38 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

My goal would be to accomplish the following:

1. Keep the excellent Command system in place
2. Keep the excellent maneuver system in place
3. Redesign the shooting system so that all ships and squadrons shoot together
4. Keep as much of the current objective system as can be maintained with the above goals
5. Redesign the fewest number of cards possible to maintain game balance

I would be on board.

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I generally don't get what your proposal is, maybe the reading comprehension will come to me in a bit.

Maybe move in turn order. Shoot all at once.

Then comes the question of how do you balance for small ships, which currently are semi-balanced through the ability to get out of nasty arcs. You move 3 CR90s in towards an ISD, it'll pick one and chew it up.

I don't know how large the unit strength disparity is in X-Wing, having never played that game. But in Armada, giving the large base ships last movement and first shot in every round is *far* too strong for them relative to small base ships. You've taken away the arc dodge stratagem, too.

We'll see how Strategic Advisor plays out, but I dunno, I've got a bad feeling about this.

Armada really accentuates burst damage... either as first or last...

An ISD or MC80 with all its upgrades super shot, combined with a 5 squadron alpha is a brutal amount of attack in one uninterrupted go.

2 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I would be on board.

--

I generally don't get what your proposal is, maybe the reading comprehension will come to me in a bit.

Maybe move in turn order. Shoot all at once.

Then comes the question of how do you balance for small ships, which currently are semi-balanced through the ability to get out of nasty arcs. You move 3 CR90s in towards an ISD, it'll pick one and chew it up.

The idea is to use something like the X-Wing Pilot Skill system by using a mathematical combination of ship stats to create an initiative number. Smaller lighter ships would generally be able to act first, so they could engage or turn away. Heavier ships would act last so they could always be relevant, but could be forced to choose from multiple unappealing scenarios. The upside for large ships is that they then get to start shooting first, but are forced to actively chase after anything they want to shoot at.

Squadrons are then made part of the shooting phase, so you have a direct benefit to activating them with large dedicated carriers instead of small flotillas.

I think there's some balancing acts to work out, but it feels like the start of an idea.

I did think about making large ships move first, but i'm concerned that this would make them too inflexible against smaller ships. The existing problem is that large ships can reduce your fleet combat strength by way of severely impacting your bid and activation advantage.

1 minute ago, Blail Blerg said:

Armada really accentuates burst damage... either as first or last...

An ISD or MC80 with all its upgrades super shot, combined with a 5 squadron alpha is a brutal amount of attack in one uninterrupted go.

Yeah, this is what you already saw at the end of Wave 2. Top finishers at GenCon 2016 were two nearly identical ISD Avenger combos pushing squadrons around with Demolisher handling the burst damage duties.

Maybe the simplest solution could be the best. Keep everything the way it is, except split attack and movement into two separate action segments.

Activate and fire each ship, alternating activation, then move each ship alternating activation. Demolisher becomes even more a game changer, but it could be mitigated by allowing its movement to occur in the attack step, between attacks. Thus making it a greater target.

Before we start changing MASSIVE RULES (alternating activations vs all ships firing and moving), can we discuss just changing some things about flotillas first? I think that would go a lot further to "making Large Ships matter" than making a whole new game for us all to learn.

Really activation advantage didn't get stupid until flotilla spam and mass amounts of ace/specialized fighters were available. Some kind of adjustment there without core rules shifts would do wonders.... either flotillas bought from fighter allotment or flotillas not counting toward tabling would do a lot to cut down on mass activation lists.

Just a couple of quick thoughts /ideas:

• Prevent flottilas from getting more than 1 die against medium or large ships
• flottilas become their own size catergory with its own points cap - eg upto 1/6th (aka 50 points out of 400) may be spent on flottilas before upgrades.
• flottilas lose sqn or engineering points when below half health - or 1 point for each damage card on the flottila
• up to 3(?) flottilas activate as a single ship in the activation phase. You must activate the maximum amount possible eg if you have 4 flottilas in your list the first time you activate 1 you must activate 3. when you next activate a flottila that round you only have 1 left to activate so can only activate that one.

6 hours ago, slasher956 said:

Just a couple of quick thoughts /ideas:

• Prevent flottilas from getting more than 1 die against medium or large ships
• flottilas become their own size catergory with its own points cap - eg upto 1/6th (aka 50 points out of 400) may be spent on flottilas before upgrades.
• flottilas lose sqn or engineering points when below half health - or 1 point for each damage card on the flottila
• up to 3(?) flottilas activate as a single ship in the activation phase. You must activate the maximum amount possible eg if you have 4 flottilas in your list the first time you activate 1 you must activate 3. when you next activate a flottila that round you only have 1 left to activate so can only activate that one.

1 and 3 address nonexistent problems.

2 might be reasonable

4 would allow me to activate my entire squadron screen in a single go. Not an adorable little 6 Squadron Quasar Alpha, but an 8-12 Squadron Alpha.

didnt say they were well thought out idea

But expanding no. 4, if you were going to make multiple flottilas activate in a single activation then you are talking about rule book errata to put the frame work into the game. So with that you can put restrictions in /clarify how commands would work.... eg if flottila 1 did a sqn command could flottilas 2 & 3? after all its a single activation and you cant do the same command twice in one activation

hrmmm think this idea might be best in its own thread......

Activation advantage has been a thing since Q won with 4 gladiators and a VSD....then clonisher...then MSU Vette fleets,....then Rieekan aceholes (which worked great because it had spam and full sqns) now defiance ackbar

All either side did was pad their lists with whatever was their cheapest ship....raiders and vettes....later on.. Then now it has become flotillas which are super cheap (especially the rebel one) and they spam that. Thankfully they offer little combat support besides the ability to use relay.

Activation padding only works so long before combat occurs then it is all down to the important ships actually shooting. The gencon 2 ISD list with full sqns works because during that first 2-3 turns when your opponent is out activating you your activations still mean something...you are pointing your big ships at the ship or 2 that you want to kill and letting your sqns do their work...cause you can't hide anywhere from good speed sqns.. I use activation advantage in a lot of my lists. But once combat is engaged. My ISD or my Demo or whatever tends to start moving first and the remaining activations don't matter.

The way to beat activation spam is to threaten the important ships and/or gobble up the padding ships. Everyone I see tends to play this "turns 1-3 I am moving speed 1 maybe 2 and building tokens on all my fleet so that no shots are fired until 3 or 4" style game. Where simply sometimes it is beneficial to start threatening your opponents padding (using sqns or a flanker) or just run and gun for the main targets as early as possible. I see some lists proposed on the forums that actually think outside the box a little and that is great to see. I also, even with bidding for first, have chosen 2nd more often lately due to me guessing correctly that they have token manipulation built into their list. So I also know how to run my list as 2nd player...(in fact I am starting to prefer it although I don't do token manipulation myself.)

My thoughts on Wave 7. More big ships (dual likely) with 4-5 activations being the norm (always will be outliers) Flotillas are going to get eaten up at long range if people properly kit out those big ships....and when you see a list that is dependent on spam (or anything in particular) remove or threaten that dependency and you have gained the initiative (making your opponent react to you). I also believe their will be less full sqn builds due to some of the goodies like EWS, WAB, Ord Pods, that have come out. EWS in particular on a big ship is the death to yavaris based lists as they won't be able to triple tap (without the ship rededicating the chaff token) Sloane has been eating her way through ace lists and has resulted in more generics coming which frankly aren't up to the task either and will now be eaten up by anti sqn upgrades that lists are bringing. So the 50-80 point token screen will become the norm.

Final thought. I personally love when I see someone across from me play some list that I have seen win at a big tournament. Because I have already practiced against that list, know and understand exactly its strengths and weaknesses and can pick it apart. Whereas they have not seen my list archetype and have to figure it out there and then. ( I never repeat my own lists, even from regionals, if I did well). I learned early on that the best way to beat a list was to fly it yourself in practice a few games to see its weaknesses and what you are trying to do with it.

As for changing how the game is played...well someone will just figure out how to break that system too. (look at x-wing with PS wars....low skill blockers)

(2nd finally) as for removing flotillas from tabling requirements...I could care less, when you are down to just flotillas (you probably don't have much sqns left either) not much firepower and your opponent can just pick you to death. All this would create would be more 10 point scores because good players in tournaments already run lists that are aiming for those already and now you are just going to see them get that score more often (while still running flotilla spam in their own fleet)

3 hours ago, Mogrok said:

(2nd finally) as for removing flotillas from tabling requirements...I could care less, when you are down to just flotillas (you probably don't have much sqns left either) not much firepower and your opponent can just pick you to death. All this would create would be more 10 point scores because good players in tournaments already run lists that are aiming for those already and now you are just going to see them get that score more often (while still running flotilla spam in their own fleet)

Removing flotillas is aimed more at max squadron lists than activation padding lists. The remaining flotilla in that case is worth closer to 120 points, because of the unkilled fighters still on the table.

If it’s not a solution for the problem list(s) then we can’t call it a solution to the problem...

I think we should let wave 7 hit play it for at least 2-3 months then come back and have this discussion, super excited for the wave to hit and already have a game scheduled the day of release!

1 hour ago, Valca said:

Removing flotillas is aimed more at max squadron lists than activation padding lists. The remaining flotilla in that case is worth closer to 120 points, because of the unkilled fighters still on the table.

If you still have 120 points of sqns left and I destroyed all of your capital ships...you are still dead...you can't catch the player....he will just kill your flotillas...and if there isn't enough time to do that...well there isn't enough time for your sqns to do much either. Arguments like this are just "I wanna score 10-1 when I take out my opponents capital ships." If you notice when you look at top players and how they play at regionals...they are sometimes getting 10-1's in the current meta....do you really want to seem them getting nothing but 10-1s. I ran 1 ISD 4 goz 134 points of aces....I only lost 2 gozanti in total in all three games....and maybe 1-2 sqns per game. And they were trying for my ISD...thankfully. I would still run it no matter this convention. Because, I am trying to win big with that list....and if I lose my ISD I am not winning the tournament regardless.

29 minutes ago, Mogrok said:

If you still have 120 points of sqns left and I destroyed all of your capital ships...you are still dead...you can't catch the player....he will just kill your flotillas...and if there isn't enough time to do that...well there isn't enough time for your sqns to do much either. Arguments like this are just "I wanna score 10-1 when I take out my opponents capital ships." If you notice when you look at top players and how they play at regionals...they are sometimes getting 10-1's in the current meta....do you really want to seem them getting nothing but 10-1s. I ran 1 ISD 4 goz 134 points of aces....I only lost 2 gozanti in total in all three games....and maybe 1-2 sqns per game. And they were trying for my ISD...thankfully. I would still run it no matter this convention. Because, I am trying to win big with that list....and if I lose my ISD I am not winning the tournament regardless.

The argument is based on how the game originally came out. The risk of going squadron heavy is that you get tabled when your ~260-270 points of capital ships are destroyed. It mitigated the resiliency that squadrons had against capital ship attacks. The introduction of flotillas essentially removed that risk. It made squadron heavy lists more viable in tournaments not because they can win 10-1 but because they have a hard time losing big. Consistency wins tournaments.

That's tangential to the thread, however. Just wanted to provide some insight into why people have advocated that rules.

27 minutes ago, Valca said:

The argument is based on how the game originally came out. The risk of going squadron heavy is that you get tabled when your ~260-270 points of capital ships are destroyed. It mitigated the resiliency that squadrons had against capital ship attacks. The introduction of flotillas essentially removed that risk. It made squadron heavy lists more viable in tournaments not because they can win 10-1 but because they have a hard time losing big. Consistency wins tournaments.

That's tangential to the thread, however. Just wanted to provide some insight into why people have advocated that rules.

I understood perfectly well why. I just don't agree with the premise of the complaint...or the solution.

Repurposing the thread for something else:

Anyone got Wave7 ideas they really want to try or think are interesting? I can build a super death fishbowl-pickle, but meh. Seen it done it. What's something really interesting?

Disclaimer: I have zero table exp with it, but...
Is it just me, or does the Mc75 look so good on paper I have no idea what I should do with it? It almost feels like no matter what I build, it'll be ok, simply due to the chassis. 3 arcs of death? yeesh.