Agreed. As a fan of both crunchy mechanics in games, and super thematic games in general, abstraction is the best. And really, really hard for some people to get.

Is that an upgrade?Or a squadron?

Abstraction!

They're not canon now, but who know what could happen in the next season of Rebels... (Answer: Not this. We all know at least that much.)

... I had an entire side-conversation I wanted to continue, but nooooo, people had to get confrontational, and stick to the actual topic. So what you're saying is.... I should bend to your elitism and allow you to dictate the entire conversation? Hey, I was just trying to fly my conversation out away from the main topic. It's totally justifiable.

... I had an entire side-conversation I wanted to continue, but nooooo, people had to get confrontational, and stick to the actual topic. Man, your profile pic threw me for a loop there. Oh man, so many opportunities for sabotage.

... I had an entire side-conversation I wanted to continue, but nooooo, people had to get confrontational, and stick to the actual topic.

Featured instead of appearing, maybe?

This is exactly what I was going to post. Right now, I doubt it. It's a maybe based on mention in books (... right?). But if a working one shows up in Rebels in active service for the Empire (or even used by the Rebels for more than a single episode), I'd put money on it.

Yeah, mostly. But I don't think you can just say "Well, theme doesn't matter if the rules are fine." Again, a really hard time coming up with even potential examples, given the "wackiness" of the universe. Uh. Like... Something gives you the means to fire your commander out of a cannon and at another ship. Some kind of upgrade or ability that is intended to be a kind of... ejecting ship parts out in some offensive fashion? But doesn't distinguish between crew- and non-crew upgrades? Is "just theme" reason enough to justify a rules change to limit that to only non-crew upgrades, if it's mechanically just fine (assume it is, for discussion)? I'm sure someone could justify even that, with the general nonsense of star wars. But that's the closest I could think of, at the moment.

So, due to discussion of "Can theme ever be a reason for rules changes on its own" in another thread, I got to thinking about all of the stupid things Star Wars has in the whole of the EU, and how really, there's almost always some justification for any random dumb thing somewhere in the Star Wars universe. Which got me to thinking about the Yuuzhan Vong, and how stupid that was. ... And god help me, I kind of think they'd actually be interesting in Armada. Mechanically at least. Visually. Thematically, god, no, just... well, except they're just as "thematic" as "lifeboat" commanders (maybe moreso, since we actually see them ever in Star Wars fiction). Thankfully, though, they've been burned from the canon (and were loathed regardless), so it's at most a pipedream.

Not really? And again, just... speaking hypothetically. I don't even think FFG would really include anything really "out there" enough to be a bother. Any stupid thing you can think of, could probably make some sense in the SW universe. It's full of stupid things, especially when you reach out into the depths of the EU. The worst I can imagine is adding dumb stuff, not dumb rules - and no amount of rules changes could fix it if they added Gungans-with-space-helmets riding giant-space-fish into battle.

Again, I don't think flotillas hit that mark (neither do, like, freighter swarms). But saying "Theme is never going to be a good reason to change rules" is too much for me.

First, I really don't care about changing it. It's fine. Whatever. You do you (in tiny boats). And I agree that, if it's not screwing the game up, it's not a big deal That said, I think there has to be some degree of concession to thematics, even within the competitive scene. I don't think lifeboats are that offensive, but if some future thing is completely fine mechanically, but runs completely against the Star Wars universe and theme... that would be a very real problem with the game. But I think it would have to be pretty extreme. Bending things in ways that we just don't see in the movies/books/comics/whatever isn't enough. It would have to be something completely universe-shattering, where the theme has just been dumped in a hole. Lifeboats don't do that. "Oh No Squadrons" is the exact opposite of that (it's more thematic than not).

More brainstorming: What about a Fleet Support upgrade along the lines of: "When a friendly ship is attacking a squadron at distance 1-5, each of its [critical] icons add 1 to the damage total." or "When a friendly ship is attacking a squadron at distance 1-5, each of its [critical] icons add 2 to the damage total." or "When a friendly ship is attacking a squadron at distance 1-5, it may reroll 1 die." You could reduce the distance/area of the effect in order to keep the cost manageable (especially on the second one).

I hope​ you're right. I wouldn't mind it being large, but it's feeling kind of weird that the Rebels have more Large ships than the Imperials. Even though I know it's just because, y'know, ISD​s. ISDs for days.

Do we just, completely not understand the concept of two different scales (of weapons/ships/stats/etc)? "Why don't they just shoot them with all of their turbolasers?" I dunno. Let's ask Star Wars (or... the Wookiepedia. Star Wars, I'm informed, is not a real person): "Turbolasers were the primary weapons of capital ships. They were used for ship-to-ship combat or, in some cases, planetary bombardment. A single blast from a turbolaser could completely incinerate a fully shielded starfighter; however, due to their slow turret traverse and an equally slow period of charging up and cooling down, using turbolasers against fighters proved to be highly ineffective because fighters were too fast and small for a good target lock due to a slower rate of fire than point-defense laser cannons. Turbolaser turrets installed on the first Death Star were unable to hit the nimble Rebel starfighters that were attacking the station during the Battle of Yavin, although they could hit starfighters that were following predictable trajectories, such as straight lines."

The "piling up" approach is how I've seen it used, too. I dunno. It gives a little more room to work with Strategic​ squadrons... but that doesn't seem like much.

I think it's all working as intended, frankly. Armada is meant to model the space combat of Star Wars. In Star Wars, starfighters are dangerous to capital ships. In Star Wars, larger ships would need a way to counter and minimize the dangers that starfighters present. In Star Wars, the best way to fight against starfighters is with more starfighters ("ship to ship"). In Star Wars, we see this play out in the actual strategies employed - ships and fleets brought large contingents of starfighters. The "problem" being presented by squadrons in Armada ("I have​ to take squadrons to counter them") is the exact "problem" faced by the militaries in Star Wars. Heck, look at Imperial strategy in particular. They, too, just wanted to "play only with the big ships", but were "forced" to bring starfighter squadrons en-masse in order to deal with their "meta" (the Rebellion's heavy use of squadrons). And that's just the thematic side. The core mechanics of Armada, that it's had since the start, also support this. Ever since the game started, we've effectively had two "scales" for combat: Ship-Scale and Squadron-Scale. They follow their own rules, and they have combat values that only really make sense within their own scale (ie X-Wings have more Hull than a Corvette). From the very start, it's been set up so that ships do one or two dice of damage to squadrons, while squadrons themselves do three or four dice of damage to other squadrons (with the reverse also being true). If you looked at Armada and said "Man, what a great game about big ships where it will certainly be a viable strategy to completely ignore squadrons," you were ignoring both the thematic source, and the actual core mechanics. EDIT:​ Which isn't really to say anything of balance. Except that "I have to bring squadrons to counter squadrons" isn't​ a balance problem. If it's "I have to bring 130 points of squadrons to counter these 100​ points of squadrons", then​ it's clearly a balance problem. If it's "I can't bring 130 points of ships to counter these 100 points of squadrons", well yeah, that shouldn't be surprising anyone.

That "perception of Star Wars" (being starfighter-centric... I think that's what you mean?) just... It is Star Wars. In any and every source. For reasons given by various people (which mostly come down to "because it made better action adventure movies").

I don't think the "casual"/"competitive" split is really that clear, or important, or difficult to deal with. The only thing that really matters is expectations within a single group, whether that be private group of friends, or the community attending actual store events. Violating those expectations in an intentionally disruptive way is just being a jerk. People should try not to be jerks. Bringing a soul-crushingly-powerful list to a CC campaign being run with a couple of folks who only have starter + $50 collections is just mean. Less so if you're unaware of the situation beforehand, but I think it still falls on the more experienced/invested player to level the playing field.

The prequels were pretty awful (and yes, especially Episode II), but at least they gave us a whole lot of fantastic stuff in the EU.

The AT-AT walker for SWMiniatures gives a good example, I think, of how to do such a ridiculous model. It's massive, expensive, and really only functional as a map- or scenario-feature. But it's awesome. Mine lives in my kitchen, on top of our cabinets. I would love to have an SSD living up there with it. I'd still rather have an SSD as a big playmat/terrain piece tied to objectives (if you wanted to make it compatible with regular play) and campaigns.

Pirates of the Spanish Main featured the limitation that a ship could only hold a total number of points of crew (upgrades) on the ship equal to or less than the cost of the ship. I could see something like that for Armada (but I don't think it's at all necessary).

I have my Interdictor because I love the model, and love the idea. Gameplay? Eeeeeh. I'm really looking forward to using it in CC though. I feel like, yeah, those mechanics are more of what I want/expect from an Interdictor. I really want to use it to put together a "hunter-killer" fleet: one just dedicated to making the Rebels suffer through focused losses of their various uniques and titles. Outside of CC, I'm going to use the Interdictor as the super-support-ship that it is. Shields for days!