First I like to say this is not a really serious question or any direct criticism to the game or balance. More like an interesting discussion of abstraction.

How do you deal with the fact that the power level between ships are heavily skewed towards smaller ships in the game, from an abstract sense that is?

As you know I'm more into the role-playing aspect of the game than the competitive part so it is an important question to me.

Just take the Victory class ship and compare it with the Nebulon B class. By going of the Wookipeedia you can clearly see that if the Nebulon have a hull rating of 5 the Victory should have at least a hull rating of 15 and its shields should probably be at least twice as strong. The firepower of a Victory class cruiser are probably about ten times that of a Nebulon-B if not more.

The main benefit of the Nebulon-B was its strong Anti-Fighter capacity and large hangars for its size and made it into excellent escort ships while larger ships such as the Victory struggled against smaller crafts such as fighters since it was more difficult to cover it with smaller weaponry. The Nebulon-B did not have any great fire power at any decent ranges since it had very few turbo lasers only a few single mounts while the Victory had both quad and double batteries in at around a total of 50.

If we disregard fighter complement which was the biggest drawback of the Victory, how many Nebulon-B frigates would realistically be needed to have a "realistic" chance to beat a Victory class cruiser?

No matter what it would always be a Pyrrhic victory since many Nebulon-B would go down in the process.

I see that the same is more or less true for pretty much all other ships in the game. Can we see this as some form of abstraction or where the power of those small ships really that great and the firepower of larger cruiser that bad... considering the cost of a Victory was about 57 million credits and a Nebulon-B only 8.5 million credits.

I understand where this is coming from...

...but it's almost impossible to give a good answer.

An A-wing can take out a SSD.

An X-wing can kill a Death Star.

And basically everyone will have their own interpretation of what's "realistic". Ask 10 players and you'll get (at least) 10 different answers.

For me personally: I just ignore it. It's a game and I focus on the mechanics. End of story.

I also do some SW RPG, however, and here the difference between ships is more marked. But it's still fairly vague, and smaller ships can and do perform stuff that their tonnage can't really account for.

Well in the movie things are done from a cinematic perspective and you rarely get the whole picture.

I doubt it was a single A-Wing that disabled that SSD alone in "reality" while the X-Wing destroying the death star did so by hitting it in a very special place at a crucial moment and it fits the story... so no big deal imagining how that work. But if this were common then no one would build large ships in the first place so it is sort of a moot point to bring up extremes.

I have no problem with a smaller ship being able to bring more concentrated fire power and one of its benefits are just that it is small. But at some point size is not small enough and the role will shift. Star Wars are after all very similar to WW-II naval battles and ships seem to take the same roles as ones back in the forties.

This means that a destroyer could be lethal to a Battleship if it could get close enough to fire its torpedoes... with the caveat it had to be able to get close enough without being sunk. Which was a feat on its own unless it had protection of some kind. Ships in Star Wars seem to operate on the same principles.

Basically in "realistic" terms a ship the size of a Nebulon-B was simply too large to pose any real threat to a larger cruiser such as the Victory and its defense would be speed and its fighter complement if you had several Nebulon-B not its main guns. A single Victory class could probably destroy half a dozen Nebulon-B with little to no damage done to it if it came down to guns against guns. Not that an Admiral controlling a small fleet of Nebulon-B would consider that approach unless it was the only alternative. Although, six Nebulon-B with a full fighter complement would be really dangerous to a lone Victory class cruisers since a single Nebulon-B carried roughly the same amount of fighters as a Victory.

It is also possible to imagine that each small ship base often represent more than one ship and so it is an abstraction and the capability of several smaller Frigates. That is easier for me to abstract than the fact a Nebulon-B is that strong.

Re. that SSD we do know that Acky ordered the Rebel fleet to shoot at her, but it was such a target-rich environment. Didn't look like the SSD had any trouble whatsoever until it crashed with that A-wing

Anyway. That's basically my point: that's YOUR interpretation. 6 Nebs + squads are a real threat of a single VSD with squads.

Others might say a couple. Or three. Or whatever.

No agreement is possible.

I don't even agree that WW2 is such a great analogy, but that's just me.

There is simply not enough information available even if you learn wookiepedia by heart - and should anyone ever manage to accomplish that, there is still the problem that some details contradict each other, or that given statistics for e.g. armaments seem quite incoherent. Apparently a W34t Turbolaser costs 9000 credits and weighs 5 tons, but what does it exactly, apart from turbolasering?

Next problem, if you ever get to grasp the technical details of all involved ships, their armaments, armor, shields, you would still need to find an explanation for SW physics. Even if you get all weapon characteristics on the sheet, you will still not be able to calculate a ships combat capacity.

After all, SW is not sci-fi, its space fantasy. There is no way you will ever find a definition of a ships power that is much more but pure opinion and imagination.

This is a game so things need to be balanced relative to each other, not to the lore. But the lore should be the inspiration for the balance and mechanics. I did some math a while back, and if I remember correctly, the MC80 Home One is 1.6 times more powerful in the game than in the lore. An ISD is the base line since it has the most dice and the most guns. I basically took the turrets from Wookiepedia and divided that by the amount of dice on the ship and then compared the 2. Or something like that.

Point is, if the Neb was scaled down from 3 red dice to 2 or 1, why would you take it? Balance wise, that's an awful ship. 1 or 2 reds will not dish out enough damage. By buffing the floor (small cheap ships) to punch above their lore weight class, you can create a game of cat n mouse. Thus, swarm fleets are born.

Also, you can take into account the fickleness of the dice. Red dice do not always deal damage, especially on small ships. Nebs, AF, Vics, Arqs, even CR90s tend to deal low amounts of damage. But take an MC80 or ISD which can take Leading Shots or another form of reroll, and you will see how effective those red dice can be. It's almost like the red dice allow the lore to be there by making small ships weaker, but the mechanics dictate you give more dice than the ships should have had. It's a complex balancing issue,

It is a discussion from abstraction and what seem realistic and you could argue either way but at least you should rationalize those arguments, that was my intention here.

My rationalization is that each Frigate such as the Nebulon-B represent about two ships, that seems reasonable given its stats versus the mass of those ships and going from the Legends data. It actually fit quite well.

In regards to that A-Wing it is still a moot point, you do things in a movie for cinematic reason and one extreme does not make for a good generalization. You need to account for the fact that large ships was built and they obviously did it because it worked, not because they liked wasting resources. The movie say almost nothing of how much the rebel fleet had pounced on that star destroyer before that A-wing crashed into the bridge or if that even was what brought it down either. We are just left believing it had something to do with it, which it probably did and there are some explanation for it. A good enough explanation is that the ship was too close to the Deathstar to begin with and with its engines temporarily knocked out it was caught in the Deathstars gravity and crashed... it might as well just have been some huge unfortunate set of circumstances and luck rather than a weakness as things usually are when a battle rage. This is just an educated guess. But rationalizing that all it take to take down an SSD is a single A-Wing makes very little sense in any capacity, no SSD would ever be built if that were the general case and is not a very good argument.

Just because Star Wars live in a set of different laws of physics you can still make good arguments on those assumptions.

I would like to hear a good argument WHY anyone would build a Victory class cruiser if it is as weak as it is in the game in comparison to a much smaller and obviously cheaper ship such as a Nebulon-B, especially the Victory-II class whose role actually was space superiority combat and for the record had the same speed as most other cruisers of its size and class. The Nebulon-B was not used by the Empire for space superiority combat, it was for escort purposes and the Rebel alliance had great respect for them since they relied allot on small fighter raids. With their scarce resources just a couple of Nebulon-B escorting some transports posed a great threat to the rebels that often lacked larger capital ships to deal with them on regular basis.

The Corellian corvette definitely have way more firepower in the game than it should as another example, it must represent at least three such ships working as a small squadron, at least that make sense to me from an abstracted point of view.

I am gladly persuaded otherwise but with arguments that makes sense not just that someone else have a different argument, that is not information I can consider useful.

If you are to argue that SSD were regularly destroyed by single star fighters and then proceed to argue some "realistic" reason they kept building them and other large ships I'm all ears, but I want something that make sense.

As I understand the Empire did NOT build it success on being incompetent, they had great success overall even if they lost in the end. And why did the New Rebublic keep using these ships if they where such a waste and why did the Republic use similar ships before the Empire?

21 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

This is a game so things need to be balanced relative to each other, not to the lore. But the lore should be the inspiration for the balance and mechanics. I did some math a while back, and if I remember correctly, the MC80 Home One is 1.6 times more powerful in the game than in the lore. An ISD is the base line since it has the most dice and the most guns. I basically took the turrets from Wookiepedia and divided that by the amount of dice on the ship and then compared the 2. Or something like that.

Point is, if the Neb was scaled down from 3 red dice to 2 or 1, why would you take it? Balance wise, that's an awful ship. 1 or 2 reds will not dish out enough damage. By buffing the floor (small cheap ships) to punch above their lore weight class, you can create a game of cat n mouse. Thus, swarm fleets are born.

Also, you can take into account the fickleness of the dice. Red dice do not always deal damage, especially on small ships. Nebs, AF, Vics, Arqs, even CR90s tend to deal low amounts of damage. But take an MC80 or ISD which can take Leading Shots or another form of reroll, and you will see how effective those red dice can be. It's almost like the red dice allow the lore to be there by making small ships weaker, but the mechanics dictate you give more dice than the ships should have had. It's a complex balancing issue,

Yes... I understand that it is all for game balance and that was not what I wanted the discussion to be about but rather what rationalization do people do to cover that fact. I also stated it was important the discussion was NOT about criticizing that part of the game.

I do this by imagining that most smaller ships actually represent more than just one ship, that makes things easier for me to visualize the battle as it happens, remember role-play IS important for some.

Just now, jorgen_cab said:

Yes... I understand that it is all for game balance and that was not what I wanted the discussion to be about but rather what rationalization do people do to cover that fact. I also stated it was important the discussion was NOT about criticizing that part of the game.

I do by imagining that most smaller ships actually represent more than just one ship, that makes things easier for me to visualize the battle as they happen, remember role-play IS important to some.

Well I guess what I said is my rationalization. I'm a fairly straight forward person, so logically it makes sense that the cheapest ships have a battery of 2-3 dice so they can actually be playable.

To put my reason simply: FFG made a game with a Star Wars skin. They wanted to have a bunch of ships from the movies and buffed them with the worst dice to give incentive to the player to take them, but still have their rolls weak enough to make a CR90 look like a CR90, and an ISD with its rerolls feel like an ISD.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

Well I guess what I said is my rationalization. I'm a fairly straight forward person, so logically it makes sense that the cheapest ships have a battery of 2-3 dice so they can actually be playable.

To put my reason simply: FFG made a game with a Star Wars skin. They wanted to have a bunch of ships from the movies and buffed them with the worst dice to give incentive to the player to take them, but still have their rolls weak enough to make a CR90 look like a CR90, and an ISD with its rerolls feel like an ISD.

Yes... and I fully agree this is their intention all along. But I wanted the discussion to be about how people deal with it on a role-playing perspective and like to rationalize the ship stats differently and a bit more accurately.

It seem perfectly viable to assume that each Nebulon-B ship which have a small template could represent two such ships, the corvettes represent three ships since they are really tiny. Most small ships would represent two to three ships.

And as I said the discussion was not about criticizing FFG decisions for dice and power level but what the thoughts about the rational abstractions are.

Keep in mind that raw firepower is not equivalent to actual fir output. Ofen a ship cannot fire all its guns at once therefore it can fire with less power than its maximum theoretical firepower.

The problem is, you're using role play aspects and rationalization for a game that was designed with absolutely zero role play and background considerations.

if we went with your rationale, both the CR90 and the Nebulon should be flotillas. Likewise, in game a couple of Awing squadrons are perfectly capable of taking out an ISD, given enough time.

The game designers took Star Wars imagery and concepts and designed a fun game around them. I don't try to rationalize ANYTHING, I simply apply the rules of the game as is. Attempting to rationalize why the game works the way it does using Star Wars lore or real world is futile and will only lead to frustration.

Now if you want a convo about comparing Star Wars and real world naval combat, without using the game as a reference, that's doable.

Just now, Norell said:

Keep in mind that raw firepower is not equivalent to actual fir output. Ofen a ship cannot fire all its guns at once therefore it can fire with less power than its maximum theoretical firepower.

Yes, this is definitely one thing you must consider and why a smaller ship generally have more fire-power per point of mass at the disadvantage of being easier to disable/destroy... more or less. But if being big only had drawbacks then no one would build them with guns and only use hangars and fighters on them.

6 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

The problem is, you're using role play aspects and rationalization for a game that was designed with absolutely zero role play and background considerations.

if we went with your rationale, both the CR90 and the Nebulon should be flotillas. Likewise, in game a couple of Awing squadrons are perfectly capable of taking out an ISD, given enough time.

The game designers took Star Wars imagery and concepts and designed a fun game around them. I don't try to rationalize ANYTHING, I simply apply the rules of the game as is. Attempting to rationalize why the game works the way it does using Star Wars lore or real world is futile and will only lead to frustration.

Now if you want a convo about comparing Star Wars and real world naval combat, without using the game as a reference, that's doable.

Well the discussion was about role-play so someone NOT interested in that don't need to comment on it... ...say so in the first post, more or less.

I wanted the discussion to be between people interested in the role-play aspect of the game not the actual game mechanics which is not in question. How do other people like me interested in the role-play aspect rationalize the different game stats and abstractions leading from it?

And my point is, that the game has zero role playing aspects to it. None.

As far as posting....sorry, but open forums. Everyone free to post were they want!

However, and trying to address your original example of a VSD and Nebulons, I do agree that lore wise, a VSD should be able to take on a swarm of such and prevail. Heck, for that matter, if we go by lore an ISD should have some 20 hull, double the shields and throw like 16 dice from the front arc. That would however make it prohibitely expensive, and unbalance the game. And as I mentioned, the designers don't care for lore, just game balance. Mind you....id love an ISD like that....lol.

8 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

And my point is, that the game has zero role playing aspects to it. None.

As far as posting....sorry, but open forums. Everyone free to post were they want!

However, and trying to address your original example of a VSD and Nebulons, I do agree that lore wise, a VSD should be able to take on a swarm of such and prevail. Heck, for that matter, if we go by lore an ISD should have some 20 hull, double the shields and throw like 16 dice from the front arc. That would however make it prohibitely expensive, and unbalance the game. And as I mentioned, the designers don't care for lore, just game balance. Mind you....id love an ISD like that....lol.

I never said no one cold post or anything like that, just that if you were NOT into the role-playing side of things this was not the topic for you since that is ALL it is about and not game mechanic or balance which I agree with. If the game has ANYTHING to do with role-play is not up to you or anyone else to decide that is up to the one playing the game to decide... it will for some and not others. This topic was for those with whom it matters, like me.

Personally I have no problem with rationalizing that an ISD is one ship if it is on the board and Victories are two ships while most small ships is about three to six ships while a squadron is about 24 fighters and irregular squadrons four to six ships perhaps. In that way everything makes perfect sense to me and it scales pretty well if you deal with it like that.

If you play a game where only small ships are represented then each ship could represent one or two ships, I have no problem with that either. It is just an abstraction.

Hehe, the fastest way to get me to post somewhere is to say 'if this isn't your thing, please don't post....' Sorry, I'm evil that way.

Back on your topic, tough. I think VSD is definitely a single ship. Same for space taters or MC80. With that said, the CR90 and Nebs should definitely be flotillas. As we know however, FFG uses a very generous sliding scale for such, with imagery more important than lore....which is a shame, sometimes.

The GR75 and Gozanti should probably be 3-4 ships to a stand. Xwing scale I think is more constant, and using their Gozani and CR90, we can see the Gozanti is a bit smaller. So three Gozanti per stand and two CR90 would be more per the lore.

34 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

Hehe, the fastest way to get me to post somewhere is to say 'if this isn't your thing, please don't post....' Sorry, I'm evil that way.

Good we could clear that up and be constructive... ...I never meant any disrespect.

Looking at the impact each ship class has at the game then I could go with medium and above is one ship and small ships are about two to three ships while flotillas can be whatever is neccessary and less important in general, just that they are plenty of small little ships which is hard to target with normal turbo lasers but easy enough with the smaller lasers and ion cannons.

I do like the fact that a bunch of corvettes can make a meaningful impact on larger ships if not caught in their frontal arc but they obviously need to do so in numbers so they can concentrate their firepower properly.

When looking at the size, mass and weapons these ships have in the Legends part of the lore it is sort of easy to extrapolate roughly the numbers each stand represent. I would also think that a smaller ship have a much easier time utilizing their few cannons than a big vessel that cant always fire all their weapons as effectively as a small one.

This way the game make more sense to me... I also visualize each game in front of me when I play... for me it is far from being just numbers on the board. I see the battle unfold like a movie in my head but I might just be crazy... no one else that does that?!?

1 hour ago, Norell said:

Keep in mind that raw firepower is not equivalent to actual fir output. Ofen a ship cannot fire all its guns at once therefore it can fire with less power than its maximum theoretical firepower.

I like to reffer to this simply as energy, or power capacity if that even makes sense. So you can make use of this 100% Power to enable the different systems of the ship (guns, shields, engines, countermeasures, life support... etc) This makes sense to me as for example a Neb could potentially go rogue and escape a blockade without shooting a single shot just by going 40% shields, 40% engines and 10% life support (not actual gameplay ).

In my mind a ship ready to engage battle in a balanced SW universe battle would go 20% shields 40% guns 20% engines 10% life support, 10% others. And switching between them properly during the course of the battle is what makes the difference!

When I am stuck in traffic I like to roleplay that I am in a black Ford F-150 that is actually a CR90 with slaved turrets so it only needs a crew of one to fly, and my name is Darth Kevin who is a Sith who uses his powers for good, and I roll a 1d20 to see how many additional red dice I add to each attack because of my Sith powers.

(Edit to add that Darth Kevin has beautiful blue eyes and is the secret love child of Raymus Antilles so he gets a matching token whenever he resolves a command dial)

2 minutes ago, xerpo said:

I like to reffer to this simply as energy, or power capacity if that even makes sense. So you can make use of this 100% Power to enable the different systems of the ship (guns, shields, engines, countermeasures, life support... etc) This makes sense to me as for example a Neb could potentially go rogue and escape a blockade without shooting a single shot just by going 40% shields, 40% engines and 10% life support (not actual gameplay ).

In my mind a ship ready to engage battle in a balanced SW universe battle would go 20% shields 40% guns 20% engines 10% life support, 10% others. And switching between them properly during the course of the battle is what makes the difference!

That mirrors the command dials pretty closely. CF = Guns. Repair = Shields/Life support. Engines = Nav. Squad = Other

It obviously is not only energy but how you utilize the crew and what they are concentrating on and the role the ship are given at any moment in a battle.

But yes, the command dials pretty much is a good representation of how a ship are currently utilizing its crew and energy.

39 minutes ago, jorgen_cab said:

Good we could clear that up and be constructive... ...I never meant any disrespect.

This way the game make more sense to me... I also visualize each game in front of me when I play... for me it is far from being just numbers on the board. I see the battle unfold like a movie in my head but I might just be crazy... no one else that does that?!?

I know you didn't, were cool.

if I'm playing a casual game, there's a whole movie going in my head. If it's a competitive tourney, the only thing in my head is cold hard facts and calculations, designed to bring ruin to my opponent in the fastes, most efficient way possible.

I'm a formerly avid RPGer. Now I play Armada and am a recovering loremonger.

The underlying problem here is that the SW lore was not created in order to project a balanced and realistic universe. It was created in order to tell a story. RPGs use the SW universe to do the same thing. However, as children of the Enlightenment, we want our surroundings to make sense, even when we are stepping into a world of fiction. Also, as GMs and players in RPGs we want to present a plausible setting in which we can calculate our characters' actions. FFG also has to create a balanced game in the middle of a very unbalanced and unrealistic fictional setting.

I suggest that if you want to present a setting in which your characters can make reasonable decisions, based on a calculable context, that you take Armada as the underlying physics and system of balances. Wrap anything from Wookieepedia around that, rather than trying to make Armada (or X-Wing, or Imperial Assault) fit the SWU according to the lore found on Wookieepedia.

However, as someone who has obsessed over doing some of that, I would say that it's probably not worth it; ultimately, what we're actually looking for is the good story, even if we're in denial of that fact.

5 minutes ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

ultimately, what we're actually looking for is the good story, even if we're in denial of that fact.

Or we are after a Victory with 15 hull and 38 red dice out the front? Wait till you see the updated ISD!

Maybe a literal scale too where the fighters are the size of pinheads and the SSD comes in a refrigerator box (refrigerator not included).

I mean, I understand and sympathize with the worthwhile endeavor of pointing out that things don't particularly make sense. I mean, I opened up an ISD and flipped it upside down and realized there was no WAY my CR90 was going to fit and was disappointed, and I am sure (hopefully) that I am not the only one.

I appreciate Star Wars as a universe. I even appreciate what the mouse has done to attempt to bring a shade more harmony and sense to it. But at the end of the day, I can suspend my disbelief and just enjoy it.