Wave 7 includes a number of excellent upgrade cards that gives squadrons hard time. Big ship fleet players say, "Woo-hoo!"

That's great and all, but the objective shouldn't have been to Nerf squadrons overall. (Okay, so it's not exactly a Nerf too squadrons, it's a counter to squadrons. Whatever.)

But, the real problem with squadrons is relay. Well, Relay and flotillas! Yeah, the Cannot Get Your Ship Out blog and Green Knight's new blog both just addressed this issue. The wave 7 upgrade cards do nothing to address either of these problems. Why should Squadron heavy fleets that rely on traditional activation techniques be penalized? This just means that whenever relays and flotilla spam are addressed, the effects will be overpowered against Squadron fleets, instead of fixing the real problems that made the game less fun. (Or at least less thematic, or ruined the risk-reward balance.)

What are the "real" issues in your opinion?

I see you say Relay and flotillas. Is this not an offshoot of high activation fleets with "wasteful" activations.

Pryce, Raddus and Bail address these issues by allowing players a method of choosing not to partake in the activation game.

Pryce lets you last/first without outactivating your opponent.

Raddus lets you avoid taking damage on the approach by the ships being in raddus space. Thus making the early game where cheap activations are so powerful less important.

Bail does something I am sure, i just havent figured out whay yet personally.

This is what I see as the new tools of wave 7 designed to combat "wasteful" activations. I'd like to hear the alternative interpretations people have after a couple of weeks.

I came second at regionals with Pryce because it she batters traditional fleets when built carefully.

The first two sentences of the third paragraph. CGHSO and Green Knight have expanded on it better than I can.

I think Ginkapo is looking for something like:

-The ability for a flotilla to activate squadrons, pad deployments, and pad activations, and aide token generation for objectives for that cheap while never having to expose itself to danger causes balance issues. Those balance issues are X, Y, Z. Like flotillas being 1m away from the nearest ship makes tabling your opponent and/or scoring a 10-1 nearly impossible.

Something like that. Not just “lsomsthing like “they are broke real hard”

While Wave 7 may not address those specific questions, it brings up tremendous questions and choices of its own. The amount of stuff we have to play with right now when building fleets is downright awesome.

I think the Relay and Flotilla spam answers will end up being rule changes, not upgrades.

I think it sounds like you're worried that Squadron heavy players might be getting nerfed too much. It's a bit too soon to start thinking the sky is falling, especially without actually seeing if they do anything to relay/flotillas at all.

Really you should probably be asking with the new cards in Wave 7, do squadrons at least let me feel like I'm competitive? As long as the answer is yes, the game is in a good spot.

We have like 20 threads at least discussing the issues about Relay and Flotilla spam. Rule Changes are probably being play tested right now for those.

Idk what you're talking about. I think Wave 7 is the best wave yet, in both cool, original content, as well as balancing the game.

WAB, EWS, Ordnance Pods, Draven, and Saxon bring squadron hate. Reinforced Bulkheads finally ended the ET ram terror. Bail and Pryce mess with last/first. SAd is meh, but at least allows large ships fleets some breathing room. 2 new commanders that let you build vastly different fleets than the wave 6 meta. 4 more large ships, 3 with Ordnance slots.

Wave 7 was the correct answer. Armada feels good right now.

43 minutes ago, elbmc1969 said:

Wave 7 includes a number of excellent upgrade cards that gives squadrons hard time. Big ship fleet players say, "Woo-hoo!"

That's great and all, but the objective shouldn't have been to Nerf squadrons overall. (Okay, so it's not exactly a Nerf two squadrons, it's a counter to squadrons. Whatever.)

But, the real problem with squadrons is relay. Well, Relay and flotillas! Yeah, the Cannot Get Your Ship Out blog and Green Knight's new blog both just addressed this issue. The wave 7 upgrade cards do nothing to address either of these problems. Why should Squadron heavy fleets that rely on traditional activation techniques be penalized? This just means that whenever relays and flotilla spam are addressed, the effects will be overpowered against Squadron fleets, instead of fixing the real problems that made the game less fun. (Or at least less thematic, or ruined the risk-reward balance.)

Waves are for new content. Erratas are for fixing problems with existing content. I recommend you be patient. FFG pays attention to our feedback more than many give them credit for. I have faith the problem will be addressed in due time.

What's wrong with this fleet... MC80H and 7 GR-75's

compared to this fleet...MC80H, MC30, and 4 GR-75's?

When does that 8th activation matter? Only when the opposing fleet has 7 activations, and you want to go last.

How often does that happen? There are two parts to that answer, one is at the fleet-building level and the other is at the game/round level. How many fleets do you think you will face that have 7 activations where you REALLY need to go last? Maybe against an MC30 spam list that bid hard for first. Ya don't want to endure last-first from that. Ok. Do you feel you need it against all other match-ups? I'm guessing a lot of those activations you have will be empty...literally do nothing but shuffle a flotilla around.

What about at the game/round level? How many rounds in a game do you want to go last? Maybe one or two rounds? Once you and your opponent have closed, don't you usually want to hit first in the next rounds?

I'm not saying activation advantage is worthless; it clearly is extremely valuable. But there is just as clearly a point of diminishing returns. Is having 10 activations ANY better than have 8? Only if you think you'll face a list with 9 activations. Relay with flotillas means you can get some use out of activations that might otherwise be useless, but how many squadrons do you have? If it is SO valuable for you to move them last, then why not wait until the squadron phase?

I think what this wave does is tip the scales a little bit toward high quality activations rather than quantity of activations. Raddus runs roughshod over the idea that the number of placements is super important to gain an advantage at deployment. He is the MASTER of later deployment; practically no other fleet archetype allows you to have more knowledge of your opponent's dispositions before choosing where to deploy a ship (or two!). And how about Thrawn? Does giving an extra command dial to a flotilla much improve the quality of their activation? What does, say, an engineering command do to help a flotilla that's skirting the map edge? Concentrate fire? Navigation? I think they don't get much. But what about a ship that's in the thick of combat? I think they benefit quite a bit. The Thrawn commands will simply improve the quality of the activation of any combat ship.

This wave is about enhancing activation quality without having to increase the quantity of activations (Raddus, Thrawn, Strategic Advisor, Pryce, Bail, etc...). I think that's a step in the right direction.

58 minutes ago, elbmc1969 said:

Wave 7 includes a number of excellent upgrade cards that gives squadrons hard time. Big ship fleet players say, "Woo-hoo!"

That's great and all, but the objective shouldn't have been to Nerf squadrons overall. (Okay, so it's not exactly a Nerf two squadrons, it's a counter to squadrons. Whatever.)

But, the real problem with squadrons is relay. Well, Relay and flotillas! Yeah, the Cannot Get Your Ship Out blog and Green Knight's new blog both just addressed this issue. The wave 7 upgrade cards do nothing to address either of these problems. Why should Squadron heavy fleets that rely on traditional activation techniques be penalized? This just means that whenever relays and flotilla spam are addressed, the effects will be overpowered against Squadron fleets, instead of fixing the real problems that made the game less fun. (Or at least less thematic, or ruined the risk-reward balance.)

I think this presumes that flotilla spam and relay mechanics are a bug in FFGs vision for this game and not a feature. Going back to their earliest articles about flotillas, I specifically remember them asking, "how many flotillas will you take?"

I'm fairly certain they wanted flotillas to be spammy from the start, knowing that it would help specific lists and be a danger to others. Seeing some of the stuff they released in 7 solidifies that belief in my opinion. Bail, Pryce, SAs, all seem like a very light adjustment to make some of the more extreme issues with flotilla spam less relevant. As for relay, I really think they must have known from the start, wave 5 came after flotillas, after all. I think relay works exactly as intended.

I could be wrong but I don't expect anything heavy handed to happen to either of these....

15 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I think this presumes that flotilla spam and relay mechanics are a bug in FFGs vision for this game and not a feature. Going back to their earliest articles about flotillas, I specifically remember them asking, "how many flotillas will you take?"

I'm fairly certain they wanted flotillas to be spammy from the start, knowing that it would help specific lists and be a danger to others. Seeing some of the stuff they released in 7 solidifies that belief in my opinion. Bail, Pryce, SAs, all seem like a very light adjustment to make some of the more extreme issues with flotilla spam less relevant. As for relay, I really think they must have known from the start, wave 5 came after flotillas, after all. I think relay works exactly as intended.

I could be wrong but I don't expect anything heavy handed to happen to either of these....

Just because its working as intended doesnt mean its not an issue. Game designers often make mistakes. Thats why things like patches and errata exist. Because its extremely difficult to predict how upgrades will effect the game once they hit the wild.

Also I’m pretty sure you owe Blizzard money for even using the phrase “Working as intended”

38 minutes ago, Truthiness said:

Waves are for new content. Erratas are for fixing problems with existing content. I recommend you be patient. FFG pays attention to our feedback more than many give them credit for. I have faith the problem will be addressed in due time.

Yes although they do sort of also try to fix stuff with new content.

12 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

Just because its working as intended doesnt mean its not an issue. Game designers often make mistakes. Thats why things like patches and errata exist. Because its extremely difficult to predict how upgrades will effect the game once they hit the wild.

True enough, but as I've stated before I'm not sold it's a big enough issue to warrant an errata.

There may be some metas heavily afflicted enough to need it, but I've yet to even see a 5 flotilla fleet (not to mention a 7 flotilla fleet lol). I ran regionals out here, I don't think we had anything like that show up. We had a 4 flotilla fleet place in 7th but that was about it.

As I said earlier about Bail, Pryce and SAs, they feel like the light handed touch FFG should be using to improve these issues instead of the straight up nerf many have suggested we get.


I must be one of the only people alive that enjoys the way relay works. lol

For reference

5 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

True enough, but as I've stated before I'm not sold it's a big enough issue to warrant an errata.

There may be some metas heavily afflicted enough to need it, but I've yet to even see a 5 flotilla fleet (not to mention a 7 flotilla fleet lol). I ran regionals out here, I don't think we had anything like that show up. We had a 4 flotilla fleet place in 7th but that was about it.

As I said earlier about Bail, Pryce and SAs, they feel like the light handed touch FFG should be using to improve these issues instead of the straight up nerf many have suggested we get.


I must be one of the only people alive that enjoys the way relay works. lol

For reference

Your not the only one. Its just our voices tend to be drowned out by the screaming mess of people who hate relay lol

20 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

True enough, but as I've stated before I'm not sold it's a big enough issue to warrant an errata.

There may be some metas heavily afflicted enough to need it, but I've yet to even see a 5 flotilla fleet (not to mention a 7 flotilla fleet lol). I ran regionals out here, I don't think we had anything like that show up. We had a 4 flotilla fleet place in 7th but that was about it.

As I said earlier about Bail, Pryce and SAs, they feel like the light handed touch FFG should be using to improve these issues instead of the straight up nerf many have suggested we get.


I must be one of the only people alive that enjoys the way relay works. lol

For reference

I loved relay when it dropped. Then I learned how to really abuse it.

Edit: bah im reading that and it sounds condesecending. Not how I mean it.

20 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

Edit: bah im reading that and it sounds condesecending. Not how I mean it.

Really? I thought that was part of your lovability ?

I must say I do dislike how Tanky VCXs are.

Flotilla rage is so 2016, jeeze.

Next there'll be a thread on XI7s.

4 hours ago, elbmc1969 said:

Wave 7 includes a number of excellent upgrade cards that gives squadrons hard time. Big ship fleet players say, "Woo-hoo!"

That's great and all, but the objective shouldn't have been to Nerf squadrons overall. (Okay, so it's not exactly a Nerf two squadrons, it's a counter to squadrons. Whatever.)

But, the real problem with squadrons is relay. Well, Relay and flotillas! Yeah, the Cannot Get Your Ship Out blog and Green Knight's new blog both just addressed this issue. The wave 7 upgrade cards do nothing to address either of these problems. Why should Squadron heavy fleets that rely on traditional activation techniques be penalized? This just means that whenever relays and flotilla spam are addressed, the effects will be overpowered against Squadron fleets, instead of fixing the real problems that made the game less fun. (Or at least less thematic, or ruined the risk-reward balance.)

As the guy who wrote that specific article for CGYSO, I don't disagree that overall, flotilla spam and Relay present some problems (more specifically, as of wave 6, I was pretty confident that they did; wave 7 is a new but somewhat-similar world so I don't want to make any big arguments there just yet) and that there doesn't appear to be a hard Relay counter (Gar Saxon doesn't really count...) at the very least in wave 7. With Pryce and Bail out, the activation shenanigans game (which flotilla spam is in part relying on) is currently a big unknown and I don't feel confident saying much of anything until I get more experience and we see more data, especially as the meta matures in the coming months. In terms of the 1+X flotilla-spam fleets, Raddus seems to be something of a hard counter himself, as gut-punching the actual combat ship in those types of fleets can make them fall apart, and Raddus excels at that. We'll see if it's enough, but it's encouraging at the very least.

I'll also second @Truthiness that if there is a fix coming, it's likely an errata of some kind and not the kind of thing that could be done with upgrade cards without them being a silver-bullet "this specifically affects Relay/flotilla spam"-type of upgrade, which are very difficult to properly balance and can create very weird unsatisfying metas. Silver bullet fixes were how Netrunner balanced itself for some time and it was deeply unsatisfying, so I'm glad that errata is the preferred method of late. It's just FFG doesn't want to move too fast or pull the trigger before they're sure, so they tend to be more conservative than some of us would prefer, but it's in the long run likely better for the game.

So in short: I'm glad that you're concerned about the situation, I agree that elements of flotilla-spam and Relay (especially together) need to be thoughtfully considered, but I recommend patience for the time being. Both in terms of seeing how wave 7 plays out and seeing what FFG decides to do about the matter.

What if Flotillas were treated the same way squads are, if all other ships are eliminated it counts as being tabled? That would incentivise players to use the bigger more expensive ships and not just pad their fleet with flotilla activations hiding on the edges of the map abusing relay. I'm not on the balance team so I have no idea if that would be overkill.

7 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

What are the "real" issues in your opinion?

I see you say Relay and flotillas. Is this not an offshoot of high activation fleets with "wasteful" activations.

Pryce, Raddus and Bail address these issues by allowing players a method of choosing not to partake in the activation game.

Pryce lets you last/first without outactivating your opponent.

Raddus lets you avoid taking damage on the approach by the ships being in raddus space. Thus making the early game where cheap activations are so powerful less important.

Bail does something I am sure, i just havent figured out whay yet personally.

This is what I see as the new tools of wave 7 designed to combat "wasteful" activations. I'd like to hear the alternative interpretations people have after a couple of weeks.

I came second at regionals with Pryce because it she batters traditional fleets when built carefully.

To answer on Bail, have you watched Master of the Fleet latest batrep? The MC75 had Bail on it and was second player. On the turn the MC75 was about to get blown up by the ISD, it instead activated first and got an excellent double arc on the ISD and flew out of the big front arc.

It was actually kind of awesome.

7 minutes ago, Sybreed said:

To answer on Bail, have you watched Master of the Fleet latest batrep? The MC75 had Bail on it and was second player. On the turn the MC75 was about to get blown up by the ISD, it instead activated first and got an excellent double arc on the ISD and flew out of the big front arc.

It was actually kind of awesome.

They technically cheated. Blail cannot start on the raddus ship without sacrificing his functionality, as he is out of play when his timing states you declare a round.

7 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

They technically cheated. Blail cannot start on the raddus ship without sacrificing his functionality, as he is out of play when his timing states you declare a round.

hmmm, didn't they declare the round at the start of the match?

edit: So you're saying you can't put Blail at all on the raddus ship because you can't even set the round token at the start of the match?

Yep. I mean you can put him there but hes a hige waste of slot and points. Honestly i just think you dont take bail in a raddus fleet, but who knows theres probably an angle somewhere that could make it work