Hyperwave Signal Boost - Aha. It IS useful!

By Garrett17, in Star Wars: Armada

TLDR: To make sure unengaged AI bombers get extra dice during the squadron phase because you were busy doing something else during the ship phase.

So this card was bugging me at first for how utterly valueless it seemed when compared to the other fighter-based offensive retrofits you could take due to the following principles:

1) Generally you want to move later rather than sooner before the shooting starts

2) When the shooting starts you want to activate sooner rather than later

HSB seemed utterly useless because it specifically worked against both these principles because you basically only get to use more fighters at a time in the squadron phase with the AI benefit only kicking in if you were attacking only and not moving.

That meant you could use the card to move more fighters early in the squadron phase which works against you because you generally want to move after your opponent (unless you just want to be shot during the squadron phase) and can't effectively defer the effect of the card for long because even if you don't use it you still have to activate squadrons normally leaving you fewer squadrons to use as the phase goes on. Violates principle 1.

It also means that you could attack with full armament provided you're willing to wait until the squadron phase. But that means you'd have to be engaged with someone first going INTO the squadron phase. Given half the droids are 3-hull, this struck me as a terrible idea. If someone engaged you during the turn or you engaged them the turn before you're probably not going to make it to the squadron phase unless you're throwing an enormous swarm of them and counting on some of them living long enough. Violates principle 2.

And you have to feed the card!

But I finally had an epiphany this morning. You could use HSB to trigger AI on bombers to strike at full armament during the squadron phase while controlling starfighters with squadron commands during the ship phase. If you're playing correctly, enemy squadrons are tied up elsewhere with fighters but you're close enough to command them while bombers who are hopefully further from the fight and planted right in a ship's path earlier can be reached by HSB which naturally extends communication range.

This is just about the only circumstance I can think of where HSBs would win out over the other offensive retrofits on offer.

Anyone have any other ones?

Edited by Garrett17

There are some things you can do that require a large ship, but other than that, you could also use Dooku to lock out your opponents squad command and then either get the jump on their squad ball with twice as many as normal, or CF while shooting his ships and then still get your fighters that are in the ball attacking as normal.

Maybe. I just find raid is too easy to get rid of especially with all the token spamming that people can (and will need to) do now. But I haven't played with or against Dooku yet.

Edited by Garrett17
3 hours ago, Garrett17 said:

Maybe. I just find raid is too easy to get rid of especially with all the token spamming that people can (and will need to) do now. But I haven't played with or against Dooku yet.

If they're using a token to ditch raid, then they're down one squadron that they had a plan to use already. It also helps that Hardcells can slice while they're fighting instead of being on a flimsy little flotilla.

3 hours ago, Garrett17 said:

Maybe. I just find raid is too easy to get rid of especially with all the token spamming that people can (and will need to) do now. But I haven't played with or against Dooku yet.

It works really well with Dooku, since it is fleet-wide. Single instances aren't as useful unless you can concentrate them. To really have an effect they need a 2 turn impact.

That being said, if you manage to get Raid onto a ship 2 turns in a row, it can be very effective (1 turn is adequate for Repair against ships designed to concentrate fire or push squads, if you time it right). Most people bank a nav token turn 1 then set their ships to do whatever. Raiding Nav is pointless - it really should be used for Repair or Squadron, and then maybe CF.

With Squadron, you can raid turns 2 and 3, and since they banked a Nav, they can't do anything about it for a while. You use that opportunity to Alpha their squads and do as much damage as possible.

With Repair it's a bit more tricky, but generally you use it rounds 4 and 5, since that generally is when people start shifting their commands to repair. They have been spending their dials banking or using their primary commands (Squad, Nav, CF), so they'll have to discard their Repair dial, at least for the one of those 2 turns, and at least a token for the other, and that can make all the difference.

I haven't used it yet for CF, but I imagine any time between turns 2 and 4 is when you'd want to use it, depending on the timing of engagement.

The above is based off of 1 game where I managed to use Dooku very effectively to shut down my opponent's fleet (and would have done better had I remembered to use him on turns 2 and 3 rather than 2 and 4), and general observation about the turns in which certain commands are used. The key factor though is getting the same Raid token 2 turns in a row - 1 turn has too little impact, generally (see exceptions above).

Ever tried HSBs with him?

I think it’s going to play well as we move into the new fewer aces fighter game.

It’s not as much use if you have a list of 6 aces supported by Carriers with the capacity to activate them all.

But the 4 ace limit means you will start to see far bigger fighter wings as generics take the places of all those costly aces. You could easily see separatists fighter wings hitting 10-12 fighter bases, your going to struggle to activate all your fighters with that number of bases to activate, even if you have two comms frigates with expanded hangers and spare tokens every round that’s only 10 activations, loose your tokens and it’s down to 8. Hyperwave signal boost will allow 2 comms comms frigates to activate 12 fighters without using the tokens. Which considering how cheap the septics generic fighters are and how important activation is to them, i can’t see it not being stapled to a comms frigate.

it also will allow some interesting game plays, it acts like flight commander in that you will be able to move you ship before activating your hyper-wave signal fighters, allowing you to have that little extra activation range and or shuffle your fighters up with a fighter coordination team before the hyperwave activates them.

It’s also a boosted comms equivalent, allowing that activation of fighters at long range ( so it’s acting in the same way as flight commander and boosted coms as well as giving 3 more activations to you carrier, all from one card costed at 3 points ).

finally it will also allow your cheap generics to do what expensive rogues always did well and jump that “it’s on its last legs ship” after the ship phase to make sure it does not get to live to the next round.

all in all I think it turns the comms frigate from a middle of the road medium carrier/medium combat jack of all trades ( like a rebel assault frigate) to possibly the most effective point for point carrier in the game ( max seven fighter activations in a round, 3 at long range and after you have moved the ship) all for a 3 point card......it may be the best card in the world


In my quick run through I have come across 2 offbeat ideas for HSB in its use.

  1. Having the additional activation to help scoop up obj. tokens in Infested fields.
  2. Get some safe AI snipes from DIS-T81.
1 hour ago, Garrett17 said:

Ever tried HSBs with him?

No. I had a minimum squadron investment. I imagine they would work well though, with a full 134 points of squadrons - being able to shut down your opponent's squadron commands for 2 turns whilst yours are all commanded or pseudo-commanded would be a great way to win the squadron fight early.

Opposite to that, of course, is that HSBs would be a soft counter to Dooku and Raid, since they allow the player to overcome half of the effect of Raid (weakened squad attacks through lack of command).

So I've done some additional thinking and come up with the radical idea of using HSB on Hardcell battle refits to stall out your squadron activations in the early rounds as you are only activating one squad. This allows somes of your squads to have free reign of the board to move where ever they want after your oppenent has moved everything.

Please analyze and/or criticize this line of though as there maybe some unoptimal aspect I'm overlooking.

On 12/13/2020 at 1:09 PM, Hyperspace Ninja said:

So I've done some additional thinking and come up with the radical idea of using HSB on Hardcell battle refits to stall out your squadron activations in the early rounds as you are only activating one squad. This allows somes of your squads to have free reign of the board to move where ever they want after your oppenent has moved everything.

Please analyze and/or criticize this line of though as there maybe some unoptimal aspect I'm overlooking.

Sorry. I'll try and get to this. Life is just in the way right now.

I have actually been working on a build around this idea.

Munificent Comms Frigate (70)
• Count Dooku (30)
• Flight Commander (3)
• Fighter Coordination Team (3)
• Hyperwave Signal Boost (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Sa Nalaor (5)
= 121 Points

Munificent Comms Frigate (70)
• Flight Commander (3)
• Fighter Coordination Team (3)
• Hyperwave Signal Boost (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 86 Points

Hardcell Transport (47)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
• Fighter Coordination Team (3)
• Parts Resuppy (3)
• Beast of Burden (6)
= 61 Points

Squadrons:
• 6 x Droid Tri-fighter Squadron (66)
• 6 x Hyena Droid Bomber Squadron (66)
= 132 Points

Total Points: 400

On 12/13/2020 at 10:09 AM, Hyperspace Ninja said:

So I've done some additional thinking and come up with the radical idea of using HSB on Hardcell battle refits to stall out your squadron activations in the early rounds as you are only activating one squad. This allows somes of your squads to have free reign of the board to move where ever they want after your oppenent has moved everything.

Please analyze and/or criticize this line of though as there maybe some unoptimal aspect I'm overlooking.

I don't know if I'm quite following. Do you mind putting in an example of what squad you would use the 1-squad HSB on?

55 minutes ago, Cruzer said:

I don't know if I'm quite following. Do you mind putting in an example of what squad you would use the 1-squad HSB on?

Vultures due to their nature of being cheap fodder or tri-fighters being able to recover from weak/passive movement with high mobility. With the current limited squad selection the main use of the stall is so you can setup an agressive unhindered movement of your bombers/404 where you will then be part the first activation next ship round.

Another interesting side thought when thinking about HSB squad stall is in odd number of squads it allows you to choose when you want to your weaker single activation to happen in the early game. The main arguement aginst HSB stalling is it becomes a waste of points against sqaudronless lists which doint need to be competed with in sqaud activations. Also on further review when considering HSB stall you also competeing with the idea of "just put more squads in the list".

5 minutes ago, Hyperspace Ninja said:

Vultures due to their nature of being cheap fodder or tri-fighters being able to recover from weak/passive movement with high mobility. With the current limited squad selection the main use of the stall is so you can setup an agressive unhindered movement of your bombers/404 where you will then be part the first activation next ship round.

Another interesting side thought when thinking about HSB squad stall is in odd number of squads it allows you to choose when you want to your weaker single activation to happen in the early game. The main arguement aginst HSB stalling is it becomes a waste of points against sqaudronless lists which doint need to be competed with in sqaud activations. Also on further review when considering HSB stall you also competeing with the idea of "just put more squads in the list".

Oh I get it! Using HSB during Squad Phase to only activate 1 squad, vs the usual requirement of 2. That does have some merit to it, I can agree. Dunno how effective it will be in the end, but definitely is a 200IQ-level strat XD

On 12/13/2020 at 1:09 PM, Hyperspace Ninja said:

So I've done some additional thinking and come up with the radical idea of using HSB on Hardcell battle refits to stall out your squadron activations in the early rounds as you are only activating one squad. This allows somes of your squads to have free reign of the board to move where ever they want after your oppenent has moved everything.

Please analyze and/or criticize this line of though as there maybe some unoptimal aspect I'm overlooking.

The worth of the strategy will depend on how badly you want to stall vs. how much you want move first.

That will depend on the number of squadrons involved in the squadron war which typically which has a pre-engagement and a post engagement half. In my (limited experience) it usually goes like this:

  • Pre-engagement - You stall until your enemy is forced to move up then you jump him and engage on your terms OR your enemy moves up in a way that forces YOU to move on less than ideal terms. The side who can stall the longest usually wins this part
  • Post-Engagement - You start trying to take apart the other side's squadron groups faster than he can take apart yours

HSBs only really help out in the pre-engagement phase in this scenario because you're looking to get a stall benefit out of them. How much you want to stall depends on how many fighters you want to stall against. If the enemy brings no fighters, you get no benefit. If the enemy brings a lot more fighters than you (and leaves them to the squadron phase) you still might not get much benefit. The ideal scenario is you have to have close to an even number of fighters which guarantees you unopposed squadron moves at the end of the squadron phase and then you're still limited to only shooting or moving. If you're second player and your opponent activates his squads on his first activation your benefit drops to near zero again so you need to also be first which means you need a bid.

At this point you're using three or more offensive retrofit slots that may face off against the wrong number of fighters and you need a bid. It's a lot to ask for a benefit that's difficult to value.

My 2 cents.

Edited by Garrett17

In my limited experience as I only played two games with the new rules and zero games with any Clone War stuff is that the squadron game have become way more strategic and moving your squadron in a single ball is not really the most effective any more. As AI on Droid-fighters make them so much more effective you can essentially get six to seven good activation and attack from a single ship this way and that is extremely effective use of a limited resource.

Using similar tactics with the Empire is now a very potent solution. If you position both ships and squadron correctly you can move your bombers into a position to intercept a flanking threat or support your capital ships without having to activate them in the ship phase at all. Imperial and Separatist Bombers are fast enough to often position themselves where the opponent can get to them without sending their fighter squadron without any hope of activating them with a squadron commands or even reach them in one turn at all.

With the change to Intel having a numbers advantage can be really effective in many situations and forcing the opponent to split his squadron presence or just split their fire as you rush in and engages the opponent in a way you force them to split their fire. Using this trick you can fly the bombers into a strategic position... forcing the opponent to react and then surround their fighters with your faster Droid fighters.

Bomber generally want to move into a good bombing run and not into engagement of enemy fighters... this forces the enemy to then either move to intercept them and then be swarmed buy your fighters in a less than advantageous position. Or they leave the bombers alone and they can perform their bombing run in the next Squadron phase uninterrupted. You obviously want to place the bombers in such a way that only one or two enemy fighters have any chance to reach them in one turn as that will split their fighters up... it is almost like a trap... now you might even be likely to kill off some of them when you activate and engage the other fighters elsewhere to keep them busy... you should have the numbers advantage. Using Intel of your own you might even be able to jank the bombers lose and instead activate your fighters in the next squadron phase as they locked down the enemy fighters elsewhere. As you should have the numbers advantage you should be able to do this.

These types of strategies will work if you have 10+ squadrons. They do with Imperial fighters quite well now even when not using Sloane.... ;) ...regular TIE fighters are now really useful for all Imperial commanders. A medium fighter screen with say 10 TIE-fighters/bombers and a few Reserve Hangar decks can be quite effective even if you don't plan to activate more than half or less of them in the ship phase.

Edited by jorgen_cab

Hi All,

I have taken some interest in HSB and need some clarification on a section of HSB.

I've seperated the sentences and highlighted the text in question.

--

"During the Squadron Phase, when it is your fleet's turn to activate squadrons, you may exhuast this card to choose a number of unactivated, friendly squadrons at close-long range up to your squadron value.

This turn, activate each of those squadrons.

While attacking, each of those squadrons with AI are treated as if activated by a squadron command."

--

So my question is. If I have a Munificent Comms Frigate (has Squadron 3) and during my squadron phase, would i be able to activate 3 squadrons in my turn to attack .

Normally in the squadron phase, you can active 2 squadrons for each of your turn. So does it mean in this case the text imply that HSB actives 3 squadrons when I use HSB?

Your thoughts would be much appriciated.

thanks!