Its also conditional, they could fail, which seems like a fair trade off to me? EDIT: also as an edition change, its fair to rework profiles too if this is too much...
I would certainly like some cleanup on what skills are interchangeable; see for example all of the FAQ rulings on what does or does not count as a BS Attack.
That is more people not being able to read than a problem with the rule itself. Though being able to make that dodge to cover in the active would be nice, that being said stuff with kniematica and/or hyperdynamics may get pretty obnoxious quick.
I'm going to take issue with "not being able to read" - there are a lot of things that can be done with the structure of rules to make them easier to get right.
It is very much a RTFM issue, the fifth bullet point is; In Reactive Turn only, a successful Dodge allows the user to Move—or use another Short Movement Skill that doesn't require a Roll—up to 2 inches. It says quite clearly at the beginning of the clause that it is reactive only.
I think you're missing my point. I'm simply saying there are ways to structure rules/skills such that it's easier or harder to make such mistakes. I'm not saying that I think Dodge is ambiguously worded. Infinity is a very complex game with a lot of small details that are easy to lose track of for newer players.
You could just limit Kinematica and Hyperdynamics to ARO. I know that adds a layer of complexity, but it also makes sense based on what the skills represent. I personally wouldn't mind active turn dodge being changed. This could just be done with labels if they were applied more consistently. If, for example, Speculative Fire's effect just said The user may declare a single Short Skill with the BS Attack Label against a target outside his LoF, with the following benefits and restrictions placed on the attack: instead of the current text, and the point immediately below the box on the wiki about Burst was in the box (because why the hell is it not right now? It's one of the EFFECTS of Spec Fire!) then there wouldn't be so much confusion about what skills are available in this situation.
Active turn dodging is kind of weird at the moment. I reckon Dodge should be deleted and replaced with MOV, which should become a legal ARO entitle the user to a PH roll against all incoming attacks if no attacks are declared by that trooper in the same order. Move-Move should give two dice because things that are moving fast should be harder to hit, rather than things that move slow and do a backflip or whatever stupid thing is imagined to constitute an active turn Dodge currently in Infinity. Kinematica can then be deleted as a rule, as merging dodge with move will create variations in distance. Ridiculous PH values should be reigned in.
Which ones? The only units I can think of that are too far ahead of the curve are Ajax and McMurrough, but I think one of those is pretty reasonably balanced right now. Anything else with bigger PH than that is getting a huge dodge penalty currently anyway.
I think they could split PH into "Agility" and "Brawn" and do away with skills like Hyper-Dynamics and the TAG and REM penalties to Dodge. Unsure which would be simpler, but I like the idea of removing the dodge penalties for unit type and just having everything be on the sheet.
General things I want improved: Condensing of hacking programs to a base one for each result plus a higher level version available as an upgrade to specific units (i.e how Brain blast and redrum currently work, but the several programs that immobilize need condensed) Review of all names to remove confusion. I.e. Veteran L1 (often abbreviated Vet L1) is not a skill common to Veteran Troops, and is only slightly different from V:Courage, which causes confusion often in my group. Special Dodge Smoke is another thing that causes confusion with regular Dodge. To continue on about Dodge, I think much of the issues are due to the fact that it's the one thing where you have more capabilities in ARO than during your active turn. With Kinematica, in ARO I can Dodge move up to 4 inches, while declaring it as a short skill in the active turn with the same model leaves her standing in the same spot. This is counterintuitive to how just about every other action that has both a Skill&Aro option works. Even if the fix is as simple as saying that the Dodge short skill also gets the 2 inch base move (Kinematica improves), I think it needs a change to bring it in line with the other Short Skill/ARO actions.
Oh oh one change I'd like to see in a similar vein. Can we just rename all Antipersonnel mines Shock mines? I see lots of people reference them as AP Mines and it bothers me.
The alternative is to have PH still represent both, but have two sets of "skills" that give a +3 bonus to either "evasion skills" or "brawn skills" (like +3 DAM in CC or something).
Less so for REMs. There'd no need to have PH be that high to start considering how many also have electric pulse.
I wonder if Agility even needs a separate stat when there is already a MOV value which shows how fast something is. Backflips, Naruto posture and somersaults to dodge bullets do not really need a fundamental representation in game, and if they did, they could be a skill called agility which could modify dodge target rolls and replace the Skubhammer-named hyper-dynamics skill.
