2 minutes ago, Tirion said:

disagree as usual

the development time of each wave means that these were in dev way before.

Just as likely that the IA errata was, too.

Not necessarily saying that the flotillas were in response to the IA errata. More likely both dev teams recognized the same problem was coming up in both games, cross-talked, and came up with their own solutions. The flotilla solution is mechanically very similar to the IA errata, it's just 1) dual-purpose, 2) more thematic, and 3) has a cost associated.

Honestly the ship design seems to balance itself out because point per point an ISD II is well worth 3 CR-90 Bs in battle. If it were activation all at a turn I would put my money on the ISD taking out all 3. however with the whole Activation thing now having more activation hence the small ships helps out because now they have an advantage using their numbers to react and gain initiative over the larger and more ponderous ships. As for flotillas it is no secret they are for the squadron game, but if you take a look at it with out them the big ships or the ships that ignore the squadron game like the MC-30 will be outclassed and have no place in the meta.

Flotillas were always going to happen. This isn't a home-brew sci-fi game where the designers can simply create new ships willy-nilly, new releases need to be established in the lore of the game and signed off on by LFL, so having iconic ships that appeared on screen in various movies or TV shows was ALWAYS going to mean those ships turn up in the game.

But I do think the designers failed to account for the fact that cheaper ships allow more activations. Admittedly it's a very hard thing to balance since the advantage only comes with spammed activations and the only way to counter that would be to introduce an activation cost (such as, for every ship you have beyond the third, add 10 points cumulatively) or something like that.

Or, the most elegant way to do it would have been to simply allow the player with the least activations to pass and equal number of times as the difference between activation counts. You have three activations and I have six, you can pass three times. You have five and I have 7, you can pass twice, etc. Big ships pay extra points for all the things they get. The better attacks, the more hull and shields, the more upgrade slots. But they don't get a discount (IMO) for the loss in activations you have to pay in order to fly them.

8 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

Also, it's hard to say if this is actually a problem. Everyone uses flotillas (isn't it over 80%?). So if everyone uses the "OP strat", is it still a problem?

Yes. It is still a problem. Your comment amounts to "if every Imperial fleet runs Demolisher, then all Imperial fleets are balanced." The mentality of "if card/strategy A is kicking your but, use it back" is indicative of unhealthy game balance. If a strategy or card is dominant to the point of alienating any fleet which does not use it, it is not balanced.

I am personally uncertain how I feel about the change flotillas add to the game. I am certain about the idea in your comment though.

Start flying 2 cr90b's with engine techs and reinforced blast doors. They can pull their weight agsinst large ships, but more importantly walk all over small ship spam.

The solution is here. It works.

11 hours ago, Church14 said:

Yes. It is still a problem. Your comment amounts to "if every Imperial fleet runs Demolisher, then all Imperial fleets are balanced." The mentality of "if card/strategy A is kicking your but, use it back" is indicative of unhealthy game balance. If a strategy or card is dominant to the point of alienating any fleet which does not use it, it is not balanced.

I am personally uncertain how I feel about the change flotillas add to the game. I am certain about the idea in your comment though.

There is a huge difference between Demo and flotillas. Everyone uses flotillas because they are cheap and have amazing utility, you can have multiple, and they are available to both sides. People use Demo because it allows you to break the most important mechanic in the game - shoot then move. Demo is just good, but you can only have 1, and only 1 side can have it. There was a lot of discussion if Demo is unbalanced because it is in over 50% of Imp fleets, and back in wave 2, I thought it was in 60-70% of Imp fleets, and winning close to 80%?

I think flotillas have helped balance the game more than anything.

Maybe the problem is more there : ''Stop complaining about thing's that change the way you where playing before a release.'' Yes somethimes we feel like at first look that some new stuff is too powerfull and will change everything in the game in a bad way. With some back and reflection, there is nothing that I can say is that too much powerfull (just maybe Major Rhymer... his bringing so much for is little price tag)

It's a new way to use ship and squadron! It bring's more strategys and tactics (what is supposed to be fun).

You don't like flotillas, don't buy them but face the fact that the player that you will encounter sometimes, will bring them to the play. There is no problem whith the flotillas games, you maybe just need more of them.

This is a game that ask you to always adapt your play to what your foe will do. So do the same with the new release.

Adapt yourself or face your destiny!!!

Passing? I could see it being a reasonable ability for an Admiral, honestly.

Another option or two for flotillas would be nice honestly. As it is you need to be able to get the most out of them to make the most out of a big ship list, so having other ways of working in those tiny activations would pay dividends, I think.

1 hour ago, Grey Mage said:

Passing? I could see it being a reasonable ability for an Admiral, honestly.

This card long predates flotillas, which make it grossly overcosted in the current card environment.

On 2017-02-10 at 11:14 AM, xanderf said:

I think it's probably worth taking a step back and looking at what the actual problem is that is caused by the activation imbalance, as doing so may point out another solution that could work better than simply spacing out activations more.

To whit: I believe it would be fair to say that the issue is...difference in activation counts means the player with more activations is better able to react to, and get firing opportunities, against the player with fewer activations. Which is a similar issue that hex-and-counter wargames have faced since the 1970s. And the easiest solution is probably the same one that 'Panzer Leader' implemented as the sequel to 'Panzer Blitz' - opportunity fire!

IE., have a new rule that runs something like:

"If a ship or squadron has not performed any attack during the turn, it may execute one attack against an enemy ship or squadron that attacks it, after that attack is complete"

(...this being, for squadrons, very similar to 'counter', except... 1: It is only once-a-turn instead of every-time, 2: It requires the squadron not have already activated or otherwise attacked, and 3: It doesn't work if the target of the attack is destroyed. And for ships, of course, a new way to respond to being stuck activating before any enemy is in range, and moving into range of their guns before their turn to fire.)

But that does nothing to help the guy with 2 activations versus the Guy with 4 activations.

No matter who goes 1st the 4 Activation person has the advantage.

Activates crap useless piece outside of sphere of Combat, guy with 2 activations moves with nothing to shoot at, now in range of a mess of stuff, gets pummeled, but with your suggested rule can do nothing as it has now activated.

So, based on what you suggested, that only seem to benefit the person with more activations, not less.

23 hours ago, Church14 said:

Yes. It is still a problem. Your comment amounts to "if every Imperial fleet runs Demolisher, then all Imperial fleets are balanced." The mentality of "if card/strategy A is kicking your but, use it back" is indicative of unhealthy game balance. If a strategy or card is dominant to the point of alienating any fleet which does not use it, it is not balanced.

I am personally uncertain how I feel about the change flotillas add to the game. I am certain about the idea in your comment though.

12 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

There is a huge difference between Demo and flotillas. Everyone uses flotillas because they are cheap and have amazing utility, you can have multiple, and they are available to both sides. People use Demo because it allows you to break the most important mechanic in the game - shoot then move. Demo is just good, but you can only have 1, and only 1 side can have it. There was a lot of discussion if Demo is unbalanced because it is in over 50% of Imp fleets, and back in wave 2, I thought it was in 60-70% of Imp fleets, and winning close to 80%?

I think flotillas have helped balance the game more than anything.

Thing with Demo I call it the Falcon of Armada, as with the move than shoot mechanic makes it act like a FOO Strategy. For more information on FOO see the video below.

Now are Flotillas FOO strategy. Absolutely not, the FOO with flotillas would be the Rymer Ball. Now what Flotillas do is give the flag ships a cheap support escort option so often used as carriers (although why don't Gozanti's make better Carrier than Transports was probably more for balance over theme but I digress.) However Flotillas are a necessary element of the game. I know many people just want to see super star destroyers take hits and bulldoze over all puny ships (as any good imperial commander) but that just isn't in the game or the movies. Sure they can win any one on one fight but in group fights they tend to blow up. However I do believe flotillas help those large ships more than they hurt them. Without them the Large ship list will be way more outnumbered on activations then they are now. Also you can't exactly play a game with nothing but flotillas but not in the same sense where you can't play a game with nothing but squadrons (where it is a list that gives an automatic defeat if it weren't already illegal). Sure legally you can make a list of nothing but flotillas and Squadrons but Flotillas aren't as good in the core gameplay aspect known as the Ship game. They would get crushed and while max fighter commands would help, it would do little to stem the onslaught of the puny cargo ships. Now if an All Gozanti or Transport list made it to the Top 4 I would join the waambulance of "Flotillas are Ruining the Game" just like some of the people on this topic. However because they are not on the top 4 I don't consider them.

Now on saying that Every list uses a flotilla so it is imbalanced is like saying every list uses a small ship so small ships are imbalanced. It is not the same effect as saying every Imperial list has a Demolisher which I already given my opinion on it. Thing is Demolisher is a very specific upgrade in which it is tied to the GSD. The GSD has other options besides demolisher but they pale in comparison with power of Demo. Thing is about Flotillas is that there are not any other options other than their respective factions flotilla. Maybe in a later wave the Rebels will get a C-ROC flotilla that focuses more on ship support than squadron support. Where as for other ship types (except the Imperial large ship) there is at least two or model options. So that lack of variety may be the biggest flaw with flotillas for now but it will change if this game has at least 10 waves.

7 hours ago, NeonKnight said:

But that does nothing to help the guy with 2 activations versus the Guy with 4 activations.

No matter who goes 1st the 4 Activation person has the advantage.

Activates crap useless piece outside of sphere of Combat, guy with 2 activations moves with nothing to shoot at, now in range of a mess of stuff, gets pummeled, but with your suggested rule can do nothing as it has now activated.

So, based on what you suggested, that only seem to benefit the person with more activations, not less.

Not sure you follow the suggestion. I activate ship 1 of 2....it has nothing to attack, I move it towards the enemy. Bummer - the enemy activates, and they attack me! Well, hey, I still get "opportunity fire", so I can at least fire back at them.

Now I activate my second ship it also has nothing to attack - crap! Move it forward. Enemy activates another ship, attacks it - hey, it gets "opportunity fire", too, and can attack back!

Is this not better than what we have, now?

Sure, it's true that with 4 activations to 2, the enemy will have some activations I don't have a response to. But they'll be my choice of activations. I could just as easily "held my opportunity fire" against the first two and waited for the next two to attack. After all, if the enemy has twice as many activations as me - it's a safe bet their ships are not the equal of mine. So they have a pair of MC80s and a pair of CR90s...well when the CR90s activate and attack against my ISD, I choose not to 'opportunity fire' them. When the MC80s attack, I *do* use 'opportunity fire'.

This really isn't a new problem to wargaming - seriously, it's been on the books since at least the 1970s. And the solution to it is not much younger. "Opportunity fire" - the choice for someone forced to move before they got the shot they wanted to have a chance to still react to enemy movement with firing in response - fixes it.

8 hours ago, DiabloAzul said:

This card long predates flotillas, which make it grossly overcosted in the current card environment.

That's a really interesting card. If it had some other interaction with the activation game, that might be enough to bring it up to around that cost level.

If it it was an Imperial card it would synergyze well with the Interdictor title.

Flotilla Ubiquity

They're everywhere, and yes I agree FFG probably wanted them to have a viable place in any strategy. I am hard-pressed, and I think anyone would be, to say that flotillas aren't a necessary inclusion in any serious list. It's commonly accepted that four activations is an absolute minimum, and we see a general trend of higher activations directly correlating with tournament wins, up to some number around six or seven ships. Regionals data show 90% of Rebel winners including a flotilla, and 100% of Imperial winners including one. They're just mandatory. The activation advantage is so good that the actual functions of the flotilla are just gravy on top. We know this because including a naked GR-75 flotilla in your list is often considered points well spent.

A Flotilla Counter

I say counter, not nerf. I'd like to see an effective counter for flotillas to come along, not a punishment. Just a different way to play that can compete with the significant advantages granted by flotillas. Anyway, I like flotillas. They're cool and thematic. I just think they somewhat come at the expense of big-ship fleets, which are even cooler and more thematic, and seem inarguably harder to win with in the current meta. Flotillas actually do a couple of quite good things for the game, so I'm looking forward to other ways to do those good things.

To be totally honest, there are already ways to punish flotillas, by means of gaining accuracy results on your attacks. We have those already, and FFG has given us more. JJ won Worlds with a list that put H9 on an MC30 as a very effective counter to flotillas. Many others now claim to have been early adopters of the anti-meta H9 strategy, but I think they're just jumping on the bandwagon. That may be a counter to flotillas, but it's still a ship that has to get into position and wipe out several flotillas to make back its points. It also needs to be said that JJ himself had three flotillas in his fleet, so this fleet composition is not exactly the answer to the ubiquitous flotilla.

FFG has this under control, I'm confident. The flotilla effect has put a subtle skew into the meta, but the game is as a whole excellently balanced, and more so now than ever before. FFG pays very close attention to this kind of thing, and although the design process makes their responses seem slow, it gets here eventually. I have a feeling a couple of upgrades will come along in future waves that will respond to flotilla proliferation.

My Ideas

Just brainstorming here on some interesting upgrade possibilities. Some might be broken, or dumb. But the larger point is that there are plenty of ways to quietly nudge the meta.

• Challenge the flotilla's role as a lifeboat
  • War Council (Support Team): If this is your flagship, add one Fleet Command icon to your upgrade bar. You may not equip this to a ship with a Fleet Command icon in its upgrade bar.
  • Combat Information Center (Offensive Retrofit): If this is your flagship, place a command dial face-down on this upgrade card during the Command Phase of the first round. When you activate, you may discard this upgrade and reveal the command on its face-down dial. If you do, set the top command dial of this ship to the revealed command.
  • Command Ship (Unique Title, 0 points): If this is your flagship, you may equip another title to it, and reduce the cost of that title by 2, to a minimum of 0.
  • Executive Officer (Officer): If this is your flagship, the number of command dials assigned to this ship is one less than its command value, with a minimum of 1. (Intentionally worded not to stack with Relentless.)
  • Zuckuss (Unique Imperial Officer): When you attack a flagship, you may add one red die set to an accuracy result to your dice pool.
• Compete with cheap activation inflation
  • Logistics Officer (Officer): Medium or larger ship only. You may exhaust this card instead of activating a ship.
  • Ready Teams (Defensive Retrofit): When a ship activates, you may exhaust this card to ready one of your exhausted defense tokens.
  • Disciplined Gunners (Weapons Team): At the end of your activation, if you have not performed any attacks, you may exhaust this card. When you are attacked by a ship, if this card is exhausted, you may discard this card and perform one attack that targets that ship.
  • Hyperspace Adjutant (Officer): When you deploy during the Deploy Ships step of Setup, you may choose one friendly ship at distance 1-5 and remove that ship from the play area. You must deploy that ship on a later deployment turn. After you deploy, discard this card.

9 hours ago, xanderf said:

Not sure you follow the suggestion. I activate ship 1 of 2....it has nothing to attack, I move it towards the enemy. Bummer - the enemy activates, and they attack me! Well, hey, I still get "opportunity fire", so I can at least fire back at them.

Now I activate my second ship it also has nothing to attack - crap! Move it forward. Enemy activates another ship, attacks it - hey, it gets "opportunity fire", too, and can attack back!

Is this not better than what we have, now?

Sure, it's true that with 4 activations to 2, the enemy will have some activations I don't have a response to. But they'll be my choice of activations. I could just as easily "held my opportunity fire" against the first two and waited for the next two to attack. After all, if the enemy has twice as many activations as me - it's a safe bet their ships are not the equal of mine. So they have a pair of MC80s and a pair of CR90s...well when the CR90s activate and attack against my ISD, I choose not to 'opportunity fire' them. When the MC80s attack, I *do* use 'opportunity fire'.

This really isn't a new problem to wargaming - seriously, it's been on the books since at least the 1970s. And the solution to it is not much younger. "Opportunity fire" - the choice for someone forced to move before they got the shot they wanted to have a chance to still react to enemy movement with firing in response - fixes it.

Well, that makes more sense than what you said initially. That said, most games I have played in the past have always been about Activation Control. have more activations than opponent so you can ensure you are moving when you want to move and they are moving when they don't want to move.

And I don't mean Star Wars Armada, but plenty of other miniature games like D&D minis, the Old Star Wars Minis, Battletech, etc

7 hours ago, xanderf said:

Not sure you follow the suggestion. I activate ship 1 of 2....it has nothing to attack, I move it towards the enemy. Bummer - the enemy activates, and they attack me! Well, hey, I still get "opportunity fire", so I can at least fire back at them.

Now I activate my second ship it also has nothing to attack - crap! Move it forward. Enemy activates another ship, attacks it - hey, it gets "opportunity fire", too, and can attack back!

Is this not better than what we have, now?

Sure, it's true that with 4 activations to 2, the enemy will have some activations I don't have a response to. But they'll be my choice of activations. I could just as easily "held my opportunity fire" against the first two and waited for the next two to attack. After all, if the enemy has twice as many activations as me - it's a safe bet their ships are not the equal of mine. So they have a pair of MC80s and a pair of CR90s...well when the CR90s activate and attack against my ISD, I choose not to 'opportunity fire' them. When the MC80s attack, I *do* use 'opportunity fire'.

This really isn't a new problem to wargaming - seriously, it's been on the books since at least the 1970s. And the solution to it is not much younger. "Opportunity fire" - the choice for someone forced to move before they got the shot they wanted to have a chance to still react to enemy movement with firing in response - fixes it.

This idea would invalidate many different strategies. CR90s are now worthless going agaisnt large ships. Why attack with my 2/3 red dice when I am taking 4-5 in return? Demo would be shut down because it would likely die on the return fire. Same for MC30s. In fact, any small ship is worthless now if you opponent brings dual ISDs.

I move my ISDs into the fire zone of all your ships. They all attack me, and I get 4-8 dice, with all my dice mods, as free attacks, and then I get to activate and make 2 attacks. Even if you make it so you get 1 return fire a round, the game still comes back to activations because you need a sacrifice ship to suck up the big dice coming its way, and it will likely be a flotilla who can just scatter/evade away the reds.

This idea just doesn't fit with the mechanics of the game. You would have to shift around too many rules to make it work effectively, and FFG is unlikely to do a heavy handed errata like this. I'd expect ships and upgrades suited to taking out flotillas (which we already have) to be the way to go.

On 2017. 02. 10. at 9:19 PM, JgzMan said:

If I were going to see a "pass" mechanism implemented, I'd want to either see it as an upgrade, (tap this card instead of activating a ship) or make a rule that three "pass" in a row without an activation immediately ends the turn. Three, IMO, is the magic number.

1. I pass, because I'm waiting for the other guy to move into my trap, or move away from a spot that he is threatening, in to gain some other advantage.
2. Other guy is unwilling to allow me that advantage, so he passes.
3. Now it's right back where we were at step 1. I can either advance the game, or I can pass, ending the turn. (or possibly just the ship phase)

This effectively allows both players to agree to end the turn, but also allows a player to either allow his opponent a pass, or forbid it, based on his own interpretation of the tactical situation.

I'm not sure allowing players to pass is a good idea, but this seems the safest way to do it.

This would turn the activation advantage around as you could use less activations and force the enemy into a situation he shouldn't be in, namely that he has to either give up his activation advantage or you can force end the round prematurely saving yourself from suffering the activation disadvantage. Suddenly everyone would bring LESS ships into action.

If we're brainstorming solutions, I'd rather kill two birds with one stone while not getting errata/base game rule changes involved. Make an upgrade that works like...

Codebreaker Node

Offensive Retrofit -(X) points (I'd keep it cheap, honestly)

Medium or large ships only.

Instead of activating a ship, you may exhaust Codebreaker Node to force your opponent to activate one of his ships. This ability may only be used if your opponent has more unactivated ships than you do.

Makes offensive retrofit slots on medium and large ships more valuable (which is where this kind of ability is most helpful, against swarm fleets) while also limiting the ability to combine the activation-pass mechanic with carrier fleets, which would prefer to use that slot for Boosted Comms or Expanded Hangar Bay. It also limits the potential uses per turn to the number of Nodes you have brought with you, so you can't just roll in with two ISDs and plan to keep passing forever.

5 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

I move my ISDs into the fire zone of all your ships. They all attack me, and I get 4-8 dice, with all my dice mods, as free attacks, and then I get to activate and make 2 attacks. Even if you make it so you get 1 return fire a round, the game still comes back to activations because you need a sacrifice ship to suck up the big dice coming its way, and it will likely be a flotilla who can just scatter/evade away the reds.

'Opportunity fire' would obviously be only once a round, and it would count as your 'attack' for the round. So none of that 'take the opportunity fire shot and then activate and take two more shots'.

Secondly, the person using it doesn't HAVE to take it the first time. So there is no point in a 'sacrifice ship to suck up the big dice' - the person planning to use op fire would just hold fire until the ship they wanted to shoot at them did so. (And if it end up not doing so - then you just gave up chances to fire back at everyone who had previously shot at you, waiting to respond to an attack that never came...)

20 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

JJ won Worlds with a list that put H9 on an MC30 as a very effective counter to flotillas. Many others now claim to have been early adopters of the anti-meta H9 strategy, but I think they're just jumping on the bandwagon.

A bit off-topic, but I couldn't let this pass.

This idea is not new at all. Been around for quite awhile, in fact. Wow, I've been preaching this gospel almost as long as @TheEasternKing, @Caldias and @thecactusman17.


In even further off-topic news, in doing the research for this ridiculous and unnecessarily lengthy series of links, I came back across the genesis of @Drasnighta's nickname, and chuckled lightly to myself.

Next thing I know, Ginkapo will be telling me about the glory of Sensor Teams.

Back on topic, it seems pretty uncontroversial to note that flotillas are everywhere, and that the benefits of quantity of activations currently seem to outweigh the benefits of quality of activations. It might be controversial to see this as something that deserves a tweak, but if I were a designer I'd make a concerted effort to include some cool stuff to make people want to run "quality > quantity" lists 1-2 waves from now. My post above was mostly about trying to illustrate a few obvious ways they could do that with a fairly soft touch, rather than (as was the original post in the thread) with something drastic like an IA-style errata.

On 12/02/2017 at 6:47 AM, Vergilius said:

That's a really interesting card. If it had some other interaction with the activation game, that might be enough to bring it up to around that cost level.

The obvious change is to allow you to delay an activation by either player, but that may be horribly broken regardless of cost. You get to go first if you were second, and you get two successive activations if you were first to begin with. Nasty. Then again, predictions on how horribly overpowered stuff is rarely survive actual gameplay experience.

A more "out there" change may be to make your squadrons with Strategic activate as if they were ships. VCX-100s are about the same price as GR-75s, so it's not like you're getting free activations (plus they eat into your squadron point allowance, can't do lifeboat duty and don't save you from tabling). Absolutely needs testing, though!

On 2/11/2017 at 3:28 PM, DiabloAzul said:

This card long predates flotillas, which make it grossly overcosted in the current card environment.

This was exactly what I was thinking about when I said it. 've passed a copy to the Rebel player in my area.

5 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

Next thing I know, Ginkapo will be telling me about the glory of Sensor Teams.

I clearly dont need to.....