1 hour ago, Herr Style said:

Thanks for those comments about Scatter, and erm, thanks everyone for the comments to not to try out STAW. (Seriously, this is drifting off topic more than a thread I once put in where we started to discuss catheters instead of Neb B’s LOL).

Personally, I wouldn’t be upset if a Squadron was penalized in some shape or form for having a red Scatter token. Whether it be half dice or just one for Sqn attack. Well, my two pennies worth anyway. ( ducks head below parapet). 😁

Eh, half the strong opinions on STAW was because it was ridiculously fun to play. Balance was non-existent, total lack of playtesting blatantly obvious (and flat-out admitted by the design team), but it was built on a solid "system" that FFG had made, and just oozed that kind of ridiculous technobabble-solution-of-the-week that defined the TNG/DS9/VOY era of Star Trek. Absolutely impossible to make a fair game out of - whoever brought the most cash to the table to buy exclusives just flat-out won, period, every time. But it did FEEL like some of the most stupid extremes of Trek, and heck...that was a lot of fun. Won my own DS9 in those campaigns, can't hate the game, as shockingly terrible as it was.

That said - I think it served an illustrative point, because the real problem with that game was that to the extent they tested anything (almost not at all - witness the big ol' derp of the cloaked minefields), it wasn't fully examined in the context of everything that could build off of it.

And I think 'scatter' feels a lot like that. I mean, sure, Stele + Jendon is hawt right now, but...take the game as-is, simply substitute every 'scatter' token for 'brace', and play it...see what happens. No more scatter. Suddenly, nothing is as crazy. All the extremes smooth out.

The problem is, indeed, 'scatter'. And I think it's the same as the IG in STAW. It just turns out that complete attack cancellation is...effectively... infinitely powerful, in certain circumstances. Or no power in others. And that, as a game mechanic, is very stupid . Do the same thing IG did. Instead of 'cancel everything down to 1, then let other defenses work', just...flat-out have a hard limit that SOMETHING always DOES get through. Just a little. Just... something . But that's often enough.

Im I the only one that thinks scatter only should apply to force sensitive characters?

They should have given the evade token to squadrons, with additional text that it cancel one die at short.

1 hour ago, xanderf said:

And  I think 'scatter' feels a lot like that. I mean, sure, Stele + Jendon is hawt right now, but...take the game as-is, simply  substitute every 'scatter' token for 'brace', and play it...see what happens. No more scatter. Suddenly, nothing is as crazy. All the extremes smooth out. 

Sooo, the few scatter aces people take they will stop taking (except mauler who is broken anyway) and everyone will carry on running their normal squad balls consisting of mostly bombers. Oh and Sloan gets a nerf, I promise guys scatter isn't the issue with squads.

@Truthiness do you have any data on the subject?

So no nerf on Jendon?

On 3/31/2019 at 11:51 PM, cynanbloodbane said:

I still don't see any issue with scatter. 1 accuracy and it is useless. Only times it has EVER annoyed me at all, are the few times I have attempted to kill an escaping Flotilla with Demolisher. But thems the breaks, so I even take that in stride.

Don't need to fix it if it ain't broke.

For me this is it, I have never been able to use scatter, every time that I used one they had a accuracy and one shot them. So to me accuracy it worthless.

1 hour ago, c5alinas said:

Im I the only one that thinks scatter only should apply to force sensitive characters?

They should have given the evade token to squadrons, with additional text that it cancel one die at short.

Actually, due to the nature of squad combat the brace kinda does that already. Most AA shots deal 1-4 damage, with majority being 2-3, so a brace will usually find itself cancelling one damage. It's not useful when 1 damage comes in which is good to allow squads to wear out over attacks, but strong against 4+ so can weather other ace attacks or kallus, so that's the variation vs a close-range useable evade, otherwise it does the same. Kinda represents a few fighters of that squadron avoiding the attack cleanly.

I think scatter abstractedly represents the circumstancial positioning and ability of light squadrons and flotillas to avoid fire for that window period. I.e. firing towards an incoming group means the squadron/flotilla are presenting much narrower profiles and coupled with their small size allows them to avoid being shot up, with much sighs of relief to their crews I imagine. But if happening to be firing perpendicular to or across their flight path, some are more likely to get hit. In Armada this is abstracted through the scatter token

I think the silly one is when a flotilla scatters a squadron attack haha. Fighters should be able to easily hit flots which are larger than them

1 hour ago, Muelmuel said:

Actually, due to the nature of squad combat the brace kinda does that already. Most AA shots deal 1-4 damage, with majority being 2-3, so a brace will usually find itself cancelling one damage. It's not useful when 1 damage comes in which is good to allow squads to wear out over attacks, but strong against 4+ so can weather other ace attacks or kallus, so that's the variation vs a close-range useable evade, otherwise it does the same. Kinda represents a few fighters of that squadron avoiding the attack cleanly.

I think scatter abstractedly represents the circumstancial positioning and ability of light squadrons and flotillas to avoid fire for that window period. I.e. firing towards an incoming group means the squadron/flotilla are presenting much narrower profiles and coupled with their small size allows them to avoid being shot up, with much sighs of relief to their crews I imagine. But if happening to be firing perpendicular to or across their flight path, some are more likely to get hit. In Armada this is abstracted through the scatter token

I think the silly one is when a flotilla scatters a squadron attack haha. Fighters should be able to easily hit flots which are larger than them

Thats a valid point.

But brace only takes away half of damage, while evade takes away a dice. For example if a squadron only gets one damage you cant brace but still evade that damage. Another aspect is red dubble hit.

8 hours ago, CDAT said:

For me this is it, I have never been able to use scatter, every time that I used one they had a accuracy and one shot them. So to me accuracy it worthless.

Have you seen my dice? Full of accuracies when they have braces, hits when they have Scatter!

If we are talking about what is wrong with squadrons it is force mulipliers like Jendon, the point efficiency, and flexibility. As I said earlier the only issue I have with scater is its consistent ability to dodge flack, but at the end of the day thats not the main issue. Look at thr unholy trinity as I call them MMJ no scater in that buch, but why are they so strong, Force mulipliers (Jendon) point efficiency, consistency, and flexibility just a quick exsample.

Maarek Stele (21)
• Morna Kee (27)
• Colonel Jendon (20)
= 68 Points

MMJ 68 points with a damage potential of 8, 3 from Morna the a Jendon double tap another 3 and 2 from Maarek.

The next closest thing to this potential would be a naked raider

Raider I (44)
= 44 Points

It is possible for a naked raider to do 8 damage thus being more points efficienc right? Well no because of how inconsistent it is, so lets make the raider more consistent.

Raider I (44)
• Ordnance Experts (4)
• External Racks (3)
= 51 Points

So I am fairly confident that the raider we have here can do 8 damage, and its still fewer points, but lets look at flexibility.

The raider will deliver its payload and probably jump out of harms way, as it has to move. The fighters however can do this over and over again, and easily reposition to hit another ship, they simply have more flexibility.

In the end squadrons have two things ships are a little more lacking flexibility especially in movement, and force mulipliers ships have some force mulipliers but nothing to the extent of doubling their damage output value like squadrons have on both sides. I think any issue in the squadrons game really boils down to the force mulipliers squadrons have access to, I mean sure there are probably other things that could be fixed in the squadron game to, but the access to force mulipliers is one of the main things that make squadrons so powerful, not scatters.

4 hours ago, xero989 said:

Maarek Stele (21)

• Morna Kee (27)
• Colonel Jendon (20)
= 68 Points

MMJ 68 points with a damage potential of 8, 3 from Morna the a Jendon double tap another 3 and 2 from Maarek.

The next closest thing to this potential would be a naked raider.

That said, Morna's average damage is 2.25 after rerolls, making it 6.5 average damage from the three of them. So 17 points more than an upgraded Raider and half your squadron cap seems reasonable.

Another random idea - what if, absent special abilities, squadron defense tokens didn't refresh ? So each token only gets that max of 2 uses, then it's gone.

17 hours ago, clontroper5 said:

Sooo, the few scatter aces people take they will stop taking (except mauler who is broken anyway) and everyone will carry on running their normal squad balls consisting of mostly bombers. Oh and Sloan gets a nerf, I promise guys scatter isn't the issue with squads.

@Truthiness do you have any data on the subject?

I don't, but the raw data is there if you want to make your own copy of the data sheet for a deep dive.

6 hours ago, xero989 said:

If we are talking about what is wrong with squadrons it is force mulipliers like Jendon, the point efficiency, and flexibility. As I said earlier the only issue I have with scater is its consistent ability to dodge flack, but at the end of the day thats not the main issue. Look at thr unholy trinity as I call them MMJ no scater in that buch, but why are they so strong, Force mulipliers (Jendon) point efficiency, consistency, and flexibility just a quick exsample.

Maarek Stele (21)
• Morna Kee (27)
• Colonel Jendon (20)
= 68 Points

MMJ 68 points with a damage potential of 8, 3 from Morna the a Jendon double tap another 3 and 2 from Maarek.

The next closest thing to this potential would be a naked raider

Raider I (44)
= 44 Points

It is possible for a naked raider to do 8 damage thus being more points efficienc right? Well no because of how inconsistent it is, so lets make the raider more consistent.

Raider I (44)
• Ordnance Experts (4)
• External Racks (3)
= 51 Points

So I am fairly confident that the raider we have here can do 8 damage, and its still fewer points, but lets look at flexibility.

The raider will deliver its payload and probably jump out of harms way, as it has to move. The fighters however can do this over and over again, and easily reposition to hit another ship, they simply have more flexibility.

In the end squadrons have two things ships are a little more lacking flexibility especially in movement, and force mulipliers ships have some force mulipliers but nothing to the extent of doubling their damage output value like squadrons have on both sides. I think any issue in the squadrons game really boils down to the force mulipliers squadrons have access to, I mean sure there are probably other things that could be fixed in the squadron game to, but the access to force mulipliers is one of the main things that make squadrons so powerful, not scatters.

Don't forget durability. The higher individual hp of this group contributes to it's effectiveness as it requires a higher concentrated effort to erase off the board(bigger squad ball, ship+squad combined aa, etc.) plus are more likely to survive the battle and so keep their points from the enemy.(Lore: You want to know why you see MMJ in every battle? They don't die/get scarred in their missions!! )

Personally I'm wondering why I don't see Han as often as Morna since his ability to last-first could compare to her reroll ability in terms of doing damage. I think Lando might be just as popular as her when he comes out if for that reason.