I actually don't see that much more variety, I see a lot of cloaking.

I think the bigger effect than the AOs is the new ships coming out. The Excelsior is a cool ship with some cool stuff that helps counter cloaks. Since there were a lot of cloaks before, everyone runs anti-cloak.

It'll eventually smooth out, I think. But it's hard to judge much of anything at this point.

The top list used 5 different ships in 6 lists. The bottom used 11 different ships in 6 lists and no 2 lists were the same, 2/3 of the top list were the same ships, E-D/Excelsior. There is a huge disparity between the variety of the 2 months.

The AOs were only suppose to be for one month. In theory each month will give us a new set of AOs to exploit. There shouldn't be time for smoothing out.

I understand, but I'm not sure it's the AOs to blame is all.

Yeah, looking at the difference in the two lists, AO just made most of your players play Feds, while without AO you see almost every list play a Romulan ship. It's not actually variety if a bunch of ships are from the same busted faction.

You also didn't mention upgrades which I would assume are likely the same across the board.

The problem seems to be you have a lot of power gamers at your store, NOT the AOs.

I can barely remember the ships so the upgrades are out of the question.

We do not have a lot of power gamers. We have 2 federation players, 1 Klingon player, 1 dedicated min/maxer, everybody else likes to mix it up, especially after they have won a prize ship. We had a 3 Jem'Hadar attack ship list win an OP event. I wonder how many times that happens. The guy who won with that list offered to give me, give, not sell, not trade, but give me his prize. When I told him I already had one he gave it to another who didn't. This is someone I didn't know before attack wing and don't socialize with outside of STAW. A complete stranger 3 months ago.

I can say that in the OP3 event all 3 of my games played out differently. I set up differently, had different strategies, used different tactics for each game. In the OP4 with the AOs I and my opponents set up the same, my strategy was the same, and my tactics were the same for each game. It was like a return to OP2 were the scenario restricted options, but this scenario isn't like that. Makes me think it was the duplicate fleets caused by the AOs since everybody used them.

Like I said we should have our normal compliment of players Saturday. It's at a different venue. I'll be curious how much variety we have.

That's cool that you have a great set of people to play with. There's only been three of us (plus the organizer) at my venue, so it's hard for me to gauge anything.

I feel fortunate to have the STAW group I have. They make the OP events a lot of fun, with very little pressure.

Being a nice person to play with does not exclude anyone from being a min/maxer nor a power gamer. The same is true in regards to whether the player wants/keeps the prize. I know a few HC players who couldn't care less about the prizes most of the time, but they will bring highly competitive teams every time.

What I find suspect is that as soon as AO's hit the table, everyone except the Klingon player rushed to play Fed ships. I also, wonder how many of those had Capt. Picard in the build. If that isn't a sign of power gaming, then I don't know what is. Also, I can't help but feel like the group, that particular event only, was...not very creative. I've played only Dominion ships in all my OP's thus far. I've cross-factioned Capts and upgrades, but that was more because I didn't like the Dominion upgrades enough to force myself to play only those. Worth noting though, is my venue ran month 3 with a restriction on cross faction upgrades anyways (decided prior to month 1) and AO's weren't allowed (because we already had the restriction in place). If the AO's were allowed in my next OP event (which they aren't), I would play a Koranak/Kraxon build with both AO's. Not very inspired either, I know. But, much like, your dedicated Klingon player, I'm going to stick to my guns and not let the meta dictate what I play.

I suppose, my point is that the variety is not solely dictated by the AO's, but also by the players willingness to build outside the box. I honestly don't believe that the Feds have so much of an advantage over other factions that only they could win in an AO environment. Feds have nothing to match the sheer fire power of the Klingons (and the ferocity of the boarding party) and they really can't match the maneuvering of a skilled Romulan fleet using Sensor Echo. And neither of those factions can match the ingenuity of the Fed crew.

The Klingon player still took advantage of UF. We couldn't use the Flagship resource and without that it is hard to use all your points effectively in a Klingon United Strike Force. I look for him to go that way in our 3rd event this month.

Everybody min/maxes except for the total theme player that has to stick to his theme no matter what. Even he will min/max within his theme if he has enough options to do so.

What hasn't been said up to this point is that the Federation USF is a fun fleet to play and play against. It is a good fleet to illustrate how in game decisions affect who wins and who loses. They are not easy to fly and one mistake can be game changing with any 2 ship fleet. The problem arises when they are such a high percentage of the fleets. Federation ships have been represented in winning lists in our area, but never a pure Federation list. Who wouldn't want to be the first to bring home the gold for the Federation. The AOs give the Feds their best chance yet.

I'm a min/maxer.
I build to win at an OP and will use whatever advantage I can get to win by mixing everything into a Winning Stew. I view OP events as my challenge times, my games where I build to secure victory.

Most are coming out to win a ship, and I like to see the teams that are brought, including what I can come up with. That said, I also enjoy faction pure the most. It makes for better games in my opinion, and with some good players, we can agree not to go overboard building to obliterate the foe.

So with Admiral Orders, no it isn't going to change the spirit of the game for me, but it will change what I'm playing most likely. It lets me test out new strategies, new tactics and most importantly, new cards which I otherwise might always have brushed over.

I think the main thing I go for when I play at an op is to face my opponent's best with my best and to be courteous while doing so.

I hope this gives one side of the discussion for consideration.

Everyone min/maxes to some extent, even if Faction pure.

(Not counting my friend Techlee that plays EPISODE SPECIFIC!)

When I play an original series Enterprise all loaded up, it gets Quantum Torpedoes instead of the era-specific Torps it came with. That's still min/max.

I prefer our venue rule of Faction pure, but I wouldn't be put out if it was changed. Kirk would just get some new toys to play with.

I'm sure Scotty could kit-bash a photon torpedo into a quantum torpedo. He might complain a bit or harp on the dangers of the process - but it would get done.