Will there be a 2.0 Armada?

By voltagejim, in Star Wars: Armada

8 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Why would you be adding anything but brace if you only have one in the first place?

Max duplicate tokens by base size? Charge on a sliding point scale? Develop some new tokens for that slot only? Bake in the max brace/redirects each ship can have and put all the others in a pool? If FFG went app based it seemed like a spot to add a little more list building options w/o feeling too gimmicky.

48 minutes ago, codytx2 said:

Defensive tokens for sure. For instance the ISD would have 3 permanent tokens and 1 open slot allowing you to add any token depending on the ship purpose on your list but keep the max number of tokens the same as what they currently are on each ship.

Upgrade slots I would want to change not really defense tokens. Though I would love a brace on my Arquitens.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

So saying it's vibrant is just false or at best delusional. Just because folks are bringing a few odd other lists, that you have the same cornerstones still consistently pulling high win rates is very telling. It mirrors our local meta which had been dead locked for even longer now.

I think this is where you start to see the gap between casual players and OP players.

Generally speaking communities built around OP are gonna get bored more quickly. I don't think it's a far stretch to say this. Part of being competitive is seeing which commanders, ships, squads and upgrades work best for their cost. Considering many of the people who are active here on the forums are also talented competitive players, it's no surprise that many of them are sharing the sentiment that the game is going or has gone stale. Add to this the fact that many new releases are previewed months ahead of time revealing commanders and ships to be tested ahead of time, I don't think competitive play has much of chance of staying "fresh" without a much faster release schedule. (Maybe one similar to X-wing?)

That said I don't think this equates to the overall meta being stale, though.

OP is fun, I host tournaments whenever I can, and compete just as often, but I am by no means a competitive player. Not to say I'm not good, I just don't like being locked into "competitive" choices in fleet building. With that in mind my choices for list building aren't restricted. I play pretty much weekly, sometimes two games a week. I play oddball fleets, Pulsetaps, BTAs with phantom swarms, A list with 6 VT-49s and a kuat, even made a fun NK-7 list. Am I gonna win an event higher than local tournaments with these? Probably not. (I'd give 'em a run for their money with that 6 VT-49 list though lol) But I am still able to come up with new and refreshing ways to play.

My point being, many casual players are quite happy because the game is much more balanced than it was previously. To them the meta is still vibrant.

After all, large ships have a legitimate place in the game again, yet MSU's can still wreak havoc. Flotilla spam is a thing of the past. Large point dumps into squadrons or squadron defense are no longer a must to play, and yet heavy squadron lists are still valid as a fleet archetype. Things are good. A little stale if you gotta be #1? sure, but that ain't me.

Though I won't argue that some new releases are welcome at any time :D

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

Other core things that could be addressed in a second edition are things like apps/codex to update point costs and adjust upgrade bars

I do agree with this, but I really don't think we need a 2.0 to implement it. This feels like the perfect thing to implement for OP, making it optional for casual players.

FFG doesn't give Armada any attention. No expansions in over a year. No new wave even announced. The concept of them doing a 2.0 for armada is laughable. They'd need to actually put some effort into producing products for Armada to make that happen.

20 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I think this is where you start to see the gap between casual players and OP players.

Generally speaking communities built around OP are gonna get bored more quickly. I don't think it's a far stretch to say this. Part of being competitive is seeing which commanders, ships, squads and upgrades work best for their cost. Considering many of the people who are active here on the forums are also talented competitive players, it's no surprise that many of them are sharing the sentiment that the game is going or has gone stale. Add to this the fact that many new releases are previewed months ahead of time revealing commanders and ships to be tested ahead of time, I don't think competitive play has much of chance of staying "fresh" without a much faster release schedule. (Maybe one similar to X-wing?)

I can definitely see the difference, and my more casual experience might be skewed a bit. However, when I see a person (CommanderDave was it?) winning competitively with an Interdictor-Gladiator-squad-Screed list, I wonder if folks whose metagame is stale have created that stale meta by refusing to look at other options. I could be wrong of course; maybe they HAVE tried new lists and dismissed them. I am admittedly a mostly casual player, but I would be surprised if the competitive list-building space has been fully explored, much less exhausted.

@Darth Sanguis

I'm not trying to down you or anything, but it seems to me you don't know what a meta is. Because you just tried to say that the meta can't be stale because as a casual player you don't use the meta. That's like saying it can't be cold outside because I'm inside and it's warm. If your not in the meta game then of course you wouldn't know it was stale. Which is great and I approve and you keep doing you man.

On one point, your not wrong though, the interest life span for more competitive (though not necessarily Organized Play) players is much shorter by comparison, but that doesn't mean we don't try off the wall lists too. It's often by doing just that that we solve the meta, like making two activation builds, and it's the same thing we do to try and crack it with something new. Or we just get bored and want to screw around and get some toys or of the box we haven't in awhile. What really happened though is many of the meta alternatives you expect to be out there don't make it into the meta unless through some quirk they are basically broken. A strong player, who has rode the meta for awhile and is comfortable with their list will still knock down most upstart entries. The times an upstart list may win, through first time lock or excessive practice the margin is small enough that really it's still not working or worth it. And the strong meta lists are strong for a reason and will almost always be able to adapt to the upstart strategy by the next game with very little change to the actual list if any. This is when we call the meta stale. Yes from time to time something will look like it's about to shake it up... Then it gets adapted to and knocked back out. The fact that when I look at the regionals data for this year it still shows what it did basically six months ago is evidence of this. I have no doubt a few odd lists made it through every once in awhile, but where are they now if they were capable of winning that one time? The meta reformed. It's stale.

@RobertK after this much time of the entire world banging their collective heads against the meta wall, I'd actually believe every option had been explored, and exhausted. Which is why all this time later it's still repeat of the the same few core cards over and over. Armada isn't that big really when you get right down to it. Heck there's still only one medium size ship for rebs.

Just now, RobertK said:

I can definitely see the difference, and my more casual experience might be skewed a bit. However, when I see a person (CommanderDave was it?) winning competitively with an Interdictor-Gladiator-squad-Screed list, I wonder if folks whose metagame is stale have created that stale meta by refusing to look at other options. I could be wrong of course; maybe they HAVE tried new lists and dismissed them. I am admittedly a mostly casual player, but I would be surprised if the competitive list-building space has been fully explored, much less exhausted.

I'm of the same mindset, but I honestly can't tell ya.

I may not be the smartest guy either, but I'm not sure the regional data referenced allows us to draw any real conclusions about the meta, how it's changed or a lack thereof. There's really no frame of reference for what anything means.

Sure, a couple of commanders continue to place high rankings. This certainly means something, but what? Do we attribute this to the commander card's ability? How do we account for the human aspects of it? Who are the winners? Are the same people winning or scoring high year after year? If so do we attribute the win to the card or the person? Are they bringing the same or similar lists? How do you account for random pairings? These are regional events, so anyone can go. Luck in the pairings doesn't offset the value of the victory?

IDK... I'm casual as they come.

If anyone has answers to these, or can explain how they've identified that the competitive scene is stale, I'm willing to listen for a mo'

7 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

I'm not trying to down you or anything, but it seems to me you don't know what a meta is. Because you just tried to say that the meta can't be stale because as a casual player you don't use the meta. That's like saying it can't be cold outside because I'm inside and it's warm. If your not in the meta game then of course you wouldn't know it was stale. Which is great and I approve and you keep doing you man. 

Nah it's all good, I'm learning! lol

Interesting. The metagame, as I understood it, refers to the dynamic of strongest strategies in a competitive scene.

I suppose it was my rational that the OP scene would have it's own meta, or it's own list of the strongest strategies. It was also my understanding that each local area would have it's own dynamic of strategies that were the strongest, it's own meta. Especially if the local group was not part of the collective OP competitive meta. For example, while Sloane and Raddus might dominate at a OP competitive level, at a local level lists built around that might typically lose. (For an example, specifically from our local group, Rieekan Aces has never done well, even when played by some of our more skilled players, so while in terms of the OP competitive meta, it's been good for ages, in our local meta it doesn't do great as our local group has a much different dynamic.)

I suppose this makes sense to me because while the OP is the highest tier of competitive play, due to the nature of the game, it's impossible to not be competitive at some some level. There is a winner and loser to every match. And while outliers exist (like those who just bring their favorite ships, play to lose, or even set individual goals instead of trying to win) the majority of players at a casual level are still competing.

If this is indeed incorrect, then allow me to revise my previous statement.


"I don't think this equates to overall game being stale."

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

after this much time of the entire world banging their collective heads against the meta wall, I'd actually believe every option had been explored, and exhausted. Which is why all this time later it's still repeat of the the same few core cards over and over. Armada isn't that big really when you get right down to it. Heck there's still only one medium size ship for rebs.

I shouldn't try to argue whether the game is stale for you or not. If you find the meta stale, you just do. And why would I argue that anyway? I'm for more ships and a faster release schedule just as much as you are! Cheers!

If there were a 2.0 (which I hope there isn’t) what about a speed 0 indicator on the unit card that allows turning at speed zero?

It could add an interesting dynamic, particularly for unmanoeverable ships such as the Vic. You can turn but at the risk of no use of defence tokens.

Honestly I'd like the rule that defense tokens don't work at speed zero to be removed, and individual tokens given the reference as necessary. As in Evade and Scatter work only when your speed is one or higher, but Brace, Redirect, and Contain work always. This would allow for more interesting objective play since huge static ships don't get punished for stopping in defense position of a station. It does unfortunately allow for more Castle strategies, but that's a legit strategy in the universe for me; see Battle of Scariff, so I don't really mind the game being rebuilt around that from the get go.

The only thing about letting defenses work at speed zero is that it allows for some castle type defense say 3 cymoons in a corner with gunnery teams that dont ever move

29 minutes ago, Kushielrdf said:

The only thing about letting defenses work at speed zero is that it allows for some castle type defense say 3 cymoons in a corner with gunnery teams that dont ever move

Turn at speed zero but no token use is an acceptable compromise position I think.

4 hours ago, Kushielrdf said:

The only thing about letting defenses work at speed zero is that it allows for some castle type defense say 3 cymoons in a corner with gunnery teams that dont ever move

What about only allowing unspent defense tokens while at speed zero? Or if you use a defense token while at speed zero, it is discarded...

19 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Honestly I'd like the rule that defense tokens don't work at speed zero to be removed, and individual tokens given the reference as necessary. As in Evade and Scatter work only when your speed is one or higher, but Brace, Redirect, and Contain work always. This would allow for more interesting objective play since huge static ships don't get punished for stopping in defense position of a station. It does unfortunately allow for more Castle strategies, but that's a legit strategy in the universe for me; see Battle of Scariff, so I don't really mind the game being rebuilt around that from the get go.

There could be some unintended consequences from that unless some upgrades where also changed or It could make some ships unplayable?

Other then the release schedule if it aint broke don't fix it. If we start changing things because this or that game system does something we want in Armada wont the game lose its unique identity and rule set that makes it the game we all love.

10 minutes ago, XR8rGREAT said:

There could be some unintended consequences from that unless some upgrades where also changed or It could make some ships unplayable?

See also the quote you took "... rebuilt around that from the get go."

It's a 2.0 rebuild we're taking about here, of course you have to change all the ships, the squads, and upgrades, and the everything's too.

14 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

See also the quote you took "... rebuilt around that from the get go."

It's a 2.0 rebuild we're taking about here, of course you have to change all the ships, the squads, and upgrades, and the everything's too.

Opps miss read I guess. what im getting at though if we change the game to much will it still be Armada. I love the game as is it. Other then the lack of news but im sure there is room for tweaks and tidy up of some rules, Maybe a cheap essentials pack with a new rule book with what ever bits are needed and all the errated cards and maybe some new bits to freshen the game a bit.