There's been a ton of squadron hate floating about the forums since I've been on, admittedly some of which has been posted by me, and it's got me thinking about about some of the experiences and discussions I've had. A lot of squadron hate comes from over representation and a very efficient means to deliver damage outside of ship to ship combat. During heated discussions about squadrons, those who enjoy them often hold that they are well represented in both power and abundance in Armada. It's come to my attention that telling these players that they should "go play X-Wing" is about the same as kicking someone in the ****. Which ultimately sparked a new thought. Why should ship focused players be telling squadron players to piss off when they're the ones acting well within the game design and intention?

Maybe the ship folks need a shift in scale.

At the bottom rung I'd say we have Imperial assault, which focuses on the actions and conflicts of individuals grouped together in small teams. From there we step the scale back to X-Wing, which focuses on fighters, transports, and small frigates, designed to emulate dog fighting. After X-wing, the scale shifts way back to Armada, bringing large class carriers and battleships into the equation all the while softening the restrictions and complexity of the ever present squadron focused combat. Finally we move on to rebellion, which seems to take a galactic perspective and lets the player focus on the war in full without worrying about the trivialities of each individual conflict.

My thought is maybe there needs to be a game set some where in the scale between Armada and Rebellion.


I know I'm not alone when I say I did not believe when originally buying into this game things would be so heavily slanted in favor of squadrons and small ships. The X-wing vs Tie fighter play was so simple during the first wave and core release, I could not have imagined it then where it is today, with functions like Intel, Relay, flotilla carriers, BCCs, and so on... As fighters seem to gain more and more focus each wave the game moves slowly away from what I had hoped for to begin with, a larger scale, ship based strategy game. Yet it has become clear that the majority seem to see squadron play as the enjoyable centerfold of Armada, while many others lose interest in the increasingly less ship focused game play. To me this says there should be another game. If X-wing is looked at as the fighter based game that only dips into small ships/corvettes, and Armada is the game that sits in the middle balancing ships and squads evenly, then maybe there should be a game that focuses heavily on large/EX-large ships that only slightly dips into small ship/flotilla play


Maybe not the most popular idea, as it would likely split the already (seemingly) limited Armada market, but I get the impression that the balance between the effectiveness of ships versus the effectiveness of squads will forever be in a state of ebb and flow... meaning one particular group of players is going to unhappy with the game state all the time.

When I first heard about the corellian campaign, I was hoping it would add maps, hyperlanes, etc to the framework of armada battles. That would have provided a more strategic level of play. I'm kind of spit balling that for the campaign I'm running for a friend.

Not sure if it works for the sort of games that we have at our local game stores.

Hyperlanes is a rough thing to model, since we see in the movies that you can go from anywhere to anywhere (including outside the galaxy entirely) in a short amount of time.

4 minutes ago, Democratus said:

Hyperlanes is a rough thing to model, since we see in the movies that you can go from anywhere to anywhere (including outside the galaxy entirely) in a short amount of time.

I remember when I realized how that last shot in empire made no sense.

As to a game in between, I dunno, it's a pretty small space to occupy. Though I have thought about trying to somehow make super quick Armada games with just squads, flotillas and maybe a small ship.

36 minutes ago, Baltanok said:

When I first heard about the corellian campaign, I was hoping it would add maps, hyperlanes, etc to the framework of armada battles. That would have provided a more strategic level of play. I'm kind of spit balling that for the campaign I'm running for a friend.

Not sure if it works for the sort of games that we have at our local game stores.

I was hoping the'd add a bit of lore and context myself, but at the same time, leaving it open for players to house rule in RPG elements isn't so bad either.

9 minutes ago, Democratus said:

Hyperlanes is a rough thing to model, since we see in the movies that you can go from anywhere to anywhere (including outside the galaxy entirely) in a short amount of time.

Honestly they could have used their galaxy map from the RPG core books and just modded them a little...


Either way, doesn't really have to do with a new ship game focused on large scale battles. lol

It comes back to the flotillas again I'm afraid.

Squadrons are way better when they are activated by a ship and get to do the move and shoot/shoot and move thing. Flotillas then "over-power" squadrons for the points framework. You need the activations flotillas bring and have to get other use out of those points and the easiest way is have them push squadrons. The only fleet without flotillas I played against was the only fleet with rogue squadrons.

I can't really justify the "hero rogues" like Han and Hera and Boba Fett in lists. No sense paying the Rogue premium when your flotillas need to do something. To me that runs contrary to some of the fluff arguments in favor of all the squadrons.

The point of the fleet (of a navy generally) is to protect the transports (troops, ground vehicles, munitions, supplies.) Flotillas have made the transports part of the battle in the wrong way and are largely responsible for throwing off the scale in the way you suggest. Flotillas are out of scale.

1 minute ago, Tiberius the Killer said:

I remember when I realized how that last shot in empire made no sense.

As to a game in between, I dunno, it's a pretty small space to occupy. Though I have thought about trying to somehow make super quick Armada games with just squads, flotillas and maybe a small ship.

Small space to occupy?

Just now, Darth Sanguis said:

Small space to occupy?

Seems to me that isn't really a squad building game but a more traditional style war boardgame with somewhat limited replayability. Position A -- Team A -- Team B. Team B needs to get to position A. Team A needs to get through Team B.

1 minute ago, Frimmel said:

It comes back to the flotillas again I'm afraid.

Squadrons are way better when they are activated by a ship and get to do the move and shoot/shoot and move thing. Flotillas then "over-power" squadrons for the points framework. You need the activations flotillas bring and have to get other use out of those points and the easiest way is have them push squadrons. The only fleet without flotillas I played against was the only fleet with rogue squadrons.

I can't really justify the "hero rogues" like Han and Hera and Boba Fett in lists. No sense paying the Rogue premium when your flotillas need to do something. To me that runs contrary to some of the fluff arguments in favor of all the squadrons.

The point of the fleet (of a navy generally) is to protect the transports (troops, ground vehicles, munitions, supplies.) Flotillas have made the transports part of the battle in the wrong way and are largely responsible for throwing off the scale in the way you suggest. Flotillas are out of scale.

I was feeling the scale shift as early as wave 2 with Intel... as soon as bombers could ignore screens

indeed the scale is the problem.

you can fit a good-sized("with lots of the models that you like") squadron force in 100, let alone 134, points.

you CANNOT do that in 400 points for ships. let alone 270-300 that you have after spending for admiral/squadrons.

lets say you wanna see epic battles with big space cruisers: disregard what is competitive right now, just imagine the models.

you will fit 1, maybe 2 large ships. ok, maybe 3 if you sacrifice everything. lets say you want to play an ACTUAL BATTLELINE of 3-5 combat ships. 400 points is barely the limit!!! the fact that you are forced to play squadrons(and you SHOULD, this is star wars) means you have no points to play with the toys you like.

the game should have been "slightly smaller than star wars rebellion" anyway; you play fleet combat for the epicness, not the patrols.

18 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Either way, doesn't really have to do with a new ship game focused on large scale battles. lol

Sorry, guess I was unclear. It sounded to me like you were looking for an operational scale wargame of Star wars fleet combat. So, positioning of fleets, conquering important locations in a given star system or sector, that sort of thing. Individual units would be a single star destroyer, or a group of small ships. You wouldn't worry about damage to Hull zones, but instead track as "fresh/damaged/dead." Large ships might have an extra damage step, or just an armor factor to overcome.

I am kind of on the squadron side of things here. When this game first came out I personally thought it was a bit silly that Squadrons had to be told to move and shoot and not being able to do that in the squadron phase. Then there was all the lists mostly Imperial that had no squads and I thought the game was very untrue to the real world and the Star Wars universe.

If we take a look at navel combat in the world you see pre-World War II the sea's being dominated by the battleship and then ships around it to support it. In current navel warfare you take a look at fleets and it the aircraft carrier that is the center of the fleet with ships around it to support it.

This is similar in Star Wars if you take a look at the history. During the Clone wars Venator which was the most used was a carrier. Then as the Empire grew the Navel Doctrine changed to be more ship focused, and less on fighters. Here is a good You Tube video talking about the change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnsYyna77hY

Then when you take a look at when the rebellion happened the rebellion concentrated more on fighters because that is what they could afford. They could not make the capital ships to keep up with the ISD. Which did well for there rebels as they had fighters that were better than the Empire fighters and could take down ships like a swarm of wasps. The Empire saw this and started to change their focus back to fighters coming out with the Tie Advanced onto the Tie Defender, and Tie Phantom.

So I think Fighters should be a central part of this game. However I do agree with you Darth Sanguis that the pendulum has swung a bit too far one way as this game should seek more of a good balance between the 2.

I also agree with the comments that this has mostly happened because of the flotillas. There has been lots of talk about how to deal with that... like putting in the pass rule etc. I am not sure has the idea been put forward of maybe adding another phase? It can go Ships, Flotillas, Squadrons, This way they do not count towards the activations of the ships, and if they are in the wrong place they will get blown up before their phase etc.

2 minutes ago, Baltanok said:

Sorry, guess I was unclear. It sounded to me like you were looking for an operational scale wargame of Star wars fleet combat. So, positioning of fleets, conquering important locations in a given star system or sector, that sort of thing. Individual units would be a single star destroyer, or a group of small ships. You wouldn't worry about damage to Hull zones, but instead track as "fresh/damaged/dead." Large ships might have an extra damage step, or just an armor factor to overcome.

I see, no I feel as if that scale would be too close to the "rebellion" side of the gap I'd like filled.

I suppose, ideally, the scale wouldn't be too far off from what's currently represented in armada. Maybe bump each base size down one notch, and move smalls/flots onto a "x-wing" style base. So if we're modeling of the ISD, t would be roughly the size of the current VSD (may a scooch smaller) that would let the SSD scale in at the size of something the size of say 2 current ISDs. With a simplified upgrade/title system I could see a typical match of this new game have 6-8 "Large" class ships with various mediums/smalls or say 1 XL with 3 or 4 larges and various mediums/smalls. With a similar ship card system squadrons could be represented by tokens, each ship granted a number of base squadron tokens (ties or headhunters) base on squad value, and upgrades could be taken to make them different more advanced tokens like bombers or x-wings...


Similar moment system, maybe just scale the tool and add more notches? similar ranges and distances, similar dice/shields/commands

11 minutes ago, Payens said:

If we take a look at navel combat in the world you see pre-World War II the sea's being dominated by the battleship and then ships around it to support it. In current navel warfare you take a look at fleets and it the aircraft carrier that is the center of the fleet with ships around it to support it.

This is similar in Star Wars if you take a look at the history. During the Clone wars Venator which was the most used was a carrier. Then as the Empire grew the Navel Doctrine changed to be more ship focused, and less on fighters. Here is a good You Tube video talking about the change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnsYyna77hY

Then when you take a look at when the rebellion happened the rebellion concentrated more on fighters because that is what they could afford. They could not make the capital ships to keep up with the ISD. Which did well for there rebels as they had fighters that were better than the Empire fighters and could take down ships like a swarm of wasps. The Empire saw this and started to change their focus back to fighters coming out with the Tie Advanced onto the Tie Defender, and Tie Phantom.

So I think Fighters should be a central part of this game.

See while all this is lorcially/historically accurate, it not what I wanted to play, and not what I expected based on the parts provided originally.

Scale determines the accuracy of what you see... zoom out far enough and those "central parts" become tiny specks in an overall battle between ships.

When I first saw armada I saw the opening scene to episode III. A bunch of capital ships fighting for siege of an entire planet.... not 1 maybe 2 big ships and the unholy mass of nobody snubs in a complicated dance to win fighter superiority.

As for moving the pendulum, it will eventually swing back... someone is going to be unhappy perpetually with this system.

I have more fun playing 600 points with no squads than I ever did playing 400 with 134, ironically sharing a similar amount of play time. While doing that with friends is fun, I think it's be even more fun to just get a game actually focused on ships. Leave the complicated and time consuming squadron shenanigans behind, represent them in play as tokens and be done with it.

1 hour ago, Darth Sanguis said:

the already (seemingly) limited Armada market

A lot of good points here, but IMO you hit the real issue here on the head. If the market for Armada was larger, then a lot of the strife and frustration over issues with the game would be moot. The problem is in many if not most places the number of players is so few that you basically have to take whatever you can get for games. This forces players who may want totally different things out of the game to play each other just to get games. Most problematically is that it drives casual players who really aren't interested in being World Champs (which I think a property like star wars likely attracts a lot of relative to other miniature games), into the competitive scene just to get games in. Sure most places it still works and people are generally nice, but the underlying frustration is still there that you either aren't playing the game the way you want or you're asking others to.

Unfortunately it's a catch 22, seeing unhappy players may scare off new players, but without more players a lot of people are going to remain unhappy.

We had an IKEA open up near here last week. I found myself looking at the glass display cases and I suddenly started pondering how nice some of my Armada ships would look in one. Then I got really sad, because I realized at that moment, that's more or less where I am at with the game. They're just pretty models to a game I used to have a great time playing.

7 minutes ago, Scummy Rebel said:

A lot of good points here, but IMO you hit the real issue here on the head. If the market for Armada was larger, then a lot of the strife and frustration over issues with the game would be moot. The problem is in many if not most places the number of players is so few that you basically have to take whatever you can get for games. This forces players who may want totally different things out of the game to play each other just to get games. Most problematically is that it drives casual players who really aren't interested in being World Champs (which I think a property like star wars likely attracts a lot of relative to other miniature games), into the competitive scene just to get games in. Sure most places it still works and people are generally nice, but the underlying frustration is still there that you either aren't playing the game the way you want or you're asking others to.

Unfortunately it's a catch 22, seeing unhappy players may scare off new players, but without more players a lot of people are going to remain unhappy.

We had an IKEA open up near here last week. I found myself looking at the glass display cases and I suddenly started pondering how nice some of my Armada ships would look in one. Then I got really sad, because I realized at that moment, that's more or less where I am at with the game. They're just pretty models to a game I used to have a great time playing.

After my crushing defeat at a store championship last Saturday I was almost at the same point. It wasn't even squadrons that did it, it was just the scale of things.... because squadrons are SO prominent FFG will never be able to bump past 400 points without increasing the play time requirements or lowering the % of squadrons allowed... which means my dual ISD fleet will never be balanced enough for tournament play. Which leads to the tournament I played in this weekend. I cut my OP tap ISD to save 30 something points so I could add a tie fighter screen. (which at 500 points would be balanced perfectly without cutting an ISD). Even though I performed 4 successful pulsetaps over the course of the tournament, the lack of fire power from the interdictor both made my Avenger ISD a target and failed to deliver enough damage to carry through... I've been running PTs for a loooong time, and it just now dawns on me that without a medium size GUNship that can reach speed 3 the only time a pulse tap is even close to efficient or effective is with 2 ISDs. Which will never be balanced in competitive play.

Sheer point of the whole matter is that scale has made the ISD into a very beautiful model I will likely end up mounting on my PC tower at work...


so yeah.... I get it mate.

It's a Star Wars game. Not gunna make everyone happy all the time.

I like to advocate playing whatever makes you happy during casual games and then applying those fleet concepts to competitive lists, which means you build a list that can win against other fleets that the casual fleet normally would struggle against. For example, if you like to play squadronless fleets in causal play, it might be smart to take some Tie/F in case you run against some squadrons and you don't get torn apart. Or if you like to play dual ISD, it might be smart to add 2 Gozantis to it so you don't get screwed by lack of activations. It's not your super fun fleet, but it has the aspect of it in your tournament list.

5 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

After my crushing defeat at a store championship last Saturday I was almost at the same point. It wasn't even squadrons that did it, it was just the scale of things.... because squadrons are SO prominent FFG will never be able to bump past 400 points without increasing the play time requirements or lowering the % of squadrons allowed... which means my dual ISD fleet will never be balanced enough for tournament play. Which leads to the tournament I played in this weekend. I cut my OP tap ISD to save 30 something points so I could add a tie fighter screen. (which at 500 points would be balanced perfectly without cutting an ISD). Even though I performed 4 successful pulsetaps over the course of the tournament, the lack of fire power from the interdictor both made my Avenger ISD a target and failed to deliver enough damage to carry through... I've been running PTs for a loooong time, and it just now dawns on me that without a medium size GUNship that can reach speed 3 the only time a pulse tap is even close to efficient or effective is with 2 ISDs. Which will never be balanced in competitive play.

Sheer point of the whole matter is that scale has made the ISD into a very beautiful model I will likely end up mounting on my PC tower at work...


so yeah.... I get it mate.

1 x ISD is viable. you can fit ISD, Demo, Raider, 1-2 flotillas and fighter screen EZ. according to the world champ, 2 x ISD + flotillas is viable too (he spoke of some such darth vader build iirc)

the problem is the interdictor. it requires weird things to work. i've seen people use it, just, its difficult enough that i wouldnt advise it unless you have some weird experimental retro shenanigan in mind.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

It's a Star Wars game. Not gunna make everyone happy all the time.

I like to advocate playing whatever makes you happy during casual games and then applying those fleet concepts to competitive lists, which means you build a list that can win against other fleets that the casual fleet normally would struggle against. For example, if you like to play squadronless fleets in causal play, it might be smart to take some Tie/F in case you run against some squadrons and you don't get torn apart. Or if you like to play dual ISD, it might be smart to add 2 Gozantis to it so you don't get screwed by lack of activations. It's not your super fun fleet, but it has the aspect of it in your tournament list.

My Dual ISD is literally 40-50 points from being able to compete, but it's an unshakable 40-50 points. There's nothing I can afford lose, nothing that can be moved. Don't get me wrong. I do run it in tournaments, but that lack of 4-5 ties to keep stuff off my ships is just enough to matter. Just enough to be painfully frustrating.... because I know squadrons are the reason the point total will never shift competitively.

On hyperlanes: You actually cannot just jump from one place to another. Not in one jump anyway. More often than not the travel takes several shorter jumps.. Mapping of hyperlanes is an extremely dangerous and rewarding enterprise as you may get a decisive advantage over your rivals if you do so. That makes the Kessel Run so incredibly exciting, because there are not stable hyperlane routes there so you have to calculate the shortest route every time you go in and you have to recalculate it every time you stop.

The Separatists knew about a direct hyperlane route form the Outer Rim to the Core which made the attack on Coruscant possible. The New republic also knew about a secret hyperlane in the Deep Core that helped them to win a decisive battle against the Yuuzahn Vong.

In the earliest times of the Republic the Sith managed to remain hidden because Korriban was outside of the mapped hyperlane routes and they were discovered by accident by two hyperlne explorers, Gavb and Jori Daragon.

The end of ESB is a bit of oddity: You see, most of the hyperlane routes are more or less parallel with the galactic disk. You need an big amount of energy and very precise exiting coordinates to leave the galaxy because of its extreme mass and gravity. For the same reason you can't just jump into a galaxy (and that's why the Yuuzhan Vong couldn't invade the galaxy by all their forces at once). Plus, if you leave the galaxy there is no way telling where you exactly are because there are no reference points. Therefor if you left the galactic disk you basically cannot be found. And that's exactly that the Rebel fleet did: They had very precise coordinates when and where to jump and they jumped out form the Galaxy. Not too far, but far enough that without knowing the exact coordinates the Imperials had not the slightest chance of finding them. That is a desperate and very risky endeavor but in this case it worked out fine for them (but IIRC some smaller ships still got lost).

I don't know why I wrote down all this.... But my point is, there could be and should be a hyperlane route map and it would be in agreement at the very least with the EU.

8 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

My Dual ISD is literally 40-50 points from being able to compete, but it's an unshakable 40-50 points. There's nothing I can afford lose, nothing that can be moved. Don't get me wrong. I do run it in tournaments, but that lack of 4-5 ties to keep stuff off my ships is just enough to matter. Just enough to be painfully frustrating.... because I know squadrons are the reason the point total will never shift competitively.

I often find myself unable to remove upgrades or ships too from lists because of synergy or I just want them. It's definitely a struggle. I tend to just build a new list with the same idea and figure out what to drop to make it competitive. But sometimes I feel like I lose the fun factor when I finish with it.

3 minutes ago, Kikaze said:

1 x ISD is viable. you can fit ISD, Demo, Raider, 1-2 flotillas and fighter screen EZ. according to the world champ, 2 x ISD + flotillas is viable too (he spoke of some such darth vader build iirc)

the problem is the interdictor. it requires weird things to work. i've seen people use it, just, its difficult enough that i wouldnt advise it unless you have some weird experimental retro shenanigan in mind.

This isn't a point of viability. It's a point of scale. I read the same thing in his interview. I know I can make specific ship builds work. And if I thought running someone else's fleet was fun, I'd do just that. I know what others use, and if winning a store championship was all I wanted to do then yeah, that'd be the way to go. My Dual ISD runs almost perfectly, I've won 2nd place with it, but has a serious weakness to squadrons.... thus the swap to the interdictor lol less points means I can wrangle 4-5 squads

The interdictor in my fleet actually performed without flaw. It hyperspaced in at point blank ,delivered two overload pulses, and went about it's merry way. It's more a question of threat level over functions. The interdictor was the shining star of that fleet. The problem arises from the lack of threat generated from an Interdictor. Every shot targeted my ISD. Even when the INT was present, because the INT wasn't a threat. When I run the dual ISD version, this problem is resolved, but the heavier cost in points and upgrades means no fighter screen.

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I often find myself unable to remove upgrades or ships too from lists because of synergy or I just want them. It's definitely a struggle. I tend to just build a new list with the same idea and figure out what to drop to make it competitive. But sometimes I feel like I lose the fun factor when I finish with it.

I just tried this very thing by swapping an ISD with an INT... Ironically it did everything I wanted... but without the ISDs threat it crumbled.

see:

2 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

My Dual ISD runs almost perfectly, I've won 2nd place with it, but has a serious weakness to squadrons.... thus the swap to the interdictor lol less points means I can wrangle 4-5 squads

The interdictor in my fleet actually performed without flaw. It hyperspaced in at point blank ,delivered two overload pulses, and went about it's merry way. It's more a question of threat level over functions. The interdictor was the shining star of that fleet. The problem arises from the lack of threat generated from an Interdictor. Every shot targeted my ISD. Even when the INT was present, because the INT wasn't a threat. When I run the dual ISD version, this problem is resolved, but the heavier cost in points and upgrades means no fighter screen.

Overall, it's frustrating.

I wouldn't mind a slightly more zoomed out view. Something where groups of CR90s are together on the same model (similar to current GR-75s) and Star Destroyers are somewhere around the size of the AF. Probably less focus on fire/hull zones and more on simply bringing massed firepower to bear on an intended target. Keep it on a 3x3 mat, add some fun tokens or figures to represent space stations and I'll buy it.

Of course, I still love Armada, so I don't need anything new.