Change the raider defense token package to match its knife fighting ways. At least replace one of the evades with a redirect

On 6/8/2018 at 11:46 AM, Coldhands said:

-Concentrate fire: Rename to Coordinate weapons. Current adding an extra die is sometimes just a waste of dial, and you don't feel like you achieved anything with the extra die. I'd suggest adding 3 effects you can choose from when doing this command:
-effect 1: Concentrate fire: after rolling the attack pool, you may change one of your dice to another dice with the same colour with any face. This way your shot becomes meaningful. Yes, critical damage farming would end with this, but you still need to time this command, and you can only have 1 command dial a turn(except for Thrawn). Token unchanged.
-effect 2: Hold fire: your ship receives a hold fire token, and skips attack phase. Any time after an enemy ship moves, you may remove the hold fire token, and execute an attack phase for the ship. I'd introduce this for the pure reason, that a ship to ship combat is not done with a single salvo from one ship(normally) destroying the other one with that not being able to shoot even once. If you imagine two ISD-s wanting to shoot each other, getting closer and closer, those ships open fire simoultanously. You'll be shot at first, there is no change in that, but you won't waste a complete turn not shooting. I hope you understand the idea.
-effect 3. split fire: sometimes you want to shoot a ship at long range, but that is just half of your guns. What do the other gunners do? Well, if they are told to, they'll shoot a different target. OR, the enemy is about to go down, all you need is a small spit. What does your ISD do? ALL GUNS SHOOT THAT SHIP, THAT ONE HULL MUST GO!. Of course a 'good commander' would use its ship resources wisely(if he is busy commanding the guns). So, yeah the idea is as long as the hull zone you selected to fire has 'unused' dices, you may pick an enemy ship and shoot it. Collect all the dices the arc has, then you may select any number from the pool, and attack with them. Continue until you have no dice left from the pool. Obviously current restrictions stay, shooting a ship once per hull zone.

Effect 1) could just replace the current concentrate fire and be balanced from what I can tell. Might need to restrict activating upgrades with these dice tho.
Effect 2) I think this would need to come with a penalty of one dice of each color (to a minimum of 1). Logically ships are moving and shooting at the same time. I think that shots that we take in game represent firing-solutions-over-time for the ship as it makes its maneuver. Silencing your guns for any portion of that time is going to reduce your number of firing solutions.
Effect 3) This would make an awesome upgrade card. It would be pretty useless to smaller ships which is why I think it should be an upgrade card instead of a dial option but I really like it. I would have players roll their attack pool, then select to remove any non-blank results and save them for another target thats in range. This, in effect allows a judicious captain to avoid overkill.

On 6/8/2018 at 2:39 PM, Joe Censored said:

? A ship designated as the Flagship reduces its total number of command dials by 1 to a minimum of 1

I would love to see that for about 3 games... I mean, My lists would go crazy cause I run Triangles in almost all of them. Would be pretty dang unbalanced, especially with Relentless as an option. This might work as an objective card though.

21 hours ago, Darth Veggie said:

One change I really love to see is that squad activition via ships does not demand a command (this is an idea of @Green Knight) . I'd love to see the big ships, the VSD and the af2 as carriers. But in an age where specialized purpose of ships is cheap (quasar/Yavaris ) and/or necessary, the aspect of universal squad activation that was strong during earlier waves of the game has been lost.

YES! THIS! I would have them activate this way during the squadron phase according to normal squadron activation rules and maybe give extra range to squadrons activated with a dial (or maybe let them attack a ship/non escort despite defending squadrons). That way squadrons way outside of the range of a ship still have to chose between move and shoot but the flight controllers in your crew pit dont just twiddle their thumbs until the captain points at them.

5 hours ago, Nagasadow said:

Effect 1) could just replace the current concentrate fire and be balanced from what I can tell. Might need to restrict activating upgrades with these dice tho.
Effect 2) I think this would need to come with a penalty of one dice of each color (to a minimum of 1). Logically ships are moving and shooting at the same time. I think that shots that we take in game represent firing-solutions-over-time for the ship as it makes its maneuver. Silencing your guns for any portion of that time is going to reduce your number of firing solutions.
Effect 3) This would make an awesome upgrade card. It would be pretty useless to smaller ships which is why I think it should be an upgrade card instead of a dial option but I really like it. I would have players roll their attack pool, then select to remove any non-blank results and save them for another target thats in range. This, in effect allows a judicious captain to avoid overkill.

Makes sense to me what you're saying about effect 2. Depends really how we imagine the shots. If its continous fire, makes sense to roll less, since you spend less time shooting. But... in ep3 we see a scene where the clone ship uses some kind of ammunition. That case the guns are loaded and all you need is to shoot, then makes no sense to roll less die. But some sort of reload penalty should be there then.

• Longer movement tool (50% longer)
• Longer range ruler (50% longer)
• Simplification overhaul to the unnecessarily overly-complex squadron game. They could start by having a max of 1 ability on each squadron, and limiting aces in some way. Or, getting rid of 75% of the squad abilities. The game literally takes 2-3x as long when squadrons are used.

1 hour ago, Thraug said:

• Simplification overhaul to the unnecessarily overly-complex squadron game. They could start by having a max of 1 ability on each squadron, and limiting aces in some way. Or, getting rid of 75% of the squad abilities. The game literally takes 2-3x as long when squadrons are used.

That would take away everything that is fun for me about Armada. The complex interaction between squadron (and squadrons and ships) is what gives this game depth in my opinion. I dont want the tactical dept of the squadron game to be diminished by simplifying it. Its what drew me to this game in the first place. There's no other Fleet based spaceship game that also incorporates starfighter squadrons in a significant way.

Give more options to players who dont want to use squadrons instead but dont take away the unique options provided by the detailed squadron game.

22 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Well, seeing as Armada 1.0 isn't exactly thriving, 2.0 speculation is just for lolz.

It was doing OK at the Euros, Store champs are getting better, maybe Armada is a slow grower? 2.0 would be another way for FFG to milk the Armada cow like it has the X wing one.

1 hour ago, Phil B said:

It was doing OK at the Euros, Store champs are getting better, maybe Armada is a slow grower? 2.0 would be another way for FFG to milk the Armada cow like it has the X wing one.

That means they would have to acknowledge that the cow exists...

its a real Shrödingers ship situation

14 hours ago, Coldhands said:

Makes sense to me what you're saying about effect 2. Depends really how we imagine the shots. If its continous fire, makes sense to roll less, since you spend less time shooting. But... in ep3 we see a scene where the clone ship uses some kind of ammunition. That case the guns are loaded and all you need is to shoot, then makes no sense to roll less die. But some sort of reload penalty should be there then.

To my understanding only Black dice represent projectile weapons. Turbo-lasers and Ion canons are both energy weapons that dont have a specific "reloading" process. It would make sense to not have that restriction apply to black dice now that you bring it up.

Change obstruction rules, so ship size matters: Small - remove 1 die, medium - 2 dice, large, 3 dice. More importantly, change the rule so the removed dice are rolled against the obstructing ship, friend or foe. This way, small ships can’t easily shoot a small target hiding behind a large ship, allowing shield tactics to actually work.

46 minutes ago, Jukey said:

Change obstruction rules, so ship size matters: Small - remove 1 die, medium - 2 dice, large, 3 dice. More importantly, change the rule so the removed dice are rolled against the obstructing ship, friend or foe. This way, small ships can’t easily shoot a small target hiding behind a large ship, allowing shield tactics to actually work.

I agree that there is too little reward when putting a meat shield in front of something but just changing obstruction in that way would render three dimensional space battles onto a two dimensional plane.

1 hour ago, Nagasadow said:

I agree that there is too little reward when putting a meat shield in front of something but just changing obstruction in that way would render three dimensional space battles onto a two dimensional plane.

It would be to putzy for gameplay, but it’d be cool to use the three kinds of ship stands to determine height, and allow maneuvers to change your positioning as such.

as it stands we’re already pretty locked into 2 dimensional space with how the game functions.

On 6/9/2018 at 10:00 PM, Green Knight said:

Well, seeing as Armada 1.0 isn't exactly thriving, 2.0 speculation is just for lolz.

Armada would be thriving if FFG would't intentionally choking it to death.

4 minutes ago, Norell said:

Armada would be thriving if FFG would't intentionally choking it to death.

This saddens me. But only because its true. Maybe the lack of effort or I don't know. It would require like 10-15 minutes to write a small article/devblog, every 2-3 weeks. Am I asking too much? We just need the thought that they care. There shouldn't be an 'inside' fight between FFG-s own products, they should fight the other companies. Shiny big events, supporting local communities, news, make people think all their games thrive so more people will be lured in.

Buy out Armada, shall we? Sorry, just a desperate thought

4 hours ago, Jukey said:

It would be to putzy for gameplay, but it’d be cool to use the three kinds of ship stands to determine height, and allow maneuvers to change your positioning as such.

as it stands we’re already pretty locked into 2 dimensional space with how the game functions.

Yeah but its still capable of representing 3 dimensions like squadrons not obstructing, abilities that avoid collision and the very redirect defense token as examples.

UN nerf Rhymer, and add when friendly squadrons attack at range 1 to Slone. I want Imperial bomber wings to be effective again.

There's so much to discuss I don't know where to start. Not that I think it needs some changes per se, but they would certainly be welcome. One I haven't seen discussed so far is the set up if the Imperial Triangle ships arcs. I think they should all have an arrangement similar to the Arquitten, but with a super deadly narrow front where all batteries can focus, and stronger than current sides. The maneuvering system in my experience so massively favors broadside arcs that I feel this change would still emphasize the design of the destroyers, but also play better mechanically with the rest of the game pieces.

I would be for the app, point costing and all. I'm for a reevaluate of squadron activation and combat power and for how squads interact with ships. I Like the native counter on ships idea. I am against changing the current ship activation method but admit there needs to be some check in place for massive activation count differences. I just don't want an initiative system, really. I'm for a rebuild of the command system, but do want to keep it. There's a lot of things that then cascade off of that.

On 6/9/2018 at 1:13 PM, Marinealver said:

Well the depth in Armada might be adding time to make those 3 hour rounds even with a 6th turn limit.

[...]

Having to chose which ship moves first in the activation tacks on a ton of time.

[...]

Either way, I am jsut trying to think of ways to speed up a game of armada. I have identified activations as a point of constraint putting delays in the game. If you have other ideas to improve the flow o the game and speed up the turns then let me know.

In my experience the amount of time consumed by considering which ship to activate next is not the main reason for Armada's increased time demand. The intricacies of the squad game or checking all the possible maneuvers before notching the tool seem to me much more responsible for that. But that might be my outlier experiences.

On 6/9/2018 at 1:13 PM, Marinealver said:

[...]

Now a different system such as speed + command could work much better. An ISD at speed 3 will have 6 initiative, a CR-90 at speed 4 can have 5. That could be a thing used to determine movement order instead of having players take a couple minuets to figure out which ship they want to move first. Also adds more momentum to the ships as faster ships take some force to put on the brakes and slower ships have to step on it to get that ship moving.

[...]

This is not the way the Runewars system works. It is not maximum speed + command value, hence a fixed number. In such a case we would also have a decision free initiative system. A Runewars like system would be more like current speed + the initiative value of the command revealed (which would demand that each command gets an initative value)

Just now, Darth Veggie said:

In my experience the amount of time consumed by considering which ship to activate next is not the main reason for Armada's increased time demand. The intricacies of the squad game or checking all the possible maneuvers before notching the tool seem to me much more responsible for that. But that might be my outlier experiences.

This is not the way the Runewars system works. It is not maximum speed + command value, hence a fixed number. In such a case we would also have a decision free initiative system. A Runewars like system would be more like current speed + the initiative value of the command revealed (which would demand that each command gets an initative value)

That is what I was trying to say. It wouldn't be maximum speed but current speed + command. A VSD at Starting at speed 1 will go at Int 4 same as a CR-90 at Speed 3. Thing is it takes a Navigation command (dial/token) to change speed, but that doesn't change initiative until the next round. So if you so if VSD use nav to go from speed 2 to 1 at Int 5 it won't activate at int 4.

But yeah not the main reason but one of many reasons. The movement system in Armada is not as simple at X-wing in which you just put down the corresponding movement template and everything fits into place.

How about they let squadron commands the way it is, but remove the "cannot move and shot" in the squadron phase, and give Rogue another ability. Then, if you really want to activate your squadrons in the ship phase you can, and eveyone get to move and shoot in the squadron phase.

I like the idea of allowing move and shoot in squad phase but at a greatly reduced speed. Or forefeit shooting to make a full speed move. Let rogues keep full speed and attack to help their value return a bit.