About open information and line of fire

Yes, line of fire is open information, I don't really see how it could be anything else without preventing you from looking at the board. The game also encourages you to help your opponent check lines of fire to speed up gameplay.

The purpose of AROs is to allow your troopers to defend themselves by shooting back, Dodging, Hacking, etc, rather than just standing around absorbing bullets.

 

Yes, that is true, but on the other hand you will be playing a mission that requires your opponent to do certain things, such as pushing buttons to activate objectives. If you position your ARO-pieces so that your opponent cannot accomplish the objective without engaging them, then you can dictate a bit of what fights they have to take.

Of course, the active player is nearly always at an advantage when it comes to dictating when and where an engagement will happen, but you can do a lot to force them to expend orders and resources getting into that position.

 

Here's a more in-depth answer:

A unit having Line of Fire and a Line of Fire existing are two different things and the rule book uses really confused terminology for it (it is seriously the thing that annoys me the most about the rules). A unit can draw Line of Fire to anything in its Line of Fire Arc (typically 180 degrees) but Line of Fire can still exist outside this Arc (remember: Line of Fire is an uninterrupted line connecting any two game elements) which is primarily used to determine reciprocal Line of Fire (even if the rules makes use of the term "draw" here as well).
In this way you're never forced to reveal whether a trooper masquerading as another have 360 visor or not.

Can your opponent ask about lines of fire? Yup, they sure can, however, it is likely that positions where there are no game elements can't be asked about, I do believe that while in the process of determining the end position of a movement they can still ask about positions where they can reach.

Can your opponent ask about this all the time? Sure can, but you need to establish a level playing field and it really isn't okay for a player to dump a bunch of their cognitive load on their opponent. If you find your opponent is asking far too frequently, you may need to talk to them either by subtly saying things like "which unit are you asking about?", "he's still facing that direction" or "I'll change the model for a silhouette, why don't you check" or by being more blunt and call it out.

Last but not least, I can't recommend playing with 3D Markers enough - most of CB's Designed for Infinity partners sell variants of these. The flat Markers are so very bad for representing units on a game board.

 

Highly unlikely. But I agree with the rest of your post.

 

To be more precise;
Yes, you can ask about a general area of the board or a specific piece of game element such as the board itself
No, I don't think you can answer if they can see an S5 unit if it were to position itself there prior to the game allowing you to place the miniature there, especially since it's a form of pre-measuring* placing a silhouette there.

* Referring to the silhouette's volume, not the line of sight vector

Or with examples.
Yes: indicates a trooper without activating it "What units that I know of have LOF to this guy?"
Yes: spends a regular order "I declare Move" measures to a spot, places silhouette in that spot "can you see me here?"
No: indicates spot without activating a unit or not in range of current movement "If I move my unit here, can you see its silhouette?"
Yes: indicates a corner of a building "Is your sniper set up so it can see this corner?"
No: indicates a corner of a building "Is your sniper set up so it can see a <insert silhouette here> rounding this corner?"

 

Oh, I know what you were saying, I just disagree with you :-)

The conversation's been done to death, and I certainly don't propose to reargue it. Suffice to say, I think yours was the minority opinion on this one. Also, in my experience it's universally played that you can place a template in a hypothetical spot so that you and your opponent can jointly check LoF.

Again, I don't want to reopen the debate, I just wanted to flag for the OP that the opinion that you can't check LoF to a hypothetical spot is disputed - and, I think, a minority opinion. Anyone who wants to know the arguments on both sides should refer to prior threads (and emerge, days later, a broken and hollow man).

 

Yes, I'm aware, but we do have that placing silhouettes arbitrarily is a form of pre-measuring, as you are aware, so there is that.

 

We have that placing a silhouette for the purpose of checking whether a ledge or gap is wider or narrower than the silhouette is a form of pre-measuring. I'll concede that that ruling was made after the LoF debate, so wasn't considered during that debate.

My opinion is that the ruling doesn't mean that placing a silhouette for the purpose of checking LoF is pre-measuring. But, to avoid re-opening the debate, I won't go into my reasons for that opinion - we can leave it as an unanswered question with the likely outcome in dispute :-)

 

If by “I want to check if there’s line of sight to this position”, using your eyes or a laser pointer, you can do that fine without using a ruler (whether it’s marked in inches, or it’s a silhouette).

So what’s the purpose of placing a silhouette other than to measure the size of a space on the table (or measure the height of terrain)? After all, the whole reason you’re putting a silhouette on the table is that you know how big it is.

 

Either way, the purpose is to come to an agreement as to whether a trooper in that spot would be seen, so that the active player can decide whether to activate the trooper. In my experience, most players rarely need to place a silhouette, but prefer to place one on occasion when it's borderline whether there's a LoF. But sure, most of the time we'll easily reach an agreement without placing a silhouette.

 

Q: Does your Hafza masquerading as an Odalisque have LOF behind him?
Your Answer: Yes...

No, that’s literally a lie.

 

Technically probably allowed, but maybe a better answer less likely to generate bad blood would be "Yes. You're in the Odalisque's back arc, but she has a 360 degree visor so she can see you."

And if they follow up with "why did you phrase it so awkwardly?" "Well, QK has access to holoprojector, so I always try to answer questions keeping in mind that any model may secretly be a Hafza."

 

It's from the completely bungled reciprocal LOF ruling. Drawing LOF and there existing a LOF isn't the same thing. And mind you, we're supposed to ignore that the FAQ says "draw LOF".

 

Because I know were this is heading to, can you please make sure it does not go there please? thanks.

 

I'm just trying to explain the LOF rules as the LOF rules have been explained to actually mean. If I wanted to make an actual commentary on the FAQ wording it'd have been a lot more elaborate.

 

As long as the conversation and debate is kept to a logical level I am not objecting.

 

This.

Infinity desperately needs a distinction between Line of Fire (drawn between two game elements and always open) and Line of Sight (what the Trooper can actually see - derived from LOF and other open information such as vision arcs and visors).

LOF is reciprocal but LOS is not.