Yeah, it's gonna be another one of those ideas.

While discussing the Squadron Command Plates the idea of having information readily available in the play area came up. Personally, I've never had an issue with squadron info being available, but ships have always been a bit of a nuisance. Now, I've never played at any event formal enough to require dials/cards/tokens in the play area next to the ship, but I hear that's a thing. I've seen a lot of card holders designed to facilitate the ease of placement, but they're all designed to sit directly next to the ship, or off the play area on the player's edge.

With that said, the idea of having information available on the ship itself got me thinking about how much I enjoyed Vassal's system where defense tokens, hull value, speed, and other elements are directly on the ship. Of course the biggest issue of using a device that does so in an actual game of Armada is that it would cover the card attached to the base, blocking arc lines and dice armaments making the game bore difficult to play.

But what if the device was attached to the support fin? The way I see it, those fins are easily large enough (at least on large ships) to support a little holder that could have slots for the defense tokens, command tokens or even a dial for speed and HP...

I sketched something up, obviously not a literal interpretation, but an idea.

Thoughts?

This would actually be kind of handy, as long as it didn't obstruct from seeing arc lines or line of sight dots, which might be hard on a small-based or even medium-based ship.

Just now, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

This would actually be kind of handy, as long as it didn't obstruct from seeing arc lines or line of sight dots, which might be hard on a small-based or even medium-based ship.

Very true, but there may be way around it, at this phase I'm just trying to gauge whether this is something people would want to use... lol we'll see

I find it... odd.

I mean, the entire point of your Squadron Dock was to avoid having to reach in, knock, bump about, replace, etc etc etc to minimise game impact.

This will have the total opposite effect. Constantly having to reach in and change and modify things there...

I mean, I salute the absolute creativity of it. But between the different heights of ships, mounting options (fin vs stalk), obscuring of ship detail... I think its going to take a lot of work (and possibly more than its worth) to actualise a compromise...

1 minute ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Very true, but there may be way around it, at this phase I'm just trying to gauge whether this is something people would want to use... lol we'll see

If it works out, I'd be interested in it (and I'm actually not a fan of Squadron Plates). Unlike the squadron plates, what these do is they would move more info about a ship to the ship itself on the table, which makes visually surveying the battlefield much easier when making decisions. The squadron plates, as handy as they are, move vital info from things on the table to off-table, making surveying the landscape much harder.


That being said, if the size issue can be resolved, as long as it was easy to pick-up and flip defense tokens without bumping or nudging ships, they would be great.

8 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

I find it... odd.

I mean, the entire point of your Squadron Dock was to avoid having to reach in, knock, bump about, replace, etc etc etc to minimise game impact.

This will have the total opposite effect. Constantly having to reach in and change and modify things there...

I mean, I salute the absolute creativity of it. But between the different heights of ships, mounting options (fin vs stalk), obscuring of ship detail... I think its going to take a lot of work (and possibly more than its worth) to actualise a compromise...

Well, there is actually an equal/opposite version of this... it was going to be a ship command plate that moved the shield dials to the cardholder and left proxies in their place to make ships more hands free. but the design was clumsy, and I could see how that could get very confusing, so I bailed on it. With all the conversations I've had about being able to identify all relevant info on the mat, this seemed to make sense.

Though, admittedly, you may be right, I imagine it would all depend on execution and design, but if it's something people may be interested in, it could be fun to design. lol

34 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

If it works out, I'd be interested in it (and I'm actually not a fan of Squadron Plates). Unlike the squadron plates, what these do is they would move more info about a ship to the ship itself on the table, which makes visually surveying the battlefield much easier when making decisions. The squadron plates, as handy as they are, move vital info from things on the table to off-table, making surveying the landscape much harder.


That being said, if the size issue can be resolved, as long as it was easy to pick-up and flip defense tokens without bumping or nudging ships, they would be great.

Getting a good look at the smaller bases I think the biggest issues I'll face are with the CR90, Neb-b and both flotillas, whose stands are just too small to fasten to.

But that doesn't mean they're impossible.

I'm thinking of resin casting a .25" extender off the bottom of the base that has a slot for the CR-90/neb-b peg, then adhering that to a vacuum formed piece of plastic designed to fit the underside of each ship. This piece could be designed to hold the 3 defense tokens almost flush with the CR90/neb itself on the left while leaving a single slot for a command token and a small dial for HP on the right. Or vise versa. The overall size of the piece should just barely overlap the base dimensions but would be at the height of the CR-90/neb-b model itself, and could easily be removed, all without obstructing the ships' arc card at all.


It's all plausible, I'd just have to work on a mold to do the resin casts and build one of those DIY thermoplastic vacuum form tables.

I have to admit that I saw the first sketch and immediately thought:

Why does that ship have a set of brass knuckles?

They play hardcore over there.

12 minutes ago, Greatfrito said:

I have to admit that I saw the first sketch and immediately thought:

Why does that ship have a set of brass knuckles?

"If your fleet were from where my fleet's from, it'd be freakin' dead." -MC30 Scout Frigate-

lol That's pretty funny.

The design is definitely subject to change here

Yeah, I've been trying to come up with a good solution to this myself since... pretty much day 1. Particularly the command tokens, which spend a lot of time just chilling on the bases, with lots of opportunity to fall off and get lost/forgotten about. Unfortunately, I'm not a particularly creative person, so I have no good solutions.

The more I think about it, the more I want some kind of electronic solution with LEDs that lets you adjust values from the side of the table, but displays them on the ship base. This would obviously not be a cheap solution, but would be the cleanest.

Just now, Ardaedhel said:

Yeah, I've been trying to come up with a good solution to this myself since... pretty much day 1. Particularly the command tokens, which spend a lot of time just chilling on the bases, with lots of opportunity to fall off and get lost/forgotten about. Unfortunately, I'm not a particularly creative person, so I have no good solutions.

The more I think about it, the more I want some kind of electronic solution with LEDs that lets you adjust values from the side of the table, but displays them on the ship base. This would obviously not be a cheap solution, but would be the cleanest.

Well, it may not be an issue for long. After the discussions I've had over my command plates, I'm looking at a tech solution to have LED lights and a small digital counter in the base of my squad infills. My tech guy seems confident that I can develop a hands free infill that will electronically display all the information needed on squads.

That said, that's all still very hypothetical, but should it turn out for my squadron command plates, you can bet I'd find a solution for ships... until then, I'm gonna try to do it the ole fashion way... thermoplastics and resin! lol

I was thinking of a similar thing for squads. A bracket that clips on the stem (like a lego man hand might) that holds a tiny little D6 (or D8). The die would be used to track the squad health instead of dial. I was trying to think how it could also track activation in an easy way, I thought it had the potential to make it possible to do the book keeping without having to pick the squad up, but still have the info on the field.

The challenge will be the receiver on the base. You'll have very limited space to work with, particularly on the squadron bases. Not that it can't be done technically, but finding an off-the-shelf solution could be a challenge.

12 minutes ago, homedrone said:

I was thinking of a similar thing for squads. A bracket that clips on the stem (like a lego man hand might) that holds a tiny little D6 (or D8). The die would be used to track the squad health instead of dial. I was trying to think how it could also track activation in an easy way, I thought it had the potential to make it possible to do the book keeping without having to pick the squad up, but still have the info on the field.

I believe LITKO actually already makes a squad base that holds a d6, but to me handling the squad at all still presents all the risks... it's gotta be hands free or what's the point lol

(http://www.litko.net/products/SW%3A-Armada,-Fighter-Squadron-Flight-Stand-(1).html#.WJzPj28rK70)

2 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

The challenge will be the receiver on the base. You'll have very limited space to work with, particularly on the squadron bases. Not that it can't be done technically, but finding an off-the-shelf solution could be a challenge.

Well, I have my sights on a digital display that's only .25" long and almost as wide, if I can design a very small chip to allow it to toggle between numbers and feed an LED into a separate toggle on the same board, it could be done. right now, that board may be my biggest set back... but, again, I haven't even begun to discuss this with my tech guy, so right now it's all theory.

My vote is for tracking command tokens, small hats. Since larger ships tend to higher command, they can wear more hats. Not sure what to do about the pelta title...

I thought of this a while ago too, it seems like such a simple solution in theory.

In practice, as Ard says, its a small space on some ships, and need to avoid blocking arc lines. Must be possible though.

2 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

I find it... odd.

I mean, the entire point of your Squadron Dock was to avoid having to reach in, knock, bump about, replace, etc etc etc to minimise game impact.

This will have the total opposite effect. Constantly having to reach in and change and modify things there...

I mean, I salute the absolute creativity of it. But between the different heights of ships, mounting options (fin vs stalk), obscuring of ship detail... I think its going to take a lot of work (and possibly more than its worth) to actualise a compromise...

This, perhaps oddly, is where I'm at on this. I object to the squad plates as they seem to make things more difficult to ascertain at a glance, but tend to prefer tokens be kept on the ship cards to declutter the play area and ease moving ships about. Fascinating.

A butterfly so it only ever sits in the broadside arcs....

12 minutes ago, AdmiralYor said:

My vote is for tracking command tokens, small hats. Since larger ships tend to higher command, they can wear more hats. Not sure what to do about the pelta title...

4 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

A butterfly so it only ever sits in the broadside arcs....

current front runner

10 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

This, perhaps oddly, is where I'm at on this. I object to the squad plates as they seem to make things more difficult to ascertain at a glance, but tend to prefer tokens be kept on the ship cards to declutter the play area and ease moving ships about. Fascinating.

In my mind, if properly executed, the token holder will be clutter free appear to be floating either next to the model or just below. We'll see, once I have a solid idea on the design I'll share it again, see what you think of it then. To me, knowing what each ship has for defenses, HP, and spare commands at a glance would be 100x more helpful than knowing whether a squad has activated or it's current condition.

If you make it from clear plastic you can still see the arcs and lasers should be able to go through it un-refracted. I'm indifferent about this design. I know some people follow the RRG to the letter and use their dials and tokens on the base of the ship, but my girlfriend just got me 6 command decks so I keep my dials and tokens on those. So I see command decks as a competitor with your product.

If you can't get clear plastic, I see this as a definite violation of the modification rules since you are modifying the function of the components, in this case, seeing the arcs on the ship template. Just something to keep in mind, as judges may rule them illegal. Also, the template may cover the "ID" slot where you place numbers and flag ship tokens, which again, can prevent either player from easily seeing it since it looks like it slides right above the slot.

Have you thought about recreating the fin and including some little "shelves" for the tokens to go on? This means you can also get tokens on the peg ships like the CR90 and flotillas. And it's tournament legal: "Ship fins or pegs (including the connecting pegs affixed to ship models) may be modified or replaced with a different connecting method."

Or you can create ones that have command token slots associated with the amount of command tokens they can hold. No need to use more plastic for 4 command tokens when we can only hold 3, and I don't think anyone would object to reducing the size (cheaper and looks better). Also, you can make the large base ones have slots for 4 defense tokens, since they are the only ones able to hold 4 D tokens except for the Arq. So again, you reduce size on the rest of the products. I'm not sure how your manufacturing process is, but hopefully you can create multiple designs without increasing cost, compared to a single price for a single design (I know some places want as few design changes as possible so they can streamline production).

Just throwing ideas out there to help you.

7 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Have you thought about recreating the fin and including some little "shelves" for the tokens to go on? This means you can also get tokens on the peg ships like the CR90 and flotillas. And it's tournament legal: "Ship fins or pegs (including the connecting pegs affixed to ship models) may be modified or replaced with a different connecting method."

It may be difficult to see, because these sketches are crap lol but this is actually the design. The "shelf" would fit on the support fin and inch or more off the cardboard as to leave the base unobstructed.

Actually, since this thread started I've reconceptualized the design to sit atop the fin as a fin extender that would branch out just past the model and leave the tokens seemingly floating to the right or left of the ship... completely legal in my mind and unobstructive. there will be more pictures to follow over the next few days...

But thank you, very much for your input!