1 minute ago, Blail Blerg said:

Ewwww. Zombies.

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I always thought the FFG thing of making the main characters a big deal was weird. Even just Biggs + Bwings from ROTJ. Besides, I liked the idea of making my characters and commanders for xwing and armada. I wrote story driven campaigns for that. It was super fun.

My things would emphasize generics, and generics could learn pilot abilities (think ace squads or ship titles) when they got to a certain skill) from the ship they were from. So everything was FFG based, with no real need to add extra cards or abilities, which would be subject to review and bias of me and the group.

That sounds like a really fun system.

13 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I'd much rather have my clone wars stuff. Yeah. Makes no sense to allow Kylo and Vader together, when people scream about Clone Wars and Civil War still.

(Psst. is it technically the clone wars? or clone war?

Clone wars stuff would make so much more sense.. Like the re-activation of old WWI Destroyers in WWII .. And we already have the Pelta from Clone Wars..

Just now, GilmoreDK said:

Clone wars stuff would make so much more sense.. Like the re-activation of old WWI Destroyers in WWII .. And we already have the Pelta from Clone Wars..

Also the Scrugg and the Arquietens

7 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

That sounds like a really fun system.

=)))) It was for xwing though. Do you want my rule sheet? Its like one page! =)

I meant to get around for a simple campaign system for Armada, but that never happened. We lost our gaming group to bomber death, and we just constantly constantly over and over again get wiped out by squadrons. So all our efforts have been to test the end limits of Armada balance to bring it back from that very very not fun precipice.

I rant. anyway:

For armada, the basic idea would be when a ship loses its hull, it becomes crippled/scarred, if you took double your hull you were completely destroyed. you could hyperspace as an action that took two turns to get off the board, and gain points form objectives to buy new stuff. Ships would be able to get extra upgrades (as most of the time, we want to xmas tree our ship but we shouldn't. Lets us use those cards we never use). And squadrons could learn the abilities of their uniques.

Anyway. We have Correlian campaign now also, which is pretty close to what i used to imagine.

20 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

=)))) It was for xwing though. Do you want my rule sheet? Its like one page! =)

I meant to get around for a simple campaign system for Armada, but that never happened. We lost our gaming group to bomber death, and we just constantly constantly over and over again get wiped out by squadrons. So all our efforts have been to test the end limits of Armada balance to bring it back from that very very not fun precipice.

I rant. anyway:

For armada, the basic idea would be when a ship loses its hull, it becomes crippled/scarred, if you took double your hull you were completely destroyed. you could hyperspace as an action that took two turns to get off the board, and gain points form objectives to buy new stuff. Ships would be able to get extra upgrades (as most of the time, we want to xmas tree our ship but we shouldn't. Lets us use those cards we never use). And squadrons could learn the abilities of their uniques.

Anyway. We have Correlian campaign now also, which is pretty close to what i used to imagine.

It'd be lost on me since I never got into x-wing. Your armada rules do sound similar to CC tho, great minds I guess.

2 hours ago, Madaghmire said:

It'd be lost on me since I never got into x-wing. Your armada rules do sound similar to CC tho, great minds I guess.

Yeah, theyre similar enough that at this points its not a big deal for me not to make a campaign play for Armada.

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At this point, I'm more interested in an alternate armada... where shooting happens simultaneously. and maybe even movements could happen somewhat simultaneously. With slow cardboard tokens of torpedo sprays (that move!) you have to manually maneuver to dodge.

This also really reduces activatioon advantage and the turn-style play that really doesnt make much sense.

And double the hull, but squadrons instead become a precision surgical tool where a set of squadrons can go and crit specific systems related to the 4 arcs of a ship: damage they do is special crit damage, for instance, enough to the back takes out the engines, and (imperial bridge) (go to inertial, uncontrolled movement). Sides damage some of the turbolasers, life support. Frontal damage hyperspace relay, comms, hangar bays (for rebels, bridge).
You just deal the engine crit card when the squads do enough rear arc damage.

The squads here also function as choice-of-direct damage as opposed to hurling damage from your turbos at whatever is closest. Fighters become spread out, and multiple points of defense are required. The intent now is not just to throw balls of fighters at each other and let them wipe each other out for sheer damage.

Here squadrons are meant to go in little squads with missions tasked to disable ships and make them easier to take out or force to surrender and capture. Consequently, defensive clumps of squads need to be small and divided to delay and protect crucial ship systems. It also requires more speed: faster defense fighters are required to keep up with small ships like CR90s, which don't fight off squadrons well.

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But that's my pet project, dunno if anyone else would think that's a cool system.

1 hour ago, Blail Blerg said:

At this point, I'm more interested in an alternate armada... where shooting happens simultaneously. and maybe even movements could happen somewhat simultaneously. With slow cardboard tokens of torpedo sprays (that move!) you have to manually maneuver to dodge.

This also really reduces activatioon advantage and the turn-style play that really doesnt make much sense.

...or you could, ya know, just add opportunity fire into the game , which is how every other wargame has been handling that problem since the 1970s. Also solves - if FULLY implemented - the "leapfrogging" mechanic that even 'simultaneous fire' doesn't address.

You never did explain what your issue with it was in the other thread...

21 minutes ago, xanderf said:

...or you could, ya know, just add opportunity fire into the game , which is how every other wargame has been handling that problem since the 1970s. Also solves - if FULLY implemented - the "leapfrogging" mechanic that even 'simultaneous fire' doesn't address.

You never did explain what your issue with it was in the other thread...

Well. Ok, I'm sorry, I really don't know as much as I probably should when I said that. Can I redact the statement and apologize for the timing damage?

I'm largely unconvinced it was neccessary for the current game to mitigate activation advantage in that way.

Either way, I'm still more a fan of simultaneous damage, a la Magic.

Also i dont know what you mean by leapfrogging.

And my main issue is also that i dont particularly care for turn based play, which armada is. Simult also is prbaboyl faster. and opens the way for double size games.

28 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Also i dont know what you mean by leapfrogging.

And my main issue is also that i dont particularly care for turn based play, which armada is. Simult also is prbaboyl faster. and opens the way for double size games.

'Leapfrogging' is a problem with IGO-UGO games. Say you've got a Glad-I Demolisher coming in at an angle on your Liberty's front, after suffering your escort ships' wrath - he's down to one hull pt and no shields or defense tokens left. Has opening salvo dice and a con fire ready to go, and starting the turn it's just outside your Liberty's max range. Activates and flies into...and through...your red dice range (and you don't fire)...through your blue dice range (and you don't fire)...into it's black dice range, and BLAM - 7 black dice into your front with OE and Screed besides...

"Leapfrogging" is that annoying mechanic - in "reality" the Liberty would have opened fire as soon as the Demolisher entered range, and it would have been dead before it even got to blue dice range, nevermind its own black dice. But because the game works with movement happening as a distinct (and immutably different) step than combat, the defenseless one-hull Demolisher flies in from out of range and blows away the Liberty with no possible reaction.

That's ridiculous. "Simultaneous fire" only helps a little bit, in that at least now the Demolisher dies simultaneously to the Liberty...but, again, "in reality", that would never have happened. The Liberty's guns FAR outrange the Demolisher's, and so it would be dead before it got a shot off.

FWIW, while 'Opportunity Fire' is one way to fix that...given there are only 4 speeds in the game, an 'impulse system' might be another option that the game would be well adapted too. Roughly think of this as - the command phase is executed simultaneously, then all ships have their own maneuver tool that they plan with and 'lock in' at once. The round then proceeds through four 'impulses' (each with its own shoot-opportunity-for-all step, then phasing-ships-move only one step forward on their maneuver tool step) something like...

3 hours ago, xanderf said:

'Leapfrogging' is a problem with IGO-UGO games. Say you've got a Glad-I Demolisher coming in at an angle on your Liberty's front, after suffering your escort ships' wrath - he's down to one hull pt and no shields or defense tokens left. Has opening salvo dice and a con fire ready to go, and starting the turn it's just outside your Liberty's max range. Activates and flies into...and through...your red dice range (and you don't fire)...through your blue dice range (and you don't fire)...into it's black dice range, and BLAM - 7 black dice into your front with OE and Screed besides...

"Leapfrogging" is that annoying mechanic - in "reality" the Liberty would have opened fire as soon as the Demolisher entered range, and it would have been dead before it even got to blue dice range, nevermind its own black dice. But because the game works with movement happening as a distinct (and immutably different) step than combat, the defenseless one-hull Demolisher flies in from out of range and blows away the Liberty with no possible reaction.

That's ridiculous. "Simultaneous fire" only helps a little bit, in that at least now the Demolisher dies simultaneously to the Liberty...but, again, "in reality", that would never have happened. The Liberty's guns FAR outrange the Demolisher's, and so it would be dead before it got a shot off.

FWIW, while 'Opportunity Fire' is one way to fix that...given there are only 4 speeds in the game, an 'impulse system' might be another option that the game would be well adapted too. Roughly think of this as - the command phase is executed simultaneously, then all ships have their own maneuver tool that they plan with and 'lock in' at once. The round then proceeds through four 'impulses' (each with its own shoot-opportunity-for-all step, then phasing-ships-move only one step forward on their maneuver tool step) something like...

Actually I was thinking about simult movement in that way, one by one.

However, simult fire does indeed give you the damage, but not the true timing of the attack you're right. But since range is still a clear factor in armada, its not necessary for things to be as close to real time.

Getting closer to real time and range kiting has other problems, and you start to get into the intricate balance issues of Starcraft 2 and concave and unit movement. (not the largescale imbalance).

The other issue is the speeds of travel as opposed to the distance of the turbos. Really, those turbos I feel should be firing like 3-4 range rulers away as opposed to movement of the same degree. I would have made all the distances doubled, so that two range rulers give the full extent of accurate, damaging fire. But that's starting to become a scale issue and needing a huge table, something I detest for wargame set-ups.

Either way, that's neither here nor there.

Another reply to you xanderf is the question of large-gun turret traverse, large gun accuracy and targeting.

Apparently in WWII there were times where the appropriate call for a smaller ship was actually to get semi-close or even damnably close to large ships. The amount of time and sometimes even the possible angle level meant that at something as big as even like 6-10km a large ship actually could not shoot at destroyer or a tiny boat. Reload and rotational turn, angle of de-elevation caused there to be gaping holes in defenses to small ships coming close... which incidentally usually also unloaded torpedoes (blackdice) or pelted the large ship with deck damage.

So this is real life leap-frogging.

The question is, do the huge turbolasers have the same issue? The answer seems to be yes, they fire slowy, and are particularly poor at locking smaller target, totally incapable of hitting squadrons for instance. For smaller ships, this is illustrated with the evade defense.

So what did the battleships and heavy cruisers have? They had secondary lower ranged armament and even short range torpedoes, meant to attack smaller ships if they got close enough. These are your blue and black dice on large ships.

Armada is a game that will be going on for years. I'd much rather wait for the sequel trilogy to finish so we can get a much larger range of ships before we get expansions from them.

Im also not covinced the First Order, New Republic/Resistance should be retroactively compatible with the OT factions as its done in X-Wing. I think Sequel Trilogy Factions should be able to use any of the ships and squadrons from their Original Trilogy equivalents (First Order can field any Imperial ship) but not the reverse (the Empire cannot use Frst Order ships). In that way even if they release only a couple sequel trilogy such as a Resurgent and sone updated future Rebel ship the new factions can draw from the vast selection of ships we already have.

That way we all save money and FFG doesnt have to worry as much about balancing the ST stuff with the OT. Maybe for the future ships we get a new longer firing stick with a new dice set and color to represent more advanced longer range guns on the ships of this new era in SW.

Ep8 might give us some capital ships to include. Right now i doubt we'd get any TFA stuff unless they do another squadpack and need padding to reach the usual number of squads included and/or standalone crew just appear in nontfa packs (Kylo, General Leia, Old Han, etc could just appear as crew cards in other packs)

23 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Apparently in WWII there were times where the appropriate call for a smaller ship was actually to get semi-close or even damnably close to large ships. The amount of time and sometimes even the possible angle level meant that at something as big as even like 6-10km a large ship actually could not shoot at destroyer or a tiny boat. Reload and rotational turn, angle of de-elevation caused there to be gaping holes in defenses to small ships coming close... which incidentally usually also unloaded torpedoes (blackdice) or pelted the large ship with deck damage.

That's not really accurate. World War II destroyers closed with larger ships because their only effective weapon was the torpedo, which was a short-range weapon. WWII fire control "computers" were only capable of tracking targets moving at a fixed speed and direction. Turret traversal and reload time was a problem because fire control adjustments were done manually, by sighting shell splashes, and longer delays between salvos meant more time for the target to adjust course again and throw off the updated firing solution. So large ships could shoot in the correct direction, they just had trouble predicting the target's position well enough to actually hit it. Closing with large ships was more dangerous, not less, because fire control became more precise as the range dropped. Also, cruisers and battleships all had lighter, secondary weapons batteries specifically to defend against destroyer attacks. These weapons would only become effective as the range closed.

Off the top of my head, the only case I can think of where a battleship literally couldn't fire at an attacking destroyer was the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, where at least one US destroyer got within a kilometer of the battleship Hiei. But the destroyers only closed to that range because the battle occurred at night, so both forces got within three kilometers before even opening fire, and because both commanders completely lost control of their fleets at the start of the battle. That battle was later described as "a barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out" by one of the officers present. As an example of how confused that battle was, the US flagship (USS San Francisco) lost track of the ship sailing directly ahead of it in formation (USS Atlanta), decided it was Japanese, and attacked it, killing the Atlanta's bridge crew and the only other American admiral present. In short, it's a good example of how not to fight a battle.

Also, both Japanese battleships were able to hit the San Francisco repeatedly with their main batteries at a range of about 2.5 kilometers. The San Francisco probably only survived because the Japanese were shooting fragmentation shells designed for shore bombardment, not the more damaging armor-piercing shells.