This board is so not as awful as I've seen in the past (on other forums). Generally it's one of the more civil and helpful communities I've seen (and that's not just here - the amount of extra community content is amazing compared to how much actual game content we have). The biggest disagreements I've seen (that have gotten messy in the last few days) always seem to be ones where someone is trying to focus on one specific element... but other people disagree with his/her premises as much as, if not more than, their "main point". Like flotillas and "theme is important", or squadrons and "I should be able to play [effectively] without them". Civil disagreement with your premise isn't ignoring your point or argument - it's disagreeing with a different (and potentially much more fundamental) part of it.

Reminds me of the Stranger Things logo.

Maybe have it be an upgrade that just lets you flip a face-down damage card on an enemy ship to face-up (regardless of type)? Maybe an upgrade that requires discarding it for the effect? Maybe have it let you look at a small selection of critical damage effects (three cards? pick one from all of its face-down damage cards?), and choose one?

The artwork looks FFG enough. Hopefully the ship is Imperial only. Imperial makes sense (and I'd loathe giving Rebels more squadron help at the moment), but I'd really feel a bit sad if we couldn't use it for Rebels, and keep piecing together Phoenix Squadron from the cartoon.

I would have prefered they keep all of the freighter-like ships to packs like R&V, just because I don't personally like having a lot of duplicates of the freighters on the table (8 YT2400s looks hilariously​ dumb to me), but I like having a lot of the "standard" squadrons available. As long as I can trade some of the VCXs and Lambdas away, it's not a huge deal.

I could get behind the idea of mixed ship-and-squadron packs, but I'm guessing they'd want to spread both of those out more. I'm guessing we won't see the U for a while, just because we do​ have so many squadrons at the moment. And I'm guessing that they'll need to save everything they can to fill out a third wave of squadrons without getting too obscure to be appealing.

That's what I assume. Though really, something like the U-Wing is going to wind up an irregular squadron instead. Which is... Okay.

Sure!And mixed ship squadrons? U-Wing + 2 X-Wings?

Spread out the "large battles" - have them timed, or delayed, or triggered at some point.

As a vassal thing, maybe? Easier to find players and manage schedules, I would think.

I think that's why he said "IF the Raider had a squadron value of 2". As-is, it wouldn't work.

We have E-wings, which come from outside the standard Rebel/Imperial era (... right?). Do we think we'll get more slightly-out-of-era ships, just assigned to the factions that make sense? Will we get First Order ships as just Empire ships? Resistance ships as Rebel? Will we see more EU stuff brought in, and get some Imperial Remnant and/or EU New Republic ships for the proper factions?

Could it be a ​Nebula-class Star Destroyer​ from the New Republic era? If so, not a ship we're likely to see for the game (though admittedly I ​do like it quite a lot).

Could be a NR era ship, given the timeframe of the E-Wing, but I'll hope along with you that it's indication of the Venator coming sooner rather than later.

Your closing statement is also a huge consideration as well. As one of the previous recomendations would suggest, changing the way flotillas are viewed within the game mechanics would address this, such as moving them to their own "inbetween phase" after ship phase but before squadron phase.....logically viable since they are not ships in the sense otehr ships are, but nor are they squadrons. Another suggestion was that flagships have a minimum points value. In this sense, lifeboat flotillas could still be utilized but you'd have to add upgrades to the flotilla to bring it's points value up to "command ship level". In order to gain use of that flotilla throughout the battle, it would still have to be in range for it's upgrades. Sure, lifeboat flotillas would still exist but it might force a shift not only in building an activation advantage but their use as a corner dwelling no-nothing all game long. To be fair, I don't think the Activation Advantage aspect of flotillas needs to be fixed, so much as we could really use more tools to play with that aspect of the game. I see "Activation Advantage", "Deployment Advantage", and even Initiative all as potential design space. I always like to compare to other games, and the "activation advantage" aspect of flotillas feels exactly like the cheap filler units used for the same "activation advantage" in Star Wars Miniatures. Some of the most interesting effects and abilities in that game played around with these same concepts, changing how many units you could "activate" per turn, changing how and where units could deploy, and changing how Initiative would work. I would really like to see some of that in this game (only, y'know, better, since Armada is a much more tightly put together game [in my opinion]). Someone like Thrawn would be a great place to introduce something like this. Maybe something like... You may exhaust this card instead of activating a ship on your turn. You may discard a command token and exhaust this card to activate an additional ship on your turn.

Oh oh oh! This looks like a good thread to be involved in! Seriously though, my thoughts: Flotillas are weird to begin with, and I'm actually impressed at how well they actually do​ work in the game mechanically and thematically. Especially when it comes to the Rebel Transports, even though they show up in so many battles, I was worried that they would totally feel out of place in these big fleet battles. On a thematic​ level, I don't think "lifeboats" are very "Star Wars"-ey. They can be justified​, but they're still just weird and feel out of place. Commanders "leading from the rear" and staying away from the main battle is totally a great military strategy. But Star Wars is stupid​ in a lot of ways, and this is one of them. Commanders are in their big command ships, barking orders and being "in the fray". It's dumb, but it's Star Wars. With regard to ​range of commander effects​, I don't see a problem at all. As others have pointed out, limited range is​ a thing for most things, but "commanding" (commanders, Fleet Command​ upgrades, and Relay) specifically seems to be exempt. With regard to lifeboats being a mechanical advantage / imbalance, I don't really​ see it. What's the desired alternative? That they go on the biggest ship? If you kill that ship anyway, does it matter that much that the commander isn't killed and the commander's effect remains? Are hiding those points ​that​ effective? Isn't it kind of like sticking a little custom objective off in the corner for your opponent to consider​? Honestly, more than dealing with the "lifeboat" issue with Flotillas, I'd like to see the whole "activation advantage" thing addressed in some way that doesn't encourage plopping down tiny, nearly useless, ships. An upgrade - crew or commander or something - that can be used as a "dummy" activation just to stagger our your major activations ​without​ having to include little tiny ships floating around in the background.

All the data makes it look like bomber lists are certainly at the top of the meta right now, but we've seen that with other lists before, too, right? I know we all love content getting released, but I wonder if a long(er) dry spell might help the meta stabilize and become more clear. That's how that works, right? If there's an imbalance, you need to look at specific units, upgrades, and causes. You really can't keep blaming "squadrons" as a whole (nor "bombers" as a whole). If there's an imbalance, it's going to be specific things.

Amazon has them for $49.99 <GULP>. Cool Stuff still shows 20+, Miniature Market shows out of stock. !!! Thanks for the heads up on coolstuff. Haven't checked in the last few days. Now to just restrain myself from throwing in a bunch of extra things, too. And to somehow explain this to my wife. Again. Just... just constantly. EDIT: I actually checked with my LGS again yesterday. They still carry zero Armada (or X-Wing now, which confuses me since I know they have a decent X-Wing scene), and their ordering was... just not good. I honestly don't understand how that store stays open. Just M:tG all day every day?

"Just the two" I can't even find one.

The game should end when all of the ships hyperspace out, though, right?

I don't know about other threads (seriously, it's a discussion dragged over as many threads as the "Flotillas are the worst" topic), but in this thread your "problems" were: 1. "I can't fight it without joining it." 2. "More Points is better than Fewer Points when it comes to squadrons." 3. "Why even bother with Large ships?" I think your data analysis is attempting to show (1) to be true? But (1) is where my concerns enter in. When you say "Oh no, Starfighters are dangerous, I have to use squadrons​", I'm not concerned; I'm honestly impressed that the game mechanics are leading you to the same conclusion that is made in universe​ by the actual military leaders. I hope it's not trying to show (2), because (2) should obviously be true. Does the data even account for points spent on squadrons, or is it just a list of numbers? Does the data even include a count of Large ships? Are you looking at that data point? Again, the data is neat, but just showing that winners use squadrons doesn't really show that they're a problem. The correlation could be that these winners know to use every part of the game to their advantage. If anything, lists with fewer squadrons popping up at the top would be showing something "out of whack" with the game.

I'm not "punching an opinion through", I'm adressing the other essential part of "you have to take squadrons, and that's a problem". I've been saying, for multiple reasons, based on both mechanics and theme, that it's not a problem. Data is interesting and all, but it's not going to speak to whether squadrons are a problem on its own, in a vacuum. You can't say "this part of the machine is broken, because it keeps spinning all the time" if you don't understand why the part is there or what it does.

Greatfrito, there's been a large amount of discussion about this point, and its not relevant to the discussion at hand. Its also an opinion. Since we got to talking about data. Go Bring up some data to support your point. Images, and books and resource materials. Man, no. That's a common knowledge thing. The "evidence" is: Go look at Star Wars. Seriously though, dig around and find one of the few examples to the contrary​. But if you're not sure where to look: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Starfighter_combat http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Space_warfare http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_II-class_Star_Destroyer/Legends Do some folks just think Star Destroyers carried around a bunch of TIEs for fun?

Yes, the data does support that this is​ a fairly decent model of the "squadron heavy" Star Wars universe. ​

"Pro-Float Crowd" https://youtu.be/OPdDdC4go6c