FAQ drop before worlds confirmed

By Karneck, in Star Wars: Armada

7 hours ago, slasher956 said:

ah... ok I read your post as the sqn that uses the scatter can not deal damage on its next attack.

Your saying that scatter instead of cancelling all dice, just cancels any hits icons

Doesn't cancel any dice or icons, just reduces the damage from those icons to 0. This boosts the effectiveness of cards that do additional damage effects like Assault Proton Torpedoes and Heavy Ion Emplacements, but since you cannot resolve a critical effect vs squadrons they remain safe.

It makes flotillas more vulnerable to direct assault from certain ships while still keeping them functional from their old standpoint.

9 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Doesn't cancel any dice or icons, just reduces the damage from those icons to 0. This boosts the effectiveness of cards that do additional damage effects like Assault Proton Torpedoes and Heavy Ion Emplacements, but since you cannot resolve a critical effect vs squadrons they remain safe.

It makes flotillas more vulnerable to direct assault from certain ships while still keeping them functional from their old standpoint.

I don't think that making flotillas more vulnerable (i.e APT Demolisher would be able to autokill a flotilla by bump-APT damage-bump) is the right answer as it discourages people from bringing flotillas to provide fleet support while not helping much against mass flotilla lists (after all, the number of attacks is still limited and no critical effect would one-shot a flotilla). And I believe that the balanced approach would be to keep flotilla's place of a fleet support ship that flies nearby and provides some kind of support while discouraging flotillas spams that provide significant benefits (tabling insurance, cheap squadron activations, activation advantage) while safely staying away from combat.

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

You know what game doesn't have flotilla problems?

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/forum/534-star-wars-legion/

You know what game has endless terrain problems that won't/can't be resolved? Legion is fun, but i won't be playing it in tourneys with all the loosey-goosey terrain rules.

Edited by Thraug
Just now, Thraug said:

You know what game has endless terrain problems that will/can't be resolved? Legion is fun, but i won't be playing it in tourneys with all the loosey-goosey terrain rules.

Wait for the FAQ and RRG update. Alex is aware of the problems and is fixing it.

Tournaments is only half the fun anyway. League play is really flippin cool.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

Wait for the FAQ and RRG update. Alex is aware of the problems and is fixing it.

Tournaments is only half the fun anyway. League play is really flippin cool.

I'm hoping the terrain rules can be tweaked so that they aren't ambiguous and players arguing about LOS from POV and branches in the way, and antennas being seen, and balancing acts for vehicle/repulsor units, and ... and bleh. I doubt they can do address all of this, so I'm with you, it's friendly league play for me, with like-minded friends.

*retracted*

Lets look at this logically. There are two issues that flotillas purpetuate, though by themselves arent an issue as a ship.

Flotillas are at the extreme end of activation superiority.

Flotillas are at the extreme end of deployment superiority.

Both these issues arent in themselves intrinsic to flotillas so we need to be careful. Cr90s and raiders provided activation superiority long before flotillas appeared. Tie fighters gave deployment superiority long before flotillas appeared.

One of the suggestions is that flotillas dont count for tabling. It sounds nice as it weakens flotillas. However, what will actually happen? 1+X fleets become 1+RX and 1+HX fleets where R and H denote raider and hammerhead lifeboats. Does this make much difference to activation or deployment superiority? Not in my opinion so why change it?

Another option is to limit the number of flotillas. Again how will this affect the game? Apart from putting an inelegant fleet building rule in place it will replace every two flotillas with a hammerhead or raider in the extreme cases. Does this help with activation or deployment superiority issues? A little bit, but mainly just changes its form. Inelegant nonetheless.

One possible fix is to introduce Raddus and Profundity as a direct counters to deployment superiority. And introduce Pryce as a direct counter to activation superiority. What do these actually do to the game? No one knows as they are all in here whining rather than noticing the performance of both these cards in the latest regionals.

Edited by Ginkapo

Raddus + Bail = your silly deployments, activations and 1st player advantages mean nothing.

The main problem with flotillas is flotilla spam. So if this advantage could be fixed the problem will be solved. Raddus, Bail, Pryce and Sloane is the one way to address the problem. But we could go from other side and remove flotillas from the regular turn sequence. What if flotillas should activate after all other ships but before squadrons? This could solve the flotilla spam problem, though making game turn sequence more complex.

1 hour ago, Green Knight said:

Raddus + Bail = your silly deployments, activations and 1st player advantages mean nothing.

Other admirals are available for flavour.

2 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

One possible fix is to introduce Raddus and Profundity as a direct counters to deployment superiority. And introduce Pryce as a direct counter to activation superiority. What do these actually do to the game? No one knows as they are all in here whining rather than noticing the performance of both these cards in the latest regionals.

Gink has a very good point here. I faced @comatose this past Saturday as first player with 1 ship more than he had and a Strat Adv when he did not. Turn 3 started with his Armored MC75 facing down my Ordnance MC75 at close range with Dodonna's Pride and TRC Jaina's light both at medium. I've got him dead to rights, no?

No. @comatose had Bail on his Shark(do we have a good nickname for these yet?) Tuna? Anyhow, he timed and positions Bail perfectly on round 3 and my first place activation strong fleet couldn't do a thing about it. If you're having activation woes I'd definitely check Bail and Pryce out. Getting your heavy hitter into position and loosing that first barrage can be a game changer.

4 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

One possible fix is to introduce Raddus and Profundity as a direct counters to deployment superiority. And introduce Pryce as a direct counter to activation superiority. What do these actually do to the game? No one knows as they are all in here whining rather than noticing the performance of both these cards in the latest regionals.

Or they exacerbate flotilla issues if you take your suggestion with a lot of flotillas...

Really, with wave 7 I get the sense they were prepared with the faq but held it back just in case. The wave seven cards help the large ships to overcome a flotilla nerf to keep beibg competitive.

Edited by ImpStarDeuces

Just a thought on Scatter. What if the Scatter Defense Token has limited effectiveness against Ship Weaponry? For Squadron attacks, no change. If a ship is attacking either a squadron or another ship with a Scatter Defense Token, you can spend the Scatter token to cancel 2 dice.

33 minutes ago, Fraggle_Rock said:

Just a thought on Scatter. What if the Scatter Defense Token has limited effectiveness against Ship Weaponry? For Squadron attacks, no change. If a ship is attacking either a squadron or another ship with a Scatter Defense Token, you can spend the Scatter token to cancel 2 dice.

you can get up to 5/6 dice when attacking a squadron from a ship (base 1(or 2) + agent kallus/General Draven + con fire + external Racks), sooooo that scatter change would still be super effective vs squadrons.

So I think flotillas are fine just the way they are...

46 minutes ago, ndogg229 said:

So I think flotillas are fine just the way they are...

Your not the only one.

Anyone know when this will happen? Need to get prepared for store championships here next summer.

The only thing I don't really like about flotilla scatter is that one anti ship sqn in small numbers don't do a lot to them.

When in movie / actual setting this is not the case.

Many a time I have ended up with a sqn mid to high teens cost only being able to shoot / chase a flotilla and it can't do anything as it just scatters.

The issue is the spam... I don't see many simple ways to fix this outside the tabling option or an artificial limit (either a set number or ratio)... having individual new upgrades be required to combat a very common opponent is one of the issues that keeps plaguing X-wing and causing them to nerf, re-nerf, and re-errata multiple ships... I don't think comparing using 39 or 44 pt ships for AA or deployment padding really compares to 18 or 23 point ships.

I said it before, and its been mentioned already in the this thread, the easiest way to cut down on spamming of flotillas is force them to activate together. The only issue is you need to have a couple of caveats about what commands they can do / how multiples of the same command work.

If there is a flotilla nerf coming down in the newest FAQ (and I suspect that flotillas and/or Relay are getting hit with the nerf bat, msyelf), FFG already knows what they're going to do. Playtesters need to work on proposed ideas some time in advance to see what the consequences of various changes would be, just like they need to try out different versions of new stuff for months before it's released as a new wave. We don't know the specifics just yet, but FFG would have already pulled the trigger on if and what, so any proposals in this thread for or against such a nerf or what form it should take, provided they're written to influence FFG's decision and not just for conjecture, are wasted typing. Or, in short:

trpCvmT.jpg

Edited by Snipafist

I am happy with the change, it is by far the best possible change they could have made (out of all the many suggestions.) Flotilla's are a huge issue, and it's always bugged me that I can smash my opponents MC/ISD but lose the game because some poxy flying boxes with useless weapon systems are flying all about the edge of the play area....not very exciting or even very realistic ( And I mean that in SW terms, the only way we see these things survive near capital ships is by fleeing to lightspeed as fast as possible.)

So less flotillas overall? means the people wanting to run last/first won't need as many activations to get there after this then, no?

Edited by TheEasternKing
39 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

If there is a flotilla nerf coming down in the newest FAQ (and I suspect that flotillas and/or Relay are getting hit with the nerf bat, msyelf), FFG already knows what they're going to do. Playtesters need to work on proposed ideas some time in advance to see what the consequences of various changes would be, just like they need to try out different versions of new stuff for months before it's released as a new wave. We don't know the specifics just yet, but FFG would have already pulled the trigger on if and what, so any proposals in this thread for or against such a nerf or what form it should take, provided they're written to influence FFG's decision and not just for conjecture, are wasted typing. Or, in short:

trpCvmT.jpg

Props for the Ozymandias reference!
(side note, I thought the casting for him in the film was way off the mark. He's supposed to be the perfect human specimen but he just comes across as scrawny and whiny)

32 minutes ago, TheEasternKing said:

I am happy with the change, it is by far the best possible change they could have made (out of all the many suggestions.) Flotilla's are a huge issue, and it's always bugged me that I can smash my opponents MC/ISD but lose the game because some poxy flying boxes with useless weapon systems are flying all about the edge of the play area....not very exciting or even very realistic ( And I mean that in SW terms, the only way we see these things survive near capital ships is by fleeing to lightspeed as fast as possible.)

So less flotillas overall? means the people wanting to run last/first won't need as many activations to get there after this then, no?

Wait, you're speaking past tense. Have they dropped the FAQ somewhere already or are you making assumptions?

Edited by ManInTheBox

I think it's the combination of many flotillas and relay which really irks. The flotillas fly about harmlessly and yet carry a deadly activation for squads which means the relative risk to reward is fairly inconsequential. I think replacing flotillas with Hammerheads - while it still has the same impact for padding activations - doesn't come close to bringing the same lethality with relayed squadrons.

With this in mind, if there's a nerf to relay, this will by default also nerf those 1+ lists.

I've been pondering for a bit on this, and I think an old suggestion is both the most effective and least disruptive.

Relaying squadrons must be in range of the ship doing the Squadron command. It elegantly nerfs both without ruining either one. It allows relay to still keep squadron pushers out of direct fire but also within potential striking distance. It feels like the Rhymer change where instead of being an obvious include it now forms part of a dedicated squadron strategy. It is also a thematic win in my mind.