7 hours ago, Card Knight said:

Haven't read through most of the thread, but had an idea reading the early posts on issue with activations.

How would you guys feel about an upgrade that either allowed you to sacrifice your command dial for that ship for the turn, or sacrifice one of your attacks to pass an activation? Just a thought! I personally like the sacrificing a shot aspect. Good drawback, and most big ships have a primary firing arc that they want to fire out of anyway, which they can (usually) only fire out of once anyway (gunnery team ISDs...). I think it'd be a great boost for big ship lists, and obviously things like GT ISDs wouldn't have to proc it if they have two great shots lined up. Might have to make it Unique or Limited or something like that.

It goes back to my comment about having an upgrade to pass activations. What's to stop me from just passing the activation back to you? We end up back at square 1.

If we do the sacrifice a dial: You sac a dial on a CR90 to skip next activation. Finish up the CR90s activation. In response, I activate my Goz and sac the dial. Finish the Goz activation. Now we skip your activation, but then we skip mine. Now you activate.

If we sac an attack: You activate ISD. Sac 1 attack to skip next turn, make 1 attack this turn. Finish activation. I activate a CR90 and sac 1 attack and make the other. Skip your activation to mine, and I skip mine so back to you. If you place a restriction on "You can skip 1 attack so long as you are able to make an attack", that could help.

I just don't see it working out very well.

No unique upgrade would help. If you play a mirror match the unique is useless since you can just bounce it back to your opponent. A generic upgrade would be horrible for the game since it becomes the "must have" upgrade where you try to out activate your opponent with upgrades.

The only way I can see a pass mechanic added is if it were a rule change. But then you must make the case that there is an activation problem like there was in IA where 1 build can win every game and the only way to play the game is to play the same build as everyone else. As it stands, that just is happening in Armada where the same fleet wins multiple times in a row. The only list at risk right now of doing that is the Ackbar80 doom pickle, which runs a 170-180 point MC80, 2-3 flotillas, and TRC90s or Admo. That type of fleet has won 3 regionals so far, but even then, the highest activation I saw was 6. And it had Shara/Tycho. And DeMSU or MC30 swarm tear it up pretty bad, so it is not the 100% win list that everyone needs to play.

I'm just not convinced right now that we have a problem.

Undeadguy has a point. Activations are there for balance and even if you try and make a change to the activation while making it cost something you just end up back to square one as everyone takes it. At least with Flotillas they add something new to the game while giving you that activation advantage and it's not just a blatant activation abuse. And Flotillas can be destroyed to eliminate that activation advantage while an upgrade would remain as long as the ship is on is in play. So everyone will be forced to take a large defensive ship to protect that advantage and then small ships become a massive liability and now we have a game with less diversity because everyone will be trying to play that one list.

(FFG has been very good about balance up till now and even though the balance slightly favors the Rebels in this brief period the new wave looks to be swinging it back to the Empire just slightly. And in a non-symmetrical Miniature Game that is the best any game designer can get. Massive diversity with extremely close balance and models that seem to fit their cost structure. Hell even X-Wing went through it's like 5th nerfing to try and rebalance its ships.)

So even if this was a thing everyone would take it and we would be back to this very spot in a few months with a bloated cost that adds nothing else to the game.

And who benefits more from spending an attack to skip an activation? Two big ships (4 attacks) with big dice pool or 6 little ships (12 attacks) with little dice pool. Who loose more? That would be stupid with those flotillas batteries. The good point is that the offensive transport would have a purpose but I am sure you are not looking for that.

2 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

It goes back to my comment about having an upgrade to pass activations. What's to stop me from just passing the activation back to you? We end up back at square 1.

If we do the sacrifice a dial: You sac a dial on a CR90 to skip next activation. Finish up the CR90s activation. In response, I activate my Goz and sac the dial. Finish the Goz activation. Now we skip your activation, but then we skip mine. Now you activate.

If we sac an attack: You activate ISD. Sac 1 attack to skip next turn, make 1 attack this turn. Finish activation. I activate a CR90 and sac 1 attack and make the other. Skip your activation to mine, and I skip mine so back to you. If you place a restriction on "You can skip 1 attack so long as you are able to make an attack", that could help.

I just don't see it working out very well.

No unique upgrade would help. If you play a mirror match the unique is useless since you can just bounce it back to your opponent. A generic upgrade would be horrible for the game since it becomes the "must have" upgrade where you try to out activate your opponent with upgrades.

The only way I can see a pass mechanic added is if it were a rule change. But then you must make the case that there is an activation problem like there was in IA where 1 build can win every game and the only way to play the game is to play the same build as everyone else. As it stands, that just is happening in Armada where the same fleet wins multiple times in a row. The only list at risk right now of doing that is the Ackbar80 doom pickle, which runs a 170-180 point MC80, 2-3 flotillas, and TRC90s or Admo. That type of fleet has won 3 regionals so far, but even then, the highest activation I saw was 6. And it had Shara/Tycho. And DeMSU or MC30 swarm tear it up pretty bad, so it is not the 100% win list that everyone needs to play.

I'm just not convinced right now that we have a problem.

I would agree that I don't think we have a problem. This was just a cool idea I had when I read the upgrade card to pass an activation. For my scenario it would definitely be restricted to Large Base ships only (forgot to say that in the original post), so it would be a lot harder to manipulate. Obviously there's still room to do it, but there's not many lists that would run multiple large ships, and it wouldn't detract from MSU's at all. It would just be a tool to help. And like I said, there would be nothing forcing you to proc the card.

But like I said, I don't think its an issue. I just genuinely thought it was a fun upgrade card mechanic that wasn't overpowered. I think there's plenty of options already to deal with everything out there. And I definitely don't think the game is unbalanced, as we can see from shmitty's data.

2 hours ago, Beatty said:

Undeadguy has a point. Activations are there for balance and even if you try and make a change to the activation while making it cost something you just end up back to square one as everyone takes it. At least with Flotillas they add something new to the game while giving you that activation advantage and it's not just a blatant activation abuse. And Flotillas can be destroyed to eliminate that activation advantage while an upgrade would remain as long as the ship is on is in play. So everyone will be forced to take a large defensive ship to protect that advantage and then small ships become a massive liability and now we have a game with less diversity because everyone will be trying to play that one list.

So do you think my proposed upgrade would be THAT powerful that everyone would automatically take a large ship just to equip it? I feel like forcing a large ship in to some lists would be difficult and would actually detract from them. I don't feel that if there was a way to pass an activation on large ships only that everyone would want to take them. I mean it would be powerful, but not a be all, end all. I mean, you'd spend over 1/4 of your points for a large ship that didn't do much? I mean most lists with a large ship have 4 activations, and the upgrade would put you at "5" activations with sacrificing a big shot from your big ship.

Idk. Like I said, I thought it was just a fun upgrade style that popped in to my head late night reading these.

But I do think its funny to have a triple ISD list that has essentially "6" activations haha.

Not sure I see it the same way you do but I'll trust the game developers and play testing to keep the game going. But I also do not see an issue with activations at this time like others do.

7 minutes ago, Card Knight said:

I would agree that I don't think we have a problem. This was just a cool idea I had when I read the upgrade card to pass an activation. For my scenario it would definitely be restricted to Large Base ships only (forgot to say that in the original post), so it would be a lot harder to manipulate. Obviously there's still room to do it, but there's not many lists that would run multiple large ships, and it wouldn't detract from MSU's at all. It would just be a tool to help. And like I said, there would be nothing forcing you to proc the card.

But like I said, I don't think its an issue. I just genuinely thought it was a fun upgrade card mechanic that wasn't overpowered. I think there's plenty of options already to deal with everything out there. And I definitely don't think the game is unbalanced, as we can see from shmitty's data.

If it was restricted to large bases I can see it more plausible to work in the game. I think a better option would to simply give every large ship a free activation pass every round instead, to a max of 2.

Just now, Beatty said:

Not sure I see it the same way you do but I'll trust the game developers and play testing to keep the game going. But I also do not see an issue with activations at this time like others do.

And like I said, I don't think there is an issue either and I trust the developers as well. But I do appreciate pointing out the flaws in the idea. Any addition to the game would obviously have to be balanced and un-able to be broken.

I like common ground. We all have it.

Isn't the point of large ships though that you're giving up activations to get better usage of your upgrade cards and more damage per roll? You can't just say they should get an extra ability to pass the turn because it lets them do better against MSU. You can fit 5 ships and some TIEs in an ISD list, so I don't think giving them an extra activation is needed, at all.

23 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Isn't the point of large ships though that you're giving up activations to get better usage of your upgrade cards and more damage per roll? You can't just say they should get an extra ability to pass the turn because it lets them do better against MSU. You can fit 5 ships and some TIEs in an ISD list, so I don't think giving them an extra activation is needed, at all.

I agree, but I'm neither for or against an activation rule change. I also try to play along with new ideas to see where they take me.

22 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Isn't the point of large ships though that you're giving up activations to get better usage of your upgrade cards and more damage per roll? You can't just say they should get an extra ability to pass the turn because it lets them do better against MSU. You can fit 5 ships and some TIEs in an ISD list, so I don't think giving them an extra activation is needed, at all.

I suppose my counter to that would be, what does that list gain by adding in a "6th" activation? In a list like that, I'm not sure I would even take an upgrade that allows an activation pass.

7 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I agree, but I'm neither for or against an activation rule change. I also try to play along with new ideas to see where they take me.

That's kind of where I'm at. Would adding in this mechanic break the game? Would it be detrimental? etc, etc...