joke once about bombing campaigns; the enemy asks, "Why don't you come down here and fight like men?!" and the response is, "Because we don't have too!"

I'm normally the kind of player that prizes sportsmanship and "ethics" in tabletop gaming, but I think in this case your friend has to temper his expectations to the environment you're all playing in. When I'm playing casually I don't feel bad for calling out a player for a **** move, but that changes a lot in a tournament environment and I think it has to change in the campaign as well. One-off, casual games encourage you to play around and maybe jump in when you shouldn't but, as has been pointed out, the campaign has emphasis on the LONG game that can encourage defensive or evasive behavior over your usual style.

Plus it's not just a game about big ships slugging it out, no matter what some people think. It's a game about fleet warfare, and sometimes that warfare means playing it safe so that you can win the overall war. My two cents.

Still shocking to me how very few posters seem to know that the Defender (Player 2) always wins ties and that the Original Poster resolved this very, very wrong. Once you realize that, the issue of an attacking force appearing and running from combat in order to kill a base and score bonus campaign points goes away.

Yet we've got dozens of posters siding with the OP and telling him that his opponent is just sour grapes, yet almost no one telling the OP he is wrong about the rules.

Curious.

40 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Still shocking to me how very few posters seem to know that the Defender (Player 2) always wins ties and that the Original Poster resolved this very, very wrong. Once you realize that, the issue of an attacking force appearing and running from combat in order to kill a base and score bonus campaign points goes away.

Yet we've got dozens of posters siding with the OP and telling him that his opponent is just sour grapes, yet almost no one telling the OP he is wrong about the rules.

Curious.

I think its less to the overarching point. OP's question is framed in light of this specific set of circumstances sure, but its more about whether employing such tactics are ethical with the assumed givens at the time. Of course they should address the fact they misinterpreted the rules, but the broader "is it ok for me to refuse engagment because I think its the best way to win even though its much less fun" is the heart of the matter of the post.

Ethically you are in the clear. You did nothing unethical or illegal so no worries.

Although I would add that it is a game and the point of a game, especially a gaming group is for everyone to have fun. I probably wouldn't stick around in a gaming group with you if you refused to engage unless it made RP sense for the scenario. IE if you were a fleet trying to run a blockade it would make sense that you wanted to stay disengaged as much as possible but if you are a player defending a base and won the match because you stayed disengaged I wouldn't find that very fun.

He did cross the line with name calling unless of course it was just good nature ribbing but I do agree with his sentiment that showing up just to be dicked around is not fun at all.

Edit: also note that this comes from my perspective. I found a group of friends who play games the way I like to have fun and that is to use them as a narrative device. We have a facebook group where we write up after action reports detailing our games from an in universe perspective. We run thematic fleets instead of trying to come up with the best combos or even the most efficient fleets. We do this because we find it fun. I probably wouldn't play in your campaign not because you did anything wrong or unethical but because from what you said we are looking to get different things out of the campaign and those things can be mutually exclusive. One of my groups house rules is that theme trumps all.

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Still shocking to me how very few posters seem to know that the Defender (Player 2) always wins ties and that the Original Poster resolved this very, very wrong. Once you realize that, the issue of an attacking force appearing and running from combat in order to kill a base and score bonus campaign points goes away.

Yet we've got dozens of posters siding with the OP and telling him that his opponent is just sour grapes, yet almost no one telling the OP he is wrong about the rules.

Curious.

This was something our entire group was misinformed about. We had two CC events running in parallel, and the group leader was misinformed I suppose. Fortunately I ended up engaging that opponent enough to earn points, still, he wouldn't have been happy had the match continued as an evasive farce. lol

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

... yet almost no one telling the OP he is wrong about the rules.

Curious.

Yeah, like Maddy said, you sorta grasped onto something that felt peripheral to the main issue (to us). It's CC, there's already house rules put into place. Its an issue but not 'the' issue.

I agree with swusn in spirit, but I'm one of the types of players who thinks it's thematic to throw a force at an opponent just to pin them down and tie them up to save my valuable friends and comrades.

"Only the fighters are attacking, I wonder what those Star Destroyers are waiting for." ...

"Hold here."

"We're not going to attack?"

"I have my orders from the Emperor, himself. He has something special planned for them, we only need to keep them from escaping."

I mean, ethically and everything you're OK. You played to win (or not because you were 1st player?) and no one will blame you for that.

But, I kind of feel for the player you played against.

I mean, if someone invites me over to play Armada, that includes 10 minutes to pack things up, 10-15 minutes to get there, 30 minutes to set everything up, then another 90-120 minutes to play the game. That's a whole evening or afternoon for a single game.

Considering my own tight schedule, if my opponent spends the entire evening evading and doing maneuvers that prevent any form of combat, I would have been salty as well.

I say people are quick to judge the other player. I'm not saying you did wrong, but I can understand your friend's frustration.

Were you not supposed to know what was happening on the other tables?

I think thats a pretty important distinction to make if your campaign games are supposed to be played without knowing the outcomes/status of your compatriots games or if its all considered open and free information to wander over and see how your team mates are doing.

1 hour ago, PartyPotato said:

Were you not supposed to know what was happening on the other tables?

I think thats a pretty important distinction to make if your campaign games are supposed to be played without knowing the outcomes/status of your compatriots games or if its all considered open and free information to wander over and see how your team mates are doing.

No, it was a relaxed CC campaign. Players were allowed to know how other games were going. No real concern for metagaming there.

What sorts of things can you really learn about other games that would actually impact the way you play your game? Yes, you are teams, but you're still largely left to your own devices most of the time. You're getting the same resource and refit points, but other than one or two points of remainder, you're not sharing anything.

I suppose a lot of it comes down to the spirit in which the game is being played. What annoys me more than anything else in gaming (board games, card games, war games, whatever) is being held to some sort of higher standard than my opponent, by my opponent. Tactics and strategies that are OK for him or her to use are suddenly unfair when I use them.

On 1/24/2017 at 2:19 PM, Darth Sanguis said:

He had enough resources to repair his ship, but not enough to fit them with upgrades. House rules for the CC event we ran let players reallocate resources between other players, so I dumped all my resources into my teammates fleet to outfit it completely. Leaving mine repaired, but sparse.

12 hours ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

What sorts of things can you really learn about other games that would actually impact the way you play your game? Yes, you are teams, but you're still largely left to your own devices most of the time. You're getting the same resource and refit points, but other than one or two points of remainder, you're not sharing anything.

In this specific example, they are playing a house rule that leaves them much less "left to your own devices" as they are allowing sharing of resources. So, knowing that someone on your team just lost an ISD and will have at minimum 55 or 60 points of unscarring to do after the round is significant. It may well make you want to play more conservatively with your own fleet, as the op did. Does that mean there was some sort of unethical conduct going on? I would say no. If the campaign was relaxed and knowledge of the other games wasn't something that was intended to be withheld, then there is absolutely nothing unethical going on here.

As others have pointed out, this may not have actually been a viable tactic since it appears there may have been a misunderstanding about who would win a game when no points are earned by either side, but that is secondary to the point. Knowledge of other games is allowed in their campaign. The op used his knowledge of what was going on to impact how he played as a strategy to help his team. While I can see being annoyed as the opponent, there is nothing inherently unethical about it. Frankly, he is trying to do best by his teammates, which I would consider not only ethical, but smart.

All that said, I would probably be a bit grumpy if I was the opponent as well. But at least that meant all of MY ships were healthy and I could proceed to do lots of upgrading before the next round.