There are objective/fleet builds that are very strong for 2nd player.

A certain MC80 build with lots of VXCs and objective-token shenanigans comes to mind.

3 minutes ago, Democratus said:

There are objective/fleet builds that are very strong for 2nd player.

A certain MC80 build with lots of VXCs and objective-token shenanigans comes to mind.

Just to be clear, you just argued that the OP is singling out one specific ship/fleet and suggesting changes based on it, but you argue against changes in objectives based on a single fleet build. Even if you give other examples of strong 2nd player fleets, it doesn't mean that objectives can't/shouldn't be changed to allow for greater variety.

You can build strong 2nd player fleets, but not with most ships or builds. The objectives are weighted toward certain styles and, thereby, constrict fleet construction quite heavily.

4 hours ago, deDios said:

1. Thematically - a Demo/Admo suddenly having double the speed of everything on the board is awkward.

I actually don't have any thematic issues with this. We're already operating under mechanics that break simultaneous actions into turn based movements. When a ship changes activation order from one turn to the next doesn't mean that it is suddenly operating at an odd speed comparatively. Thematically it is more like they were more prepared to complete their next action. If I'm commanding an MC30 that is about to nose dive an ISD, you can be sure that I'll have my crew ready to fire two shots in quick succession.

But where is the opposing player's opportunity to respond (like they really would) to the head long charge of a high threat ship?

Players that are being first/lasted have very little agency in their fate against fast moving enemy ships that start outside of weapons range and then dart into range, and back out again before the target can respond.

Why do we not want equal activation? In a competitive game you want as many things to be equal as possible, (points, deployments, activations, etc.) so that these components of the game do NOT dictate game play, instead allowing the skill of the players to be the determining factor.

When list building can be leveraged to gain massive advantages such as the Last/first situation, it can threaten to allow list building to surpass skill as the determining factor in victory.

The simple solution, rather than what ifing about 2 ISD's playing 7 TRC 90s, is for people to take normal 3-5 ship fleets that are not designed to leverage an unfortunate game mechanic short coming. We should be taking ships in our list because of what they can do for use in battle, not because they are an activation filler. Marry this with a pass token that allows 3 ship fleets to fight on even footing with 5 ship fleets and you are now making real progress toward a fair and level playing field where tough choices about navigation and activation order are made on BOTH SIDES , not just one.

The reason first last is so hard to accept is that it requires much less skill to do than is required to counter it. It can, and is frequently countered, but it is an easy button that should be scorned. There is no, (and should never be) an easy button in high level competitive games, see chess, go, pento, or any other classic strategy game and this will become readily apparent. These games are taken seriously as high level competitive games with large followings and international leagues and rankings specifically because of how balanced they are. The closer to equal footing each player is on, the more viable a game is as a serious competition level game because the players , not the lists, shine.

We all do want to succeed or fail on our merits in this game right? Not just the merits of our list and our ability to count...

45 minutes ago, ryanabt said:

Just to be clear, you just argued that the OP is singling out one specific ship/fleet and suggesting changes based on it, but you argue against changes in objectives based on a single fleet build. Even if you give other examples of strong 2nd player fleets, it doesn't mean that objectives can't/shouldn't be changed to allow for greater variety.

You can build strong 2nd player fleets, but not with most ships or builds. The objectives are weighted toward certain styles and, thereby, constrict fleet construction quite heavily.

I argued that the thread was moving toward that, not the OP.

And I brought up 2nd player strong fleet/objectives because the post before mine stated a need for good objectives.

As for objectives constricting fleet construction, that's a feature not a bug.

2 minutes ago, Democratus said:

I argued that the thread was moving toward that, not the OP.

And I brought up 2nd player strong fleet/objectives because the post before mine stated a need for good objectives.

As for objectives constricting fleet construction, that's a feature not a bug.

Point taken.

Nevertheless, call it what you may, I think we can all agree that the game would benefit from an opening up of the objectives so that more than a few in each category are effective enough for general fleet building.

4 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

allows 3 ship fleets to fight on even footing with 5 ship fleets and you are now making real progress toward a fair and level playing field where tough choices about navigation and activation order are made on BOTH SIDES , not just one.

You know this is a game about warfare right? It's a little more complicated than chess. You get to decide, entirely, how to build your fleet and are required to know how to make that build work. That's basically how skill is defined in this game isn't it? The ability to make and use fleets successfully? (even if you lose).

The use of the word "fair" when you're talking about the number of ships you choose to bring in relation to what you'll face is humorous. Why should players who decide dump all their points into 2 ships be rewarded against those who spread their points out over 5 or 6?

I gotta say, I'd rather have the freedom to build what I want and accept that sometimes, I'm gonna fight a niche that will beat it. (IE 1st/last demo or BTA). Frankly, I think that it adds more of an edge to the competition. Not only do you have to be concerned about player skill, but whether they have brought the rock to your scissors.

I wouldn't mind seeing more objectives, and maybe some tweaking of existing objectives.

Most Wanted/Solar Corona are nearly ubiquitous.

Second player should have last activation. Bend and alter the rules to allow this.

One of the biggest problems in Armada, and in any game, is playing a certain way to deny your opponent of any reaction. It's not fun to be on the losing end of that which is why people have consistently asked for nerfs to Demo, flotillas, BTA, last/first, etc. It's a consistent theme on the forums. Rather than discussing any solution to the problem, more often people will tell the OP to suck it up and deal with it. "Stay out of the front arc", "Win by round 4", "Git gud".

If the game did allowed some reaction to major threats like BTA, the game would be in a much healthier place. Right now, there is no reaction to a last/first Hondo BTA. You can't rip tokens off, change the dial, move the target, or spend defense tokens. The only thing you can do is use Lando and Admo, but those don't solve the problem. You just take the damage and hope BTA rolls poorly.

It's poor game design. It's why people are quitting. I don't care if you agree or not, but this is an issue.

12 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

You know this is a game about warfare right? It's a little more complicated than chess. You get to decide, entirely, how to build your fleet and are required to know how to make that build work. That's basically how skill is defined in this game isn't it? The ability to make and use fleets successfully? (even if you lose).

The use of the word "fair" when you're talking about the number of ships you choose to bring in relation to what you'll face is humorous. Why should players who decide dump all their points into 2 ships be rewarded against those who spread their points out over 5 or 6?

I gotta say, I'd rather have the freedom to build what I want and accept that sometimes, I'm gonna fight a niche that will beat it. (IE 1st/last demo or BTA). Frankly, I think that it adds more of an edge to the competition. Not only do you have to be concerned about player skill, but whether they have brought the rock to your scissors.

I think his point was that any game (especially a game with "deck" building) wants to maximize the number of combinations a player can build and still have the game be determined by how the player plays their build not by its composition.

Essentially avoiding pre determined paper, rock, scissors play mechanic determined by list building. Now abviously, luck of the dice and player skill play a factor but just in the last vassal fun tournament where you were assigned a fleet to play for each game there were games where the outcome of the game was very strongly predetermined just by looking at the composition of the two lists.

My opinion is that if I have to, very specifically, build a list with a very specific couple of cards in mind that I have to watch out for. That detracts from the fun factor, at least for me. And there are a few cards in the current meta that very strong simply because the "abuse" the first/last mechanic.

Suck it up and deal with it, @Undeadguy !

I suggest staying out of the front arc and winning by round 4. You can do it if you git gud.

15 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

But where is the opposing player's opportunity to respond (like they really would) to the head long charge of a high threat ship?

Players that are being first/lasted have very little agency in their fate against fast moving enemy ships that start outside of weapons range and then dart into range, and back out again before the target can respond.

You have the opportunity to prepare yourself on approach and position optimally, but a ship of sufficient speed and initiative will be hard for a ship of lower speed and initiative to respond to. The easiest way to respond is to anticipate .

17 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

Why do we not want equal activation? In a competitive game you want as many things to be equal as possible, (points, deployments, activations, etc.) so that these components of the game do NOT dictate game play, instead allowing the skill of the players to be the determining factor.

When list building can be leveraged to gain massive advantages such as the Last/first situation, it can threaten to allow list building to surpass skill as the determining factor in victory.

No I don't. I want many different asymmetric fleets to be viable to allow for as much variety in matchups as possible while the game itself remains balanced.

What's the point in having list-building as an element of the game otherwise? Why not just give everything all the stats of a Nebulon and then leave the rest to spatial evaluation skill and dice luck? Why not just play chess? A wargame needs variety along multiple different axes to ensure that every game isn't the same; otherwise, it would get very boring very fast.

A well-built list does give you an advantage over a poorly-built one. That's good. That means there is a consequence for being bad at fleet building, and a reward for being good at it. Just as there's a consequence for being bad at tactical execution, and a reward for being good at it. It does not follow from this that list-building skill must be surpassing tactical execution skill as the determining factor in the outcome.

23 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

We should be taking ships in our list because of what they can do for use in battle, not because they are an activation filler. Marry this with a pass token that allows 3 ship fleets to fight on even footing with 5 ship fleets and you are now making real progress toward a fair and level playing field where tough choices about navigation and activation order are made on BOTH SIDES , not just one.

I did take those three GR75's because of what they do for me in battle. They gave me communications, observation, intelligence, and combat control support to enable me to maximize the impact of my combat ships in battle. I chose to make the trade to forego some combat points to instead take some support to allow my fleet build to work well.

Why didn't you?

26 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

There is no, (and should never be) an easy button in high level competitive games, see chess, go, pento, or any other classic strategy game and this will become readily apparent. These games are taken seriously as high level competitive games with large followings and international leagues and rankings specifically because of how balanced they are. The closer to equal footing each player is on, the more viable a game is as a serious competition level game because the players , not the lists, shine.

Football (whichever type you prefer to interpret) is taken seriously as a highly competitive game too. A big part of football is putting a good team on the field and choosing what tradeoffs to make within my budget. Do I want a fast team, a strong team, a good keeper/kicker? I'm eminently okay with Armada outcomes being influenced by how well you built your team.

11 minutes ago, Democratus said:

Suck it up and deal with it, @Undeadguy !

I suggest staying out of the front arc and winning by round 4. You can do it if you git gud.

Oh thanks man, I never thought about it that way. Guess I should net list a fleet that can beat these things and everyone can play the same thing.

7 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

...

No I don't. I want many different asymmetric fleets to be viable to allow for as much variety in matchups as possible while the game itself remains balanced.

...

I did take those three GR75's because of what they do for me in battle. They gave me communications, observation, intelligence, and combat control support to enable me to maximize the impact of my combat ships in battle. I chose to make the trade to forego some combat points to instead take some support to allow my fleet build to work well.

Why didn't you?

...

Sorry but its tough for me to take comments like this seriously when with one breath you say that you want as much variety in the game as possible with the game remaining balance yet in the very next paragraph calling out a poster for not building the list that is the most compentative and then even continuing with a football analogy that goes along the lines of "if you're not building Real Madrid then you deserve to lose"..

10 minutes ago, PartyPotato said:

Sorry but its tough for me to take comments like this seriously when with one breath you say that you want as much variety in the game as possible with the game remaining balance yet in the very next paragraph calling out a poster for not building the list that is the most compentative and then even continuing with a football analogy that goes along the lines of "if you're not building Real Madrid then you deserve to lose"..

No, I'm challenging him to consider why he opted not to make the same choice I did if it's so clearly and obviously the only optimal option. edit: "Why didn't you?" is there not to imply "you should have." It's a legitimate question.

The answer, of course, is that it is not the only optimal option, as evidenced by the fact that, when building his fleet, he decided that something else was more important to him than those extra two or three activations.

Those are the things that his opponent forewent to get those extra activations, weaknesses he accepted to get that advantage. It's on you, the player, to identify what those weaknesses are and to figure out how to exploit them.

List variety is not threatened by equal activation footing, only the lists that abuse game mechanics that the community acknowledges as a shortcoming of the rule would be negatively impacted by a pass token concept.

2 ISD vs 7 CR 90 does not have to be about activations, is can be about multiple small packets of damage from different angles vs. overwhelming barrages, these 2 fleets have merit in terms of their combat potential, activation count aside.

Right now the 2 ISD list would have a huge issue even being fielded, but with activation equality it is not such a concern... aka list diversity.

4 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

You mean discard to pass? An officer that allowed a pass every turn of the game seems ridiculous. I could see it being once, but seriously? Exhaust? Here comes the pass card/ms-1 ion cannon meta.

Don't forget we get Vader to kill officers upgrade cards. Now we know why this is worth the points taking him.

abusing a game mechanic issue HARDER then the next guy does not a noble, skilled admiral who wants to win a fair fight, make...

22 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Do I want a fast team, a strong team, a good keeper/kicker? I'm eminently okay with Armada outcomes being influenced by how well you built your team.

Strong kicker? You are thinking of Rugby there....

2 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

Right now the 2 ISD list would have a huge issue even being fielded

lol

'kay

Just now, Ginkapo said:

Strong kicker? You are thinking of Rugby there....

I'm keeping it as geographically-agnostic as I can.

4 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

abusing a game mechanic issue HARDER then the next guy does not a noble, skilled admiral who wants to win a fair fight, make...

You can call it "abusing" as much as you like, but until you can clearly define what makes it "abuse," you're going to have a hard time convincing me that you're not just labeling my views with emotive language to dismiss them.

You say abusing harder...

I say utilising better...

And this is why I get paid the big bucks.

(I dont)

Meh I'm over it.

"Flotillas are OP"

"Activation mechanics OP"

"Armada is dead"

silliness....

There is always going to be people crying about something. It's the nature of the world.