7 hours ago, geek19 said:

These newfangled kids today with their cheaper activations, etc etc? Back in my day we had to push squadrons through a VSD, and we liked it! It turned like a drunken cow, and that was the way the game WAS PLAYED.

"We had to push those squadrons uphill, both ways, in the snow, with no shoes!"

9 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Schmitty's data clearly demonstrates that in competitive play Flotillas are drastically overpowered for the cost, with massive increases to the number of activations per fleet and huge reductions to the cost per activation of both ships and squadrons. The winning European Continental champion prior to wave 5 releasing was a list of 7-8 flotillas plus squadrons, and that was before the advent of Relay further reduced the need to approach combat range.

7 hours ago, geek19 said:

No, his data showed that the number of activations increased. It says nothing about them being overpowered for their cost, he didn't analyze that. Furthermore, wave 2 had a weighted average (if i'm doing my math right.... @shmitty?) of 3.68 activations per fleet. Now, we're at an average of 4.49 (again, if I'm doing it right). That's a 1 ship difference, not a massive increase. Even ignoring my math, the result of flotillas was that 2 and 3 ship fleets were shoved out an airlock faster than Lando in the front arc of an ISD. How is that bad, that 2 ship fleets aren't competitive anymore?

More analysis is needed before either of these claims can be made. For example:

(2+3+4)/3=average 3
(2+2+5)/3=average 3

What can you conclude from this? You have an average, but are missing the min/max, Stdev, CV, etc. If you told me that on average, activation counts went up by 1 between wave 2 and 3/4, I want to see the full data analysis. What about outliers? Should we remove a fleet that has 8 activations when the next closest data point is 6?

I have so many questions about this analysis people are doing and no one is willing to say anything, which leads me to believe people are making the numbers fit their opinion.

21 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

I'm working on it. It's a lot of data to dig through and I just got access to manipulating it. Had to do a work around of downloading it and uploading it back to Google.

37 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

More analysis is needed before either of these claims can be made. For example:

(2+3+4)/3=average 3
(2+2+5)/3=average 3

What can you conclude from this? You have an average, but are missing the min/max, Stdev, CV, etc. If you told me that on average, activation counts went up by 1 between wave 2 and 3/4, I want to see the full data analysis. What about outliers? Should we remove a fleet that has 8 activations when the next closest data point is 6?

I have so many questions about this analysis people are doing and no one is willing to say anything, which leads me to believe people are making the numbers fit their opinion.

I have the same issues. Having the regionals data is nice to look at whether certain things are being used, but the data itself has all sorts of issues with trying to actually draw meaningful conclusions from. It also spans a period lot around 3 months, so anything in March was affected by what people saw in January and February.

7 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I'm working on it. It's a lot of data to dig through and I just got access to manipulating it. Had to do a work around of downloading it and uploading it back to Google.

Is the data available somewhere?

3 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Is the data available somewhere?

I pulled it from Schmitty's thread about regionals.

1 minute ago, Undeadguy said:

I pulled it from Schmitty's thread about regionals.

I find it interesting that there are walls of text from people immediately opposed to things without having tried them.

Nobody is arguing for tyranny. The refusal to run experiments is typically the first sign someone is wrong in science. If you want to be persuasive against, test properly (e.g. don't deliverately **** up because people will notice) and point out flaws and strengths fairly.

You will either convince people you are right, or you will find out you are wrong but adopt something better. Either one is a win for you personally.

You know what is a loss? Shouting down someone asking purely about playtesting and new ideas without being willing to engage. Down that path leads to nobody posting on these forums (I might point out that the average rate and depth of posting has already been falling for months, so the community is already guilty of this), and eventually, nobody playing Armada.

2 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

I know, hence my comment that the issue is not flotillas but low cost ships.

Everyone feeling the pain of having to take flotillas will feel the same way about hammerheads.

Sorry, my initial response was being sarcastic about the Hammerheads and I knew that was what you meant, haha.

It is clear to me now that the forum no longer functions. I pray you will bring sanity and compassion back to FFG.

Guys, i posted graphs of number of activations in Schmittys thread about flotillas. Numbers are already crunched.

@Undeadguy Tokra was the german national champion. NOT the European Continental Champion. Great geography there.

I agree with Reinholt. I will happily wait till there are quite a few battle results before complaining.

I'm not personally a big fan of the passing infinitely option but I'd be curious to hear about what people's experiences were like.

Is anyone going to be actually playing with this house rule and posting here? I feel like we just took the flotilla complaining and moved it to its 5th new topic in two weeks.

9 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I'm not personally a big fan of the passing infinitely option but I'd be curious to hear about what people's experiences were like.

Is anyone going to be actually playing with this house rule and posting here? I feel like we just took the flotilla complaining and moved it to its 5th new topic in two weeks.

In my original post here, I provided a hyperlink to the Battle Report section of the forums, where I encourage people to post their results.

Edit:

Also, passing "infinitely" might be a bit of a mischaracterization.

The thread located in Battle Reports explains how the passing rule works.

13 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

Guys, i posted graphs of number of activations in Schmittys thread about flotillas. Numbers are already crunched.

@Undeadguy Tokra was the german national champion. NOT the European Continental Champion. Great geography there.

What? I never said anything about that. I quoted the prickly dude.

And I already knew Tokra won Germany with his 8 flotilla list.

Fair.

@thecactusman17 Go learn some European geography. I hear Nevada is the capital of the US of Texas.

You remind me this:

Another idea I'd like to try:

You play via command values counting for activation "points" in a turn.

Ties go to person w. initiative, ie first player.

E.g. we start at 0 pts each. I am first player. I activate a flot. you activate ISD. I now have to activate 3 "command value" worth of ships before you have to go.

So on and so forth. You can still activation delay, but it costs a lot more to do so. It is also a clunky, inelegant solution, and maybe a much worse idea. I still want to try it though!

Anothrr idea I have: ship overwatch officer, 10 pts. When you reveal a CF dial, you may place an overwatch token on the ship. When an enemy ship ends its movement within distance 5, you may spend the token to perform a single attack on that ship. Attack counts as obstructed.

7 minutes ago, DUR said:

Anothrr idea I have: ship overwatch officer, 10 pts. When you reveal a CF dial, you may place an overwatch token on the ship. When an enemy ship ends its movement within distance 5, you may spend the token to perform a single attack on that ship. Attack counts as obstructed.

So you could shoot Target A during your activation and then shoot it again during its activation? That seems kind of game breaking.

10 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

So you could shoot Target A during your activation and then shoot it again during its activation? That seems kind of game breaking.

I would like "solutions" like that rather than nerfing. It is true that it has problems as written but could be fixed.

Flotillas F****r Officer: when you reveal a command you may choose 1 ship beyond distance 5 of you and assign a f*** you! token to it. Whenever a ship with a f*** you! token ends its movement at distance 1-5 of you, you may discard this card and the token to perform an attack against that ship.

So I'm sure someone has said this already, so sorry if i's not a new idea, but hear me out in case it is.

There have been so many threads suggesting changes due to the activation disparity caused by cheap activation, ranging from adding a pass system to removing DF tokens on flotillas all the way to making flots count as squads and so on.


While I actually don't hate the pass system presented in the OP, I feel like it's more a band aid than a fix, sure it'll stop the bleeding from getting all over your nice things but it doesn't actually fix the hole all the blood is coming out of.

If activation is the bad guy here let's address it directly.

Now, here I may get a bit shaky, 'cause I've only ever play 2 matches of xwing, but it seems like the reason activations are so important in armada is because shooting and moving happen during the same phase.... it allows people with more ships to delay to avoid blasts from large ships based simply on the number of activations. (Add to that the ability to first/last shot an enemy and the value of an activation skyrockets).

If this is the case, then why isn't the mechanic change we're looking for modeled after x-wing?

If I'm correct in my memory, and please correct me if I'm not, they have a move phase and then a shoot phase, and who moves first and who shoots first is based off an assigned number value.

Now, it's not perfect, as squadrons would need to be addressed more clearly, but if our mechanic change was that attacking and moving were separated by a phase wouldn't that eliminate all the current issues with activations? Delays no longer matter other than in situations with overlapping, activation count is really only as valuable as what each activation can do...

So let's say for sake of argument command value is how we determine a ship's "numerical value". Since Armada is set up backwards from x-wing by making players shoot first the ships with the highest command value would have the option to shoot first, starting with first player. The players would then take turns as such.

So let's say first player is running an Mc80, 2 Mc30s, and a GR75 and second player is running 2 ISd IIs and a raider.

1st player: MC80 is command 3 and can therefore attack as it's tied for highest, it does.
2nd player: Having 2 ships at command 3 the 2nd player can attack with either one first, so he chooses and does.
1st player: since the 1st player's next highest command value is a 2 and the second player still has a 3 that hasn't attacked, the 1st player is forced to pass
2nd player: attacks with his 2nd ISD
1st player: has 2 command 2 ships and can attack with either, so he chooses one and attacks
2nd player: 2nd players last ship is a command 1 and there are still command 2 ships that haven't attacked so player 2 must pass
1st player: attacks with the other mc30
2nd player: the raider is command 1, tied for highest value, so it attacks
1st player: the GR is all that's left (it attacks? lol)

Attack phase done:

The players would then take turns maneuvering their ships in the same fashion except that the lowest command value goes first starting with the first player...


You get the basic idea, no matter how many activations there are, they're only as important as what they can do. and yes, while big ships get advantages while shooting, smaller ships get advantages while moving.

1 hour ago, Snipafist said:

So you could shoot Target A during your activation and then shoot it again during its activation? That seems kind of game breaking.

Oops, no, you forgo shooting to get the token.

ahahaH. I did talk about simultaneous movement then simultaneous attack. I think it makes for a very entertaining game system, with one little wrinkle. Some order of precedence has to be established for ramming and overlaps. (You can also make every ship move 1 speed at a time, which would be quite fun!)

I play Xwing a LOT. The issue with Xwing: For a while, high pilot skill ships who got to move last and shoot first were strongly preferred over everything else cuz with some thought you could easily remove smaller ships before they even fired. Xwing has its own issues caused by its innovative and fun PS system. They've mitigated it more recently by adding a power curve: middle PS pilots have ridiculously good cost effective abilities to balance out the payment you do for their points. (maybe we should think about something for medium ships).

I would not do an Xwing style of combat. Simult fire is actually easy and works very well: see Magic. Just do attacks one at a time, then assign all damage at the end of the step.

Just give everything Rieekan's ability and first/last no longer matters, no does activation advantage. You just need to get enough damage on the target to remove it for next round.

9 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Just give everything Rieekan's ability and first/last no longer matters, no does activation advantage. You just need to get enough damage on the target to remove it for next round.

Ram fleets.... ram fleets everywhere.... lol