Greetings!
I'm curious if there is interest in our "gaming" part of the Armada community in playing an online multiplayer battle of Armada.
I would suggest a number of players per side, building and controlling a number of ships and squadrons each. Grand Admiral, etc, as normal.
In order to have this not take *forever* I would make the following changes:
1. No ship titles (Avenger, Demolisher, Yavaris, etc) or Aces (Luke, Dutch, Wedge, etc)
2. All ships ACTIVATE simultaneously. That is, all ships REVEAL their orders, FIRE, and then MANEUVER at the same time as all other ships.
Each ship would need to be given a set of orders that would be carried out by the GM, rolling dice in the event of confusion.
Each turn would start with the GM posting a picture of the battlefield and a log file from vassal allowing players to check ranges, arcs, etc, consider maneuvers, etc.
Then each player would need to send in a short set of orders for each ship that they command.
For Example:
CR90A with TRCs - "Elegant Hope"
ORDER: NAVIGATE - increase speed to 4, extra click at 1
TOKEN: Use REPAIR token to move 1 shield to FRONT
FIRE: Front arc - 2 Red 1 blue at ISD "Gargantuan" targeting right arc. TRC any blank or ACC, if ACC remains target brace.
FIRE: Side arc - 1 Red 1 blue at ISD "Gargantuan" targeting right arc. TRC (if not used in front) any blank or ACC, if ACC remains target brace.
DEFENCE: Use tokens to maximum effect - evade doubles as priority. Redirect front to Left, Right to Front if possible.
MANEUVER: Speed 4 - R, R, R, RR.
Squadrons will be interesting / challenging / impossible - a lot of discretion / randomness will have to be used by the GM.
All Squadrons activated by ships would move towards their designated targets and engage each other. Squadrons not activated by a Ship would still need an order from their controlling player to either MOVE or SHOOT.
Players would be able to chat among their team via a google doc or discord chat - but each player would still need to submit their own orders - we don't want it to be just the Grand Admirals calling all the shots for both sides.
The GM would be able to play (I think) as long as they had their orders in first - or were just trustworthy enough to be trusted.
I'd be interested in running a small game as a test to see if this concept has legs.
What do people think? Any interest? Any suggestions on improvements / changes/ ideas?