I haven't looked through them in great detail, but what I've seen looks really cool. Each "alliance" gets its own document that talks about how to make mixed fleets. Basically, your Sorylians, Aquans and Terrans are able to work together, and your Dindrenzi, Relthoza and Directorate are all working together.
The Alliance documents tell you how to mix your fleets and use parts of one faction with parts of another. The flexibility in ship choices is countered by losing some of your tactical flexibility with your hand of cards. Basically the more flexible you are in building your fleet, the less flexible you are in what you can do in game with your cards.
In the balance, I think the advantage gained from the Alliance fleets over the pure-faction fleets offsets the disadvantage, and I think Spartan Games wants it that way. It feels like they're encouraging people to expand the game from the small selection of ships each faction has by, instead of increasing each faction, increasing the ships available to each. Probably a good idea given how Spartan Games is very slow in putting out more ships of late. Instead of being excited for a single new ship hitting the store, I can look to the entire Directorate and Relthoza lines to see what they have available.
Another thing they have added are the minor factions for each Alliance. These are groups of 2 and 3 ships that different small groups can bring to the table. These are the systems that could not fight with the big factions alone, but they can join with them to face down larger factions.
A great concept in my eyes. They have a ton of new options for each ship class. Instead of being limited to one type of Escort, you can start attaching other Escorts to your ships to let them get different bonuses. Plus, this brings to the table a bunch of new ship types. Dreadnoughts, Assault Carriers (carry a lot of Assault Points instead of Wings), Leviathans, etc.
My only worry is that, on the whole, I was really excited as I thumbed through one of the faction ships until I realized they were the ones I DIDN'T get to play with my Dindrenzi. Then when I looked at the other faction, I was a little disappointed. On the whole, it looked like the 'good guy' faction had cooler ships than the 'bad guy' faction. Though I'm sure I'm missing a lot of the interactions of these ships. While the good guys have better firepower all around, the bad guys probably have some nice synergy that I just haven't seen yet.
Finally, there is a document of Model Assigned Rules (MARs). These are a whole slew of special abilities, similar to what they have in Dystopian Wars, that get assigned to different ships. Some may have Medical Craft which can launch out and try to regain lost Crew Points from nearby ships. Others are very maneuverable, letting them turn faster. Others are good at working in tandem and get bonuses when linking shots.
Overall, I'd say these documents were very much needed to keep Firestorm Armada going. They offer a ton of great changes and new ships to allow the game to expand. I feel like they're moving from a six-faction game to more of a two-faction game with an s-ton of variety in each faction. It's very easy to play two of the same alliance fleets against each other and have them be completely different builds.
In the end, though, I think it's a matter of too little too late for me. I have only a couple people I could play FSA against at this point, and I don't think any of us want to spend more money on the game, no matter how cool the new stuff looks. Got a lot of games in before, but I'm not about to jump in on the new stuff since I haven't had a game since last October or so. Too bad. If this was the game that was brought out some 8-10 months ago, it would have been awesome.
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