Speaking to Xwing here, I've had a couple people tell me they dropped out exactly because of the requirement of having an app.

As I've said.,..I can see some utility, but I'm not sold at all on this.

Regarding X-Wing, around here it was slow and took off with V2. However, the group was new when V2 came out so they still had that level of excitement, so the change was easier than for someone that had been playing for some time.

I don't think the app was at fault for the majority of players that gave up, rather the need to re-purchase cards and cardboard for things you already had. The app was free and addressed some of the troubles that X-Wing had developed after 10 some waves.

I also must say I find myself questioning the narrative of a group of 8 becoming a group of 1, didn't anyone think of sticking with V1 and keeping the group together? It seems to me that there was just some new game that was more interesting, perhaps they found something else to replace their X-Wing night.

Would an app work for people if the points and slots of ships/upgrades at time of release are printed on the cards?

The app would then be required only for organized play, where balance tweaks to some cards have been applied?

You can then avoid a lot of the (mostly justified) concerns about needing to buy $50-$100 of cardboard to keep playing

I'm not against new technology; I can remember what it was like before the internet and frankly I wouldn't want to go back to those days. An app could offer some advantages to Armada, but at the same time, it dilutes one of the key pleasures of a miniatures game: it's an analogue experience in an increasingly digital world.

I suspect this simple emotion is behind a lot of the opposition to making Armada digital.

I don't know why people are so focused on the digital part of point changes. Other tabletop games change points regulary and publish it as a downloadable and printable text document (or charge you 50$ in case of Games Workshop...). It would be exactly the same for Armada - you can have everything analogue, the digital app is just an optional addition. Armada players are just used to have point costs printed on reference cards, but thats just a curiosity of FFG games. Most tabletops publish point costs in some sort of reference document, which can be printed or bought as hardcover in addition of being available digitally.

Fact is adjustable point costs are a necessity for the longterm health of any tabletop game. That or throwing everything over board and going for a new edition.

Ugh. No. This is the exact thing that made me quit X-Wing when they went to 2E and pushed the companion app.

When I play a tabletop game, it's because I want to get *away* from screens, not be glued to another one. And if a companion app houses the "latest" in terms of points value of everything, that promotes the exact same "release now, test and fix it later" mentality that has made modern video gaming such a pain in the posterior.

If you want to use one of the (many) third-party apps that will help you build your fleet, be my guest. But, to my eye, the "official" version should *always* be the printed form, because it's so much easier for everyone to keep track of on the fly. Heck, I don't even like errata/FAQs for that exact reason - I recognize their necessity, but I think they should be released as little as possible, and significant effort should go into testing ships/cards in advance to ensure that they're not super-unbalanced (and Armada tends to be better than most at that - while cards like Rhymer and Demolisher were absolutely overpowered in their original forms, they remain the exception, not the rule, for how well-thought-out cards usually are).

18 hours ago, Decarior said:

Other  tabletop games change points regulary and publish it as a downloadable and printable text document (or charge you 50$ in case of Games Workshop...).

"Games Workshop does it" is probably the single-most convincing argument I can think of for why FFG shouldn't.

I mean, look at how ridiculous their errata/FAQ/added content got in 40k 7E. Dataslates/Formations were published online, in White Dwarf, in campaign books or supplemental codices, to the point where I honestly think you could have created your own dataslate in Photoshop and brought it to a tournament and fooled about 80% of the people there.

20 hours ago, Decarior said:

I don't know why people are so focused on the digital part of point changes. Other tabletop games change points regulary and publish it as a downloadable and printable text document (or charge you 50$ in case of Games Workshop...). It would be exactly the same for Armada - you can have everything analogue, the digital app is just an optional addition. Armada players are just used to have point costs printed on reference cards, but thats just a curiosity of FFG games. Most tabletops publish point costs in some sort of reference document, which can be printed or bought as hardcover in addition of being available digitally.

Fact is adjustable point costs are a necessity for the longterm health of any tabletop game. That or throwing everything over board and going for a new edition.

What you mention is a huge part of why I got out if those games, heck I was a GW Outrider back in the day. Finally had enough of the madness and sold ALL my GW, Privateer Press and Battlefront stuff. Managed to get rid of my large Xwing collection just ahead of the 2.0 change, and now I only play Armada.

In case it wasn't obvious from my snarky comment about the 50$ charge - GWs handling of point changes and new releases via codices is pretty terribly. But point changes are still a necessity if you don't want new editions or a discontinuation of a game. So publishing these in charge-free documents that are available online is the best way. Infinity does it that way and FFG with X-Wing 2.0 too. Don't know why is such a big deal too look up point costs in a list or a book. If you want Armada to be supported long term this is a small price to pay.

5 hours ago, Decarior said:

In case it wasn't obvious from my snarky comment about the 50$ charge - GWs handling of point changes and new releases via codices is pretty terribly. But point changes are still a necessity if you don't want new editions or a discontinuation of a game. So publishing these in charge-free documents that are available online is the best way. Infinity does it that way and FFG with X-Wing 2.0 too. Don't know why is such a big deal too look up point costs in a list or a book. If you want Armada to be supported long term this is a small price to pay.

At least for me it is not needing to look up the point cost, it is needed to look up what upgrade slots I have on each ship, and what the cost of a upgrade is for that ship. As I do most of my fleet builds there at the game table this is a major pain in the butt. But even a larger issue is that I do not want electronics involved with my table top games, so if they go the way of the app then you are starting down that slippery slope and as I have said I am done. Your use of GW as an example does bring back memories. Yes GW is terrible at lots of things like treating its customers as people, balancing a game and so on, but they are very good at tweaking point costs and then coming up with new versions of the game (often with major changes so you have to buy new stuff) all in the name of keeping the game supported. So to some extent it sounds to me the people who want to go this route are asking FFG to follow the GW method of game design (no/little play testing, no balance, make tweaks on the fly, and then new versions of the game to reset when it is to broken).

6 hours ago, Decarior said:

But   point changes are still a necessity if you don't want new editions or a discontinuation  of a game    . 

Disagree. Yes, things occasionally need to be rebalanced, but that should be a rare and one-time thing (and the number of ships/upgrades in Armada I can think of that would warrant that treatment is in the single digits).

No game will ever be perfectly balanced, unless it is a chess-style game where both sides are completely identical. There will always be some cards/units/abilities that are stronger or more cost-effective than others. You can fiddle around with adding a point or two here or taking them away there, but beyond a certain level it doesn't really improve the end product and is more a nuisance than anything that makes the game more fun. And, in terms of balance, Armada is honestly probably one of the best games I've ever seen. Every single ship in Armada is viable in a competitive list. Sure, some are easier to build around than others, but there's no ships like the TIE Punisher or Firespray in X-Wing that are literally impossible to use competitively and are there just for collecting or to give yourself a handicap against a newbie. The number of games where I can say that I can put any unit I own on the field and still be able to make a good list around it is vanishingly small.

About the worst thing I can say about balance in Armada is that if you want to run starfighters you are basically *required* to run Intel, but even then that's a matter of mechanics, not points; no amount of point adjustment on the Intel ships will change that, and making them more expensive won't cause people to run alternate starfighter builds, it will just cause them to stop running starfighters altogether because of how easy starfighter swarms are to lock down if there's no Intel keeping them moving.

Points adjustments should not be thought of as a substitute for new editions, as the two are designed to do different things. Points adjustments are for balance, which, as previously mentioned, is an area Armada is already in pretty great shape on. New editions are to re-tool mechanics that aren't working or do a sweeping re-adjust of the game to deal with the bloat that inevitably gathers after years of continued development and new releases. For however badly I dislike what they did with X-Wing 2E, even I won't deny that the game needed a new edition by the end of 1E to deal with power-creep and for a redo on some cards/ships/mechanics that were created early in the game's lifecycle before FFG really knew what they were doing with the game. But for however much people talk about Armada 2E, I'm not seeing a dire need for that sort of intervention here. Starfighters are an oft-complained about part of the game and I agree that if there was a 2E that's probably the part of the game that needs the most attention, but beyond that I can't think of much beyond minor tweaks that I would want to see happen.

16 hours ago, darkknight109 said:

No game will ever be perfectly balanced, unless it is a chess-style game where both sides are completely identical.

Except Chess itself isn't balanced. Statistically speaking white wins more often (single digit percentage IIRC) due to being able to keep black in the reacting loop.

1 hour ago, LennoxPoodle said:

Except Chess itself isn't balanced. Statistically speaking white wins more often (single digit percentage IIRC) due to being able to keep black in the reacting loop.

Black should have picked better objectives then. Solar Corona was not the right choice for him. Or he should have deployed better to counter White, mirroring him was foolish. Stack up one side of the board and just start trying to turn a flank or something

20 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Black should have picked better objectives then. Solar Corona was not the right choice for him. Or he should have deployed better to counter White, mirroring him was foolish. Stack up one side of the board and just start trying to turn a flank or something

The pawns + queens spam build works well for black.

And dice...

Yes. Also, do a full second ed.

7 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Yes. Also, do a full second ed.

Why? If there's a game that does NOT need a second edition, it's Armada.

I would like very much an official FFG Armada fleet building app that works offline, designed for the iPad. It would have all ships and cards, with current text. It would have official, high-quality FFG artwork. Every item should have explanatory text beyond the card text, since the use of many upgrades is not obvious, and sometimes contrary to the simple reading of its card’s text. And I want to be able to print a high quality list with artwork for non-competition games.

I want an easy way to build fleets while I’m on airplanes and in hotel rooms.

I want quality, official FFG artwork. The fan-created websites are great — I use and gave money for the Ryan Kingston web builder — but their usability is hindered by the lower quality artwork they can use.

And while I like cards on the table for easy reference, I still have to have a digital copy of the latest errata to have the right text. So many cards are changed, that I’m digital whether I like it or not. So make it easy on me with an auto-updating app instead of making me monitor FFG to see if a PDF (PDF? Ugh!) is updated again and needs re-downloading.

And I want to not be forced to buy ships I will never use to get a card for gaming with friends. And I want to not have the hassle of making my own “proxy” cards.

Give me me a great FFG app system. Rebalance the game. Add in some new ships and squadrons. I’m ready yesterday for this!

I largely stopped playing because I slowly grew tired of the meta that I was playing in, it is only the SSD that is getting me ready to try again.

In a competitive game players tend to take the things that cost the least for what they get and there is a threshold where the value of the ship has diminished as to be not worth considering.

In considering balance you can't just look at what the players are taking, because that is just an indication of what sits in the band of costs that make the ship playable. In terms of balance you also have to address the ships that fall outside of that band because they are too high of a cost. At the time I was playing the VSD and Nebulon B (with no title) were both regarded as bad choices. There are also many upgrades and squadrons that ended up in my folder and didn't come out.

As such I think to say the costs of things is in balance you need to look beyond what is being played and look at what isn't as well.

Having a tool that would allow the points to be adjusted would allow small incremental changes to be made that would change the meta just a little here and there and improve the meta during the long passage of time between releases and errata.

I am on board with a PDF for ship and upgrade points with...1) release right after Worlds. 2) hardcopy reference sheet available (for a nominal fee). Not in agreement with upgrade slots being treated this way. They help define the ship. Changing slots around I'm sure would ruin distinctevness.

55 minutes ago, axe238 said:

Changing slots around I'm sure would ruin distinctevness.

Would it? A lot of the minor stuff asked for wouldn’t affect that.

They would be be able to do the opposite. The difference between the MC80A and MC80c isn’t much and they can be build largely the same. Giving the MC80c a fleet command slot and removing the turbolaser suddenly makes them more distinct.

Well you got me there. I myself would love to see supp team and def retrofit replace wep team and off retrofit on a Victory, but only as a supplement (mk. III?) not a replacement.

On 5/10/2019 at 5:45 PM, Darth Lupine said:

Why? If there's a game that does NOT need a second edition, it's Armada.

For one thing, the cards wouldn't be using the same formatting anyway so may as well redesign the appearance to make them more readable. Minor, but real.

Other things are still on my mind too. Activation advantage needs core rules balancing. I've seen others ideas for this, I have my own version of course. It's possible to do.

Squadrons work currently fairly well. But one tiny imbalance and they seem to be the first thing to break. **** the game was practically released with Broken Rhymer. Than they had to Nerf Riekan twice because he interacted with them. Gallant Haven got nerfed, flotillas had to get limited partly because of their cheap ability to activate squads. The list just gotta on and on with these guys. Let's not even talk about Yavaris right now.

The command system is great... But... Nobody ever seems to get it. And why should they? Everyone I had to teach the game to, this was one of the many snags I'd run into. Two reference a stat on the card, the other two are arbitrary things you just have to remember. There's a disconnect between the effect of the command and the ship performing it. I.e. Concentrate Fire does the same thing on a ISD as it does on a CR-90. There's also a disconnect between the size of a ship and how much it can do on a turn. When the MC-80 Commander decides to order squadrons, the steering and engineering crew take a smoke break and go play cards with the Gunners? It just disappoints and every play session me and the guys jeer it. We can do better with this.

Squadron combat is swingy AF. At this scale of battle game, combat between squadrons should represent the dogfight nature that it is. Warhammer does this in Age of Sigmar and 40k. Pretty sure Drop Zone Commander does this. X-wing tracks a 'skill' stat but for equal skill has a simultaneous rule. FFS Axis and Allies has this. Counter shouldn't be a special ability of squads, it should be a core ability of all squads that some squad types do better at. It should not be possible to steam roll just because the game is designed to. For that matter it should be a core ability of ships too.

Also I fear for what delaying the second edition will do the games base. X-wing and it's transition is a cautionary tale. They waited too long to do it at all and lost a hefty chunk of players who have up on the BS, and then when they finally got around to it there was so much to convert that many bailed anyway. It's recovering now but I feel like they aren't getting the response they wanted. Of the old players in my area, or if twenty or so at one regular night, there are three left. And we're nowhere near to the old numbers with the new players joining yet. Armada is already on the proverbial ropes. Our area, it's *almost* died. Were down from 12 players to MAYBE 4 on a regular basis. I'd hate to see it died because of bad design management.

Look. I may sound Doom and gloom on this, but my heartfelt feeling is this: Armada is a great concept with a lot of original ideas and mechanics that have never been done before. It would be insane to expect them to have gotten it right on the first shot. X-wing was much the same. Moral is: it may not need it now, but it is wise to give it one before it's too late. At some point you have to say okay, that was good, but it was a first go, now let's make it better.

8 hours ago, axe238 said:

I am on board with a PDF for ship and upgrade points with...1) release right after Worlds. 2) hardcopy reference sheet available (for a nominal fee). Not in agreement with upgrade slots being treated this way. They help define the ship. Changing slots around I'm sure would ruin distinctevness.

I was talking about the costs on upgrade cards, rather than the icons for what can be added to various ships. However, that's not a bad idea as you could do that easily enough.

You could even take it a step further, where you have a ship card with just the "basic" ship details, and use plastic overlays to create more than two variations.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

Also I fear for what delaying the second edition will do the games base......

An app, that would allow points changes and small refinements with a team that listens to the players and isn't afraid to errata cards is a good middle ground between stagnation and the chaos of a complete upgrade.

FFG has to look at ways to curate their games and look after the players in a better way. These games aren't board games, they have a life of their own and you need to look after that, it isn't sustainable to make a game that sees half the player base go away because something that could be fixed isn't. What works for board games doesn't always work with collectable games and miniatures games that need more effort to look after.

I agree, I think X-Wing suffered for far to long under the old approach that fixed problems with upgrade cards, "silver bullets", as often times by the time the new wave was released players were fielding the new wave of broken, the new version was just system shock on the players left. The app/errata could slow down the loss of players and smaller incremental changes to cards and rules could have been introduced slowly. At some point the players would have been wanting a new version and the conversion would have kept far more players.

On 5/11/2019 at 11:46 AM, ShoutingMan said:

I want an easy way to build fleets while I’m on airplanes and in hotel rooms.

I want quality, official FFG artwork. The fan-created websites are great — I use and gave money for the Ryan Kingston web builder — but their usability is hindered by the lower quality artwork they can use.

Yeah NO. FFG cant even make a descent X Wing app what make you think they will do a good job for Armada?

Ryan Kingston web builder works great on my Tablet never had a problem with it because there is nothing complicated about it. its the reason why most people use YASB for X Wing instead of the app fast and simple