Hey everyone,

For a long time my play group has hated using squadrons. The reason for this is moving them on the board and positioning them tends to take way more time than normal ships. We have several "Lawyers" when it comes to squadron engagement and positioning so it is never fun. We all know that the game is balanced around squadrons and how they interact with the ships that carry them. I have been working on an alternate set of rules that change how squadrons work. I realize that this has balance implications and I am all ears to any adjustments that anyone has as feedback. This is a pre-alpha version of the rules in my mind, a framework for play testing and balancing. I know that some of you may hate this concept entirely but I am hoping that at least some of you will have some constructive feedback or ideas I could add to this framework. My hope is that squadrons become more about rolling dice, the portion of the game we find enjoyable and quick, rather than positioning and movement.

Squadrons 2.0

1. Each squadron is attached to a ship.

2. Each squadron can be activated once per round.

3. The attack range of the squadron from the ship is based on that squadron’s speed. I.E. the range ruler with 1-5 can be used to determine if a squadron may participate in an attack of a ship.

4. The number of squadrons assignable to a ship is determined by the squadron value of the ship.

5. Once a ship is destroyed all squadrons assigned to that ship are destroyed. Destroyed is defined as removed from the table for the purposes of effects that keep a ship on the table after its hull is 0.

6. All offensive attacks require a squadron command. A ship may send all or a subset of its fighters to attack when executing a squadron command. The attacker may choose to send the activated fighters to attack up to as many targets as the ships command value. I.E. a command 4 ship could divide its squadrons between up to 4 target ships. When an attack is declared using a squadron command a defending ship may scramble any squadrons it possesses defend against that attack.

   1. If this happens the scrambled fighters are counted as activated for that turn.

      1. Scrambled fighters may be used on an attack per attack basis. The defender can choose to activate all, none, or a subset of his squadrons for each attack depending on which squadrons are available to be activated. The defender assigns which of his fighters are attacking which squadrons. (unless rules force matchups E.G. escort)

   2. There is one round of combat, damage done to both the attackers and the defending counter fighters using the ANTI-SQUADRON armament. At the end of that one round any surviving attackers begin the attack run on the ship.

   3. The ship rolls its ANTI-SQUADRON attack against each of the attacking squadrons.

   4. Damage is calculated normally as if the attacking squadrons were participating in a ship to ship engagement. I.E Hits, crits, acc all count per ship to ship rules. Both the attacking squadrons and the defending ship suffer damage at the same time. **The effect of crits on squadrons are yet to be determined. Possibly just a damage or maybe a special effect.**

7. When a squadron suffers enough damage to be destroyed it is removed from play. It is removed from play at the end of the current attack. I.E. If a squadron was destroyed by a defending fighter it does not attack the ship but any damage done to the defending squadrons is resolved.

8. The Grit keyword will allow a squadron to shrug off one damage per combat round. I.E. 1 against all combined squadron vs. squadron combat and also 1 against ship vs squadron.

9. The Cloak keyword will let it avoid one defender when attacking.I.E. when the defenders are assigned it reduces the defending squadrons by 1 at the attacker’s choice before combat is rolled. The avoided ship participates in no combat that attack and counts as activated as normal. **This would force the defender to assign two squadrons to attack this craft to do damage to it in this round of combat.**

10. The Counter keyword will let you steal one dice from an enemy attack pool and add it to your own.

11. The Heavy keyword will mean that any damage caused by this squadron is reduced by one against other squadrons unless the target is heavy as well.

12. The Escort keyword means that the defender must assign at least one squadron to this attacker if able.

13. The Relay keyword will allow “Relay #” attackers to make a second attack run on the defending ship. They will be exposed to ANTI-SQUADRON fire from the ship again during the second run. This run will count as a second round of combat meaning ships destroyed in the first round may not participate in the second.

14. The Bomber keyword will let you re roll your dice against ships / Add one extra damage for a crit. **Not sure which I like more. I am leaning toward rerolls**

15. The Assault keyword will work as normal.

16. The Intel keyword will provide the heavy debuff to any enemies that ship is engaged with. Engaged meaning in squadron vs squadron combat against.

17. The Snipe keyword will let you enter a pre-attack phase against interceptors. I.E. the squadrons with snipe all apply their damage before the non-snipe squadrons. Any destroyed squadrons do not get to return fire. If both attacker and defender have snipe damage is applied at the same time for those snipe units, then non-snipe units participate.

18. The Rogue keyword will allow squadrons to be activated on both attack and defense once each per round. ** Still working on this one. Possibly changed to “can always be used on defense”.**

19. Squadrons may not ready defensive tokens unless they are “activated” on their carrying ship in a “repair” activation. For the round they are being repaired they are activated and may not conduct any actions outside of their launch bay. **Not sure if this should be an engineering command or a squadron command or neither… totally up in the air still. **

I think the biggest hurdle to using this is that it basically rewrites all the rules of squadrons, and every keyword except Strategic, Adept, and Dodge. Your group will have to adjust more significantly if they play against others and they can't make use of common build advice or theory-crafting.

2 hours ago, M_Krakatoa said:

We have several "Lawyers" when it comes to squadron engagement and positioning so it is never fun. [...] My hope is that squadrons become more about rolling dice, the portion of the game we find enjoyable and quick, rather than positioning and movement.

I think you want to aim at making squadrons simpler to achieve this.

My own house rules for squadrons are:

• Squadrons must be touching to be engaged and to attack. Squadrons must be touching a ship's base to attack it. Text on a squadron (or squadron keyword) referencing "at" or "within" distance 1 is now "touching".
  • Reasoning: This gets rid of most of the fiddly measuring people like to do. If you want to engage, you have to go right up in their face. The decision-making is more "binary".
• When issuing a squadron command, you can activate a number of squadrons, up to your squadron value, that are the same speed and touching, as a single activation. They must end their movement touching each other or the same enemy ship or squadron, and if they attack they must attack the same target (if able).
  • Reasoning: This means you can activate more squadrons and increases the utility of a squadron command token, but those squadrons in a shared activation have to take the same actions. Thus a player can over-commit, for example by moving three squadrons but the first squadron one-shots the enemy, the remaining two don't get to do something else now.

I think I got the touching idea from an old Crabbok video where he was spitballing about how to make squadrons less time-consuming.

It's hard for me to definitively say how much time the first rule saves, though, as I play on a non-standard 2x4 area due to space constraints; so there isn't as much meaningful measuring to do in the first place. I have very squadron-heavy lists, though, so the second rule helps a lot.

I think this idea has merit.

I'm assuming that if a ship dies, all its squadrons go with it?

Also, can a ship begin with more squadrons than its squad value?

Two things for you:

1) I think each squadron would need to be rebuilt from the ground up rather than taking the abilities and stats they already have and trying to figure out how to make it fit the new system.

These rules are just too different for that to work.

Instead, figure out how you think each squad should 'feel' and start rewriting their stats and rules from scratch to match the new system.

2) I think play testing of these rules will find that the weakest part of them (read here: the bit that will be easiest to abuse/end up feeling the most frustrating to players) will be the defending squads bit. Not sure, just a hunch.

Also, welcome to the forums!

Feel free to find my post for new forum users and comment there 🙂

I'm not seeing it.

You say the issue is "Lawyer" type players so want to rationalise the rules. The problem is that I dont see how introduce a whole new set of rules to be gamed prevent "Lawyer" type players from "Lawyering".

Isnt the issue the players not the game?

6 hours ago, Flengin said:

I think this idea has merit.

I'm assuming that if a ship dies, all its squadrons go with it?

Also, can a ship begin with more squadrons than its squad value?

Yes both of those would need to be on written down but we’re already assumed in my mind.

I think the main motivation behind reusing keywords is to include as much existing points balance as possible but you bring up a very good point. It may be worth just starting from scratch 🤷‍♂️

**Edited original post to include these two rules**

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

I'm not seeing it.

You say the issue is "Lawyer" type players so want to rationalise the rules. The problem is that I dont see how introduce a whole new set of rules to be gamed prevent "Lawyer" type players from "Lawyering".

Isnt the issue the players not the game?

I think the issue came down to the fact that most of our group understood why someone would want to min max their squadrons engagement interactions if the move was within their range. One extra tied down squadron could impact what damage a ship took.

All of that min maxing just took soooo much time. Armada was (in our minds) about the ships, not squadron focused like x wing. But often more time was spent in our games moving squadrons than ships.

I do like the idea mentioned above to limit engagement to touching bases. I will take that as a possible smaller scope fix 👍

I wonder if anyone has tried running the game on a hexmat with 38mm / 1.5" hexes? This is an idea I was tossing around in which you have 1 squadron per hex. You could manipulate ranges to match hexes (2,3,5,7,8 respectively) or just adjust to Range 1 = 1 hex. If you play with 33mm/1.25" hexes you could probably get by with 2 hexes = 1 range. My opinion is that it would eliminate the precision of squadron placement and speed up that portion of the game. It isn't a perfect 1:1 ratio with the current range ruler, and you would need a hexmat to play, but otherwise I don't think any other rules would need to be changed.

For reference, the range ruler has the following measurements:
Range 1 = 77 mm, Range 2 = 125 mm, Range 3 = 185 mm, Range 4 = 250 mm, Range 5 = 303 mm.

The other idea I had would be to use toothpicks or tokens to show which squadrons are engaged.

The idea of a hex mat is interesting. You would need to find a hex mat but that may be far more simple than the rules change. I will think that through for a bit.

The main problems I see is that the squadrons lose their flexibility.

- They are tied to their ships, they go down with their ship (rogues completely lose their purpose)

- They lose substantial amount of threat range by the attacks being tied to ship to ship distance.

- This needs a complete overhaul of the squadron and ace point system since the mechanics outright negate or dismiss keywords (I saw that you reworked that, but IMO you just created another issue) and those keyworda are heavily influence the cost of the squadrons

- The same is true for every squadron related upgrade card. Boosted Comms obsolete, Squall, FCT all means nothing.

I get your problem of the clunky mechanics and I really disagree with your solution. Hopefully I was constructive enough that you can improve your system if you still feel necessary.

6 minutes ago, Rimsen said:

The main problems I see is that the squadrons lose their flexibility.

- They are tied to their ships, they go down with their ship (rogues completely lose their purpose)

- They lose substantial amount of threat range by the attacks being tied to ship to ship distance.

- This needs a complete overhaul of the squadron and ace point system since the mechanics outright negate or dismiss keywords (I saw that you reworked that, but IMO you just created another issue) and those keyworda are heavily influence the cost of the squadrons

- The same is true for every squadron related upgrade card. Boosted Comms obsolete, Squall, FCT all means nothing.

I get your problem of the clunky mechanics and I really disagree with your solution. Hopefully I was constructive enough that you can improve your system if you still feel necessary.

I see what your getting at. I knew not all upgrades would be easy or direct transfers but I was hoping with a rule set that worked, certain upgrades could be adapted. I will take another look at it and see if there is anything that can be done. Appreciate the perspective 👍

Hot mess.

Just this one: The attack range of the squadron from the ship is based on that squadron’s speed. I.E. the range ruler with 1-5 can be used to determine if a squadron may participate in an attack of a ship.

Mind-boggling change.

My own fan edit concept piece exercises have used similar rules over the years. The one I lean most strongly to recently is a short step over from yours where I had the ships upgrade bar include squadrons as bringable upgrades. So like a Pelta had one squad upgrade so could bring one stand, ISDs could take like four, etc. Creating a designated mini battle group.

When a ship and it's designated squads activated it fired weapons, moves, squads move, squads fire. The activation slider gets repurposed to indicate squads have moved or shot yet in the activation which makes them really only a helpful reminder you can leave off entirely if you want to clear board congestion, since the ship itself now indicates whether the squads have activated. It does require a owning ship identifier be slotted to the squads to tell them apart though, since this 'dedicated command structure' was also means of accompolishing some other things in the overall edit. Which had to all be brought together under a cohesive structure so a ton of other things got pitched and rebuilt from ground up. Which is just to say don't take this morsel and think it was a complete thought lol. Maybe just some collaborative inspiring to offer a fellow sand boxer.

@FFGdesignteams, I know your in here! I can sense you (edit: watching us)! Go make your own rules, stop stealing these good peoples good ideas. 😝 😜 lol

Looking at that list of rules, are you certain you’re not one of the lawyers? 😉

(Just joking)

17 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

My own fan edit concept piece exercises have used similar rules over the years. The one I lean most strongly to recently is a short step over from yours where I had the ships upgrade bar include squadrons as bringable upgrades. So like a Pelta had one squad upgrade so could bring one stand, ISDs could take like four, etc. Creating a designated mini battle group.

When a ship and it's designated squads activated it fired weapons, moves, squads move, squads fire. The activation slider gets repurposed to indicate squads have moved or shot yet in the activation which makes them really only a helpful reminder you can leave off entirely if you want to clear board congestion, since the ship itself now indicates whether the squads have activated. It does require a owning ship identifier be slotted to the squads to tell them apart though, since this 'dedicated command structure' was also means of accompolishing some other things in the overall edit. Which had to all be brought together under a cohesive structure so a ton of other things got pitched and rebuilt from ground up. Which is just to say don't take this morsel and think it was a complete thought lol. Maybe just some collaborative inspiring to offer a fellow sand boxer.

@FFGdesignteams, I know your in here! I can sense you (edit: watching us)! Go make your own rules, stop stealing these good peoples good ideas. 😝 😜 lol

So, really no point bringing a Quasar or other carrier, since you have permanent squadron command.

1 hour ago, Rimsen said:

So, really no point bringing a Quasar or other carrier, since you have permanent squadron command.

To an extent, yes. But in other ways I had built in some checks to that end to make them still desirable from a meta or play style level.

As I stated in the quoted text, other options had to be scrapped and rebuilt. This got addressed with a new command dial system, squadron value overhaul, and other combat values were going to need completely redone, and eliminating the squad phase. This was all done so that carriers in that particular fan edit would be able to do more with the squads they did bring.

For instance using a Quasar as your example, it would have in this system a high squadron 'skill' of say 5 and maybe some more squad upgrades and squad slots. When it executed a squadron command it could spend points up to that value in a similar way to current engineering commands. This would get it various effects like dice rerolls to represent better CnC abilities, restoring squad health to represent it's better repair system and maintenance crews, and I considered even having it provide what the Intel keyword currently does. Meanwhile the ISD though being able to field a similar number of squads would have lesser squad skill overall, say like a 2 for a non-carrier refit, as it would be geared more towards gunnery and fleet coordinating.

Also in that concept I had squads live when the carrier died. This was so that activation count would hopefully be more maintained throughout a match, leading to less act count swings and multi activation and first-last problems. It also smoothed out the deployment count curve too, leading to less deployment advantage knowledge. That was one of the major upsides to the concept for me.

On 8/22/2020 at 2:43 AM, M_Krakatoa said:

For a long time my play group has hated using squadrons. [...] My hope is that squadrons become more about rolling dice, the portion of the game we find enjoyable and quick, rather than positioning and movement.

I'm very sorry, but if you and your friends agree that you don't like squadrons, you could easily arrange not to use them. There's no need and no benefit to houserule squadron play to a degree that you can't play Armada with anyone outside your group anymore.

In my eyes your rules are not Armada any more and I don't think we as a community of Armada players benefit much discussing them. Please do me a favor and post such things as offtopic, as we all would when we feel a need to discuss another game (like Star Fleet or whatever).

I'm very sorry @Triangular , but if you and your friends agree that you don't like house rules discussions, you could easily click over to a discussion you find more appealing. There's no need and no benefit to get in the way of a discussion some are enjoying as a way to get to have more fun with a game they love. Especially because nothing about it prevents them from playing a game elsewhere if they choose so long as the house rules stay, y'know, at home. Like the name implies 😜

In my eyes, since the rest of the rules they are using are Armadas, the discussion belongs here in the main forum anyway as it is quite on topic for a general discussion. This is where we've always had Alternative rules, card variants, ship ideas, errata discussions, and more besides posted for fun discussion. As several people have already chimed in with thoughts and feedback and questions it would seem a good portion of the community is in fact benefiting from the discussion joyfully. Have a great day! 😁

Get rid of the models completely, make them an upgrade for a ship, and have it add to the ship attack, negated by the opponent’s squad complement.

Ex- “Squadron 4” would allow you to take 4 squadron upgrade cards tied to a ship.

Each card would have anti-ship and anti-squadron values.

An attacker could add a squadron’s anti-ship values into a dice pool (once per turn), while the defender could cancel opponent squadron dice additions with their own squad upgrade anti-squadron value (once per turn).

3 hours ago, emsgoof said:

Get rid of the models completely, make them an upgrade for a ship, and have it add to the ship attack, negated by the opponent’s squad complement.

Ex- “Squadron 4” would allow you to take 4 squadron upgrade cards tied to a ship.

Each card would have anti-ship and anti-squadron values.

An attacker could add a squadron’s anti-ship values into a dice pool (once per turn), while the defender could cancel opponent squadron dice additions with their own squad upgrade anti-squadron value (once per turn).

In a sense that is the goal. The models would never have touched the table in my world. I will look a bit into streamlining some things.

I said in my initial post that I knew some people would absolutely hate this. I don't think this is for everyone or for the general population for that matter. I will continue to work on these with my play group until we find a balance we like. 🤷‍♂️

13 hours ago, emsgoof said:

Get rid of the models completely, make them an upgrade for a ship, and have it add to the ship attack, negated by the opponent’s squad complement.

Ex- “Squadron 4” would allow you to take 4 squadron upgrade cards tied to a ship.

Each card would have anti-ship and anti-squadron values.

An attacker could add a squadron’s anti-ship values into a dice pool (once per turn), while the defender could cancel opponent squadron dice additions with their own squad upgrade anti-squadron value (once per turn).

This is a game I would not want to play.

14 hours ago, Green Knight said:

This is a game I would not want to play.

Well, there are certainly people out that that do not want to play squadrons as they currently are, either.

@emsgoof 's idea reminds me of axis and allies. You pile up your force, they pile up theirs, you take turns rolling off. It's not a bad concept. It has a place. But maybe not at this scale or in this style of game. For like a campaign map to determine some outcome, maybe?

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

@emsgoof 's idea reminds me of axis and allies. You pile up your force, they pile up theirs, you take turns rolling off. It's not a bad concept. It has a place. But maybe not at this scale or in this style of game. For like a campaign map to determine some outcome, maybe?

There's an interesting idea to include in a campaign - Rebel squadron attacks. Think the Rebel Assault on Eadu in Rogue One. You could also have Tie Bomber / TIE Defender strikes.

11 hours ago, emsgoof said:

Well, there are certainly people out that that do not want to play squadrons as they currently are, either.

Sure.

But then I'd say they're playing the wrong kind of game.