9 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

My issues is they are a dominant tactic for which they are also their own counter. It's flotillas all the way down.

It is not self evident. As I have already shown it is not reflected in the regional data.

Please stop stating it as if this is a global issue.

13 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

I am saying it has made turtle / delay the dominant tactic, which is boring.

I feel like you and I have very different definitions for "turtle" if you think an MC30T rush fleet is turtling...

18 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

It is not self evident. As I have already shown it is not reflected in the regional data.

Please stop stating it as if this is a global issue.

What % of fleets finishing in the top 4 at Regionals did not include at least 1 flotilla?

What % of fleets finishing in the top 4 at regionals did not include at least 2 flotillas?

4 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

What % of fleets finishing in the top 4 at regionals did not include at least 2 flotillas?

About 66%. I am not going into details here. You ignored me last time because the facts didnt suit you. I wont waste my breath.

4 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

What % of fleets finishing in the top 4 at Regionals did not include at least 1 flotilla?

What % of fleets finishing in the top 4 at regionals did not include at least 2 flotillas?

Does it make a difference on what that Flotilla was used for? or is it an automatic assumption that Flotillas are immediately there for activation bumping and nothing else? Or the activation bump they give is immediately worth more than anything else the flotilla may be bringing?

Legitimately trying to find out why there seems to be a distinct disconnect between both sides here...

If anybody is sitting at a computer with Excel, I'd be interested to see someone validate Reinhold's claim that fleets are 50% flotillas by count. My personal experience is that that is an overstatement, but I could be wrong. It happens occasionally.

You could do it by count of fleets with 50%+ flotillas by count, or just total number of flotillas divided by total ship count (easier but less interesting).

2 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

If anybody is sitting at a computer with Excel, I'd be interested to see someone validate Reinhold's claim that fleets are 50% flotillas by count. My personal experience is that that is an overstatement, but I could be wrong. It happens occasionally.

You could do it by count of fleets with 50%+ flotillas by count, or just total number of flotillas divided by total ship count (easier but less interesting).

Flotillas are average 1.56 per fleet. Activations is 4.49 per fleet.

Read the regional data thread for more details.

I did sit with excel running. He ignored my data then.

28 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

Why care about the ships that let me not activate any of my ships until, if you are running a 4 activation fleet, I have been able to force your entire fleet into my guns? This is the engine that makes a list like the @Caldias or @Ardaedhel MC30 spam work, and work well enough to place in the top of Regionals.

This seems self-evident; my point is what this situation with activations does is incentivize everyone to start every list with stall flotillas. <20% of points or not, they are now an auto-include. Put differently: now over the past 15 games I have played, flotillas have been in 100% of them, represent over 50% of the total ships by count, and no game has featured less than 4 of them combined.

My issues is they are a dominant tactic for which they are also their own counter. It's flotillas all the way down.

Edit: I'm not saying it is unfair; everyone can do it. I am saying it has made turtle / delay the dominant tactic, which is boring. Also I can't type and had to fix typos that make me look like an illiterate drunk moose.

Over the past 15 games you have played, how many fleets brought less than 36 points of fighters? My position is that flotillas are part of the game, just like squadrons and warships are. If a player completely ignores them they are placing themselves at a disadvantage. I also think that a player that only uses flotillas as an empty activation is giving up an advantage to their opponent (who is likely using flotillas as well, because they are smart and not boring), because quality activations are what win encounters.

I've suggested the H9 Ackbar Pickle in THREE different "crying about flotillas thread" now... has anyone else actually tried it? With H9 you can take out flotillas/most small bases with ease by denying their most important defense token, and I've even gotten three in one round before (both side arcs, ET double ram, then it ran into me). It's pretty hard for them to delay if their flotillas are dead! Then it's just a matter of finishing off the one or two actual ships, which large wads of red dice help very much with. Have a ship for targeting large enemy ships (Landmonition in my fleet) and a decent fighter wing (tycho and 5 a wings for me) and you have an incredibly well rounded fleet that is effective against almost any list it faces.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results... how far has the crying gotten you guys so far?

Well, for my part, I will attempt to explain once more and then take my leave from these forums for good, as I think things are degenerating to the point that there is no longer a reason to participate. In order:

While not all flotillas are used for activation padding, I have observed two trends in winning lists across many archetypes (which Torka and was also speaking to in this thread and Steve has spoken to before, I believe) that is making armada stagnant:

1 - With the introduction of the new objectives, bidding for 2nd and then refusing to engage while using activations to delay has become a highly viable and winning strategy. Maybe I am quick to see this because I also play Cracken, but I played a game recently where zero of my ships rolled dice for an entire game and I won 8-3. This is driven by the incredible power flotillas bring via activation efficiency. If someone did not spam flotillas on their side, I can often not activate any relevant ships until their entire side is exhausted for the turn with all my flotillas hugging the board edge in back sopping up activations. If you don't agree on this, I challenge you to play with 6 activations minimum for a few tournaments and see what happens.

2 - Relay has exacerbated this and, I believe, is part of why the breaking point for a lot of us was wave 5. @shmitty (and to be clear I think he is dead on and wanting to go 2nd is a thing) was speaking to the power of the new objectives and strategic elsewhere, but I would suggest that Strategic (so I can dominate token objectives) plus efficient squadron pushing (which flotillas are) plus activation delay all wrapped in an 18 point package is a bit much. Now I can activate all my squads while delaying my ships and dominating my objectives while spreading out my flotillas on the back board edge (my usual set up is 2 in each bottom corner facing sideways at a slight angle and two in the middle facing sideways opposite each other, and yes I have been running 4 flotillas lately). The spread means anything short of speed 4 ships will kill a max of one in a game and I can delay 4 activation fleets such that they will spend an entire game not being able to attack my main combat ships because I never have to move until their turn is over.

3 - First / Last alpha strikes when you field 6+ activations also remain brutal. If I'm not first, unless you took 6 or more ships yourself, you have the old Demo/Admonition first/last problem.

4 - The dominant counter is to lean into the tactic. How do you avoid being delayed to death? Take more of your own flotillas. A good example of this was the game that @Caldias and I played at the MD regional. We had 12 total activations on the table and ended 6-5. That was my worst result on the day, and he only managed it because he actually was even with me (6-6). Edit: I screwed up which list Craig brought and thought it was the pre-Shara one. Fixed! Teach me to write without my notes handy.

5 - Which brings me to the core problem: there is no downside to taking some flotillas, so it has become the dominant tactic in wave 5 and all the fleets I see lately are converging on the same archetype. I have seen one medium ship in 15 games - and it was Gallant Haven. Large ships exist as onesides with a ton of flotillas around them to delay delay delay so they can shoot. The MC30 list exists to delay delay delay to force people into the flotillas. You always want some for the relay / strategic combo as I have won multiple games by refusing to engage (and if the other guy brought speed 3 or less ships it is becoming increasingly possible to have games where no shooting occurs or, if it does, it's because I'm losing one flotilla late), or you want a ton of relay for squadron objectives, or you want to be able to first/last and delay people into your guns. All of those are much better with flotillas.

So where are we? The majority of my games don't involve much fleet combat anymore unless my opponent makes mistakes and leaves me an opening they shouldn't, or lets me go first with Admonition or Demo and more activations. The counter tactics that work to fight this engine are leaning hard into the same thing oneself (I think it is telling that Ginkapo and Ard are in this thread yet their best lists are themselves very high activation count lists that thrive on this same engine).

On data: I'm not terribly interested in the overall average or the low end of the pool because that's where you get the guy playing five assault peltas who scores 3 tournament points and started two weeks ago. When you look at the top bracket, the trend (increasing in wave 5 top 4 for Regionals) is more flotillas, more squadrons, more strategic, more deployments, more activation. Perhaps more telling, when you parse apart Regionals and take only those with large numbers of attendees, this trend becomes more pronounced. That is to say, the larger the tournament, the more this matters and you can't get lucky and win a 50-person MD regional with the same list that wins the 8-person snow day regional in the Midwest.

So my statement is twofold:

First, not engaging in ship combat or barely engaging in ship combat is boring as hell, and it works. It works really well. Armada: the epic game of delaying with flotillas and running away with corvettes while picking up tokens and picking off straggler squadrons! That makes one not want to play this game, and forces fleets to converge.

Second, many fleet archetypes no longer exist. You can do anything you want, so long as you take flotillas to pad it, also leads to what @OgRib astutely identified: if you are going to take flotillas, you should use them. This is also why the average point spend on squadrons recently is over 100 in my games, excepting the guy playing just Shara and Tycho in a 3xMC30 4xGR-75 list. Again, medium ships are gone. Large ships exist as onesies with huge flotillas swarms to drive it.

I am very confident this will be borne out at worlds; notice the list @Overdawg just won Stele (another large tourney) with fits perfectly into this archetype. It's making the game a very boring sort of delay / evade / single precision strike and nope out sort of dance, and it's also off-putting to new players because "I spend the first half of every turn moving this tiny thing at speed 1 on the back board edge, STAR WARS!" just doesn't grab people.

Hopefully this actually explains why I see this as an issue, and with that, I am out.

Edit: likewise, with increasing frequency after games I get the comment of "you are a good sport, but also that game was not fun at all and I don't know what I could have done differently without changing my list." I know Steve has been experiencing the same, and he's one of the best Armada players I know. This is not a sample of one or just one meta.

What if flotillas activated at the beginning of the squadron phase instead?

11 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

I am very confident this will be borne out at worlds; notice the list @Overdawg just won Stele (another large tourney) with fits perfectly into this archetype.

Does anyone have this list? I saw in the Stele thread that lists were not documented which is pretty disappointing.

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Does anyone have this list? I saw in the Stele thread that lists were not documented which is pretty disappointing.

Its document in the Stele thread list.

21 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

Well, for my part, I will attempt to explain once more and then take my leave from these forums for good, as I think things are degenerating to the point that there is no longer a reason to participate. In order:

While not all flotillas are used for activation padding, I have observed two trends in winning lists across many archetypes (which Torka and was also speaking to in this thread and Steve has spoken to before, I believe) that is making armada stagnant:

1 - With the introduction of the new objectives, bidding for 2nd and then refusing to engage while using activations to delay has become a highly viable and winning strategy. Maybe I am quick to see this because I also play Cracken, but I played a game recently where zero of my ships rolled dice for an entire game and I won 8-3. This is driven by the incredible power flotillas bring via activation efficiency. If someone did not spam flotillas on their side, I can often not activate any relevant ships until their entire side is exhausted for the turn with all my flotillas hugging the board edge in back sopping up activations. If you don't agree on this, I challenge you to play with 6 activations minimum for a few tournaments and see what happens.

2 - Relay has exacerbated this and, I believe, is part of why the breaking point for a lot of us was wave 5. @shmitty (and to be clear I think he is dead on and wanting to go 2nd is a thing) was speaking to the power of the new objectives and strategic elsewhere, but I would suggest that Strategic (so I can dominate token objectives) plus efficient squadron pushing (which flotillas are) plus activation delay all wrapped in an 18 point package is a bit much. Now I can activate all my squads while delaying my ships and dominating my objectives while spreading out my flotillas on the back board edge (my usual set up is 2 in each bottom corner facing sideways at a slight angle and two in the middle facing sideways opposite each other, and yes I have been running 4 flotillas lately). The spread means anything short of speed 4 ships will kill a max of one in a game and I can delay 4 activation fleets such that they will spend an entire game not being able to attack my main combat ships because I never have to move until their turn is over.

3 - First / Last alpha strikes when you field 6+ activations also remain brutal. If I'm not first, unless you took 6 or more ships yourself, you have the old Demo/Admonition first/last problem.

4 - The dominant counter is to lean into the tactic. How do you avoid being delayed to death? Take more of your own flotillas. A good example of this was the game that @Caldias and I played at the MD regional. We had 13 total activations on the table and ended 6-5. That was my worst result on the day, and he only managed it because he actually out-activated me (6-7).

5 - Which brings me to the core problem: there is no downside to taking some flotillas, so it has become the dominant tactic in wave 5 and all the fleets I see lately are converging on the same archetype. I have seen one medium ship in 15 games - and it was Gallant Haven. Large ships exist as onesides with a ton of flotillas around them to delay delay delay so they can shoot. The MC30 list exists to delay delay delay to force people into the flotillas. You always want some for the relay / strategic combo as I have won multiple games by refusing to engage (and if the other guy brought speed 3 or less ships it is becoming increasingly possible to have games where no shooting occurs or, if it does, it's because I'm losing one flotilla late), or you want a ton of relay for squadron objectives, or you want to be able to first/last and delay people into your guns. All of those are much better with flotillas.

So where are we? The majority of my games don't involve much fleet combat anymore unless my opponent makes mistakes and leaves me an opening they shouldn't, or lets me go first with Admonition or Demo and more activations. The counter tactics that work to fight this engine are leaning hard into the same thing oneself (I think it is telling that Ginkapo and Ard are in this thread yet their best lists are themselves very high activation count lists that thrive on this same engine).

On data: I'm not terribly interested in the overall average or the low end of the pool because that's where you get the guy playing five assault peltas who scores 3 tournament points and started two weeks ago. When you look at the top bracket, the trend (increasing in wave 5 top 4 for Regionals) is more flotillas, more squadrons, more strategic, more deployments, more activation. Perhaps more telling, when you parse apart Regionals and take only those with large numbers of attendees, this trend becomes more pronounced. That is to say, the larger the tournament, the more this matters and you can't get lucky and win a 50-person MD regional with the same list that wins the 8-person snow day regional in the Midwest.

So my statement is twofold:

First, not engaging in ship combat or barely engaging in ship combat is boring as hell, and it works. It works really well. Armada: the epic game of delaying with flotillas and running away with corvettes while picking up tokens and picking off straggler squadrons! That makes one not want to play this game, and forces fleets to converge.

Second, many fleet archetypes no longer exist. You can do anything you want, so long as you take flotillas to pad it, also leads to what @OgRib astutely identified: if you are going to take flotillas, you should use them. This is also why the average point spend on squadrons recently is over 100 in my games, excepting the guy playing just Shara and Tycho in a 3xMC30 4xGR-75 list. Again, medium ships are gone. Large ships exist as onesies with huge flotillas swarms to drive it.

I am very confident this will be borne out at worlds; notice the list @Overdawg just won Stele (another large tourney) with fits perfectly into this archetype. It's making the game a very boring sort of delay / evade / single precision strike and nope out sort of dance, and it's also off-putting to new players because "I spend the first half of every turn moving this tiny thing at speed 1 on the back board edge, STAR WARS!" just doesn't grab people.

Hopefully this actually explains why I see this as an issue, and with that, I am out.

Edit: likewise, with increasing frequency after games I get the comment of "you are a good sport, but also that game was not fun at all and I don't know what I could have done differently without changing my list." I know Steve has been experiencing the same, and he's one of the best Armada players I know. This is not a sample of one or just one meta.

Sounds like you are all a bunch of WAOC players and are making the game unfun for yourselves... we are not having these issues in my meta because we actually WANT to play the game. I mean sure 4 flotillas skirting the back edge and abusing relay is effective, but it needs a player to actually take it to see the table. And you guys are doing this in friendly games with each other? Maybe flotillas aren't the problem....

4 minutes ago, MandalorianMoose said:

Sounds like you are all a bunch of WAOC players and are making the game unfun for yourselves... we are not having these issues in my meta because we actually WANT to play the game. I mean sure 4 flotillas skirting the back edge and abusing relay is effective, but it needs a player to actually take it to see the table. And you guys are doing this in friendly games with each other? Maybe flotillas aren't the problem....

This is a specious argument.

In a good game, you should be able to both play hard and play to win while still having fun. I am responsible for being a good sport and constructive player, but I'm not responsible for FFG's game design.

If a game is either / or (you can have fun OR play the best you can), the fault is with the rules of the game.

31 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

Well, for my part, I will attempt to explain once more and then take my leave from these forums for good, as I think things are degenerating to the point that there is no longer a reason to participate. In order:

While not all flotillas are used for activation padding, I have observed two trends in winning lists across many archetypes (which Torka and was also speaking to in this thread and Steve has spoken to before, I believe) that is making armada stagnant:

1 - With the introduction of the new objectives, bidding for 2nd and then refusing to engage while using activations to delay has become a highly viable and winning strategy. Maybe I am quick to see this because I also play Cracken, but I played a game recently where zero of my ships rolled dice for an entire game and I won 8-3. This is driven by the incredible power flotillas bring via activation efficiency. If someone did not spam flotillas on their side, I can often not activate any relevant ships until their entire side is exhausted for the turn with all my flotillas hugging the board edge in back sopping up activations. If you don't agree on this, I challenge you to play with 6 activations minimum for a few tournaments and see what happens.

2 - Relay has exacerbated this and, I believe, is part of why the breaking point for a lot of us was wave 5. @shmitty (and to be clear I think he is dead on and wanting to go 2nd is a thing) was speaking to the power of the new objectives and strategic elsewhere, but I would suggest that Strategic (so I can dominate token objectives) plus efficient squadron pushing (which flotillas are) plus activation delay all wrapped in an 18 point package is a bit much. Now I can activate all my squads while delaying my ships and dominating my objectives while spreading out my flotillas on the back board edge (my usual set up is 2 in each bottom corner facing sideways at a slight angle and two in the middle facing sideways opposite each other, and yes I have been running 4 flotillas lately). The spread means anything short of speed 4 ships will kill a max of one in a game and I can delay 4 activation fleets such that they will spend an entire game not being able to attack my main combat ships because I never have to move until their turn is over.

3 - First / Last alpha strikes when you field 6+ activations also remain brutal. If I'm not first, unless you took 6 or more ships yourself, you have the old Demo/Admonition first/last problem.

4 - The dominant counter is to lean into the tactic. How do you avoid being delayed to death? Take more of your own flotillas. A good example of this was the game that @Caldias and I played at the MD regional. We had 13 total activations on the table and ended 6-5. That was my worst result on the day, and he only managed it because he actually out-activated me (6-7).

5 - Which brings me to the core problem: there is no downside to taking some flotillas, so it has become the dominant tactic in wave 5 and all the fleets I see lately are converging on the same archetype. I have seen one medium ship in 15 games - and it was Gallant Haven. Large ships exist as onesides with a ton of flotillas around them to delay delay delay so they can shoot. The MC30 list exists to delay delay delay to force people into the flotillas. You always want some for the relay / strategic combo as I have won multiple games by refusing to engage (and if the other guy brought speed 3 or less ships it is becoming increasingly possible to have games where no shooting occurs or, if it does, it's because I'm losing one flotilla late), or you want a ton of relay for squadron objectives, or you want to be able to first/last and delay people into your guns. All of those are much better with flotillas.

So where are we? The majority of my games don't involve much fleet combat anymore unless my opponent makes mistakes and leaves me an opening they shouldn't, or lets me go first with Admonition or Demo and more activations. The counter tactics that work to fight this engine are leaning hard into the same thing oneself (I think it is telling that Ginkapo and Ard are in this thread yet their best lists are themselves very high activation count lists that thrive on this same engine).

On data: I'm not terribly interested in the overall average or the low end of the pool because that's where you get the guy playing five assault peltas who scores 3 tournament points and started two weeks ago. When you look at the top bracket, the trend (increasing in wave 5 top 4 for Regionals) is more flotillas, more squadrons, more strategic, more deployments, more activation. Perhaps more telling, when you parse apart Regionals and take only those with large numbers of attendees, this trend becomes more pronounced. That is to say, the larger the tournament, the more this matters and you can't get lucky and win a 50-person MD regional with the same list that wins the 8-person snow day regional in the Midwest.

So my statement is twofold:

First, not engaging in ship combat or barely engaging in ship combat is boring as hell, and it works. It works really well. Armada: the epic game of delaying with flotillas and running away with corvettes while picking up tokens and picking off straggler squadrons! That makes one not want to play this game, and forces fleets to converge.

Second, many fleet archetypes no longer exist. You can do anything you want, so long as you take flotillas to pad it, also leads to what @OgRib astutely identified: if you are going to take flotillas, you should use them. This is also why the average point spend on squadrons recently is over 100 in my games, excepting the guy playing just Shara and Tycho in a 3xMC30 4xGR-75 list. Again, medium ships are gone. Large ships exist as onesies with huge flotillas swarms to drive it.

I am very confident this will be borne out at worlds; notice the list @Overdawg just won Stele (another large tourney) with fits perfectly into this archetype. It's making the game a very boring sort of delay / evade / single precision strike and nope out sort of dance, and it's also off-putting to new players because "I spend the first half of every turn moving this tiny thing at speed 1 on the back board edge, STAR WARS!" just doesn't grab people.

Hopefully this actually explains why I see this as an issue, and with that, I am out.

Edit: likewise, with increasing frequency after games I get the comment of "you are a good sport, but also that game was not fun at all and I don't know what I could have done differently without changing my list." I know Steve has been experiencing the same, and he's one of the best Armada players I know. This is not a sample of one or just one meta.

Just to clarify, in our game I had 6 activations. I killed more points but you won on the VIP. I will also say that was the most fun, tense game and this was due to us being even on activations. It may have felt like I had more due to your unlucky structural pull on Bright Hope's asteroid and my subsequent ram.

Otherwise, I think these are good thoughts. I am pretty confident that FFG does love the game and will do whatever it takes should it perhaps becomes more unanimous that this might be an issue.

Dealing with activation disadvantage:

48 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

(I think it is telling that Ginkapo and Ard are in this thread yet their best lists are themselves very high activation count lists that thrive on this same engine).

On data: I'm not terribly interested in the overall average or the low end of the pool because that's where you get the guy playing five assault peltas who scores 3 tournament points and started two weeks ago. When you look at the top bracket, the trend (increasing in wave 5 top 4 for Regionals) is more flotillas, more squadrons, more strategic, more deployments, more activation. Perhaps more telling, when you parse apart Regionals and take only those with large numbers of attendees, this trend becomes more pronounced. That is to say, the larger the tournament, the more this matters and you can't get lucky and win a 50-person MD regional with the same list that wins the 8-person snow day regional in the Midwest.

All the data we have been posting is top four data which doesnt reflect anything you are saying.

If you want to admit that what you are talking about is the games you are experiencing and the players you play against, then there is something to discuss. We've already established that you only consider your mates to be good players.

As for your jab at me. I have been running 4 activation for quite a while now. And my so called best fleet had 5 activations.

It's not a jab: I know you've played with the ram fleet and it's exceptionally good when used well. If I told you that we were sending you to Worlds and if you didn't place in the top four, you'd be executed, I don't think you'd take the four activation fleet is my point.

Likewise, my point on the data is this: look closer. I said why I think the averages are misleading and went back and tracked down wave 5 results at larger Regionals. The trend is there. We only know two of the top 4 at Stele but both were also 2+ flotilla high (5+) activation fleets.

Demolisher (Wave One)

Ackbar (Wave Two)

Flotillas (Wave Thor)

Waiting for the next Destruction Balloon on Episode VIII (maybe Relay?)

1 hour ago, MandalorianMoose said:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results... how far has the crying gotten you guys so far?

Although, in the same respect... continuing to engage them... over and over... expecting them to change their behavior is kinda the same thing... lol

As the old saying goes...

Sage goes in all fields...

they don't get bumped if everyone just rolls their eyes and moves on....

54 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

This is a specious argument.

In a good game, you should be able to both play hard and play to win while still having fun. I am responsible for being a good sport and constructive player, but I'm not responsible for FFG's game design.

If a game is either / or (you can have fun OR play the best you can), the fault is with the rules of the game.

All I'm saying is we aren't having anywhere near the same amount of issues that you guys are, and we are playing with the same set of ships and rules... maybe that's because we actually want to play the game and throw fists of dice rather than trying to min max to the point of breaking it.

I do think if they made the relay squadron have to be in activatable range and then "boost" the signal further it could to a long way in curbing the "4+ running away" tactic you all seem to be employing. In my meta flotillas have a defined role that keep them near the fleet (comms net, repair crew, etc) and within killing range

1 minute ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Although, in the same respect... continuing to engage them... over and over... expecting them to change their behavior is kinda the same thing... lol

As the old saying goes...

Sage goes in all fields...

they don't get bumped if everyone just rolls their eyes and moves on....

Sixth LOL... poor fool!

5 minutes ago, MandalorianMoose said:

All I'm saying is we aren't having anywhere near the same amount of issues that you guys are, and we are playing with the same set of ships and rules... maybe that's because we actually want to play the game and throw fists of dice rather than trying to min max to the point of breaking it.

I do think if they made the relay squadron have to be in activatable range and then "boost" the signal further it could to a long way in curbing the "4+ running away" tactic you all seem to be employing. In my meta flotillas have a defined role that keep them near the fleet (comms net, repair crew, etc) and within killing range

But what do you do, then, if someone in your group starts running it and consistently beating everyone? Excommunicate them for playing by the rules? It just takes one to shift a meta, and when it's totally legal it's hard to tell people they aren't playing how you arbitrarily want them to, therefore they are wrong. And let's not even mention Organized Play.

Also telling is that I am not seeing what I was looking for: "I do X. It does not have flotillas and I still win consistently, including tournaments."

Everyone is talking in circles, but point me to the non-flotilla lists consistently winning at events with a decent sample size and I will change my tune, because that's concrete evidence I wrong. I looked for this!