I'm with the 'just go with what's on the cards': "An Engineer, Doctor, Paramedic or the trooper designated as Datatracker must be in Engaged state with an enemy Specialist Troop, spend a Short Skill and succeed at a Normal WIP Roll." It's a Normal Roll because the rules tell you it is. Aside - I assume we all ignore the requirement for being in the Engaged state noting you don't enter the Engaged state with Null state enemies, and just accept S2S for the Green version? OTOH the 'does Data Scan count as affecting an enemy Hacker for the purposes of generating FTFs' DOES result in the argument you guys are having. It was resolved in - I want to say ITS 9? - that no it did not: Classifieds like Data Scan affect the game state not the target. @Mahtamori argued strenuously for this outcome: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/data-scan-aro.27434/ Re: Flash Pulse vs Dogs. Flash Pulse affects Dogs - it causes the Immunity (Total) skill to function. This is why they strip Symbiomates. This is literally in an FAQ.
I'm not finding the resolution in that thread. The last thing I see is a decision to add it to the unsolved questions list (followed by @ijw answering some unrelated questions regarding dogged/NWI). Is there an answer in there that I'm missing?
I want to say it was answered separately by HellLois. But I could be wrong. I just know that at some point after that discussion I started playing that Data Scan couldn't be opposed by Hacking (despite personally believing the opposite makes way more sense).
If you have time, could you find the resolution of that thread because if data scan is not a ftf, then all the cards that declare normal roll has to be just normal (can't see why there would be an exception).