I do realize that there are more urgent things to clean up in the rules, but I couldn't resist putting out some wishlisting now that we have a subforum perfectly fit for it. I always liked how Infinity handles the 3d terrain in its rules compared to most other games, where verticality of the terrain is often an afterthought at best, and I feel like N4 went a bit too far with streamlining troopers falling down out of the game, so with the living rulebook on the horizon maybe it's time to change that a bit? I'm not sure if all models should be able to fall down when declaring Jump, but with the super-jump I strongly feel the necessity for improvement in how it works, because as of right now the only models on which it feels impactful are 6-2 and 6-4 models on 25mm bases, and all the other ones use it for either jump up and down on a rooftop to shoot at a prone model hiding on a roof, or to jump down from a roof in a bit more order-efficient fashion. (and don't even get me started on how sad it is to see Seraphs gathering dust on the shelves of MO players) As a first change, I would propose that models with super-jump are allowed to fall down up to 8", that will give these models a better chance at catching out models hiding on the roofs by jumping up their full MOV, as well as better horizontal mobility, and will work neatly with pre-measurement of ZoC that we have now. As a second change, how about making super-jump work the same way climbing plus works - make it alter the user's Jump Skill from an Entire Order Skill to the Short Movement Skill Move, that'll make it easier on the side of learning the rules, as well as making fireteams and coordinated orders less fiddly in terms of moving troopers with and without super-jump at the same time.
Jump issues have been discussed a lot and I am surprised that they still haven't been ruled on yet, especially since the C1 and N4 rulebooks released with essentially "illegal" graphics showing jump movement. It's also tied up in the fact that many buildings (including the official CB ones) have guardrails on them that sort-of create vaulting gray-zone. As you suggested, I'd love to see Super Jump work the same way as Climbing Plus from a movement mode standpoint. I wonder if it would also be helpful to directly tie a maximum fall distance into the MOV value of a trooper. For example, a regular jump is up to your first MOV and you can fall up to your second MOV, but a super jump trooper can fall up to their first MOV. So a 6-2 or 4-4 without super-jump has the same vertical jump of 4"up and 4" down (since the 6-2 needs to use some of their actual jump parabola to move down to within 2" of the landing zone). Then a 6-2 with super jump is jumping 6 and falling 6 as a short skill or jumping 8 and falling 6 as an entire order skill. Another option might be to remove the parabola measuring from jumping and just say "maximum height traversed by the jump is X and maximum distance is X". So a 4-4 can reach any surface up to 4" higher/lower than them and up to 4" away, for example. Then a super jump 4-4 or 6-2 using their full jump skill could do 8" high by 8" distance. Maybe that's a problem (since it easily makes super jump better than C+) and leads to some kind-of insane jumps from even normal troops, but just thinking out loud here. I find the difficulty of getting on and off terrain currently means anyone starting even one level up on a building who doesn't have Super Jump is probably never getting down. Maybe that's by design but I'd love to be more mobile.
I'm not a fan of the old "jump 6 into the air, smite all before you" thing. I'd love to see some fall distance but not enough to allow that. Making second MOV the fall distance for a model (either for SJ only or for all models) would be interesting and typically prevent the craziest shenanigans. Alternatively, just delete the doctor classified... or classifieds in general... and the incentive to suicide off a building is gone, and with it, the main issue with fall damage. I've always seen deleting fall as a huge overreaction to fixing a fundamentally silly element of the rules. For me though, the most important change to superjump (and jump) is to can the parabola. Its impossible to measure it properly and people just best guess it all the time. So just make it straight line movement. If that makes it notably better, change the price, whatever it takes.
I thought the primary offender for removing fall damage was possession. I think primarily they need to choose whether Super Jump is meant to be a combat skill or a traversal skill. If it's meant to primarily enable "popup attacks", then you don't really need to fix the parabola issue (but maybe clarify it and alter the examples to reflect how it's used) and could instead opt to have those units get a -3 to BS Attacks when declaring Jump which makes them get (the more important) half of Cover. If the skill is meant for traversal primarily, then the first step is to drop the parabola and probably allow the unit to fall a short distance without introducing fall damage. As jank as it may seem, simply allowing a Jumping trooper to essentially "walk on air" would be a fairly significant step in both simplifying and empowering the skill as a traversal skill - most people won't declare the really silly jumps as it would generally be hugely inefficient use of time and orders.
Allow falling from a jump, but if your fall distance is greater than your first MOV value, your jump becomes an idle. Measuring becomes easy. Super Jump becomes useful. Problem solved.
Doesn't need the idle clause, you may pre-measure the Jump after declaring the skill just like any movement.
While I had considered that with the original suggestion,you thought is that the idle clause would be needed as house keeping in order to circumvent potential abuses that people might try to force. I don't know what those abuses may be, but that's the point, I suppose.
with movement skills allowing measurement from declaration in N4, having an exception for "except for if you fall with super jump" seems unnecessarily complicated, as well as feel-bad moment for anyone who mismeasures a building by a quarter of an inch but yeah, both of the suggestions would go a long way in making superjump feel worthwhile again, i'd especially like having it work like climbing plus, having a strelok pop out of camo cause the linked k-9 wants to jump onto a ledge is one of my least favorite fiddly-bits currently in N4
People are probably tired of me sharing this video by now, but I'll have you know that a great deal of preparation went into the section of this film starting as of the 3:51 mark and ending at the 5:08 mark:
Thanks. I replied on the video. Sadly it feels like an anti-Infinity video but it was still pretty good. I'm guessing not your intent but it's the way it came across to me. As I said there, the rules for Infinity have gotten better since the 1st ed. but some things got a little broken along the way. Like trying to glue an arm on a figure but because of handling, something else breaks off . Super-Jump is one of those things that was almost too good before and they tried to Nerf it a bit and it got mixed up. Then the added problems of translations. Do they talk about this a lot in Spanish forums? I think their images try to show their Intent. But it's hard to understand Intent. They need someone to do video versions of the FAQ!!!
Just spitballing but what about if super-jump was returned to its old ruleset where falling was allowed but a clause was added that you can't declare BS Attack from anywhere your trooper isn't in contact with a solid surface? It would remove the more abusive stuff at the cost of some utility, but then it's a strong traversal skill and you could still jump over/onto something and then blast anything in LOF from that landing location and anything with super jump and climbing plus could still do sick backflip wall-stick shots.
I like that since it's simple. Sure you can jump up and down! You just can't perform any BS Attack while you do it.
The... issues... with Jumping and the reference to parabolas that makes jumping as actually described basically not work are old. I don't know if it is been in the game forever, but the N4 rules are basically a direct copy-paste from N3.
Hmm. What about this: - You super-jump in a straight line in any direction. - When super-jumping, you can fall any distance. Eliminates parabolas which is probably necessary (who can plot a parabola at the table?). To get off a roof, you just jump out and slightly up, then fall to the ground. To get onto a roof, you jump diagonally up to a point in the air above the roof, then fall onto the roof. Getting onto a roof with a parapet is no problem, you just have to go a little higher so that you clear the parapet. Getting off a roof with a parapet would be the only thing that would get difficult - you could only do it if you started a bit back from the parapet (if you started touching the parapet, you couldn't jump in a straight line to get over it). You could still do a Move-SJ to back up and then jump. Alternatively, vaulting during jumping could be allowed in some way, but that might add too much complexity.
The parabolic always throws people (me) off. I'd like it to be like an ¬ Move 4-4 figure is: jump is 4" up, 4" over, can drop down up to 4". Dropping down more than 4" can cause damage. No matter what, they can only only move the first move horizontally on the table. For super-jump, short skill. May combine movements for a long skill. Base must be on placed on terrain to shoot-close combat-hack-etc. May use dodge in the air.
Suggestion for a rule wording change based on comments from Knuds in a Discord chat: This Special Skill allows the user to vault over obstacles whose height is less than their MOV value as part of a Short Movement Skill Move. A Trooper can move over any scenery item whose height is equal to or lower than the height of the Trooper’s MOV Attribute value, with no need to declare Climb or Jump. This vertical movement is not taken into account when measuring how far the Trooper moves, but the Trooper counts as moving up and over the obstacle for the purposes of LoF. It also allows Troopers to move vertically, diagonally or horizontally, up to his first MOV Attribute value in inches if declaring a Short Movement Skill, and up to his second MOV Attribute value if declaring a second Short Movement Skill. As with the Jump Skill, by Troopers with Super-Jump cannot benefit from Partial Cover MODs when moving over any scenery item whose height is greater than the height of the Trooper’s Silhouette Template. The user of this Special Skill may declare Jump as an Entire Order by adding both values of their MOV Attribute into a single jump. As with the Jump Skill, by declaring Jump Troopers with Super-Jump cannot benefit from Partial Cover MODs during their trajectory of their jump.
Can jump vertically, diagonally or horizontally the first move value and fall the first move value seems the cleanest without giving people exaggerated movement. Allow premeasuring. I think ZoC and movement premeasuring are the only premeasuring the game should have.
I'm loving some of the suggestions here. At least to me, the Idea of Super Jump is excited. Having a super soldier hopping roof to roof like a super hero, firing on the way, sounds awesome. Like an old arena shooter or action movie. But in practice, the inability to fall makes super jump overly restrictive in movement. I use the long order jump to scale buildings often, but short order jump isn't very helpful when Rodoks/Khawarij can barely make a decent jump and shoot in the same action.
