Hi, I was unable to find a definitive answer. Perhaps you could enlighten me... The Active Player activates a hacker, there are several enemy troopers within the hacking area (repeater network), with no LoF to the active trooper. The hacker declares an Idle for their first Short Skill. Then, AROs are declared. Finally the hacker declares a Comms Attack against one of the potential targets (or several of them, with a B>1 program). --> Can all enemy troopers within the Hacking Area declare an ARO? --> Are all of those AROs valid, or only the one(s) of the trooper(s) actually targeted by a Hacking Program? ___ The errata for Hacking Area state (V.1.0): "[Errata] In the Hacking example (p61), the Knight of Justice and the Orc both declare an ARO but this appears to contradict the rules for AROs. Remember that non-LoF AROs can be declared anyway, and then in the ARO Check step you find out if the ARO was valid. " I guess the rule presumably contradicted is the following one (p21): "The ARO declarations of the Reactive Player’s Troopers are considered valid in the following situations: ... - It is affected by a Template Weapon, or is the target of a Hacking Program or other Comms Attack." ___ The example doesn't answer my question, since both troopers are targeted. With an extensive repeater network, there could be a lot of AROs being declared with each order, as every trooper within the hacking area is a potential target (and be it only for Spotlight). Please let me know how this works. Perhaps it is obvious and I'm just confused. Thx!!
Looks like the text you're quoting was removed from FAQ 1.1.1. The current rule is that when the hacker declares Idle, enemy troopers that don't have LoF or ZoC don't get to declare an ARO, even if they're in her hacking area via a repeater. The exception is hackers, who get AROs when targets activate in their hacking areas. When the hacker then declares a hacking attack as her second short skill, the target then gets an ARO if it didn't previously have one.
Adding a detail to QueensGambit explanation, just to clear any doubt: enemy hackers always have Aro on friendly hacker through friendly repeaters. So in your example the first idle of the active hacker procs an Aro from every reactive hackers in the network, while other troops cannot declare anything (as no valid Aro is declarable). As soon the active unit declared the hacking action, the reactive troop may declare Aro (if not already generated by the previous idle)
Thanks for the clarification! The errata I mentioned is still in the Wiki, despite being removed from the latest FAQ - that's why I brought it up. If you don't mind, I have a quick (and probably dumb) follow-up question: In case roles are reversed from my above example... a Trooper activates within ZoC of an enemy (reactive player) repeater. --> Can every hacker of the reactive player declare an ARO and target the activated Trooper with a Hacking Program? Does this apply to any activated Trooper or only Hackers? ...I guess that's how it works, but we had a discussion about this during our latest game, therefore a confirmation / clarification would be much appreciated. Thanks again for helping out a newbie ;-)
Latest FAQ hasn't been uploaded to the Wiki yet. Yes, if the Active model is within ZoC of an enemy repeater it is in the hacking area of all enemy repeaters, so they will ask get AROs, this applies to all troopers, not just hackable ones, as programs like Spotlight can target anyone.
Please note that as of N4, you do not typically gain AROs based on your skills. If the enemy is in your hacking area (remember that you can measure the active trooper's Zone of Control when the reactive player is about to declare AROs!), you can target them with any hacking program your trooper has available. Later, at step 5, is when you check if you picked the correct one or not. Just remember to take Stealth and Sixth Sense properly into account! Holoprojectors and Holomask are a thing!
