Accretion in Game Design

By elbmc1969, in Star Wars: Armada

3 minutes ago, Yosh6314 said:

While everyone is talking about game speeds, are there any tips for a faster set up as that usually seems to take up as much as about a third of the actual game when we get going however my storage solution isn't particularly elegant and contains all my armada stuff rather than just the fleet I'm flying.

Please delete your post and start a new topic. This is already getting off-topic enough.

27 minutes ago, Yosh6314 said:

While everyone is talking about game speeds, are there any tips for a faster set up as that usually seems to take up as much as about a third of the actual game when we get going however my storage solution isn't particularly elegant and contains all my armada stuff rather than just the fleet I'm flying.

I pre-pack everything. I have a cheap toolbox for all hardware. I separate out ships and squadrons, and get their bases and shields set.

I pull all necessary tokens and dials and identifiers needed and put them in a plastic bag.

I have a 3-ring binder with card-keeper sheets for all cards. I consolidate cards and objectives for the fleet in extra pages.

For me, this helps speed my in-game prep time. It also forces a pre-game fleet review to avoid requiring a card I don’t have or letting my opponent I need to borrow a spare APT. :)

9 hours ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

...you're not really going to continue to go down the list of intellectually dishonest debate tactics...are you?

You seriously think that fleet was a argument?

I told you already, its was made as a joke. Stop being hypocritical and looking for a fight everywhere, read what i posted!!

And im the one who didnt read the topic hey? Jeezs

1 hour ago, DrakonLord said:

You seriously think that fleet was a argument?

I told you already, its was made as a joke. Stop being hypocritical and looking for a fight everywhere, read what i posted!!

And im the one who didnt read the topic hey? Jeezs

I didn't get the joke. You see too many people on the Internet making stupid commments, or just trolling.


Anyhow, it came across as trolling, rather than LOLs. Just needed better writing, I guess.

6 hours ago, elbmc1969 said:

I didn't get the joke. You see too many people on the Internet making stupid commments, or just trolling.


Anyhow, it came across as trolling, rather than LOLs. Just needed better writing, I guess.

Wouldnt be the first time. Wont be the last.

As for better writing, i have a serious issue expressing myself with words, something ive suffered with for years. However when the second post was literally saying the first post was a joke, i think it becomes less of a "ive written a bad joke" to "the other guys just straight up ignoring me"

6 hours ago, elbmc1969 said:

I didn't get the joke. You see too many people on the Internet making stupid commments, or just trolling.


Anyhow, it came across as trolling, rather than LOLs. Just needed better writing, I guess.

Oh and the joke was that a fleet built to fail is gonna fail, not every list or "any" list will work.

16 hours ago, DrakonLord said:

You seriously think that fleet was a argument?

I told you already, its was made as a joke. Stop being hypocritical and looking for a fight everywhere, read what i posted!!

And im the one who didnt read the topic hey? Jeezs

Oh honey...

The problem was, Green Knight said “can any list really work?” And the replies were largely, “You could probably fly any ship you wanted if your list was built to work with that ship.”

Your reply, as it was on the page, looked to be trying to refute that claim by creating a horrible list. So, I called you out on it as a bad example. From there (and the accusation you made that little old me likes to pick fights) stems from me not accepting the “well it’s a joke!” excuse because it’s overused when someone is proven wrong or they feel embarrassed.

What I would have gone with in your reply to me was something like: “Yeah, it was supposed to be a joke. I’ll go sit in my corner now ?”. It comes along waaaaay better than calling out someone specifically so I’m inclined to read it and then say I obviously don’t understand jokes.

Essentially, throwing a jab at a guy is not a good way to diffuse a situation.

Just a thought. Back to ACCRETION!

31 minutes ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Oh honey...

The problem was, Green Knight said “can any list really work?” And the replies were largely, “You could probably fly any ship you wanted if your list was built to work with that ship.”

Your reply, as it was on the page, looked to be trying to refute that claim by creating a horrible list. So, I called you out on it as a bad example. From there (and the accusation you made that little old me likes to pick fights) stems from me not accepting the “well it’s a joke!” excuse because it’s overused when someone is proven wrong or they feel embarrassed.

What I would have gone with in your reply to me was something like: “Yeah, it was supposed to be a joke. I’ll go sit in my corner now ?”. It comes along waaaaay better than calling out someone specifically so I’m inclined to read it and then say I obviously don’t understand jokes.

Essentially, throwing a jab at a guy is not a good way to diffuse a situation.

Just a thought. Back to ACCRETION!

You can't return somewhere that you have never been to ;)

Ok ive tried 2 times now to form a reply and each time aussie internet has kicked in and wiped the editor when i went to quote something.

Eitherway @ricefrisbeetreats basically what i said in both of those is that from my point of view, ive bee insulted, told ive made intellectually dishonest arguments (jokes not arguments, so i dont get how it can be a intellectually dishonest argument), just because i make a joke and couldnt accept that hey, it actually was just a joke when i told everyone so.

Btw read my other comment again. I didnt say you cant take jokes, i said you "obviously didnt get the joke'

Joke. Not jokes.not plural.

As in you didnt get this joke. Sorry if you read it the other way but theres no ('s) in that word, its only talking about that one joke.

Edited by DrakonLord
Clarification and spelling
15 hours ago, DrakonLord said:

Btw read my other comment again. I didnt say you cant take jokes, i said you "obviously didnt get the joke'

Joke. Not jokes.not plural.

As in you didnt get this joke. Sorry if you read it the other way but theres no ('s) in that word, its only talking about that one joke.

Dude. You've literally started this from an argument over semantics. Joke/jokes, any fleet can be viable/any ship expansion is viable. The original intention was to clarify the original statements made and make sure you weren't just trying to make a really bad straw man argument. You decided to reply in an aggressive tone instead of just saving face with a "yeah, bad example" reply. I've clarified as much as I possibly could, but it's a hopeless case of me wasting my time trying to have civilized discourse on the internet.

After all this, I'm just embarrassed for you. Good luck.

10 hours ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Dude. You've literally started this from an argument over semantics. Joke/jokes, any fleet can be viable/any ship expansion is viable. The original intention was to clarify the original statements made and make sure you weren't just trying to make a really bad straw man argument. You decided to reply in an aggressive tone instead of just saving face with a "yeah, bad example" reply. I've clarified as much as I possibly could, but it's a hopeless case of me wasting my time trying to have civilized discourse on the internet.

After all this, I'm just embarrassed for you. Good luck.

Good luck to you too

Well the nice thing about Armada not getting as many releases as X-wing, and in one of many ways Armada not being as popular as X-wing sort of a blessing in disguise, is that there isn't much accretion in Armada as there is in X-wing.

X-wing is extremely popular briefly beating out 40k at one point for dominate table top miniatures game. Thus the demand for new stuff in X-wing is exponentially higher as the latest wave gets solved almost a day before it is released quickly making the game stale even with new stuff out. Thus X-wing is much more susceptible to accretion and power creep than Armada is.

But as X-wing has shown that after so many waves stuff starts to get broken and unbeatable combos start to turn up, the same thing could happen to Armada. Just at this rate it is going to take some more time. Keep in mind X-wing doesn't just have 13 waves (although they did have wave Twevleteen but Armada had Wave Thour), X-wing also had huge ships, special release repaints, and movie tie in releases separate from the rest of the waves, whereas Armada has had only 1 cardboard only campaign. So even if Armada reaches wave 13 it still won't have as much bloat as X-wing has now.

I think the big source of the accretion in X-wing compared to Armada is that Armada had all the lessons learned with X-wing. I don't think X-wing was originally thought out to be as big as it was.

The big thing is that Armada also doesn't have a lot of stuff that just ignores some of the basic rules. With X-wing you have to be stacking up lots and lots of actions and effects and most of those effects need to be dice modification. In the first wave it was red dice versus green dice and at this point your green dice don't really matter much with all the various modifications.

5 hours ago, Marinealver said:

But as X-wing has shown that after so many waves stuff starts to get broken and unbeatable combos start to turn up, the same thing could happen to Armada. Just at this rate it is going to take some more time. Keep in mind X-wing doesn't just have 13 waves (although they did have wave Twevleteen but Armada had Wave Thour), X-wing also had huge ships, special release repaints, and movie tie in releases separate from the rest of the waves, whereas Armada has had only 1 cardboard only campaign. So even if Armada reaches wave 13 it still won't have as much bloat as X-wing has now.

I think the other area is that Armada isn't solely a blow everything up game. With the objectives and turn limit Armada isn't faced with having to make everything deadlier each wave. Armada doesn't need broken things as much as X-wing needs broken things. Both from the nature of the game and the nature of the players drawn to the games.

I like this topic, especially when we have a similar game to compare Armada to with X-wing.

For me it feels as though each faction is beginning to “play the same” with each release, meaning they’re more and more evenly matched even though they have differing play styles.

This can lead to a stale game, or in this case something that strays from the source material.

Armada already does that in that it’s a game that requires balance and therefore doesn’t feel much like there’s a rebellion going on since both forces are evenly matched (I suspect Legion will suffer from the same break in theme).

My suggestion for a fix is a closer look at objective cards and have faction specific objectives. Both fleets will have the same point builds, but each their own goals during play. After all, should the rebels have the exact same goals as the imperials EVERY TIME they face each other? Some of the time it makes sense, but not every time.

This will allow for a balanced game that still feels like Star Wars.

Edited by Flavorabledeez

Just now, Flavorabledeez said:

My suggestion for a fix is a closer look at objective cards and have faction specific objectives. Both fleets will have the same point builds, but each their own goals during play. After all, should the rebels have the exact same goals as the imperials EVERY TIME they face each other? Some of the time it makes sense, but not every time.

This will allow for a balanced game that still feels like Star Wars.

I like the idea of some more objectives that feel different. Currently I feel like every time I go to list build the same objectives keep coming up. Capture the VIP could be interesting, but it's worth 50 points in the end. I'll probably farm Fire Lanes and Contested Outpost for more with similar effects on positioning.

2 hours ago, Frimmel said:

The big thing is that Armada also doesn't have a lot of stuff that just ignores some of the basic rules. With X-wing you have to be stacking up lots and lots of actions and effects and most of those effects need to be dice modification. In the first wave it was red dice versus green dice and at this point your green dice don't really matter much with all the various modifications.

Huh. Armada fleet building seems to be all about "dice mitigation." Personally, I hate anything that reduces dice randomness--if you want to reduce Armada to chess, make the combat purely deterministic. Add more dice to your pool, especially more red dice? Sure! Never know what will come up.

Something I keep seeing in regards to theme, is that the rebels were hopelessly outnumbered and thats not shown in the games.

Now, everyone knows why this is, from a design standpoint.

But from a fluff standpoint, the rebels were fighting a guerrilla war, and the reason they were able to conduct a succesful campaign against the empire is that by and large they were able to determine the engagments and localize their strength in a way the Empire couldnt, as it had such a large spanse of territory to cover which serves to diffuse its power. So a game like Armada, in which we are seeing skirmishes more than like Endor 2.0, it actually makes sense that the Rebels wouldn’t be outnumbered in the context of the engagments we play out on the table, because the Rebels wouldn’t be involved in such an engagement in the first place. If anything its a bit wierd that they’re picking a fight when they are evenly matched.

Sorry this has nothing to do with accretion.

8 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

Something I keep seeing in regards to theme, is that the rebels were hopelessly outnumbered and thats not shown in the games.

But from a fluff standpoint, the rebels were fighting a guerrilla war, and the reason they were able to conduct a succesful campaign against the empire is that by and large they were able to determine the engagments and localize their strength in a way the Empire couldnt, as it had such a large spanse of territory to cover which serves to diffuse its power.

The movies (probably) didn't show every significant fleet battle. A lot of them were probably moderately balanced, and a good number probably had the Rebels outnumbering the Empire as they conducted raids.

That's one of the big problems with points-based games: you don't see uneven battles because everyone builds to a particular points level. 180 points of blockade runners vs. 400 points of defenders on a 6'x6' map could be very interesting.

Im not sure why I was quoted there. I agree with what you said tho, although in terms of 180 v 400 only if theres some scenario specific stuff going on there.

Just now, elbmc1969 said:

Huh. Armada fleet building seems to be all about "dice mitigation." Personally, I hate anything that reduces dice randomness--if you want to reduce Armada to chess, make the combat purely deterministic. Add more dice to your pool, especially more red dice? Sure! Never know what will come up.

Armada doesn't do dice mods the same way that X-wing does. Most of your dice mods in the core and early expansions come from target locks and focus tokens. You needed an action to get those. You only got one action for the turn (specific pilots aside.) Your other actions like re-positioning came at the expense of those mods. Most weapon upgrades that came with built in dice mods required a target lock to use.

Now with the large based ships and crew you can get weapons upgrades with mods that do not require target locks while still getting a target lock and still getting to take actions. This is primarily why the early wave ships have been left in the dust. They can't match the action economy (i.e. pushing damage through because of dice mods) of the newer ships.

In Armada you get dice mitigation mostly through upgrades and not through "gaming" the action system of the game by squad building choices that push ships out of the running.

15 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

Im not sure why I was quoted there. I agree with what you said tho, although in terms of 180 v 400 only if theres some scenario specific stuff going on there.

1. I was trying to explain that there were probably at lot of balanced battles that we never saw on screen. Backing up your argument, more or less.

2. Building on your point about the Rebels not looking for fair fights.

Yeah, there'd have to be some scenario-specific stuff, but with a 6' wide table the defenders have a serious problem concentrating their forces against the much smaller blockade running force. In the regular Blockade Run objective the 3' table width really reduces the blockade runners' maneuver options.

Edited by elbmc1969
typo

Baring some of the first and second wave stuff, I feel alot of the ships and upgrades in the game have a place in how you want to build a fleet.

If you want to play some lopsided thematic stuff where the rebels are undergunned then playing rebels might not be as fun cause obviously reasons of being at a disadvantage.

General ramblings aside. There are many elements in the game to understand along with reasoning on what you are capable with your fleet. If you don't have the firepower to take out an ISD unless you spend 2-3 turns using EVERYTHING you have, it might be best to avoid it to the best of your abilities. Kinda like what some guerrilla warfare people would do. You don't go after an APC with a minigun when you only got light infantry weapons and grenades. But hey, we have a large arsenal of ships, squadrons, and tools to work with dealing what threats you can manage.

6 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

If you want to play some lopsided thematic stuff where the rebels are undergunned then playing rebels might not be as fun cause obviously reasons of being at a disadvantage.

There are plenty of hex and counter wargames, and scenario-based miniatures games, where the forces are unbalanced, but the terrain, situation, and victory conditions make the game balanced.

11 minutes ago, elbmc1969 said:

There are plenty of hex and counter wargames, and scenario-based miniatures games, where the forces are unbalanced, but the terrain, situation, and victory conditions make the game balanced.

But is Armada balanced around that gameplay?

28 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

But is Armada balanced around that gameplay?

The Corellian Campaign has shown us that it certainly can be.

While it falls short of achieving perfection in this arena, it points the way.