So Suppressive fire is cancelled when “The Trooper's army enters a Loss of Lieutenant situation” but Veteran states that “The user is not affected by the Loss of Lieutenant situation, and remains Regular”. I assume Veteran takes precedence? Should be pretty straightforward but the line about trooper’s army is throwing me off and I am getting different answers. Another unrelated question: How is a Line Infantry with Veteran affected by E/M ammo? It won’t be affected by neither state (IMM-B and Isolated) but: Can it Dodge if a template is placed by a speculative attack? I assume yes since it is affected by the template. Does attacks become FtF in LoF? I assume yes on account of how Flash Pulse interacts with Total Immunity.
If your question is "Is something still face-to-face even if it's impossible for one side to actually do anything to the other?", the answer is that it doesn't matter to the game mechanics. For the record, for the case of multi-spectral visors vs. thrown smoke, the reason why the smoke stops being a face-to-face roll is in the smoke rules: Because the MSV trooper ignores the effects of smoke, you're not placing the smoke template anywhere that's blocking its line of fire.
Sooooo... it's a face to face roll that has no effect on the FP user's Active but can be an effective (dice vs dice) ARO on Reactive? Bwuh?
I would assume that the Veteran in suppression still has the state cancelled, since LoL meets a state cancellation clause, and it’s affecting a state rather than affecting the Veteran directly. But I’m honestly on the fence and would 100% play it the way my opponent prefers.
From various answers IJW gave during primarily N3; Veteran troopers are unaffected by the effects of Loss of Lieutenant. Because they are unaffected by Loss of Lieutenant, they would remain in Suppression state even if the army enters Loss of Lieutenant. Arguably, this is an answer that needs to come from authority and not from answers given in previous edition, but I'm reasonably sure the answer above will hold true.
Although the veteran skill does say that the model is unaffected by the Loss of Lieutenant, there is some interesting wording on the Suppressive Fire State Page: The Suppressive Fire state is automatically cancelled in any of these cases: The Trooper declares an Order. The Trooper declares any ARO other than a BS Attack using the SF Mode profile. The Trooper uses a weapon that cannot be used for Suppressive Fire. The Trooper fails a Guts Roll. The Trooper enters Engaged, Isolated or Retreat! State, any Null or Immobilized State, or any other State which specifies that it cancels Suppressive Fire. The Trooper's army enters a Loss of Lieutenant situation. The Trooper joins any kind of Infinity Fireteam. Although I agree with Mahtamori in that the spirit of Veteran trooper functionality would be that they could "hold back the enemy" and continue blasting away, I don't think it works in N4 I too think that this is an answer that needs to come from authority, but as I am reading it here; I would say the veteran trooper cannot continue in the state while the army is in Loss of Lieutenant.
I agree it's ambiguous, but I think I fall on the "not cancelled" side. I don't think I buy the distinction, because I don't think states exist independently of troopers. "‘State’ is a game term for each of the altered conditions, beneficial or not, that a Trooper or game element might find itself in." I think that cancelling a troopers suppressive fire state is affecting the trooper by changing the state it's in. I don't see this distinction either. When an army enters LoL, that situation has the effect of making all troopers in the army irregular. It affects each trooper. Troopers with Veteran ignore that effect. The question is whether they also ignore the effect of having their suppressive fire state cancelled. It's possible that "and remains Regular" is intended to mean that that's the only way in which the trooper with Veteran is not affected by the LoL situation. But it could also be intended as a redundant restatement of one of the effects of being unaffected by the LoL situation. Given that the rules are full of redundant restatements of effects, my inclination is that that's the case here. On the whole we've tried to avoid applying N3 rulings to interpret N4, but given that we currently have no N4 rules authority and no word from CB on when we will have one again, looking to N3 rulings seems to me to be a reasonable option in cases where it's the best way to answer a question for the time being.
This seems to be another one of the N4 rules situations where the new wording has diverged completely from N3 functionality and now works completely different as currently written - a situation that also happened with impetuous, for example. Impetuous, as written in the rules, didn't require you to move directly towards the deployment zone - they had to correct this with a FAQ document. Unfortunately, this Veteran situation doesn't have a correction yet in FAQ. For that, I expect there to (hopefully) be an answer in a newer update to the FAQ.
Rules wording for Veteran and suppression cancellation with regards to LoL hasn't changed going from N3 to N4.
Checking out the N3 rulebook, I'm surprised to see that the wording is exactly the same. Is the retention of Suppressive Fire State by Veteran troopers purely from forum post rulings or a FAQ from the previous edition? I would love some deeper clarity on this.
I see. I suppose until there's some more officiated N4 discussions on the matter, it does make sense to fall back on N3 functionality - especially if the wording is the same. Although this can be pretty ambiguous as well (see https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/oblivion-jammer-and-tactical-awareness.34962/#post-291608 where ijw seems to state that the army being in LoL cancels suppressive fire state) So what's the deal with the ijw situation? Was he someone who worked with CB in the past and no longer does, and thus any rulings mentioned by him should be taken as gospel? I don't ask this to come across as argumentative, to be clear. It just seems like there's a lot of rules questions that turn into "see what ijw said on the matter", and I guess he hasn't posted since like april or something? I'm genuinely confused as to when to read the rules and when to defer to the interpretations of someone who seems to no longer participate in the community.
@ijw was CB's official way of answering rules questions. He was one of the authors of the N4 rules (and is listed as such in the rulebook) and has an "Infinity Rules Staff" banner on his forum posts (you can see it under his name and above his warcor banner). You can also find posts from @psychoticstorm (the forum moderator, and also CB staff) confirming that @ijw 's answers are official CB rules answers. He hasn't posted since April and CB hasn't commented on the silence, which is why the state of the rules is currently a mess in some ways. There's no question that LoL cancels the suppressive fire state. The question is whether the Veteran skill trumps that effect for troops that have it.
Thank you for this answer, it clears up a lot of confusion for me regarding the acceptance of ijw's answers as rulings. As far as the veteran vs suppressive fire state, I myself fall into the category of tending to play it however my opponent decides, but I find it really ambiguous still due to the wording. I look forward to a time when the rules discussions get back on track with official CB input.