Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board

Making Aegis make sense

Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: New Rules: (D) Combat Rules: Making Aegis make sense

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Tuesday, August 04, 2026 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Anyone who has played SFB for any amount of time has run into Aegis (D13), and assuming you have, you've played with/against a Federation 'heavy fighter' fleet, at which point Aegis...

...becomes a nightmare.

And, in any case, it makes no sense. Why can a weapon that can 'fire for effect, observe effect, then decide to fire again (or not)' work against ONLY size-class-6-or-smaller? I mean, how does that follow, right? A Klingon G-1 is not that much bigger than a Federation F-111 - but your Ph-G gets a single salvo (win or lose!) against that G-1...but can pulse each step, individually, against the F-111...because: reasons?

Worse - in PLAYING this - the player has to decide each step. Do I keep shooting? Is 'crippled' enough? Oof! More time wasted.

I suggest a fix that keeps the spirit (and effect - mostly) of the existing restrictions, but is more internally logical, and speeds up play.

Delete the size restrictions. As a system, Aegis is designed to...destroy things. You point it at something, it destroys it...or keeps firing at it, until it does. ONCE destroyed, it switches to the next target of the same type. And keeps firing on THAT until destroyed. Same 'watch for effect, then decide' logic - only it isn't up to the player, the weapon switches automatically once a target is destroyed.

This:

* Speeds things up considerably, in reducing demands on player analysis
* Actually makes sense as a system that is supposed to be 'reacting faster than the crew normally would' - they aren't making decisions...it is executing its role as fast as it can, switching targets mid-attack, as needed.
* Preserves the limitation of the rule (mostly) - Aegis keeps a weapon shooting at one target until that target is destroyed, then switches to another target of the same type. It's automated, why would it do anything else? Corner case - you pulse a Ph-G three times into a Frigate and blows it up...the last shot will go to another Frigate, as it automatically switches. This...won't ever matter, in any situation where it shouldn't. No artificial size-class limitation required, the rule structure simply makes sense of the existing requirements.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Tuesday, August 04, 2026 - 07:47 pm: Edit

As I understand it Aegis has a specific fire control system. It is restricted to small close in targets.

Truthfully, I hate your plan. I am fighting Kzinti are a drone/fighter heavy Fed force. Incoming drone's lab and identify. I fire my phaser-G at a drone. Roll a six. •••• but with Agis I can fire again and kill it. Your rule says it fires and keeps firing. At what range 3 or 4 drones? I want to conserve those other 2 pulses for next Imp. What if i fire a phaser 3 at the drone. Same thing i fail to kill it. Agis allows me to fire a PH-2 at it.

I know you think the system is slow and cumbersome. So are 48 drones on the map.

Allowing to fire at anything defeats the purpose as a defensive system.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Tuesday, August 04, 2026 - 08:00 pm: Edit

Quote:
..but with Agis I can fire again and kill it. Your rule says it fires and keeps firing

I'm not sure I understand the difference. It keeps firing only until it gets the kill, then moves on.

So you, the human player, roll the dice...and it doesn't kill it! Ah, shucks, have to fire the second shot at the same drone. Third shot can go to a different drone.

The "human out of the loop" takes the shot...and doesn't kill it! So it keeps firing until it gets the kill...which is the next shot! Same as you! Third shot can go to a different drone.

For drones, this really isn't going to make any difference at all. No human will choose to stop firing at a drone before it's dead, nor will this rule. Or are you suggesting that's a needed gap to fill? You fire once at a drone, determine it's armored, then decide to switch targets mid-attack to a different one and leave that one alive? I'll grant, this would be a problem if this is something you often do (for some reason).

For fighters, it makes EVERY bit of difference. A human might shoot once at every fighter in a swarm, to soften them up for a later salvo. Or decide to shoot twice at one of them because they didn't roll as high as they wanted. Or shoot to cripple one, and then just damage the others. Etc.

This is all a lot of wasted time/decision-making, for no real gain, and it makes no sense logically - requiring that rules be written to artificially exclude larger targets. (Otherwise you'd have an endless, "well I'll keep Ph-3 hitting this guy until I take out his Disruptor via Mizia effects, THEN switch targets"...which the current rules already prohibit, artificially, but this is a better way to get the same result, as it doesn't require arbitrary boundaries.)

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, August 04, 2026 - 08:51 pm: Edit

Honestly this mimics Phalanx, or Goalkeeper type systems.

A reasonable set up would allow range limits, or target limits on a per impulse set up, i.e. no farther than range 2, or Type IV drones only, or drones in general.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 04, 2026 - 09:17 pm: Edit

I think this is too radical a change to make after it's been that way 30 years. Phaser-Gs mimic Gatlings. SFB-aegis does not mimic firing the five inch gun at a destroyer.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Tuesday, August 04, 2026 - 10:00 pm: Edit

Quote:
I think this is too radical a change to make after it's been that way 30 years.

I'd be curious to hear the situations where it would actually act any differently than "human making a choice in that moment".

I can't think of very many. Mostly, it just does the same thing the human does, in all cases*.

But it does eliminate the arbitrary "can only work on size class 6 or smaller"...without changing, in any way, how it actually DOES work on larger units.

It's mostly a proposal to eliminate an arbitrary boundary that lacks in-universe explanation, without really (much at all?) changing how it works in practice.

* FWIW, I'd see an obvious distinction between 'limited' vs 'full' Aegis in letting players decide whether you 'shoot to disable' (full Aegis option) or 'shoot to kill' (also an option for full Aegis, but also the ONLY way limited Aegis works). But, then, that's a choice you'll have already made going in to the decision to attack, so...?did anything actually change? You are simply deciding what option you are setting your auto-defenses in, as in current CIWS systems, and...letting them do their thing, switching targets as needed - automatically - based on your use of the system.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 01:59 am: Edit

It is a radical change, allowing that rapid fire to be used on starship targets. I cannot endorse, support, or approve this. It would completely change the game by turning a defensive weapon into an offensive buzzsaw (which is why you want it). This won't happen. Dead Horse.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 10:59 am: Edit

The in-universe explanation is that it is a very advanced, computationally expensive, close-in point defense fire control system. The player making decisions at each aegis firing step is an abstraction of the fire control system making those decisions, based on whatever parameters the captain and weapons officer have running on it. Rather than making a bunch of even more cumbersome rules that try to mimic that, the game just allows players to make those decisions on the fly.

And what is being suggested would be more cumbersome, because it creates an *obligation* on the player to fire weapons - and that is a gigantic can of worms. It�s easy to think of �you�d just keep firing anyways� - but with what? If I engage a drone at range 3 with an ADD and miss but have a second available ADD and engage with that and miss again, am I obligated to then engage with phasers for the remaining two firing steps? Even though holding them to engage at range 2 or 1 or 0 would be much more advisable? Or what if I was planning on using those phasers to engage a fighter? How do I determine which phasers I am obligated to use? Can I down fire them? What if I�m engaging a plasma torpedo and just want to wear it down without destroying it? Would I be obligated to just dump all available phasers? What if I run out of available phasers, would I be obligated to put an ADD into it?

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 03:23 pm: Edit

Quote:
The in-universe explanation is that it is a very advanced, computationally expensive, close-in point defense fire control system

But that does not explain why as close-in weapon system cannot be used to shoot at larger targets. I mean, a modern CIWS is meant to shoot down missiles and aircraft - but it's perfectly capable of shooting at speedboats or capital ships. Why wouldn't it be? If it can hit a small, fast-moving thing, hitting a larger, slower-moving thing is only easier.

Quote:
It�s easy to think of �you�d just keep firing anyways� - but with what?

You are already declaring your fire, anyway. So whatever you tie into it this impulse - it isn't required to be used, after all. Nothing is changing about that. "I'm firing my forward pair of phasers at that cruiser" - you fire those two phasers, that's it. "I'm firing my 360 phasers against this drone swarm as Aegis" - they fire in sequence until any given drone is destroyed, then move on to the next.

Quote:
What if I�m engaging a plasma torpedo and just want to wear it down without destroying it?

Then don't fire your weapons at it in Aegis mode? I mean, yes, as proposed, if you decided to fire all your phasers in Aegis mode at the plasma torpedo - they'll all get used, until it's destroyed. So if you don't want to destroy it...don't do that?

So, yeah, this does reduce the 'decision space' for players a bit, and so arguably weakens Aegis overall in some corner cases. But it isn't weakened that much, and it makes more logical sense this way.

Quote:
allowing that rapid fire to be used on starship targets

I'm...not clear what you mean, here? I'm referring to D13.0 Aegis - there are no 'rapid fire' rules that I'm aware of, there? Aegis is just a fire control system that lets you (a player) decide whether to fire another weapon or not, within an impulse, after observing the effect.

This proposal is to change exactly nothing except removing the 'player decision after each weapon firing' in favor of a rules-based decision.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 03:32 pm: Edit

This proposal was rejected above because it's bad for the game and not supported by the technology. For that matter, it was originally written the way it is now because the other way would be bad for the game and not supported by the technology. And like I said, even if it were a good idea (which it isn't) it's too much of a change for a game that has been studied to master's degree level by thousands of fans.

If you want to fire a phaser-G at a single target of any size, help yourself, fire all four shot at once.

Aegis is purely a defensive fire control system and purely small targets and it's going to stay that way because it's what the technology defines as I shall explain below.

You don't need shoot-look-shoot when the target is a starship. You just keep shooting until it's dead. And in a micro-fractional split second you cannot tell instantly if a starship is going to explode.

If you want to say "oh, my third shot killed his last tractor, so I can save the fourth shot" the technology won't let you. If you want to say "oh, my third shot killed his ship, so I can use the fourth shot on a different ship" the technology won't let you.

That's just too sophisticated a targeting loop. You can tell instantly if a drone or fighter is dead. You cannot tell instantly if you got the one box you wanted on a ship with 150 boxes. You also cannot tell instantly if an entire starship is dead. The actual death of a ship takes more time (albeit it tiny fractions of a second) than Aegis has to process the target and switch to another ship.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 04:07 pm: Edit

I note you studiously avoided the �If I engage at range 3 with ADDs that fail to kill am I obligated to then fire phasers� case.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 04:16 pm: Edit

Quote:
obligated to then fire phasers

I didn't, as I mentioned the idea would be you decide what is even available to fire when deciding to use it. So if you didn't have your phasers tied to the Aegis system, it wouldn't fire. If you did, it would.

But SVC's reply seems thorough enough to close the topic.

EDIT: Had written something else, but deleted it. SVC's answer is actually perfectly logical to explain everything as-is.

Effectively, to paraphrase - the thing you are interested in when attacking a ship...what systems are destroyed from an attack...is a result of chain reactions that take the entire impulse to resolve. So there is nothing for Aegis to measure or react to when firing on a ship. Whereas with a drone or fighter - it's dead, or it's not...instantly - Aegis can react to THAT multiple times within an impulse.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 - 04:43 pm: Edit

Such a system would actually be more complex and unwieldy. Even though the specific proposal itself is dead, it�s worth looking at what would be required to implement as an exercise - namely of the �it�s a lot easier to say there should be a rule that does X then it is to write a rule that does X.�

Requiring players to commit which weapons are available for Aegis fire at Stage 6D1 would take up more time at the table, as players would have to analyze what *may* happen and make decisions on what weapons to assign, which is going to be an involved process, especially in any situation with more than a couple of targets - never mind multiple escorts. Do specific weapons need to be assigned to specific targets for follow-up fire as part of that commitment? Can weapons be held for later firing steps? Etc.

There is a bunch of interactions and cases that would need to be nailed down because, as an SFB rule, it needs to be precise and airtight. And by the time it gets there, would the result actually be any quicker or smoother?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Thursday, August 06, 2026 - 10:13 am: Edit

I should note that, for first-generation X-ships, X-Aegis can also be used against units of Size Class 5.

This requires the "full" construction or conversion of a given hull into an X1-ship. In other words, while limited (but not full) non-X Aegis can be installed as an XP refit, it's not possible to install X-Aegis in this manner.

In both cases, it is possible to install phaser-1Xs (complete with rapid pulse capability) onto both "full" X1-ships and (in certain numbers) onto an XP-ship. So even if a squadron or fleet with partial-X refits can't trouble PF crews to quite the same extent as a "Flying Squadron" of X1-ships can, it can nonetheless make life more difficult for the pilots of enemy fighter squadrons.

-----

Beyond this, we don't yet know what X2-ships have to offer in this regard. But, I would very much doubt that even such hulls could, or indeed should, be able to rapid-pulse their phasers in close quarters against "full-sized" enemy starships.

Although, if it were to be allowed at all... perhaps it would only work against non-X ships? As in, both X1-ships and other X2-ships would be exempt.

This might be a way to encourage the various star fleets in Alpha to accelerate the shift towards X-technology - which, by Y205, should be well in earnest in any case.

-----

On a side note: I find it interesting to consider how Aegis fire control was adapted for use over in Federation Commander: where it enables the ship so equipped to assist a nearby allied ship in the Defensive Fire phaser of a given Impulse.

So, if one wanted to use a more streamlined type of Aegis fire control, they are welcome to pop over to FC for a moment or two!

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Thursday, August 06, 2026 - 05:47 pm: Edit

Steve Cole beat me to my argument against this. Size 6 and 7 targets have simple check off boxes; anything larger has an SSD.

Since it is possible to have a SC-5 or larger target have undestroyed boxes when it explodes, this idea would require DAC use multiple times per impulse due to the once-per-volley hits and therefore maximize the Mizia effects each impulse. I think this would increase the time the game requires, especially if combined with Hellbore sequencing (E10.44) which allows firing Hellbores before or after other DF weapons.

Unless I missed a rule forbidding this, you could fire at a ship 6 times in an impulse, better utilizing the Mizia effect. Since the Hydrans also have respectable P-G suites, this would be painfully effective at close ranges where Hydrans already do well.

Administrator's Control Panel -- Board Moderators Only
Administer Page | Delete Conversation | Close Conversation | Move Conversation

			This is a private posting area. A valid username and password combination is required to post messages to this discussion.
Username:
Password:

Add a Message