2 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

No I meant the other points beyond that paragraph.

Ah. The point about red gunline is hard to estimate as red dice are unreliablke and can be evaded. I feel that gunline will end up being one of the options but not the only one. No opinion on swarm fleets and Rieekan (as it requires some analysis). Disagree on first player being disadvantaged (as he can still activate first and have a chance to kill a ship before it shoots or to get a damaged ship to safety).

36 minutes ago, pt106 said:

Ah. The point about red gunline is hard to estimate as red dice are unreliablke and can be evaded. I feel that gunline will end up being one of the options but not the only one. No opinion on swarm fleets and Rieekan (as it requires some analysis). Disagree on first player being disadvantaged (as he can still activate first and have a chance to kill a ship before it shoots or to get a damaged ship to safety).

I didn't say first player would be disadvantaged, I said it "hurts first player advantage". Very different things. And I don't see how you could argue that.

The Rieekan/swarm stuff is obviously educated guesswork. Although I feel like last/first double arcs are pretty key conceptual component of most swarm fleets and the detriment to losing it is pretty obvious. But theorycraft and practice often diverge in strange ways so who knows.

As for the redline, agree its hard to estimate. My theory is that the ability to sit back on scoring objectives without worrying about a triple tap would significantly buff the type. My concern is that it would go too far, but sure thats worst case scenario. I do think the point about unreliable red dice is a tad unfair, because at this point if you build that fleet without signifcant dice modification you deserve your blanks.

1 hour ago, Madaghmire said:

I didn't say first player would be disadvantaged, I said it "hurts first player advantage". Very different things. And I don't see how you could argue that.

I should be more careful with my statements than. Lets try again: in the statement " I think it significantly hurts first player advantage" I would disagree with the word "significantly" as in my mind even without last-first ability the advantage of being first player is significant enough to bid for it (and build fleets around being first player). Sorry for being unclear.

So a bit off topic, I wasn't really on the forums for the last FAQ release... will they announce it or will the FAQ just update?

16 minutes ago, pt106 said:

I should be more careful with my statements than. Lets try again: in the statement " I think it significantly hurts first player advantage" I would disagree with the word "significantly" as in my mind even without last-first ability the advantage of being first player is significant enough to bid for it (and build fleets around being first player). Sorry for being unclear.

Fair enough. So then a reasonable inference would be that you don't believe that being able to last/first has significant value?

6 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

So a bit off topic, I wasn't really on the forums for the last FAQ release... will they announce it or will the FAQ just update?

They normally release a big article with all the FAQs, but that ship has sailed. So I think they will just update it.

Expect Dras to link it if it drops.

2 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

Fair enough. So then a reasonable inference would be that you don't believe that being able to last/first has significant value?

I think what he means is the same thing I meant. That first/last has tremendous value, and too much value, and having first activation is value enough without the bonus of the last activation as well.

16 minutes ago, Caldias said:

I think what he means is the same thing I meant. That first/last has tremendous value, and too much value, and having first activation is value enough without the bonus of the last activation as well.

So thats well and good, and I agree with at least that last line. But its not what he said. In fact, the first/last having tremendous value runs directly contrary to

39 minutes ago, pt106 said:

Lets try again: in the statement " I think it significantly hurts first player advantage" I would disagree with the word "significantly"

After all, if it has tremendous value, how can one say that taking that tool out of the box does not do "signifcant" harm to the kit?

Clearly, what he goes on to state fully supports the interpretation you lay out above. So lets lay this out;

I think we can all stipulate that being first player retains value whether or not first/last is a thing, for reasons elucidated previously in the thread.

The question is, when you remove ability to build for the last/first activation from the toolkit, how much does that effect the overall balance between first and second player? I'd want that looked at long and hard, given that we are talking about a core rule that pretty much every design decision already made had to have taken into account.

5 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

After all, if it has tremendous value, how can one say that taking that tool out of the box does not do "signifcant" harm to the kit?

It has tremendous value for some fleets (that were specifically built around abusing last-first). It has value (but not a tremendous value in my opinion ) for other fleets. One possible way to differentiate between these fleets is to look at the bid amount, as last-first fleets usually have a runaway bid.

3 minutes ago, pt106 said:

It has tremendous value for some fleets (that were specifically built around abusing last-first). It has value (but not a tremendous value in my opinion ) for other fleets. One possible way to differentiate between these fleets is to look at the bid amount, as last-first fleets usually have a runaway bid.

So are these last/first fleets so prevalant right now that we need a core rule change to completely neuter them?

37 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

So are these last/first fleets so prevalant right now that we need a core rule change to completely neuter reasonably adjust them?

Might be worth a shot.

22 minutes ago, Democratus said:

No Madaghmire is totally right and wise. All hail Madaghmire, King of Spaceships, Champion of Righteousness, Slayer of the Vicious Chicken of Bristol, Voted Peoples Sexiest Man Alive and seriously guys, he's just the best.

Aw go on.

Why do I suddenly feel like a panelist on "QI"?

It's never a Blue Whale!

Ok, real conspiracy time:

What are the chances that they're holding the FAQ back until it no longer affects Worlds? Sudden mechanical changes could undo weeks or months of careful work.

6 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Ok, real conspiracy time:

What are the chances that they're holding the FAQ back until it no longer affects Worlds? Sudden mechanical changes could undo weeks or months of careful work.

This is frustrating but the precedent is FFG doesn't wait for such things. They are VERY VERY VERY willing to make huge changes to games right before major events. See Xwing.

I really want to know whats holding up the FAQ. If there will be major changes. Atm, funny enough, we haven't actually confirmed if this leak is actually true.

17 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

This is frustrating but the precedent is FFG doesn't wait for such things. They are VERY VERY VERY willing to make huge changes to games right before major events. See Xwing.

X-Wing has much larger, more frequent tournaments that give indisputable data about competitive play issues. FFG makes those decisions after several consecutive events that show clear trends. For example, the recent changes to specific Imperial and Scum ships and pilots were made because there was significant evidence as to how they impacted the game and exactly which elements contributed to their success.

edit - Also, X-Wing as a game system is far more about mechanical interactions than Armada, which is more about strategic decisions. Because of this, it is easier to see when a mechanical interaction is causing unwanted or unforeseen issues in the game. In Armada, there are relatively few purely mechanical interactions that are impacting the game meta to the degree they do in X-Wing. One of the reasons for this is the already fairly broad action economy in Armada (you can typically do nearly anything at the right time if you've planned appropriately), which is where many of the mechanical interactions in X-Wing influence the game most.

As a seasoned veteran of the game told me at the last casual tournament I played in, "context matters."

I believe one of the issues with dealing with mass flotillas is the scatter.

In the squadron game, scatter is much easier to deal with because of the dice pools, low cost, and repeated attacks that squadrons can offer in dealing with other squadrons that have scatter.

Yes, there are ways of dealing with Scatter in the context of ship-to-ship warfare, but I do think it is more difficult to deal with the flotilla scatter in this context. As previously stated, Admo with H-9 and APT is great at nuking squadrons, but is it cost efficient to direct a large portion of my fleet's ship firepower to dealing with flotillas only?

In my experience, it's even more difficult to deal with flotillas at long range, as even if I do get the necessary accuracies I need, I still have to overcome the Evade to deal enough damage to pop one.

Again, I know there are other creative ways of dealing with flotillas, but is it worth dedicating one of your two gunships (as has become the trend in many fleets) to kill flotillas when you have other, arguably more important ships to worry about?

Just my two cents.

12 hours ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

As a seasoned veteran of the game told me at the last casual tournament I played in, "context matters."

I believe one of the issues with dealing with mass flotillas is the scatter.

In the squadron game, scatter is much easier to deal with because of the dice pools, low cost, and repeated attacks that squadrons can offer in dealing with other squadrons that have scatter.

Yes, there are ways of dealing with Scatter in the context of ship-to-ship warfare, but I do think it is more difficult to deal with the flotilla scatter in this context. As previously stated, Admo with H-9 and APT is great at nuking squadrons, but is it cost efficient to direct a large portion of my fleet's ship firepower to dealing with flotillas only?

In my experience, it's even more difficult to deal with flotillas at long range, as even if I do get the necessary accuracies I need, I still have to overcome the Evade to deal enough damage to pop one.

Again, I know there are other creative ways of dealing with flotillas, but is it worth dedicating one of your two gunships (as has become the trend in many fleets) to kill flotillas when you have other, arguably more important ships to worry about?

Just my two cents.

This is a good point, by coincidence ( or rather because of the launch of damage control officers), one of my gunners typically runs IO which can be used quite successfully against flots... I guess I'm kinda lucky in that sense... 2 for 1 deal.

16 hours ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

As a seasoned veteran of the game told me at the last casual tournament I played in, "context matters."

I believe one of the issues with dealing with mass flotillas is the scatter.

In the squadron game, scatter is much easier to deal with because of the dice pools, low cost, and repeated attacks that squadrons can offer in dealing with other squadrons that have scatter.

Yes, there are ways of dealing with Scatter in the context of ship-to-ship warfare, but I do think it is more difficult to deal with the flotilla scatter in this context. As previously stated, Admo with H-9 and APT is great at nuking squadrons, but is it cost efficient to direct a large portion of my fleet's ship firepower to dealing with flotillas only?

In my experience, it's even more difficult to deal with flotillas at long range, as even if I do get the necessary accuracies I need, I still have to overcome the Evade to deal enough damage to pop one.

Again, I know there are other creative ways of dealing with flotillas, but is it worth dedicating one of your two gunships (as has become the trend in many fleets) to kill flotillas when you have other, arguably more important ships to worry about?

Just my two cents.

Well if your losing to rampant flotilla use then the trend might need to change.

@Warlord Zepnick poinst spent to guarantee accuracies when ships shoot ships are not wasted in my opinion. Those upgrades that help kill flotillas also help kill ISDs

I wonder if they won't nerf relay so the relay squadron needs to be in comms range to work. So it becomes like some kind of boosted comms that can shoot, move and use strategic.