Excellent idea.

Supported (however I'm afraid this could be slightly strong in numbers depending on the mechanic, no need Falcons V2)

They would essentially be equals of logistics, except preventing the damage upfront instead of healing it after, in addition Destroyer hulls are much more easy to alpha than cruisers.

You could also have them mount Defender Missiles, but instead of shooting down the missiles of their target they defend their target from incoming hostile missile fire.

Has anyone in eve ever actually used defender missiles

Okay. But a logistic ship can have the same effect by having reps on something before the attack begins. If the effect these new ships have, were to be effective without targeting your allies (eg. over the anti-weapons' range, 50k or something), then there were would be a big enough difference in my opinion. How then would the ships mod decide who to protect and who not to? Only those in fleet? By standing? By corp or alliance?

I do see another problem though. A fleet of these ships could be used to make a fleet completely invincible to any fleet smaller than it.

There is a partial solution to that of course. It would be good to see the ships mod shooting projectiles out of space without collaboration ie, they randomly choose a projectile to shoot at. This would mean that the more ships you had that did this, the more likely they were to be shooting the same projectiles (ie negating some of their effect).

Which would mean the more of these dessies you had in a fleet the more likely they would be to end up shooting the same targets and wasting their effect. It would also mean the bigger the enemy fleet (ie, the more projectiles coming) the less likely statistically they would be to shoot at the same projectiles as each other. It might actually scale quite nicely. It would give small fleets more effect against big ones and big ones less effect against small ones... and so on and so forth. That is only a small fix to the problem though. I still think they would be difficult to balance in numbers.

There are a lot of concepts to be ironed out. I'm not giving my support to this thread quite yet. But neither am I dismissing it.

to counter the invincibly fleet issue you are suggesting..

all mods are targeted. and have to be active before the shot is fired. this means that it can only be active on one target.
this means that the "aegis destroyer" can only protect one ship per mod fitted.

if the "AD" is projecting defense logistics to multiple targets then their effect is going to be greatly diminished.

[snip]
Another edit - about the idea of making it harder for the protected ship to fire properly:

- Since the protection module has a certain ammo it is designed to intercept, it will give a penalty to damage from protected ship based on it's type, and the penalty is half of its interception power.
- Lore can be adjusted to "since it's hard to differentiate between 'friendly' and enemy projectiles when they are fired in such a short time as to be able to react to them, modules degrade performance of friendly guns as well. Now, obviously, an anti-laser Aegis module will not affect any non-laser guns on the protected target as well. This will actually encourage the use of different weapon types between warring parties.
- Since it gives penalties, it has to be used only on fleet members (lore could justify it saying that you need input from the protected ship to know whom to protect against, and this info is not shared outside the fleet). This will prevent Aegis modules from being used for harassment of neutrals and purposeful dps reduction of the firing ship of choice.

Well, actually, the whole fleet restriction was there to accomodate for inclusion of penalties. If no penalties are needed, then away goes the restriction. However, using Aegis modules in hisec should flag the defending destroyer the instant it attempts to intercept incoming fire, making it a valid target for the attacker:

- Battleship Alice is defended by destroyer Bob, Bob's Aegis module activated on Alice and idle.
- Enemy battleship Chris appears. It has a wardec on Alice, but not Bob.
- Chris targets Alice. Nothing happens.
- Chris fires at Alice.
- Aegis module on Bob is triggered because Alice is under fire, attempting to deflect the attack from Chris.
- Whether any real damage reduction happens or not, Bob is now flagged towards Chris and can be attacked legally.

Hovever, this in no way prevents Concord coming for Chris should he do something like that without a wardec on Alice.


As for tactical maneuvering, since destroyers have very slow speed when modules are activated, you can't effectively defend all the ships in your fleet (unless you have as many Aegis destroyers as needed to cover all other ships in your fleet, which is quite a lot, considering you won't fit more than 3 Aegis modules on one destroyer, and even that sacrificing all tank). So, if you cover those ships that are facing the opponent, he might have the option to try to flank the front tankers and attack the rear snipers which are now unprotected.

In any case, the main use I see for such ships is protection against alpha and short-duration incoming dps reduction to key targets in small to medium scenarios. They are certainly not meant for sustained protection. Maybe some larger vessel could be used in bigger fleet fights, because, frankly, no matter what number you place next to 'Tech', a T2 or T3 destroyer is still a destroyer, and with modules active it's not even speed-tanked. Means it will live only as long as the locking time on that enemy sniper goes.

Another edit:
Your idea that going up close and personal is a way to negate Aegis defence has merit, but, IMO, it creates a loophole - blaster boats are already very strong at close range (seen examples when blaster cruiser almost killed a heavily tanked BC). So, while according to Earth Lore (tm) it is logical, in EvE it could create another imbalance towards close range PvP (which, as you can guess, means no formations... again).

Still, it's your thread and your original idea, so I won't fight over it

The thing that troubles me with all this is the fact that in large fleets when primaries are called, Aegis boats are going to be first concentrated alpha targets, and won't last long. Now, there is nothing wrong with the idea of cheap expendable ships, but when it comes to the sentiment that new players would wish to contribute to fleet warfare by flying this more eagerly rather than tackle rifters or some other cliche throwaways, I'd think it makes no difference to a new player. After all, flying something that is DESTINED to die first is no fun, especially when you don't have any reasonable chance of getting a KM yourself. On the other hand, if you let them withstand sustained damage from a large fleet, it means giving them a tank more befitting a dread rather than a dessie, so it doesn't quite work.

So the problem I see is with scaling - adding more Aegis boats at some point stops giving any more benefits, while adding damage boats generally scales quite well. Therefore at a certain size of fleets, Aegis boats would be owerwhelmed to a point when having them is less useful than just fielding more plain DPS, AND they are too frail to last long, which, again, reduces their usefulness in large scale combat even more.

If we find a solution to that, we will get a though-out game mechanic that can be proposed to CCP. If not, Aegis boats remain useful only in preemptive asset protection, such as hisec mining ops or cargo runs, which could be nice for every miner or hauler, but that is not something most EvE players would want to fly (more likely just put an alt and press a couple buttons, then alt+tab), I think.

[Snip...]

Now, one thing I could imagine as useful in large scale battle, is using Aegis platforms in Anti-Drone warfare. While some people said here that drones should be excluded, I think that good old flak screen is quite viable against those pesky Fighters and Fighter-Bombers, making carriers a bit less OP - you'd have to actually remove enemy's SAM capability before having a go at bombing them. Plus, this could be an AOE effect with modules dealing automatic damage to anything within range (smartbomb style, with a chance to hit based on drone signature and speed, and working only on drones). Again, short duration due to loads of ammo expended while operating.

[snip]

I'm not sold that the boats should actually be slowed by modules, but have the general speed of destroyers. The faster you go the harder it is to keep them in the proper position, so they have a tactical trade-off to keep them slow, not to mention that the Athena and the Penitent would be armor tankers and probably fit plates.

Aegis destroyers may protect each other, first, and second, may have logistics and Command as back up.

Part of the entire point of Aegis destroyers is that you must activate your module before the opposing party fires. Because this is an action on a friendly, not only should you not get flagged for it, you shouldn't get flagged at all unless you take an overt action toward the attacking ship. You mention that this pure defensive action should flag for aggression, and you give an example of how it would work, but you don't say why it ought to work that way.

I held it to tech level 1, so that only Destroyers IV would be required, in addition to the requisite CIWS skills mentioned. Keeping the hull cheap means ship replacement is easier to manage so new players aren't afraid to lose it. It's also gets them used to blowing up, which, if you are overly afraid to be blown up, you end up staying away from 85% of the game play in Eve.

With regard to a blaster-boat loophole, I think that blasters would make it harder to defend, but at the same time, the blaster boats are likely without protection and make nice juicy targets if you prepare for them. This is also one reason why I don't think we should pre-nerf the speed too much.

...

You're right, though. There is a scaling issue. But I'm of the opinion that overwhelming force should actually be overwhelming. Only, now the bar would be set a fair bit higher. For all the while the opposing fleet is chewing through destroyers, your fleet isn't going to sit back and watch. Perhaps Tech 2 for better resistances for ~ 12K EHP when max-tanked lets say, might make more sense.

Again, I don't think we have to ask CCP "build me exactly this." Rather, we ought to say, "build me something that lets me play this way."

Thank you again for the feedback. Keep it comping.

I like that idea, a sort of drone disruption smart bomb. How about it having a small chance to disconnect the drone?

That would be a natural development for a race designed to fight hoards of missile ships. Unfortunately, Eve doesn't really follow logic in terms of its ship design. Look at the Amarrian which specialize in cap draining, but whoses main enemy use cap-less weapons...

Implementation could be difficult. I am not sure that the game is built to do complex geometry for EVERY weapon firing. That could get pretty messy.

I get what you're aiming at here, but this idea has been brought up many times in the past & shot down each & every time.

Lets say you have 2 blob fleets facing each other, both completely protected by these Aegis Destroyers. Both fleets need smaller ships to kill the 'Ship creating big shield preventing all incomming damage'. Smaller ships race toward said Aegis Destroyer, out of the protection of their own. The small ships on both side get alpha'd. The result? 2 blob fleets are still facing each other & the only damage happening was on some cheap frigates.

I'm not denying that it's a cool idea in theory, but cool theories often don't work out in this game.

Interesting ideas BUT

This is not really how AEGIS works. As I type this I am sitting in Combat Systems Maintenance Central on board an East Cost based Arleigh Burke -class destroyer currently deployed to the Middle East.

AEGIS allows AEGIS equipped ships to share information with other ship (not necessarily AEGIS ships) and to fire defensively and offensively from that data. The problem is there is no real reason to do this with a few exceptions and most of the time we are not close enough to other ships for this to be practical . Some of this may not make sense because I will have to leave out some classified stuff that limits AEGIS. If AEGIS detects a vampire (inbound missile) it will find a firing solution and depending on the ships weapons posture will automatically fire an Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) to intercept it, or the ESSM will be command launched by a watch stander. If the ESSM misses or for some reason does not kill the vampire then Super Rapid Blooming Off-board Chaff (SRBOC) will fire and the Close in Weapons System (CIWS) will get it. For offensive we have the SM-2 Standard Missile for surface targets and the Block "C" and "D" Tomahawk Missiles for longer range strike packages. Now for the classified omission: for reason I cannot discuss we cannot in practice shoot off of another ships data unless we are out of missiles (not likely to happen) If a technical problem prevents us from shooting off of our own data, that same problem will prevent us from using another ships data and that's all I can say about that.

So in summery the biggest advantage of AEGIS is allowing AEGIS ships to share data (primarily from the AN/SPY-1 3 dimensional Air search Radar) with other ships allowing the battle group to use that combined data "see" the strategic picture covering thousands of square miles. And to use that data to plan; air strikes from carriers, Tomahawk missile strikes from VLS equipped ships, assist in deployment of marines, and overall fleet defense because knowledge is power.

Oh we also have Vertically Launched (VLS) Anti-submarine Rockets (ASROC) for offensive and defensive anti-submarine warfare (think torpedo deployed by a rocket)

Arleigh Burke class destroyer