Does the miniature of Fighter Squadron, 3 models on a single base, represent a full Squadron of 12 fighters or a flight leader and 2 wingmen?

I'm curious because I'm working on some campaign home rules and it makes a difference there were it might not in gameplay terms.

However, damage wise compared to single model Squadrons representing larger vessels such as light freighters and shuttles it makes more sense that a fighter squadron represents exactly what it shows 3 fighters. If that is the case then the Squadron stat for escort and capital ships seem low where a Imperial class Star Destroyer is supposed to have 6 Squadrons: 1 of 12 TIE Bombers, 1 of 12 TIE Interceptor, and 4 of 13 TIE Fighters each. 6 Squadrons but 24 sets of 3, and although the Rebels often fought in groups of 3, Imperial pilots more often worked in groups of 4. Such as 4 TIE fighters attached to a Gozonti class ship which works in Flotillas of 2 in Armada.

1 hour ago, Swadey said:

Does the miniature of Fighter Squadron, 3 models on a single base, represent a full Squadron of 12 fighters or a flight leader and 2 wingmen?

I'm curious because I'm working on some campaign home rules and it makes a difference there were it might not in gameplay terms.

However, damage wise compared to single model Squadrons representing larger vessels such as light freighters and shuttles it makes more sense that a fighter squadron represents exactly what it shows 3 fighters. If that is the case then the Squadron stat for escort and capital ships seem low where a Imperial class Star Destroyer is supposed to have 6 Squadrons: 1 of 12 TIE Bombers, 1 of 12 TIE Interceptor, and 4 of 13 TIE Fighters each. 6 Squadrons but 24 sets of 3, and although the Rebels often fought in groups of 3, Imperial pilots more often worked in groups of 4. Such as 4 TIE fighters attached to a Gozonti class ship which works in Flotillas of 2 in Armada.

I think you can make it represent whatever best fits for your home brew - 12 or 3, modify the squad values of ships etc.

The rules are vague about what constitutes a squadron beyond the "three models on a stand" part. I believe this is deliberate so you can decide the answer that's right for your game.

It’s been quite some time since this has come up. Well over a year.

Deliberately Vague.

Like the others have said I think it is deliberately vague, for me I like to think of them as what you see is what you get for numbers. So one for the large squadrons are one per and standard are three per. It makes it feel more like what you see in the movies. For example in a new hope when the falcon is fleeing the death star and are fighting the four TiE fighters it is a fight that the falcon is not sure that they would win, but if you had a entire squadron of 12 the falcon would be in for a tough fight. In Armada I do not think that the falcon has much of a chance of losing to a single base, and a chance of taking on three or four stands (if you think three per or four per stand, but the thought of the falcon taking on thirty six to forty eight even basic TiE's I can not believe, but maybe it is just me).

It just seems to me that ships point defense and Squadron stats are geared towards fighter Squadrons representing more than three, or assume large ships never launch all their fighters when going into a major battle. While the fighter Squadrons hull and attack stats, especially compared to non-fighter squadrons indicates, what you see is what you get.

Maybe I just need to play a lot more games to get a feel for what is the right interpretation for me.

It’s an abstract concept. Whatever makes sense in your imagination. There’s definitely not a 1:1 correlation with the numbers of squads that wookieepedia or any other source says are in a particular group.

If a Squad of 3 is repping a Flight leader and their wingmen, then it makes sense balance wise.

Then again, "Flight Leader +Wingmen" fits the uniques more than the generics.

It's probably meant to be 3, with the squad based upgrade cards filling in the rest (Reserve bays for instance)

On 2/8/2020 at 1:45 PM, Cpt ObVus said:

It’s an abstract concept. Whatever makes sense in your imagination. There’s definitely not a 1:1 correlation with the numbers of squads that wookieepedia or any other source says are in a particular group.

This.

Look at the scale of the ships vs. the distance at which they are shooting each other in the game, look at the fact that, for rules/gameplay purposes, we measure to the cardboard, not anything more analogous to a ship itself, the fact that each game 'engagement' is limited to six turns:

The whole game is a serious abstraction.

Even considering what (little) we know about the SW universe (how the weapons actually work, etc).... This is a far more abstract game than most many other war-games, and really all of them are abstracted to various degrees, by necessity...

It's not really worth the time trying to figure out the specifics of what a 'squadron' is, as long as we can say that - In the game, the squadron fills a role that is conceptually similar to what we see fighter/bomber squadrons do in the SW universe, when we see them on-screen (in books, whatever)...

9 hours ago, Benmartin said:

Off topic: Where is the data for this graph found? Can it get updated with SSD, Star Hawk and Onager?

8 hours ago, thestag said:

Off topic: Where is the data for this graph found? Can it get updated with SSD, Star Hawk and Onager?

Somebody posted this info somewhere on this board a long time ago - at least a year past. I can't recall who it was.... I copied it at that time into my own spreadsheet.

The "very precise measurements" (hundredths of mm) comes from converting from English measurements for some of the models, rather than actual precision, I think...

Looks like I never actually measured the Hammerheads.... I don't have an SSD, Starhawk, or Onager to measure and include.

I also seem to remember that for at least a few of of the ships in-universe, some of the the data you can find is conflicting (different possible LOA for MC80's, etc. depending on where you look).

On 2/7/2020 at 3:58 AM, Swadey said:

Does the miniature of Fighter Squadron, 3 models on a single base, represent a full Squadron of 12 fighters or a flight leader and 2 wingmen?

In the first place, keep in mind that a 'full squadron of 12 fighters' is itself a fan-fic idea.

It's never stated in canon anywhere*. Indeed, the assault on the first Death Star over Yavin appeared to have two X-Wing squadrons at 11 fighters (green squadron and red squadron) with a single squadron of Y-Wings that consisted of 8 fighters (gold squadron).

* IIRC, the source of this number was the West End Games RPG back in the 80s, somewhat pulled out of the air based on theoretical standard post-WW2 squadron sizes. But even in the real world, squadron sizes very wildly - a Nimitz-class carrier's typical wing at the moment consisting of F/A-18 squadrons of 10 aircraft, helicopter anti-submarine squadrons of 7 aircraft, electronic warfare attack squadrons of 4 aircraft, etc.

4 hours ago, xanderf said:

In the first place, keep in mind that a 'full squadron of 12 fighters' is itself a fan-fic idea.

It's never stated in canon anywhere*. Indeed, the assault on the first Death Star over Yavin appeared to have two X-Wing squadrons at 11 fighters (green squadron and red squadron) with a single squadron of Y-Wings that consisted of 8 fighters (gold squadron).

* IIRC, the source of this number was the West End Games RPG back in the 80s, somewhat pulled out of the air based on theoretical standard post-WW2 squadron sizes. But even in the real world, squadron sizes very wildly - a Nimitz-class carrier's typical wing at the moment consisting of F/A-18 squadrons of 10 aircraft, helicopter anti-submarine squadrons of 7 aircraft, electronic warfare attack squadrons of 4 aircraft, etc.

Didn’t one of the Lieutenants on the first Death Star tell Vader that they counted more than 30 Rebel ships, but they’re so small, they’re evading our turbolasers? Your count above gives us only 19... unless you mean there were two groups of 11 X-Wings each...

Also, Green Squadron? There was a Green Squadron at Endor, but I don’t recall them at Yavin.

I’m just curious.

19 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Didn’t one of the Lieutenants on the first Death Star tell Vader that they counted more than 30 Rebel ships, but they’re so small, they’re evading our turbolasers? Your count above gives us only 19... unless you mean there were two groups of 11 X-Wings each...

Also, Green Squadron? There was a Green Squadron at Endor, but I don’t recall them at Yavin.

I’m just curious.

Exactly, yeah - it was two groups of 11 X-Wings (Red squadron = 11, Green squadron = 11)

As to the name of the groups - that came from the official novelization (one of the few books considered 'canon' back in the day), although as you note the total number of fighters works out that math either way. 2x squadrons of 11 X-Wings + 1x squadron of 8 Y-Wings = 30 fighters, as quoted in on-screen dialog.

Spent some time doing research of canonical source material, of the most notable is Star Wars Rebels and the new Thrawn trilogy, although I might mention others and of course the original movie trilogy.

Rebels fighter Squadrons vary in size greatly due to availability and maintenance issues. They will even mix fighter types within a Squadron designation such as Blue Squadron mixing X-wings and U-wings or in the Aftermath trilogy there is a mixed squadron of X-wings and B-wings, and of course Alphabet Squadron is a complete mess. However when they can Alliance pilots tend to work in groups of 3 fighters of the same type, this might be an actual Squadron or more likely a flight within a Squadron which is usually never more than 12 fighters.

Imperial fighter doctrine is much more rigid, however the Empire is large and the fighter complement of a fighter Wing might not always be at full strength. The Empires swarm fighters are almost always in groups of 4, this is also handy as the Gazonti class ships can carry 4 TIE/ln or TIE/in. The Chimera, a modified ISD I, carries 6 squadrons of 12 fighters each on board, 60 of these are TIE/ln. 12 are TIE Defenders. TIE bombers seem to operate in groups of 2 and Vader seems to prefer flying with 2 wingmen, and in Vader's case at the DS I you see a group of 6 which would probably be two groups of 4 but Vader took two of them. However the ISD in addition 72 fighters also carries several Lambda class shuttles and a legion of storm troopers and their equipment, which would include Sentinel class Shuttles and Gazonti class ships to carry AT-AT to a planets surface.

Even if you put 4 fighters per base of TIE/ln fighters and only used those for an ISD I that is 18 game squadrons at 8 points a piece or 144 fleet points and each individual Lambda shuttle adds 20 points, which is not a legal fleet build for 300 points. If you say a Squadron base represents the entire 12 fighter squadron then you only need 6 at a total of 48 points but that makes 12 TIE fighters incredible weak compared to a single Lambda class shuttle.

This is why I sought clarification

It’s also why it’s not defined 🙂

Be side that way there’s never a definitive “this is wrong”, only ever the much looser “this doesn’t feel right...”

It would feel more right if you could use 1/2 your points on Squadrons instead of 1/3.