Hey everyone,

My group and I were new to TI when we picked it up at Gencon and have completely loved it so far. We had a situation come up over the game we did this last weekend and wanted to make sure we ruled it correctly.

Please keep in mind that we all 3 players had PDS II at this point.

During the pace cannon offence step: What if there is a 3rd person not involved in the upcoming conflict that has PDS II one adjacent space away and he wants to shoot into the activated system.
Player 1 has activated the system and moved ships in (has PDS II in an adjacent system so he can participate in SC offence.)
Player 2 currently possesses the activated system that is being attacked and has PDS and thus they will participate in SC offence.
Player 3 is not involved in the upcoming conflict, but has PDS II in a different adjacent system.

The order of players shooting makes sense and is laid out in the rulebook, but does player 3 get to choose who is taking the hits? Does he declare who is taking the hits before or after he rolls? Can he split them or assign them all to a single player?

I suppose that P3 choose one fleet he want to fire on. Anyway all attaks must be declared BEFORE rolling the dices.

Are we certain player 3 CAN fire? As I recall, in 3rd, you had to be involved in the activation to fire your pds. I would not have expected that to change with the new edition.

Thank you for saying this. I think this was part of my question that I originally meant to convey in addition to what I asked.

I am aware that this would not work that way in 3rd edition, but I did not find the 4ed rule book entry on SC offence to be clear on this distinction.

I found this in TI4 reference (3rd point of 66.3)

"• If a player has the “Deep Space Cannon” technology, he can use the “Space Cannon” ability of his PDS units that are in systems that are adjacent to the active system. The hits are still assigned to units in the active system. "

From the Learn to Play guide:

After the active player’s ships move into the active system, each
player’s units in the active system may use their “Space Cannon”
abilities against the active player’s ships in that system.

9 hours ago, Network57 said:

From the Learn to Play guide:

After the active player’s ships move into the active system, each
player’s units in the active system may use their “Space Cannon”
abilities against the active player’s ships in that system.

I know this is the learn to play and not the official rules, but this makes it sound like Player 1 in my scenario cannot use PDS II for space cannon offence because P1 is the active player...unless he was shooting at himself.

This doesn't seem to align with how most people are reading how PDS II works during this step.

55 minutes ago, dompoulin said:

I know this is the learn to play and not the official rules, but this makes it sound like Player 1 in my scenario cannot use PDS II for space cannon offence because P1 is the active player...unless he was shooting at himself.

This doesn't seem to align with how most people are reading how PDS II works during this step.

I think the intent is that the active player can fire his cannons at an enemy ships in the system; and every other play in range can fire space cannons at the active player. That is, if Player A moves into a system occupied by Player B, Player C with PDSII in range can only fire at Player A, not at Player B. This is how I read it, though I agree they aren't consistently worded between the L2P and RR.

20 minutes ago, Network57 said:

I think the intent is that the active player can fire his cannons at an enemy ships in the system; and every other play in range can fire space cannons at the active player. That is, if Player A moves into a system occupied by Player B, Player C with PDSII in range can only fire at Player A, not at Player B. This is how I read it, though I agree they aren't consistently worded between the L2P and RR.

Based on my reading of the rules, taking into account what the likely intent of the rules were, and all the responses here, I think that this is the correct interpretation.
P1 and P2 fire at each other and any 3rd+ player not involved in the conflict can only shoot at the active player. That seems most consistent and fair.

It also offers up lots of opportunities for P3 to be bribed by P1 or P2 to fire or not to fire.

In TI3 PDS could only be fired at the current active player, or by the current active player on any possible target in the activated system.

I have not found any reference of this changing for TI4.