On 5/25/2017 at 3:06 AM, Kiwi Rat said:

What is this obsession with having faster games?

Armada is supposed to be a game, where you can put some thought into your moves before you make them, not this hurry, hurry, hurry, I want to quickly activate all my units thing.

Of all the games ( FoW, Armada etc...) I played, I have observed the following pattern in regards to game speed:

New players are initially slow to make their activations, as they are still in the phase of trying to discover the finer points of the rules.

Veteran players due to their obvious experience, can more quickly spot and decide what to do and should/can't do.

So two Veteran players with alot of sqds. should be able to play a game just as fast if not faster, than two new players with very few sqds.

Armada is one where larger and slower ships have to plan far ahead, but given their size they "act" only twice per game, the rest of the turns are executing that plan of dial set up while smaller ships get to "act" 6 times assuming a game goes to the full 6 without tabling or time or other stuff.

As for your argument on veteran players it has been on record that final games of 5 hours has gone to time after only 5 turns. So with nearly an hour per turn yeah there is missing a lot of refinement that is sorely needed for this game. I don't mind long games as I do play games like Twilight Imperium but a living table top miniatures game that a "standard" match takes more than 1/4 of the day, that is not good. I don't want it to be as fast as X-wing, but 6+ hours for a single "standard" game is an inevitable death sentence.

On 5/25/2017 at 6:13 AM, Baltanok said:

Not really an option without a) rules rewrite, and b) dedicated mapsheets, but what I would have liked to try would be for the entire map to be printed with hexes slightly larger than current squad bases. Ships moves as normal, but squads move into & by hexes. squad abilities have a hex range instead of a ruler range. (current range 1 = 2 hexes, all other brackets= 1 hex each) No fussy exact placement trying to get this squad placed engaging that, that, and that squad while not engaging that other squad. A dot in the center of the hex would serve as the official position for LOS measurement.

Another advantage is that minor nudging while toggling fighters in the scrum is no big deal. exact position doesn't matter.

Well yeah, of course there has to be a rulebook errata but at least it isn't the card that is getting changed. However with engagements and intel, nudging does make a bit of a difference. But I haven't really address that other than more squadrons move than two. However it could be adjusted for squadrons as there tends to be more squadrons than ships.

On 5/25/2017 at 9:40 AM, Thraug said:

Simple answer to OP question: No.

Too complex for no payoff.

Care to elaborate? I always find it funny when Armada players say something is too complex given how many boast about the depth of strategy in the game.

Either way, Armada has many issues when it comes to the competitive scene. I know many players here don't really care much for the competitive scene and prefer Armada to have a narrative based campaign in which Armada does a much better job when compared to X-wing (especially with stuff like Corellian Conflict). Anyways I was just throwing an idea out there but as common with the forums you make a suggestion and people either reject it flat outright not wanting any changes in their game (impossible with a expansive table top game) or want to put in their own ideas like make flotillas take up squadron points.

An interesting activation system someone mentioned on here a while ago was by command value. Basically a player activates until they have matched activated command values.

So if an ISD goes first, the next player must activate 3+ command values of ships. I guess you could think of it as whenever a ship activates, it gives the opponent that many chips, they have to activate ships until that is 0. If the go over, they give the opponent back some chips, repeat.

16 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Game speed is critical.

This may not be obvious if you don't play it competitively...

Armada is not X Wing.

There are plenty of competitively played wargames that have two day events that only have four or five rounds. Maybe Armada, instead of trying to cram more games into a single day, and impacting rules changes to facilitate that, should just turn itself into a big-boy wargame and adopt two day events or fewer rounds.

I don't play competitively; I'm just starting to figure Vassal out, and that's because I have far too few perspective opponents for face-to-face games. That said, my thoughts on this subject, as well as "pass" rules and so forth, is as follows.

1. There is no need to speed up the game. X-wing already exists for a fast paced game, as suits fighter combat. The more thoughtful and patient nature of Armada better fits capital ship combat, in my opinion. In any case, I find it hard to imagine a means of speeding up gameplay without losing some of the critical and tactical details of the game.

2. The game already includes mechanics to balance the activation system. If you use a bunch of cheap ships for increased activations, they suffer from greater fragility and less ability to put out damage. In comparison, if you balance your fleet, getting a few small support ships to favor control over activations, while also employing some more durable and powerful ships (the ISD should ALWAYS have a place in my opinion), you can use the support ships to manipulate activations, and nearly assure yourself a chance to strike with your more powerful hammer. As a bonus, if the enemy is using nothing but small fry, the frontal arc of an ISD or the broadsides of an MC80 can burn them down in a turn. (To be fair, between an Overload Pulse from an ISD and a close range, double arcing Gladiator, an MC80 can be brought down in a turn, too.)

Is the balance perfect? Clearly not. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having these discussions. But, the bottom line is that NO GAME I've played involving capital ships can be perfectly balanced based on points, alone. Without support ships, it tends to be very hard to make only heavy hitters work in a field against a more diverse fleet. Both B5Wars and Star Fleet Battles demonstrated that in their systems, both scout ships and carriers with a decent fighter compliment were almost a necessity in order to engage fleets which had such things and knew how to use them.

In order to fight a diverse fleet, you should have to bring a versatile fleet of your own. In order to deal with the threat of fighters, you should have to maintain a moderately effective fighter screen of your own. None of this, in my opinion, is unreasonable to expect of people playing a game based on space ship battles which, in the movies and books, ALWAYS show fighters as part of the battle, and often very important parts. (Granted, the movies were lazy in showing us only three types of ship in the Imperial fleet, but both Legends and the Disney Canon have generously fleshed out the fleet with greater versatility.)

I am honestly quite happy with the way Armada plays as it is now. I also admit that my opinion may change if I start playing more tournament style players, either in the unlikely event I find people to play live with beside the couple of guys I know now, or after I get a good handle of the Vassal system and start playing other people on there. I can only state my opinion based on my current experience and understanding, and I won't pretend that my opinion now is so sacred and divinely inspired as to be beyond later reconsideration.

1 hour ago, MarekMandalore said:

1. There is no need to speed up the game.

I think I agree with you mostly but for 1, I've seen quite a few tournament games end before turn 6. I wonder what percent of games ending before turn 6 is ok for a healthy competitive scene? And are we close to it? I guess that data is pretty hard to track.

12 minutes ago, homedrone said:

I think I agree with you mostly but for 1, I've seen quite a few tournament games end before turn 6. I wonder what percent of games ending before turn 6 is ok for a healthy competitive scene? And are we close to it? I guess that data is pretty hard to track.

Games ending before turn 6 is fine as long as those games have reached a natural conclusion (IE there is no meaningful way to score or preserve more points for the losing player). It's when those games end due to time that you have an issue. Armada has some issues that make the game take longer than it should in terms of time investment, and these are not byproducts of "making good moves." Most of the issues have to do with clunky mechanical interactions that require equal time investment for major and minor units, which really becomes apparent with large groups of squadrons on the table. See again the Worlds final table that basically had to end a full turn early partly because there wasn't sufficient time to play a full, methodical final round.

On 5/24/2017 at 10:22 PM, Marinealver said:

So just throwing this around but what if you had more ships/squadrons you end up having more activations per turn in phase? Since a lot of flotillas are brought in to bring more activations what if the activations per turn was increased so that lists with fewer ships/squadrons still have reactions against flotilla corvette swarms. Also it can shorten the length of turns so that games don't take so long. Here is a basic proposal as an example. Numbers could be adjusted.

• 1 ships/squadrons: 1 activation per (for obvious reasons)
• 2-6 ships/squadrons: 2 activations per
• 7-12 ships/squadrons: 3 activations per
• 13+ ships/squadrons: 4 activations per

So what do you think, or how would you adjust the numbers say around (2-4) 2 activations (5-7) 3 activations?

If activations are the issue, than a way to solve it is to front load activations.

Well another quick fix to have an Armada game to be less than 1½ hour.

Will simply be to reduce the play area to 3' x 3' and reduce the game rounds from 6 to 4.

Then you can have your quick game, it'l be short and brutal, but who cares about well thought out tactical naval manuevres across the board. The speed of the game is more important

On 2017-5-25 at 11:36 AM, thecactusman17 said:

Further, in most cases, the mechanics do not excuse the slow pace of play in competition.

This.

Its not the mechanics that are the issue. Its the players.

On Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 8:19 PM, thecactusman17 said:

OK, so I'm not saying that my suggestion is 100% the way to go, but I need to point out the following:

1. As far as it matters, you're already getting out-activated in the squadron phase by anything with Rogue. That's the whole point of Rogue.
2. The squadron system is, overwhelmingly, the most time-intensive part of competition Armada. By orders of magnitude. If you haven't played a low/no squadron game recently, try it. The game will barely pass an hour and a half at most with good positioning and decent rolls.
3. Squadrons need a fix to promote faster play.

Interesting idea but i think i can go one better during the squdron phase 1st player activates all there squdrons then the second player acatavites all of theres. But we also add a simultaneous fire rule so yes 1st player kills all the second players squdrons but the 2nd player gets to activate and fire back with all there squdrons before any destroyed squdrons are removed. That might speed it up a bit

Dont know if i like it tho

3 minutes ago, X Wing Nut said:

Interesting idea but i think i can go one better during the squdron phase 1st player activates all there squdrons then the second player acatavites all of theres. But we also add a simultaneous fire rule so yes 1st player kills all the second players squdrons but the 2nd player gets to activate and fire back with all there squdrons before any destroyed squdrons are removed. That might speed it up a bit

Dont know if i like it tho

I like it, for a few reasons

1. It makes defending squadrons more dangerous to alpha strikes
2. It makes fighter screens more effective at intercepting bombers
3. It makes squadron commands more meaningful
4. it makes Rogue more meaningful
5. It makes the Intel mechanic more meaningful

14 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

I like it, for a few reasons

1. It makes defending squadrons more dangerous to alpha strikes
2. It makes fighter screens more effective at intercepting bombers
3. It makes squadron commands more meaningful
4. it makes Rogue more meaningful
5. It makes the Intel mechanic more meaningful

Good points number 2 especially. Squdrons are still engaged untill they are taken off the board. It would really buff Ties protecting an ISD. Which could be anoying if you dont bring Intel. Could also provide a lot of diversity in the squdrons also. Not just shuttles and defenders

Just now, X Wing Nut said:

Good points number 2 especially. Squdrons are still engaged untill they are taken off the board. It would really buff Ties protecting an ISD. Which could be anoying if you dont bring Intel. Could also provide a lot of diversity in the squdrons also. Not just shuttles and defenders

Here's loosely how I'd do, if I could convince them to errata the squadron rules:

1. When squadrons would be activated, squadrons must choose if they want to move before attacking. If they move, the controlling player moves them into the desired position. In the squadron phase, players alternate moving squadrons that want to move before attacking 2 at a time.
2. After all squadrons have had their initial move, all squadrons may attack if they are able to do so. All squadrons must nominate targets for their attacks before any dice are rolled on either side. If more than one squadron wishes to attack an enemy ship or squadron, those attacks are combined into a single attack. Attacking players may reroll dice equal to the number of squadrons with Swarm involved in that attack. Players alternate choosing which enemy target they want to attack in initiative order. All attacks are combined and defended as single attacks. When attacking ships, bomber and non-bomber attacks must be rolled separately, but occur simultaneously.
3. If a ship or squadron would use a Counter attack, it may attack any one squadron that attacked it.
4. If a squadron can move after attacking, it may choose to move now. Again, during the squadron phase, players may move squadrons in initiative order 2 at a time.
5. At the end of the phase, normal end-of-squadron-phase effects occur.

What this does:

• Makes squadron activations faster, by reducing number of mechanical checks for attacks and defense. Move, total up dice, roll, take additional movements or response attacks. All existing AOE effects and special abilities still function as originally designed.
• Low-power squadrons can now gang up on more durable or defensible squadrons, eliminating enemy squadrons faster and shortening the overall game length. More powerful squadrons can spread attacks around multiple less durable squadrons. Abilities to mitigate or pile on damage become more effective by protecting larger groups, but damage is more easily forced through.
• Bombers now roll once against enemy ships, shortening the game length and making bombers slightly less powerful against ships while still making them a dangerous threat in numbers.
• Faster squadrons now have an immediate ability to intercept and stop advancing squadrons before attacking, both sides have the ability to respond to incoming attacks.

Chess clock. One game is 90 minutes. 6 rounds means 15 minutes per round. 7 minutes per person. When it's your oponents turn their clock is counting down, when they are done with an activation they hit the button, and your 7 min begins counting down. Continue alternating until all activations are complete, or a players time runs out. When a players seven minutes are up all their unactivated squadrons are toggled as though they were activated, any unactivated ships lose there activation, the ships command dial isn't revealed and is left for the next round, and ships speed is set to 0. No navigate step. Both sides have the remaining minute from each round to reset command dials and flip used defense tokens back to green. Ships that don't activate for two consecutive rounds have 'jumped to hyperspace' fled the field and are considered destroyed. Use this format to adjust how long you want your game. More points means more time. This might be a very fun way to play, also brings out the idea that the battle don't stop so you can think about it. Decide on a course of action commit your ships, or watch victory be ripped from your hands! Just off the top of my head, and truly intended for fun, but I am interested to hear criticism for this. It just might be a competitive way forward. It kind of promotes smaller fleets of the bigger ships, and if you want to out activate your opponent, then you better be ready to move!

The whole goal of a chess clock is that you don't need to individually time player rounds.

If you did a chess clock, you'd do it as 1 hour each. Maximum game length is 2 hours. This gives both players a full period of time to make decisive actions and also maneuver their squadrons rapidly. At the start of each round, players reset their dials, defense tokens, etc. in initiative order.

Miniatures games with a chess clock has been consistently proven to work when the game mechanics promote fast mechanical interactions, such as in Warmachine/Hordes by Privateer Press. I think this would be improved by tweaking squadron mechanics, but it definitely can be done in Armada.

8 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Miniatures games with a chess clock has been consistently proven to work when the game mechanics promote fast mechanical interactions, such as in Warmachine/Hordes by Privateer Press. I think this would be improved by tweaking squadron mechanics, but it definitely can be done in Armada.

Its not just the Squadron mechanics... For me, it was the simple Attack mechanics.

And I did test it... In the testing I did with a Chess Clock - it either:

- Ends up very tedious to be switching multiple times through an attack. (Your side while rolling and modifying dice, enemy side while defense tokens, your side with crit, enemy side while they're dealing cards)

- Ends up with your opponent able to attempt to surreptitiously slow-roll you as you tick through your clock on their decisions and actions.

That's not to say there wouldn't be a whole bunch that could be cleaned up to do it... But it was very, very tedious right from the start... Actually adding more time to play because of the clock changeovers.

But again, that was my testing - and I'm only a single point of reference - I think they should be tested by more - but a focus on how the gameplay actually works as it is with them I feel is more important than adding a chess clock and changing the rules at the same time... Scientifically - work through one variable at a time

Chess clock would be a nightmare to manage, drastically slowing down the game. Chess gas distinct turns fir each player, armada does not.

I dont have anything to add except I read the title and I was like "activations determined by number of ships? What kind of crazy idea is this? How could we even do that?"

but like super sarcastic.

We used a chess clock for out CC final battle recently but I don't think it made the game shorter. We didn't use it for deployment or during the command phase, and those do end up taking a lot of time. At the start it didn't seem quite fair for the Rebs as they had a lot more ship activations, but as one could guess, the real time used was squad activations. Each side had 2 hours of time on the clock and the Imps ran out when the Rebs had about 20 minutes left due to the number of Imp squads.

On 5/26/2017 at 10:45 PM, thecactusman17 said:

1. When squadrons would be activated, squadrons must choose if they want to move before attacking.
2. After all squadrons have had their initial move, all squadrons may attack if they are able to do so. All squadrons must nominate targets for their attacks before any dice are rolled on either side.
3. If a squadron can move after attacking, it may choose to move now. Again, during the squadron phase, players may move squadrons in initiative order 2 at a time.

That would introduce a lot of new information track.

every time I read this

"What if activations per turn was dependent on number of ships?"

"I say to my self " It is. You get one activation per ship or group of 2 fighters,

12 hours ago, Thraug said:

Chess clock would be a nightmare to manage, drastically slowing down the game. Chess gas distinct turns fir each player, armada does not.

Completely disagree. Also counter intuitive that forcing someone to be aware of how much time they are using would somehow increase the time they are using.

"Chess" clocks are crazy simple to use. You simply push a button that switches over to your opponents clock. So when ever you action is "done" you push the button to signify it is now your opponents turn to make an action. With a game clock two experienced players could quite literally play a game in complete silence as they would never have to ask if their opponent is finished using tokens or still contemplating using vader, leading shots, what ever (Still more efficient to verbally communicate what arc youre shooting at, but still could be done in silence by just pointing).

Example of how easy this would be...

Start my time

Reveal command, bank token, use engineering whatever

Target enemy ship

roll dice and manipulate to hearts content

push time over to opponent

He uses tokens

Push time back to me

I move overlapping some squadrons, I set them aside

Push time over to oppenent

He sets squadrons where he wants them and begins his turn... and so on.

4 hours ago, svelok said:

That would introduce a lot of new information track.

I was thinking that, too. With the new Imperial commander and upgrades, I plan on running a LOT of TIEs. If I play an opponent with a similar list, how would we be expected to track declared targets for 20+ squadrons?

8 hours ago, PartyPotato said:

Completely disagree. Also counter intuitive that forcing someone to be aware of how much time they are using would somehow increase the time they are using.

"Chess" clocks are crazy simple to use. You simply push a button that switches over to your opponents clock. So when ever you action is "done" you push the button to signify it is now your opponents turn to make an action. With a game clock two experienced players could quite literally play a game in complete silence as they would never have to ask if their opponent is finished using tokens or still contemplating using vader, leading shots, what ever (Still more efficient to verbally communicate what arc youre shooting at, but still could be done in silence by just pointing).

Example of how easy this would be...

Start my time

Reveal command, bank token, use engineering whatever

Target enemy ship

roll dice and manipulate to hearts content

push time over to opponent

He uses tokens

Push time back to me

I move overlapping some squadrons, I set them aside

Push time over to oppenent

He sets squadrons where he wants them and begins his turn... and so on.

This reminds me of Action points from other table games. 3 actions per ship per turn:

• 0AP Spend token: You can spend a token anytime you could trough your activation.
• 1AP Bank token: Instead of using the command you may spend 1AP this activation to bank a token matching this command.
• 1AP Movement: Increase or decrease your speed by 1 and gain 1 joint value in your next movement step through a Navigation command as Usual. Cannot be used before a Rush Action or a Retreat Action.
• 1AP Shoot: Can only be done twice as usual and, as usual, not against the same target and/or the same hull unless you have upgrades that allow this.
• 1AP Squadron: Once per turn activate squadrons up to your squadron value. Trough a revealed squadron command as usual.
• 2AP Rush: Spend 1 navigation command or token to move up to your current speed +1. Cannot exceed you speed limit. You cant use any movement AP actions after this action.
• 2AP Retreat: Spend one navigation command or token to move up yo your current speed -1. The total movement cannot be 0. You cant use any movement AP actions after this action.
• 2AP Brace: Ignore forward overlapping damage against enemy ships or obstacles. You cant use Shooting actions this turn.
• 2AP Repair: Spend up to your Engineering points trough an Engieering command as usual.
• 2AP Evasive mannuvers: Substract half of the dices rounded up (opponents choice) from he/she's battery armament on the next 2 attacks targgeting this ship. You cant use Shotting actions this turn.
• 2AP Focus fire: Ignore Obtruction rules, add 2 Red dice faced up with accuracy and make and attack against an enemy ship. This added dices cannot be re-rolled by any means. Shares the Targeting restrictions of the Shoot action.
• 3AP Emergency repairs: Spend an Engineering command to spend up to your engineering points x2.
• 3AP All fire power on that SSD!: Your next 2 attacks can target the same ship and/or the same hull. You can do one extra attack from a hull (even if you already attacked from this hull) treating the target as it was obstructed.
• 3AP Wing command: Spend a Squadron command to activate squadrons up to your Squadron value + 2.

Just a sample could be a lot more. And a lot of ways to play with the AP's trough new commanders and upgrade cards.

On 25.5.2017 at 7:22 AM, Marinealver said:

So just throwing this around but what if you had more ships/squadrons you end up having more activations per turn in phase? Since a lot of flotillas are brought in to bring more activations what if the activations per turn was increased so that lists with fewer ships/squadrons still have reactions against flotilla corvette swarms. Also it can shorten the length of turns so that games don't take so long. Here is a basic proposal as an example. Numbers could be adjusted.

• 1 -4 ships/ 1 squadrons: 1 activation per turn
• 5-8 ships/ 2-6 squadrons: 2 activations per
• 9-12 ships/ 7-15 squadrons: 3 activations per
• 13+ ships/ 15+ squadrons: 4 activations per

So what do you think, or how would you adjust the numbers say around (2-4) 2 activations (5-7) 3 activations?

Incredibly clunky...possibly THE worst suggestion ever.

Let's play a miniatures game where I can't really do much, except look at my mini doin' nothing.

Plz let this thread die.