By not being at the edge, there is a portion of the base that is screened from below. You have to get your silhouette high enough that the top of it is above the level of the elevated terrain to see the full height. Not that it matters due to the Reciprocal aspect as noted already
mutual awareness and facing are two different rules. How do people still not understand this, its in the FAQ clear and bad as day
Yes it is!;D Dura lex, sed lex. And its not 1st time;) (hello to 2W models with NWI vs shock ammo;) ) And its not as obvious, if You remember Full Auto and Suppresive Fire discussion, D.;) Sometimes such tough statements can be quite surprising to others;)
Agreed. Infinity has several core mechanisms that are not only quite different to those found in other games (and so for players experienced in other games, one could almost say some Infinity rules are 'unintuitive') but they were not at all well explained in the N3/HSN3 rule books. As Marsellus Wallis might've said: 'right now, the rules are pretty f---ing far from obvious.
Related question: if a prone trooper is not at the edge of a rooftop, it can be very hard to check if Line of Fire exists to a target unit. Does anyone have any formulae, rules of thumb, etiquette or house rules that make this practicality easier to manage?
I don't find it all that hard, tbh. As was said, a laser pointer helps, a small flashlight can help as well (observe the shadows). Just remember that it's impossible to draw line of fire to a prone trooper on a higher elevation and that a lower trooper relies on mutual awareness (yes, it gets weird).
I don't think I can agree with such a use of "mutual awareness" (I though mutual awareness was important for shooting through zero visibility zone i.e. smoke and shooting vs msv2) Because otherwise - the 3x3mm square has no point in it. In order to shoot anyone you are fine to see micro-mini-super-duper-shity thing, it becomes always possible to have LOF. I think 3x3mm square should be also mutual. + Reading RAW "This means that as long as any troop can draw LoF to its target, the target can draw LoF to its attacker as well" means absurd situations like - only being a target allows to draw back LOF, otherwise, if you do not see target "3x3 mm", and target do not declare any ARO - you can't attack the target even if target has "3x3 mm" vision. + Drawing LOF to a prone trooper on a roof can be difficult as hell, especially when roof is just a little bit higher then s2 - > there will be always some long enough distance in order to be able to catch the micro millimetre of a prone s0 on the roof.
It 100% still has a point, because it means that you can't draw LoF from a tiny point to a tiny point - at least one of the troopers must be able to see 3x3mm. 'Target' in this case is clearly being used for 'thing you're trying to draw LoF to'. There is no connection at all to needing to shoot them, or for them to declare an ARO. The way you're reading it would break the entire game. For example, in the reactive turn placing a Mine/throwing Smoke/firing a Pitcher/Dodging all require LoF to the active trooper, but none of them target the active trooper.
Real life example please...I mean have you ever had such a situation? LOF tiny-to-tiny? ...Even if there was some...when there are tiny pieces of siluets connected by LOF and it is not possible to move some of them to be able to shoot after.... it is only 3x3mm from one side - so game looks like - I'll just move a little bit my trooper so you'd catch my 3x3mm ... Very frustrating for reactive player. It is VERY easy to expose 3x3 mm and start "pixel hunting". So that is why I say, it has no point. I can see a mili-mini-shity part of siluete, but I can shoot it, because I exposed half of my siluette to it. On "reading RAW" - I admit, that I was wrong.
Because as easy as it is to pie slice 3mmx3mm to infinitely small part of the other SIL it is infinitely easier to pie slice infinitely small point to infinitely small point. So this literally comes up in every game that involves pie slicing.
You don't need 3x3 mm for that. "3x3mm" rule has zero impact on pie slicing. You can pie slice with or without that rule.
It has an impact. The position you need to be in for 3mmx3mm is different to just needing infinitely small LOF. You can do it without it, the rule just changes the fidelity you can do it with.
What you say about it being impossible is appealing, because as I say we've found it very hard to verify in practice, but the rules suggest it is possible. Can you explain a little more?
Simple trigonometry. The base is 3mm tall and the trooper on the lower level requires visibility to 3x3mm plane that is perpendicular to the direction of the line of fire and fully within the silhouette of the target. It's impossible to draw uninterrupted straight lines from the origin point of the line of fire to the entire plane due to the floor that the prone trooper is standing on. That said. I find it's more common for people to treat the 3x3 condition as meaning a 3x3 surface area on the silhouette's cylinder, which would mean that viewing angle won't actually make a difference in this way and prevent the trooper turning their ass towards the enemy from becoming immune to attacks (in most cases, since it's still possible to do this by moving slightly back from the edge, but people tend to instinctively put models both facing directly towards where they are shooting and prone models at heights as close to the edge as possible).
Because mutual LOF wouldn't exist. He's wrong on that, mutual LOF doesn't consider facing. The overall point is valid though. The only reason troopers Prone on roofs that they're not B2B of the edge of can draw LOF to Troopers below them is due to the mutual LOF rule.
Your going to have to work out the logic on that one in plain text because: For a troop to be able to draw LoF to its target, it must meet these conditions: The target must be within the troop's front 180˚ arc. Means that when Mutual Awareness is defined by a model being able to draw LOF, it doesn't make any mention of removing that requisite of LOF. I've had this argument with IJW before (me taking roughly your position and losing that argument) and there's a reason I don't play with 3x3mm defined that way. Not in the same order. Say I've got a good active turn model on a tall roof, an Intruder HMG or a Djanbazan Sniper, and I want to protect it during the reactive turn from being shot at while it's at disadvantage. My last order would then be to Move (turn around) and Shoot. For the entire duration of my opponent's active turn he'd have to get on that trooper's height to shoot back.
Look at any of the "shooting in the back from in front" threads, the assumption throughout is that you only need 3mm X 3mm from one party, not both. The reason for this assymetry is mutual awareness rule. I'm not saying that mutual awareness allows you to shoot back at people shooting you from behind: I'm saying that irrespective of facing only only party needs to be able to draw LOF to 3mmx3mm. CB's language around LOF is loose (or more precisely CB uses LOF to mean both 'LOF irrespective of facing' and 'LOF including facing'). I have always just assumed that the they're talking regardless of facing, much like with Sixth Sense we just assume that Total Cover still applies. The reason I make this assumption is to avoid precisely the absurd situation you describe. Basically, mutual awareness determines whether LOF exists but then still need to apply facing to work out whether LoF *really* exists. Your Intruder scenario can get worse though: that Intruder could be in a marker state, your opponent Discovers+Shoots at you. The attacking trooper has LOF to the marker due to mutual awareness. After your opponent succeeds at the Discover, you place the Intruder such that the attacking model is outside your facing and thus outside LOF for the BS Attack.