Losing 6th sence Fireteam bonuses while declaring delayed ARO

If you split your ARO, none of the members will have sixth sense, so you would not be able to delay. You must either declare the same ARO for everyone of forfeit entirely.

 

Counterpoint:

Sixth sense allows you to delay the declaration of your ARO until later in the order sequence. It only affects the timing of the order sequence.

The rules say that "a Skill declaration is not valid if the Requirements for their execution are not met" in which case the unit is deemed to have declared Idle instead. But "was declared at the correct point in the order sequence" isn't a Requirement for execution of a Skill (this is easily checked since each Skill has a box listing its Requirements).

"Delay" itself isn't a Skill declaration, doesn't have Requirements, and can't fail at the Resolution stage and become an Idle.

Losing sixth sense at the Resolution stage can't retroactively change the order sequence. Because of the All At Once principle, in the Resolution phase you don't consider _when_ each Skill was declared. You just look at all the declared Skills, determine which ones have all their Requirements met, and resolve all those Skills simultaneously.


I'm not sure that's the correct analysis, but I don't think it's clearly the reverse, either.

 

I don't think this has ever been officially answered, and it has been asked several times over the years of N3, but keep in mind that this is not too dissimilar from when a unit declares a delayed ARO using Sixth Sense only to find out the enemy unit was/is out of range during measurement.

I've personally always gone out of my way to never let this become an issue during games, simply because I've never been able to answer nor arbitrate it with confidence, though I'm partial to the interpretation that the delay is invalid if the unit loses Sixth Sense and thus causes all skill declarations to fail (note; this is different from "not happen" as units will still get kicked from the team for declaring divergent AROs).

Basically, if you're looking for an answer from Helllois or IJW you might never get one before N3 is history, so maybe make a house rule?

 

So, we know that that rule doesn't apply to a unit with Sixth Sense when the active unit is within its ZoC, because Sixth Sense allows the unit to delay the declaration of its ARO.

The question is, does the rule apply retroactively when the unit had Sixth Sense at the time it delayed its ARO declaration, but lost Sixth Sense at the time that it declared its ARO. In this scenario, the declared ARO itself is still valid, but the time at which it was declared was, arguably, retroactively too late. I agree with @Mahtamori that the rules don't appear to answer that question.

If we do apply the rule you quoted retroactively, we get this:

1. Active unit declares its first Skill.
2. Fireteam units all delay their ARO declarations.
3. Active unit declares its second Skill.
4. Fireteam units declare divergent AROs, causing them to lose Sixth Sense.
5. Applying the rule quoted, the units now all _lose their ARO_. Note this is different from the rule I quoted where a Skill's Requirements aren't met. When the Requirements aren't met, the ARO is converted to an Idle. But where a unit fails to declare an ARO at its first opportunity, it loses the ARO completely (does not Idle).
6. So now, retroactively, none of the fireteam units declared any ARO.
7. Which means that they didn't declare divergent AROs.
8. Which means that they didn't lose Sixth Sense....

And then the fabric of the universe collapses in a time loop paradox, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT.

 

It's not a time loop paradox, because not declaring an ARO is legal, regardless of whether or not you have sixth sense. Step 8 would be that your fireteam is still intact but declared no ARO, and gameplay continues with the next order.

 

Mmm, I'm not sure I buy that. Yes, not declaring an ARO is legal, which is why it's possible to say that retroactively, they didn't declare any ARO (having failed to do so at step 2 which is the point when, retroactively, they had to choose whether to declare or not).

But once we allow that retroactive change, so they didn't declare any ARO, it follows that they also didn't lose their fireteam bonuses. Which means they still had Sixth Sense throughout the order. Which means we can't disallow them from delaying their ARO until step 4.

There's no basis on which we can take away their fireteam bonus, except that they declared divergent AROs. But unless they have their fireteam bonus, they didn't declare divergent AROs (or any AROs at all).

I don't know the right answer, probably @Mahtamori is right that it just takes a house rule one way or the other. But I think it's a genuine time loop if we try to apply the rule retroactively.

 

I've not seen anything new that changes my opinion from the previous discussion - they will lose their AROs if there aren't enough members left in the Fireteam.

 

@ijw has resolved the original question, so we can move on to something else:

Is that correct? Do you have a source? I've always wondered how this would work. Especially if the camo declared it as an ARO, I always kind of thought that if it turned out to be out of range, camo would not lose the marker state. Since it would never have had an ARO in the first place (assuming no LoF to the active unit).

 

Well, but that doesn't answer the question of what happens when the trooper attempts to declare a skill, but it turns out they were not in fact allowed to declare it because they had no ARO.

What if I want to uncamo a trooper? Suppose we're playing Acquisition. I have first turn. On my turn 3, I move a camo unit into contact with the tech coffin but it's still in marker state. I want to keep it safely in camo for as long as possible, but reveal it at the end of your turn so that I control the tech coffin. So I wait until your last order. You activate someone on the other side of the board. I declare that my camo unit will use a ZoC ARO to Change Facing. You point out that the active trooper is obviously not inside my ZoC. I say "no problem, let's measure it. Yup, turns out you're right, that's way outside my ZoC. Oh well, my trooper declared an ARO so he's revealed anyway."

 

I guess my point was more that entering and remaining in the loop requires the active choice of the controlling player. You can choose to exit the loop and remain in a legal game state. This isn't some sort of Marauding Raptor + Polyraptor situation.

 

Fair enough, we may just have been using "time loop" differently. Probably my fault because I wanted an excuse to say "time loop." Really it's more of a paradox along the lines of "this statement is false." No time travel.

Anyway it doesn't matter anymore since @ijw has ruled on it.