r/StarWarsArmada • u/Maturin- • Aug 03 '26
List Building ACE slightly delayed but here's an article on everyone's favorite upgrade
Hi Armada Community, thanks for your patience. Apologies for the slight delay - our webmaster is in limbo due to international airline woes, but we'll still get the ACE update out today! In the meantime please enjoy this article about...PDIC, and why we changed it the way we did. https://www.armadarulesetcollective.com/news/ionized-point-defense-cannonning-and-mathemating-EaOZkN
(corrected a silly typo after a loong time!)
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u/gildedgannet_redux Aug 03 '26
I've put some thought into reworking PDICs myself, and this is probably the most balanced interpretation possible while still being thematic.
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u/Semillakan6 Aug 03 '26
Good luck on the launch! I was doubting myself if the release was today or I had read wrong the post from the OG announcement.
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u/laxdragonhf Aug 03 '26
This is why community driven content is ass.. This is a bad change. Making it an exhaust and costing a token makes it effectively a non use for the card and also is redundant for stopping it from happening multiple times. The easy change is it lets you reroll enemy crits and nothing else thus making the Red bomber still effective but it still does its intended purpose of "knocking down ordinance". There is a million other ways of dealing with this card instead of making it "another card but worse" and its probably because of the bias of the community council
All large ships should have PDICs inheritly imo because Squadron play is the must unfun and uninteresting aspect of the game.
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u/tanzlustbatkai Aug 03 '26
it is exhaust or spend a token. not both.
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u/laxdragonhf Aug 03 '26
Doesn't change the overall of this card being ruined for the reason it was liked. It let you get away with a smaller screen and not insta lose to bombers. Those 2 points of damage are not going to change much against bomber balls.
Also their logic of "rerolls are too random" means we are gunna change evades right? Its a stupid reason. Rerolls are part of a dice game, just let them be
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u/Briar_Cudge Aug 04 '26
Squadrons are a key part of the experience, and PDIC was definitely broken both thematically and gameplay design wise.
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u/AdministrativePost96 Aug 04 '26
Armada always has and always will be a combined Arms game
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u/laxdragonhf Aug 04 '26
Squadrons were broken for the onset and AMG / FFG started to realize it and then were cutoff. PDIC wasn't an accident it was an apology. Squadrons should have half the dice and half the health. Flakking should have been more powerful. Armada is a game of fleet combat that has been plagued since the first squadron expansion with squadrons being OP and ruining grand strategy. There is a reason that most of the broken metas heavily leaned on squadrons and carriers.
They dont have movement planning, they are too reactive, they have too much health, etc etc. AMG and FFG started to realize this but were cutoff unfortunately.
Its okay i get that alot of people are simps for the Carrion kings ARC, Legacy, and now ACE who couldn't let the body get cold before they tried to slam their homebrews into the corpse. Who especially ARC promised to only really do points and tweaks but then released their own wave day 1. Commical.
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u/Stevespam Aug 04 '26
Problem: Armada didn't establish fuel limits on squadrons.
Solution: all squadrons can only be active for two turns before having to dock with a carrier
I foresee no problems or complications with this whatsoever.
Don't get me started on the ammo limits for fighter laser blasters...
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u/laxdragonhf Aug 04 '26
You joke but the problem is fighters move and act in a very simple way compared to the ships which is why braindead strats always come from them and stuff like Intel, relay, and flotillas had to be changed. squadrons Lean into dumb styles.
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u/Stevespam Aug 04 '26
This feels like you trying to get a game that you want rather than enjoying a game that you have.
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u/laxdragonhf Aug 04 '26
Im not the one who changed PDIC and added their own content to the game. I was happy with Armada as it was. I played in tournaments and did my time but ARC, Legacy, and these Carrion Princes all turned me off. And they can't just be happy proctoring tournaments and adjusting points they gotta impose their will on an IP/ game system that isn't theirs to change. Its sad that i would be forced to play this crap if i do a major tournament again.
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u/Stevespam Aug 04 '26
People are misreading this card. Exhausting it does not remove its ability to reduce damage using confire tokens. The card has two options: exhaust to reduce damage, and remove a confire token to reduce damage. You can choose either one, but after the card is exhausted, you can still use the confire token option.
That means during a single enemy activation you have the potential to reduce damage by two over two squadron attacks or 2 arc attacks. If you have sources that can pass additional tokens, or the ability to create more tokens on the defending ship, you can continue to reduce damage by 1 over future opponent activations during that round of play.
That means that the limitation for damage reduction is only dependent on how many confire tokens the defending ship can generate and what you want to use them for. You as the pdic player will have to choose when you want to retain confire tokens for other effects such as intensify firepower or utilize them for damage reduction. That feels like good tactical gameplay to me.
In practical terms, this is a more effective general source of damage reduction than old PDIC. It doesn't remove the ability of special crits to trigger, but it will remain effective against multiple sources of damage over a turn. When you look at how PDIC damage reduction averages out, if you build around it, it will be more effective in terms of damage reduction on average then old PDIC. If you don't build around it, it will remain a source of consistent damage reduction.
That means that this is most effective at reducing multiple attacks from squadrons, but less effective at reducing crit effects from close range brawler ships running special crits. The chance reduces the RNG nature of the card and increases consistency while at the same time opening up fleet building to more archetypes - specifically close range brawler archetypes that were basically locked out of meta play due to the increased inconsistency of their triggering effects.
I think it will be hard for you to argue that removing an archetype from the game is good for the health of the game.
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u/laxdragonhf Aug 04 '26
Never said remove squads. I am saying they are problematic and PDIC making them all roll twice was a start towards undoing the hellscape that they are.
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u/Stevespam Sep 02 '26
You might not enjoy playing against squads, but they have been a part of the integral design since very early on, whereas PDIC was included as one of the very last elements before FFG/AMG stopped development. I'm sympathetic to how much you liked them, but they were not a core element of the game's design for most of its life.
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u/laxdragonhf Sep 02 '26
It was a step towards corrextuon like they have been taking since the development. Advanced Sensor net, changes to Intel, to Flotillas, Titles that dealnwith squadsrons constantly printed etc etc. FFG struggled with the monster they created every single update.
It was a mistake making squadrons movement and interaction so simple compared to ships, they knew it and never got to realize a way to fix it
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u/Stevespam Sep 02 '26
I'm going to disagree with you there. You're painting this like FFG has been struggling to course correct squads from the beginning when they've just been releasing new upgrades and updating cards. The change to Intel was part of a wide-ranging refresh from 1.0 to 1.5 what affected many different elements of the game. Neither ATN nor the changes to Intel encourage squadless fleet archetypes from being played. To the contrary - both the Intel change and ATN require opposing squads to even matter. I'm not going to care that new Intel is worse for my bomber ball than old Intel if you're not running squads. And your ATN upgrade card is useless if you aren't running heavy squads. What both of those examples really do is increase the depth and complexity of Squadron play, which is a perfectly reasonable goal to strive for as more game material is released. In fact, at the very same time that PDIC was released, ffg also released the hyena bomber - which is capable of throwing two red dice per bomber activation and flies at speed 4. Doesn't that seem to fly in the face of your argument?
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u/laxdragonhf Sep 02 '26
No. The Hyena Bomber barely sees play because it was given an appropriate level of health to firepower, also red dice are unreliable and are easily deterred by hmmmmmm oh yeah PDIC. And yes they didn't want to REMOVE squadrons so you opining on the fact you need squads to stop intel or whatever is lost. I think they wanted squadrons to have less impact and they were slowly achieving this over time. Making ships more resilient to them woth changes to evade for example too.
Its okay that you can't see it and that the fame hungry Arc developers can't either. They are gunna do whatever is popular opinion with thsir fan content so i guess enjoy to hopefully make people like you happy and defend them from legitimate misunderstandings of the game's design.
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u/Stevespam Sep 02 '26
Hyenas hit much harder than x-wings regardless of their one less health, and have the speed to attack from longer ranges. Your argument sounds like nonsense. The single point less of Hull is not enough to entirely remove their usability, yet they weren't seen. Why weren't they used? Pdic's. Why would ffg continue to introduce bombers into the game if they weren't intending them to be usable in the game?
Adjusting the overall impact of squads to reduce them is fine. The issue is that pdics removed squads entirely. When's the last time that X-Wing bombers were a legitimate Choice? How often did you see TIE bombers? As far as ACE developers being fame hungry... 😂😂😂
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u/laxdragonhf Sep 02 '26
They jumped on the still warm body of the dead game and they injected their own sad fan content immediately. They are clout sharks.
Xwing bombers have never been a thing so its a stupid comparison. Xwings are a switch hitter, thats the point hyenas are not, and they dont see play so its a dog shit example despite in your eyes being the best bomber there is.
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u/Maturin- Sep 02 '26
Speaking as a medical doctor, it's generally poor practice to let your patient cool off before trying to institute life support.
That's why the body was still warm while resuscitation measures were implemented!
;P
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u/Stevespam Sep 02 '26
You're mixing up ACE and ARC, which are not the same thing. ACE is a blend of both Legacy and ARC. Legacy has been a thing for several years, already had its growing pains, and was following an effective model of public development when the two combined. The Legacy leads are very active in ACE - Doty is the developer of Star-Forge and the Armada.Community website, as well as T5, and it's providing an excellent combined experience.
As far as the squads we're discussing, you're making my point. For a switch-hitter, it's funny how X-Wings only saw use for their anti-squadron role, instead of being a proper multi-role fighter/bomber. Why release aces like the Hera fighter if you didn't want to support the role of X-Wings as bombers? Was that only to support their role as superiority fighters? If that's the case, why have her enable X-wings in rerolling their bombing die?
Dedicated bombers like Hyenas in an old PDIC environment were rendered mostly useless, so as you say - they didn't see play. Yet, why were they still released? What was the point of having a faction with only 4 squads and removing one from realistic play?
Both of these releases happened late in development of the game. Your assertion that the developers were trying to gradually course correct over several years and nerf 134 sounds completely ridiculous in that context. Bomber fleets are an intended mode of play.
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u/Homer_Jr Aug 03 '26
ITS PIKACHU!!!