I'm having a hell of a time.

I had a very bad first game, being tabled. It happens.

But because of that, and becase of the way my opponents are, and have been built, there is no "Run away" for a Game to survive.

My choices of opponents include:

1) Multiple TRCing Arquitens and Jerry. With the ISD of Splattiness.

2) Victory Rhymerball of Doom

3) OzzelISD + Demolisher of Destiny. (Who is also packing all the Vector-Relay Phantoms)

In every scenario I've attempted, I am going to die horribly.

Even in the cases where I can attempt to "stay at speed 0 a few turns, then speed up and try to run", I'm going to be caught by something . Generall,y something big and fast .

I can't even out-deploy it, as my opponents can just shuffle 2 spynet tokens over to whoever is going against me...

And its really, really depressed me. My cycle seems to be to get a 400pt Fleet... Play it 2 games... Then get a new Fleet. Because there's no building up. There's no hording supplies.

I just don't know what to do at this point, in this campaign. Honestly, its not so much the 400 vs 500... That imbalance, I can somewhat live with. Its the "One Upgrade each Ship" that hurts the most. I mean, if I could come out of the park swinging, I'd start swinging with FC/FCT B-Wings... But they can't play a single upgrade game in any way that let's them survive the game 2 and build up.

Anecdotally, with multiple campaigns running simultaniously here - each of them have been shifted heavily on the Imperial Advantage.

2 minutes ago, Sekac said:

So you agree that killing a stationary and defenseless station is twice as hard as killing an ISD? Because that is mathematically false.

Your opinion might be that it doesn't matter in the long game and that's fine. That, to me, doesn't excuse objectively identifiable poor balance.

I didn't understand this.

The stations are super-soft targets.

ISDs very hard.

17 minutes ago, Sekac said:

It's easy to forget that the voices of the internet are not all from one mouth. Some may have asked for asymmetry and others are responding to it. It's not necessarily hypocrisy.

Also, there's a right way to do asymmetry and a wrong way (admittedly the right way is harder to pull off). You can balance an elephant against an equal weight of peanuts, but it's hard to do if you just guess how many peanuts you'll need.

And that's what it feels like FFG did here. The Show of Force/Hyperlane Raid problem is purely bad game design. You don't even need to play the scenarios to realize how bad it is. There is no reason whatsoever that killing a defenseless station is twice as rewarding as killing an ISD after playing directly to its strengths. It's just poor design.

Some are willing to excuse poor design because there are some long game self-correcting mechanics, and strategic options to overcome their poor design. I am not. They simply chose not to balance the rules and put the oneness on the players to have fun despite the poor balance. That's great IF (and only if) all of the participants are on the same page. If they're not, then it's an easily abuseable ruleset and not very much fun.

Add to that the poorly worded rules resulting in the A or B methods of choosing bases, and the "attacker gets initiative, oh wait no he doesn't, he's just automatically first player" issue. Seriously, FFG? How do you not even know what initiative[\i] means?!

It's awesome they created a campaign and fun can certainly be had, but to me it just comes across as a series of blunders born of apathy.

There is a difference between your real, legitimate complaints of CC, and people saying they get rolled every game because one faction is weaker than the other.

I agree Hyperlane Raid is bad. I tried to play it and got crushed. It's very hard to play aggressive with Rebels when I have no room to maneuver out of the front arc of the ISD moving forward in the middle of the map. I have not yet played Show of Force so I can't say.

I think the attacker should be given first player. This way both sides can build to 500 points without worrying about a bid. And it means you can have a different set of objectives for the base defense. It also creates the dynamic of the losing team being able to rebound back on the points. Can you imagine what it would be like to always have Demo being first player and facing it with a scarred fleet? And how do you build to 500 points? Let's say you are Imps and I'm Rebels. We both do a 5 ship list with 1 large and you have Demo and I have Admo, and we have an equal number of squads. Do we do a stand off with our lists to always get 1st player? Will either of us ever buy upgrades? Is it worth spending 20 points in upgrades when your opponent can spend 15 AND get 1st player? This is why the attacker gets 1st player. There is no game of chicken.

I totally understand the base placement. Our group went through it too, but the most obvious choice was the Rebels place a base and outpost, then Imp places a base, and alternate. This way the base placement is in sync with itself and you don't get Rebels claiming 3 planets.

Now, if you want to claim that Imps are better or worse than Rebels, that's where the problem comes up. Right now, our campaign in NC is 7-6 Rebels. Super close campaign and there have been no blow outs for either side. We are all skilled players with certain play styles, yet our games have been close every time we play. Most games win as a 6-5 or 7-4. When people say that their campaign is 6-0 Imps/Rebels, the skill of the players is at fault, whether it is list building or playing the game. There is no reason campaigns should be that one sided, unless you have players literally throwing everything at their opponent with no regard for actually trying to keep things alive. You only need 1 point to win the game.

Attacker IS always 1st player.

18 minutes ago, Sekac said:

So you agree that killing a stationary and defenseless station is twice as hard as killing an ISD? Because that is mathematically false.

Your opinion might be that it doesn't matter in the long game and that's fine. That, to me, doesn't excuse objectively identifiable poor balance.

...... 0_o.......

I specifically stated that needs work..... Sooooooooo

13 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

I didn't understand this.

The stations are super-soft targets.

ISDs very hard.

And yet, imperials are rewarded twice as much for killing a soft target as rebels are for killing a hard one.

Ergo, the 2 special assaults are not balanced. Bad balance, in my opinion, is bad design. It can be asymmetrical without being bad, but this, in my opinion, is both.

I understand this is more of an issue for me than it is for others, but I reserve the right to not enjoy poorly balanced rules.

5 minutes ago, Tirion said:

...... 0_o.......

I specifically stated that needs work..... Sooooooooo

You said you had an issue with turtling and nothing else. 40 points for a station and 20 points for an ISD is something else. You implied this isn't a problem. It is for me. Make sense?

5 minutes ago, Sekac said:

And yet, imperials are rewarded twice as much for killing a soft target as rebels are for killing a hard one.

Ergo, the 2 special assaults are not balanced. Bad balance, in my opinion, is bad design. It can be asymmetrical without being bad, but this, in my opinion, is both.

I understand this is more of an issue for me than it is for others, but I reserve the right to not enjoy poorly balanced rules.

No one is debating that point.... At all.... We all agree they need work.

Cause turtling is the root of the problem.

3 minutes ago, Sekac said:

And yet, imperials are rewarded twice as much for killing a soft target as rebels are for killing a hard one.

Ergo, the 2 special assaults are not balanced. Bad balance, in my opinion, is bad design. It can be asymmetrical without being bad, but this, in my opinion, is both.

I understand this is more of an issue for me than it is for others, but I reserve the right to not enjoy poorly balanced rules.

Idk, I've killed ISDs pretty quick before. It's not like they are crazy hard to kill if you focus fire it and have squads. They just feel harder because they are firing back at you. The problem is the board set up for Hyperlane Raid. I TRIED to flank an ISD with 2 AFs going on either side and it just didn't work. That front arc is too big.

Also, if you manage to kill the ISD, or any other objective ship for that matter, you get 20 resource points, and 20 victory points which can help you win the extra 40 resource points at the end of the game. In case you didn't know.

24 minutes ago, Sekac said:

The Show of Force/Hyperlane Raid problem is purely bad game design. You don't even need to play the scenarios to realize how bad it is. There is no reason whatsoever that killing a defenseless station is twice as rewarding as killing an ISD after playing directly to its strengths. It's just poor design.

Some are willing to excuse poor design because there are some long game self-correcting mechanics, and strategic options to overcome their poor design.

Calling it bad design doesn't make it so. You haven't demonstrated how the Rebels receiving +50% resource-generating planets at the outset doesn't offset the easier Imperial special assault mission, the purpose of which is... to generate resources.

It may well be that it doesn't--I haven't played through the campaign enough times to say definitively one way or another--but my single experience has shown the overall campaign to be very finely balanced. Our rebels have been behind by 0-1 points the whole campaign, but are coming from behind to trigger the all-out assault with a 3-point lead this round.

But this is asymmetric design, pretty much by definition, and you can't point to just one element and say "yup, that's bad" without looking at all the other elements that interact with it. One side has an advantage in a certain respect that is offset by the other's advantage in another respect. It may well be that running the numbers would reveal the value difference in terms of resources gained between the difficulties of the two special assault missions is equal and opposite to the value difference between the starting planets. Just as it may be that the value difference between Rieekan's special interaction with the hyperspace escape rules may be offset by the Interdictor's special rule.

But quantifying either position on either of those questions would be very hard. I don't have enough data to say yea or nay, to either... Do you? The only data we really have is lots of outdone anecdotes, which seem to be more or less evenly split, suggesting that the campaign is in fact at least somewhat well-balanced.

I will concede that it appears special assaults as a catch-up mechanic seem poorly balanced, though.

14 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Double post

Real quick can someone break down the rieekan issue? Is it that a destroyed ship still gets away?

1 minute ago, Tirion said:

Real quick can auntie break down the rieekan issue? Is it that a destroyed ship still gets away?

Yes. The zombie evades end of turn destruction by hyper.

2 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Yes. The zombie evades end of turn destruction by hyper.

Thanks just wanted to make sure.

42 minutes ago, Sekac said:

So you agree that killing a stationary and defenseless station is twice as hard as killing an ISD? Because that is mathematically false.

Your opinion might be that it doesn't matter in the long game and that's fine. That, to me, doesn't excuse objectively identifiable poor balance.

No one is debating it's a bad objective. That is unanimous at this point. But applying the imbalance borne in the objective to the rest of the campaign is where I cease to track with you.

42 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I think the attacker should be given first player. This way both sides can build to 500 points without worrying about a bid. And it means you can have a different set of objectives for the base defense. It also creates the dynamic of the losing team being able to rebound back on the points. Can you imagine what it would be like to always have Demo being first player and facing it with a scarred fleet? And how do you build to 500 points? Let's say you are Imps and I'm Rebels. We both do a 5 ship list with 1 large and you have Demo and I have Admo, and we have an equal number of squads. Do we do a stand off with our lists to always get 1st player? Will either of us ever buy upgrades? Is it worth spending 20 points in upgrades when your opponent can spend 15 AND get 1st player? This is why the attacker gets 1st player. There is no game of chicken.

In Corellian Conflict, the attacker is always the first player/has initiative.

48 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

No one is debating it's a bad objective. That is unanimous at this point. But applying the imbalance borne in the objective to the rest of the campaign is where I cease to track with you.

It's not an extrapolation of one bad element being applied to the whole campaign, but a number of red flags. From vaguely worded rules, to needing an FAQ to clarify that they meant attacker "is first player," not "has initiative" like the book says.

It's billed as a narrative campaign but the nature of the objectives encourage specialization, and in no way reward narrative fleets.

The bonuses of the various planets have a pretty clear hierarchy of best-to-worst (until later in the campaign when repair yards have diminishing returns) which means there is an optimal path through the campaign. This will hurt replayability as moves are easy to anticipate, and starting planets are nearly preordained.

The mechanics of scarring and veterancy encourage players to play as little of Armada as possible to mitigate the disparity if they suffer early round losses.

No one of these is a deal-breaker for me, but they collectively create obstacles to what I hoped the campaign would be.

49 minutes ago, Derpzilla88 said:

In Corellian Conflict, the attacker is always the first player/has initiative.

I know. I was responding to Sekac as to why I think FFG made the attacker 1st player.

23 hours ago, Sekac said:

Do you have a link for that thread? I'm looking for ideas because I just don't see how. When imperials own all but one repair yard, and all have 500 point highly optimized lists, whereas we have one 450 and two 400 point lists (with the possibility of one being a new starting list). What can we do to easily get back in it?

No offense, but you haven't really offered any substance to your arguments. We say these scenarios are clearly imbalanced unless you take specific lists to minimize the imbalance, and your response is essentially "trust me, it's fine." Okay, but how?

Quite frankly in that situation you have been outplayed. I understand you got Thrawned by the Imperial GA but that signals to me you probably don't want to play with an asshat like that again.

3 minutes ago, Sekac said:

It's not an extrapolation of one bad element being applied to the whole campaign, but a number of red flags. From vaguely worded rules, to needing an FAQ to clarify that they meant attacker "is first player," not "has initiative" like the book says.

It's billed as a narrative campaign but the nature of the objectives encourage specialization, and in no way reward narrative fleets.

The bonuses of the various planets have a pretty clear hierarchy of best-to-worst (until later in the campaign when repair yards have diminishing returns) which means there is an optimal path through the campaign. This will hurt replayability as moves are easy to anticipate, and starting planets are nearly preordained.

The mechanics of scarring and veterancy encourage players to play as little of Armada as possible to mitigate the disparity if they suffer early round losses.

No one of these is a deal-breaker for me, but they collectively create obstacles to what I hoped the campaign would be.

It would appear you are one of the few people who are not enjoying CC. You can stop playing it and go back to the normal way to play. The only thing stopping you is your team, which I think you should stick out and finish the campaign. In the end, this is still a game and you are not forced into playing it.

You can wait for the FAQ to see if they change anything, but I find it unlikely they would change the entirety of the campaign. I forsee them creating a new one and adjusting the mistakes they made in this one. And hopefully they can hire someone to proof read all their rules.

3 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

And hopefully they can hire someone to proof read all their rules.

CC Rulebook, Page 19, "Credits"

Its the 7th Line Down.

Just now, Drasnighta said:

CC Rulebook, Page 19, "Credits"

Its the 7th Line Down.

Alright. Grab your pitchforks and torches...

On 2/22/2017 at 5:33 PM, Sekac said:

Do you have a link for that thread? I'm looking for ideas because I just don't see how. When imperials own all but one repair yard, and all have 500 point highly optimized lists, whereas we have one 450 and two 400 point lists (with the possibility of one being a new starting list). What can we do to easily get back in it?

No offense, but you haven't really offered any substance to your arguments. We say these scenarios are clearly imbalanced unless you take specific lists to minimize the imbalance, and your response is essentially "trust me, it's fine." Okay, but how?

I dont, but Im going to say its all in tactics.

They have 500pt fleets- so they arent changing anything. Make your 400pt fleets to go best against their strengths and then use your 2 to 1 assaults to maximize good matchups.

Play objectives, and take back some repair yards. Or go after unoccupied territory and spam outposts to make up for your current resource losses.

@Drasnighta are you building one upgrade fleets after the first? I am pretty sure if you retire a fleet, the next one is not limited to one upgrade.

11 minutes ago, Grey Mage said:

I dont, but Im going to say its all in tactics.

They have 500pt fleets- so they arent changing anything. Make your 400pt fleets to go best against their strengths and then use your 2 to 1 assaults to maximize good matchups.

Play objectives, and take back some repair yards. Or go after unoccupied territory and spam outposts to make up for your current resource losses.

This is the tough bit:

If I'm attacking, that means I'm Player 1.

As Player 1, to maximise my advantage, I need to be able to out Deploy and/or out Activate my opponent. This is difficult, being 100 points Behind.

As Player 1, this means all Objectives are inherently advantaged to Player 2... my Opponent. I'm chosing from them, but ceding them the advantage.

As Player 1, I can go after Repair Yards, and hope they havnt built bases on them, as that makes life even more Difficult to Win.

As Player 1, I can go after Unoccupied territory - but building outposts still relies on winning the game , which is tough to do, being down in points, activations, deployments, Spynets and ceding my opponent the Player 2 Objective Advantage...