The First Galactic Meta
I'm sure I am hardly alone in saying this is an exciting time to be an Armada fan. Soon, we will add two new factions which means new play styles, ships, commanders, and upgrades. This will inevitably shake up the meta much more than just a standard release, so here is what I expect each faction will do to change how we play the game.
The Grand Army of the Republic
If we look to Legion, we see that the Clone Army is heavily focused on two things: Synergy and Strong Individual Units that come at premium cost. In Armada, I expect to see a lot of upgrades that rely on ships sharing tokens or using each other to boost their abilities. In essence, the whole is greater than the sum of it's own parts. This means GAR fleets will need to focus on a specific area of game play that they excel at rather than being more ad hoc like Rebels or highly specialized individual ships like the Empire. In essence, Clone ships will not be fantastic at an individual ability, but definitely have a slant that requires other ships that share that slant to make the fleet function (See bottom of the article).
Additionally, I expect GAR to have the best squadrons in the game, but also the most expensive. Especially when it comes to the Aces, which will likely include some very powerful characters (cough cough Anakin). While that means bringing less squadrons, I expect even a small amount of GAR fighters to provide substantial benefit to the fleet. As a personal note, I am not a fan of squadronless play in any regard, but I think if you're flying GAR without squadrons, you at the very least need an appealing story about how all your squadrons died before the battle began. Seriously, how can you justify clones without squadrons?
I don't expect anything like a Quasar for Republic, so you'll likely need a few ships assisting in pushing the squadrons, but I do think ships like the Venator will have ample firepower to contest other ships as well, so a pair of them with squadron support will be a formidable fleet.
So how does this impact the overall meta? Right now I think everyone is aware that squadrons CAN be good, but are only sort of threatening to ships in mass numbers. I suspect GAR will remove this idea from the game and fleets will be forced to deal with squadrons. If the typical counter is "I'll just hunt the carrier" then how do you kill the carrier when the carrier is also a capital ship and oh by the way, the other capital ship is also a carrier? Better figure out how to strap some AAA to those ships my friend. And since Republic ships will typically stay together, objectives that split the battlefield will also likely be stronger than they are now.
You heard the Doc, shoot them squadrons!
Separatist Fleets
Separatists, much like their GAR counterparts have formed a strong identity in Legion I believe will carry over that identity in Armada. So, what do the droids do in Legion? Well, they are what you would expect: cheap not very useful chaff units supported by extremely good support units and commanders that use powerful abilities and weight of numbers to overwhelm their opponent. In Armada, I suspect this means having lots of cheap ships and squadrons that on their own are a little underwhelming, but combined with Commanders with very strong abilities and coordination can surprise you with their effectiveness.
I expect Droid squadrons to stay pretty cheap similar to Empire squadrons, and while some of the more powerful capitol ships like the Providence Class are likely to be on par with other factions, I do think Droid ships will tend to be a bit cheaper on the whole but just a little less effective. However, what they lose in raw power will be amplified by strong Commanders.
The impact I foresee will be an emphasis on flagship hunting, as a Commander that is bringing strong utility to a large fleet will be leaps and bounds more powerful than a Commander in charge of a few stronger ships. The linchpin falling will likely spell defeat for the Separatists though, so they will likely try and stay closer together to protect their flagship, as well as bring plentiful screens of vulture droids to keep the bombers away. However, these fighters will be cheap for droids, meaning they can provide a lot of bodies for a low cost, meaning even bomber focused fleets will have to chip in flak to clear a path to that flagships hull.
Summary
Let's wrap up with what I think are the big changes.
1. These factions will push squadrons even further into the limelight. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it
2. These factions are more focused on working together cohesively rather than having specialized ships that act independently
3. New upgrades will likely expand the meta window beyond what we see now
Finally, I developed a grahpic to show where the two new factions fit into play style wise, using Rebels and Empire as the two poles. I hope you all find this conversation intriguing and feel free to disagree with me in the comments!
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