Well, it would be pretty stupid not to use any aegis at all, and if you use two aegis, the rules pretty much force a clamshell unless you build a big ship. Also, there is nothing specific to clamshells with regards to being overwhelmable by massed fire. Plasma is the only major downside to using two aegis, but I've yet to see any of our pirate ships with flak get hit with significant amounts, no matter how many dauntless VI I throw at them. And you're right, using 26 give near invincibilty to frontal plasma.
But I have explored alternatives. In fact, I'm have a hard time bettering one idea. I got rid of everying but my one frontal aegis and spammed scatter beams behind it. Then I gave it 0 AI range. It basically kills everything (200 damage per frame, and pirate's speed to get on to cores while dodging enough fire on the way), even in fleet on fleet testing (6 such scatter spammers vs one of every other tournament design I've gotten my hands on leads to 4 fully healthy scatter spammers winning). So maybe the best defense it a good offense, or in this case killing things before they get off 2 shots. How's that for an alternative. ~8 points for frontal aegis (maybe with hp buff), ~20 points for movement, ~30 sections, and ~90 points of weaponry, going straight to the core to kill. (Another fun weapon to use for this was pulsars at point blank, as they bust even hp buffed aegis the instant they go 'live', but in practice they're useless since they'll have enough flak to stop it. Probably :twisted: ) Plasma, missles, or other normally easily PDed projectiles like this strategy too (maybe this is repeater gun's time to shine
). It's basically the final solution done right, since we can get on cores quickly (a dietering might still be good, though).
Also, I think we should basically scrap lancets. This is going to be a fierce fight; any sections not deflectored or aegised get blown off quickly enough that if a weapon
can be hit by the lancet, it's about to be blown off anyways.
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