What if Reset and Dodge were replaced by one generic skill, called Evade? The effects of which are determined by the type of attack against you instead. So if a Ghazi Moves granting you an ARO, you can declare Evade. if the active model shoots, you follow the rules for dodge, if they jam, you follow reset. This would eliminate the situation where a Ghazi moves and if we declare a Dodge ARO we get jammed. If we declare a Reset we get hit with a template. Both results in a normal roll against us. I ask this because the current rules seem at odds. It feels like currently we are encouraging the active player to make decisions based off a sequence of events during an order where everything is supposed to be simultaneous? While the reactive player cannot. I feel this suggestion thematically covers each physically different action because the intent of both actions is the same. Which is to evade an incoming attack. Even if my suggestion was implemented, the active player still gets to decide their second short skill after seeing the ARO. But at least it wouldn't be nearly as punishing at it is now. Thoughts?
It means that you can't get a catch 22 situation. There's always the "correct" answer which, whilst less punishing for the ARO trooper, does not reward skillful play of the attacker
Well which is more important to Infinity... Maintaining the integrity of simultaneous game play? Or providing certain troopers access to this catch 22 by allowing one player to follow a sequence of events while the other cannot? Is rock paper scissors a skillful game when one person must go first?
You've got to get the person to play rock paper scissors first. There's more to the game than just picking a skill and rolling dice, in order to achieve a catch 22 you have to get a hacker into ZoC without being in LoS. That's either going to be poor play on ARO player, or the active player is going to have to work hard (and win repeatedly) to get there.
What happens when a trooper is simultainously caught by a Mine and ARO'd by a Hidden Hacker? Does the "Evade" work against both attacks?
Given that Dodge and Reset involve performing completely different actions they shouldn't get lumped together.
Hacking and jamming are powerful weapons because of their ability to attack without LoS often at no risk to themselves. Do they really need the added bonus of these catch 22's? It feels more like a loop hole that was missed rather than good game design. Much like having a jammer and gun, having a knife and gun are also two different weapons with different skill declarations. Picture this: I move into base to base with an enemy with my knife and gun. But instead of allowing them to declare a Dodge which covers both a CC Attack or BS Attack. Imagine there was a Parry skill only for CC Attacks and Dodge skill against BS Attacks. Now my opponent must decide which to use but as the active player i can simply choose the other option to get my normal roll. That example is exactly the same situation as Dodge and Reset. Would you call either simultaneous or fair? I'm not sure, but we can certainly write rules to handle it. There are plenty of possibilities. We could allow them to escape both or force them to choose one. Brainstorm some ideas.
No thanks. I use my E/Mauler Zero religiously. Placing an E/Mauler next to a HI link and then deploy a repeater to harass him with, is like 90% of the reason I pick him. Edit: I also reject this notion of “requires skill”. @Ginrei this is about how many orders it realistically takes to deploy this form of “pincer” attack and assessing if it’s worth the order expenditure. I don’t think it’s fair to belittle the move as something that requires “little skill” and I find it perfectly acceptable for people to expect value of depleting both their limited deployables and the orders invested in doing so.
Technically everything is a different action. Look at my example above and explain to me why we shouldn't make a separate evasive skill for all forms of attack then.
It would also make the delay option of sixth sense useless if you could always choose the right answer as an ARO. I think its a builtin part of the game to not be able to always choose the perfect ARO option and I think its good. And for that, the "evade" skills had to be different.
I did that after I posted my answer, but I still don't get your example. Do you propose we have a combined "evade" skill that then works like dodge or reset anyway?
I agree that skill isn't even relevant to this discussion. I was simply responding with my opinion that it isn't skillful. The other poster is free to believe it is skillful. It's subjective, i completely get that. Are you essentially saying that these catch 22's are incorporated into the weapons points cost and balanced around this tactic? You don't feel their point cost is fair enough already for a weapon that can fire without LoS and harm an enemy without risk to themselves?
The example shows how arbitrary the addition of a separate rule such as Reset was. CB could have created a Parry Skill to escape CC Attacks in exactly the same way it did with Reset to escape Comms Attacks. Which would result in the example i gave above which is identical to catch 22s we're discussing. EDIT: So if you're ok with Dodge and Reset, I don't see how you can't be ok with Dodge and Parry.
Because if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Or in other words, dodge is the art of not being where the pointy things are, whether the pointy things are bullets or knives, it's a physical attack being avoided by physically avoiding the incoming pointy thing. Comms attacks aren't pointy, you avoid them by hammering reboot button on your comlog hoping that the malicious programme doesn't have time to enter runtime. If someone has set up a situation where my only choices are Dodge or Reset, then well done to them, it's actually pretty rare.
Forgive me, I'm not sure I entirely understand the question. I'm I correct to assume that "catch 22's" means you're in a situation where if you either Dodge or Reset, you get hit with one or the other or combi + flamer, where if you shoot you get a flamer or if you dodge you get 3 dices? Something like that? To answer your question to the best of my understanding, yes I think their they are priced around this combo. I mean if you consider the fact that the AP Mines profile is 1 point cheaper and you lose the ability to inflict damage with your deployables AND you potentially put your hackers in jeopardy (killer hackers), despite this, the E/Mauler is STILL more expensive AND requires twice as many orders to make use of said combo (and orders is also a valuable resource which is difficult to put a price tag on).
It's not a loophole. Those are both physical evasions, rather than physical and electronic/computing. It's not an equivalent situation.