With the Starhawk and Raddus class Mon Cal ship, the Rebellion now has two ships capable of going toe to toe with the Executor class, making epic play conceivable. To make epic play epic the standard point ceiling will probably be lifted which however comes with its own problems such as game length increasing substantially. I have two ideas for that.

1) Ship Commands

What if epic scale ships had a ship command similar to squadron command. If for instance an Executor SSD initiated a ship command upon activation it could choose two ships within range to activate (without activating their own command dials) which could only attack and move before that SSD did. Essentially the idea is with more ships on the table due to the increased points this would get ships moving faster. Yes this means two to three ships will be attacking in one go but this is epic level play, you'll have to figure out how to counter three enemy ships moving at once. Its a double edge sword because the enemy can do the same thing back. All this does is truncate rounds and gives a new way of play.

Imperial:

• Executor Class Super Star Destroyer = 2 ship command
• Tarlandia's Pride Class/Imperial Communications ship = 1 ship command

Rebel:

• Starhawk = 1 ship command
• Raddus = 2 ship command

2) Legion Style Squadron Play

This idea is a lot less concrete. To mitigate the potential of more squadrons being put in lists due to the increased points slogging down the game time, I suggest squadron pieces get assigned a squadron leader. Three squadrons of the same type are grouped into a wing with one assigned as squadron leader. Wherever the squadron leader is moved the other two follow.

That is actually a brilliant idea.

I like both ideas. Although I'm not sure I'd pick those ships. ThFor all we know the Raddus is a Starhawk-class ship. Although probably not as that would require the film-people co-ordinating with the book-people. There's also the question of scale; the Raddus is a bit under double the length of an ISD; the Executor is 18 times as long as an ISD? The Resurgent-class might be a better option - it's about as long as the Raddus. The downside being that that would put us firmly into TFA era stuff - whereas apparently the Raddus dates to not long after Endor (if not before).

The Ship Activation system is interesting, but might cause problems particularly with first-player advantage. Maybe an alternate idea would be that the Command ships' dials also apply to any other ship within a certain distance - maybe similar to Thrawn; at the start of each round the Epic ship reveals its Fleet Dial, and while within distance [3-5] of the Epic ship another ship can resolve that command as if it had its own dial (with all the normal limits)?

The Legion-style option for squadrons sounds neat. Turning squadrons into wings - with a single movement, single attack and single defence. Maybe the Squadron Leader would have to be a unique squadron - with little token-things to add to the stand (maybe numbered- or coloured- versions of the current identification things - one marked as the Leader). Not sure how that would work with squadron actions/bonuses - maybe every squadron in a Wing would have to be the same (other than the leader)?

What about the Bellator? Sure, less known in cannon but well in line with the dimensions of the Raddus.

Um, what about the Lusankya? Rebel SSD

My one hope for any Armada 2.0 is a revamped, and SUPER STREAMLINED squadron system. I hate to admit it, but the squadron game in armada is killing the game for me, rapidly. It's just too fiddly and takes waaaay too long to play, dragging out an otherwise very elegant game. They really need a way to speed up squad play.

We use to play 3 games in one evening. Now the players who havent quit due to long fiddly squad battles never get more than 1 game done in an evening. Sad.

25 minutes ago, Thraug said:

My one hope for any Armada 2.0 is a revamped, and SUPER STREAMLINED squadron system. I hate to admit it, but the squadron game in armada is killing the game for me, rapidly. It's just too fiddly and takes waaaay too long to play, dragging out an otherwise very elegant game. They really need a way to speed up squad play.

We use to play 3 games in one evening. Now the players who havent quit due to long fiddly squad battles never get more than 1 game done in an evening. Sad.

I agree the squadrons take up way to much time for something meant to be "fast and zippy"

How are you guys playing squadrons? I don't find that it really takes all that much time, and I've flown full RhymerBalls, Fireballs, huge AA balls against no squadrons and the various above. I think a lot of people don't really think ahead with them. They are just like your ships, you need to be planning where they are going and what they are doing. When is also important especially when using relay or rogues

Intel extended the fighter game. As did ships like mauler and Biggs who require exact placement to get their points worth. I played imperial ace Rhymerball most of the last wave and I recently played a fleet where I replaced it all with just a gang of decimators and defenders and was shocked at how fast that played.

One problem I have seen with squadrons is that I notice people either only wanting squadrons with Rogue, or taking the lowest possible costing ones (TIE fighter and Z-95). The Rogue concept I feel like should have a limit. I have seen people running four YT-2400s in a list, but look in Star Wars, when has anyone ever fielded an entire squadron force of these things? Yes I understand we don't have to follow movies word for word but I think there should be like a limit of one or two on these big heavy Rogue ships, maybe determined by the total number of squadrons you could possibly activate with your fleet? 1 at 5 and 2 at 10? I don't know balance wise.

I just don't buy that squadrons cause long games. Action Paralysis causes long games. I see more delay in ship movement than in squads.

That being said, my last 4 games of Armada took 35m, 40m, 45m, and 90m. The 90 minute game was against a new player.

I'm hoping for Pride of Tarlandia for the Empire Epic. It was at Endor, and is no where near the size of an SSD while being big enough to be an Epic.

As to the Squadrons, I was thinking of doing something similar but using four squadron bases. "All wings report in"