I get it. This is a question that can't be answered. It is a game and it is a fun game. (If you don't like Armada, I can recommend some forums where you might enjoy reading more)

For anyone who has played this game much of all. Ship activations and activation order a a HUGE part of the tactics of this game. Why are Flotillas great because people are willing to buy them just for the extra activations. Why are life boats and relay annoying? Because it makes use of those ships we were perfectly willing to just buy for the activations in a pretty effective way.

But why are we so annoyed about these little flotillas being so good. I think it is because in that little part of our brain that likes to pretend we are actually commanding Star Wars cruisers in space naval engagements doesn't think these little support ships should work in our imaginary battle the way they work in the game.

And now we are back to activations. Of all the things in Aramda, the one that just doesn't seem to make sense from a, we are pretending to have a massive space battle, sense is the way ships activate. Why would the fact that there are two more CR-90's half way across the battlefield make it harder for my ISD to chase down this Corvette right in front of it. From a narative sense it doesn't make much sense.

But it does from a game play sense. I lets little, far less powerful, ships compete against big nasties like ISDs. The "Game" part of the game works. And if the buying a couple (or more) flotillas lets me have an ISD and have 5 activations, then they are a hugely welcome part of the game for me. (Since I love ISDs, they are the reason I play this game).

So for the record, I don't think Flotillas, or any of the things they can do are overpowered. It's not something only one faction can do, and it doesn' push other ships out of the game. In fact, I think they make ISDs more playable. The problem is a disconnect between what is good for the "game" and what seems like it should be good for the imaginary battle that takes place in our heads. And in all comes down to how activations work in this game.

I'm struck by your use of the phrase "narrative sense". I hear what you're saying, and understand what you mean by it, but I would say that alternating activations goes not make 'simulationist' sense.

However, a narrative naturally does a sequence to it. Especially with Star Wars being, from its core, a cinematic medium, it makes sense that the story is told in sequential (rather than coolncurrent) action, as the camera goes to and fro, pointing at this, and then that object/scene.

That's at least how I convince myself that alternating activations works for Star Wars.

16 hours ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

I'm struck by your use of the phrase "narrative sense". I hear what you're saying, and understand what you mean by it, but I would say that alternating activations goes not make 'simulationist' sense.

However, a narrative naturally does a sequence to it. Especially with Star Wars being, from its core, a cinematic medium, it makes sense that the story is told in sequential (rather than coolncurrent) action, as the camera goes to and fro, pointing at this, and then that object/scene.

That's at least how I convince myself that alternating activations works for Star Wars.

I think the only way you can justify alternating activations is that it's a board table-top game. If it were a computer game, all activations would be simultaneous, like in Empire at War. The fact that it is on a table top leads to all sorts of issues one wouldn't think 'Star Warsy', like 2D combat, alternating activations, etc.

As for flotillas, why would their role clash with imaginary battles? Why would you ever have such flimsy ships if they weren't there for support? 'Hmm, I can have my flagship concentrate on directing 72 TIE fighters, or I can have the team of Gozantis WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY back there out of danger doing nothing take on the job. . . choices, choices. . .'

I have a strong opinion about this topic. And I have written here about it For brevity I quote myself

Quote

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 mechanisms, 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.

P.S.: If somebody don't like flotillas (or MSU in general) because using them simply for activation padding feels to him like "abusing" the activation game, I would ardently point to the fact that this does not speak against the activation game in itself, but against the possibility to "abuse" it. There are rule modifications discussed in this forum that make activation padding senseless, but nevertheless keep the activation decision making intact. We are not X-Wing. Our setup of the map does not change completelly within one or two game rounds due to super versatile units. We need the activation game to even this out. Dropping the activation game in favour of a more "narrative" mechanism would make armada a lot more boring.

Talking about narrative: anybody has a clue what the squadron command represents? Making squadrons move and shoot and activate earlier does not feel like anything narrative.

31 minutes ago, Xeletor said:

Talking about narrative: anybody has a clue what the squadron command represents? Making squadrons move and shoot and activate earlier does not feel like anything narrative.

I always have imagined this as the ship feeding in orders and tactical data to allow those fighters to react better to the battlefield than the other side.

1 hour ago, Xeletor said:

Talking about narrative: anybody has a clue what the squadron command represents? Making squadrons move and shoot and activate earlier does not feel like anything narrative.

Think of it this way, fighters and bombers have historically had a weakness in their sensors (radar or whatever). Because of the performance requirements of their platforms, they simply can't carry the same long range arrays as ships or more dedicated platforms.

For analogs to this, think of a modern AWACS aircraft that will direct all activity in the airspace or WW2 battles where squadrons had to get directions from radar-equipped vessels...only crank it up to a thousand because visually identifying a target in space is a near impossibility and the battles are probably taking place over massive distances. Without directions from platforms with sensors that can find the enemy at such distances, the squadrons are basically in a holding pattern playing a hardcore game of Marco Polo.

Obviously, if the squadrons are close enough for their own sensors to pick up the target, they can just prosecute without further directions. You'll note, Rogue is usually on larger ships that would be better able to accommodate more powerful sensors.

I have made a ship combat game where you also alternate the movement but you always resolve them in size order. So first all large ships activate, then medium and last small ships... that makes small ships better at reacting. then shooting come which is small ships first, mdium second and large third. So you never moved and shot at the same time so smaller ship had a huge advantage but it was of course balance in other ways.

Not saying it is necessary in this game just think this is a more interesting way of solving it.

I don't think that the activation economy is a bad thing. I agree with Ghostof in that this is a board(table top) game and not a simulator, so it is pretty unavoidable. I also agree with Darth Vegie that from a pure game mechanics side of the game it works very well and produces a complex and fun game. That doesn't change the fact that no one imagines starships doing battle by taking turns. Nor would a good naval tactician be the commander who is best able to take advantage of the this turn taking behavior in any fictional space battle we would imagine. So there is a disconnect between the way the game plays and the way we imagine a space battle would play out. This sort of disconnect isn't so much a good or a bad thing, it just is. I would point out that other problems some people seem to have with this game (the abundance of flotillas) isn't really a matter of the game being broken, just a result of the activations economy that is built into the game and how that activation economy wouldn't really be a thing in the fiction.

I do have to disagree with Darth Vegie. I don't think taking advantage of any rule in the game is an "abuse". If one gaming group wants to enforce house rules they think make the game better, that is fine. But if someone is playing the game as written to good effect I don't see how that can be called abuse.

On 6/1/2017 at 7:53 AM, jorgen_cab said:

I have made a ship combat game where you also alternate the movement but you always resolve them in size order. So first all large ships activate, then medium and last small ships... that makes small ships better at reacting. then shooting come which is small ships first, mdium second and large third. So you never moved and shot at the same time so smaller ship had a huge advantage but it was of course balance in other ways.

Not saying it is necessary in this game just think this is a more interesting way of solving it.

So big ships are punished doubly by the activation mechanic? You get less of them because your ships cost more and they have to move first. I agree with the sentiment but I don't see how this fixes anything.

Undeniably.

Deployment, activations, attacks. These advantages are handled best by MSU ships and fighters, which is why they are so strong right now (and why everyone went with Rieekan aces in the last worlds tournament: a list emphasizing all three of these axies of strength with ultra-resiliency packed on top of it).

Deployment means you can delay, delay... with fighters or fast MSU ships until you've pinned down where the enemy's big expensive heavy ship is in their deployment zone. Then you deploy your big attack ship (Admonition MC-30, Demolisher, your own big ship) in response to that to catch it out of position.

Activations means you can activate, say, those three GR-75s not doing anything to wait out the other guy's big ship to move into attack range. So that ISD you want to attack... by waiting for him to move into your range, you denied that big ship it's ability to attack anything and put it in perfect position for your ideal ship to launch it's attack. It has to suffer x many turns of being attacked for how ever many activations there are remaining.

Attacks is strong in having multiple attacks against the same ship. If that ISD is choosing to face an APT-backed Admonition or three corvettes with TRCs, along with fighters, how will it spend its four defense tokens in the most optimal way to stay alive? Repeated shots exhaust defense tokens to make the ship weaker for the subsequent attacks. This is why fighters, and that Rieekan ace list, work so well... and why big ships are at such a disadvantage. They are massive targets easily plinked at by small amounts of (guaranteed with TRCs) damage that they have to respond to. And big ships like the ISD, MC-series, and so on... do not have evade tokens to cancel these sniping shots. Even if the Empire took Needa on a ship for that Evade, it's sacrificing some of the resiliency they need at close range where they can employ their full batteries.

IMO, big-medium ships are in a hole right now because they do not play to these advantages except as carriers, where you can take advantage of deployments and attacks... hopefully making the most of your single activation.

6 hours ago, Hrathen said:

So big ships are punished doubly by the activation mechanic? You get less of them because your ships cost more and they have to move first. I agree with the sentiment but I don't see how this fixes anything.

In my opinion if a game is balanced around it I would prefer it... I would actually prefer that firing is more or less simultaneous while smaller ships get to activate after bigger ship. I would also prefer if their were some bid mechanic to claim initiative during a game. That is what I had in my game. You could bid command tokens to take the initiative in either ship size phase but these command token could be used for many things and was a hard currency.

In our campaign we have made it a bit different which make more sense since battles are often not equal anyway. First of all every piece of upgrade , ace pilots or unique squadron are hidden information until used, you don't even know how many upgrade cards a ship has or if any reinforcement will arrive later from the enemy side. Every scenario are based on victory points where the aggressor can earn up to two campaign points and the defender up to one. If the aggressor beat the defender by at least 25% victory point marginal he gain one campaign point of he beats him with double the amount of victory point he gain two campaign point. The defender only get one campaign point if he beats the aggressor by double the victory points. Any player who don't have initiative but have at least two more victory points in the current battle can spend two and gain initiative.

Our campaign is not about fair fights and if you are about to loose campaign points to the opponent you better flee rather then press on and just give points and resources to the opponent. This make engagements allot more dynamic and fun, they also feel more realistic when initiative usually swing in the favor of the one in the lead and is a signal that you better do something or get out of there.

We look at the victory point as a combination of moral and "command and control".

This work perfectly in a campaign setting but poorly for sport.

Absolutely beyond a shred of doubt.

--

longer answer. I don't find it fun to make permutations of which ship should go when. In this case I find the hammerheads and small ships to be a major turn off. I'm not sure there's much left to play for in this game. Activation order is really boring gameplay

Something that actually might work better is the chips in the bag version to remove some of the gamey mechanics with alternating activation. Every ship puts a chip in the bag with its ID. Each player draw from its own bad and do so in turn. Whenever you draw a chip you can opt not to use and instead put it on the ship now the opponent can draw a new ship and use that. Whenever you draw a chip and activate a ship you can also activate a ship for which to have a chip on it if you want to. This is to hinder that moving ships in formations is not penalized to hard.

This way you will remove some of the worst meticulous calculation and will get some form of fog of war. But every system have some form of downside, question is just which one you would prefer.

All in all I thin it work OK as it is. I can also add that the more points you play with the less activation advantage will be seen as a problem. I usually play with 600p in one of games on the standard size table. This make for much more interesting battles and activation initiative are slightly less a "problem".

On 6/1/2017 at 4:09 AM, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

I think the only way you can justify alternating activations is that it's a board table-top game. If it were a computer game, all activations would be simultaneous, like in Empire at War. The fact that it is on a table top leads to all sorts of issues one wouldn't think 'Star Warsy', like 2D combat, alternating activations, etc.

As for flotillas, why would their role clash with imaginary battles? Why would you ever have such flimsy ships if they weren't there for support? 'Hmm, I can have my flagship concentrate on directing 72 TIE fighters, or I can have the team of Gozantis WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY back there out of danger doing nothing take on the job. . . choices, choices. . .'

Yeah, but in games like those you do have other issues. Seriously you may not know this but RTS sports like Star Craft and Brood Wars are a young athletes sport and retirement comes early. All the APM(Actions per minute) send people away with arthritis. Now there are some games which put a limit on APM by removing some micro agency and purposefully slowing down unit response but the end result of those games is that they become less popular than say Brood Wars.

58 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Yeah, but in games like those you do have other issues. Seriously you may not know this but RTS sports like Star Craft and Brood Wars are a young athletes sport and retirement comes early. All the APM(Actions per minute) send people away with arthritis. Now there are some games which put a limit on APM by removing some micro agency and purposefully slowing down unit response but the end result of those games is that they become less popular than say Brood Wars.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. . . are you saying that having to manage events as they occur causes people to stop playing them sooner? I didn't know that. I only have experience playing First Person shooters like Battlefield, some Total War series games, and Assassin's Creed (baring the Wii racing games). . . are those the APMs you're talking about? Fascinating.

Also, I feel I should mention, I'm not advocating RTS games, I personally didn't like EAW for just that reason: great game, personally prefer turn-based games (like Total War! ) - except combat. If it's on a computer, I prefer the realism of live combat. It's having to wait for funds, react to random attacks by OP enemy spams. . . that stuff I don't like. I just brought it up because it did support the point that simultaneous movement is impossible in any game played between 2 people (do you happen to recall how confusing children's games could be, when 4 people play out the same battle scene? People dying left right and center before you knew they existed), and so the turn-based activation seems the fairest concept.

1 hour ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

I'm not quite sure what you mean. . . are you saying that having to manage events as they occur causes people to stop playing them sooner? I didn't know that. I only have experience playing First Person shooters like Battlefield, some Total War series games, and Assassin's Creed (baring the Wii racing games). . . are those the APMs you're talking about? Fascinating.

Also, I feel I should mention, I'm not advocating RTS games, I personally didn't like EAW for just that reason: great game, personally prefer turn-based games (like Total War! ) - except combat. If it's on a computer, I prefer the realism of live combat. It's having to wait for funds, react to random attacks by OP enemy spams. . . that stuff I don't like. I just brought it up because it did support the point that simultaneous movement is impossible in any game played between 2 people (do you happen to recall how confusing children's games could be, when 4 people play out the same battle scene? People dying left right and center before you knew they existed), and so the turn-based activation seems the fairest concept.

No, pros stop sooner because they get arthritis before they reach 30. Skip to 0:40 below to see what I mean.

As I said, remeber all those goofy "Hacker" movies and TV shows that Hollywood makes where people actually put 4 hands on a keyboard to type faster. Yeah hackign doesn't work like that but pro-RTS games do.

On 6/1/2017 at 1:58 AM, Hrathen said:

I get it. This is a question that can't be answered. It is a game and it is a fun game. (If you don't like Armada, I can recommend some forums where you might enjoy reading more)

For anyone who has played this game much of all. Ship activations and activation order a a HUGE part of the tactics of this game. Why are Flotillas great because people are willing to buy them just for the extra activations. Why are life boats and relay annoying? Because it makes use of those ships we were perfectly willing to just buy for the activations in a pretty effective way.

But why are we so annoyed about these little flotillas being so good. I think it is because in that little part of our brain that likes to pretend we are actually commanding Star Wars cruisers in space naval engagements doesn't think these little support ships should work in our imaginary battle the way they work in the game.

And now we are back to activations. Of all the things in Aramda, the one that just doesn't seem to make sense from a, we are pretending to have a massive space battle, sense is the way ships activate. Why would the fact that there are two more CR-90's half way across the battlefield make it harder for my ISD to chase down this Corvette right in front of it. From a narative sense it doesn't make much sense.

But it does from a game play sense. I lets little, far less powerful, ships compete against big nasties like ISDs. The "Game" part of the game works. And if the buying a couple (or more) flotillas lets me have an ISD and have 5 activations, then they are a hugely welcome part of the game for me. (Since I love ISDs, they are the reason I play this game).

So for the record, I don't think Flotillas, or any of the things they can do are overpowered. It's not something only one faction can do, and it doesn' push other ships out of the game. In fact, I think they make ISDs more playable. The problem is a disconnect between what is good for the "game" and what seems like it should be good for the imaginary battle that takes place in our heads. And in all comes down to how activations work in this game.

Most of the ones saying that flotillas and activations are a problem aren't saying that due to any balance or thematic issues. The game is greatly balanced. It's more that it inhibits list diversity, as anything auto-include means that your choices are limited, which is bad for the game. Others disagree. If you are interested in looking into what people were actually saying with regard to flotillas, there are plenty of threads you can search through.