Planetary ion cannon is basically 3 free attacks....

4 minutes ago, Norell said:

Planetary ion cannon is basically 3 free attacks....

yeah but it can be avoided with Strategic just a lot harder

To be honest, I fear that objectives are a major problem of the Sector Fleet rules. Yesterday I chatted a bit with @Green Knight about that. As FFG writes in the rules, first player advantage is marginalized the bigger the fleets become. However, this is not true of all objectives. Some of them scale really well. Here is a list of the well scaling ones:

RED:

• Close-Range Intel Scan
• Opening Salvo
• Precision Strike
• Targeting Beacons

YELLOW:

• Fighter Ambush (but see below)

BLUE:

• Solar Corona (but see below)
• Superior Positions (but see below)

And there is some more to say:

• Fighter Ambush is already not great, if your opponent also plays maximum squads
• Solar Corona and Superior Positions also start to lose efficiency as soon as more of the deployment zone is needed.
• Blockade Run and Fleet Ambush do also scale in principle quite well, but soon the question arises how to play/deploy with the limited space.

The problem now is that either first player advantage is less important. In that case the well scaling objectives are too strong. Or it does not lose much of its efficiency, but then all not so well scaling objectives are immensly underpowered (which would be the bigger problem considering the limited amount of well scaling objectives in the categories yellow and blue). Either way, there is a problem.

Minefields!

Minefields and Planetary Ion Cannon do static damage - so they won't scale up with more points. You're still only rolling so many dice; great, you've taken out a ship with them but there are 10 more to go. You want objectives that apply to everyone, or otherwise scale.

For Assault Objectives:

• Blockade Run could be fun,
• Close-Range Intel Scan should scale really well (so many attacks, so many accuracies, so many free points!),
• Opening Salvo scales well the more ships you have,
• Targeting Beacons, you've got a pretty good chance of something being in range of them to shoot, and every ship can benefit from them.
• Honourable mention to Most Wanted against an SSD; a bonus 220+ points. I assume no one with an SSD will ever pick that.]

I don't like Precision Strike that much as it doesn't give the Second Player much of an advantage other than at the list-building stage. For 400 points it works well because most people won't have bombers+APTs lists, but at higher points I suspect there will be more well-rounded fleets. Advanced Gunnery might be interesting on a Home One-MC80 list, on the assumption that anything that wants Gunnery Teams will have them anyway. But still only affects one ship so not that great.

For Defense Objectives:

• Contested Outpost; so many ships, just park them on the station? Down side is that the points don't scale - and 120 points isn't much in a 1000-point game.
• Fighter Ambush might work if you're going max squadrons, but risky as your opponent will probably have a lot of squadrons as well. Not sure having the squadrons further forward is that big of an advantage.
• Jamming Barrier could be interesting - a way to stop those ISDs from smashing your ships straight away,
• Honourable mention to Fleet Ambush. Oh my.

Fire Lanes might work, but is still a fixed number of points. Plus there's always the risk a couple of ISDs pass through and claim the tokens, or something with strategic moves it under a ship of yours that's blocked.

For Navigation Objectives:

• Dangerous Territory, more for the freedom to fly over obstacles than the bonus points,
• Sensor Net if you have enough strategic+FCTs and are comfortable with it; so many points possible,
• Solar Corona; boring, but fairly safe. Sure it will probably hurt you at some point, but hopefully will hurt them more, and you get the deployment advantage,
• Honourable mention to Navigational Hazards, if you feel daring.

Superior Positions could be interesting, but with more ships around I think it will be much harder to get behind enemies.

1 hour ago, Grumbleduke said:

Superior Positions could be interesting, but with more ships around I think it will be much harder to get behind enemies.

You're spot on with everything you've said. Like, yea Minefields will stuff more easily, but who cares? It's going to be like 4 free damage spread across like 95 Hull points and who knows how many shields... big deal, might as well not even have an objective in play at that point.

Though the point about Superior Positions I think is not about getting behind enemies for bonus points, but is instead about deploying 1,200 points of fleet after the opponent deploys 1,200 points of fleet.

I was surprised that missions like Capture the VIP, Contested Outpost, Salvage Run and Intel Sweep didn't receive say a 50% points increment for use in these large scenarios.

The MOV chart didn't scale by as much as I thought it might either so I suppose it balances somewhat. Yes you have more MOV to try to achieve to get better wins but you also have more fleet to achieve it with.

Station Assault could be a good one? It would direct a split in the forces if they are placed far enough apart.

1 hour ago, Ling27 said:

Station Assault could be a good one? It would direct a split in the forces if they are placed far enough apart.

Why split your forces? Ignore one base, especially if it is defended a little, and just roll in on the other. An 800 or 1200 point fleet shouldn't have any trouble killing one base (unused flank fire arcs, Gunnery Teams out the front etc.) and then you have no enemy benefit for the rest of the scenario and 40 bonus points each.

I don't think there would really be a meaningful split in forces anyway. 1200 pts is three full-sized fleets. Even if you TRIED to concentrate that many ships, they would have to be spread out enough to allow space for maneuver. You would probably have guns on both stations just by maintaining a reasonable spacing. How many people have played the standard objectives with a 1200-pt fleet on a 6x3 table? I haven't, but if a Triple Cymoon list has trouble putting all three front arcs on the same target area without going bumpety-bump, how much more trouble would six ISD's have when you add in some support ships.

I think the notion of what it means to "concentrate" and "split" may need adjustment.

would anyone be crazy enough to fly say 3 SSD loaded up and max Squads and pic there opponents Fleet Ambush due to lack on any other better choice

I just hope Im there to flim it if they do

3 hours ago, X Wing Nut said:

would anyone be crazy enough to fly say 3 SSD loaded up and max Squads and pic there opponents Fleet Ambush due to lack on any other better choice

I just hope Im there to flim it if they do

3 SSDs in the ambush area and 2 Gozantis to go in your usual deployment zone.