Unless I am trying out a specific concept, I trend towards well-rounded fleets. That's true for both tournament, campaign, and casual play. I like a well-rounded fleet as it gives me tools to compete in a game no matter what my opponent brings. I also typically build my fleets to function whether going first or second. Looking back at my recent fleets I've found that the following points ratios have been a really good starting point for me when I build a fleet:

• 60% Ships
• 20% Squadrons
• 10% Upgrades
• 10% Admiral

Which works out to 240 points in ships, 80 in squadrons, 40 for upgrades, and 40 for my admiral. No admiral actually costs 40, so I can use the leftover points there to add to whichever category needs some more room.

Now, these are starting points only and can certainly be modified to fit whatever I want to accomplish with the fleet I am putting together.

Posting as I am curious if anyone else follows a similar pattern?

I spend less in squadrons (~15%) and more in upgrades (~15% as well), other than that it's pretty much the same

It's too regimented for me to think about it that way. I just think about what ships I want, slap a list together and go have fun.

I guess it's good I don't play tournaments, huh?

I've done a lot of max squad fleets, with 3-4 ships loaded with upgrades.

Dual Vic II (GT, SFO, SA, and LS + Motti) and Goz with BCC with ~130 points of Fireball madness.

Liberty (SA, LS, ET, Raymus, H9) and Yavaris (FCT FC), 2 GR-75 (BCC + Dodonna) and ~130 points of B-Wing, X-Wing, HWK madness.

Recently, I've dropped to 70 points of squads, 15 points of upgrades, Sato, and the rest are ships to a total of 400 points.

5 minutes ago, Xindell said:

It's too regimented for me to think about it that way. I just think about what ships I want, slap a list together and go have fun.

I guess it's good I don't play tournaments, huh?

You'd probably do just fine in a tournament. I just found that if I don't start with a structure of some kind I end up with a mess that has huge holes in it.

I use a completely opposite method.

1.) I try to identify a theme, ie, how this fleet should function. Is it going to use bombers, a clever combo of upgrades, long range or close range focus? That type of stuff.

2.) Once I have an idea, I try to select a balance of ships that will allow for for this theme.

3.) Activation count is more important than most are willing to admit, so I adjust my ships to always try to get at least 4 activations, but I have been known to run 3.

4.) Fill in the absolutely necessary upgrades first. Anything that is needed to make the theme work.

5.) Fill fighters with allotted space or to fill remaining points. Fighters will be determined by the theme of the fleet.

6.) Final tweaks and variants. Fill in extra upgrade cards that will help the fleet, add extra fighters, or change out upgrades to make similar fleets.

Boom, fleet completed.

I've found in wave 5, the "optimal" lists have ships lightly upgraded, with some squads, and more ships, whether for activations or support (Comm Net, etc.) Or you have ships with no upgrades, some squads, and a giant monster that has every slot filled.

I will say that I try not to Christmas Tree my ships up too much. I am the guy that tends to even run my Demo with only the title and OE. I would rather get that 4th activation, even if it means less upgrades. I rarely hit max with fighters, usually ending in the 50-80 points range. But that's not preplanning, it just kind of ends up that way.

I haven't really broken down the ratio of my builds. I think I might go back to my previous builds and put some numbers to the builds just to see what my percentages are.

My list building rules:

1. Pick an admiral.

2. Decide which ships work best with that admiral. My usual minimum is 4 ships.

3. Decide which type of squadron list is needed for those ships. Do I need a squadron screen, bombers, or balanced list.

4. Use leftover points for upgrades to the ships. If I feel I "need" a particular upgrade, I then go back to the squadron list and cut corners if I need to. Maybe drop a unique ace to a generic for example.

5. Pick the best objectives for the list I created.

6. Over analyze the build for hours tweaking as needed...LOL.

5 minutes ago, itzSteve said:

6. Over analyze the build for hours tweaking as needed...LOL.

Normally, as I said above, I will slap together my list pretty quickly and just go with it. However, if I don't have a game coming up and get into the "I'm bored, lets build some lists" mindset, then I totally am guilty of this too! Which is so dumb because in these cases they are lists I will likely never play anyway!

1 minute ago, Xindell said:

Normally, as I said above, I will slap together my list pretty quickly and just go with it. However, if I don't have a game coming up and get into the "I'm bored, lets build some lists" mindset, then I totally am guilty of this too! Which is so dumb because in these cases they are lists I will likely never play anyway!

Exactly!!!

Rather than think about points, I think in terms of this very loose, top level idea: "how will I apply damage." There's any number of shapes that can take: "Reliably at long range via TRC's on Nebulon-B's." "Up close with black dice via MC30c's." "I want to fly bigaft ISD's into someone's face." "I want Rebel bombers bombing like there's a party over Scarif and everyone's invited." "I want Gozanti Vader trololol." Sometimes it's a combination of those things: like, I want bombers and Sato-ordnance-shennanigans from a scout frigate.

I start putting one or two of those things in, and what should go in the rest kind of naturally fills out if I'm looking for the list to make sense.

Sometimes, however, I just put 3 ISD's in the list and my options are then so drastically reduced the rest of the list is easy.

3 minutes ago, DUR said:

Rather than think about points, I think in terms of this very loose, top level idea: "how will I apply damage." There's any number of shapes that can take: "Reliably at long range via TRC's on Nebulon-B's." "Up close with black dice via MC30c's." "I want to fly bigaft ISD's into someone's face." "I want Rebel bombers bombing like there's a party over Scarif and everyone's invited." "I want Gozanti Vader trololol." Sometimes it's a combination of those things: like, I want bombers and Sato-ordnance-shennanigans from a scout frigate.

I start putting one or two of those things in, and what should go in the rest kind of naturally fills out if I'm looking for the list to make sense.

Sometimes, however, I just put 3 ISD's in the list and my options are then so drastically reduced the rest of the list is easy.

I shotgun like that too. What I found was that by the time I was done tweaking I often ended up back at about that same ratio I typically use. Whether I start or end there I seem to have a fleet building comfort zone.

I always seem to hover around 80pts of fighters, even if I vow to go "fighter heavy". I always feel like I'll never offset the damage a ship can lay down vs using those points on fighters.

It's really in my head though. I've seen fighters beat my lists up in the past.

I'm not very good at this.

I'm tending to go 'back to basics' at the moment with non-optimised ship-focused build.

Heavy on ships, (70-75%)

light on upgrades (5-8%)

Cheaper admiral (5-8%)

Light on Squadrons overall with a focus on anti-squadron-Squadrons. So fewer bombers, more 'counter'. (10-20%)

Often, but not always, I start my build with squads. After I've found an appropriate squad set (generally about 90 to 120 points) I put my admiral in and then go about adding ships. This way I build the ships to compliment the squads and fit their activations. Usually this is the case if I'm building a rhymerball or autoball because the squads need to operate as one entity.

I tend to begrudgingly remove ships and upgrades to squeeze in a minimum fighter screen, while muttering darkly about it the whole time.

Joking aside, I tend to throw together what I ideally want, and then prune it back down to the relevant points level, same way I build decks for LCGs.

1 hour ago, herod1204 said:

I tend to begrudgingly remove ships and upgrades to squeeze in a minimum fighter screen, while muttering darkly about it the whole time.

Joking aside, I tend to throw together what I ideally want, and then prune it back down to the relevant points level, same way I build decks for LCGs.

..... same.

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My tips:

4-5 ships required nowadays. 3 is ok for larges if you play well, 7 is possible nowadays in many builds.
squadrons, minimum 6, minimum 70 points, realistically more like 90-110 required. (we can make an exception for 7 ship MSU)
Admiral has to be very relevant to the build.

Generally upgrades are cute, but less works quite well usually. less works better than more.

I'm in the super-casual "What Sounds Fun (and how can I make it work with what I own)?" end of things.

A lot of my stuff is limited primarily by my collection (mostly everything now, but not very many duplicates).

No set ratio or order of things, Though in even our tiny little "meta" of two or three people, running lite on squadrons isn't an option.

well, looking at the W5 regionals data, and counting the cost for the lower cost version of a given ship, 2/3 of fleets are between 47-64% ships. (median 55%). The most ship heavy was 326 (5 ARQ, 1 GSD), and the most ship-light was 156 (ARQ, GSD, 2x GOZ). (both of those from Boston, for those of you keeping score)

I'm not sure I can quite express how I build lists. I know I like to talk about buildings lists a lot and what ideas go well together, so I suppose if someone managed to gather all my posts and read everything I've written on the subject, they'd have a pretty decent idea (maybe better than I have about myself) on how I construct lists. Here's a decent stab at it.

We generally have some idea going into list construction exactly what works presently. Even if a new wave comes out, we're never exactly right back at the beginning. Truthiness showed that B-wings worked in wave 2; wave 4 opened with a couple of B-wing lists winning some major tournaments. Wave 5 opened with a couple of B-wing lists doing well in some tournaments. Granted, they were never exactly alike. New ugprades mean new tools, but on the whole, the basic concept is still in place. 8xYT2400 worked in Q's national's list, but then got updated in a different ship/commander direction for wave-4, but there's still a key concept of attempting to completely win the squadron game. I'd also be curious if there are some alternate ways of doing that one now that wave 5 is out. All of this long-winded mess to say that I start by looking at the concepts that I know work. The key is to focus on the concepts, not on the units.

From there, it is often a matter of matching a commander to some ships and creating a core concept to a fleet. Generally speaking, I experiment a bit with each wave but have a core set of list concepts that I come back around to. I think the Madine Liberty concept I played through Wave 4 is a good example. There are wave 5 variants I've experimented with, and the only open question is what new possibilities emerge in wave-5 that threaten it more seriously. Right now, I'd say a lot of my thinking seems to revolve around the squadron game, and the fact that I'm either playing into it or trying to figure out how to play against it occupies a lot of my thought in planning.

I do think there's something to be said for 80 well thought-out squadron points. I've used that range to good effect in the past.

I start with 5 Ships and Max Squadrons and edit from there adding upgrade and reducing ships for bigger ships or more upgrades but always Max Squadrons. If I had the money I would do 19 Z95s.

I tend to find a combo id like to try out and spin from there. For example, Vader as my admiral in CC where the max points are 500?! Sign me up!

I like the idea of norra wexley giving xwings 3 side faces of 2 damage on the antiship die. Add in a bomber command and I'm a happy camper. So I throw in Dodonna since I'm fishing for crits. Then I fill in the holes.

If I run squads, I'm going to run all of them. If I run ships, there probably won't be a squad in site. Our area has a pretty squadron heavy meta, so 60-80 pts of squadrons might buy you 1 turn, tops, if you try to slow them down.

Themes are very important, pick something your fleet does and do it really well.

Generally activiations 4 will do. They only really help until the fleets are engaged, but favourable engagement is nice. 5 if it fits.

Everytime someone talks about needing a full 134 of squadrons because a smaller number is relatively useless or that not running squadrons isn't an option in their meta I twitch uncontrollably. Once. Just one twitch.

IS THAT NOT CONCERNING TO YOU

ahh. *screaming into the void.