Late to the thread so only had a brief scan, but why so much hate for flotilla activations? They're bringing big ships back into the game, especially against nasty (potentially undead) squadron balls.

They allow big ships to thrive via cheap activations, support and carrier abilities. I agree taking a swarm of naked flotillas for activation advantage is a rather cynical and gamey - they should have a function, even if only Comms Net.

I'm a big fan of the Liberty, but it generally gets wrecked against bomber lists. Im running a 7 activation Lib list (a fully decked out Madine Lib plus 6 flotillas - 2 slicer tools, 3 comms net, one repair crew with Leia) and a Shara/Tycho/ 4 A wing escort at my local on Tuesday against an ISD/Raider/Gozanti/Firespray swarm and its going to be a blast - because the flotillas allow the big ship to get out there and do its thing in a bomber heavy environment.

Summary: Flotillas help me field the big ships i love and more squadrons to support them. They're thematic (Star Wars films and cartoons are dripping with GR75s and Gozantis) and fun (nothing like constantly slicing someone's Yavaris the whole game ) but can still be easily popped with H9s or a little Engine Techs-inspired nudge. More power to the big ships (with lots of little ships following behind)!

4 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Slightly back on topic, we keep hearing about euros being this amazing Rieekan counter, really, no one has given a reasoned explanation as to how or why the euros lists counter rieekan. nor even, what the counter even is. crazy enough, there isn't even a set of lists!?!?! the only reason you arent hearing me whining that the topx/8 are all squadrons is cuz that info hasn't been presented! yet, supposedy euros fixes the game! Whee. i hate this carp logic.

Oh also, more max squadrons beats max squadrons. YAY.

List were posted in Euro thread i believe. A great mix to be had with a great bunch of folks (who roundly and soundly savaged me )

1 minute ago, GammonLord said:

Late to the thread so only had a brief scan, but why so much hate for flotilla activations? They're bringing big ships back into the game, especially against nasty (potentially undead) squadron balls.

They allow big ships to thrive via cheap activations, support and carrier abilities. I agree taking a swarm of naked flotillas for activation advantage is a rather cynical and gamey - they should have a function, even if only Comms Net.

I'm a big fan of the Liberty, but it generally gets wrecked against bomber lists. Im running a 7 activation Lib list (a fully decked out Madine Lib plus 6 flotillas - 2 slicer tools, 3 comms net, one repair crew with Leia) and a Shara/Tycho/ 4 A wing escort at my local on Tuesday against an ISD/Raider/Gozanti/Firespray swarm and its going to be a blast - because the flotillas allow the big ship to get out there and do its thing in a bomber heavy environment.

Summary: Flotillas help me field the big ships i love and more squadrons to support them. They're thematic (Star Wars films and cartoons are dripping with GR75s and Gozantis) and fun (nothing like constantly slicing someone's Yavaris the whole game ) but can still be easily popped with H9s or a little Engine Techs-inspired nudge. More power to the big ships (with lots of little ships following behind)!

This is why people dislike flotillas. You see a fleet of nothing but one large ship and 6 flotillas. Plus the scatter makes them deceptively hard to kill along with wasting decent attacks to kill an 18 point ship.

12 hours ago, GammonLord said:

Late to the thread so only had a brief scan, but why so much hate for flotilla activations? They're bringing big ships back into the game, especially against nasty (potentially undead) squadron balls.

They allow big ships to thrive via cheap activations, support and carrier abilities. I agree taking a swarm of naked flotillas for activation advantage is a rather cynical and gamey - they should have a function, even if only Comms Net.

I'm a big fan of the Liberty, but it generally gets wrecked against bomber lists. Im running a 7 activation Lib list (a fully decked out Madine Lib plus 6 flotillas - 2 slicer tools, 3 comms net, one repair crew with Leia) and a Shara/Tycho/ 4 A wing escort at my local on Tuesday against an ISD/Raider/Gozanti/Firespray swarm and its going to be a blast - because the flotillas allow the big ship to get out there and do its thing in a bomber heavy environment.

Summary: Flotillas help me field the big ships i love and more squadrons to support them. They're thematic (Star Wars films and cartoons are dripping with GR75s and Gozantis) and fun (nothing like constantly slicing someone's Yavaris the whole game ) but can still be easily popped with H9s or a little Engine Techs-inspired nudge. More power to the big ships (with lots of little ships following behind)!

see? That's what I mean by saying the flotilla meta is extremely boring. All you do is activation padding until your 1 big ship can do something. Put yourself in your opponents shoes. Let's say he has 4 ships, even after he activated them all, you still have 2 flotillas and the Liberty to activate. You must be extremely boring and frustrating to play against. So, thank you for proving my point that flotillas when taken en masse bring stale and boring gameplay.

36 minutes ago, Sybreed said:

see? That's what I mean by saying the flotilla meta is extremely boring. All you do is activation padding until your 1 big ship can do something. Put yourself in your opponents shoes. Let's say he has 4 ships, even after he activated them all. You still have 2 flotillas and the Liberty to activate. You must be extremely boring and frustrating to play against. So, thank you for proving my point that flotillas when taken en masse bring stale and boring gameplay.

Add to that ; most of the times said flotillas just run away activating squads via relay rather than at least do something thematic like screening. Not talking about this player; just in general. 2 enemy fleets now have like 2-3 ships in total. The rest are not even support flotillas- just an excuse to pass.

43 minutes ago, Sybreed said:

see? That's what I mean by saying the flotilla meta is extremely boring. All you do is activation padding until your 1 big ship can do something. Put yourself in your opponents shoes. Let's say he has 4 ships, even after he activated them all. You still have 2 flotillas and the Liberty to activate. You must be extremely boring and frustrating to play against. So, thank you for proving my point that flotillas when taken en masse bring stale and boring gameplay.

I think you missed the point - flotillas aren't padding, they have a role. Just because a ship doesn't shoot, doesn't mean they don't participate in a meaningful way. I explicitly stated that activation padding isn't good and flotillas should have something equipped.

The focus of my argument: flotillas make big ships more useable/ relevant. Big ships make the game more exciting. Ref. the "extremely boring" comment, keep it civil. Plurality of opinion is a good thing, don't resort to insults.

@Kikaze - Slicers? they need to be in the thick of it, and are key tactical elements in a fleet. Comms net: less in the front but cant quite run away. Repair crews? They need to be nigh on sitting on the big ship to take effect, IE right in the thick of it. Agreed, if someone has naked flotillas that runaway solely for activations, thats bad. Flotillas that have a role, potentially a decisive role = good.

14 minutes ago, GammonLord said:

I think you missed the point - flotillas aren't padding, they have a role. Just because a ship doesn't shoot, doesn't mean they don't participate in a meaningful way. I explicitly stated that activation padding isn't good and flotillas should have something equipped.

The focus of my argument: flotillas make big ships more useable/ relevant. Big ships make the game more exciting. Ref. the "extremely boring" comment, keep it civil. Plurality of opinion is a good thing, don't resort to insults.

@Kikaze - Slicers? they need to be in the thick of it, and are key tactical elements in a fleet. Comms net: less in the front but cant quite run away. Repair crews? They need to be nigh on sitting on the big ship to take effect, IE right in the thick of it. Agreed, if someone has naked flotillas that runaway solely for activations, thats bad. Flotillas that have a role, potentially a decisive role = good.

I think you are walking a fine line of activation padding vs quality activation if you have 6 flotillas. I'll say 2 Slicers is defintely not activation padding since you need to activate those at the correct time in order for it to be effective. But Repair Crews is not doing anything until you take damage, so you can easily pass that activation. And 3 Comms Net is a lot. It's hard to make a case as to why those are not padding since they pass tokens to the Liberty and can be done before or after it has activated.

I also think 7 activations is way too much. 6 is a lot but still good. Drop a flotilla for Leia and Ahsoka. More upgrades on the Lib and have a massive bid.

Also: a single big ship, esp if its the only combat ship, is hardly exciting.Battlelines trading blows are exciting. bomber wings making runs while dodging flak are exciting. in general , "Battlefield living hell" is exciting. But one supertightly packed ball "stay close to rhymer/wexley/crow /(insert stacking aura) " of squads vs another ,while ships activate doing next to nothing ,just applauding one real ship, is not exciting. I'd love a fleet with 3 ships and 2 flotillas. Instead we get 1 x ship(demo/isd/admo) , one carrier, plus flotillas. Its not even on vassal; many people here play different stuff, just the tournament result stats are extreme. EDIT: the whole setup of the "2+3" does remind me of the "1 carrier & 1 cruiser escort & smaller frigates/destroyer escorts the us navy forces use. So maybe it IS thematic just the problem is different/has to do with points costs tgat make only flotillas available for such use.

Can I admit a guilty pleasure to everyone here? I love these threads.

Going from toy spaceships to how its like dating a hot white supremacist?!?! How awesome is that? You can't make this stuff up. Next thing I know I'm thinking about what it would be like t actually date a hot white supremacist... she's so hot but every time she opens her mouth I'm like "wow thats really offensive..."

Maybe I'm just a big fan of conflict. But the best times these threads have ever seen was Lord Neilson, or Lyr vs Hero... so many good times.

I dont think @Captain Weather has brought up a point I don't agree with. Super hard to argue against because it s so well put together and every time I'm thinking "dang he's right"

Props to @Smitty for being the father figure of the forums, trying to make everyone feel loved.

And @Blail Blerg always cracks me up.

basically i love these forums

I still think that the simplest solution is the best one:

Make flotillas non-scoring.

If your fleet consists of one big ship with six near-naked flotillas to give activation advantage, but you LOSE if that one ship dies, then that's a high risk/high reward strat - yes, you have the activation advantage, but Force forbid your opponent catches you in a bad place or even gets lucky. As it is, it's low risk/high reward, with very few downsides.

This also has the benefit of not needing to change the core mechanic significantly.

I still feel that lowering max squad point allowance fixes everything with this game, including activation spam.

If you don't have to worry about 12+ deadly squadrons then you can hunt down these flotillas that give activation spam, and best of all, games would be much easier to manage and not take forever to play one game.

Our group used to each play two to three games on night, now we are lucky if we can squeeze in one game on due to the number of squadrons on each sid and the time it takes to play manage 24+ squads. it has literally doubled the amount of time our games have taken, and probably more.

20 minutes ago, iamfanboy said:

I still think that the simplest solution is the best one:

Make flotillas non-scoring.

If your fleet consists of one big ship with six near-naked flotillas to give activation advantage, but you LOSE if that one ship dies, then that's a high risk/high reward strat - yes, you have the activation advantage, but Force forbid your opponent catches you in a bad place or even gets lucky. As it is, it's low risk/high reward, with very few downsides.

This also has the benefit of not needing to change the core mechanic significantly.

Unfortunately, I feel like this will just make the previous small unit swarms as powerful as they were before flotillas.

Has anybody experimented with having all flotillas go on 1 activation? i.e. if you activate a flotilla, you activate them all. So there's some activation advantage, but it's not overwhelming.

I have no idea if that would 'fix' anything, or if anything actually needs to be 'fixed' (n00b here), just curious.

4 minutes ago, Requete said:

Has anybody experimented with having all flotillas go on 1 activation? i.e. if you activate a flotilla, you activate them all. So there's some activation advantage, but it's not overwhelming.

I have no idea if that would 'fix' anything, or if anything actually needs to be 'fixed' (n00b here), just curious.

I haven't tried it, but I think it would make it worse. In a 7 ship list with 6 flotillas, you 're making it 2 activations. Furthermore, those 6 flotillas can then have a 12 squadron pseudo-alpha strike, by activating 2 squads each in an uninterrupted group. That would be devastating.

3 minutes ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

I haven't tried it, but I think it would make it worse. In a 7 ship list with 6 flotillas, you 're making it 2 activations. Furthermore, those 6 flotillas can then have a 12 squadron pseudo-alpha strike, by activating 2 squads each in an uninterrupted group. That would be devastating.

The more interesting one is to limit the number of flotillas to a number of non-flotilla ships in a fleet.

1 minute ago, PT106 said:

The more interesting one is to limit the number of flotillas to a number of non-flotilla ships in a fleet.

Like for every 1 ship, you may have 1 flotilla? That is indeed interesting. Dunno if it would work. It'd probably just encourage MSUs, since less large ships can be fit in lists.

Just now, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

Like for every 1 ship, you may have 1 flotilla? That is indeed interesting. Dunno if it would work. It'd probably just encourage MSUs, since less large ships can be fit in lists.

Not really. Its not a solution but may be a way to get rid of really skewed lists (ISD/MC80 + 5 flotillas, 3MC30+4 flotillas etc) while keeping large ships supported (for example 2ISD + 2 Gozanti). It will also push down activations a bit.

31 minutes ago, PT106 said:

Not really. Its not a solution but may be a way to get rid of really skewed lists (ISD/MC80 + 5 flotillas, 3MC30+4 flotillas etc) while keeping large ships supported (for example 2ISD + 2 Gozanti). It will also push down activations a bit.

That would prohibit my 3 activation ISD II Avenger, with both Gozanti Flotilla titles slinging squadrons. That is just the type of list that Flotillas let me play now.

Weight it by ship size and I wouldn't complain.

1 Flotilla for each small ship.

2 Flotillas for each medium ship.

3 Flotillas for each large ship.

2 hours ago, Requete said:

Has anybody experimented with having all flotillas go on 1 activation? i.e. if you activate a flotilla, you activate them all. So there's some activation advantage, but it's not overwhelming.

I have no idea if that would 'fix' anything, or if anything actually needs to be 'fixed' (n00b here), just curious.

It could result in a very huge activation if they all were required to go at once.

If, however, your opponent had the option of telling you to activate another flotilla (your choice) upon activating a flotilla (assuming there were unactivated ones still around), that could be interesting. They're effectively only activation padding when your opponent is okay with that. In the first 2ish turns of the game where their delaying potential is greatest and they don't tend to do a lot, your opponent could tell you to just keep activating them until they were all tapped out.

I'm not sold on that idea, but it is interesting...

2 hours ago, cynanbloodbane said:

That would prohibit my 3 activation ISD II Avenger, with both Gozanti Flotilla titles slinging squadrons. That is just the type of list that Flotillas let me play now.

Weight it by ship size and I wouldn't complain.

1 Flotilla for each small ship.

2 Flotillas for each medium ship.

3 Flotillas for each large ship.

Or... perhaps even better... for each Command point a ship has above one you way take a flotilla.

This way you can't spam corvettes and flotillas in the same fleet and have to choose between them for activation advantage. This would probably see most fleet go down to about four or five activation's per turn.

Just now, Snipafist said:

It could result in a very huge activation if they all were required to go at once.

If, however, your opponent had the option of telling you to activate another flotilla (your choice) upon activating a flotilla (assuming there were unactivated ones still around), that could be interesting. They're effectively only activation padding when your opponent is okay with that. In the first 2ish turns of the game where their delaying potential is greatest and they don't tend to do a lot, your opponent could tell you to just keep activating them until they were all tapped out.

I'm not sold on that idea, but it is interesting...

This don't work, neither does it to force multiple activation per turn, mainly because ships collide and take damage... it would be nearly impossible to fly ships in formation if you were forced to activate in a certain order.

Just now, jorgen_cab said:

This don't work, neither does it to force multiple activation per turn, mainly because ships collide and take damage... it would be nearly impossible to fly ships in formation if you were force to activate in a certain order.

I don't really understand what you're saying.

Effectively, the idea would be if I activate flotilla A and have 3 other flotillas, at the conclusion of flotilla A's activation, my opponent could request i activate one other flotilla. I could choose B, C, or D. He could continue making this request if he wished until I was all out of flotillas to activate. I would still determine which one was activated. If I was dumb enough to set them up to collide with one another regardless of their activation order, that's on me.

Again, I'm not in favor of the idea to the point that I feel super strongly about it, but "maybe someone's flotillas will hit something" doesn't really strike me as a good counter-argument.

2 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I don't really understand what you're saying.

Effectively, the idea would be if I activate flotilla A and have 3 other flotillas, at the conclusion of flotilla A's activation, my opponent could request i activate one other flotilla. I could choose B, C, or D. He could continue making this request if he wished until I was all out of flotillas to activate. I would still determine which one was activated. If I was dumb enough to set them up to collide with one another regardless of their activation order, that's on me.

Again, I'm not in favor of the idea to the point that I feel super strongly about it, but "maybe someone's flotillas will hit something" doesn't really strike me as a good counter-argument.

No... the whole point with choosing the order to activate is that you can fly one ship behind another if you wish or say fly them to face the broadside against the enemy and fire their weapons in a line.

It would also be awkward if I could not keep my Repair Crew flotilla close for fear of forcing to move it into my own ship and die.

It would just disrupt the overall game mechanic and prohibit formation flying in a gamey way.

This is why ships could never work with an individual initiative order such as in X-Wing.

Ultimately, Flotillas are boring.

This is a problem regardless of what types of ships it may help because this is a game and people don't generally play those to be bored. If anyone has ever played a game with a strong control element, you'll certainly understand that, even something that is 100% balanced within the framework of the rules and competitive format, can turn people off of the the game because it's aggressively unfun. Having ships that frequently wander around the table doing f*** all like they're at the mall and they forgot where they parked is not interesting. It is not interesting to you, me or a casual observer that would otherwise be interested in the game. What makes it worse is the flotilla v. flotilla i.e. if we both have a bunch of flotillas then we trade meaningless activations.

This is not helped by Flotillas having a Squadron of 2, which generally makes them the best squadron activators. This means even when they are doing things it's not "Yeah my ship throws a pile of dice at your ship!" it's "Pew pew, your turn".

Regardless of game balance, flotillas probably need a nerf for the overall health of the game. I would also posit that there probably needs to be some inherent benefit for larger ships. As far as the game is concerned, an ISD and a CR90 is basically the same. There is no inherent bonus for the ISD being the size of a city and it gets a whopping 1 extra defense token (oh, a Contain token? You shouldn't have), but it involves a pretty massive opportunity cost. The real reason, though, that I want to see big ships get a buff is because when someone walking by an Armada game sees an ISD or one of the Mon Cals, they're like "wow that's a sweet model" and you basically never get that with any other ship size.

You may certainly posit that this mostly a "how it feels" as opposed to a matter of fact approach, but in a game, how it feels to play and watch is everything.

15 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

I would also posit that there probably needs to be some inherent benefit for larger ships. As far as the game is concerned, an ISD and a CR90 is basically the same. There is no inherent bonus for the ISD being the size of a city and it gets a whopping 1 extra defense token (oh, a Contain token? You shouldn't have), but it involves a pretty massive opportunity cost. The real reason, though, that I want to see big ships get a buff is because when someone walking by an Armada game sees an ISD or one of the Mon Cals, they're like "wow that's a sweet model" and you basically never get that with any other ship size.

I can't agree with this enough. It is so incredibly frustrating to have a 100+pt. ship that can't consistently put out as much damage as a 51pt TRC vette. Hopefully wave 7 will add some large base only upgrades to help make these ships more enticing to take.