Delay

this ship activates after squadron phase before status phase (multiple ships using Delay follow 1st player, 2d player convention)

2 minutes ago, OgRib said:

Delay

this ship activates after squadron phase before status phase (multiple ships using Delay follow 1st player, 2d player convention)

Urgh, after watching a 6x SW7 CR90B Rieekan + Rogue game... I hate this already.. Not that it really changes much...

Maybe something like Battlestations! Double your anti-squadron armament, or gain counter 2. A token would give counter 1.

There would be quite the opportunity cost to using Delay, no navigate or concentrate fire. It would give an outnumbered player 2 another tactic when dealing with high activation lists.

but I'm just spitballing, it might suck in actual play

This is an incredibly difficult subject for us to approach. I like the idea and thought process, but you are trying to implement a new mechanic into an established game, where as upgrades modify or expand the mechanics.

I haven't really seen any ideas that are original, more like ideas that we already have upgrades/mechanics for.

Taunt- Escort

Communication-Comms Net

Docking- Repair/Space Station-ish

Scanning- Director Isard (bet no one uses that card anyway (except Dras who admitted to it once) so this command seems pointless.) and Slicer Tools

Defensive/Evade - Evade. We already have this. Not sure how you can or would want to expand an evade command. Also, we have ECM which allows you to spend tokens anyway.

Delay - eh. We already have activation delay from flotillas

I'm not saying these ideas are bad or anything, but we are still thinking inside the box. We have these type of mechanics already, and the majority of the upgrades influence the commands we will use. Demo will use Nav n CF. It has ET and OE so it wants to move fast and reroll lots of dice. Interdictor has high Eng value, so it wants to repair a lot and transfer shields with PE. The Liberty title wants you to have squad tokens.

We need a new idea that goes beyond these 4 mechanics, and would also create upgrades associated with that new command. One of the issues with this is balancing the new command with every ship, which I think is near impossible. There are too many variables to account for. So what about a new command that is associated with specific ships or group of ships, or upgrades that grant a new command?

Stealth Field/Generator- Can only be attached to small ships - Stealth Command: You cannot be the target of an attack unless it is at medium-close range. You cannot declare any attacks this round.

For this to be most effective, it has to be activated first, but can also be countered by getting your ships at medium range. You can no longer get flanked by Demo because you already know where it is.

Assault - Large ship only - Assault Command: Temporarily set your speed dial to 0 until the end of the round. After you roll your attack pool, you may add half the number of dice in your attack pool, to your attack rounded up. You may only add dice already in your attack pool. You do not execute a maneuver this round.

ISDs and MC80s just got a whole lot scarier. This is a major swing command. You get a whole lot of dice, but you are literally a sitting duck. Any return fire is going to hurt. Easy way to abuse this is with activation advantage, but also easy to counter with squads and just staying outside of the nasty arcs.

Intelligence/Intel/I got the Death Star plans - Flagship only - Intel Command: Whenever this ship is associated (destroying ships, attacking, picking up tokens) with scoring VPs, add 50% rounded up until the end of the round.

This makes your objectives even more valuable. It is also a gamble with some objectives, like Most Wanted or Advanced Gunnery. If you can deal enough damage to kill the ship and you revealed this command, you get more VP. Or you get more VP from Fire Lanes or Intel Sweep. And as an added bonus, you have another reason to equip your commander on a ship that will be doing something besides running away. You wanted theme? I give you theme.

These ideas are really hard to come up with. Typically I can come up with ideas relatively quickly...

On 2/5/2017 at 11:03 AM, Nostromoid said:

I think it's part of why we see big juggernaut ships struggle against a handful of small ships. That one Brace token on your ISD is little comfort against two or three MC30s.

Possibly the "Fifth Command" could be something like "Action Stations - Ready one exhausted defence token" and the corresponding token could be spent for any card effect that requires you to spend or discard a token.

I'd thought about making it recover or ready a defence token, with the token version being ready only. But if my ISD could recover or ready a defense token on turn 4, 5, and 6 as a native ability, it would be disgusting.

hyperspace out.

The 5th Command - Emergency damage control

Discard dial, forgo attacking, remove all command tokens on this ship, all turns limited to 1 click (unless already worse)

You may remove one face up or face down damage card for every upgrade card you discard plus you may gain your engineering points to spend as normal but may not improve total amount of shields currently on the ship by more than 1 per facing.

Brace For Impact!!!

Strategic: able to use any 1 of the 4 commands at its token value.

This is really a question of what do ships do?

They fly around - Navigate

They shoot things - CF

They repair themselves - Repair

And they direct Squadrons around - Squad

Come up with something else they do that isn't already taken care of by defense token of upgrades and you'll be on the right track.

Personally, things like boarding actions or planetary invasions/bombardments come to mind.

Even in that regard, I'd argue that PlanetaryBombardment is just Shooting Things... And Planetary Invasions are just directing Squads around - usually they're bigger and slower and filled with more meat-products.. But still...

Only the Boarding Action would be applicable - and honestly, i still think thats best handled with an Upgrade Card, if its ever even possible with the timeframe and siatuations we've got... Personally, I find it a bit much in the limited game time we have, as it is.

Also, any kind of boarding action that I can think of in Star Wars only happened after a ship was already incapacitated or captured (ie: 'destroyed' in game terms). A shuttle going slow enough to safely do any kind of forced docking would be a sitting duck for any functional point defense weapons. Also, isn't there some basis for the proposition that shields prevent direct contact with the ship? I mean, ultimately this isn't 40K or BFG. No boarding torpedoes and/or space marines please. If anything it would be best as a red objective (as others have said). Like this:

The second player selects a ship from the first player's fleet. That ship becomes an objective ship. If that ship is destroyed, place an objective marker where the ship was last located. If a ship controlled by the second player ends it's activation at range one of the objective token, the second player receives X victory points. If the ship is not destroyed at the end of the game, the first player gets X victory points.

Obviously it would need some tweaking to keep the first player from just hypering out that ship when it's close to death (maybe switch it to, if the ship leaves play while an opposing ship is within X distance).

How about "Hard about" , An emergency turn, basically a violent turn either to port or starboard to avoid a collision or a ram

or

"Emergency power now", pushing the drive system into "red line'' to temporarily increase speed by two, good for avoiding a

targeting solution, or a ram.

4 hours ago, stuh42asl said:

How about "Hard about" , An emergency turn, basically a violent turn either to port or starboard to avoid a collision or a ram

or

"Emergency power now", pushing the drive system into "red line'' to temporarily increase speed by two, good for avoiding a

targeting solution, or a ram.

Sounds like one needs flying practice as Nav kind of does both these, or at least enough of them it is redundant (I don't feel redundant commands would be good at all)

32 minutes ago, Darthain said:

Sounds like one needs flying practice as Nav kind of does both these, or at least enough of them it is redundant (I don't feel redundant commands would be good at all)

Exactly, we don't need redundant, which is why I tried to go for commands that are not offensive, defensive, or positioning, but more of a support command such as scanning (although there really is no hidden information to scan), and some other support that doesn't move squadrons around in a offensive manner. Like a defensive support such as docking.

Abandon Ship!

If destroyed this turn, its worth half points!

So if we look at the values on a ship's card, we see that every value has a matching command except one. The navigation chart matches the navigation command, the attack values are matched to concentrate fire, squadrons go to squadrons, and repair to repair. The one missing is the command value itself. So my take on it would be:

Reassess: Spend your dial to choose new commands for any of your command dials. Before revealing your command dial you may spend a reassess token to chose a new command on your top command dial.

so either this or a command command that does it for other ships in the fleet.

2 hours ago, Irokenics said:

Abandon Ship!

If destroyed this turn, its worth half points!

How did you get back on the ship next turn?

7 hours ago, Irokenics said:

Abandon Ship!

If destroyed this turn, its worth half points!

Problem with that is it is along the same lines as Jump to Hyperspace. Meaning, the command is only used once. The commands both dials and tokens are tactical commands. If it were going to be a dial command you would be able to use it more than once per game.

For abandon ship you could simply in a campaign if your ship was destroyed before activation then discard your dial to try and save all commanders, officers, support, and weapons team. And there will be some sort of roll off to see which one made it.

I like to assume that dials are the orders the XO gives to operate the ships (as the XO is in charge of all operations) and tokens are standby commands direct from the Captain ("on my command"). Tokens are not as intensive as dials as dials are Standard Operating Procedure and tokens are Direct Orders.

22 hours ago, FatherTurin said:

Also, any kind of boarding action that I can think of in Star Wars only happened after a ship was already incapacitated or captured (ie: 'destroyed' in game terms). A shuttle going slow enough to safely do any kind of forced docking would be a sitting duck for any functional point defense weapons. Also, isn't there some basis for the proposition that shields prevent direct contact with the ship? I mean, ultimately this isn't 40K or BFG. No boarding torpedoes and/or space marines please. If anything it would be best as a red objective (as others have said). Like this:

The second player selects a ship from the first player's fleet. That ship becomes an objective ship. If that ship is destroyed, place an objective marker where the ship was last located. If a ship controlled by the second player ends it's activation at range one of the objective token, the second player receives X victory points. If the ship is not destroyed at the end of the game, the first player gets X victory points.

Obviously it would need some tweaking to keep the first player from just hypering out that ship when it's close to death (maybe switch it to, if the ship leaves play while an opposing ship is within X distance).

Certainly within the old PC tie fighter games there were specialist stormtrooper assault shuttles & in the comic republic commandos stormed an imperial ship or station.

The armada shipyard site had developed an interesting boarding mechanism that seemed simple & easy to implement.

On 2/10/2017 at 6:38 AM, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

So if we look at the values on a ship's card, we see that every value has a matching command except one. The navigation chart matches the navigation command, the attack values are matched to concentrate fire, squadrons go to squadrons, and repair to repair. The one missing is the command value itself. So my take on it would be:

Reassess: Spend your dial to choose new commands for any of your command dials. Before revealing your command dial you may spend a reassess token to chose a new command on your top command dial.

so either this or a command command that does it for other ships in the fleet.

I feel like that's way too good with Tarkin. He just always hands out Reassess tokens, and then having a high command value stops being a mixed blessing and just becomes a question of how many tokens you can store on turns that you don't want to change your command dials. If you aren't using Tarkin, it's a fairly weak command because it does nothing until the turn after you reveal it. It would be the best token and the worst dial, basically. I'm not sure I'd ever use it except to grab the token for later, although it would be my default pick for my first or second command every game.

Then again we are talking in hypotheticals, so if Armada had ever had a fifth command it's safe to assume that upgrades would have had costs or effects that properly accounted for the fifth command. So maybe Tarkin would say you can't choose Reassess. Or maybe ships would have higher command values to account for the core mechanics giving you a way to change your mind, so you'd see ships with four or five command. I thought this idea was stupid at first but now that I'm imagining how Armada would look if this was a thing from day one I think it's one of the better suggestions in this thread.