I should say at the outset that when it comes to Armada, I think that more is more . Some may disagree. But I say, give me more. More ships. More factions. More play styles. More choice. To that end, I'd love to see space stations make their way to the game. Not just for the variety that they could offer, but also, because this is a miniatures game -- and I love the minis.

What might stations do?

Good question! Personally, I envision them acting like a Super Pelta or Super Flotilla. Load them up with Fleet Support, Fleet Command, Offensive Retrofit, and Support Team slots. I see them as slow, with mild offensive ability, but effective at commanding squadrons or lending a helping hand to others. I wouldn't envision them being built for out-and-out slug fests. However, in order for them to be worthy alternatives to something like a pair of flotillas, they'd have to be priced accordingly. Somewhere in the 80 points range, perhaps? Any more expensive, and they become a tough sell.

Who might get a station?

Multiple factions, every era! If you are an Imperial player, for example, you're in luck! Skystrike Academy from the Rebels TV show is an obvious candidate.

Skystrike Academy:

And for those players who are excited about the upcoming Clone Wars expansions? Stations like the Valor could be a potential option for Republic players.

Valor:

And what of the future? Well, an obvious choice for Resistance players would be the Colossus.

Colossus:

This is all wishful thinking. We might never see these. Perhaps it's likely that we'll never see these. But I think the minis would look amazing on the table (especially the vertically oriented stations) and I think they'd introduce some fun new gameplay styles.

I definitely wouldn't hate to see the old Golan defense platforms make their way into the game. SORT of already have - that's the art on the armed station card.

Nice thing is they are more modest sized compared to some of these - about a VSD-ish, more or less. Less plastic = lower cost = better odds of seeing release.

A Problem with adding stations in normal Armada scenarios is that if you have a station costing say 80 points and you are the first player it may find itself in the wrong position to where the action is. This could be made worse by an enemy with 8-10 squadrons out deploying you easily. You may only see an enemy gozanti and 10 squadrons before your station has to be placed.

In some scenarios this may be less important like Contested Outpost where you know roughly where the ships will be drawn to. However first player in Solar Corona will mean a useless station far away from the enemy who (as second player) have no reason to go anywhere near it.

A variety of faction specific or generic stations would be good for designing scenarios around. Don't make these scenarios tournament legal but similar to those in RiTR.

Another problem with stations is Onagers. They can engage at extreme range and turn a siege situation on its head, forcing the station players 320 points of other ships to abandon it and come after the Onagers 400 points of ships - again abandoning the station to irrelevance.

3 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

A variety of faction specific or generic stations would be good for designing scenarios around. Don't make these scenarios tournament legal but similar to those in RiTR.

Generally, I'd agree - they make more sense as scenario/campaign objectives. But how that is done COULD be so much cooler than it is, now...

Quote

Another problem with stations is Onagers. They can engage at extreme range and turn a siege situation on its head, forcing the station players 320 points of other ships to abandon it and come after the Onagers 400 points of ships - again abandoning the station to irrelevance.

Eh...you can work around that.

Say - the station comes with a defensive retrofit that lets it deploy a dust cloud within 'long' range as its first activation. Onager problem solved!

(And a title that lets it use its defense tokens at speed-0. Because: obviously.)

etc - things you have to build into the design, for sure, but not necessarily game-breaking.

The first-player/second-player thing is a bigger question. Unsure how easily to deal with that - given we all (I assume) agree that a game offering the option of starfortressing is not desirable.

I do envision stations being mobile. Perhaps even up to Speed 2. That way they aren't stuck in one place. Anyone who plays Vics (Me!) knows that while Speed 2 is hardly swift, it will move you a fair amount across the table over six rounds (And anyone who plays CR90s will laugh at this statement). This would also allow stations to somewhat keep pace with the fighters they're commanding.

But yes, @Mad Cat , there is no doubt that some situations would favor stations more than others. I imagine them being similar to an Onager or Interdictor, where a player is building their list (and tactics) around that ship. The give-and-take and tough list building decisions is part of the fun!

The best would probably to publish stations together with a bunch of station scenarios.

An alternative to shoehorn it into more normal games would be that if you built a fleet with a station, the station and its upgrades has a point cost but isn't counted as part of the fleet (e.g. you build to 400 without it) and you had to include a mandatory objective card depending on the station. If that objective is chosen, you have to remove a portion of your list equal or greater to the point cost of the station and put it in instead. Maybe a squadron list has been designed so you replace some of the carriers with the station, or a LMSU having to leave several of the smaller ships behind, reducing the list to a large and a support craft guarding a station.

Its a bit clunky, but it would mean that a station never was on the table without it being the center of the action, and that they could be included without making it some special event.

Designing them so that an Onager didn't mean auto-loss would require very careful playtesting, though. Ideally, a single Onager should be able to damage a station significantly over six turns, but not destroy it by itself.

I'd prefer stations not moving, or _perhaps_ have a move of 1 without any ticks and any way of getting ticks or adjusting speed. Like, y'know, orbiting or something.

The Onager is a siege-engine. It should definitely destroy a space station. That's the purpose of sieges.

However, I don't think having a station as a ship is healthy, rather as an objective so a lot of aformentioned problems will disappear.

33 minutes ago, Rimsen said:

The Onager is a siege-engine. It should definitely destroy a space station. That's the purpose of sieges.

Having to rush an Onager with a reduced defending fleet could also be a good and thematically appropriate game, so I'm not dismissing that possibility at all, but your description of the purpose of siege artillery is inaccurate. The "artillery softens up the target before/during the assault" is totally a trope in Star Wars, and is also one of the main actual historical purposes of siege engines. There isn't a "definitely should" here, just a "what works best".

52 minutes ago, Rimsen said:

However, I don't think having a station as a ship is healthy, rather as an objective so a lot of aformentioned problems will disappear.

But yeah, you're probably right here. Stations as ships sounds fun, and I'd totally try it out for a match or two, but it's probably not good for the game overall.

I mean, we have stations in the game already. Through this we’ve learned that without entirely new rules, static defense are not effective unless an objective forces you to them.

The solutions proposed are to either make stations ships (they can move, carry upgrades, but get a single 360 shot instead of arcs) or to give them superpowers. Those superpowers (throwing dust fields) become sort of silly because there’s no logical reason those abilities wouldn’t be able to be mounted to ships.

Making objectives that favor stations isn’t a great solution either. Because unless you bring a strong bid, your opponents can choose to be second player.

I don’t see how to make an immobile structure that you pay points for that is going to be effective as both first and second player. If you make them mobile, then you made them ships without arcs and hull zones. For something big, this feels wrong. It’s like saying a Lucrehulk shouldn’t have Hull zones. If you make them small and weak, they become proxy mines that move (And do shield damage), which could be a cool mechanic.

Tl,dr: The mechanics required to make stations viable would make them not stations. I like the idea of weak, mobile proxy mines.

1 hour ago, Indecisive Mogwai said:

But yeah, you're probably right here. Stations as ships sounds fun, and I'd totally try it out for a match or two, but it's probably not good for the game overall.

I think it could be fun, just mechanically being a ship makes a lot of things problematic IMHO

The premise is interesting, what about Bases for defense on planets during campaign play? This could make for an interesting addition if Base defense scenarios were played out like this:

Use the long 6 x 3 play area (Players on the 3' sides). Setup akin to Blockade Run, although with the Rebel Base needing to be within 1 range ruler. For 3x3 play areas, put the base near a corner maybe?
For Armed Station, Fighter Wing and Ion Cannon, the Station has to be destroyed to remove the base (on the Strategic Map). You can still have a normal victory depending on points scored. Fighters for the base need to be deployed within Range 2 of the base. Ion Cannon shots use the Ignition Token mechanism. Place the ignition token at any range (close - long) and they can hit at extreme range. Consider that the "Planetary Ion Cannon" can fire its Blue dice at Long range from the ignition token.

These are my quick thoughts based on the original premise. Some of the more memorable games I've played (non-Armada) included either Planetary Defense Units or Starbases/Stations.

I envision them being “ships” for purposes of the game. Able to move. Able to fire. Able to use shields. They would definitely be niche. No denying that.

11 minutes ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

I envision them being “ships” for purposes of the game. Able to move. Able to fire. Able to use shields. They would definitely be niche. No denying that.

But then what makes them stations? By what you described, strap a Golan platform model to a VSD stand and you have what you asked for. VSD sure moves like an immobile defense platform.

Space stations move in Star Wars. Death Star. Colossus. 👌

1 hour ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

Space stations move in Star Wars. Death Star. Colossus. 👌

Colossus is an X-man not a space station. Nerrrrrrrd.

There's ways to bring a static station into contention I think

First off, it's already been mentioned but the station should be able to use it's defence tokens despite technically being at speed 0.

Now to give stations force projection you have two options that i can see:

First is a "fighter command" upgrade which would buff the station's squadron value (assuming it's not already quite high) and allow commanding of squadrons out to extreme range. Or possibly relay through any friendly ship to activate them.

Second would be an ignition style upgrade. I see it functioning somewhat like the planetary ion cannon objective where an objective token (or possibly tokens) placed on the play area within a specified distance of the station. The station could then make one of it's attacks from the token (attack range from the token & dice for the attack are technicalities which can be figured out).

After firing, the token could then be moved to within a set distance of it's current location. (That way the station could put down effective fire within a specific area, but would be vulnerable to ships rushing past the token).

15 minutes ago, namdoolb said:

There's ways to bring a static station into contention I think

First off, it's already been mentioned but the station should be able to use it's defence tokens despite technically being at speed 0.

Now to give stations force projection you have two options that i can see:

First is a "fighter command" upgrade which would buff the station's squadron value (assuming it's not already quite high) and allow commanding of squadrons out to extreme range. Or possibly relay through any friendly ship to activate them.

Second would be an ignition style upgrade. I see it functioning somewhat like the planetary ion cannon objective where an objective token (or possibly tokens) placed on the play area within a specified distance of the station. The station could then make one of it's attacks from the token (attack range from the token & dice for the attack are technicalities which can be figured out).

After firing, the token could then be moved to within a set distance of it's current location. (That way the station could put down effective fire within a specific area, but would be vulnerable to ships rushing past the token).

A station that can use defense tokens at speed zero AND has a high squadron value and can activate squadrons at extreme range or has an ignition weapon? No thank you.

All these stations sound like great additions to a home-brew campaign, but not for a standard game of Armada (400 point fleet, tournament rules).

There's more to Armada than just 400 point tournament play.

I would love to see stations like that in campaign play, or in the 800-1200 point games.

21 hours ago, Admiral Calkins said:

A station that can use defense tokens at speed zero AND has a high squadron value and can activate squadrons at extreme range or has an ignition weapon? No thank you.

All these stations sound like great additions to a home-brew campaign, but not for a standard game of Armada (400 point fleet, tournament rules).

Personally I probably wouldn't use them in 400pt play either (never say never ofc)

The idea of a chunk of your points being invested into an immobile platform which has little to no control over if/when it engages the enemy seems like a terrible idea from a tactical point of view, regardless of how heavily discounted on points this station might be.

(If) stations were included in the game, I would expect restrictions on either how many you could take (like flotillas) or on how many points you could spend on them (like squadrons), or possibly restrictions both ways... who knows. All I can say with any certainty is that they'd take measures to ensure you couldn't put too many of them on the table at once.

also with them being immobile, I would expect some restrictions on deployment; you'd probably have to deploy them a little further in than your ships, you'd almost certainly have to deploy them first, and I would expect restrictions on how close to obstacles (or each other in the event that you had more than one) they could deploy.

IF they were included as a unit you could add to your fleet they would need some way to project force beyond the length of a range ruler, otherwise their immobility makes them completely useless.

As for defense tokens: If we treat them like ships they kinda need them, and since they can't set a speed other than 0 they need some way to be able to use them.

Just the deeper reasoning behind my earlier musings.... Personally it would take some really innovative design to come up with a station that i would consider fielding in an actual list.

Even I, the guy who asked for these in the first place, would find stations much less compelling if they couldn't move. 😂