Order declaration, line of fire and aros

So, first off welcome, I don't recognise the name. :)

Second, Here Be Dragons. The question of when you can check LOF and to what is closely related to an open debate about how the play the game (the great 'play by intent' debate).

Nevertheless, this is how my meta plays it:

LOF is *always* open information. You can check it prior to step 1 or at any other point in the order. You can even check it to hypothetical points (IE if I activated this and moved it to here, would that get LOF?).

I'd recommend asking locally and seeing how it is specifically played where you play.

 

And, regardless of this, if you start in view of an opponent, and want to go prone as part of your first skill, and going prone would put you out of LoF from said opponent, you still suffer an ARO.

 

Your opponent gets an ARO if you activate a trooper in their LoF (Step 1 of an order), so even if you go prone at the start of your first move (in step 3) the activation of the trooper still grants an ARO at step 4 and can choose to BS Attack at the point before your trooper went prone.

http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Order_Expenditure_Sequence

 

Because during an order, a model is considered to be simultaneously occupying all positions along its movement path.

 

Among other things, see the example on the Move skill:

MOVEMENT EXAMPLE
In his Active Turn, Angus is leaning against a wall in Total Cover. He does not have LoF to his nemesis Alguacil Ortega, on the other side of the building. Ready to put an end to their feud, Angus declares his first Short Skill: Move.
Angus moves only slightly so that his base peeks around the corner just enough to gain LoF to his target while still in Partial Cover. Once he has seen Ortega, Angus' model returns to his original position in Total Cover. His Move declaration will take him to the corner and back.
Since Ortega also gains LoF to Angus, he declares his ARO: BS Attack.
Angus then declares the second Short Skill of his Order, another BS Attack.
In the subsequent Face to Face Roll, Ortega suffers the Partial Cover MODs. Were Ortega to win the Face to Face Roll, and Angus to fail his ARM Roll, then Angus would end his Order in Unconscious state behind the Total Cover, where he finished his movement.
​

That’s how it works—you get Line of Sight to the movement and you get to declare an ARO. And there are a few places where the rules are somewhat rubbish if you skip the examples where they explain what the bad wording means.

And that example—move to corner and move back, shooting in the middle and getting shot at in the middle—is pretty much Infinity in a nutshell.

 

The examples are part of the rules. You can't read any of Infinity's rules in isolation. This means that parsing Infinity's rules is hard, so don't worry about it. :)

 

I called it Infinity in a nutshell for a reason. The most important concept of the game is explained in an example for the Move skill.

If that situation isn’t acceptable to you, several other rules and mechanics are going to do the same thing.

 

You can check for existing Line of Fire before a unit is Activated (Step 1) and once again before the opponent's ARO(s) are declared in Step 4. Where movement is involved, this will usually mean after a model's position has changed, the movement resolved, and its actual position is properly known. ie. you can check for LoF to the new position before declaring ARO.s

Thus, if Prone were declared as part of a Move (Prone) Order declaration, both players would know where it was before the model moved, and therefore what LoF.s were available, and once again again after the movement (truncated by Prone).

If we presume that at the start of the Order there is LoF to a unit, and that it would be hidden when having later moved Prone, then - as @Hecaton says, that original LoF is still good for ARO declarations against the model after it's moved and become hidden.

Order Expenditure Sequence
Prone

 

The examples are part of the rules in Infinity, they demonstrate how the rules are practically applied. There are many places in the rules where the examples are required to properly understand them. They are in the rulebook for good reason.

 

It's in the RAW. It's just not explained well. It's explained as if it is being told to someone who already knows the rules ;).

The General Movement rules include:

• When declaring any form of Movement, you must specify the exact route the trooper will follow, so that the opponent can declare the appropriate AROs.
• Troopers have a LoF arc of 360˚ while they are moving.

And the ARO rules include:

A trooper owned by the Reactive Player can declare an ARO if any of the following is true:

• It has Line of Fire (LoF) to a trooper being activated by the Active Player.

And the Structure of an Order rules include:

Even if declared one after the other, both Skills in a single Order occur simultaneously. For example, if you declare Move plus BS Attack, (the Short Skill troopers use to fire their weapons), you can make the BS Attack at any point during the movement route declared, and not necessarily at the beginning or the end of that route.

Note that the ARO rules state "being activated" as opposed to "activated," and the general movement rules specify both that you must declare an exact route and that your trooper has 360 LoF while moving.

In other words, the Infinity rules countenance that everything that happens when you Activate a Trooper occurs simultaneously, so all Troopers on the table exist entirely in every place they occupied between Activation and Resolution. This is different than a lot of other wargames, which is really why CB should have been MUCH more explicit about this in the text of the rules. But it is in there, and you don't need to read an example to find it. You just need to read all the bullets of three different rules and a REMINDER block...



The big caveat to all of this is that despite Troopers existing entirely at all points occupied prior to Resolution, there are specific rules about declaring Skills and declaring AROs.

First, you must meet all conditions for declaring a skill in order to declare it, so you must Move into LoF of a target before declaring a BS attack. Second, you must declare AROs at the first opportunity or forfeit your ARO. Usually, this doesn't really matter much, but there are some circumstances in which it matters.

For example, you can Declare Move with a Trooper in the Holoecho State and move one of the echoes into LoF of an enemy Trooper. The enemy trooper must NOW decide what ARO to declare, and only that single echo is a viable target for a BS attack at that time. Once the target is declared, it is locked in. Is that Echo packing a weapon you'd prefer to Dodge against? Is it just an echo and not the actual dude? Is the real dude going to Move with the second shot skill into Partial Cover?

You could also provoke an ARO with a Second Short Skill declaration, and thus have your two possible skill declarations locked in when you get shot at.

 

Oh man... that's a HUGE pet peeve with me and the Infinity rules. Use the term "Order" for one friggin' thing, please!

Here's how I look at it:

An Order is a resource the Active Player may use to Activate one Trooper.

Once Activated, a Trooper must Declare Skills. Every Skill has a set of Conditions (my term) and Elements (my term). A Trooper must meet the Conditions to Declare a Skill and must include all Elements in the Declaration, such as the Route of a Movement skill or the Weapon and Target of an Attack Skill.

There are Short Skills, Short Movement Skills, and Long Skills (my term). An Activated Trooper may Declare one Long Skill, two Short Movement Skills, or one Short Skill and one Short Movement Skill.

The Elements of a Declared Skill may satisfy the Conditions for a subsequent Skill, such as the Route of a Movement Skill satisfying the Line of Fire Condition of an Attack Skill.

An Activated Trooper must always Declare Skills, even if the Skill is Idle. A Trooper that does not meet the Conditions of a Declared Skill must Declare Idle instead.

When a Trooper is Activated, all Sychronized (my term) Troopers are also Activated.

Synchronized Troopers must maintain a Coherency specified in their respective rules.

Synchronized Troopers must Declare the same Skills as the Activated Trooper, but an Order only gives the Active Player one opportunity to change the Game State (my term). One Attack, one Objective roll, one Hacking Program, etc. Unless otherwise noted, only the Activated Trooper may attempt to change the Game State.

An Automatic Reactive Order (ARO) is a resource that a Reactive Player's Troopers may use to React (my term).

A Reactive Player's Troopers get an ARO when an Activated Trooper Declares a Skill in Line of Fire or Zone of Control, including the Elements of a Declared skill, such as the Route of a Movement Skill or the Target of an Attack Skill.

A Reactive Trooper only gets one ARO per Order spent by the opposing player, and must spend the ARO to React before the enemy Trooper Declares a different Skill.

A Reactive Trooper can Declare one Skill with the ARO label.

Once all Active and Reactive Troopers have Declared Skills, all Declared skills are Resolved simultaneously.

The Active Player may then spend another Order to Activate a Trooper.


That's Infinity.

 

So, by rules as written, is it okay to break out the laser pointer and check LOS at any point in time during the game?

 

Yep, LoF is open information :)

Standard caveat about sportsmanship and time wasting applies.

 

It's open information but can only be drawn between two model. Which mean you can't actualy check if a model will be able to aro you during your move before making the move. The only thing you can check is the LoS between your model and the ones that might see you before you move.
That's the rule.
However, this rule is often breached in order to accelerate the game, it's what we call play by intent. There is nothing wrong with it IMO, but it does change the way people play. Playing by RAW actualy involve way more risk taking and surprise. Play by intent give you more control over your strategy. I like both playstyle for my part, but if people know the rules and play quickly i tend to lean a little bit over the RAW.

Envoyé de mon LG-H815 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

We're straying into the intent monster here, but suffice to say there are situations where LOF need to be checked between a trooper and something that is not a trooper (or even figurine)