Stairs and cover

Hmmm, curious...
@Teslarod
Let's say trooper A is behind (but touching) a small ramp (narrow end ending at A's location) in relation to trooper B. Would you grant A cover against B? What if A was on the ramp, but not at the top, so that A's SIL is still partially blocked by the ramp? Would this not be an almost identical situation to stairs if you are arguing that they act like a diagonal ramp in terms of motion and position?

If A is on an even longer ramp and B is at the top, but far enough back to not be able to see all of A's SIL, do you grant cover to A? What is your justification?

To me, it seems that regardless of how a trooper treats the stairs while moving along them, the stairs are stairs that have a specific shape. If that shape obscures part of trooper A from trooper B, then it should grant cover. I mean, come on... we are now granting cover by standing behind a curb or lightpost.

 

Those pieces of scenery representing stairs and ladders allow Troopers to treat those vertical or diagonal surfaces as a horizontal surface. Therefore, the Trooper can use any Skill or ARO with the Movement Label without needing to declare Jump or Climb, and without applying restrictions for Jump or Climb. Movement distances are measured along the surface the Trooper moves along, as seen in the diagram.

Sorry there's just not much to argue here.
Stairs work like ramps and are entirely smooth for gameplay surfaces. All individual steps are ground down and ignored.
The rules tell you to walk on the surface as shown in the diagram
Ending your Movement does not flip you back vertical to mach the physical shape of stairs, that has no backing in the rules.
Most stairs are pretty much unplayable without using stair/ladder rules and there is no reason to begin with to suggest a change from N3.
Playing stairs as ramps that allow you to act as if Moving horizontal works like a charm

While you are on a straight "ramp" you won't have cover against other troopers on the same "ramp". If you somehow manage to get your S obscured because the stairs are bent and have a railing or something ofc you get cover. But not from the steps itself since you can't Move in a way that obscures your base, check the diagram again, you actually move inside the steps on a ramp.
There's no rule that lets you end movement inside of the physical volume of scenery. The steps aren't there for gameplay purposes.

 

How do you place a SIL on the "ramp" so that it is in contact with the Green line you say the SIL moves along?

 

You mean physically? Place something of insignificant thickness as a ramp?

 

Teslarod has acknowledged that the green line in this diagram is wrong. Rather the line illustrated in the rules is the purple line.

He argues that the base of the Trooper follows the purple line.

How does he physically place the SIL there?

If he doesn't and rather he places the SIL as he earlier described (ie as Blue) then I'd argue that Red achieves his stated belief (that the base of the SIL conforms to the purple line) better than Blue.

Practically it is MUCH easier to play with the SIL in position Red and allow it to not be fully supported by an individual step. Otherwise on larger steps you end up with lots of weirdness with floating or clipping SILs.

 

Hmm, perhaps I was unclear on some of my situations.

Here is what I was thinking for situation 1:


Here is situation 2:

And here is situation 3:


Would you grant Trooper A cover in these 3 situations? And if so, why?

 

This all depends on how Cover and irregularly shaped terrain works, but assuming that you need no air gap between the piece of terrain that's providing the cover and the SIL then:

1. Maybe. It depends on precisely how the terrain is built, but in perfect Cube Infinity no, because there is never any terrain that simultaneously touches the SIL and also blocks LOF. However, in practice this part will usually be bigger than infinitesimally small and so will both touch the SIL and block LOF.



2. and 3. Yes. The ramp itself simultaneously touches the SIL and partially blocks LOF.

 

FWIW: I knew how you would answer the question ;).

The point I'm trying to make is that you may treat stairs as a ramp for movement purposes, but it should still provide cover due to its shape. And since even ramps can grant cover if you are both touching the ramp and have part of your SIL blocked by it, then stairs should as well. Telsarod's argument is that stairs are ramps for all gameplay purposes and I just don't see that in the rules.

 

The rules say troopers treat stairs and ladders as horizontal surface.
Without restrictions, what then follows are some examples, not an explusive list.

Also stairs and ladders work the exact same in the rules.
If you have trouble wrapping your head around that with stairs, take a moment and think about ladders.

The usual ladder has rungs and spaces in beween them. That's impossible to move on. The stair and ladder rules let troopers treat something classified as a ladder as a horizontal surface (for all gameplay purposes). The rungs and spaces are still physically present, but irrelevant to gameplay.
The same applies to the shape of stairs, for gameplay purposes they're just one even surface that that's treated as horizontal.

As for your examples 2 and 3 are no different than getting cover because you're on a roof and higher than the other guy's Silhouette.
1 is probably a no because you're not on the surface that would grant cover against things "below".

Also how does the "for movement purposes" (which the rules don't say) limitation work?
For Movement purposes still means you're aligned to the ramp shape of stairs, not the step shape of stairs. Standing and ending Movement is very much movement.
Last time I checked you can't end Movement in scenery, so you can't end your Movement inside the steps either. How would you claim cover from the physical shape of stairs under these circumstances? The answer is you don't, because the trooper considers those stairs a ramp.

 

(emphasis added)

Bringing up ladders did get me thinking about it more, so that was a good counter. I'll have to think on that a bit more.

However, I did want to address this point in the meantime. The rules you quoted in red a few posts up are what I was referring to. I said the stairs were treated as a ramp for movement purposes (as shown in the diagram as well).

This does still have a rather glaring problem in the practicality of it, though. If you are to move the SIL along the "inside corner" of the stairs, there is not practical way to actually figure out your actual path for LoS (since it's impossible to phase your SIL into the physical stairs, and impractical to measure that gap to subtract off the top of your SIL). It's even impractical to measure that movement distance, since the ruler/tape-measurer can't phase through the physical scenery either. And that's not even counting the fact that things are even more different if you count the top step as part of the flat surface of the landing or as the "last step" in the incline.

The more I engage in this discussion, the more I think that it's just not a very simple problem to solve (movement up stairs).

 

@Teslarod?

@Mahtamori I agree that I can see where Teslarod is coming from (I agree that nothing in the rules tells us not to play it like that), my issue is that his interpretation is unplayable because of how it requires the SIL to phase into irregularly shaped terrain. The difference between where he says that the SIL should go (along the green line) and where he previously said he placed the SIL (Blue) is significant (particularly on large steps like the ones you found in Zones and SILs).

Given that one interpretation is unplayable (or not actually played as he's arguing the rules say to) and the other is playable and still complies with extremely vaguely worded rules ("is treated as horizontal is more guidance than an actual rule") and other illustrations in the book then I don't really see why it's an argument at all.