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Terrain Skill Revamp

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by TheDiceAbide, May 31, 2019.

  1. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
    Warcor

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    Anyone who knows anything about me, knows that I freaking love using special terrain (so much so that I’m making everyone at the Rose City Raid play with it). Since I’m the Warcor in my meta, my meta also uses a lot of special terrain.

    Since we have a ton of experience using the rules, we’ve started toying with ways to improve it and make it more fun. One particular place we decided could use some improvement is the Terrain Skills. With the current skill, someone who is specialized in an environment is no better off than someone trained in a wide range of surroundings.

    Updated Special Terrain Rules:

    Multi Terrain - Ignores movement mods of all terrain types, no need to pick at beginning.

    Special Terrain Skills - Ignores movement mods of that type, and grants a special rule usable only when the model is in the corresponding terrain.

    Aquatic - stealth
    Desert - forward deployment L1
    Mountain - climbing plus
    Jungle - sixth sense L1
    Zero-G - super jump

    Added Bonus, here are the quick reference cards I’m using to denote special terrain effects at the RCR:
    1CAAF21D-1707-4CCF-85B6-15D6968234D3.png
     
  2. Scribbler

    Scribbler Well-Known Member

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    This is cool! In fact, do you mind if I hijack the idea to use in the campaign that my team is (hopefully) going to start soon?

    The only thing I'm wondering is why you chose FD1 for desert terrain. Everything else makes a lot of sense to me, but I'm having trouble putting together how being specialized to a desert lets someone run ahead of their team. Just curious!
     
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  3. barakiel

    barakiel Echo Bravo Master Sergeant

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    I like it. Water's an interesting one too... I also feel that water can be further subdivided too. Ankle-to-waist high water is difficult, no other effects. But deep water opens up some really interesting possibilities. Very difficult, but also saturation (shooting at submerged targets is difficult.) Deep water is probably where your Stealth rule makes the most thematic sense?
     
  4. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
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    Please go right ahead!

    I was more thinking of dedicated desert specialists would be navigating ahead for safe route, like a guide. Though it’s mostly a moot point, almost nothing in the game currently has the Desert Terrain skill, haha.

    B3BD903C-5433-4D00-B143-4440503DE6FC.jpeg
     
    #4 TheDiceAbide, May 31, 2019
    Last edited: May 31, 2019
  5. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
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    I was also thinking in a underwater environment, it would give super jump instead.
     
  6. Ceilican

    Ceilican Well-Known Member

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    I’ve been mentally workshopping something similar, with results fairly close to yours.

    I considered the environmental skills (aquatic, desert, et al) to be separate and “environmental rules” would apply to the whole table, like the “alpine terrain” rule in the dire foes 7 mission.

    For aquatic terrain, I was thinking “sapper.” The idea being that these people are trained and practiced at holding their breath and so could duck into the water with very little of themselves showing.

    Also, for desert terrain I thought “tactical awareness.” The idea there is that everyone else is slowed down, or sapped of energy by the heat except those with desert endurance training.

    Amazingly, I could only find one unit with desert training and it was the Bagh-Mari.
     
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  7. archon

    archon Well-Known Member

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    Like the idea. Good for campaigns. But I think Multi has still to choose one.
     
  8. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
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    Thanks, I’m glad you like it! For me, the point was to make Multi a good generalist skill, but doesn’t have the advantages of the specialized skills in their preferred environment.
     
  9. Kraken1130

    Kraken1130 Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps the [Type] Terrain skills also ignore any hazardous terrain rules associated with that particular terrain zone? So if woods are hazardous, units with Jungle Terrain ignore the hazardous roll?

    Also I like the ides of deep v shallow water having different effects - I always thought it would be a neat add-on effect if deep water made models S0 while in the zone to represent the target being largely underwater.
     
  10. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    I feel troops with the appropriate terrain skill should always get cover in that terrain. This gives them a) an always relevant reason to want to be there and b) the ability to move more freely than others who need to seek cover.

    Situational bonuses like stealth etc are cool. But terrain that only gives disadvantages drives players to see it as undesirable. Whereas if they could imagine it giving them a tangible positive benefit they would probably see it as more of a positive.
     
  11. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    It's certainly interesting as an idea, I'd need to play with it some before I decide if it's balanced.


    OK, that is a very useful thing! Consider that data table 'borrowed'!



    Yeah, that's kinda my concern, too.
     
  12. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Love it! May I suggest adding "Reflective" in the Saturation row? Reflective would be altering the visibility parameter to also fuck with MSV - I'd imagine certain tropical vegetation could be radiating sufficiently to make multispectral scanning useless, same goes for specific gas mixes etc
     
  13. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    That would be on the Visibility Penalty line, and according to the Red Box Text on White Noise, zone types do not actually stack.

    On that note, @TheDiceAbide , your visibility line is missing Eclipse (blocking both normal vision and MSV). What terrain type might create an Eclipse zone? Burning tires, like what you'd see in a full on civil war or major rioting. I even have a resin terrain set that not only has burning tires, it includes some polywool to use as the smoke cloud.
     
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  14. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
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    Thanks for the feedback!

    It was actually a conscious decision to leave out Reflective and Eclipse. Since I'm using these for a Satellite tournament, I didn't want to create any controversy around making up rules. Instead I only chose to represent options which are mentioned in the special terrain section of the rules: http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Special_Terrain_Rules

    Personally, I usually use reflective for a lot of my terrain, as well as damage types for hostile terrain that do not appear in the Hostility chart. One idea I had was for making fuel drums hostile, they don't have any movement, visibility, or saturation effects, but would be hostile 20+ which would result in DAM 13 fire hits. Similarly minefields wouldn't cause any movement/visibility/saturation effects, but would be Hostile 18+ causing DAM 13 Shock. There are all kinds of cool things you can do.
     
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  15. daszul

    daszul Well-Known Member

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    That is a nice idea!
    Maybe S1 in shallow water?
    Or just Cover?

    The idea of gaining cover while in one's special terrain can also be achieved by granting the skill sapper
    - like they are able to merge with that type of terrain.

    What about hostility levels?
    RAW as I see it, the terrain skills only affect the movement penalty, but not the hostility level.
    Any idea how to do that?
    Like, reduce the hostility level by one if you have multiterrain, or two if you have that type of terrain skill?
    Or +3/+6 to the roll to avaoid the effect?
     
  16. Sangarn

    Sangarn TRIUMcorp CEO
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    Nice ! But as a VIRD player I feel bad because all my troop already have stealth :p
     
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