What are your opinions on fighters being allowed as PDS casualties...perhaps I am not aware of an existing rule.

Upon a Deep Space attack...as enemy forces move through an adjacent system, the fighters are ON the carrier and thus cannot be casualties of PDS...

What about upon space invasion, it also seems logica that a PDS should only target capital ships due to their size....to me it makes no sense for a PDS to hit A tiny fighter outside of the planets atmosphere.

Thoughts?

I think it would be a nightmare.

6 PDS grid would get 3 hits on average. Add a buff or two and you are talking 4 hits.

Then on the counter attack you are talking 4 more hits. That's 8 hits.

And I haven't even started with the PDS owners actual ships!

Fighters become worthless, and turtling becomes even more advantageous.

But I could be wrong...

Bill

Dr.Funktastic said:

If I recall correctly, a PDS cannot fire at a fleet moving through an adjacent system. It can fire into an adjacent activated system that the moving fleet ends its movement in.

Regarding taking PDS hits with fighters, the game mechanic is that the PDS is firing at the fleet, not specific ships. The owner of the fleet being fired upon gets to choose which units the hits get applied to.

The game seems to have as one of its design points that fighters are there to take hits on behalf of the capital ships. In thematic terms, think of them as a fighter screen for the capital ships. If you want to play with a different house rule that you and your players find enjoyable, go for it! Everyone should have fun playing games, and Twilight Imperium seems to be fairly easy to homebrew.

Dr.Funktastic said:

It makes no sense that the PDS can hit a fighter outside the planet's atmosphere, but the fact that it can target ships of any size in an adjacent star system (with DSC) is no problem for you?? Do you have any idea how far away two stars are from each other? Whatever the PDS shoots, the projectiles themselves must be able to break the light barrier, otherwise it would YEARS for the shots to get to their destination.

And this is assuming the fighters don't deliberately jump in front of the shot to protect the larger and more valuable capital ships, of course. (Kamikaze tendencies aside, it's entirely possible that most fighter ships are automatic drones. One would think they'd have to be, the way they get thrown to the flames in most games of TI3 =P) Just because you hit a fighter doesn't mean you were aiming at a fighter - this is why the defender gets to choose his casualties.

We're talking about sci-fi supertech here. The concept of a gun that can shoot targets in space from a planetary surface (and do so quickly enough that the target can't just move out of the way) is already past the point of handwaving the technology involved compared to what we know how to do in the modern world. Letting said space guns hits smaller targets doesn't add a whole lot to the suspension of disbelief factor.

bnorton916 said:

Actually, our group has tried and stuck with an interesting houserule - hits inflicted by Capital ships and PDS cannot be blocked by fighters, but fighter hits may be blocked by fighters (we also remove the associated techs/action cards that give abilities like this). This initially sounds like a severe blow to the all-around usefulness of fighters, but we find it actually *decreases* turtling:

1) Firstly, players don't spend several turns trying to build a sufficient fighter screen - there's no point! Rather, players instead build dreadnaughts or destroyer screens as damage sponges, and it makes the fleet supply limit even more significant.

2) Players who do decide to build fighter-heavy still aren't badly penalized - fighters give fantastic bang for your buck and don't take up fleet supply when supported by a carrier. Even if their supporting carrier is destroyed, fighters still keep shooting until one side is completely destroyed. Plus, fighters still remain useful as defence against other fighters.

3) The game just goes much faster overall since each combat doesn't require chewing through 6+ fighters before significant losses happen

4) Also, since everyone knows the rule, people pay attention to PDS deployments very carefully, and often amusingly enough form very exhaustive demilitarization treaties. ("I'll withdraw my forces from your border if you don't deploy any PDS on that planet"). We've had amusing games with interlinking demilitarized zones where no one dares to put down a PDS first for danger of triggering aggression from another player.

Plus, it's not that bad since you're limited to only two PDS active per planet. So only a 3 planet system can support a 6 PDS grid.

Finally, heavy turtling is the consequence of poor map design. And the default map construction rules are terrible at this - every player will place their best stuff in their own pie slice and rarely will interact. Playing with preset maps quite neatly avoids this - if you pay attention in map construction, you can easily prevent PDS + Deep Space Cannon spam from being able to cover everything. I heartily recommend the maps provided in PsiComa's Shattered Ascension rules, even if you don't use the rules themselves. It speeds up setup and the entire game tremendously.

vendredi said:

I would have to play your house rules to see how I feel about them.

I do whole-heartily agree about using the preset Shattered Ascension maps. I would prefer to never pay with anything else.

Bill

I hate pds rules as they currently stand. Especially with the "blind fire" option allowed by the FAQ

Professor Nomos said:

How would you rework the PDS rules to improve them? What do you like and would keep? What do you dislike and would remove? What do you dislike and would change, and how?

Please share your thoughts. Lots of TI3 folks here really enjoy discussions about rule changes, suggestions, and homebrewiness!

I suppose experiances vary but in most games PDS's are responsible for turtling in the game as even with the ability to take fighters as hits, once a proper grid is setup its usually wholely unprofitable (often not even worth the victory point you might earn as a result) to even attempt to break it.

My group had attempted various house rules to resolve that problem but in the end though none of these house rules really worked out that well.

One rule we had was that whenever you fire a PDS it causes the system to activate. This had the effect of people abandoning PDS's all together seing them as not worth it and making deep space cannons a throw away technology so we abandoned it.

Another one was that shooting any number of PDS's from any one system always cost one command counter from either the command pool or strategy allocation. The result was better, but still it seemed to costly in most circumstances and the players that played without them in those games seem to fair better. We ultimatly abandoned it.

In the end the result was that the current rule was still the best even if the effect is sometimes unit has the undesirable effect of turtling.

i have always played it so that fighters can take the hits from DPS; DSC, from a rule-stand point is there nowhere written that they can't take them, and from a logical stand-point you could figure that the capital ships sense the incoming danger and scramble their fighters to intercept the incoming firepower whereas their capital ships would be to slow to evade the blast.

personally, i don't see the problem with the PDS units, if some-one wants to turtle through the game that's fine, as it is their choice to employ such tactics.

Frankly, i belive that players who would employ such tactics would simply find other ways to employ said turtle tactics. and removing PDS units, or reducing their value would only do the game harm, especially since some races are excpected to turtle at least a little. The Jol-Nar are not going to head for a major conflict before they have their needed technological advantage and therefore would suite them well to turtle throught the first few game-rounds, and PDS units are a good way to defend yourself passibly without having taking fleet supply.

Actually a pds grid make offense possible for a besieged player.

You cannot Attack until your Defense is adequate.

You get your defense to be adequate by doing:

1. Form a nonaggression pact with your neighbor(s), It allows you to have a lower amount ships at that border maybe 0 ships. This has the lowest cost.

2. Put 4 ground troops on every planet. It is medium cost but consumes lots of time. The player will turtle half the game doing this.

3. Build 6 pds and 4 space mines. This is high cost, 20 resources, but it cost only medium time. The player can attack as soon as the neighbor's main fleet is locked down. The small sniping fleets cannot attack.

For a player being besieged by 2 or 3 players, the pds grid is the only thing that will allow him to go on the offensive and counter the stalling the attacking players do.

The attacking 2 or 3 players stall, waiting for the besieged player to lock down his main fleet so they can swarm all over his lightly defended planets.

Witha pds grid and space mines, the besieged player can ATTACK as soon as one of his opponents lock up their main fleet.

Usually the besieged player has the biggest fleet and will crush the main fleet of 1 attacker.

Example: Both neighbors plan on destroying the player in between them from turn 1 of the game.

1. The targeted player cannot get any allies so he get goes down the Warsun tech path.

2. He buys all 6 pds, Deep Space Cannons, and finally Warsuns. (Obviously he needs lots of high resource planets or trade goods)

3. He waits for 1 opponent to lock up his main fleet and then he takes his Warsun fleet and smashes the other opponent.

If he did not have a pds grid, the other 2 players would just gradually take all of his planets by sniping at him with light fleets.

Those players who propose nerfing pds and space mines are players who ALWAYS have great alliances in the game and do not want isolated players to have these great defensive weapons.

These great defensive weapons are usually the only answer to the dreaded "Signal Jamming". You can lose alot of planets if your main fleet is "Signaled Jammed" right away. The pds grid and Space mines is the only thing you have to prevent a massive loss of planets.

An isolated player that plays L1Z1x, Barony or Muaat can hold their own in a game by building a pds grid, Space mines and Warsuns.

But this is a very very expensive thing to do, but if you cannot get allies, it is the only thing you can do.

The only other option for a besieged player getting "ganged up" on is to "Resign" from the game. There is no point for him to play several rounds watching his planets slowly being taken away from him by small sniping fleets.

The pds grid and space mines at least gives him a resonable chance of fighting back and only losing a few planets.