Rebellion in the Rim Article 9,058: Actually Fighting

Alright, time to pew pew those lasers into your opponent, and as we all know the best way to have fun is through rules and understanding of them!

See, he gets it

Just click through and read the article.....
As Biggs just mentioned for us (and you KNOW it's serious when I start hyperlinking to other articles!), the objectives change each time.  Just because you played his Advanced Gunnery last round, your opponent's red may be replaced by Precision Strike, which DEFINITELY helps your heavy bomber fleet this time!

To quote Biggs (so I don't have to redo the work):

The trick with Choose Objective is that the objectives that the defending player brings are modified by where the battle is taking place.  All locations either have different Standard Objectives, replacing the ones you have in your list, or Campaign Objectives, which are added to the 3 Standard Objectives for your opponent to choose from.  They don't have to choose the ones from the location, they can always choose the ones that you brought if they think it works better for them, but typically if you are attacking a location, you will want to at least pay a bit of attention to what objectives you can hurt the defender with, since it is up to the attacker to decide which one to play. 

Also important is that to get a unique reward upgrade you have to play a Campaign Objective (including base defenses), and that you can only play a Campaign Objective as a team once per system. 

Speaking of Base Defense Objectives, if the attacked location is a base, it automatically uses only the Base Defense Objective assigned to that location.

Easy peasy, right?  Take that into account when you're choosing where to attack, knowing you can either potentially give yourself a great option (Advanced Gunnery Liberty? SURE SOUNDS GREAT) or already be forcing yourself to remove some (see previously mentioned Precision Strike with bombers sentence 6 inches up).

The other thing to realize is that you may have to eat some bad objective(s) if it gets you what you need.  Having just DONE the planets breakdown, there's a good amount of specific upgrades/slots that you can only get in locations that may not make it easy for everyone.  If you want Interdictor experimental retrofit upgrades, you know what you're picking from.  If I want Concord for my Hawk, there's one planet that I can get it if I'm not undersized.  AND you know that if you want the uniques, you need to play a green objective.  Not necessarily win it, of course, but that's all the other considerations.  Each part of the campaign is a balancing act of taking the upgrades you need, fighting the fleet you want or don't want to fight, and making sure the upgrades you need are going to be the upgrades you're going for earlier and able to get/work around based around your win/loss record from those fights.

Whatever, ya genocidal madman.  That's right, Josh Brolin is a monster.

How do you know who should attack where and who should defend? Because one person can always take a base reward each round, it's a little easier to push fleets around as needed, but it's basically going to depend on who needs what and what tokens your group needs.  Resources make bases, Destiny tokens ensure rolls, etc etc.  TALK to your fellow commanders and determine who's going to be doing what where.  What is most important for all 3 of you to have this round and next? If Jamie needs squadrons to deal with the opposing squadron list, you may not want him to wander into it this round.  Give him someone he can fight this round and worry about next round THEN.  But someone has to fight that squadron list this turn alright.  Don't ALSO assume you're automatically going to win the battle ahead of you; you may end up with the second place reward, and you need to know what THAT can give you.  Plus the overarching campaign points strategy itself as well!  It's a balancing act, as I keep saying, and if you can get 2 wins on your side from your allied admirals then you might need to take it on the chin this round.

Biggs says: Keep in mind when planning out what you need for upgrades, that the only thing that matters in determining the winner at the end are Campaign Points.  Giving up a point here or there to get yourself an advantage is fine, but that advantage needs to turn into more points down the line.

Should you make an offensive fleet and defensive fleet?  No.  We had those in our previous Corellian Conflict game and it is not fun and turns the campaign into a situation where 2 players always fight each other.  It's not enjoyable and ruins the verisimilitude.  I like Eric but I don't want to fight his same fleet for 3-4 weeks in a row.  Be able to defend and/or attack as needed, because tower defense is for your phones and not my good time.  Hard recommendations of "do not do this if you want to enjoy the campaign."

Sometimes you go in knowing that you're not gonna have a great time.  So long as they don't have an interdictor within distance 5 of you, you can jump out if you have to on round 4 or later.  And that may be the right call if you can't unscar your forces and you don't want to have to worry about, or if you can run with the VIP token or stolen supplies (from the green objective; there isn't an FAQ for this case but because RitR is for fun my ruling is that the hyperspaced ship IS distance 2+ from enemy ships, so I'd count it).  Don't just jump out, because it DOES give your opponent the points from your "destroyed" ship, but if it makes sense at the time.... go for it.

But the most important bit is that all that matters here like your favorite sports game is Wins and Losses.  Wins get you the bigger number of points for upgrades, no matter how Pyrrhic that victory may be.  Wins get you presence which can become a base, wins get you the token, wins are what you want.  So yeah, you may need to take the desperate act, strike at that nearly dead ISD to finish it off, even if his squadrons will shoot you later.  Because you're either the hero or the goat.

I'd say sorry Cleveland, but (points at gif above)