In my handful of games so far, we've just played kill points.

However I'd like to progress to the objectives and wondered what advice the Grand Moff's and Admirals of this group would give when choosing these?

Are there some more suited to a fleet with fewer ships, others more suited to fleets with small/medium sized ships etc

Thanks in advance for your help.

I know there are some that are better for squadron lists. I don't think there are any objectives that favor a certain amount of ships though. Superior positions might help if you're out deployed.

It really comes down to what your play style is. Do you like big heavy hitters or a bunch of small fries? Do you rush in or hang back? Use a lot of squadrons? Broadsides or head on?

3 hours ago, RedDogReb said:

In my handful of games so far, we've just played kill points.

However I'd like to progress to the objectives and wondered what advice the Grand Moff's and Admirals of this group would give when choosing these?

Are there some more suited to a fleet with fewer ships, others more suited to fleets with small/medium sized ships etc

Thanks in advance for your help.

If you have just been playing death match you are in for a treat. Armada becomes a completely different (and IMO better) game when adding in objectives.

However, because of the practically infinite levels of complexity in fleet building that has synergies with objective selection this question might be too broad for me to effectively give a non-university lecture length response to.

There are a small number of objectives you will see a lot because they are safe. These are good so you at least don't get yourself into a position where you have a terrible objective that your opponents can keep picking and forcing you into a situation where you almost guaranteed to lose. However, as you specialize your fleet and play other objectives you should start to see the synergies standing out.

Red Objective = Put a flotilla in your list and pick Most Wanted. This is the safest objective in the entire game. You give yourself a great opportunity to score by doing something you already want to do (blow up a ship) and make it easier to destroy the ship of your choice. The drawback is potentially giving up an extra flotillas worth of points, and if they shoot that flotilla instead of one of your other ships, they are welcome to have them!

Yellow Objective = Contested Outpost is a safe-ish Yellow. It lets you defend a sector of space as second player, which means that your opponent will be coming into the engagement area you choose. As second player, you can leverage that hopefully into a situation where you get the first effective shots as they drift into range. MSU does not want CO however, so this assumes you have a large ship or VSD that wants to anchor a position. Not quite as safe as MW, but generally effective.

Blue Objective = Solar Corona is a safe Blue but with a limited advantage gain potential. It gives you deployment advantage, and a bonus that generally is fairly easy to take advantage of and doesn't typically backfire too badly. However, it puts a lot on your deployment. Once ships are moving, if you didn't take advantage of the set up rules to get a great deployment for yourself the buff you get isn't enough to carry you through. Still, no points on the objective on the line so it comes down to a slug match.

Note the emphasis above is more on limiting the backfire potential rather than giving a true edge to the second player. There are also a couple of things that can pointed out when picking objectives that might not immediately appear.

1. Advanced Gunnery is overwritten by Gunnery Teams, so if you have Gunnery Teams on your ISD and pick AG as your objective you still CANNOT shoot at the same target twice even if it's your objective ship. This pretty much means that AG is in the wheelhouse of MC80's only as they are the only ship of it's kind that doesn't natively have a Weapons Team slot.

2. Fleet Ambush is a great way to allow someone to nuke you on turn 1 with first player advantage. It's just a poorly designed objective that gives players the impression that first player is ambushing the second player, not the other way around.

3. Superior Positions and Precision Strike are typically considered "Squad" objectives but can backfire HARD if the first player has an MSU as well. These are 2 I typically try to stay away from as the they are high risk/high reward and when they backfire usually they do so in a landslide.

4. Objectives that score points are *typically* but not always superior to ones that don't. Second player disadvantage sucks, you really want a way that you can make up the points you will no doubt lose because you are absorbing the alpha strike and in order to force an engagement that at least is on your turn.

17 hours ago, Rebelscum77 said:

I know there are some that are better for squadron lists. I don't think there are any objectives that favor a certain amount of ships though. Superior positions might help if you're out deployed.

It really comes down to what your play style is. Do you like big heavy hitters or a bunch of small fries? Do you rush in or hang back? Use a lot of squadrons? Broadsides or head on?

I've only played a handful of games, and my collection, such as it is, is rather small (1 x ISD, 2 x VSD, 2 x GSD, 1 x Raider, 1 x Gozanti, lots of tie fighters) so my experience of the game and the ships within it is rather limited.

That said, to date I feel I prefer playing the larger ships, with some squadron support, but will try small/medium ships more.

I don't mind doing either of hanging back or rushing in - Will depend on the weaponry on the ships I guess.

Cheers.

@BrobaFett thanks for the information. I'll start off with those.

Had my first game using objectives yesterday, and got pummelled, but it was against a very experienced, tournie player with a list suited to the objectives he had (obviously).

Still had an enjoyable game, rolled some dice, killed some stuff including an MC75 (The ship with the Profundity title?) with some very lucky dice rolls from a GSD at close range.

I did lose a GSD, VSD, Raider and 4 Ties plus Howlrunner. I limped off the table with another GSD and a Gozanti flotilla. In return I got the MC75, Shara Bey (eventually!) and some titled A wings I think. The objective points were horrendously in my oppos favour - Inexperience/ineptitude on my part!

http://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/p/objectives-index.html?m=1

Check out the objective articles on this blog. You'll probably find that some are well suited to the type of fleet you want to use.

If you've been playing deathmatches up to now you could agree with your opponent which objective to play, either before or after building your fleets. This can be a good way to experience how objectives change the game without having to first get to grips with all the strategic thinking behind choosing three for your fleet. The first time I progressed past the learn to play scenario we agreed to play Planetary Ion Cannon because it looked like fun. It was.