what my problem with the latest waves is. Since wave 8 I felt uneasy with the game. I first thought it was a certain dislike for the Starhawk. But it grew with the release of CW. And now I realised that it‘s a dislike for a certain design philosophy of new game mechanics.
I had a game two weeks ago. My Arquitens could have attacked some squadrons or the Starhawk. I lost my Arquitens later in the game because of the Salvo counter attack. It would have been wise to go for the squadrons not the Starhawk. The following rounds I didn‘t use the side and rear arcs of my Kuat against the Starhawk because the Salvo would have been more dangerous than my attacks.
Yesterday I had a game against a Luminara list. My SSD showed a squadron command, the token was used to exhaust all of her Venator’s defense tokens. Then I attacked her squadrons with mine. But I had to stop that because every of my attacks against a squadron flipped a red token back to green at the Venator.
And this morning I realised where my discomfort comes from. Rules like Salvo and upgrades like Luminara create situations in which you‘re better off NOT to attack your enemy.
In the early waves it wasn‘t wise to fly into the front arc of an ISD but you could fly around that. Counter keyword was also like that but it was a niche in the squadron game. You could play around that. Against Salvo you need to roll accuracies (sometimes a point of sheer luck). Against Luminara nothing helps at all. All your attacks work against you.
I don‘t mind if some of you very smart and intelligent champions and masters of this game have no problem. I don‘t want to claim that all that is bad. It‘s just that I don‘t like it.
With commander upgrade (and officer) Palpatine began the aera of game mechanics where your attacks started to work against your own ships or fleet. Palpatine wasn’t much of a problem, because he didn’t work. But they went this road further down. For me the logic of “better don‘t attack“ makes the game not more challenging but stale and unsatisfying.
At least now know that its not the uggly shape of the Starhawk that aroused my dislike for that unholly piece of sh… . Thank you for reading. Feel free to comment as long as you don‘t disagree. 😘
Salvo has never sat right with me either. I admit to not much experience with it but it seems janky. Another free attack that a lot of ships don’t really need.
An ISD can burn up pretty quickly as it is if you aren’t careful. Salvo just seems like a method to speed this up.
Honestly, squadron Counter has bothered me more than Salvo. The times Salvo has deterred me from attacking has been very few, but a number of times squadron fights has stalled completely due to both players feeling they'll loose to much if they attack...
Luminara forces your opponent to only use one defense token, so it's really only in the case of a massive fighter battle when the enemy ships has spent their defense tokens that it comes up. In a ship-to-ship fight she's kind of a self-solving problem to Salvo (since Brace or Redirect tends to be higher priority).
My problem with the latest waves have been, in no particular order:
-Super-ships so expensive you can't really afford a fleet (SSD, SH).
-Over-use of Salvo (why do the Onager even have Salvo?!?).
-Onager ignition attack.