I hope he was or has been civevac to one of your guy to get there. You are not suppose to deploy HVT and designated target in unreachable places where even a spec fire can't reach. To know if some place is accessible or not, the ITS 10 rule made it more simpler with this requirement (which i bolded) and explained Designated Target is an enemy HVT (in the DT section, so would follow HVT deployment rules) : The players must deploy their HVT models a minimum of 4 inches outside of any Deployment Zones. Moreover, the players cannot place their HVT models either on top of or inside of any Scenery Item or Building, always deploying it in an accessible location on the table.
Not that this totally invalidates your question, but that's already illegal. EDIT: Beaten to the punch, with a rules quote.
As a new player I encountered the same confusion trying to figure this out with a friend. Anything so counterintuitive is problematic in my opinion and you assume you're doing something wrong. We decided to play with a simple house rule that states the maximum height a grenade may achieve when thrown is PH/2 in inches. As long as there are no obstacles in the "path" over this height it's all good.
It has always boggled my mind that Infinity players will happily accept invisible ninjas, paratrooper werewolves, mind control, weaponized furries, and bulletproof alien pocket monsters, but apparently munitions capable of going through walls is a bridge too far. There are real-life weapons today that are able to breach a wall and spew shrapnel at the occupants inside, to say nothing of the futuristic tech available in the Infinity setting. It's like everyone has it in their head that WW2 pineapple grenades were the final word in handheld explosives and absolutely no progress has been or will be made since then. This is a sci-fi setting, the idea that grenades can only ever follow parabolic trajectories and can be thwarted by a cardboard box is, frankly, ridiculous. The current rules are clean, simple, and extremely easy to resolve on the tabletop. I'm actually disappointed they added a "sealed room" exception in response to this continued complaint from the community, because it added an unnecessary and ill-defined exception to an otherwise well-designed rule. If you are having trouble visualizing Speculative Fire on the tabletop, here is a small sample of possible implementations. Choose whatever suits your force best: - Tandem-charge grenades - Rocket-assisted breaching charges - Drill grenades - Piston Charges - Drone / RC Car grenades - "Billiard ball" semi-smart grenades - Subsonic micro-missiles, underslung or otherwise - Sonic impact devices - Thermal impact devices - A space werewolf just literally throws it through the wall. Yes, even that wall. What part of "space werewolf" was unclear? If all else fails:
What you've done is created a house rule that directly opposes the weapon's range band and still doesn't solve the speculative fire "problem".
" The players must deploy their HVT models a minimum of 4" outside of any deployment zones. Moreover, the players cannot place their HVT models either on top of, or inside of, any scenery item or Building, always deploying it in an accessible location." This image shows no model nearby having CivEvac'd the HVT there, so looks like you deployed it in an invalid location :)
How is it in opposition? It's just a height check to simulate it being a throwing a weapon. @KestrelM1 the same reason I hate plot holes and maguffins in movies. Grenades are specifically stated to be thrown weapons, in fact requiring some measure of fitness to use effectively, and have a small range band... Because they are being thrown, not driven on a small rc car to their target, or teleporting, or anything else. The rules reflect the function of the equipment poorly in this regard. Grenades just feel like weak hacking attacks rather than something physical in the environment. Grenades should be disposable, regain scatter rather than just failing, and have some measure to reign in janky speculative fire.
Sure and Mines in infinity act more like smart claymores than what we refer to commonly as 'mines'. The game is not meant to be tabletop reproduction of reality. It's a game set in the future loosely based on current concepts and understanding of weaponry. Grenades scattering would increase playtime of infinity games, already notorious for rules bloat and would not add as much to the fun as as it would to the flavour. And games are ultimately about fun. If it helps you, just like the mines, think about the grenades as being smart grenades. It gets thrown, it misses and therefore scatters badly, it senses no movement within X range and then defuses itself or doesn't go off or some variant of that. Consider it a civilian safety/property preserving mechanism, if it helps. As for spec fire, walls have windows and vents. And again, it needs to be re-iterated, there's only a small number of cases where the spec-fire doesn't make thematic sense. I think board and tabletop games are best when you roll with an overall concept as a form of gameplay than try to edge towards simulation. Because if we're going down this path, why not have the sun shining in the eyes of non-helmeted models effect their throws as well? :P
@Shoitaan Thank you for presenting your view in a grounded and conversational way without resorting to extremes. I definitely see where you're coming from, and agree the experience is ultimately about fun, for me that includes a bit more "simulation" than for you apparently, and my small group tends to lean that way so for us a few house rules improve the experience, and switch up gameplay to make thrown weapons feel more distinct. We do tend to prefer longer games though and come from old-school board games like dune haha.
The thing you have to understand about the current "pathing" lack-of-rules is that it's a reaction to how things worked in 2nd edition. In 2nd edition, speculative fire had to deal with "shadow zones" on terrain to represent the parabolic arc of throwing. They got rid of that because it was time consuming, and was really based on a bunch of "simplifying" assumptions that resulted in treating the trajectory over a nearby 10' tall wall the same as the trajectory over a 10' tall wall on the other side of the table. If you're eliminating something like that during an edition change, it's really difficult to justify making up any rules to define throwing arc and/or expect people to measure them. And, to be frank, that's the problem with a house rule limiting the height of the intervening terrain. Assuming a PH of 10, Trooper A is standing next to a PH/2 tall wall, and 6" away his target is standing next to a PH/2 tall wall. How high and how far does that projectile travel? Messing with a graphing calculator, you get an midpoint height of 11.5. As you try to squeeze the range out to put the walls at 7" apart, the midpoint height gets to 15. So what's the benefit of the objectively bad simulation?
Because grenades have a max range of 16in. So you've created a rule that specifically limits how the weapon functions.
Our goal was to make grenades feel less useless, less like a psi blast or weak hacking attack, and make them behave somewhat intuitively in regard to what a grenade is and what our expectations were from other games. So when we play we use the scatter template and impose a vertical limit distinct from the horizontal range. It's not about calculating an arc or attempting to. Is the target in range? Yes or no? Is the target behind an obstacle over the active unit's PH/2 in inches? Yes or no. If yes to the first, move on to question two, if no the grenade isn't thrown. If no to the second, the grenade lands at the target indicated and you initiate a scatter, if yes you place the template so that it is between the thrower and the terrain in approximate contact with the terrain and roll for scatter, but the grenade is considered to be on the ground and cannot pass through terrain. We also do scatter based on the hit roll and the difference between the roll and the thrower PH -6 modifier for speculative and range band mods, etc. I get it though you guys like it the way it is, we wanted something different based on experience from other tabletop games as well as old battle reports we watched for infinity. We expected them to behave differently based on these things and I searched up the forums when we realized they didn't.
Grenades USED to behave differently in N1/N2. They dropped those mechanics in N3 for a more streamlined approach. Grenades used to scatter (based on how much you failed by (the failure category - FC - x2.5 inches.). But anything that scattered ALSO used this mechanic. AD troops especially. Kinda like how in early 40k, grenades scattered a lot, and distance was based on how strong you were - but by the late 90s, they had dumped that complete mechanic.
pretty much exactly like this, they are largely pointless mechanics that add merely randumbness to the game, not tactical depth or nuance
no you dont, because theres things called probability curves that kick in when you are comparing results on multiple dice. But aside from that, theres that fact that this doesnt add anything. Dice rolls to determine outcomes adds something, IE the core element of gameplay. Random scatter based on that roll isnt adding to that core mechanic its just increasing the footprint on that randomness relative to considered player choice. Thats why its randumb
I feel like I should further clarify this for @PsychoThruster. Templates deviating into your own units matter of course but not so much in this game system. Let's go back to my smart claymore/smart grenade premise. In Infinity, civilians and friendly units do not and CANNOT trigger mines. You can use that to your advantage as the safety features of mines will not let the explosion occur if a friendly or civvies is in the splash zone. You also can't declare template attacks if a friendly is in the way. Whether the commander is unable to order a soldier to do that or safety features in their weapons prevent that.. who knows. Assume the grenades have a similar safety feature to the mines. Suddenly it makes rolling for deviation a needless burden that may only matter for extremely niche cases when the grenade may deviate into different enemies to the ones you targeted. Suspension of disbelief is important to enjoy fiction my friend XD
First the scatter isn't purely random, but influenced by the PH attribute and constrained by the environment how we do it. Additionally it adds quite a lot to the gameplay by replacing the pass/fail system with one where the grenade once thrown is guaranteed to do something. Now we only have about 20 games under our belt but we found speculative firing grenades was mostly useless because of the -6 and pass/fail binary, the only time it saw use was abuse. Now it could be the particularities of our gaming table as we have a ton of cover and multiple story buildings, and being able to ignore that with speculative fire quickly became absurd. Not just because when it actually worked it felt cheesy to be on the receiving end, but because the active player is burning orders on a substandard attack. Both players found it frustrating. So we changed it, and are enjoying grenades a lot more. Next we will be play testing making them disposable(2) with exp ammo. Oh the horror!
