Fleet building 101: the basics of fleet building

First and foremost, I (Eric) am going to be moving into a new house this week so my availability is sketchy at best. I'm hoping to be able to get one more article in this week when I have some downtime but I make no promises. I'll do my best, though. On to the article!

John and I have been dancing around the topic of fleet building for a little while and I figured now that I'm caught up to wave 3 of the Imperial releases it's time to at least get the basic parameters established for fleet building. I'll do my best to explore the considerations that go into it at higher levels but this is not an exhaustive guide. Everyone makes fleets differently and so if you're successful and your process doesn't follow my recommendations exactly, then good for you. Anyways, let's get to it, shall we?

The core idea
This is the most nebulous section on building a fleet and it mostly comes down to "daydreaming." Effectively, you need a starting point for a fleet. That can be one of numerous elements that goes into a fleet, but it's usually some core element that you expand from. This can be due to wanting to try something new, wanting to show up someone who claims "X sucks and isn't competitive,"(side note: John and I have become rather good with Commander Leia Organa [him] and the Raider Corvette [me] in large part to show up people who think those two options are bad when we felt otherwise, haha), wanting to revisit an older fleet you ran in an earlier wave with new options, wanting to try a variant on someone else's fleet list that did well in a competitive event, or even just wanting to use something you haven't used in a while. If it's a specific fleet element it could be a ship, commander, squadron type, squadron approach (small, medium, large), specific new upgrade, objective you want to try, or any combination of the above. The important thing is having a core idea and then expanding from that.

Fleshing out the core idea
Once you have the basic plan of what you want to do, build out from there. Let's suppose my core idea was "I would like to use a large fighter group with Rebels." That core idea will create some immediate "no duh" ramifications for my fleet, such as:

1. I need to invest a lot of points into squadrons (spend 120-134 points in squadrons).
2. I need to invest points into commanding those squadrons (include adequate number of carriers and upgrades that assist my squadrons).
3. I need a commander who works well with squadrons and with the ships I'm bringing to support them.
4. I need objectives that support squadrons.

And that's just the easy parts of the example - as you get down to your 400 point (or whatever value you are playing at) limit, you will find that you can't quite do everything you hoped to do with your concept. Tough choices will be made. You may even want to add a splash of something else so you don't have all your eggs in the core idea basket. It's up to you.

Field testing the prototype
Now it's time to put your fleet on the table and play some games with it! As a general rule, I don't recommend making major changes to a fleet immediately unless it performs terribly due to a crucial flaw in its construction. More often you encounter problems running a new fleet due to player error because you're unfamiliar with your fleet. That's to be expected and it's important to be able to distinguish between the two. Once you have enough data, you can start making changes to your fleet to make it more competitive or in some sad cases decide the core concept is simply not as functional as you were hoping and shelve the idea altogether and move on to something else. You will need to repeat this process several times before you have a final product that is refined enough that the tinkering with it is largely (...for now) at an end.

Anticipating testing results and shortening your development cycle
Wow, that sure seemed simple, didn't it? Well, yes; it was. The problem with the basic method of fleet building that is common to newer players (let me take a quick time out here to assert that you are loved and swell, new players, and don't let your current inexperience get you down) is that the basic fleet that was originally created is often extremely unrefined. It will get smashed in early games and take numerous iterations to really sharpen into something competitive. More experienced players can often create a first draft that is several iterations more advanced than newer players and thus their "development cycle" is much shorter. The benefit of creating a competitive fleet more quickly is immediately apparent, but over the long-term it also means that more experienced players create and use a greater variety of competitive fleets in the same time as less experienced players create and use a smaller variety of competitive fleets. This has a great meta benefit. For example, if somewhat-experienced player A is playing against very-experienced player B and player B's fleet is already honed to near-perfection and player B has already played an "end stage" archetype similar to player A's fleet and knows how it operates, player A is in for a rough game as his fleet may not yet be fully developed and player B has better knowledge of what to expect from both fleets.

Okay, so what do more experienced players consider about fleet design that less experienced players don't just yet? The answer is several basic things whose importance varies. I'll try to number them and explain in more detail below.

1) What is the state of my meta?
An understanding of what is common, uncommon, and basically nonexistent in the local competitive scene (henceforth:"meta") provides an immediate benefit. For example, if you know that most fleets bring little to no fighter squadrons (for now), you can spend less points total on fighters to oppose them and more points total on bombers (which in that environment are more effective). Conversely, if your local meta tends to be fighter-heavy, then your squadron-heavy fleet needs to invest more points than usual into fighters and bomber support (like Intel and Escort) to deal with that.

That's not even getting into more macro-meta (hoo boy here come the fancy terms) considerations such as "if my local meta is heavy on fighter squadrons because it's viewed as a necessary counter to other players bringing lots of bomber squadrons, is a bomber-heavy fleet even going to be the best approach in the first place?"

The larger your competitive field, the harder it is to really nail down what the meta is or is not. In your local play group(s) you can get a very strong sense as to what the rough consensus is (for now, it changes if competitive archetypes show up). For larger urban areas/provinces/states, it gets trickier. For something like Nationals or Worlds, it's a huge question mark. There seems to be a very rough idea as to what kinds of archetypes are doing well overall across the world but it's extremely easy to misjudge this, as all of us but FFG's silent data-collection group can only judge this is through community forums and other online data sources. People who have an axe to grind about particular builds are going to be very vocal about what they think is too good. When a random person on the internet thinks something is very strong, all you know is that they believe what they're saying and that's often because they struggle to beat it. That is usually due to their meta (a particular build is stronger there than it would be elsewhere, or at the very least stronger against player A's preferred builds), and/or it could be a function of their skill level (the best player in their meta will usually win anyways and right now (s)he is playing X). It's hard to say, is what I'm getting at.

So in short, be aware of what kinds of builds are getting attention nationally and consider why they're doing well. Just be careful to avoid panicking about them or building to counter them if they're not common in your meta. Different builds do well in different places for different reasons and your meta may not be in the same situation as the meta of the players complaining about the Doom Fleet of the Month.

In Latveria, nobody complains about Doom's fleet, no matter what month it is!

2) Do I have enough activations/how do I handle fleets with more activations than me?
If your opponent has more activations(/ships, as each ship uses one activation) than you do, that puts you at a disadvantage. To be fair, the disadvantage is on a sliding scale: having 1 less activation than most fleets is not a considerable disadvantage, but having 3+ less activations often is. When your opponent is able to wait you out by activating his less-crucial ships first, it can cause you to commit your more potent ships before you'd like. Your opponent can then respond to the final positions of your stronger ships by avoiding their strongest arcs and/or attacking them when they come into attack range. It's not a great position to be in. Pass tokens certainly help, but they're a limited resource and most will usually be spent on one, maybe two, crucial rounds.

A good fleet considers its activation count. My general advice is the bare minimum number of activations you should consider is 3, and I feel more comfortable at 4+. With the introduction of flotillas into Armada, it's easy to add one or two activations on the cheap even when using more expensive medium or large ships, and flotillas serve a number of helpful support functions that other more combat-focused ships appreciate. In my experience, most fleets cap out at 6 activations with the occasional outlier at 7 (or super-rarely, 8). In general, fleets that go past 6 activations are usually sacrificing squadron coverage (by going very light on squadrons or sometimes using none at all), which expose them to problems elsewhere that can be exploited.

There's nothing wrong with going a bit light on activations at 3. The important thing is considering how you're going to handle higher-activation enemy fleets when/if you do encounter them. We'll cover this a bit more in question 5, but it's important to have an answer to this question.

3) Do I have enough deployments?
This is something of a subset of question 2 but it deserves its own small space for consideration. In short, fleets with less deployments run the risk of being out-deployed. For example, if you show up with 3 Imperial Star Destroyers and I show up with 6 ships and 6 squadrons, then you will get 3 deployments and I will get 9. Even if I am first player, I can delay my "serious" deployments with a first deployment ship and then three subsequent deployments of squadrons. By the time that's done, all 3 of your ISDs are on the table and I know exactly where all your ships are and what speeds they are going and I can deploy my remaining 5 ships (with the important combat ones held back, of course) with that information. That's a tough situation to start a game in.

Number of deployments will vary by meta and time, but 6 to 7 is fairly average and I'd recommend shooting for at least 6 if you can.

If you're low on deployments, good objective choice can help a bit - objectives like Superior Positions or Solar Corona turn the disadvantage on your enemy by having you deploy everything last and defensive objectives like Station Assault or Fire Lanes make it pretty clear where your fleet is going to be anyways, allowing you to gain victory points through the objectives while not really giving up much in the way of surprises as to where your fleet is going to be (hitting the objective button as frequently as possible or protecting your objective).

Lt. Telsij knows all about the problems you have when there's too many of them.

4) How do I handle defense tokens/destroy enemy ships?
So to tell you another thing you already know: your fleet is trying to destroy the enemy's ships. Enemy ships are not big fans of that plan and they have defense tokens to throw some hurdles in your way. You do damage the most effectively when you can largely ignore those defense tokens and this is accomplished in basically one of two ways: quantity of attacks or quality of attacks.

The first option is quantity of attacks. This kind of approach is most easily seen in a bomber fleet where numerous squadrons can attack one enemy target whose defense tokens get overheated quickly and won't do much against numerous small packets of damage coming its way. You also see this in fleets using several small ships, particularly if they can get in attacks on the same target in one turn (such as longer-ranged CR90As and Nebulon-Bs) - the first attack or two can be defended against just fine, but the more of them that come in the harder it is to use defense tokens against the damage without discarding them for good. Thus the earlier attacks face somewhat-reduced efficacy but the later attacks usually hit for full damage or force defense token discards (which means that ship is in for a world of pain later on).

The second option is quality of attacks. This kind of approach is most easily demonstrated on larger ships with the right upgrade suites. Say for example you have an ISD-II (or, if you're a Rebel, an LMC80) with Leading Shots, Gunnery Team, and XI7 Turbolasers as well as an Intel Officer. This ship is designed to consistently get maximum value from its attacks - it can (when possible) attack twice from its best hull zone, it can at medium range spend a blue die to reroll any other dice it wants (which provides it more consistency and can help fish for accuracy results when you need them), its attacks cannot be redirected very well at all (due to the XI7 Turbolasers), and the Intel Officer assures that even at long range where you're unlikely to roll an accuracy icon, you can still force the opponent into a bad position of not being able to use his best defense token unless he's okay with it going away forever. In short, this ISD build prioritizes quality of attacks, as for its points cost it's not getting a great quantity of them.

This type of overall fleet approach is more common with lower-activation fleets using more expensive ships. The idea here is instead of trying to overheat enemy defense tokens by overwhelming them with smaller attacks, you're trying to get around your opponent getting to use them much at all through reliable accuracy results and/or Intel Officer use as well as upgrades that diminish the value of other spent defense tokens (such as XI7 Turbolasers or Heavy Turbolaser Turrets or the like). Because defense token use is troubled against such attacks, it's very common to also include upgrades that allow for rerolls (like Leading Shots or Ordnance Experts) to ensure that your "hard to dodge" attacks will hit as hard as possible and to improve your chances of getting accuracy results if you don't have an accuracy-guarantor like Home One or H9 Turbolasers or the like.

If your fleet overall has a common plan to handle defense tokens, you'll find it operates more effectively than if you've got a smattering of this and that with no clear unified plan. There's nothing wrong with including a bit of both approaches in a fleet (for example, you might want to include an H9 Turbolasers Torpedo MC30 in your "quantity of attacks" fleet so you can handle flotillas more easily, or a bomber wing may be a part of your heavier-ship "quality of attacks" approach), but the majority of your fleet should adhere to the same basic plan you have for getting damage to "stick."

I wrote more about this subject and in greater detail here, although I wouldn't recommend this article to new players just yet.

5) Can I handle common skew fleets?
First, let's define "skew." For our purposes, a "skew fleet" is a fleet that attempts to overload on one element of the game in the hopes of asking a question you don't have a good answer to. We touched on this a little bit earlier when talking about activations, but let's get into it with a bit more detail. In my experience, there are 3 major types of skew fleets:

• MSU
• Squadrons
• Big heavy

MSU (which means "multiple small units" in many wargames) brings lots of cheaper units for some benefit in that game. In the case of Armada, bringing 6 or more activations usually requires bringing a mostly- or all-small-ship fleet. The goal is to control the tempo of the game and avoid the worst enemy attacks by dodging out of the best arcs due to the activation advantage. We covered this a bit already above, but it is important to note that your fleet does need an answer for "what happens if the other fleets has 2 or more activations than I do?" The answer can be certain upgrades (like Gunnery Team on a large ship), superiority in other areas of the game you hope to leverage (such as squadrons), and/or a good anti-swarm objective suite to help you chip away at your opponent's activation advantage.

A heavy squadron approach also asks a hard question, that question being "can you handle 130ish points of squadrons, which is mostly bombers along with squadron support like Intel, before those bombers wreck your fleet?" If your fleet's response is "well I hope so but I'm not really sure" then you likely need to shore up your anti-squadron defenses, usually with some additional fighter coverage. It's important to note that you don't need to invest a ton of points into squadron defense, but you do need anti-bomber tools that are used in an anti-bomber plan. If you don't have the tools or a plan, you're going to run into big trouble when bombers are destroying your fleet and you just can't do much to stop them.

The final archetype of "big heavy" is a little bit harder to define but it can mostly be summarized as "a fleet with fewer better-defended high-hull ships." A Motti fleet using two ISDs with Electronic Countermeasures or Reinforced Blast Doors (for 17 effective hull points) as well as some fleet support would be a good Imperial example. A good Rebel example would be a fleet with a "doom pickle" Assault HMC80 with Reinforced Blast Doors and Electronic Countermeasures and Walex Blissex, etc. It's one tough ship. The question a "big heavy" fleet asks you is "do you have the muscle to actually destroy my very durable ship(s) in a resource-effective way?" Because Armada's victory point system rewards zero points for an enemy ship that survives the game at 1 hull point, you need to be careful to allocate adequate resources to handle a "big heavy" ship in time to destroy it by the end of the game (or just avoid it entirely, which can result in a win but not by a very large margin). Effectively, the big heavy fleet punishes enemy fleets that can't win a war of attrition and/or can't produce enough consistent damage to threaten it. If your fleet is too heavy on support elements at the expense of your damage output, big heavy fleets are going to give you trouble.

I wish to note that not all (or even most) fleets are full-on skew lists, but it's very common to see these basic archetype flavors being mixed together. A fleet with a lot of squadrons with one large well-defended battle carrier flagship is a squadrons+big heavy fleet, for example. Having the tools to handle the more extreme skew builds of these archetypes will also provide you with the tools to handle the same elements in well-rounded fleets, too.

6) Does my bid strategy compliment my fleet?
We touched on this one in the bidding articles, but it's important to realize that bidding (or not!) is a decision and it can affect your fleet design and objective selection.

7) Am I using good objectives?
This is the final consideration and we largely touched on this in the objectives starter article. In short, you want your objectives to be rock-solid for your fleet. They should either give you a considerable advantage when you are second player or, if you have a problematic match-up against other types of fleets, help you get a leg up when normally you'd be at a disadvantage. "Just cuz" objectives weaken your fleet, so try to avoid them and use objectives that are stronger for you.

Final thoughts 
That's a lot to consider all at once! If you're new and trying to build a fleet and trying to add those 8 elements to your fleet design considerations it can feel a bit overwhelming. No need to worry, though! You can always choose a few to focus on and then slowly but surely build out your considerations from there as you become more adept at fleet-building. Good luck!