2 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

We could all just agree to take 1 flotilla per fleet... solves a lot of problems, and solves them right now. I personally do this and just won a 24 player store championship. It can be done. For the good of the game and the fun of your opponent, play with actual ships not filler activations... We the players do have say in how our meta turns out.

To counter the inevitable "your living in fairy land and not everyone will go for that, people want to win to bad to limit themselves," come back I say that it the way in which you win is more important than if you win. So what if you win by abusing a game mechanic, does that really indicate a great depth of skill or a great depth of win at all cost, no matter how un-fun or tactically stale the experience for the other player?

Fair fights are the only ones worth being proud of winning.

My problem with this is that its forcing your moral ideology on the game. What is "fair" to you may not be "fair" to someone else. You talk about winning a "fair" fight... I followed the rules and built a list within the bounds that the rules dictate... whats not "fair" about that?

This is why its important for developers to constantly nurture a game to the best of their ability and I just don't see that happening. My guess is just that the focus of FFG is spread across so much that its hard to give a game the attention that is needed and thats probably true across all their products... except RuinWars... those guys get all the love.

2 hours ago, Captain Weather said:

So before I dive into this, I just want to say that I think that you are spot on and that the vast majority of players probably aren't tournament players.

There's a couple of really key reasons though why balancing with the tournament scene in mind tends to makes the most sense.

The first is that tournaments are really good exposure for your game. If you have a thriving tournament scene then people will come into stores and see these events, if your scene is big enough then you'll start to draw in players from the exposure and perceived popularity. Put simply, even if the majority of players are quote un-quote 'home gamers' the ones that people are going to see (if they see any at all) are tournament players.

This ties into the second consideration, invariably your biggest community advocates are also some of your best players. You look at the IFF boys during their heyday, they were the biggest advocates for the game, and also top calibre at a competitive level. Because your biggest community drivers are tournament players, that's the angle you want to help the most, to keep those people around, and to keep them pumping the game. As callous as it sounds, if a home gamer stops playing Armada at home does the community hear it? Do they notice it? Probably not as much.

The third reason is perception. Again, because tournament play and meta are the most publicised and talked about aspect of the game, you want this facet to be good. If someone new is approaching the game, even if they never plan on taking part in a tournament, if they see that at a tournament level the game has problems, they will assume the same thing (rightly or wrongly) will occur at a home game level. Basically, you don't want the tournament sphere to appear broken, otherwise people will assume the game itself is broken.

-

Now with regards to your anecdotal experience as true as it maybe to you, it bears keeping in mind that they are only our experiences, especially if they're only at a local level. A comment made in another thread ('Euros and the lack of that undead general') indirectly touched upon this:

'I think another big thing there is exposure to different lists outside the local (sorry for using this word) meta. I showed up with something which locally was very unique and no one had an answer to. I wouldn't say I'm leaps and bounds ahead of the guys we've got here in terms of skill, just that my list was giving me a strong advantage.

Showed up to Euros and at least 2 people had come up with very similar lists completely independently and a lot of what I was seeing set up opposite me recognised what I was doing and had an idea of what to do about it. Put me on the back foot as I was used to a fair degree of freedom to play the game my way, and suddenly I'm finding that outside the local scene people were ahead of that curve.

Need to break out the local bubble and get myself active on Vassal!'

What I'm driving at is that just because you're winning with 3 ship lists in your local bubble, doesn't mean that the experiences you've found are universal. Conversely, for example, when I played a CC campaign, I had a 5 ship list with an ISD. That ISD didn't die in a single game, despite being my only real ship (a direct, but very anecdotal counter to your point).

For me this is why it is incredibly helpful to look at major tournaments that draw crowds from varied local bubbles. Worlds, Euros, US Nationals, North American Championships, and yes, the Vassal tournaments. That's where you see multiple bubbles mix, and usually with the best players from an array of smaller bubbles, coming together to duke it out for top spot.

As a rule the lists that do well at these tournaments, from my experience, are the ones to consider.

Yes... I surely understand that tournament play is important, just think it sometimes overshadow the more common use of the game and it should not be balanced for tournament play only. I would rather see them develop the campaign part of the game.

In a standard campaign a 5 ship fleet is hardly a large activation fleet at 400-500p, that would be about average I say...

One ISD or two VSD are probably more or less the same thing for a standard Corellian campaign.... we play with a heavily modified campaign set which is early in its development but play very differently. No player have an individual fleet and you move actual fleets or ship object around the map and you are constricted by logistics and range. You also can lose ships permanently after one battle if you are unlucky and critical damage on ships increase the risk of them being permanently lost after a battle, slightly depending on size. You pay resources just to send ships on missions so it is always a toss up between sending enough to claim the campaign points or just waste resources since the opponent decided to withdraw and instead claimed two other systems far cheaper. You may send any amount of ships to do a mission in any system and ships also have different strategical importance and traits.

Anyway just wanted to say that there are multiple ways to play the game and not all of them revolve around competitive play which remove all of the cinematic or theme of the Star Wars galaxy (in my opinion). When I see two rebel fleets play in a Youtube clip I think they might as well just push some cardboard chits around representing ships with numbers on them. Especially with the same named characters and ships on both sides. I respect their wishes to play like that, I simply don't understand why...

All respect to good tournament players you probably would beat me any day, we will never know... though.. NO point system will fix "meta" or "min/max". There will ALWAYS be a "best" way to win big, more or less.

15 hours ago, Caldias said:

I've heard some talk about how they crush flotilla lists, but I don't see any "flotilla slayers" high in tournaments that don't have flotillas themselves.

I agree, if only it were possible to place in a major tournament without any flotillas, that would truely mean that there is a viable counter to them out there and everyone who says there are counters would be right. Sadly this is clearly not the case and it is impossible to achieve this.

I mean, I only managed third in the swiss at euros with my 'no flotillas' list. I'm sure if I'd put a flotilla in there I would have reached a proper high position, like maybe second? Gosh, I look so stupid now looking back at the errors I made in not taking any flotillas.

Seriously everyone needs to calm down. Activation advantage is massive, that is correct and is of massive tactical value in armada.

Flotillas are not the be all and end all, neither is Reikan, nor Rhymer, nor cluster bombs, nor director Isard nor is any of the other overpowered stuff people are getting hysterical about. Flotillas are an easy but flawed way of getting an activation advantage, there are other ways too.

I'm now just going to go and shout at my medal for not being good enough, it's the only way it will learn

5 minutes ago, Dr alex said:

I agree, if only it were possible to place in a major tournament without any flotillas, that would truely mean that there is a viable counter to them out there and everyone who says there are counters would be right. Sadly this is clearly not the case and it is impossible to achieve this.

I mean, I only managed third in the swiss at euros with my 'no flotillas' list. I'm sure if I'd put a flotilla in there I would have reached a proper high position, like maybe second? Gosh, I look so stupid now looking back at the errors I made in not taking any flotillas.

Seriously everyone needs to calm down. Activation advantage is massive, that is correct and is of massive tactical value in armada.

Flotillas are not the be all and end all, neither is Reikan, nor Rhymer, nor cluster bombs, nor director Isard nor is any of the other overpowered stuff people are getting hysterical about. Flotillas are an easy but flawed way of getting an activation advantage, there are other ways too.

I'm now just going to go and shout at my medal for not being good enough, it's the only way it will learn

Ignoring your sarcasm, I don't see many of the "activations are sort of an issue" people actually needing to calm down, since they aren't actually upset, just voicing opinions. Your list also has six activations, and as I've said before flotillas aren't the issue (but didn't elaborate here, perhaps I should have), activations are, flotillas are a symptom of that, and flotillas are just the cheapest source. Sorry my opinion makes you so angry.

Alex, to paraphrase what I have said elsewhere, a nerf purely to the flotilla misses the point of why the flotilla is dominant and will only usher in another dominant strategy.

The flotilla is far and away the cheapest method of getting more activations (witness an average of over 3 flotillas per list in the top 8 at worlds and euros combine, which would have been even higher without your list!) and that all the lists without flotillas doing well spam corvettes for cheap activations (Steve won the last NOVA tournament with tons of activations with a corvette list as well).

The core rules issue is activations. The easiest path to abusing that is flotillas, but they are not the sole path.

What I have not seen is a single 4 or lower activation list place well; activations are the disease, the flotilla is the symptom.

Edit: put differently, what I am objecting to is the lack of diversity from a dominant strategy basis. All good fleets are based around high activation count and low average ship cost. How they get there has some but low variance.

31 minutes ago, Caldias said:

Sorry my opinion makes you so angry.

Oh bless, I'm British, sarcasm doesn't mean I'm angry. You can tell if I'm angry if I'm utterly, unfailingly polite; that means run, run now.

looking at what I wrote though, I focused a bit too much on being sarcastic and witty and not enough on actually making my point clear. Let's try again:

Activation advantage is massive in Armada, it is incredibly important and having it puts you in much more control of the table than going first. My general strategy at euros was to trade my ships for my opponents' activations. As long as I remained in control, I could dictate the game. If I lost activation advantage I focused on regaining it. It really is a huge advantage.

However that doesn't mean the game is broken or that there needs to be a pass option. To get my activation advantage and keep it I had to deal with the squadron game by completely ignoring it and out manouvering it. That is where the quality of the activations comes into play. Flotillas are actually pretty rubbish activations, particularly rebel ones as they can't do anything other than stall and move squadrons. Flotillas are a compromise when being used as something other than fleet support or carriers and not one I particularly like.

Flotillas are not the problem, flotillas are not the easy option, flotillas are eminently counterable if you want to do so. That then lets you gain activation advantage.

I really don't like the idea of taking away activation advantage as being something worth having, as that then removes a whole element of the strategic/tactical side of the game; that of obtaining and keeping activation advantage. That then reduces the depth of the game.

Flotillas are not the problem, they are not ruining armada. They are a really easy way to get activations, but they are not normally good activations, unless you've spent loads of points making them good through squads/upgrades.

A better thing to focus on is how do I get a three ship list to either win activation advantage or to be able to ignore activation advantage? (that's why demolisher is so good)

The multitude of flotillas are ruining armada threads on this forum are spiralling into groupthink and ignoring actual, clear evidence to the contrary. Your statement that no flotilla killer lists without flotillas have done well in tournaments was merely the easiest bit for me to focus on as it is entirely understandable to make such a comment in the current flow of discussions on here, but also utterly wrong and easy to prove so.

TL:DR I'm not angry, activation advantage is a big thing, but not a bad thing, flotillas are flawed, these threads are descending into groupthink which is not helpful

Sarcasm gets you warnings round here. Its an absolute joke.

imo

21 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

Alex, to paraphrase what I have said elsewhere, a nerf purely to the flotilla misses the point of why the flotilla is dominant and will only usher in another dominant strategy.

The flotilla is far and away the cheapest method of getting more activations (witness an average of over 3 flotillas per list in the top 8 at worlds and euros combine, which would have been even higher without your list!) and that all the lists without flotillas doing well spam corvettes for cheap activations (Steve won the last NOVA tournament with tons of activations with a corvette list as well).

The core rules issue is activations. The easiest path to abusing that is flotillas, but they are not the sole path.

What I have not seen is a single 4 or lower activation list place well; activations are the disease, the flotilla is the symptom.

Edit: put differently, what I am objecting to is the lack of diversity from a dominant strategy basis. All good fleets are based around high activation count and low average ship cost. How they get there has some but low variance.

I agree with you. I'm not sure it's a problem though. It's certainly not a problem with flotillas.

Low activation fleets need a way to reach out and ****** activation advantage from a spammy high activation opponent. I think disposable capacitors will go some way to achieving this. I also think that Sato may have the potential for achieving this but I cannot for the life of me work out how to get it to work.

The censored word was s n a t c h

44 minutes ago, Dr alex said:

I agree, if only it were possible to place in a major tournament without any flotillas, that would truely mean that there is a viable counter to them out there and everyone who says there are counters would be right. Sadly this is clearly not the case and it is impossible to achieve this.

I mean, I only managed third in the swiss at euros with my 'no flotillas' list. I'm sure if I'd put a flotilla in there I would have reached a proper high position, like maybe second? Gosh, I look so stupid now looking back at the errors I made in not taking any flotillas.

Seriously everyone needs to calm down. Activation advantage is massive, that is correct and is of massive tactical value in armada.

Flotillas are not the be all and end all, neither is Reikan, nor Rhymer, nor cluster bombs, nor director Isard nor is any of the other overpowered stuff people are getting hysterical about. Flotillas are an easy but flawed way of getting an activation advantage, there are other ways too.

I'm now just going to go and shout at my medal for not being good enough, it's the only way it will learn

Clearly the issue is that you did not have sugar in your tea..... I bet you would have got first with a higher blood sugar level.

4 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

What I have not seen is a single 4 or lower activation list place well; activations are the disease, the flotilla is the symptom.

Edit: put differently, what I am objecting to is the lack of diversity from a dominant strategy basis. All good fleets are based around high activation count and low average ship cost. How they get there has some but low variance.

I thought we had Regionals data showing that 4 ship fleets DID win. We haven't seen that in the last 2 tournaments (Worlds and Europe) but we do have data for that.

I disagree that activations are the disease. I understand your objection of going super hard into activations where it seems to be an unending stream towards "more activations = better list" but since 4 and 5 ship fleets are viable and win tournaments/Regionals, is that really a problem? I'm not trying to be snarky, and you may have stated WHY this was a problem earlier. I'm just trying to understand your point. Like, the general (not saying you specifically here, just stating the overall "consensus" of thoughts from the forums) is that 3 ship lists should be viable. Motti, 2 ISD, a VSD, and a mess of TIEs, or something like that. While it doesn't win tournaments (slash isn't actually brought), what's stopping you (general you, not a YOU specifically) from developing that list and finetuning it if its something you want to play? Again, i'm not trying to be snarky, i'm trying to understand what's stopping people from bringing what they want to a game and playing it. The downside to 3 big ship activations is that your opponent is going to target it and hit it with everything they have to kill it and skate away on points, but all I can handwave is "objective choice, upgrade/commander choice, projection experts, repeated repair commands, etc."

Basically asking as i blather: what's wrong with multiple activations? I'm not understanding the argument. If it's the full extreme of 6-7 activation fleets, then sure, we can talk about that. But if it's that 4 ship lists aren't viable, I think they are, and might be even more so next wave. Demo, a VSD, a Quasar, a mess of TIEs, and a gozanti BCC, or something like that. Without going Imp, i can't say if you want VSD/ISD, but that's a build choice, really.

24 minutes ago, Dr alex said:

Oh bless, I'm British, sarcasm doesn't mean I'm angry. You can tell if I'm angry if I'm utterly, unfailingly polite; that means run, run now.

looking at what I wrote though, I focused a bit too much on being sarcastic and witty and not enough on actually making my point clear. Let's try again:

Activation advantage is massive in Armada, it is incredibly important and having it puts you in much more control of the table than going first. My general strategy at euros was to trade my ships for my opponents' activations. As long as I remained in control, I could dictate the game. If I lost activation advantage I focused on regaining it. It really is a huge advantage.

However that doesn't mean the game is broken or that there needs to be a pass option. To get my activation advantage and keep it I had to deal with the squadron game by completely ignoring it and out manouvering it. That is where the quality of the activations comes into play. Flotillas are actually pretty rubbish activations, particularly rebel ones as they can't do anything other than stall and move squadrons. Flotillas are a compromise when being used as something other than fleet support or carriers and not one I particularly like.

Flotillas are not the problem, flotillas are not the easy option, flotillas are eminently counterable if you want to do so. That then lets you gain activation advantage.

I really don't like the idea of taking away activation advantage as being something worth having, as that then removes a whole element of the strategic/tactical side of the game; that of obtaining and keeping activation advantage. That then reduces the depth of the game.

Flotillas are not the problem, they are not ruining armada. They are a really easy way to get activations, but they are not normally good activations, unless you've spent loads of points making them good through squads/upgrades.

A better thing to focus on is how do I get a three ship list to either win activation advantage or to be able to ignore activation advantage? (that's why demolisher is so good)

The multitude of flotillas are ruining armada threads on this forum are spiralling into groupthink and ignoring actual, clear evidence to the contrary. Your statement that no flotilla killer lists without flotillas have done well in tournaments was merely the easiest bit for me to focus on as it is entirely understandable to make such a comment in the current flow of discussions on here, but also utterly wrong and easy to prove so.

TL:DR I'm not angry, activation advantage is a big thing, but not a bad thing, flotillas are flawed, these threads are descending into groupthink which is not helpful

My apologies for misinterpreting you then, last time I tried to discuss this reasonably I was met with a few very obviously angry individuals, and I jumped the gun with you, so I am sorry for that. I agree activation advantage is huge in Armada, and my issue with it is it leads to less list diversity. And sure, your list can kill flotillas, there are many lists that can, and obviously yours did quite well, but I don't think this would discourage flotillas from being taken, and your list also capitalizes on the same mechanic that many flotilla lists do--activations. Anyway, we are all just spouting opinions here, my experiences will vary from yours, of course, but the data does show that flotilla ubiquity is rampant, and ubiquity means less diversity, which makes me somewhat sad. I personally feel first player is good enough without having first/last, and on the other end, out activating someone as second player by two or more activations feels a little strong the other way.

As someone who also placed rather high at a big event, I think I played one person who only had one flotilla, the rest had at least 2-3 flotillas, and the only ones I saw that lacked any were CR90 spam.

I have not read the entire thread so if some of my thoughts are rehashing what others have said my apologies.

First off a bit of my history. I have been gaming since the mid 80's. Almost all of my miniature games were historical. I did dabble in Warhammer back in the 90's but quickly had my fill of the tournament mindset of that game. Have done a good bit of historical naval games and thats the thing I want to toss in here.

Someone asked about historical examples of small ships dominating combat. Easy.

The Napoleonic age of sail.

The large warships (ships of the line) were so well constructed and valuable that nations were very reluctant to commit them to very large fleet battles. We read about those battles because they were few and far between. It was only when an admiral felt he has a significant advantage that he would commit a large fleet to action. Consequently the vast majority of actions took place between smaller ships (50 guns and below) or between vessels (craft with less than 3 masts). Basically the equivalent of Raiders, CR 90's and flotillas. You might see a 60 gun 4th rate ship in the mix occasionally which would be basically a Nebulon or Arq.

and another example

WW1

The German high seas fleet stayed in port. The other nations fleets had nothing to do but stand off and watch them. Most actions took place between individual cruisers or smaller ships with the occasional clash between a squadron of battle cruisers or larger. There was considerable action between Destroyers and smaller ships

So the idea of Flotillas being a major part of fleets in Armada is not really all that odd to me. Its just not what we think of when we think of Star Wars.

Now my buddies and I play Armada about once every two or three months and we generally play 4 player 800 or 900 point per side battles. I am honestly tired of the big rebel ships gunning down weaker Imperials. The last three games have been won by Rebel scum the only win we Imperials had was when we ran an ISD up the gut and blasted Home One to bits only to soon follow it. I have been looking for a way to upset the power curve a bit so multiple flotillas might just be the ticket.

GenCon 2016 was pre flotillae, but since Reinholt highlighted the core of the problem as being activation advantage and the prevailing sentiment as being "you cannot win tourney's without activation advantage" I think it's worth bringing up. Top 2 were both 2 activation lists in what was surely a field of 3 and 4 activation lists played by Super experienced players. Yet despite being heavily out activated, they used the tools in the game to get around that disadvantage and placed first and second. Winner was also 2017 world champ. I would guess that if Norm and his crew decided to take a lower activation list to this year's worlds they would have done just as well.

37 minutes ago, GringoFett said:

WW1

The German high seas fleet stayed in port. The other nations fleets had nothing to do but stand off and watch them. Most actions took place between individual cruisers or smaller ships with the occasional clash between a squadron of battle cruisers or larger. There was considerable action between Destroyers and smaller ships

So the idea of Flotillas being a major part of fleets in Armada is not really all that odd to me. Its just not what we think of when we think of Star Wars.

Can't speak for Napoleonic ships, but in WW1 the primary reason there was only one significant naval engagement (Jutland) was the fact that the Germans couldn't actually leave their port without running directly into the British fleet, which was exceptionally well-equipped and well-trained for the time. Jutland was itself an effort to split the enemy forces of the British navy and lure faster British ships into engagement piecemeal.

I think it is about time to start looking at how activation advantage is impacting the game. One key thing that many players seemingly in favor of continued activation dependency don't entirely appreciate is how the two sides are so unequal in their ability to field activations. Rebels have the only sub-40 point combat ships in the game. The Gozantis can throw a die or two, but typically at that point they are in severe trouble.

I'm concerned that we are entering a period where a ship's contribution to activation advantage is its primary statistic after 1-2 "key player" ships like Demolisher, Admonition, or a big MC80/ISD. For all the talk of flotillas being "empty activations" that don't contribute to the fight, I'd point out that I could sacrifice one naked CR90B for two flotillas. In @Dr alex's Euro fleet, this would have contributed to fairly reliable anti-squadron platforms and given him immediate activation advantage against all of his top 4 opponents. Even with upgrades, one Flotilla with Slicer Tools could have drastically impacted multiple enemy fleets dependent on squadron commands or other "key moment" plays.

4 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Can't speak for Napoleonic ships, but in WW1 the primary reason there was only one significant naval engagement (Jutland) was the fact that the Germans couldn't actually leave their port without running directly into the British fleet, which was exceptionally well-equipped and well-trained for the time. Jutland was itself an effort to split the enemy forces of the British navy and lure faster British ships into engagement piecemeal.

I think it is about time to start looking at how activation advantage is impacting the game. One key thing that many players seemingly in favor of continued activation dependency don't entirely appreciate is how the two sides are so unequal in their ability to field activations. Rebels have the only sub-40 point combat ships in the game. The Gozantis can throw a die or two, but typically at that point they are in severe trouble.

I'm concerned that we are entering a period where a ship's contribution to activation advantage is its primary statistic after 1-2 "key player" ships like Demolisher, Admonition, or a big MC80/ISD. For all the talk of flotillas being "empty activations" that don't contribute to the fight, I'd point out that I could sacrifice one naked CR90B for two flotillas. In @Dr alex's Euro fleet, this would have contributed to fairly reliable anti-squadron platforms and given him immediate activation advantage against all of his top 4 opponents. Even with upgrades, one Flotilla with Slicer Tools could have drastically impacted multiple enemy fleets dependent on squadron commands or other "key moment" plays.

I mean, Imps still have Raiders, they're an unholy terror against squadron lists. And when External Racks come out, they can with Concentrate Fire roll 7 dice (5 black 2 blue) with Ordnance Experts for 51 points. That gives ME nightmares. Yeah it might not kill a flotilla, but that'll badly wound the heck out of anything else. Everything else, actually. Then they can go back to flakking squadrons.

4 minutes ago, SkyCake said:

GenCon 2016 was pre flotillae, but since Reinholt highlighted the core of the problem as being activation advantage and the prevailing sentiment as being "you cannot win tourney's without activation advantage" I think it's worth bringing up. Top 2 were both 2 activation lists in what was surely a field of 3 and 4 activation lists played by Super experienced players. Yet despite being heavily out activated, they used the tools in the game to get around that disadvantage and placed first and second. Winner was also 2017 world champ. I would guess that if Norm and his crew decided to take a lower activation list to this year's worlds they would have done just as well.

I was at GenCon 2016. I think you're missing a few key elements.

First off, the numbers gap between super-high and super-low activation fleets wasn't quite the same as it is now. In both cases, using many of the new squadrons that had been introduced via Rogues and Villains, players were using massed Squadron activations in place of ship activations. They were playing basically 4 activation fleets, but activating two ships worth of anti-ship or anti-squadron firepower at a time which rapidly closed the activation gap against players who weren't prepared to lock down enemy squadrons.

Second, after Norm Weir and Dong Lee you had several players who did have high-activation ship lists. PT106 came in 8th with a 5-ship, 2xISD1s + 3x Raider 1s list. Other players in the second day cut also had 3-4 ship lists with large numbers of squadrons. What tended to separate the winners and losers at that event was having tools to defeat or neutralize enemy squadrons.

4 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

First off, the numbers gap between super-high and super-low activation fleets wasn't quite the same as it is now.

Second, after Norm Weir and Dong Lee you had several players who did have high-activation ship lists. PT106 came in 8th with a 5-ship, 2xISD1s + 3x Raider 1s list. Other players in the second day cut also had 3-4 ship lists with large numbers of squadrons.

Look at euros, 4-5 activations make up the bulk of the tourney, as in the numbers gap is super tight, or the same as it was at gencon.

Your second point seems to make my point. In fact it reinforces it quite effectively.I don't know where you are going with that...

3 hours ago, Reinholt said:

The core rules issue is activations. The easiest path to abusing that is flotillas, but they are not the sole path.

What I have not seen is a single 4 or lower activation list place well; activations are the disease, the flotilla is the symptom.

Edit: put differently, what I am objecting to is the lack of diversity from a dominant strategy basis. All good fleets are based around high activation count and low average ship cost. How they get there has some but low variance.

I would agree that the core issue at debate is activations. And I am pretty sure that everyone agrees that having more activations than your opponent gives you an advantage. My belief is that the debate is really about how strong that advantage actually is. The different opinions on that point is why I think many of these threads have many people spending their time talking past each other. Each is starting from a different assumption about the strength of activation advantage.

If I thought that activation advantage was the most important or strongest thing in the game I would approach fleet building very differently than if I did not. Currently I don't generally consider a minimum number of activations when I set out to build a fleet. I think more of the concept of the fleet and what roles I need filled. Looking over my recent fleet builds they are mostly 4 ships with an occasional 3 or 5. If I started from an assumption that activation count was the most important thing about a fleet then I doubt that I would build fleets with fewer than 5 ships and all of my fleets would start from there as a base.

And you know what, I can totally see why that would be annoying and I would want a change too.

Reading posts in these threads is pretty much an exercise in looking at which assumption about activation advantage someone is operating from. Those assumptions tend to lead to similar arguments that sound something like "this is breaking the game" or "the game is fine, get over it".

30 minutes ago, SkyCake said:

Look at euros, 4-5 activations make up the bulk of the tourney, as in the numbers gap is super tight, or the same as it was at gencon.

Your second point seems to make my point. In fact it reinforces it quite effectively.I don't know where you are going with that...

The second point is that previously the balance was Either/Or, and the current situation is "Yes And." Flotilla have thrown out the old dichotomy between high activating low power and low activating high power. Now every fleet is high activating with 2-3 power units which might include a big squadron component or a powerful combat ship, or both. But they also have 5+ activations.

2 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

The second point is that previously the balance was Either/Or, and the current situation is "Yes And." Flotilla have thrown out the old dichotomy between high activating low power and low activating high power. Now every fleet is high activating with 2-3 power units which might include a big squadron component or a powerful combat ship, or both. But they also have 5+ activations.

How is trc 90 swarm high activating low power? How was PT's list high activating low power?

58 minutes ago, SkyCake said:

I would guess that if Norm and his crew decided to take a lower activation list to this year's worlds they would have done just as well.

But they didn't, one of their key points was they felt the list was the best chance they had, and I'm willing to wager that they almost certainly would not have won Worlds this year if they had taken much lower.

Looking specifically at the Worlds Top 8 we can see that 6 of the 8 were 5 activations, 1 was 7, and the other we don't have data for. They are all around that rough activation mark. Conclusions here are much harder to draw though because we don't have a complete data set like Tokra helpfully provided us with for Euros.

The point is though, its ridiculous seeing comments 'Well the World Champion would have done just as well if he had taken lower activations!'. Maybe, we don't know, the stats seem to say probably not. More importantly though, the winning players aren't taking lower activation fleets at all. It's such a moot point to say they might have done as well, when at the decision point the good players are deciding not to take it.

36 minutes ago, SkyCake said:

Look at euros, 4-5 activations make up the bulk of the tourney, as in the numbers gap is super tight, or the same as it was at gencon.

Your second point seems to make my point. In fact it reinforces it quite effectively.I don't know where you are going with that...

So I don't know how you can still make this argument.

4-5 activations did make up the overwhelming bulk of the tournament. Yet they were drastically outperformed by 6-7 activation fleets who made up over half of the Top 8 despite being only one fifth of the fleets in the tournament.

It's literally the example you're talking about just at a different point on the scale. There was a very small amount of 2 ship and 3 ship lists, there was a substantial amount of 4 ship lists. None of the made the Top 8.

It's a pretty **** telling point in my book.

A few reasons.

First PT106's list had effectively no upgrades, relying instead on the natural firepower of the ISD1s. So it's high power, but unreliable. The TRC90 swarm is easily countered by high squadrons, and had never been at the top of the heap in major tournament play since squadrons became more ubiquitous. Dr Alex's list vey notably is not a TRC90 swarm even though that would theoretically bee more effective per ship than what he flew. Instead, it was high activating with Ackbar boosting power vs flotillas.

5 minutes ago, Captain Weather said:

It's a pretty **** telling point in my book.

Weird I didn't realise the forums censored the word dam-n

9 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

A few reasons.

First PT106's list had effectively no upgrades, relying instead on the natural firepower of the ISD1s. So it's high power, but unreliable. The TRC90 swarm is easily countered by high squadrons, and had never been at the top of the heap in major tournament play since squadrons became more ubiquitous. Dr Alex's list vey notably is not a TRC90 swarm even though that would theoretically bee more effective per ship than what he flew. Instead, it was high activating with Ackbar boosting power vs flotillas.

As a point of order, the TRC90 swarm with squadrons has been at the top of tournaments; last year's Nationals was 1 MC30 + 3 CR90s with squadrons, the Nova champ and 3rd place at worlds last year was 4xCR90 + 1 flotilla with squadrons, and Cracken lists did win or place very well at Regionals this year (though were oddly absent from Worlds, I think due to the players just not being there).

Again, though, it's a form of activation advantage, just essentially rolling the 1-2 major ships plus flotillas into a bunch of minor ships and one flotilla as an archetype. The average cost per ship is basically identical to push activations up.