Would a 100 pt squadron cap enough to bring balance to the force meta? Or would we need more? Maybe a 40 pt limit on unique squadrons? I'll be hosting a casual tournament over the next few months; maybe I can convince my friends to play with these added restrictions. If I do I will let people know how it goes. My guess is one tournament between 6-8 friends won't be enough to gather meaningful data. I'm curious to read people's thoughts.

Unpopular opinion: I think the game needs less squadron restrictions not more. I never had a problem with max squad lists and I don't even think the 1/3 squadron rule is necessary. I don't mind my opponent bringing 200 or 250 points in squads. That means they have less ships that I need to kill to table them and it would be almost impossible to have enough squad value on their ships to fully utilize their squads capabilities.

I think with the fact that squads don't count towards tableing and the fact that you need carrier to fully use your squads naturally balances list building not to include more than ~150 points in squads.

25 minutes ago, LordCola said:

Unpopular opinion: I think the game needs less squadron restrictions not more. I never had a problem with max squad lists and I don't even think the 1/3 squadron rule is necessary. I don't mind my opponent bringing 200 or 250 points in squads. That means they have less ships that I need to kill to table them and it would be almost impossible to have enough squad value on their ships to fully utilize their squads capabilities.

I think with the fact that squads don't count towards tableing and the fact that you need carrier to fully use your squads naturally balances list building not to include more than ~150 points in squads.

15x YT2400 and 3x CR90. Everything but an ISD could die in one turn against this mass of black dice. And their 6 hull, combined with speed 4, makes them really dangerous.
Or what about 11x Decimators (242 points). 33 blue dice hammerhing on one ship could will really hurt.

Sure, you could say that all you have to do is to kill the ships. But with 3 Lifeboats suddenly flying around (3x CR90 or 3x Raider I) it will be really hard to catch them all.

Lifing the limit could end in total extreme lists (worse than it is now). And everyone will be forced to put quite a few points into squadrons (100+), to prevent such an overrun.

1 hour ago, BrickDaniels said:

Would a 100 pt squadron cap enough to bring balance to the force meta? Or would we need more? Maybe a 40 pt limit on unique squadrons? I'll be hosting a casual tournament over the next few months; maybe I can convince my friends to play with these added restrictions. If I do I will let people know how it goes. My guess is one tournament between 6-8 friends won't be enough to gather meaningful data. I'm curious to read people's thoughts.

I am all for a change with the squadrons. I find them a little bit to dominant myself (and i love squadrons). But a limit to 100 will not change anything either. It will just make upgrades for Squadrons way stronger. Yavaris and Adar Tallon will be way to good this way.
Let me explain what i mean. Adar Tallon for example. he costs 10 points, and basically he gives you another squadron, paid via the ship pool. Lets do it the nice way, and say he gives an extra B-Wing for only 14 points instead of an unique for 20 or more. Extra 14 points for 10 points, but paid from the ship pool.
On top of this, this extra points are only 10% on a squadron pool of 134 (giving you 148 points in squadrons with a limit of 134). But these are suddenly 14%, when the limit is 100 points (giving you 114 points with a limit of 100). You are making Adar more valuable.
When you are using Luke or Corran, it even goes to 20+% (from 15%).

You can try it for the friendly tournament. But i am afraid, that it has no much value. From my experience the friendly tournamets rarely use full squadron lists. But i would love to hear your experience.

In the numbers crunching from worlds, they found that Imperials are only really viable bringing max or nothing. Rebels had some more flexibility, but were still mostly max or nothing.

I’m not certain if the new “viable” screen would go from 134 or bust to 100 or bust or just go to bust.

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

In the numbers crunching from worlds, they found that Imperials are only really viable bringing max or nothing. Rebels had some more flexibility, but were still mostly max or nothing.

I’m not certain if the new “viable” screen would go from 134 or bust to 100 or bust or just go to bust.

I'm not sure the extra 34 points is what makes full or nothing a thing. It's just having more than other people. If someone brings 134 for Sloane and you got 100...

A quote attributed to Stalin is, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

Three things sort of dovetail to produce the ace-heavy, max squads lists we see.

1. Eight squads is about the right number (more than that are hard to command and keep focused).
2. 134 points divided by 8 is about 17 pts, which is around the cost of a lot of aces.
3. Aces are LOTS better than generics.

So what would a shift to 100 pts do? Well, if eight is still the right number of squadrons, 100/8 is 12.5pts/squad. Not many aces cost that little. So when you build with a new limit of 100, what would your squadron contingent look like? You aren't getting eight aces. Average cost of an ace is around 19. 100/19 is a bit more than five. Are you ok with a squadron contingent of five or six aces? Yes, they are better and more survivable than eight generic squads. But can eight generics beat five aces? How about six generics and two aces?

So my question is, "At what squadron point limit do generics become more viable?" When does Stalin's quote ring true for squads in Armada? With the current cost of aces, there may be no such limit. Aces are simply too cheap for the significant bump in power and survivability.

For me squadrons provide a flexibility ships can't and I think that is what they should do. However aces are far to effective for there points defense tokens are really powerful making them insanely more durable then generics, most squadron wings you see are all aces with 1 maybe 2 generics. I think something regaurding aces needs to be changed. I love squadrons I would not have gotten into this game if it was not for the combined arms aspect, but I do think something needs to happen to ether directly or indirectly nerf aces.

33 minutes ago, xero989 said:

For me squadrons provide a flexibility ships can't and I think that is what they should do. However aces are far to effective for there points defense tokens are really powerful making them insanely more durable then generics, most squadron wings you see are all aces with 1 maybe 2 generics. I think something regaurding aces needs to be changed. ...

Agreed.

A points rebalance is definitely due for a handful of pieces, including a lot of aces.

Even though the points are printed on cards...

If they're doing it for legion already after 1 year in, it's gotta be in the works for Armada.

14 minutes ago, Bucknife said:

Agreed.

A points rebalance is definitely due for a handful of pieces, including a lot of aces.

Even though the points are printed on cards...

If they're doing it for legion already after 1 year in, it's gotta be in the works for Armada.

Source? I haven't heard anything about a Legion rebalance or 2.0, just card packs so that CW players don't have to buy Rebel or Imperial expansions for cards and vis-versa.

23 minutes ago, Bucknife said:

Agreed.

A points rebalance is definitely due for a handful of pieces, including a lot of aces.

Even though the points are printed on cards...

If they're doing it for legion already after 1 year in, it's gotta be in the works for Armada.

While I do think something might be coming as far as an app as they said I believe at Adepticon they are looking into options of having that kind of app in other games I think it is more likely going to be indericdert debuffs at first though upgrades, its possible we will get something in the SSD FAQ maybe about squadrons, but the only thing I could think of would be some sort of ace cap soft or hard.

40 minutes ago, GunNut said:

Source? I haven't heard anything about a Legion rebalance or 2.0, just card packs so that CW players don't have to buy Rebel or Imperial expansions for cards and vis-versa.

At Adepticon Q&A panel a Legion player asked if they had plans to bring an app to point balance Legion they said something to the effict that they are looking into this for some of their other games. As far as an App goes a 2.0 would not be nessicary X-Wing only got a 2.0 as it had some core rule changes and a compents overhaul to acomidate the changes in the core rules. Even if Armada got some rules rework a 2.0 would not be necessary unless core components needed to change. With an app that tracked points for competitive play you dont need new cards the point value on the cards would become "for casual play"

What about a point limit to the amount of aces you can bring? 40 points max for aces means no MJ.

IMHO the problem with squadrons isn't how many points you can take or how many squadrons you can get - I love playing with squadrons but they're too fiddly. I wish there were only 4-5 keywords for squadrons in total, no squadron special abilities (give limited squadrons extra keywords over and above their generic counterparts plus some defense tokens), and have at least some of their abilities tied to base to base contact so there are fewer range bubbles to have to deal with. Just make them a lot simpler in other words...

I'd be more interested to see a limit on Aces of some variety, say "must include 1 generic per each unique"? Or something of that variety?

I'm leaning towards a possible tweak for squads as well but less from an "aces are too good" perspective and more from an "full aces on both sides slow down the game too much" perspective.... Listening to podcasts over the years, players at regionals/world's, and watching games at these events as well it seems to be a recurring theme in armada that the squad game is too taxing... You routinely see games that involve lots of aces on both sides going to/past time. You hear in casts about players lamenting having to play 4 rounds plus with squads, or you hear from players who say the feel like they just had a lobotomy after playing a tourney with full squads... And no matter how practiced you get at your fleet and playing with full squads there is simply no minimizing the massive amount of computing power required in real time at the table...

I was thinking no more than 67 points of aces out of the 134, with unique squads not counting towards the 67... Might be a good starting place

23 minutes ago, SkyCake said:

I'm leaning towards a possible tweak for squads as well but less from an "aces are too good" perspective and more from an "full aces on both sides slow down the game too much" perspective.... Listening to podcasts over the years, players at regionals/world's, and watching games at these events as well it seems to be a recurring theme in armada that the squad game is too taxing... You routinely see games that involve lots of aces on both sides going to/past time. You hear in casts about players lamenting having to play 4 rounds plus with squads, or you hear from players who say the feel like they just had a lobotomy after playing a tourney with full squads... And no matter how practiced you get at your fleet and playing with full squads there is simply no minimizing the massive amount of computing power required in real time at the table...

I was thinking no more than 67 points of aces out of the 134, with unique squads not counting towards the 67... Might be a good starting place

I was thinking this too no more then half your complement could be aces and at 67 its exactly enough to keep MMJ off the table. I have also toyed with the idea that you can only take one ace per ship, or half your entire fleets squadron value rounded down, this makes it almost a self balancing act if you want more aces you have to take more ships meaning you have less points to spend on squadrons, both sides could get 4 to 5 aces with rebles having a bit of any easier time with it, but that seams sutible. It becomes a quality vs quantity battle and as someone mentioned before aces are taken because you can get 8 of them in a list and as soon as you go over 8 squadrons it becomes a little unwhilded to activate them all.

Edit: though if I could do anything I would probably scrap deffinse tokens and make it a rule that when a squadrons attacks it must attack a generic squadron if able. That way you are taking generics to protect your aces, though this would require a complete rework of some of the aces abilities, so probably wont happen.

16 hours ago, RobertK said:

A quote attributed to Stalin is, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

Three things sort of dovetail to produce the ace-heavy, max squads lists we see.

1. Eight squads is about the right number (more than that are hard to command and keep focused).
2. 134 points divided by 8 is about 17 pts, which is around the cost of a lot of aces.
3. Aces are LOTS better than generics.

So what would a shift to 100 pts do? Well, if eight is still the right number of squadrons, 100/8 is 12.5pts/squad. Not many aces cost that little. So when you build with a new limit of 100, what would your squadron contingent look like? You aren't getting eight aces. Average cost of an ace is around 19. 100/19 is a bit more than five. Are you ok with a squadron contingent of five or six aces? Yes, they are better and more survivable than eight generic squads. But can eight generics beat five aces? How about six generics and two aces?

So my question is, "At what squadron point limit do generics become more viable?" When does Stalin's quote ring true for squads in Armada? With the current cost of aces, there may be no such limit. Aces are simply too cheap for the significant bump in power and survivability.

At least for me, I rarely take more than one, maybe two Aces as they are just not worth the points.. I see people talking all the time about how over the top the scatter Aces are, but at least for me I can not remember ever being able to use the Scatter so they die just as fast (maybe faster as they draw more fire). So at least for me it is all about the generics as they are cheaper so you get more, and if they are going to die just as fast, more is better.