So one of the things that's been consistently unclear in the rules, and that the rules themselves seem to be a bit schizophrenic on, is what kinds of targets can be affected by States. There are a lot of states which use wording that only allows for troopers to be affected by the state; I'm going to single out Disconnected and Isolated here. Disconnected's Activation conditions are as follows: The Controller of this trooper is in Isolated or any Null state. The trooper fails a Coherency Check, breaking Coherency with its Controller. The trooper suffered a successful Attack from an enemy using a Special Ammunition or Hacking Program capable of causing this state. The trooper suffered the effect of a piece of scenery, a Special Scenario Rule, or condition capable of causing this state. Obviously this doesn't include anything besides troopers. But then if you read Perimeter items' rules: A Perimeter Item which is not in Stand By Mode will enter the Disconnected state at the end of the Order in which it breaks Coherency with its bearer or if its bearer enters the Isolated, or any Null state. For the purposes of the Expendable Trait, a Perimeter Item is spent when it detonates, it is in Disconnected state, or it is placed in Stand By Mode. These rules seem to be written assuming that there's no particular reason that a perimeter item can't be put in the Disconnected state; there's no clause that says "even though equipment cannot be put into the Disconnected state, a Perimeter item can be." One could argue that since the rules specifically tell you to put the Perimeter item into the Disconnected state, it creates an implied specific exception. There's an interesting bit in the section on G: Jumper L1 (the rules for Posthumans/Proxies): If the player has at least one AI Beacon in that is not in Isolated state or any Null state on the game table, and the G: Jumper LZ Trooper (no matter the Combat Group they belong to) enters a Null or Isolated state, then the player can keep using the Order provided by the G: Jumper LZ trooper. That Order will be added to the Order Pool of the AI Beacon's Combat Group. According to the rules, AI Beacons are definitionally pieces of equipment and not troopers, so if the Isolated state could only apply to troopers, it wouldn't do a thing to AI Beacons to begin with, and might not even be able to be applied to the things. The FAQs been silent on this topic so far, but it's implied that States can affect Deployable Equipment as well as they affect troopers, and yet there's been some rulings (in the ITS context wrt to Targeted applying to scenery Structures) that apply the opposite. Do you guys think that there's any more information to clarify this issue in the rules?
I play Corregidor so use Koalas a fair bit. I usually put them in stand by because it’s not worth the headache, so it’s never come up but I’ve noticed the trooper wording. Is it a case of lowercasetrooper is a casual description similar to model, and uppercaseTrooper is a definition in the summary of terms for something that spends orders? If it’s a special clause in perimeter to allow you to ignore the usual disconnect activation, you’d still have to follow the effects and cancellation which mentions troopers. Disconnect talks about controller and the usual suspect for controller is G:sync which says that hacking mods and states affect the synchronised model. Specifically calls out Cybermask and the wording for imp2 is trooper... Also Imetrons made me laugh the more you look into it. They are deployable equipment and never lowercasetroopers. AIbeacon is listed as an Imetrons equipment. Equipment These are all pieces of Equipment carried by the trooper (see Equipment).
I guess to this I've also got to add when AI Beacons count as troopers and when they don't - it seems like a very fuzzy boundary.
