I still don't understand how you could do prequel factions in Armada. It doesn't make sense.

You can do them as continuations of the current factions. They don't fit. The Republic are the good guys for 2.5 movies, then suddenly are the bad guys leading to the Empire. The ships are more like the Empire, but most of their characters are more like the Rebellion. However some of their characters are straight up Empire as they continued on to serve that faction. So the Republic sort of fits into both factions (which makes sense as they are the basis for both factions). The Seperatist ships don't fit either faction, and their characters are the bad guys for all 3 movies. Giving triangles to the Republic seems odd, but so does giving Obi Wan to the Empire. Giving the Seperatists to the Empire makes no sense, and giving Grevious and Dooku to the Rebellion feels a little off. Keep in mind that Palpatine was leading both factions.

As new factions, you'd need a HUGE injection of new pieces all at the same time. Even if you gave each faction 1 large, 1 medium, 2 small, a flotilla, and a squad pack of 4 squads....you have a underpowered faction that can't compete. You'd have half the ships, less than half the squadron type with an even smaller set of squadron choices, and half the commanders. Your options would be severely limited and this would make the factions easier to counter. Beyond that, to intro 2 factions like this would mean 2 large, 2 medium, 4 small, 2 flotilla, and 2 squad packs released in 1 giant wave that would be the equivalent of waves 1, 2, and 3 released at the same time. FFG can't give us regular releases, yet they are going to do a super massive wave for new factions? Anything smaller than that size of release would make the factions completely unplayable. If they try a 3 wave release over a year or year and a half, no one would buy in to get a junk faction that isn't playable (imagine just playing Imp wave 1 in today's meta).

Even if they did a super massive wave, they'd have to follow it up with a couple more waves to really get them up to par. So then you are looking at 2 years of new faction only releases to get them up to speed. To continue to support the existing factions with something to keep them active and interested, you'd need waves larger than anything we've seen since wave 1.

To do ANY of that, they'd need to put Armada in the primary production slot, which doesn't appear to have a chance of happening. X-wing is a bigger seller for them, it just launched 2.0 and new factions. Legion is still pumping out new stuff like crazy. You think they are going to sidetrack any of that to put massive support behind Armada?

That's just the logistical problems. Now lets address the customer side of things.

The new factions will have new upgrades...but existing faction fans won't want to buy them, and this will likely drive some customers out. Buying into 1 faction and trading/buying upgrades you need is one thing. Buying into 2 factions to get everything is acceptable to some. Having to buy 4 factions or trade/buy for upgrades from 3 factions gets a little overwhelming.

If they ignore existing factions for very long, players will just quit.

New factions likely won't attract new players. It'll only eat into their existing player base as some people move to the new factions. This just means more SKUs to keep in stock, more SKUs to develop, but the same number of players. That's a losing business proposition. You MIGHT pull some of the lapsed players back with this sort of move (but you could do this in several other ways also), but for how long if you don't keep steady support for all factions not only with releases but also with some customer interaction in the form of articles, news, etc.

FFG can't support their current armada factions or player base, yet will somehow successfully launch entire new factions to a dying player base just doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation.

Doing a Armada 2.0 and dropping the Empire/Rebellion support all together to do new prequel factions would likely kill the game before you could even get comparable factions to what we have released. The number of players attracted by this maneuver would likely be far less than those that would call it quits.

While the original trilogy is pretty much tapped out, they could draw more from the old extended universe (already have for some games). They could also move into the new trilogy factions as extensions of the current factions. The cartoons, comics, movies, and new live action show will provide them with new material that could/would fit into the current and new trilogy factions. (Resistance has introduced new characters, the movies have introduced new characters and a few new ships, the comics have introduced several new ships, there is another movie on the way which is likely to have a larger fleet engagement with more new capital ships, and Mandalorian is bound to give us new characters and potentially new ships)

While I'm not opposed to the prequel trilogy making a showing in Armada, it just has WAY too many obstacles, risks, and potential to hurt the game in the long run from a business perspective. Continuing into the current trickle of new content seems like a much easier path logistically speaking as well as being a safer business proposition.

@kmanweiss

I mean, would no more releases be preferrable to Prequel-Era Factions? I feel like those are the only two routes for the game at this point.



You're right that the prequel factions do not thematically fit into the Empire or Rebellion, which is why they'd almost certainly be entirely new, separate factions, with all the pros of cons of moving to a 4-Faction Game and likely leaving Imps and Rebs in the dust for a few years without any new releases (just like X-Wing as it swells up to 7 Factions over the next couple years).


From a game play perspective, I agree that the Republic would be somewhat boring, as they're basically Imperial Ships + Rebel Squadrons (which has always been my critique against their inclusion--like what novel stuff would they bring? Wouldn't they just dilute the feeling of the existing faction identities, to the extent that's even a thing?). The only novel thing they would possess are multiple Jedi, but there's no "force mechanic" in Armada, like there is in X-Wing 2.0, so either you can't really differentiate the Republic's Jedi from other squadrons/upgrades, or else you add a Force Mechanic and upset all the Rebel/Imperial players because Luke, Ahsoka, Maul, Vader, Palpatine, etc. wouldn't have such a mechanic.

The Separatists would at least be more visually interesting, but they're awfully close to just being Rebel Ships (an eclectic mix of non-triangles) and Imperial Squadrons (massed low-quality fighters... though lol what Imperial uses TIE Fighters?). At least with so many droids and command ships and the like, they could probably milk some sort of interesting mechanic from it without stepping on the toes of existing factions.



But that said, I agree with most of everything you've said. Still, with the buzz Crabbok has reported about the alleged Armada announcement at Adepticon, I feel like it's gotta be coming. FFG wants to double-dip with their art as much as possible, and they've commissioned a lot of art (including lots of capital ships) from the Prequel Era for both X-Wing and Destiny. Couple that with the well of interesting canon ships for the Galactic Civil War having run bone dry and they fact that they are unlikely to announce "Hey, just wanted to tell you Armada is officially dead!" it seems unavoidable that we see the Prequel Era factions being the next several waves worth of Armada releases (certainly with lots of included components like upgrades or possibly new Core Set stuff that coerces Reb/Imp players who would have skipped the new factions to buy into them anyways to 'keep up').

1 hour ago, kmanweiss said:

I still don't understand how you could do prequel factions in Armada.

We can look to X-Wing to see how they could do it. But we could actually go further with Armada - they only really need 1.5 factions of stuff.

The CR90, Pelta, Kitten and Gozantis (and maybe Hammerheads) are already Old Republic ships. So we'd only need a cardboard upgrade for them (and/or a re-paint). The Venator is also an Imperial ship, so that would work as well.

I would suggest having a new Core Set with one medium Republic ship (the Acclimator) and a couple of small CIS ships (maybe at least one with Fleet Support), along with some squadrons (and some cardboard for the old ships).

For Wave 2.1 you could throw in some squadron packs, one of the existing Republic ships (re-paint), and medium CIS ship. You'd probably also want Rebel and Imperial ships as well (****, make it the Dreadnought, maybe, as cross-faction?).

For Wave 2.2 you've got the Venator as a large ship (Republic/Empire), another re-paint, and a large CIS ship. Probably need to throw in a Rebel ship as well.

The new factions would be underpowered for a bit, but go with some Task Force format tournament stuff and it might be fine. It will take a few waves for them to reach top places in major tournaments (probably), but they'll get there. And it wouldn't take up that much more production space than early Armada did, which might mean cutting back a bit on X-Wing and Legion, but given how much stuff they've pushed out lately, that might be a reasonable balance.

I feel like there are more prequel capital ships than in the rest of the movies

4 minutes ago, Grumbleduke said:

The CR90, Pelta, Kitten and Gozantis (and maybe              Hammerheads) are already Old Republic s  hips. So we'd only need a cardboard upgrade for them (and/or a re-paint). The Venator is a  lso an Imperial ship, so that would work as well.  

See, this is exactly how faction identity is destroyed. CR90s were predominantly seen in a diplomatic role (and even then, just the Tantive IV.) One panel of an old legends comic is the extent of their Republic navy service, which is more than the Hammerhead has. The Pelta, Arq and Gozantis would absolutely warrant conversion kits, but anything more than that and it risks not feeling like a Clone Wars era experience (I would even feel the Pelta’s paint job is immersion-breaking as is.) So a Venator/Braha’tok wave to prepare, then a predominately Separatist initial wave with a couple Republic ships and cardboard, then additional Separatist ships (there are more of them) alongside the remaining Republic craft and Republic repaints?

In a game where you can play empire vs empire, and rebels vs rebels, I do not understand why we are worried about the thematics of a Republic faction which were "good guys" in the movies having triangular shaped ships fighting against the Empire faction ("bad guys") who also have triangular shaped ships.

I played a mirror match essentially, all the ships, commander and almost the exact upgrades at regionals. It wasn't thematic to have two Mottis or two Demolishers, but it didn't take away from the game experience at all.

If you want to be true to a theme, then when you organize your play with your local group, don't play Republic vs Empire, or do. But using something as subjective as this as a main argument against new factions seems shortsighted and a bit selfish.

FWIW, my opinion: They wont go Clone wars / movies I-III. Nope.

They will use (a few) EU ships that most of us know (because we are not 17, but played all those games and read all those books). I happily embrace that.

They might take a couple CW ships that legitimately can be said where used in (initial stages of) the GCW. By either side.

They will ease into the new trilogy, first by using new canon comics, Mandalorian etc. With or without creating 2 new factions. I prefer they leave it at 2, Rebel and Empire, thats close enough, thematically.

From a marketing and sales point of view, not bringing in Clone Wars to Armada is suicide. At this point, FFG has to know that there is an entire population of untapped target audience to drag into miniatures wargaming for Clone Wars. Why do you think they started with their meat of their sandwhich? XWing, by no secret, is their meat. And is getting Clone Wars because for years people have said that they are going to move into that. ****, I am going to pick up the Republic for XWing, and I like Armada more... but I like playing a mini-game the most.

Armada can scrape the bottom of the cannon barrel, or they can bring Republic and CIS into the game. Its a matter of time, and like other things that are a matter of time, not accepting that is social suicide. You will get left behind.

22 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

@kmanweiss

I mean, would no more releases be preferrable to Prequel-Era Factions? I feel like those are the only two routes for the game at this point.

I laid out a pretty clear path actually. Move from the OT era into the Ep7-9 era. The factions match, and there is plenty of material.

Resistance is introducing new characters and potential new squads. Ep7-8 intro lots of characters, new squads, new flotilla options, and a couple new ships. Ep9 will likely have more fleet based action so potentially more new ships/squads/characters from this also. The Mandilorian is going to intro new characters, and would likely have new squads and ships it could show as well. The OT still has enough material to make another wave. EU material (which FFG pulls from for many of it's games) has other option. The comics have introduced a number of new canon ships that could be used, along with characters and squads.

You don't need to go prequel-era when there is a MULTITUDE of options for moving ahead in the timeline instead.

21 hours ago, Grumbleduke said:

We can look to X-Wing to see how they could do it. But we could actually go further with Armada

You're not wrong...if you look at how X-wing did it originally. Imagining that a rebel unit somewhere had an ARC170 or an Auzituck is not a tough thing to do. A single fighter is not a faction however. And introducing some prequel era stuff as part of the current factions would be fine in my opinion. My problem is with the prequel material being separate factions. That would take an unprecedented amount of support to produce new, separate factions. It also creates lots of problems. But throwing a Venator in as an Empire ship or a Seperatist ship into the rebel fleet is fine. It wouldn't be hard to understand how something like that would happen or work, and it doesn't demand an entire new faction. Including prequel ships is different than building entire new factions.

17 hours ago, MDeliso said:

In a game where you can play empire vs empire, and rebels vs rebels, I do not understand why we are worried about the thematics of a Republic faction which were "good guys" in the movies having triangular shaped ships fighting against the Empire faction ("bad guys") who also have triangular shaped ships.

I played a mirror match essentially, all the ships, commander and almost the exact upgrades at regionals. It wasn't thematic to have two Mottis or two Demolishers, but it didn't take away from the game experience at all.

If you want to be true to a theme, then when you organize your play with your local group, don't play Republic vs Empire, or do. But using something as subjective as this as a main argument against new factions seems shortsighted and a bit selfish.

Rebel vs Rebel and Empire vs Empire skirmishes were not unheard of. In fact, when you are considering the Empire, such skirmishes were fairly common even before the Galactic Civil War. You do have a point though that unique restrictions are limited to only your own forces, and that creates matches that couldn't actually happen. But that's different than the actual theme of the game. Having a game where Yoda can be commanding a fleet of ISDs with Vader serving as an officer, or Grevious commanding a fleet of Mon Cal ships while Luke and Wedge fly point in his squadron swarm seems more like a homebrew rule where you allow rebel fleets to use stolen Imperial ships than what someone would consider to be tournament rules.

This isn't an argument against new factions though. It's an argument against building those new factions into the current ones. They just don't fit. The argument against new factions is that it would be unlikely that FFG could support the effort it would take to launch entirely new and separate factions.

2 hours ago, Ling27 said:

From a marketing and sales point of view, not bringing in Clone Wars to Armada is suicide. At this point, FFG has to know that there is an entire population of untapped target audience to drag into miniatures wargaming for Clone Wars. Why do you think they started with their meat of their sandwhich? XWing, by no secret, is their meat. And is getting Clone Wars because for years people have said that they are going to move into that. ****, I am going to pick up the Republic for XWing, and I like Armada more... but I like playing a mini-game the most.

Armada can scrape the bottom of the cannon barrel, or they can bring Republic and CIS into the game. Its a matter of time, and like other things that are a matter of time, not accepting that is social suicide. You will get left behind.

Why does no one consider the breadth of new content potential from the new trilogy timeline? We have many sources of new content, and it would connect with players right now. The stuff they could fly would match the stuff they can see on the big screen, or in the comics, or on the little screen in their living room. That seems like a stronger move than trying to introduce entirely new factions from the prequels.

Now using some elements of the prequels in the current factions certainly has merit. You could introduce some of the ships and squads from there as part of the existing factions. That would work, it would scratch that itch, and give us new material. But again...there are new cartoons, a new live action show, new movies, and new comics that are introducing a ton of potential new content that would register with people today...and the introduction of that era of stuff would be cross promotional for those media sources as well.

2 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

Why does no one consider the breadth of new content potential from the new trilogy timeline? We have many sources of new content, and it would connect with players right now. The stuff they could fly would match the stuff they can see on the big screen, or in the comics, or on the little screen in their living room. That seems like a stronger move than trying to introduce entirely new factions from the prequels.

Mostly because we don't see it yet . There's promise its coming (Ep 9), but there's no guarantee - and what we do have is difficult to incorporate due to sheer size, or disparate-size-ness... Plus there are identification issues in regards to squadrons (in our scale, T70s and T65s look very similar, and require new sources and colours of plastic, which isn't always easy to do *well*)...

I have no doubt, that one day, we'll have enough material to go forth into the Sequel Trilogy, and have no doubt it will mature into something...

... But to say the best part of doing it is to connect with the people now who are seeing it now, ignores indeed, those people who did so with the prequel trilogy themselves... Star wars is multi-generational, after all...

The bigger difference being that those Prequel Ships, Squads and indeed, fleets are right there ready to go now. No waiting, no development, no seeing how it ends first...

So its not *ignored*, its just *we're already waiting*, we might as well wait.. And we've got stuff to do in the meantime.

I've never understood the hurdle for some people that Republic ----> Empire. Sure the Republic was "presented" as being "the good guys" but there's a very clear transition from Republic into Empire. It's only natural if CW ships were added w/o adding new factions the Empire would be assigned Republic ships.

I say bring the republic and CIS in as new factions. That's what I want. That's what I gauge most people want. If we're running out of GCW era ships, might as well tap into CW. More content is preferable to nothing. (Although i'm perfectly content right now knowing the SSD is coming soon, I'm in no rush).

I will consider the Sequels after 9, and after the SSD comes out. I dont want to push for the Raddus or a Resurgent until I see how the SSD works on the table. Both of those would be Huge Ships; smaller than the SSD but bigger than an ISD, so maybe a smaller base than the SSD. But it would still be a center peice ship with either a couple small ships to support, or squadrons. So they change nothing that is already there.

FO would get, what... General Hux who resets your command dial to something random through his sheer incomptience (Hux is my favorite Neo-Empire characters, as his incomptience makes sense to me due to his backstory)? Captian Moden Canady (who's DA Photo is flawless by the way, great photo for his OER) who lets you deploy squadrons before ships? And... who? Kylo and Snoke? We havent seen either of them lead a fleet.

Resistance gets Holdo, Leia, Ackbar, maybe Poe, Han, Rey, Ect?

The Sequels need more fleet battles, in novels, tv shows, or movie form.

Meanwhile:

Republic could be cheaper, less ship to ship effective capital ships, but because they are cheaper you can fit more. Imagine using 3 Venators as your fleet. You can run 3 ISDs right now, but thats it. If a Venator is a large but cheap, and you could run a battle group with some squadrons, that would be fun.

Admiral choices for Republic include: Yoda, Windu, Kenobi, Skywalker, Tarkin, Yularen, Koon... the entire Jedi Council could theoretically have a spot on the republic admiralty list.

CIS can lean even further into the Cheap, Specialized ship and squadrons with a couple modular ships. It would the the faction that real money would cost the most, because you could fit plenty on the board. The trouble there becomes a numbers game. Do you run more, meh ships, or a few good ships? Remember, the more you add the more you have to remember and keep track of. You could easily have a SWARM+ mechanic with CIS to show their droid capability. And, you can get the Lucrehulk... and I know I would run a Lucrehulk.

Admiral Choices for the CIS include: Grevious, Trench, Tactical Droid (could even be a non-unique for Sector Fleet Games), Dooku, you could use Maul (and his ability could be using a ship from the Rebels or Republic to show his frequent use of taking ships), I'm sure you could pull more options but those are the ones off the top of my head.

On top of the few ships you would need for Republic to join the game, as you could introduce a conversion kit for most of the republic ships that already exist ON TOP of stand alone CW versions (best marketing option IMO), you can introduce a multi-part campaign that follows the story of The Clone Wars starting with the First Battle of Geonosis and moving into the TV show.

Again, once I see more from the Sequels and the SSD on the table being moved, then I'll think about how some of the 7-9 content will work.

Although I would like to see more EU stuff like the Interdictor SD and the Vong (yeah, I'm one of those), I think if FFG wants to continue supporting Armada and stay true to Disney and avoid EU stuff, they have not much choice but to go with prequel factions (and hopefully channeling some of them into the Imp/Reb factions). Both the Republic and the CIS have plenty of canon ships and squads to pick from, plus an ocean of interesting and relevant characters. Dooku, Ventress, Grievous, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yularen... I would LOVE to see them in the game!

Also, if you think of it, the Mouse Trilogy stuff are both ridiculously oversized and overpowered even for the sliding scale of Armada. An FO SD should be able to one-shot an ISD after all. Not very balanced. Not to mention that there are very few characters who could be introduced as officers. Leia, Holdo, Poe... That's about it for the Resistance. Not enough for a whole new faction for sure. Maybe in a few years there will be some new characters (although the scaling issue remains), but they can't maintain Armada for years without new stuff.

TLDR: I would prefer EU ships but as FFG cannot venture into that terriotry any more, I'm almost sure that Armada will either be cancelled or gets a prequel expansion very soon. The latter is much more likely though.

If I see a Venator that comes with V-Wings and Arc-170s, Id pick it up without regret, only because it would be cheaper to buy then Mel's ships, no offense to mel in anyway of course, but 3D Printing is expensive.

I really want to see the following factions:

1) Klingons

2) Cylons

3) The Borg

4) Predators

5) Xenomorphs

6) Babylon 5

har har har .... 😉

44 minutes ago, richarDISNEY said:

I really want to see the following factions:

1) Klingons

2) Cylons

3) The Borg

4) Predators

5) Xenomorphs

6) Babylon 5

har har har .... 😉

You left one out.

7) Spaceballs

As a new player, I'd like to see squadron 1 packs before anything else.

On 2/20/2019 at 12:06 PM, Grumbleduke said:

We can look to X-Wing to see how they could do it. But we could actually go further with Armada - they only really need 1.5 factions of stuff.

The CR90, Pelta, Kitten and Gozantis (and maybe Hammerheads) are already Old Republic ships. So we'd only need a cardboard upgrade for them (and/or a re-paint). The Venator is also an Imperial ship, so that would work as well.

I would suggest having a new Core Set with one medium Republic ship (the Acclimator) and a couple of small CIS ships (maybe at least one with Fleet Support), along with some squadrons (and some cardboard for the old ships).

For Wave 2.1 you could throw in some squadron packs, one of the existing Republic ships (re-paint), and medium CIS ship. You'd probably also want Rebel and Imperial ships as well (****, make it the Dreadnought, maybe, as cross-faction?).

For Wave 2.2 you've got the Venator as a large ship (Republic/Empire), another re-paint, and a large CIS ship. Probably need to throw in a Rebel ship as well.

The new factions would be underpowered for a bit, but go with some Task Force format tournament stuff and it might be fine. It will take a few waves for them to reach top places in major tournaments (probably), but they'll get there. And it wouldn't take up that much more production space than early Armada did, which might mean cutting back a bit on X-Wing and Legion, but given how much stuff they've pushed out lately, that might be a reasonable balance.

i'd actually got the other way on the starter.. one big Separatist ship, and two smaller Republic ones.

because the Separatists don't really have much in the way of small ships. even dipping into legends material, their smallest ships would still be pretty darn big in armada. they don't have much of anything comparable to a CR90 or Neb-B, and the handful they do have are fairly obscure stuff. and you don't want to stick original ships or obscure ships into the starter.

but if the Seperatist ship is the big ship, it works. you could have a Munificent class Star frigate (about the same size and power as a VSD) up against a C70 refit Consular Class and a Republic variant Arquitens Class Light Cruiser and get a fairly good match up.

On 2/22/2019 at 2:41 PM, Admiral Calkins said:

You left one out.

7) Spaceballs

Suck! Suck! Suck!

6 minutes ago, Ardiwynn said:

Suck! Suck! Suck!

Well they already have a name for the next size of ship... Mega (-Maid)!

psst, @melminiatures