There's a line that explicitly says that they can be attacked, it's separate from the definition of Hacking Area. That being said I'm completely OK with considering them part of the hacking area for simplicity sake.
@ijw can you explain how all this is supposed to work please mate? not caring about what says what, i just want to know how its supposed to be played
Yes there's a line that says that, but nowhere does it say that it allows you to use hacking programs with a range restricted to your hacking area outside of it. By implication your hacking area must include enemy hackers under the circumstance we're describing.
Does the game break in any meaningful way if players were allowed to declare orders they know they do not meet the requirements of under the expectation that they would meet the requirements of them as a result of subsequent declarations in the same order?
It would mitigate all the various tricks you can pull by trying to force change facing AROs (e.g. smoke shooting inside 8", walking into melee from around corners, etc). Depending on your perspective, you might consider this a feature and not bug. But it'd be a more significant departure from the current known position than just allowing breakwater to work properly.
I would consider it to significantly break the game if I can coordinate 4 models, 3 of which are not in LOF if a target, declaring shoot followed by move to force my opponents ARO shot onto a single member of the coordinated order despite myself getting to shoot with all 4, yes. They are niche situations but it's certainly abusable, the same way as the current system is abusable. I think it's better as it stands now where most of the abuse requires you be inside ZOC of the target.
I guess i have gotten myself a tad lost in this thread. From what i can tell: Stealth vs ssl2 through repeater is not effective. Cannot declare hold though repeater with ssl2. Is this correct or did i miss something?
Yup, you missed something XD First, that SS1 (not 2, since that one works only, but always, if you are attacked from outside your ZoC, and doesn't let you delay ARO) seems to be, by RAW, effective inside the whole Hacking Zone of the hacker with such skill (for example, Maakrep Hacker, or linked hackers like Kerr-Nau). That means those troops can delay their ARO until the second short order of the enemy troop. Which cannot be Reset, since the requirements have not been fulfilled (you need to suffer the enemy ARO first!). So you can spam SS1 or 2 (since SS2 includes SS1) hackers to be able to make the live of any enemy HI or TAG troop inside of your repeaters an untenable nightmare in which entering the repeater is certain doom, bypassing any FtF roll and going straight for the BTS roll. Obviously broken and in need of a FAQ in that part where the Repeaters allow ARO "like it is the ZoC of the hacker".
