That's what I thought too... I would have loved a 1 page thread. Cover for what? My nefarious plan to ruin the forums... somehow? Here I am doing my best Snidely Whiplash impersonation over here.
Like if I say "ok can I move here and get LOF to model A before model B" and my opponent says "no, probably not, they're vertically stacked and you'd be relying on a horizontal plan slice to see one first" that is a super preferable outcome to me doing it first then arguing about it second.
To be frank, no, you're wrong. The part about reciprocal LoF that you quoted applies whether or not an attack is actually made; LoF doesn't suddenly happen when shots are fired, it existed before. In order for reciprocal LoF to apply, you just need to be able to "draw LoF to a target," not actually attack them. Otherwise you could force Change Facing AROs within zone of control by just popping around any corner and make unopposed shots vs. 1 opponent; I'll leave it as an exercise to you as to why that is, but I can explain it if you don't follow.
I follow, and that possibility is one of the many reasons this bugs me. I would like to see the LoF reciprocality rule rewritten entirely, because if it works in N4 the way it's ostensibly supposed to (as you describe here) then it could be vastly clearer, but there's still some weirdness either way. Maybe a counter-example will help explain what I mean: Alphonse (who we can probably agree is a dick) is behind a building, and there's a possible LoF path from the nearest corner to a distant piece of cover that's hiding Bee. Coincidentally, Bee's silhouette sticks up 0.5mm above the cover. Alphonse can't draw LoF to Bee since he can't see a 3x3mm square of her silhouette, right? Alphonse pops around the corner, deliberately exposing about 20% of his silhouette. Now, the tiny sliver of Bee's silhouette can "see" more than 3x3mm of Alphonse, meaning she's got LoF to him, so reciprocally he has LoF to her, and can declare BS Attack even though he can't seem 3x3mm of her. Gotcha! Variant 1: Spoiler As above, but Bee is facing away from Alphonse. She doesn't have LoF due to her front arc pointing the wrong way, so Alphonse won't have LoF either. Due to the magic of universal, continuous, reciprocal LoF you now must face away from possible active troopers if they can see even a teensy bit of your silhouette, or you give them BS Attack when you thought you had sufficient cover. As long as you're facing away, you can't see them, so they can't see you. This is totally intuitive game design. Variant 2: Spoiler Same, but Bee has a 360 Visor. No matter what her facing, Alphonse can target her with BS Attack as long as even an iota of her silhouette is visible and he exposes 3x3mm or more of his own during his movement. Troopers with 360 Visor are now mildly nerfed, as they're required to seek very thorough total cover, since they permanently waive their right to the 3x3mm requirement for LoF, meaning more time spent moving to get into and out of total cover. WTF? Variant 3: Spoiler A TR bot is hiding behind a wall with a 1mm pinhole. Does every trooper that exposes at least 3x3mm of its silhouette to the TR bot have LoF to the TR bot? What about if Alphonse tries to peek 1mm around a corner to target one of Wall Bot's friends between them—do Alphonse and Wall Bot have reciprocal LoF if his LoF passes through that 1mm hole, despite the fact that neither is exposed 3mm? I assume not, but the fact that Alphonse can create reciprocal LoF with every trooper except Wall Bot, and Wall Bot potentially has reciprocal LoF to every trooper except Alphonse, and their LoF connects them, but they can't claim it because neither is sufficiently exposed...like...really? My question for you is basically: Is this the intended way for these to play, RAW? If reciprocal LoF is created exclusively by the active player, the rule should be: "Whenever it is possible for the active trooper to draw LoF to any target, that target may draw LoF to the active trooper." This will mean that, RAW, if even a 0.5mm sliver of the active trooper is visible over what looks like total cover, the trooper will be copping AROs from anything sticking out at least 3x3mm from its own cover that can draw LoF to that teensy sliver of active silhouette. Universal, reciprocal LoF (if it could exist, it does exist, all the time) boils down to "LoF exists between two game elements if the following statement is true: It is possible to draw an unbroken line from any point on the silhouette (or model/token) of a game element to a point on another silhouette or game element, and at least a 3x3mm square of one of them is visible from the front arc of the other." At this point I question whether 3x3mm is worth keeping in?
That's how they all work, from my understanding. Only #1 really bothers me. But it's a much better solution than "I expose less than 3x3 of myself to you while seeing 3x3 of your silhouette within zone of control. I force you to change facing and shoot you unopposed." #2 and #3 are fairly edge-case examples that are unlikely to come up in play very often.
I would note that I've never seen anyone play on tables with 1mm by 1mm pinholes. Terrain should always be discussed before a game and conversations like 'we're treating these railings as solid?' or 'we're treating these bullet-riddled walls as solid?' etc markedly improve the experience. Infinity plays poorly through a cheesecloth.
Wut? Are you talking about something that does not exist? Sorry, stopped reading most of the walls of text as the initial question got a reply. From https://infinitythewiki.com/index.php?title=Line_of_Fire Bee is orange, Alphonse is blue. LoF Example The orange Trooper has no LoF, but the blue Trooper does. Reciprocal does not always apply, the arc matters (same page, first line of the list of exceptions).
Yup. The talk about terrain is fairly ubiquitous, in my experience, unless both players are familiar with that table already.
Specifically @wes-o-matic is talking about the situation where less than a 3x3 of the reactive model's silhouette is exposed, but they're facing away from the active model, and 3x3 of the active model's silhouette is exposed. So not exactly what's going on in that pic.
I see. (silly pun) OTOH, images always use bars, so more like 3x3 should apply both ways, 3x3 to 3x3, instead of point to 3x3. I know text does not say that, but pictures suggest different.
Yes, I agree that this would be in the rules, but I do think any checks have to take the formal shape of Active player declares Move A measures movement A sticks down a silhouette template A: who can see me here? Reactive: this Camo A measures a different path A: what about here? R: That camo can see all of that truck, that side you might've been able to Cautious Move past my LOF, but if you just Move I'm gonna shoot. A: sigh. Okay, I'll just move close to the edge while remaining out of sight. AROs? R: Move back a bit, the I can see over the hood. Okay, there, now I have no AROs. A: Okay, new order, I declare Cautious Move. By contrast, this is NOT okay: A moves to the side of the table. A sets down a silhouette template by the corner of a rooftop. A: do you agree that if I move here I can see your TR HMG? R: yeah, you seem to have enough height there. A: Okay, I'll spend an order making a double Move in that direction, you shouldn't be able to see me, just stop me if a TO wants to pop out or something? Basically checks have to be done taking the actual board state in mind, not a theoretical future board state.
To be explicit, the hypothetical 1mm square hole is an arbitrary way of saying "enough exposure to meet the requirement of some silhouette being visible, but not enough to meet the requirement of 3mm x 3mm" for the purposes of contrived examples that are sufficient edge cases to make the structural rule issue really black-and-white. I don't really think this specific issue is a daily challenge for the average player, but Infinity's rules are weirdly esoteric sometimes, so I also don't think this is that weird a thing to want better wording for. We're discussing a game where this question is not definitively word salad: "If you have Strategos and LT2, does the singular "Lieutenant Order" in the Strategos rule's wording mean Strategos only converts one of the two LT orders per player turn to a Regular Order, or are we to infer it works for both but was written without LT2 in mind?" I've had the experience of a friendly game where we talked about terrain but despite thinking we were on the same page, my opponent took a shot through a teeny hole in a wall and RAW it was legal. In retrospect our setup chat covered other stuff, but we had different expectations of how comprehensive our chat was, so our expectations about that particular bit of terrain weren't aligned. There was no malice involved, but it was still annoying to have to untangle mid-Order. Not an epic disaster, but players are talking about railings and holes in fences for a reason, or those conversations wouldn't be necessary in the first place.
I think that the weirdly one-sided way that LoF talks about "any point on the attacker" but "3x3mm square on the target" is part of the problem because it introduces an asymmetrical requirement, so equalizing it either way is likely to be an improvement for streamlining purposes. Having LoF dependent on both troopers/targets/game elements/whatever being able to trace an unbroken line between any two points in their silhouettes, AND both need to be able to see at least 3x3mm of the other would simplify the interaction a bit in terms of rule wording, but increases the burden of eyeballing what meets that requirement. OTOH, if the 3x3mm constraint can really be ignored by having the active model expose enough of itself to claim reciprocal LoF from a model facing it, CB could just ditch that requirement entirely in favor of a binary, the way partial cover has gone in N4—so even a sliver of visible silhouette is sufficient. Can you see me at all? No? Then no LoF exists. Yes? Then LoF exists. Much simpler. As is, it's janky in one of several possible ways, depending on how the players read the rules.
Why is this thread still boiling away? Stash your egos people, no argument is going to convince those with views on opposing sides of this one.
about the intent vs as is and fairness... Maybe, instead of marking someone as unfair/cheater/unfun/whatever, step back a moment, take a deep breath, and try to understand what other people are saying. I've yet to see a "intent" player deffend, in the table (during a game), the intent of the aro player. It is allways the intent of the active player what matters, what can do anything relevant, with intent, a player will never get a 2+ man aro if they don't want it, it cannot fail. The aro player has no real means to do anything in reality. I am supporter of the old called "by result" (is what I was told it was called) back at the beggining of n3. It was how I learned the game during the beta: you move your dude, and check ARO then, you can check LoS, but if you fail, you have to face several AROs. There was no problem then, nobody called anyone anything. It was the game then. Since N3 I've seen this "intent" discussion, that it was not before, and has some logic behind it, but also takes out error for the active player (that goes for both, of course, but the alpha strike gets better), so there ir no clear advantage. Time consumption? that deppends on the player, not the "philosophy" they use, a fast player will remain fast if there is or not intent. as I say, I think the game is dessigned with "result" in mind, not intent, but I tried it anyway. I tried intent and saw its unfairiness with aro intent. Several times I used that "this two dudes are put to see that same spot" and so... never once was possible, the intent player always came with the pie-slicing excuse rendering my intent out. It just doesn't work. I might not be the most tournament player here (and obviously, not a good one). And specially since lockdown, but I've been in a few interplanetarios and satelites over these years... and I found people of both sides, even in the TOs! There are fast playing eople, and slow playing people (I had some games where I was really fast, and one game which I was maybe the slowest of the tournament). There are TOs that say "you intented to be seen by only this? then step back" and others say "you moved wrongly? you get two AROs". And everything might be ok. Not because someone plays by intent/result is a jerk or tries to cheat. There are cheaters, and they will try to do it be it with intent or without it. As I say, I've seen using "intent" as a tool for cheating. It might not be very common, but I suffered it by a "forgetting" player, and a friend of mine suffered it too (in different tournaments by different people, with different result by TO because in one there was a witness but not in the other). The cheat goes like this: A1 moves "with intent to see only B1 but not B2, but in that fairness looking for fast game, the possition of A1 remains ambiguous, B1 survives and A1 doesn't move again. Then B player moves the fireteam and gets an aro to both A1 or A2 because "it sees both" and B negates that intent from the previous turn. You can call TO, but unless there is someone that saw it, or it happened before, is hard for the TO to say the correct thing. The way for it to not happen was or use result (he would have got 2 AROs) or spending time possitioning the miniature (loosing one of the advantages of intent. Another "cheating" I've seen from some people abusing intent is the "I move this so only that dude sees him" and when another, unrelated miniature in a different part of the table gets aro, he says "sorry, I have to move it back because the intent was only for one miniature to see him", if someone is accepting intent, this has to be accepted too, but I think it is completelly unrelated with how intent is intended (pun intended inception XD), or at least, how I have seen explained here in the forums. With all of that (and I don't think talking about experience is a falacy of autority, but only exposing personal experience and opinions based on it), I think intent is more unfair than result (which more than unfair is error punishing). It might help to make some players take decissions faster, but it takes out a lot of power from the reactive player's decissions, and is prone to other problem. I might be wrong and there will be a time any intent player shows me that double ARO intent working...but I've yet to see it. Meanwhile, I will use intent if the other player uses it (and sometimes I will forgot about intent and used result anyway and get the wrong move)
ahem This is literally a conversation I have had. In this case my opponent had arranged his pieces with defensive intent in mind and him communicating that helped the game flow without disagreement.
The other one I like is (in N3) : I want to draw LoF to just wide of that corner, so that I get LOF to an S2 model rounding it after they lose cover.
I don't negate you had it or that it didn't happen. I just say that I haven't seen it in the table, and when I happened to see something similar, the active player always came with the pie-slicing of some kind because, there is some diference somewhere, usually because one miniature is ahead the other. To me, seems that to get the same intent fairness for the reactive player, it is needed certain table composition allowing exact vertical stacking (most of the tables I've seen doesn't have the possibility, and you cannot put a miniature on top of another), which should prove my point: there is no need to declare any intent by the aro player in that situation because the stacking does by himself, or explained other way: with the same exact vertical possition and facing, there is no need for the player to say any intent, because the result would be exactly the same with or without intent, which doesn't happen with the pie slicing. but there is one part where aro intent is good and I forgot to coment: facing. Sometimes facing miniatures is hard to asses, so stating an intent to see certain place with the facing is important, and this might be the fairest thing about intent that I can think off
