Yeah - I'm with Vanderbane on this. The position of the target of a BS Attack is a detail and choice that you need to consider at declaration (to draw LOF) so the Important box obliges you to make it at declaration. That makes this doable: 1. Alice, who is in Cover declares a BS Attack vs Bob 2. Bob declares BS Attack at Alice, because Alice hasn't moved the only position Bob can choose in which to attack Alice is the position in which Alice declared her BS Attack 3. Alice leaves Cover and advances on Bob 6. Alice benefits from Cover during Resolution, because the position Bob attacked her in granted Cover Note that this is a change from N3: in N3 you were explicitly told not to determine the position of either the attacker or defender until resolution (except when firing templates) and instead allowed the player to choose the most advantageous position (paraphrasing). In N3 it was possible to do what I described if you where dealing with an opponent who fired Impact Templates in ARO. Now I don't think the N4 change applies to ZOC AROs; and that's because of the intent of Step 5, which @ijw outlines here (responding to the question as to whether where a ZOC ARO is declared at Step 2 when the target is outside ZOC, but the target enters ZOC at Step 3 is valid): Consider the result of the opposite interpretation (that you need to declare the position of the attacker and the target when you declare ZOC AROS). The effect of that interpretation is that it makes many ZOC ARO declarations meaningless: if you declare at the wrong time you lose the ARO. This is not the case of LOF AROs: you know you have the ARO and you don't lose it because you declare it at the wrong time, occasionally you will make a declaration that has no chance of succeeding . Importantly, that's not the same thing at all from a player agency POV which means it has important effects for how players feel about the rule (which is what I was referring to above it being abusive, particularly when you consider that Perimeter Items are both Disposable and Obligatory... making this extremely frustrating). Practically, the reason I think BS Attack and ZOC AROs function differently is because, as @Vanderbane points out, for a BS Attack "given that you are drawing a line of fire, I suspect that you need two points, attacker and target, defined" whereas this is not required for ZOC AROs. Re: Hacking Area and @Vanderbane's point that "If there's room for parallel paths, that'd be good to know, but that sounds alot like "from the most advantageous position" to me." The reason it's distinct is because you don't choose the most advantageous position from all available positions al la BS Attacks in N3 but rather you simply don't get to choose: you always use all possible paths. Indeed, when you get down to it, nothing in the Hacking Area rules defines paths - Hacking Area either exists or it does not. This is where the analogy between BS Attack range bands and Hacking Area breaks down: which path you use to establish Hacking Area isn't a choice in the way which the position you attack from and the position of the target is a choice.
@inane.imp really well said throughout. I think the BS changes in N4 are subtle but important rule changes - ones that will take some getting used to for those of us who played N3 - but I’m a fan of them tactically. But as for your great response on Hacking, allow me to provide an alternative reading that I think is consistent with the rules (and why we still need official clarification). My position is that you need to choose which hacker/repeater ZoC will be considered for the hack, because the choice can matter to resolution. _If_ it is a choice/detail, the rules are clear it must be made/specified at declaration. So here’s a hacking example where a real choice would exist: you have both an enemy hacker and also an enemy repeater in ZoC of your hacker; in these cases presumably you’d _choose_ to hack directly instead of taking the firewall mod through their repeater. Importantly, choices must be declared even if in game terms they result in the same mods and rolls at resolution - for instance there are often many points along a movement path that could be chosen for a BS attack that would result in the same mods, yet we must always choose one for clarity. The best counterargument I see is that “hacking area” is mostly referred to as continuous in the rules. You might also point to the page 61 example which doesn’t detail any choice beyond splitting burst, and just simply states that the targets are in the hacking area. But I have issues with that: 1) we see similar simplification in BS attack examples, like the one on page 31 which doesn’t specify all of the choices that are required to be declared, 2) the example on page 61 has a single obvious choice (as noted in the “clearly within” text) and 3) there isn’t an example with alternative choices as in the case I provide above. Add to that, there is evidence of needing to choose how to hack a target in several places. We see references to hacking “through” repeaters in the rules text in a few places (pages 60 and 61 for instance) instead of just within hacking area being treated as a continuous zone, as well as recent comments from @HellLois discussing hacking in the same way. The Repeater rule also indicates that you _may_ use an enemy repeater, implying a choice. These all suggest choices that you should declare. The other major argument I’ve seen is, “yes, but that means I might have a hacking skill declaration that could have succeeded and yet failed because of how I declared the skill.” Indeed. I don’t find this to be at odds with several other declaration cases in the rules and is why we have Steps 5 and 6 in the Order Sequence. Now, @inane.imp brings up an interesting option, which is that hacking uses all of the paths, and thus no choice is be made. It’s mostly similar to “choose the best path at resolution” but I like it far better. If all paths are considered, then your repeaters could act like cover for your hackers by putting them in ZoC of an enemy hacker. That’s a neat interaction that seems at odds with the text of the repeater rule, but if it’s true, I’d like to know.
Yes - I can agree with that. If it is a choice / detail then it should be decided at Declaration.* I don't believe it is a choice: as there is nothing clearly in the rules that makes it so, and the language used in the rules is too imprecise to draw definitive conclusions from 'mays' and 'throughs'. Honestly - I like the idea of Repeaters just applying the negative MOD to all enemy Hackers within ZOC: it adds the defensive positioning function many players were suggesting could be rolled into N3's DHDs. It's interesting, and as @Mahtamori points out, how the rules are written at present. Until told otherwise, that's how I would play Repeaters. * Or explicitly pointed out that it is not, al la the path of Dodges.
