8 hours ago, xanderf said:

Folks familiar with older wargames may be familiar with the concept of 'impulses', already, but for those not - it's pretty easily explained. It is an alternative to IGO-UGO mechanics, where units could cross an enormous area of the table with no option for enemy response. (Which is, basically, completely unrealistic - if you see a ship coming at you, and it is in your fire arc, you are not going to wait for it to cross all the way to its optimum range before reacting to it)

Instead, what this mechanic does is break up the movement of ships into 'phases', and effectively has ships move at their speeds proportionally to each other.

Amusingly, this game makes that VERY easy to implement as a result of the maneuver chart - everything is already broken up into easy segments of 1, 2, 3, or 4, and whether a ship can yaw at any given step is clearly indicated in that chart. All that is needed is a second chart indicating when the ship WOULD move, proportionally to other ships, like this:

What happens, now, is that each turn is broken into 4 'pulses', where each ship may make one step movement on its maneuver tool. WITHIN each 'pulse', activations happen as normal - one ship at a time, back and forth. (Theoretically this would also open the possibility of 'simultaneous fire' and 'simultaneous movement' - but, at that point, we are looking at just incremental improvements for considerable increases in time. A 4-pulse system, using the existing activation process, runs about as quick as the game normally does.)

This solves the biggest problem of MSU vs smaller-ship-lists, in that there are nearly no means to react to where the latter half of the enemy formation is ending up, after your own activations, as they have a very large set of possible maneuver end-points. With an impulse system, they still retain a portion of this significant advantage - yet, they will have already spent 3/4 of their possible movement variations in getting to their current position, which blunts a large portion of the advantage they have.

This also continues interacting with the existing rules without issue (Demolisher works the same as usual - it gets its first attack when everyone else does, and its second attack after some maneuver it performs; engine techs allow an extra speed-1 maneuver after any maneuver the ship performs; etc). The maneuver chart on each ship's card makes the overall implementation - knowing when you can or can't yaw - trivial. It really does feel like the game was almost made with this in mind, just...it wasn't finished.

(Bonus #1: No longer need to try to snake that overly-long maneuver tool around the table, knocking things over. Every single maneuver is just using the first two notches.)

(Bonus #2: Hey, terrain matters, now! Since you don't instantly teleport from your starting point to your ending point, flying TOWARDS asteroids...kinda bad idea, all of a sudden)

(Bonus #3: this also solves the ridiculous realism-shatterer of MSU lists weaving through each other's formations where the ship could not possibly fit, and ending up somewhere it could never have safely traveled to, simply as a result of 'teleporting' across the maneuver tool)

No. This is not easy to implement. Nor is it "almost built into the game". It's a completely different game.

2 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

I'm Seeing it. It says "Speed" and "Impulse" but it doesn't say why that matters. the layout shows that there's a correlation but it doesn't lay out what that correlation is. It shows letters for "Attack" and "Move" *but you haven't explained what any of it actually means.*

Here's an infographic. Tell me what it means.



You've jumped to infographics but haven't bothered to explain what they mean or even what they reference. We're talking game mechanics, and I can't even figure out how your change integrates into the turn order. I'm still trying to figure out where your infographic is even applied. Is it when you declare your movement? Does it determine turn order? Does it determine activation order? When do you determine where on the chart you are, or if you're even supposed to be on the chart?

Stop, take a moment, and state in precise detail what your graphic means. Walk me through a turn. And if you refer to that graphic one more time, you've failed. Use words. You're on a text forum so write it out for me.

Then, after you've written out your idea, feel free to reference it again.

The way I interpreted it is this. All ships have two charts that they reference. A speed chart, as we have it now, and an'impulse chart'. The impulse represents 1/4 of a round. Each round every player, starting with the first, looks at the impulse chart of all their ships, on the row corresponding to the current impulse, and locates all ship without the '-' on the column corresponding to that ship's speed. The player then chooses one such ship to activate, and flips the dial. If the cell in the table at the coordinates (Impulse, Speed) has an 'A-M' then the ship attacks whatever is in range (I assume the standard current Armada rules for attack) and then moves. When determining movement, it looks at its speed chart, to the column of its current speed, and the row of the current movement it is on (so a speed 3 ship will move 3 times in a round, once in 3 different impulses, and each time it has the notches available at the corresponding row for its speed) and then moves. This is repeated until all ships that do not have the '-' at the their (Impulse, Speed) cell have moved. The impulse number (call it whatever you like, round quarter may work) is then incremented by 1, and everything is repeated.

This sounds like you are duplicating the existing round 4 times per round, but only on select ships.

I think those who claim that it is an enormous change are right. And I would like to add: It would make the game worse. I wrote an entire article about the design principles and reasons of the activation rules in armada - unfortunately in German. I will try to break its main thoughts down to 4 points:

1. Star Wars space battles are barely science fiction , but retro battles of WW2 , because this was the last phase in history where you could visualize the battle on screen is a satisfying way (fights are in eye contact distance and have a pace slow enough for our brain to cope with)
2. Such battles are in itself a bit boring for a tactics game , because of the slow speed of the main ships and their highly predictable movement. After Deployment a lot of the game would be predecided and therefore less interesting.
3. Hence, the rules are not mainly meant to simulate "reality" or to grant "realism"
4. The main task of the rules is to force you to tactial challenging decisions .

It is a bit like in chess where the queen is the most powerfull unit on the board. That wasn't the case in former times. She was as slow as the king. However, people discovered that the game is a lot more fun, if she has her current mechanics, although it is not the pinnacle of realism.

The same holds true of armada. The current activation game is a major contributor to the tactical depth of the game. It does not simulate any real process. However, without it the game would lose a lot of fascination and intelectual challenge after the first games played.

So slow ships get to wait for most other movement to be completed and shoot things.

This does nothing to skewer msu, this in fact only encourages slow rolling as it fails to capture simultaneous movement well. An attack phase followed by a movement phase would do more to capture what I think you are trying to get at.

All this does is let space hulks wait, and greatly decreases the risk of speed 0 as you know you are going last enough to mitigate anything problematoc related to not having defense tokens.

This also gives faster ships the inherent ability to mitigate any risk of big shots by moving away well before slower ships, so the risk of close engagement becomes negligible.

Slow roll games were bad enough wave 3/4 without giving slow advantages. This is hardly 'built in already', closer to half baked maybe. Try to be critical ij your ideas, instead of blind to the flaws.

10 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

I'm Seeing it. It says "Speed" and "Impulse" but it doesn't say why that matters. the layout shows that there's a correlation but it doesn't lay out what that correlation is. It shows letters for "Attack" and "Move" *but you haven't explained what any of it actually means.*

Here's an infographic. Tell me what it means.



You've jumped to infographics but haven't bothered to explain what they mean or even what they reference. We're talking game mechanics, and I can't even figure out how your change integrates into the turn order. I'm still trying to figure out where your infographic is even applied. Is it when you declare your movement? Does it determine turn order? Does it determine activation order? When do you determine where on the chart you are, or if you're even supposed to be on the chart?

Stop, take a moment, and state in precise detail what your graphic means. Walk me through a turn. And if you refer to that graphic one more time, you've failed. Use words. You're on a text forum so write it out for me.

Then, after you've written out your idea, feel free to reference it again.

Sir, I could understand his first post very well enough.

It's an initiative order. That's not hard to understand.

First Impulse: Ships of speed 4 get to do Attack/Activation and move,

2nd Impulse, Ships of Speed 3 get to do Attack/Activation and move, ships of speed 4 get to move.

and so forth.

Double Post.