2 hours ago, Church14 said:I struggle to understand how players think that a 500-600 point standard is a good idea but squadrons need to be reduced in order to save time.
You could place other restrictions in points usage , squads don't necessarily have to be one third points, and you can have a limit on activations
As long as you have limits on squadrons I think it should be fine to increase to 500 or 600.
I have 3 ISDs and would love to play with all of them with some leg room.
Also I would love if there were limits on special squadrons, for example each game having 2 or max 3 special squadrons with rest of the squads regular ones.
I played a few games where we just played with regular ones, there were more squads but it was a smoother gameplay as we have to deal with less special abilities. On the other hand, ships were fully packed and that was really fun.
On 8/3/2018 at 7:30 PM, Thraug said:500 or 600 yes, but a reduction in max squads from 33% to 20%.
That would be less than what one could field now. I would do 30% at 500, or 25% at 600 - keeping it at a nice 150 points for squads. If you were to max squads at those point caps, you'll have 350 and 450 left for ships, or comparatively, right now you can have 266 left over after max squads.
Alternatively - their could be some rules change I've seen suggested here, to help things out - 1) only allowed to take the max # of squads as squad values your ships have, 2) 10-squads max each fleet (keeping in mind total point costs)
No, please don't increase anything!
13 hours ago, Church14 said:I struggle to understand how players think that a 500-600 point standard is a good idea but squadrons need to be reduced in order to save time.
I do not think that squadrons need to be reduced, but a point increase would be nice so that we could actually fly fleets. Right now at least to me it just feels like we are playing a patrol game, but maybe that is just me.
On 8/4/2018 at 2:22 PM, Church14 said:I struggle to understand how players think that a 500-600 point standard is a good idea but squadrons need to be reduced in order to save time.
1 hour ago, Thraug said:
- Have you played a 500 or 600 point game with a 33% squadron limit? I have, and with both sides with max squads. It's a management nightmare, so painful we both decided to never play it again. For tourneys it would be very time consuming. We discussed the ultimate pain of Empire max TIE fighters vs Rebel max Z-95s! For 600 points that's 24 TIEs vs 28 Z-95s. 50+ squads, Ow!
- Have you played a 500 or 600 points with no squads? I have and it took about 1/3rd as long as the above max squad game. A couple of the games were quicker than our average 400 point games.
Yes and yes. If a 500 point, max squad game is a management nightmare for you, I would suggest playing squads more at 400 points or less. I don’t experience any increase in trouble managing another 33 points in squads.
For your second question: depends on the players. When I play, it is usually high squads. My entire carrier+squadrons activation tend to take less time than most players would activating 2 ships (equivalent points value). Because I don’t hesitate much and have a plan.
Players take long with squads because they are uncertain and get action paralysis. If they would just think ahead a bit more they can speed up play a lot
On a side note, I don’t want 500 point games because the game was never balanced for 500 and I see issues with it every time I play at that game size.
No. I've played and won a tournament at 500 points. Most fleets at 400 are efficient and deadly, and increasing the points makes allows them to take increase their synergy. At higher point values, it's easier to take multiple large ships, which means it's easier to take down MSU. Squads are also more powerful, even if you leave it at 134 points, because you can take a dedicated carrier AND fit Demo or Admo, plus any of the squadron officers.
I don't know where I stand on this. For new players (which hopefully the SSD will serve to attract some), 400pts is a good place. You can pick up a core set, a flagship (ISD/MCxx) and probably either some more squads or a smaller ship and easily get quite a bit of play out of that, especially on the rebel side of things. But increasing it to 500 points will likely require two additional purchases over 400pts, making it difficult to get into local tourneys.
On the other hand, 400pts doesn't really feel like a fleet. Increasing to 500pts would hardly change the time requirements, but would drastically open up fleet building options.
In either case, I would absolutely support reducing squadrons to either 1/5 or 1/4 of total points. I didn't get into Armada to swarm TIE fighters and Defenders everywhere. I play X Wing for that. I got into Armada to fly big hunkin' capital ships and strike fear into my opponents with their dominating presence. I just wish that it was even slightly competitive to do so.
3 hours ago, Church14 said:Yes and yes. If a 500 point, max squad game is a management nightmare for you, I would suggest playing squads more at 400 points or less. I don’t experience any increase in trouble managing another 33 points in squads.
For your second question: depends on the players. When I play, it is usually high squads. My entire carrier+squadrons activation tend to take less time than most players would activating 2 ships (equivalent points value). Because I don’t hesitate much and have a plan.
Players take long with squads because they are uncertain and get action paralysis. If they would just think ahead a bit more they can speed up play a lot
On a side note, I don’t want 500 point games because the game was never balanced for 500 and I see issues with it every time I play at that game size.
I'm glad you can manage a lot of squads quickly. From my experience, and I've played 100s of games with and against carrier builds, and more importantly from watching the major events final 4 where both sides have squads, live and on twitch, players/matches take forever and many of these games don't even finish.
Just watch the last Worlds finals. I know and have played against one of these players (a few times) and he is extremely knowledgeable/skillful/versed in carrier play and the game still took a long time, and each squad activation took a long time. This is due to the large number of variables with squadron interactions, and how much a match can be won or lost with one squad movement. One!
~400 points of squads in 600 vs 600 point battles will crush any hope of most squad vs squad tournament matches being completed. They barely get completed now with ~268 points of squads. Not buying it man, not buying it.
4 hours ago, Thraug said:
- Have you played a 500 or 600 point game with a 33% squadron limit? I have, and with both sides with max squads. It's a management nightmare, so painful we both decided to never play it again. For tourneys it would be very time consuming. We discussed the ultimate pain of Empire max TIE fighters vs Rebel max Z-95s! For 600 points that's 24 TIEs vs 28 Z-95s. 50+ squads, Ow!
- Have you played a 500 or 600 points with no squads? I have and it took about 1/3rd as long as the above max squad game. A couple of the games were quicker than our average 400 point games.
We do local matches up to 800 points with squads capped at 150, or no squads, they tend to be fun games. However, those games almost always tend to be medium and large bases +/- floatillas and minor support smalls, we never have MSUs play at the 800 point cap, which I believe would still be a logistical nightmare.
3 hours ago, Church14 said:On a side note, I don’t want 500 point games because the game was never balanced for 500 and I see issues with it every time I play at that gam e size.
Originally the game was at 200pts, then 300, and now 400pts. Raising it again will not make any ships better or worse, but more combinations will be possible which is what a good chunk of this community wants.
1 hour ago, Piratical Moustache said:Originally the game was at 200pts, then 300, and now 400pts. Raising it again will not make any ships better or worse, but more combinations will be possible which is what a good chunk of this community wants.
That is wrong. Every part. Cue that Luke Skywalker meme.
The game was designed from the onset to be balanced at 400 and they said so during a press release / article before it came out. It was going to be 400 after wave 2.
It was 180, 300, then 400. Never 200 in standard play.
Ships absolutely get more or less powerful depending on available points. Go play at 180 with a Vader, GT, ISD 2.
I see this in almost every table top game. People want to inflate point totals because the dream fleet/army/horde/lance/squad is always almost 50 points (or its equivalent) away. Then points slowly grow in informal events... until everyone sees the unintended consequences of altering the core game state and we typically end up back at the intended points total or lower (because people like manageable tournament times).
So no. 400 is more than enough. It makes for hard choices, which is a sign of good play balance. If that makes the $200 special ship hard to use in not special games, that’s a good thing for game health, not a bad thing.
22 hours ago, Church14 said:That is wrong. Every part. Cue that Luke Skywalker meme.
The game was designed from the onset to be balanced at 400 and they said so during a press release / article before it came out. It was going to be 400 after wave 2.
It was 180, 300, then 400. Never 200 in standard play.
Ships absolutely get more or less powerful depending on available points. Go play at 180 with a Vader, GT, ISD 2.
Ok I was wrong about the point increases throughout the Waves, but I stand by my comments on ship balance being maintained with an increase. It's not like 500pts will mean a 1-2 ship broken meta, people like myself just want more fleet possibilities.
Plus the meme you are referring to is Jake Skywalker, Mark Hamill said so himself it wasn't Luke.
400 is fine. Forces you to make HARD choices.
450 or 500 would probably be Ok too, but what's the point. Nothing would change.
2 hours ago, Piratical Moustache said:Plus the meme you are referring to is Jake Skywalker, Mark Hamill said so himself it wasn't Luke.
I had forgotten about that. Just one more reason to love Hamill.
The meme in question
Mark Hamill story about playing "Jake Skywalker"
http://comicbook.com/starwars/2017/12/21/star-wars-the-last-jedi-mark-hamill-luke-skywalker/
Does tournament play and standard friendly play have to be the same points necessarily? In warmahordes, there were/(are?) different levels of play dependent on points values. I could support a 300/400/500 system.
Even if they don't raise the cap for whatever reason, I'm sure they have tossed around the idea of going to a digital points system like X-Wing 2.0 - after the SSD arrives that might be a good time to announce plans for such a re-balance.
Edited by eliteone10 minutes ago, axe238 said:Does tournament play and standard friendly play have to be the same points necessarily? In warmahordes, there were/(are?) different levels of play dependent on points values. I could support a 300/400/500 system.
No. Do whatever you want on casual night. No one can stop you!
Maybe I should elaborate. I could see 300 for intro play, 400 for tournament, and 500 for standard play. Having it in print would mean not having to make arrangements for a non400 game ahead of time. Also, trying to accommodate different viewpoints regarding points limits ?
I wonder why no one thinks of going 450. It creates the perfect 150 points allowed for squads, gives you enough room to fill more diverse fleets without making the game take too long.
5 hours ago, Sybreed said:I wonder why no one thinks of going 450. It creates the perfect 150 points allowed for squads, gives you enough room to fill more diverse fleets without making the game take too long.
Because it seems a lot of people who want changes to points also seem to want to change the squadron allocation at the same time, so the status quo on one or the other doesn’t get discussed.
8 hours ago, Drasnighta said:Because it seems a lot of people who want changes to points also seem to want to change the squadron allocation at the same time, so the status quo on one or the other doesn’t get discussed.
Hmm' really? *checks posts above* yep. Uh. I don't. Up points to 800, increase squadrons as normal. I'm cool with that....lol.
1 hour ago, Darth Lupine said:Hmm' really? *checks posts above* yep. Uh. I don't. Up points to 800, increase squadrons as normal. I'm cool with that....lol.
Do you really want to play tourney games with 70 squadrons on the table (Jan, Blount 33 Z-95s x 2)!? That really would be a devastating squad buildout!