Dodge, mate, it's the Dodge that is weird in a Hacking Area, not Reset or Hack ARO. So a Tian Gou KHD walks in your Hacking Area the natural thing is to either chance an attack or Reset, not Dodge. Makes Nourkias, Samaritan or Crane Hackers move quickly...
Ok, sure that's remarkable but only because it's a change from expectations from N3. It's not really odd - without that prexisting expectation - that a Hacker has a valid ARO because "It has a Special Skill, weapon, or piece of Equipment allowing it to react to enemy actions [inside its Hacking Area] without LOF" and performs an ARO the requirements of which is they have a valid ARO.
So this is a perfectly legal Order sequence: Holo Hacker H, disguised as FO walks into Hacking area of Killer Hacker K. K's Player has no desire to Dodge, doesn't think he has a reason to Reset or a valid Hack available and forfeits his ARO to keep up the gameflow because it's a tournament on the clock. H's Player blasts him with a Normal Roll Hack. That's now legal and you have to consider it at any step of the game vs any army that can do that trick. Seems a little bit tedious vs S2 Holo if you don't want to be screwed over.
Yeah, it seems like the least bad way to deal with it may be to start every game with "unless otherwise specified, my hackers all declare hacking attack aros against every order, and my other hackable troops declare Reset." Not great, but we'll see how it shakes out in practice.
Your other hackable troops don't need to declare Reset unless they actually have a ZOC ARO: at which point you should already be actively considering "do I Dodge or Reset?". This is because your Hackable troops don't get an ARO when an enemy Hacker activates with them inside the enemy Hacker's Hacking Area. Also, this interaction is unchanged from N3 (Kanren AHD in Holo 1 walking into ZOC of a TAG and not using Stealth provoked a Change Facing or Reset ARO). And even then - as much as I dislike this interaction - generally your Hackers should be AROing vs the Team Leader in a Fireteam or delaying vs Holoechos. It's only really awful vs a coord order, and those are relatively rare and were probably going to result in normal rolls anyway. At a table, I'd probably let my opponent go "oh wow, I completely forgot that was a thing do you mind if I Reset?" It does make me devalue Marker state KHDs a little. Because being able to spam Trinity vs anything that could even remotely be a Hacker is useful. If anything - given I expect it'll stay around - it makes me disappointed that Hafzas didn't get KHDs. But alas: they're stuck with their old tricks.
Seems like you should just declare “Reset” then to be safe, doesn’t it? If you don’t get hacked, just toss a die and ignore it as the result doesn’t matter. If you do get hacked well at least you reset. Seems like you’d only waste like a second by declaring Reset vs. no ARO.
Fireteams, Holomasked Hackers, other Marker state Hackers, LOF considerations and probably a couple of other points all make declaring AROs 'just in case' to be a bad idea. Also, this mechanic simply begs for "Oh wow, I didn't know that was a thing!" or "Oh fuck, I forgot! Do you mind if we just play it as if I'd declared [X] at the correct time?" as outcomes.
That's it. We force ourselves to "automatically" declares certain things. This is just one more. If ANYTHING moves within your Repeater network, you reset like you breath. It it moves in your ZoC, well... Good luck with that!
this *well you declare Hack/Reset like a paranoid blackhat against everyone preemptively juuuust in case they might be Holo.
Sounds like Reset should be the default hacker ARO if you know the enemy might have a holomask unit in it. Edit: Responded after reading page one of a two-page thread. Nothing to see here.
