12 minutes ago, Nostromoid said:

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. 

Have I got the game for you!

It's a little out of print, though...

1 hour ago, Snipafist said:

Have I got the game for you!

It's a little out of print, though...

Actually...all ships have just four 90 degree arcs ?

And you'd get in trouble if you managed to "double arc" someone in BFG. It's just almost impossible because of how the rules work (IIRC, you aim for one specific point; the center of the circle beneath the ship).

Back to OP statement: I do find broadside ships better than front arc ships, because they can navigate to get in place without putting themselves in danger.

Because of how ship movement works (the fact that you HAVE to move forward), which I love, front arc ships often need to put themselves in the opponent lines of fire to get in position to fire the following turn. Broadside ships can just position themselves, and let the opponent decide how to handle the situation...

... but I got around (a bit, I still think broadside is better), because:

1 - Running around with your broadside means your opponent decide how the whole fight will go down. He's the one with the initiative. You play an average player, he might very well make a mistake and you'll win big. But against a good player, the problem often gets back around to you. One game I had, the opposing fleet was Ackbar, with Assault Mk2 and corvettes, and I'm playing VSD 2 with DisCap and a few support ships. I delayed the fight for 4 turns. Luckily, my opponent couldn't force the fight sooner and as a result, couldn't kill my ships in just two turns. While I managed to destroy 100+ points of ships.

2 - Objectives can force you to move in a way that is suboptimal for broadsiders. Fire lanes, Blockade run, Solar Corona ... to name a few.

So, yeah, they are better. But the game have several ways of answering that issue.

Broadside ships have one very important upside: your ability to control the range of the engagement is MUCH better. If an ISD takes a shot and moves, it will almost always get closer to the target (and probably the rest of the enemy fleet) than before. You can control this somewhat by changing your speed but get closer you will. An HMC80 can take a shot at medium range, move and end up at long range (and possibly out of range for most of the enemy fleet). It also MIGHT get closer by choosing a steeper angle of approach but that's your choice rather than the inevitable result of the ship's design. Front-arc ships have far fewer options there.

Also, double broadsides are rare but incredibly satisfying when they happen. I can still recall the time when I managed to kill a barely damaged Liberty by double arcing it with Admonition. I was flying Ackbar back then, so I put enhanced armaments on the torpedo frigate to get the red die. As a result I got 2 attacks of 3 black, 2 blue and 3 red dice each. With APT and concentrate fire to boot. It still warms my heart when I recall my opponent's face. I'm a nasty, nasty person I guess.