Speculative fire and 3d terrain

No, you target a flat surface on the building itself and the blast focus lacks volume. It's impossible for a volume-less origin point lying flat on a surface to have more than 180º field of view. Strictly speaking, the blast focus must also be positioned on a horizontal surface and if it can "see" downwards, the surface its on is not horizontal.

 

Except the focus is placed ‘on the surface’: which can be read as immediately superjacent rather than ‘lying flat’. With this reading the blast focus is infinitesimally above the plane of the roof, so you can draw a line to the point immediately above the absolute edge of a flat surface from below the plane.

And horizontal is ‘a surface of an angle that can support a model’ given the horizontal/vertical dichotomy of the rules.

 

And you don't find that this statement here says that you can't place the blast focus on the edge of a corner so it can "see" downwards?

 

No?

LOF doesn't obey the horizontal/vertical dichotomy of types of surface. I read your post as implying that you couldn't (RAW) spec fire at terrain that wasn't actually horizontal rather than that wasn't horizontal by Infinity's definition of a horizontal surface. On terrain that isn't actually horizontal but supports a model it's plausible to draw LOF from a point well in from the edge to a trooper at a lower elevation.

Fundamentally the discussion comes down to a disagreement about the position you place the blast focus. Thinking about it in 2D for a moment:
Consider a square that occupies the space between X=0, Y=0 and X=1, Y=1.
You read the rules as requiring the blast focus to be placed at 1,1.
Whereas I argue 1,1 is part of the square(ie it is a point within the square) and the blast focus is placed at 1+1/Infinity, 1 (ie the point immediately superjacent to the square).

"Place the Template directly on the game table or horizontally over a piece of terrain, and never on a vertical surface or in the air."

Given that's the wording I, personally, don't see how squares with a position that is shared by the terrain. Do you?

Practically this isn't an issue. Most metas don't allow the precision required for placing templates on the absolute edge of terrain. In metas that don't allow perfect intent, on actually horizontal terrain @Mahtamori is correct.

 

I mean, can you set up a model on an edge so that the edge supports it and you get more than 45º angle downwards? Can you set it up so you get even any angle downwards at all?

And no, my reading isn't that the focus is placed inside 1,1, my reading is that it's placed at the edge of 1,1 between 1,1 and 2,1. Placing it inside 2,1 as you argue would be placing it in the air which is not allowed.

 

No I said it was at X=1+1/Infinity. That's literally between 1,1 and 2,1... It's why I started using coordinates, it's easier to be precise.

You can draw a line to that position from practically anywhere Y>0 but <1.

 

Oh. Division. Was wondering why you wrote "or infinity" -.-;;

In either case, as far as I'm concerned it's impossible get it to have more than 180º angle and the precision necessary to get it to be placed on a corner so it is angled downwards is impossible without making use of what's practically speaking theoretical placements.

 

Yeah. It's the requirement for perfect placement that stops this in most metas not geometry. In metas with perfect intent it's geometricaly possible.

 

Yeah it's another badly written rule than confuse a lot of ppl
in our gaming group we use as homemade rule this:

Circular template are cylinder (and not sphere) and they go S7's height max
the center must be put on a surface, LoF drawn from the center (like smoke template)
everything below is not affected (like the smoke template)
and done: zero problems. easy to check.

 

Yup. Although it's not a specific model. It'll generally either hit pretty much everything or nothing.

 

how come the blast is not a 3d sphere but a circular disc with no height ? In the shotgun and DTW set of example, in each you can see that the blast focus has a vertical component in one picture and an horizontal component in another picture. If you could setup a case where models are on various 3d plane, you could easily end up having to use both example of hit/not hit showing the blast is 3d sphere.

 

You sure the blast focus is a math-point (with no area)? I'm pretty sure we had a discussion like this at some point and IJW told us the small circle at the small end of the teardrop templates was supposed to be the blast focus.

 

Following up on Tanan post, the official template from any starter boxes/starter set has a cardboard thickness (so a small circle with next to no volume) while the infinity partner template has a 3mm thickness. So laying those template flat, it could be a cylinder of the small circle by a height of 3mm, from which if placed on top of a crate you could have a very small angle of descent when drawing LoF to ground below.

 

Yes. But we're discussing the blast focus of a circular template.

Edit: relevant rule is as follows:
"The Blast Focus is at the center of the Circular Template and at the narrow end of the Teardrop Templates."

By definition the centre of a circle is a point without volume.

Personally I'd prefer them both to have a 3mm diameter sphere as the blast focus. Dealing with volumeless points on actual 3D terrain is less easy than dealing with objects of a useful size.

 

They're a sphere:

Templates used by Template Weapons and Equipment have a height equal to their radius or half their width (unless otherwise specified, as in the case of Smoke Special Ammunition,). To help determine the three-dimensional Area of Effect of a Template, add a second identical template perpendicular down the middle so the cross-section forms an X.

 

http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Template_Weapons_and_Equipment