Hello, mate, thank you for the comment. It is much appreciated. TBH, after giving 1.1.1 some thought and working around not-so-clear wording, I think I have just 1 principal question left: Do Total Cover rules (If the target is in Total Cover, the attacker may not declare a BS Attack with Weapons, Special Skills, or Equipment, that requires LoF) cancel the general design flow of the ARO? In short, with 1.1.1. ARO baiting through smoke is not possible anymore, but is CC baiting from around wall is? We don't have a clear opinion on that one. On the one hand, Total cover rules say that effectively you can not declare BS attack. On the other hand ARO rules say we check the validity (requirements) at the very end AND your comment hints that what you want is unified and consistent flow of the game. In my interpretation, this "cannot declare" only means that if you declare BS attack through ZoC at somebody behind Total Cover, and this somebody will not give you LoF during his second skill, your BS attack will become idle, and that's it? And tbh it makes sense because fewer rules exceptions = better. But maybe I'm missing something. Is it correct? I really look forward to your reply :-)
Keenly feeling @ijw 's absence. Does anyone know if/when he'll be coming back? In the normal course we would have gotten some clarity on this stuff by now.
I really think "Cannot Declare" needs to mean just that - cannot even declare (even though the FAQ and the attempts at clarification seem to suggest it could potentially be the way you're describing it as well). The fact that we now have ZoC pre-measuring (in addition to the fact that it's always been possible know if Total Cover exists prior to declaration) suggest to me that you will always have the minimum amount of information necessary to know you can legally declare a skill (even if, in the case of ARO-ing into smoke or shooting a weapon beyond maximum range, the skill may eventually get cancelled if certain conditions are not met). In theory this should mean that nothing needs to get checked upon actual declaration (implied by them striking out the first entry from the 1.1.1 ). For my part, I think removing all pre-emptive actions originating from positions that the trooper has not (yet) occupied keeps the game the least fiddly and the easiest for newcomers to understand. I think it would require explicit clarification, though. Something like this: For any skill that has a Requirement of LoF to a Target, as well as for CC Attacks, a pre-requisite to DECLARE that skill is that there is a position along the trooper's path (already defined in a move skill declared previously in this order, or the trooper's current position if they remained stationary) that can be found in which the target does not posses Total Cover. We'd also probably want to allow direct template weapon placement to not be immediately checked for failure (otherwise it's an exception to 'check at resolution'). Placement would still happen at declaration, but they would only fail at the end of the order during Resolution. This would actually bring Direct Templates more in line with Blast Template weapons such as smoke grenades, which endure F2F checks during Resolution before it's determined if they stick around or not.
I appreciate your argument about newcomers, but IMO it's fine to just update the total cover rules and allow BS attack declaration via ZoC, especially now when ZoC is legally premeasured. It is more consistent with what the new flow of the order expenditure seems to be. As for the template, I agree, but tbh I failed to find a clause which says they are not checked for failure later.
One problem with direct template placement at declaration of an ARO with no LoF is that unlike round templates, DTWs can only be placed against your base, so their threat radius is lower. They become an area denial weapon, but if there’s space to do so an enemy should be able to just walk around them. That would most likely prevent the enemy from closing to CC, but it also effectively lets them pre-measure to be out of template range for the next Order’s ARO. I don’t know if that interaction is necessarily bad for the game, but it’s a consideration.
That makes sense, yeah - I guess what I was trying to conceptualize is a way that actually pushes checks to Resolution, as is (or seems to be) the stated goal of the FAQ. The biggest point of confusion for me is that when CB says "you can declare any ARO; checks at resolution" it sounds superficially like a nice simplification of the current rules... But we STILL need to check templates immediately, and BS Attacks may (or may not be) denied before Declaration due to Total Cover. So it's really dissonant. @SubOctavian when you say BS Attacks can be declared based on ZoC, do you mean just for ARO or also for the Active player? And then (if we're talking Active Player without LoF due to total cover) that would involve identifying a point from which you're shooting at declaration that your figure doesn't occupy, right? I'm not necessarily against it if that's what they go with. I think functionally that would allow mostly the same results as any other system gameplay-wise, but it also opens up the ability to continue doing weird baiting shenanigans, such as trying to break a fireteam (via tempting them into separate dodges and attacks), or wasting an opponent's expendable weapons and then bailing on the movement that would actually make the attack legal. Then there's a question of whether you could template attack from that future position as well (seems to me that if you can BS Attack from a future position, you could BS with a template even though in RAW it says it has to touch your figure's base). If you template a group of figures from outside their ZoC (by declaring a point of fire that you haven't moved to yet) you're now giving them the ability to ARO - maybe one of them is in camo and breaks it to respond and then you don't move into a position that makes the attack legal - etc. I'm not really concerned that the ability to do this would ruin the game or anything (likely it wouldn't be common because the active player doesn't want to burn orders). I just don't like the idea of shooting from positions that figures are yet to occupy. It feels unnecessarily messy to me. Or are you implying we should shift the identification of the position that an attack originates from to resolution as well?
It seems to me that if they want to have a simple bumper sticker style rule (declare now, check later), while also preserving the essence of all-at-once, then this is all but necessary for smooth gameplay and eliminating exceptions. But not just the position... all details would really have to be moved to resolution. I'm not sure that's really what they want to do, though. Otherwise, why haven't they done it yet?
What prevents me to think they were triying to put all the things in "resolution" it is how the camo, impersonators, holoechos, etc. still work in N4. If all the things were put in the "resolution face" the exceptions about what can, or can't, be declared against this kind of troups really would not need an "extra". You could say again a camo "i will shoot him", but if in the resolution the "camo" wasn`t reveal himself, then the "requisite" will fail. Maybe isn this only a "old way to write more like N3" that sadly still remains.
The main problem I can think of is that it would mess up DTWs because I think they still need to be placed at declaration to trigger "affected by a template weapon" AROs.
I was actually just coming back here to write this. There seems to be a rather large barrier to simplifying things due to this interaction with the Order Sequence.
