Star Wars Armada: Fixing the Station Assault Objective

A couple weeks back Party Potato of the FFG forums posted a topic detailing the popularity of different objectives.  He had garnered the data from the Armada Warlords builder, so it is of course a bit unofficial.  However, there is some good firm data as well as plenty of anecdotal evidence that some of the new objectives FFG introduced with the Correlian Conflict have been duds.

One that needs some real tweaking is Station Assault.  I've written before about this objective, and its still ne of my favorites to try and get to work.  The issue is that far too often the first player will wipe out a station quickly and end up completely negating the second player's advantage.  And many times end up being able to pop both quickly and actually garner and 80 point lead over the second player.  This is likely going to be true moving forward with Cymoon ISDs being able to pretty reliably put out 7+ damage at long range.Squadron wings could always do damage, but now a Sloane list could potentially remove a station in one activation.

So how can we update the objective to bring it more into line with the better Assault objectives, like Most Wanted and Advanced Gunnery?  The most obvious choice is to remove the points scored for the first player. The first player basically starts in an 80 point hole, but can pull a bit more even by removing at least one station.  A second straightforward option is to use at least one armed station card instead.  3 extra hull is nothing to sneer at, and the station being able to trade back a few blows would allow the second player to take advantage of the choice a bit more.  To balance, the stations might need to fire at the start of the round, like how Planetary Ion Cannon works.

The objective could also be changed to allow the stations to be deployed closer together and other obstacles.  Being able to keep them closer to some other obstacles could obstruct more shots and help to force enemy ships to maneuver more to get into a good firing position or open themselves to more fire from the second player.

Perhaps a balance of the first two suggestions would be the best to bring this objective forward.  Maybe drop the points to 30 points a station, and make one armed.  That would at least make it playable going forward with the other Assault objectives.