In my experience you need to focus on 4 points when going squadron light (granted my advice should be taken with lots of salt):

1. Get the activation advantage, 1st and last makes it possible to do a train station attack, where you can position and then attack with each of your vessels through the squadrons without the opponents being able to activate those squadrons first.

2. Blocking squadrons. Fast scatter aces are the key here. They are there to block, and likely die, while they delay the opponents squadron ball.

3. Small ships. Medium/Large ships are expensive, limiting the firepower of your fleet and providing a focus target for the opponents squadrons. Small ships (ex. mc30, cr90, raiders and gladiators) make it necessary to kill a significant number of ships in order to get a win, and gives a lot of firepower over several attacks.

4. Don't go head on. Squadrons are much easier to use if the enemy comes straight at them. Use your speed to encircle the opponents fleet, and hit the stragglers. Make it difficult for your opponent to figure out where to send his squadrons.

To be fair, the above points are more generic MSU point, however many MSU builds work well as squadron light.

5 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

Did I miss something with Slicer Tools? Why would you prefer to slice the same target twice. Doing so would result in you changing the dial which you set yourself with the first slice, right? Or am I missing something?

You don't slice the same dial twice. Slice, wait till it activates, slice again, repeat.

6 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

You don't slice the same dial twice. Slice, wait till it activates, slice again, repeat.

Especially irritating for a carrier like a Quasar that has no real onboard firepower to take out the Slicers is placing said irritation on the opposite side of the carrier from the target it would rather attack, which can force some awkward decisions and leave large amounts of squadron firepower either stranded from commands or badly out of place.

Re Cluster bombs.

Remember mc30s often fly away from the mainfleet away from squad defence and flak overlaps.

Take smaller based ships. You can still load them up pretty, but the foot print really matters. It's very hard to chase a small base with squads compared to a large base. Smaller bases are less likely to overlap squads, so you don't give your opponent the advantage by picking a hull zone to hammer on, or get a "free movement" potentially placing in range of another ship.

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

Take smaller based ships. You can still load them up pretty, but the foot print really matters. It's very hard to chase a small base with squads compared to a large base. Smaller bases are less likely to overlap squads, so you don't give your opponent the advantage by picking a hull zone to hammer on, or get a "free movement" potentially placing in range of another ship.

That depends on approach though as larger ships can survive longer. From my experience wave2/wave3 even ISDs can outrun speed 3 squadrons that don't have carrier support, but they do need to navigate often.

34 minutes ago, PT106 said:

That depends on approach though as larger ships can survive longer. From my experience wave2/wave3 even ISDs can outrun speed 3 squadrons that don't have carrier support, but they do need to navigate often.

In my experience, speed 3 Rogue squads like Decimators can keep pace with a speed 3 ISD. YT-2400s can catch anything.

I think it takes more skill to pull off large ships with no squads, and this is reflected in the history of Armada. People asking how to keep large ships alive against carrier fleets and what not. It can be done, but I'm sure 90% of players won't be able to do it consistently at a competitive level.

25 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

In my experience, speed 3 Rogue squads like Decimators can keep pace with a speed 3 ISD. YT-2400s can catch anything.

I think it takes more skill to pull off large ships with no squads, and this is reflected in the history of Armada. People asking how to keep large ships alive against carrier fleets and what not. It can be done, but I'm sure 90% of players won't be able to do it consistently at a competitive level.

Rogues are a whole other story, and are the real threat for most squadronless fleets. Most squadronless fleets bring plans to deal with carriers in one way or other (Slicers, kill the **** out of the them, activation shenanigans, etc), but there aren't a lot of ways to handle Rogues. You really kind of have two options: kill them or table their ships.

Also, man, Thrawn is going to just crush the already-sparse Slicer Tools completely out of the meta. :/

32 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

In my experience, speed 3 Rogue squads like Decimators can keep pace with a speed 3 ISD. YT-2400s can catch anything.

That's why I mentioned 'no carrier support'. Rogues are a different game and require a different approach. For example, YT2400 can't deliver damage fast enough vs QLT-equipped ISD.

I did lose at Nova against a full Rogue fleet (4-7 loss against a Hammerhead swarm), however ship-wise I only lost a Raider and the game was lost on 200+ points from Superior Positions tokens that my opponent had. So it is a tough matchup but its not unmanageable.

Hera can give you uber bomber rogues.....

Shame Hera, Luke, Corran, 2xEwing, Ketsu, 4xZ95 is 150 pts. Its a lot of punch.

Slicer tools and things like that dont work in my meta.

If a ship needs to do 1 thing, especially if its a carrier that needs sqd commands,its going to have an officer like wing commander to guarantee it.

1 hour ago, DrakonLord said:

Slicer tools and things like that dont work in my meta.

If a ship needs to do 1 thing, especially if its a carrier that needs sqd commands,its going to have an officer like wing commander to guarantee it.

I think that’s a good thing, because that’s a different officer that they don’t have.

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Shame Hera, Luke, Corran, 2xEwing, Ketsu, 4xZ95 is 150 pts. Its a lot of punch.

That's the problem I keep running into with Hera. She can bring a lot to the table with just a slightly larger squadron pool, but she's just a little expensive in 134 points.

I bet she'd be awesome in CC. Got one coming up that I might try her out in...

Going back to wave-2 where my defensive squadron load-out involved Tycho, 3 A-wings, and 2 YT2400s, I think there's something to be said for a mixed group of squadrons, perhaps one good group of squadrons that can trigger off of a Carrier alpha followed by the YT2400 back-up, especially if you've got a good way to get the non-Rogues to take the hits in squadron on squadron match-ups, leaving the Rogues free to do their damage. But that takes us far off topic for handling squadron fleets with low/nonsquadron ones

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Hera can give you uber bomber rogues.....

Shame Hera, Luke, Corran, 2xEwing, Ketsu, 4xZ95 is 150 pts. Its a lot of punch.

Why the z95s? And why Ketsu?

7 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

I think there's something to be said for a mixed group of squadrons, perhaps one good group of squadrons that can trigger off of a Carrier alpha followed by the YT2400 back-up, especially if you've got a good way to get the non-Rogues to take the hits in squadron on squadron match-ups, leaving the Rogues free to do their damage. But that takes us far off topic for handling squadron fleets with low/nonsquadron ones

I've tried something like this. I can agree that combos of Rogues and non-Rogues can get some solid work done.... But I also had 134 points of squadrons versus like 4 a wings. I should go back to trying that....

It's also one of the few ways I can recommend lancers.

1 hour ago, Vergilius said:

I think that’s a good thing, because that’s a different officer that they don’t have.

While true, it also means that the one thing the ship is good at, the one thing i need to stop them doing, often at all costs, such as a quasar sqd commanding a bomber group or a low health interdictor repairing.

I cant.

And thats extremely annoying when i have the tools that *should* be able to stop them.

Its not just officers anyway, its also titles, commanders, other ship passing token shenanigans, etc.

For me slicer tools is that upgrade you have thats meant to deny certain ships certain commands, yet if a ship needs that command its going to have a way to guarantee it anyway.

Really i just want to use the upgrade, but i cant justify the upgrade when there are so many ways it can be bypassed.

48 minutes ago, DrakonLord said:

While true, it also means that the one thing the ship is good at, the one thing i need to stop them doing, often at all costs, such as a quasar sqd commanding a bomber group or a low health interdictor repairing.

I cant.

And thats extremely annoying when i have the tools that *should* be able to stop them.

Its not just officers anyway, its also titles, commanders, other ship passing token shenanigans, etc.

For me slicer tools is that upgrade you have thats meant to deny certain ships certain commands, yet if a ship needs that command its going to have a way to guarantee it anyway.

Really i just want to use the upgrade, but i cant justify the upgrade when there are so many ways it can be bypassed.

That's part of the paper-rock-scissors of it all. Slicer Tools aren't the only answer to squads, and they probably weren't ever intended to be an answer completely by themselves. I tend to find that even if an opponent has brought an answer, they can still be incredibly disruptive. If the answer is Wing Commander, then the opponent invested just as many points into answering Slicer Tools as you spent in the first place (ok, 6 versus 7, but close enough). They gave up the opportunity cost of an officer on the ship taking Wing Commander, and they probably don't have an answer to Slicer Tools on every other ship in their fleet, which may not be a huge advantage, but isn't inconsequential either. If they've answered with SFO, they've done so cheaply, and usually one turn is enough, but everything else that is true about Wing Commander is true here. If they've answered with Leia, you have some interesting options with forcing activation order, and it gets very interesting if you can kill the ship with Leia, or if you can last/first two different dials on necessary ships. So in short, even if they aren't completely vulnerable, there's still some use that can be gotten out of Slicer Tools.

Beyond that, if you feel like they are completely doubling down on answers to Slicer Tools, you can just build for what they are bringing. The thread is about answering squads with light/no squads, for which Slicer Tools doesn't have to be an answer, but it could be, but one can also answer squads in a lot of different ways. And if it comes down to your officer boosting your fleet more than their Wing Commander, that might put you up in a squad versus squad battle.

28 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

That's part of the paper-rock-scissors of it all. Slicer Tools aren't the only answer to squads, and they probably weren't ever intended to be an answer completely by themselves. I tend to find that even if an opponent has brought an answer, they can still be incredibly disruptive. If the answer is Wing Commander, then the opponent invested just as many points into answering Slicer Tools as you spent in the first place (ok, 6 versus 7, but close enough). They gave up the opportunity cost of an officer on the ship taking Wing Commander, and they probably don't have an answer to Slicer Tools on every other ship in their fleet, which may not be a huge advantage, but isn't inconsequential either. If they've answered with SFO, they've done so cheaply, and usually one turn is enough, but everything else that is true about Wing Commander is true here. If they've answered with Leia, you have some interesting options with forcing activation order, and it gets very interesting if you can kill the ship with Leia, or if you can last/first two different dials on necessary ships. So in short, even if they aren't completely vulnerable, there's still some use that can be gotten out of Slicer Tools.

Beyond that, if you feel like they are completely doubling down on answers to Slicer Tools, you can just build for what they are bringing. The thread is about answering squads with light/no squads, for which Slicer Tools doesn't have to be an answer, but it could be, but one can also answer squads in a lot of different ways. And if it comes down to your officer boosting your fleet more than their Wing Commander, that might put you up in a squad versus squad battle.

Oh i have no problem list building or flying fleets i can guarantee that lol, our group is always experimenting, in not commenting on this list for help. I dont believe slicer tools were ever meant to even help against squadrons.

What im trying to get across is my opinion, which is that bringing slicer tools is worthless 9/10 times.

Sure they (enemy) lose an opportunity in choosing a different officer... so do you in choosing a different fleet support.

I have NEVER gotten a good use out of slicer tools. Maybe you have, eh. But if your opponents built his fleet around a carrier, they would be stupid to not guarantee their ability to squadron command.

As for dealing with squadrons: you need some squadron support of your own, even if its only a little, hopefully future waves will change that but....

5 hours ago, PT106 said:

That's why I mentioned 'no carrier support'. Rogues are a different game and require a different approach. For example, YT2400 can't deliver damage fast enough vs QLT-equipped ISD.

I did lose at Nova against a full Rogue fleet (4-7 loss against a Hammerhead swarm), however ship-wise I only lost a Raider and the game was lost on 200+ points from Superior Positions tokens that my opponent had. So it is a tough matchup but its not unmanageable.

Derp. You did say carrier fleets. Must have read it then did something else before I came back to respond.

Someone uses QLTs? oooh. Was it worth it?

Also, imo Slicer tools and Tractor beam and Interdictor stuff is seriously underwhelming. Especially after Thrawn commander and Leia crew.

7 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Someone uses QLTs? oooh. Was it worth it?

Yes and yes Kallus QLTs are nasty.

7 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Also, imo Slicer tools... is seriously underwhelming. Especially after... Leia crew.

I completely agree with everything else you said, vis a vis tractor beam shenanigans. And Thrawn is going to crush Slicer Tools and spit them out. He'll be a nice hard counter to something that wasn't particularly prevalent in the first place, so... blah.

However , Slicer Tools vs officer Leia is a little different. I'm a strong advocate of always running Slicers in pairs if possible, which gives you the option to black out Leia if she shows up, but they definitely still have a place even with just one and even against Leia. They give you a pretty interesting activation-control weapon. Yes, Leia will fix the dial, but the Slicers are still going to force your opponent's activation order if he wants to get that dial back. Slice at the end of the round before they want to open with Yavaris * and then kill it before it can activate squadrons, or whatever.

With last activation, you can even still totally black out one ship's command for one critical round: slice Yavaris at the end of round X-1, they have to activate Leia first on round X if they want to fix Yavaris' dial, then you can activate Slicers to block it again.

*Note I'm just using Yavaris as the classic example of a ship that's always super useful with one command and always trash without it... this could be any ship with a situationally-critical command.