the thing I dont like about the dreadnaught and quasar is that they can go imp/reb. what I recommended was the introduction of the clone wars factions. as for the venator look, see the last page of the wave 6 prediction thread. has a nice view of venators

The problem is i don't see them adding additional factions anytime soon, Chuntsinger. As many have suggested, it is easier to just take those clone wars ships and add them to the Rebel/Imperial factions. Several CIS and Republic ships found their way into Rebel hands, and most of the original Republic equipment was used by Imperial forces until phased out of service.

I also can see dual factions ships added into Armada. Obviously not an entire wave, as that WOULD kill demand, but perhaps one ship every wave or three.

I fully agree, thats why I left the option for imp/reb usage open.

11 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

Venator should be a large base. It's about 1200m, which is the length of both MC80s, and it gives Imps another large base. Otherwise you'll have 3 Rebel large ships, and still 1 Imp. I know the game doesn't have to be even, but I really would like another large ship for Imps that can be used in several roles and have many different upgrade slots.

Not to self-promote, but that's essentially the Venator proposal, from the thread Dras brought up I cited in the Wave 6 thread, though I can go repost them here if people want, along with what we came up with for the other items.

10 hours ago, Greatfrito said:

If I were handling Droid ships...

First, I would make Droid a positive keyword, instead of Negative. I think it's easier to balance around that, and work with it at the table.

Maybe something like:

• Droid ( when this ship is activated by a Squadron Command , its anti-ship and anti-squadron armament is increased by 1 blue die until the end of its activation )

Then make Droid fighters be cheaper and weaker than both TIE Fighters and Z-95s, but still come with Swarm . Give their big command ships incredibly high Squadron values, with other stats lowered appropriately. Or give a combat retrofit upgrade that specifically benefits the use of Droid ships - maybe something like the Liberty's "activate an additional squadron when you spend a token" effect.

I don't know where the heck you would get aces from for that faction, but the concept of droid ships at least is an interesting one.

To save you the trouble of discovering this yourself, we in the old custom thread discovered something of a floor in squadron pricing right in the range that is the TIE and Z-95. A blue anti-ship is still a blue anti-ship, and a five point Vulture squadron means you can put a metric ton of those accursed things on the table, and drown more or less any victim in a hail of fire. Aces we generally stuck to manned fighters, though we did toss around a concept similar to the CC unique squadrons that aren't aces.

9 hours ago, Greatfrito said:

I was brainstorming a "what if" on the assumption that they'd be their own faction, and you could deal with it accordingly. But yeah, even then, I think I'd rather use offensive retrofit upgrades to make Droid work than just boost the native squad value through the roof.

Something like making your " Droid Command Center " upgrade let you activate twice your squadron value worth of ships, but prevent you from activating any non-droid squadrons.

And I lean toward positive effects, just because I think it is "neater", and easier to manage. Really there's not much difference, either way.

It would require a lot of digging but this was along the lines of our work. Droid as I recall was worded such that it reduced speed when not activated by squadron command, and there was a "Droid Control Brain" or some such that dialed up your squadron value for Droid squadrons just as you suggest.

7 hours ago, Chuntsinger said:

This has definitely been the key issue to debate during the thread. I wonder how the reclucant class would work, I've always been intrigued by the look of it. I feel like it's basically an mc 30 type of ship. The droid keyword would be good to take to the rules developers to see what they think. It's these types of questions and debates that made me think of this thread. its supposed to be a big, broad, all encompasing idea.

We did that ship with red front arc, blue-black sides, speed 3, but atrocious agility. They were supposedly very dangerous but clunky ships, so interpret as you will.

thanks for all of the thoughts, really good to hear. Also, thanks for the info on the reclucant. I thought they were basically mc30's. anybody got any technical data on size and armament?

There are some interesting ideas here regarding the whole droid thing. I think GiledPalaeon makes a good point about fighters. Giving them a drawback to allow for a 5 point squad is all well and good. But when you can literally put 26 of them in a standard 400 point list, the shear numbers will smother the board. Grit will be nearly completely useless (it's not even great now). Imagine 26 blue dice being thrown, 1 at a time, at a ship. Shear weight of numbers will put anything down FAST. They would almost have to all be Heavy so their #'s won't completely kill anyone else's attempt at playing the squadron game, and maybe not have an anti-ship die? That seems harsh, but I can see SO MUCH room for abuse with a 5 point squadron.

Also, I really don't see the Dreadnought coming to Armada. It's an ugly ship, it's from Legends (which you can see they are trying to at least minimize how much they put out), and frankly it was supposed to be rather OLD even in Legends. The current Star Wars canon seems to really favor keeping the Imperial side having the same wedge ascetic, and I see no reason for them to turn from that to run ugly Dreadnoughts.

Personally, I would prefer they stay away from dual faction ships. One of the truly great things about Armada is that it's an asymmetric game that have been balanced well. I would prefer it stay that way. I WANT Rebels and Imperials do be different!

I do expect we'll see a Venator before too long though. They hold to the ascetic, give them a usable large base Imperial ship to go along side the ISD, and will have different enough stats to make them a worthwhile addition.

On 28 January 2017 at 0:45 AM, Xindell said:

Imagine 26 blue dice being thrown, 1 at a time, at a ship. Shear weight of numbers will put anything down FAST. They would almost have to all be Heavy so their #'s won't completely kill anyone else's attempt at playing the squadron game, and maybe not have an anti-ship die? That seems harsh, but I can see SO MUCH room for abuse with a 5 point squadron.

Keep in mind I am NOT disagreeing with you but...

a five point squadron with 2/3 health is about what this thread seems to be thinking of as a droid squadron yes? So in a standard 400 point game you could deploy 26 of them......

..... All of which would have a droid keyword which ( depending on what is decided for this keyword) would require them to be within a certain distance of a droid command ship- that would reduce their effectiveness by a ton. Compared to the Z-95s of which you could have 19 with three red die anti squad and anti ship capacity.

secondly, IMO I agree they shouldn't have a anti ship attack die, but their anti squad could be 1/2 black die ( buzz droids are nasty) or blue die.

next, if you had 26 of these flying around A) how much money did you spend, B) how many upgrades/ships did you drop to have them, and C) will still be tied up by 12 A-wings with counter two supported by Yavaris on a Neb-B escort or Denar in a flood of Tie's

So while I do agree it would be a bit much to have 26 squadrons on a field, you would have no aces and 130 points immediately would be taken off the total fleet. So there would be ways to abuse the droids but they wouldn't be 'abused' totally, just would create a new style of play ( which every wave introduces anyway)

Vulture droids were shown to be fast, but ARE older tech. So probably speed 4. 3 hull. They are never shown to take a hit. 1 blue anti-ship. Swarm. So essentially a TIE fighter before anti-squad

Two black dice actually puts them at 9 points or so.

CIS ships were scrapped or decommissioned after the war. Palpatine saw clearly that if he leaves any war tool lying around some rebellious group would be eager to pick it up and fight. That's why he was so harsh on the Colicoid factories as well. There was no separatist ships, vehicles or droids to mention and the scarce few that survived the purge wasn't enough to consider as a typical Rebel asset.

45 minutes ago, Norell said:

CIS ships were scrapped or decommissioned after the war. Palpatine saw clearly that if he leaves any war tool lying around some rebellious group would be eager to pick it up and fight. That's why he was so harsh on the Colicoid factories as well. There was no separatist ships, vehicles or droids to mention and the scarce few that survived the purge wasn't enough to consider as a typical Rebel asset.

the galaxy is a really big place. I can see one rebel cell or two finding handful of admirals who got the hell out of Dodge at the right time, but not enough for them to be regulars.

While this is true, what about the rebellion was a regular asset at any point in time, they used what they could get when they could get it. Also, many of the first rebels were sep holdouts. Hell, cassian was a seperatist. read the rogue one novel. Also, read tarkin, alot of my inspiration for this thread comes from those books, along with catalyst. Check out my mel's miniatures reaction thread in the painting subforum for some cool sep ships. to hell with plausibility, they look **** good.

Well, the manufacturing centers might have been shredded and/or nationalized, but I'd imagine there were plenty of holdouts that joined the Rebellion, considering both of them ultimately wanted fair rule of law (Separatists wanted to leave because of what they saw in a corrupted senate). Besides, when the droid armies were shut down, there was potential for entire salvage missions to recover all that dropped war material. Not all of it had to be black market, some of it could been alliance. We see the Rebels crew themselves going after a sepratist transport (running into real seperatists in the process, still....)

For Armada, I don't think we will ever see a CIS/Republic faction division. This has yet to happen in any of FFG's games, which seem firmly rooted in the most popular Galactic Civil War era, or an extension of the GCW (With First order/Resistance). If anything scum has been the exception, but there's just so much more for scum on the people (Imperial Assault) and starfighter (X-Wing) level and not so much for capital ship warfare. There will obviously be those who disagree with me and start listing off the long line of Zahn/Mandalorian ships as contrary evidence, but none of those ships are canon (mercifully) yet. Plus, there's no need to have a scum faction. Yet if there's going to be another faction, I think that'll be it.

That said I think CIS/Republic is going to be a fabrication of the fan community, which is nice in a way because there's a perfect excuse to modify some of the currently existing wave ships to represent older craft. The VSD needs help.

On the Droid craft issue, one thought I have is if it's necessary to need a new keyword for those droid fighters. It would be an opportunity to bring something to the game, but don't create a solution looking for a problem. The soft flight controller add-on doesn't make sense to me, considering there are other bonuses to keep increasing the attack rating (like flight controllers). What is the base on those droid fighters, as well? At 1 blue, you're wondering if it's worth trying to set up the control mechanic to start fielding these fighters. At 2, their natural buff goes up to 3, and with flight controllers it brings their AA value to 4 at whatever you've priced the fighters at being. Since they have swarm, they have a re-roll as well. So for something that can hit like an interceptor if the situation is right, we're aiming around 10-12 points, depending on other factors?

On 1/26/2017 at 1:51 PM, Chuntsinger said:

I see your points here, but remember, after episode 1 they realized how poop the control ships were for that roll and thus upgraded their computers to fix that problem. However, the idea in application to squadrons is actually a really cool idea.

despite luducris size, you have to do the entire ship. it would simply be wrong no to. and if they can scale up a cr90, they can scale down a lucrehulk

Mel's Lucrehulk hits the scale balance nicely. It looks big enough on the table, but isn't an impediment to play.

I think Id do the 'droid' keyword a bit differently.

Droid: When this squadron is activated by a ship you may also activate one additional squadron at distance one with the droid keyword as if it were activated by that ship. That squadron may not also use the droid keyword to activate any squadrons this turn.

And

Controlled: When this squadron is within medium range of a friendly ship with a squadron value of three or higher increase its anti squadron armament by one blue die.

in essance, a vic class (3 squad value) can actually activate 6 droid ships. that's pretty cool. the controlled funtion is like a gallant haven type of upgrade to keep your squads close. the ships used are only for an analogy. no vic class would ever activate vulture droids. tie droids however...

Seems like relay would work well with droid keyword.

FWIW, we went about it like this (stats were only a first pass, reasonably balanced but only against Republic squadrons):

Droid X : During the Squadron Phase, your speed is reduced to X.

Droid Control Array :

Modification

[Squadron]: You may activate an additional number of squadrons equal to your squadron value.

You cannot activate squadrons without Droid .

Edit: In case it's not immediately obvious, the way DCA works is, a ship with squadron value X can activate X+1 droid squadrons with a token, 2X with a command, or 2X+1 with both. This can turn a ship with a moderate squadron value into a dedicated droid carrier, reducing the need for obscenely high stats on CIS ships.

that's pretty cool, not gonna lie. i like how the keyword encourages dedicated squad commands