How would you handle and include it for your sessions as with X-Wing Miniatures?

I probably would use them as props for the mass combat system to act out events involving such big space/atmospheric actions.

Or if you wanted to do a campaign with a bunch of Commodores.

Commodores really aren't all that impressive at commanding capital ships. They have exactly one talent that is actually specific to that role, and all that does is increase the silhouette of target ships by one. A gunner has more natural aptitude for actually rolling the barrage checks that enable players to utilize the full power of a capital ship.

I kind of wish the game had more solid rules for actually commanding NPCs, like for example, when you use a Barrage action, shouldn't you make gunnery checks with Presence/Gunnery or Intellect/Gunnery instead of Agility/Gunnery, given that you are literally commanding an entire battery of cannons, so you're issuing orders to hundreds of men, or programming a firing pattern into a computer at least, you're in no way using your agility to bring the entire main battery of a star cruiser to bear on a target, these are huge turrets, every one the size of a Sil 4 ship, housing an entire crew of gunners, loaders, technicians and officers.

There are the mass combat rules, and you can make checks with those to command large starships in theory, but that's still not an activity you can do collaboratively if you were playing a campaign where the players are all officers on a huge starship.

15 hours ago, Alexhurlbut said:

How would you handle and include it for your sessions as with X-Wing Miniatures?

I probably would use them as props for the mass combat system to act out events involving such big space/atmospheric actions.

This has come up many many times on these forums. Let me explain...no, there is too much, lemme sum up.

Armada rules don't gel well with the Pen and Paper rules. Ships are too prone to asploding and thus killing PC's, which tends to annoy said player of PC who is now cosmic dust in the void of space. The talents that make someone a good pilot in the P&P system, don't translate to Armada, like at all, so there isn't any real benefit to playing a PC. Most people, strongly suggest you to not mix them at all.

Many suggest, if you insist on having it in your campaign, and I am in this camp, to have the Armada stuff NOT involve your PC's directly. To give a good example, use the climax of Return of the Jedi. The PC's were scattered around, some on Endor, some on the Death Star. None were really involved in the fleet battle in orbit. So, have your PC's run around and do their thing, and then, while the epic fleet battle is taking place, switch over to the Armada game, and play it out. Whatever the results of the Armada game are, let that inform your campaign. Do the rebels pull off an amazing victory and push back the Empire? Great! Then in that system, the PC's will have FAR more freedom of movement, and perhaps will have opportunities to persuade more planets in that system to the side of the Rebellion. Does the Empire crush the Rebel presence in the system? Great! now the PC's have a much harder time moving around, as the ceramic gauntlet of the Imperial presence tightens on the planets. They have lost their support structure, and are now on their own. *cue dramatic music*.

So you can USE it in a game, but I wouldn't mix it, like at all. I've yet to read from a single person, where it ended well. Not saying it hasn't happened, I certainly don't read every post, but the general trend I've seen is "it sucks! don't do it!"

I should have clarified what I said how I would use it.

I would use Armada pieces as PROPS to act out space/atmosphere battles that require mass combat rules. The intent wasn't to have players get involved IN ship to ship combat, but as part of the action while the act of ships duking it out serves as the backdrop to their story.

I don't know what everyone thought what I meant by my last line in my OP.

Ah, well your subject title was "armada game", which usually means the OP is talking about the actual game itself, not just the miniatures.

So, you basically mean you want to channel your inner 8 year old and hold the figurines in the air, make pew pew noises, to describe your players space combat actions? I am 100% in favor of this plan.

Seriously though, if you just mean using the miniatures as visual aids, sure, I see no reason not to, as they aren't negatively impacting the game. If you mean actually playing a GAME of armada to act out the combat, then no, I wouldn't recommend that at all.

Having miniatures and other visual aids to show what's going on does enhance any game, if you have the minis go for it.

I'll even go so far as to say that you can utilize (most of) the Armada movement system, as it seems much more "realistic" (if such a term can be applied) than the somewhat nebulous RPG ship-movement rules. Shield dials can be adjusted to reflect Defense, the included range ruler can be used to represent Close, Medium, and Long ranges, and the freedom of movement enjoyed by squadrons will stand in sharp contrast to the much less-maneuverable capital ships. At least, that's how I use my Armada collection.

If you plan to have the PCs observing the battle but pursuing their own agenda, I'd suggest you write a script for the battle, pre-planning what will happen on each turn. On the other hand, if the PCs want to influence the battle you can still utilize the same script but you'll need decision points for the mass combat rules. Either way should be good fun.

22 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Let me explain...no, there is too much, lemme sum up.

Inigo Montoya: The Princess Bride: 1987

Indeed, well spotted.

Armada player here, you guys should note that destroyed ships are not necessarily vaporized/fragmented. We have a campaign system, in it if ships are destroyed, they end up "scarred" and can be repaired- you can even field them while scarred except at decreased capability. Once destroyed when they're 'scarred', they're gone forever. Any unique cards on them are gone, but commanders (fleet leaders) hop into escape pods and can be moved elsewhere in the fleet.

I don't think this should be a limitation to prevent you guys from using it like you'd use X-Wing. I haven't looked into RPGs in depth recently, but if I were GM'ing this I'd ask a ship commander to make a leadership check, with the difficulty being linked to the size of the battery to a maximum of 4, upgraded by the number of colors (So an ISD-II forward battery is 2 purple 2 red). Throw in setback dice based on the silhuette differences described in the RPG to factor in ship size disparity. Done?

Or play it Armada style, but change the activation order to reflect players. If one player per ship, have them activate in RPG initiative order and resolve that way, track damage and defense token spending the Armada way. Upgrade card actions on a ship are a player action, passing an increasing leadership check to toggle multiple abilities (first is two, second is three, third is four, etc). This also extends to character abilities as he/she tries to do stuff while also commanding the ship (with anything other than firing orders).

I don't think I'll have commanders in my next RPG, but I like the idea of integrating Armada.

I've integrated both Armada and Xwing into my game and they've done rather nicely. The only thing I did for the Armada game was use the maneuver template, and minis. For the ship stats I used AoR. For shooting I had each player man a gun station and used their gunnery checks to operate the guns. This worked well for some, not so well for others that don't have much into gunnery. It worked well and the players enjoyed it. The fight wasn't very long, as my pc's were only there to commandeer a Gozanti cruiser. Which I may end up giving to the players, since this will be the third Imperial vessel they've stolen. They're getting kind of good at it, so I've given them a Letter of Marque, and tasked them with capturing more Imperial alligned vessels for the Rebel Fleet they had a hand in destroying.

Using Armada has it's limitations, and requires some fudging of rules and house rules to use. If you're comfortable coming up with these, and your players enjoy them, it can work. But like someone said before, the base game of Armada doesn't work well, ships tend to get blown up too easily. Players don't like losing their characters very often.

Miniatures can provide a wonderful locational reference and some great color. They shouldn't have any mechanical effect on the game.

On 21.4.2017 at 1:20 AM, Alexhurlbut said:

How would you handle and include it for your sessions as with X-Wing Miniatures?

I probably would use them as props for the mass combat system to act out events involving such big space/atmospheric actions.

We used MC80s and several star destroyers as indicators of alignment, arcs, etc within a standard RPG space combat session. As the players were in command of squadrons of alliance minions we used the sqadron models from armada in that fight as well, instead of the usual X-Wing minis.

Still, everything was run with the RPG rules, mass combat and other wise, but the ships are nice props and semi useful as reminder of arcs, applied gta and theoretical even terrain. (Though I really need some bigger nebula, debris and asteroid fields for that).