You'd have to make some very serious adjustments to direct template weapons for this to work given how it affects melee-oriented units ability to even exist on the table. Something along the lines of making DTWs rarer than the Veteran skill or reducing the damage sufficiently that an ARM 1 unit has a very good chance of tanking the hit. I'd start with removing direct template mode from shotguns, and maybe make chain-colts, chain rifles, and E/Marats be short range impact templates and see where that leaves us. I'm also a bit worried what this will do to dealing with Fireteams, but with so many things to do with Fireteams that's not an issue that can't be solved by removing Sixth Sense from them.
[Personal post] Mahtamori has already covered some of the substantial balance issues this would create for CC units, as they would become almost completely obsolete unless they have a Marker State or Smoke/Eclipse Grenades. More agency on the active turn, you can threaten direct template in areas that people could potentially walk through Did you mean the reactive turn? It has no effect at all for the Active Player because Reactive Troopers can't move into a template, so it only adds agency to the Reactive Player. Templates would be much stronger, you would be able to wait until the resolution to put it down, giving you more opportunities at coverage. Since you would place down template at resolution, we would need an exception that allows trooper that didn't have a opportunity do declare an ARO prior and are under the template a chance to dodge. (I believe this is the only exception we would need) This sounds... messy... ;-) And would need a lot of work. More seriously, it's already bad enough that Combat Jump vs Controlled Jump, or Silent weapons, already have exceptions to the Order Expenditure Sequence. I don't think it's a good idea to turn every template weapon usage in the game into a potential exception. At an absolute minimum, you'd have to start adding sub-steps to the Resolution step, so that templates get placed before everything else is resolved. And I've a feeling that Smoke/Eclipse/Mirrorball might need further exceptions to the exceptions. :-(
The only difference it would make to DTW versus melee-oriented units is that the melee troopers would not be able to bait an ARO from the reactive trooper to then walk into their LoF unhindered. (Which is kind of the point of the suggestion) Now wether or not this behaviour is intended from a rules perspective or from a game balance perspective is not something I can answer. I personally don't care either way. It makes it so CC trooper are more reliant on their other tools (cautious move + stealth, marker state, walking in back arc, smoke, etc.) Yeah, I meant reactive turn, my bad! I think that exception would be very easy to handle to be honest. As a whole, it would remove way more convoluted exceptions that are currently present in the rules at the expense of... letting people declare Dodge if they didn't declare an ARO when they're hit by a template weapon.
Well, mostly useful as a threat; the active player will almost always choose to stay out of ZoC. As opposed to almost always trying to stay out of ZoC. It would probably make the area denial ability of receive hackers slightly better at the cost of them rarely getting to hack in reaction. I actually don't support my own suggestion; it was thrown out as a simplistic "fix" to OP's problem. I'd much rather ZoC being measured before ARO declaration but CB has already walked back from that.
"Since you would place down template at resolution, we would need an exception that allows trooper that didn't have a opportunity do declare an ARO prior and are under the template a chance to dodge. (I believe this is the only exception we would need)" I am not even sure you would need an excemption. Most examples I can think of regarding templates, you KNOW if you're going to be under a template or not (example missile launcher on a link) and if it's unclear, declare dodge as that's your only available ARO anyway and if it turns out you're not under the template then cool, nothing happens. Arguments about it making templates stronger are true, but think about it. Currently under the rules, active player can move 4", opponent declares shoot with chain rifle, places template, oh it's 11" away darn! Active player now knows they are out of range so moves another 4" or shoots unopposed. Changing how templates are placed means the active player doesn't know if they've been hit or not and will have to eyeball whether to dodge or shoot. I really do no get why CB are opposed to allowing any ARO any time and just check at resolution. It cleans up soooooo many issues and makes the game faster. Any downsides to this change are failry minor from what I can tell and don't require additional exceptions which is where the game gets bogged down.
Currently this is how I'd see the following play out if the "ARO anytime" thing was adopted: Active player declares move into ZoC but not LoF of a trooper within 2" Reactive player declares shoot with chain rifle Active player declares dodge Dodge is successful Reactive player has no LoF so shot is cancelled and active player successfully dodged anyway (if player failed to dodge then they wouldn't move so its not a problem either) Active player moves unit into cc with reactive unit I don't see how this nerfs cc troopers unless the last two points are reversed but this is not how the sequence currently works AFAIK
