On 8.7.2017 at 0:28 PM, Hockeyzombie said:

Anyway, I don't see what this does for Armada.

Currently, fleets with more ships are easier to coordinate in Armada - which is odd. Over and above the current activation system has beared some strange fruits: sensless activation padding and the last-in-first-out activation bug. The great strength of the Armada activation rules in comparison to e.g. X-Wing are that they are decision based and thereby give more tactical depth to the game. The Runewars system seems to keep the strength of the Armada system (decision based activation) without its major downside (that the simple number of units give an activation advantage).

However, to incorporate a Runewars like system into the game would really be Armada 2.0. It would require close to a complete overhaul of the game: All ship cards (especially point costs), a lot of upgrade cards and the command dial would need a major redesign (the latter two merely, if you want to have a complexity like in Runewars). But we could keep our minis! Anyway, quite unlikely that FFG would do such a major change of the game.

My two Imperial credits....

anything that hat makes the game resemble Xwing is a huge NO ( maneuvers on dials, etc.)

as as far as activation advantage, I'm in the camp that thinks providing the smaller fleet a number of passes equal to the difference would solve this. IE., I have five ships, enemy has seven, I get two passes to equal it out. The enemy still has more ships, but the mad activation padding goes away.

1 hour ago, Darth Lupine said:

My two Imperial credits....

anything that hat makes the game resemble Xwing is a huge NO ( maneuvers on dials, etc.)

as as far as activation advantage, I'm in the camp that thinks providing the smaller fleet a number of passes equal to the difference would solve this. IE., I have five ships, enemy has seven, I get two passes to equal it out. The enemy still has more ships, but the mad activation padding goes away.

After playing several games of "I have more ships than you, I win" where combat is limited to that ship that last firsts then runs away I would love to see some kind of pass system like this put in place.

29 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

After playing several games of "I have more ships than you, I win" where combat is limited to that ship that last firsts then runs away I would love to see some kind of pass system like this put in place.

I've won several games were I was out activated, but it's difficult beyond what it should be.

18 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

I've won several games were I was out activated, but it's difficult beyond what it should be.

I have too but they felt like an uphill struggle the whole way. I did win a game yesterday with 3 Vics against a 6 activation rebel list that felt easy but my opponent made a lot of mistakes. The situation I usually run into involves a swarm of TRC90s with a 20 point bid that plays shoot and scoot. Come in last first on a raider or flotilla then spend 3 or four rounds running away. A pass mechanic would turn that tactic into garbage.

Oh yeah, there's plenty that could happen in this hypothetical. If we're assuming that anything is on the table in an imaginary "2.0," then the Runewars style of initiative and commands could come into play.

Bigger ships would tend to have initiatives on the slower side, and smaller ships would tend to have initiatives on the faster side. But there would be a range of initiatives all around, primarily driven by the speed of the command given. The nimble CR90 corvette can Navigate on Initiative 1, or Navigate on Initiative 2 with a bonus, or Concentrate Fire on Initiative 2, etc. The ISD can Concentrate Fire on Initiative 3, or Navigate on Initiative 5. Perhaps the Quasar's dial is dominated by different Squadron commands, some of which activate at different initiative counts and others of which activate in conjunction with an alternate modifier on the second dial. Perhaps this could also lighten the squadron impact, with some features of squadron combat--bomber runs, escaping dogfights, using special abilities, etc.--only "turned on" when an activating ship uses a Squadron command with the appropriate matching modifier. I imagine modifiers would be hard to plan three turns in advance, so perhaps you set a stack of commands as in regular Armada, but you choose each round's modifier as you go, during the Command Phase.

The question is, could the colored runes on the dial from Rune Wars be translated over? I know nothing about the setting, but is there something about runes that's supposed to be the ultimate in RW flavor? If it's the definitive aesthetic for that setting, then maybe SWA2.0 would need something tweaked.

Also, I fully believe this is all a fun speculative exercise anyway and nothing more, because FFG rarely creates new editions of its board games (Game of Thrones the Board Game from 2003 - 2011, Descent from 2006 - 2012, Mansions of Madness from 2011 - 2016), taking between 5 and 8 years to rework the editions, and has done so for only one minis game: Dust Tactics in 2010 and then Dust Warfare in 2012. The Dust line did indeed keep the same minis but overhaul the rules, though the game is now owned by the original designer so it's perhaps not a great example of FFG successfully transferring a minis line to a new edition.

Just now, Megatronrex said:

I have too but they felt like an uphill struggle the whole way. I did win a game yesterday with 3 Vics against a 6 activation rebel list that felt easy but my opponent made a lot of mistakes. The situation I usually run into involves a swarm of TRC90s with a 20 point bid that plays shoot and scoot. Come in last first on a raider or flotilla then spend 3 or four rounds running away. A pass mechanic would turn that tactic into garbage.

That, and the TRC change literally halved the firepower of that fleet. To the point that they just evaporated here.

7 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

That, and the TRC change literally halved the firepower of that fleet. To the point that they just evaporated here.

It's really just 1 guy who runs it around here and it's not that I can't beat it, I still win about half the time. It's just so **** boring to play against and extra frustrating when it wins. The TRC nerf did weaken it a lot by halving the auto damage but it hurt Rhymer and Demo too and they were nice and easy answers to it. I guess I just wish that running 3 or even 2 ship lists was still viable. I'm just not a big fan of small ships (except for Raiders, love those things).

I'm getting back to Quality rather than Quantity of activations...

I've had wins so far with a 3 Ship Rebel Fleet... Verse 5 ship Rebels and Imperials - the Rebs with Hammerheads and such.

The trick is - boring is very relative as well - and I understand that . I got very bored of facing twin Motti ISDs for a good while there when they were a build.

Just now, Drasnighta said:

I'm getting back to Quality rather than Quantity of activations...

I've had wins so far with a 3 Ship Rebel Fleet... Verse 5 ship Rebels and Imperials - the Rebs with Hammerheads and such.

The trick is - boring is very relative as well - and I understand that . I got very bored of facing twin Motti ISDs for a good while there when they were a build.

Yeah boring is certainly a subjective term. I'm sure the guy that runs those CR90s doesn't think they're boring at all.

Just now, Megatronrex said:

Yeah boring is certainly a subjective term. I'm sure the guy that runs those CR90s doesn't think they're boring at all.

Indeed. I tried borrowing and running for a while, and honestly, in a tournament environment, you do feel like you're skin-of=your teeth the whole time because one mis-maneuver and you're toast.

Even more so now that the firepower you're outputting is halved...

So I'm not going back, for sure.

If you really want to discourage huge activation lists, make the pass option static for every turn. So if you have 3 ships and your opponent brought 6, you can pass 3 times. If you kill one of their ships, you still have the option to pass 3 times, thus giving an extra advantage to the list with fewer activations.

I don't think this is a good idea, but it would certainly discourage many small ships over the 2 ISD build.

On 7/7/2017 at 8:39 AM, tgall said:

Using the term 2.0 suggested a rework of the overall game and frankly I just don't see it as being needed.

...

yeah you are right, we don't need Armada 2.0, it is fine the way it is now even with the issues it had (some shared from X-wing and FFG's design philosophy).

Now if there was a Star Trek Attack Wing 2.0 Armada should be adaptation to it. Instead of Objectives you got missions (Blue is your main mission. Green Alert, Yellow Alert, and Red Alert are your secondary missions) More on Away team crew (pilot squadron sized cards) heck you can even give a LCG type expansion to go with the game.

I would start with the TOS era first and foremost, maybe put in some prefed (Enterprise) and anything new from Discovery. Then do the TOS Movie ships (B-rel, Excilsor, Miranda). In tow years move up to TNG era. Anyways off topic, but I can't help it but I always considered Star Wars Armada a better Star Trek game than Star Trek Attack Wing.

3 hours ago, Marinealver said:

yeah you are right, we don't need Armada 2.0, it is fine the way it is now even with the issues it had (some shared from X-wing and FFG's design philosophy).

Now if there was a Star Trek Attack Wing 2.0 Armada should be adaptation to it. Instead of Objectives you got missions (Blue is your main mission. Green Alert, Yellow Alert, and Red Alert are your secondary missions) More on Away team crew (pilot squadron sized cards) heck you can even give a LCG type expansion to go with the game.

I would start with the TOS era first and foremost, maybe put in some prefed (Enterprise) and anything new from Discovery. Then do the TOS Movie ships (B-rel, Excilsor, Miranda). In tow years move up to TNG era. Anyways off topic, but I can't help it but I always considered Star Wars Armada a better Star Trek game than Star Trek Attack Wing.

That's because Star Teek is just Xwing with different models and cards, and Xwing is a game of small fighter craft combat, not huge starships, while Armada was designed from the get go to be just that: starship combat.