It seems easier to 'circle the drain' and maintain arcs than to keep something in your frontal arc.

Eh, maybe, but it's way easier to double arc with frontal and there are few things more terrifying than an extended hangers isd with a token dropping 6 tie bombers and then following up with an avenger, xi7 double arc

I find it easier to have forward focused arcs. "Point and Shoot", and easier to navigate multiple forward firing ships.

Missions can affect this a lot. Front-arc ships are better at sitting on Contested Outpost than broadsiders typically, for example.

Broadside arcs are easier to maintain on target but frontal arcs are easier to aim.

I like to use a combination of ships with different arcs when possible. As ISD and an Arquitens or two can be quite fun. Your opponent is gonna be focused on the ISD making it much easier to keep the Arquitens flanking from distance on their sides. If they go for the Arquitens instead then they are gonna get blasted by the ISD.

Both can be fun and have their uses.

Both have their benefits, I personally prefer broadsides mainly due to the very rare, but insanely satisfying act of having an ackbar mc80 in between two enemy ships and rolling way too many red dice.

All of the above. Play style also affects this as well. It is also important to note, that while it is generally easier to get ships into your side arc, it is also easier to stop a side arc ship by dropping a small into it's front arc. It is hilarious to do to Ackbar MC80s, as you effectively neuter Ackbar's bonus.

All these question threads.

Have you collected enough data to make Armada Clone Wars yet? ?

I prefer a little bit of both.

I think broadsides ships have a much easier time keeping their full armament on target, especially when using red dice, hence why broadsides usually shoot less dice than front arcs. The way movement works in Armada helps broadside ships the most, but front arc ships have devastating turns as well.

Quote

Do broadside ships have an advantage over frontal arc ships?

Depends on which way they're facing.

Well, if we look at the Arquitens as an examble of a broadside, the answer is... sorta? We have 3-5 red dice out one side, or 3-4r+1b dice out a side if you take quads (which, could be done). So a small armament out one side that can target one ship, due to its lack of gun teams. Rarely, but when it does happen it feels great, you can get two broadsides off. Now, ive managed to park an arquitens so I got both the front and rear of an ISD before, and that felt great.

So total, you can get 6-10 dice downrange to a target, and continue to have that range all the way to close range and not lose any of your armament. The down side is, reds are mediocre in relibility at best. There are ways to mitigate this, which people like to remind me (I am a chaos player. I love the luck of the dice. It makes people wary) however then people know of these ways and how to counter.

In the end, it boils down to how you want to use them. Are they the hammer to the anvil, flying around and flanking enemies as they fly toward your larger vessels, or are they the anvil, slowing moving to hold an objective and control the area?

Although I fly broadsiders 90% of the time, I feel that front arc ships have an advantage. Getting a great firing position in Armada is 80% of the combat. Front arc ships have an raiser time of that.

Front arc ships, by flying at their targets, get into black dice range sooner against the ships they are trying to destroy. Often you're relying on speed/maneuver shenanigans to try keeping as much distance from your target as possible while trying to keep the target in your forward arc. In a way, forward-arc ships are self-destructive because they make their opponent's firepower stronger after movement and risk ramming damage.

Side-arc ships can maintain their distance after firing, so they can kite away from charging enemy ships and batter them down with repeated salvoes at the same range. Ships that are fast enough to dodge ships trying to head them off (like the ARQ), or have great firepower to answer anything trying to cut them off (like the MC75) can respond to those tries. Plus, broadsiders that can bank commands can avoid attempts to head them off- and anyone plotting it out well enough can gauge how far 6-turns of speed 1 manuverers there are to camp a corner and flood the field with fire.

11 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Front arc ships, by flying at their targets, get into black dice range sooner against the ships they are trying to destroy. Often you're relying on speed/maneuver shenanigans to try keeping as much distance from your target as possible while trying to keep the target in your forward arc. In a way, forward-arc ships are self-destructive because they make their opponent's firepower stronger after movement and risk ramming damage.

Side-arc ships can maintain their distance after firing, so they can kite away from charging enemy ships and batter them down with repeated salvoes at the same range. Ships that are fast enough to dodge ships trying to head them off (like the ARQ), or have great firepower to answer anything trying to cut them off (like the MC75) can respond to those tries. Plus, broadsiders that can bank commands can avoid attempts to head them off- and anyone plotting it out well enough can gauge how far 6-turns of speed 1 manuverers there are to camp a corner and flood the field with fire.

I think front arc ships tend to be more fun than broadside ships, because who doesn't love an ISD-K going at speed 3 screaming "WITNESS ME!"?

11 hours ago, Piratical Moustache said:

ISD-K going at speed 3 screaming

Hehehe I did that once, I was too eager to get close to my enemy, I forgot that I had no NAV command at bay , my opponent was quite confused to see my ISD going off the board ?

It's irrelevant.

I want to fly ISDs and that's that

4 hours ago, Green Knight said:

It's irrelevant.

I want to fly ISDs and that's that

QFT

Front-Firing Advantages:

• Easier to double-arc
• You can clear the path ahead of you, denying the "cap the T" strategy
• 1-2 dice stronger in their single strong arc, making Gunnery Teams get the most value

Side-Firing Advantages:

• Easier to kite enemies to deny return fire
• Easier to overlap fire from multiple ships (conga line)
• Have two strong arcs, even though you wouldn't often want to position yourself directly between two enemies

On balance, I give a slight edge to the broadsiders. Of course, that's ignoring the specifics of ship-versus-ship comparisons and just focusing on where they shoot from.

On 8/31/2018 at 5:27 PM, Piratical Moustache said:

I think front arc ships tend to be more fun than broadside ships, because who doesn't love an ISD-K going at speed 3 screaming "WITNESS ME!"?

Oh yeah, that's true... but my 3x ARQ battery has burned down plenty of large ships screaming to get into close range, between Vader and Intel Officers. Especially when they have to choose between dodging rocks or eating a crit to get into range.

It's not glamorous I know... but neither is eating 6+ starfighter attacks on a fresh ISD and losing it within a single turn. That lesson taught me that the way to win (or even... the way to your list actually kills anything) is not always the way you want to play.

Yes. That is my answer.

Yes, it's 11% more effective.

I'll show my work:

(EnhancedArms (10 pts) - spinalArms(9pts) )/ spinalArms (9pts)) x 100 = 11%

If broadsides were not more effective the cost of getting an extra die would cost more for the front. Probably also why rapid reload costs more than it should.

To all those who are saying it’s easier to double arc with Front arcs than Side arcs... care to expound on that? Because, I mean, when you really think about it, if you’re double arcing with your front arc then it means they are in your front and side arcs, and if a broadsider is trying to double arc, shouldn’t it be just as easy for them to get they’re front and side arcs lined up on the same target?

I mean, I'm no rocket surgeon, but.... yeah. Am I missing something here?

I think the explanation is that in practice, broadsiders don’t try to set up double arcs as often, usually because they’re using Ackbar or their positioning is more important than the double arc (usually with broadsiders you don’t want to turn in towards your opponent, you want to circle and kite from a distance).

As for the OP’s question, one area where broadsiders have an advantage is in dodging the enemy’s front arc. Take your typical matchup between an ISD and an MC-80 (not the Liberty). The ISD drives in hard straight towards the MC, while the MC tries to circle. As the ISD gets closer it gets easier for the MC to use a nav dial and/or Engine Techs to blast ahead and turn in hard to dodge the ISD’s front arc completely.

On 9/3/2018 at 7:50 AM, Herowannabe said:

To all those who are saying it’s easier to double arc with Front arcs than Side arcs... care to expound on that? Because, I mean, when you really think about it, if you’re double arcing with your front arc then it means they are in your front and side arcs, and if a broadsider is trying to double arc, shouldn’t it be just as easy for them to get they’re front and side arcs lined up on the same target?

I mean, I'm no rocket surgeon, but.... yeah. Am I missing something here?

I think the explanation is that in practice, broadsiders don’t try to set up double arcs as often, usually because they’re using Ackbar or their positioning is more important than the double arc (usually with broadsiders you don’t want to turn in towards your opponent, you want to circle and kite from a distance).

As for the OP’s question, one area where broadsiders have an advantage is in dodging the enemy’s front arc. Take your typical matchup between an ISD and an MC-80 (not the Liberty). The ISD drives in hard straight towards the MC, while the MC tries to circle. As the ISD gets closer it gets easier for the MC to use a nav dial and/or Engine Techs to blast ahead and turn in hard to dodge the ISD’s front arc completely.

Re: Why is it easier to double-arc (front arc and side arc) with a front-shooter than with a side-shooter? If one shoots from the front and one shoots from the side, isn't it just as easy to line up an enemy ship between these two arcs?

IMO, it's because all ships fly straight forward, and only straight forward. Nobody gets to strafe from side to side (except for those **** Rebel ships who get to do barrel rolls). Side-shooters could get double-arcs if they flew toward their targets, but in practice they don't want to do that because their target probably has friends nearby and side-shooters don't want to get overwhelmed with too many attacks coming in that one direction. They would need to give up their best strategy, which is to kite enemies along by exploiting the conga line formation.

Sidenote: I kinda hate the mechanic of double-arcs, as it's very unthematic. Ships in Star Wars aren't supposed to have arbitrary killzones at 10 and 2 o'clock. The deadliest place on a Star Destroyer should be dead-front-center. If Armada 2.0 happened, I'd really want ships to have a flexible number of arcs and a flexible number of attacks per round, with powerful single arcs re-represented as sections of the ship hull with multiple overlapping arcs.