@Blail Blerg Instead of trying to nerf 4 squads with a complicated rewording of Rieekan, wouldn't it be easier to make him like Hera? So Rieekan declares 2 squads at the beginning of the round and they get the ability. Still works normally on ships.

This allows Rieekan to still work with the Escorts, so your opponent will inevitably get tied up for at least 1 round. After that, you have to be smart with your engagement instead of rushing everything in.

What I think needs to be looked at is Strategic, this ability alone makes me not pick 50% of the objectives because they could blow up in my face unless I pick strategic squadrons myself. Before wave 5, this wasn't a problem. What I'd like to see in the next FAQ:

1. Max points upped to 450

2. A buff to a few underused cards.

3. That's pretty much it. If points bumped to 450, consider making flotillas count in the squadron points?

oh and a buff to interdictors... I'D like to see this ship more more often

upping the points to 450, arguably, would be an indirect buff to Interdictors. They perform quite well at the 500pt CC limit.

They perform quite well at the 400pt limit. You just have to think outside the box

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

They perform quite well at the 400pt limit. You just have to think outside the box

Ok, then its quite weller at 500? I am with you, when I play an Interdictor I factor the 80 points I am guaranteeing in objectives out of their cost so it makes them an attractive option. But they are niche at 400. At 500 they become more accessible to more fleets that could benefit from them but lack the points to move from a VSD->Interdictor at 400.

34 minutes ago, Sybreed said:

oh and a buff to interdictors... I'D like to see this ship more more often

This is the only request so far that I'm 100% on board with. Interdictors aren't bad but they are more niche than I'd like. We can quibble over specific other configurations (example: I think VSD-IIs and Assault Frigate MkIIAs are too expensive), but the entire Interdictor ship is a bit of a hard sell at 400 points.

500 point games and make flotillas count towards squadrons seams like an interesting way to have higher point games that still keep squadron list from going to crazy and could keep 500 point games playable in tournament play I mean there going to need to have more points available when they release the SSD executioner expansion pack to make it tournament viable, plus it will help my lovely interdictor!

Wouldn't increasing the points to 450-500 make the activation advantage even more dramatic? You'll get that guy who can add another ISD, but the MSU that doesn't run squads anyway will add 2 flotillas and another small ship.

I'd love to add another Gozanti to push squads and a Raider to my DeMSU. 8 activations, 11 deployments at 481 points. And that's not even an extreme high-activation, large bid build.

Unless you are adding cheap ships with the 100 points, that extra medium/large ship won't be much help. You'll be at a bigger disadvantage, but wielding more damage. Could you imagine 5 more GR-75s in the MC30 swarm? 3 MC30s, 8-9 GR-75s. And a 10 point bid. That is an extreme build.

Or 10 CR90s for Rieekan ramming.

In CC, people build rational fleets since they have a skeleton at the beginning. You build up to 500 and work with what you got. But tournament scene would be different.

I *really* hope 500 never happens. The table just gets WAY too cluttered at that point value. Heck, I'd be more game for dropping the limit over raising it...

4 minutes ago, xanderf said:

I *really* hope 500 never happens. The table just gets WAY too cluttered at that point value. Heck, I'd be more game for dropping the limit over raising it...

From what I heard, 300 points was very lack luster in terms of play. Certainly because there was less content, but also because you had less stuff so it didn't feel right.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

From what I heard, 300 points was very lack luster in terms of play. Certainly because there was less content, but also because you had less stuff so it didn't feel right.

300 was too low, but 350 or 375 works pretty well, from my experience. 400 is fine, don't get me wrong, but it really is about the limit at which point the game is still 'something playable in a tournament timeframe'. Different strokes for different folks and all, but if I'm stuck at a table playing a tactical wargame for 3-4 hrs for a single match, I'm not having fun. You try to ask me to play 3 matches like that in a day...

36 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Wouldn't increasing the points to 450-500 make the activation advantage even more dramatic? You'll get that guy who can add another ISD, but the MSU that doesn't run squads anyway will add 2 flotillas and another small ship.

I'd love to add another Gozanti to push squads and a Raider to my DeMSU. 8 activations, 11 deployments at 481 points. And that's not even an extreme high-activation, large bid build.

Unless you are adding cheap ships with the 100 points, that extra medium/large ship won't be much help. You'll be at a bigger disadvantage, but wielding more damage. Could you imagine 5 more GR-75s in the MC30 swarm? 3 MC30s, 8-9 GR-75s. And a 10 point bid. That is an extreme build.

Or 10 CR90s for Rieekan ramming.

In CC, people build rational fleets since they have a skeleton at the beginning. You build up to 500 and work with what you got. But tournament scene would be different.

I have imagination. So yes, I can imagine that.

And you can - and people have - do this kind of thing in CC.

1 minute ago, xanderf said:

300 was too low, but 350 or 375 works pretty well, from my experience. 400 is fine, don't get me wrong, but it really is about the limit at which point the game is still 'something playable in a tournament timeframe'. Different strokes for different folks and all, but if I'm stuck at a table playing a tactical wargame for 3-4 hrs for a single match, I'm not having fun. You try to ask me to play 3 matches like that in a day...

400 points does not take noticeably longer than 300. And I'm not taking the extra 15 minutes - I'm thinking actually play experience.

5 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

From what I heard, 300 points was very lack luster in terms of play. Certainly because there was less content, but also because you had less stuff so it didn't feel right.

It was quite ok. But 400 definitely made it better. No question there.

13 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Wouldn't increasing the points to 450-500 make the activation advantage even more dramatic? You'll get that guy who can add another ISD, but the MSU that doesn't run squads anyway will add 2 flotillas and another small ship.

I was just having this discussion on Facebook.... though from the opposite perspective, "what if" a full 167 points of squads all activated through relay by 6-7 small ships... boosting the total to 500, even if you make floats cost out of squad totals, only seems to make things worse.

I'd pull my hair out if I had to sit through an hour of my opponent rolling one die at a time and carefully picking up and placing 167 points of squads as a common match...

I suppose that's why I had posted a few weeks ago about all those structure changes I'd like to see...

squad allowance of 100 points. All squads are all stripped to core values (by my math roughly 8-12 points each based on dice/hp/speed/ect, basically allowing every fleet 8-12 fighters), abilities and aces cost extra out of the regular fleet point total.

That seemed the sensible balance to me. Squads don't lose their power, if you invest the fleet points into them (which squadron heavy fleets already do) but it also curbs the super-effectiveness against people who don't dump 1/3 of their points into squadrons.


I don't know. That's old news on my part, but I definitely would rather the system stay as it is than add, what seems to me, unstable rule changes that could, for some, break the game...

On 4/3/2017 at 9:44 AM, Caldias said:

I think the most glaring thing is in the regionals data, some 90% of rebel fleets had flotillas, and Gozantis were about 80%. When everyone was worried that Demolisher was too good, I think that ship was in about 75% of all lists. When ships are this ubiquitous, it hinders list diversity, which makes the game boring.

I have no problem winning, and I never said you can't win without them, you're just almost always better off with 2-3 in a list, which sucks. Again, I repeat, the real issue is the nature of how activations work in this game, not flotillas themselves inherently.

This is my feeling on the idea. I don't dislike flotillas, I think they work fine for what they are. Indeed, I like the option to add the fleet effects into the game. They even work well as a way to address activation disparity.

The problem is that - as you note - activation disparity is such a CRUSHING disadvantage that people are being FORCED to take flotillas to at least mitigate it...and that's a terrible design spot to be in.

Some sort of activation delay would help a ton. And lots of ways that could be managed - drop a pile of tokens on the commander card of the smaller fleet, for example, equal to 1 + the difference in activation count between the two sides. During the game, said player can spend one of those tokens in place of activating a ship (once spent, they are gone). So flotillas still probably remain the 'better' way of dealing with activation disparity, but not (the current state) the ONLY way to deal with it.

Flotillas can't activate until all real ships have activated on both sides.

54 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Some sort of activation delay would help a ton. And lots of ways that could be managed - drop a pile of tokens on the commander card of the smaller fleet, for example, equal to 1 + the difference in activation count between the two sides. During the game, said player can spend one of those tokens in place of activating a ship (once spent, they are gone). So flotillas still probably remain the 'better' way of dealing with activation disparity, but not (the current state) the ONLY way to deal with it.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the activation disparity complaints but a passing system like Imperial Assault's errata seems too drastic - there are dangers in going for numerous smaller activations and my concern is being able to pass a lot against them may remove some of the benefit of running such fleets. I'd be absolutely okay with a simpler form of what you recommended, though. Something like "once a turn when a player would need to activate one of their ships, if an opponent has more unactivated ships than they do, they may pass activation back to their opponent" or some such. It means you could still play a 3 or 4 activation fleet and not feel so overwhelmed against a 5 or 6 activation fleet but you're still going to have problems with just 2 ISDs versus numerous activations.

It is possible to play around the activation disadvantage in my experience, but it does require some cagey maneuvers and I realize it's not fun for some folks.

3 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the activation disparity complaints but a passing system like Imperial Assault's errata seems too drastic - there are dangers in going for numerous smaller activations and my concern is being able to pass a lot against them may remove some of the benefit of running such fleets. I'd be absolutely okay with a simpler form of what you recommended, though. Something like "once a turn when a player would need to activate one of their ships, if an opponent has more unactivated ships than they do, they may pass activation back to their opponent" or some such. It means you could still play a 3 or 4 activation fleet and not feel so overwhelmed against a 5 or 6 activation fleet but you're still going to have problems with just 2 ISDs versus numerous activations.

It is possible to play around the activation disadvantage in my experience, but it does require some cagey maneuvers and I realize it's not fun for some folks.

I like Caldias's idea. The player with fewer ships at the start of the game can choose who is first and second player. This means the player with less activations can prevent their opponent from first/last activation if they want. It also pulls the meta away from 2+ flotilla fleets since the benefit of having a large bid and high activations is nullified.

One consequence is everyone will be running 400 point fleets, which is fine IMO.

I'm also going on board that really its the activation that is the problem in Armada. I think flotillas are fun and good for the game. However, something needs to be done to mitigate the painful use of turn order. Turn order is always a clunky problematic part of turn based games. Even recently, the 20 year old Magic has had suggestions that their system of balancing 1st and 2nd player are not balanced enough.

I like Caldias' idea too. But I think bidding should be worth something when it comes to objectives. Dunno what. Or go with Undeadguys idea and justnhave everyone run 400 fleets, thats actually fine too.

Another option is this upgrade:
Temporal Coordinator
Large ship only
Crew 7 pts
You may exhaust this card instead of activating a ship.

Not unique. But at 7 pts, you're going to have a hard time wanting it over Tua, IO and SFO.
Large ship only, so only works for fleets with large ships in them. Sorry medium ships.

5 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I like Caldias's idea. The player with fewer ships at the start of the game can choose who is first and second player. This means the player with less activations can prevent their opponent from first/last activation if they want. It also pulls the meta away from 2+ flotilla fleets since the benefit of having a large bid and high activations is nullified.

One consequence is everyone will be running 400 point fleets, which is fine IMO.

I'm not necessarily opposed to that idea, either, should something change (I'm also fine with no change, I don't have strong feelings on the matter beyond "I wish certain people would stop talking about this in such apocalyptic terms"). My main concern with that kind of a fix would be for players who like having a moderate to high number of activations and some choice over using their objectives but would no longer be able to. It's not that big a deal, though.

I think Cal's idea is a wonderful example of outside the box problem solving but I think it would create as many issues as it solved. Prefer the seven point upgrade card, but I was more on board with the idea that activations were an issue before the 4 total ship final table.

My problem with the passing mechanic always ends up going towards the midgame. Let's say it's 4 CR90s vs 2 ISDs and I've been circling your ships. My squadrons and CR90S kill one ISD, but if you get the passing mechanic, I may have to move a ship or two into range of your ISD instead of waiting and then running away from you at that point. The passing mechanic hurts the guy running the swarm fleet because it did good and killed some of your stuff?

That seems like it's actively punishing me for taking a swarm fleet instead of running a big ship. If FFG wanted to do that, why would Cracken only affect small and medium ships? Having to work to get first and last activation in small ships alone is difficult, especially if you can get into closer range of that swarm.

I can sympathize with the people who keep coming up against swarm fleets, I know I play against a lot of them (@Snipafist...). But with the ISD-I and LMC80 and H1MC80 there's ways of building to mitigate their advantages. I just worry what a passing mechanic is going to do to the game. I'm hesitantly ok with the Once a Turn idea, but this is a much more drastic change than I think a lot of people realize. That's a large part of my worry/hesitance with the new rule.

6 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

I think Cal's idea is a wonderful example of outside the box problem solving but I think it would create as many issues as it solved. Prefer the seven point upgrade card, but I was more on board with the idea that activations were an issue before the 4 total ship final table.

What were the lists in the top8 however? Let's go by the same rules as the Regionals Data discussions, where I got bashed over and over for only talking about top4 and winners.

Though, I saw that too, I'm very interested in learning how they felt fighting 5+ activations.