Sure, that'll help against several threats that could reach your LT... or your hackers... but it won't really help against guided missiles unless you play with house rules.
Guided missiles need to be able to draw a trajectory, so if the doors are closed, it cannot hit anything inside. Am I missing something or doesn't that require any houserules?
There's no rules for doors or windows as such, they're either access points or walls; access points are open and doesn't prevent LOF unless the scenario gives rules that say otherwise. If you want doors to hinder movement or LOF/trajectories you'd have to make up the rules for it yourself I'd give you a link, but the wiki is veeeery slow atm (probably due to the office internet). Page 135 of the 1.1 rules; red IMPORTANT box
We've been assuming that Enclosed means enclosed. Not necessarily inaccessible or airtight. Like an enclosed patio or an enclosure. So while doors and windows don't block line of sight or line of fire, the Guided munitions don't use either of those and the room is still enclosed. AKA, if it has a roof and 4 walls it's enclosed.
Yeah as mentioned, you couldn't Spotlight as an ARO, Targeted didn't persist between turns, and the Order Trap of stacking negative mods onto someone's Reset wasn't a mechanic at all. So now, an unhackable opponent can walk into your repeater net, you can land 2-3 Spotlight AROs, and they have to burn heavy orders trying to Rset out of the state with a big WIP penalty, or else get bombarded the moment it's your turn again. None of those mechanics existed last edition. Now, if the Alpha doesn't work, you still have a very strong area denial tool that remains useful and relevant for all 3 turns of a game. Last edition, you could try to guided missile Alpha, but if it didn't work out, and/or your opponent wasn't very susceptible to Hacking, then you were investing a lot of SWC and resources in something that might not be useful in later turns. With Spotlight being useful in all matchups now, and in both Active and Reactive turns, it's created a bit of a monster in conjunction with Guided.
Cool House Rule, but that's in no way supported by the rules. The only restriction is that you are able to trace a trajectory between the firing model and the target; there's nothing in the rules to suggest that windows or doors block this trajectory, so unless CB come out with an FAQ or Errata they don't.
The counter to that technically should be KHDs, which other than rare exceptions, don't have great odds to walk into a Repeater relaying one or several competent Firewall backed Hackers with access to Oblivion. So they aren't good at dealing with it. So you're usually stuck with somehow dealing with the Hacker/Hackers and the Guided ML Bot in Total Cover by other means, like AD, fast C+ assault pieces or gambling on Spec Fire. If you don't go 2nd and lose the option. Add in that Guided ML Bots can go Prone now and thus significantly harder to catch on top of all GL options losing their +3 Rangebands and now a bunch of them a further +2 BS when linked. Not that I even like the option as a counter to begin with.
Nah, hiding hackers or Morans in there can cause a whole different kind of problems. And is your idea that every table should have some enclosed territory, and you should assume anything not in a building is fair game?
Enclosed has a qualifying explanation in the rules: "a possible trajectory for the Attack must always exist." If there exists a trajectory that doesn't pass through solid objects, then you can fire Guided/Speculative shots into it. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to throw a grenade through a window, which is an extremely common occurrence in the game. I will absolutely agree that CB really needs to work on clarifying their rules though; there's a lot of game terms that are only sort-of defined, and a lot of inconsistent terminology thrown around (ex: Fireteam rules specifying they modify the burst of all "BS Weapons", but yet it still applies when you throw a Trench Hammer, which is a CC Weapon making a BS attack using the PH attribute. Ugh).
Where this gets tricky is that to shoot into or out of a building you don't need a window, or a door, or anything. Just a Gate marker next to a solid wall. So unless you designate that window as a Narrow or Wide Gate it doesn't exist as far as the rules go. So no, unless you state before the game starts you cannot throw a grenade through a window. And you can throw it through a solid wall if there is a gate marker. I put up a post asking for their definition of "enclosed" so we can get something solid on this.
Well, since the rules are so fuzzy, I think it's unreasonable to support this as a workaround to the Guided situation unless we get more clarification. It's possible, but... I don't think so.
The problem is that there is no equivalent of the AP HMG or K1 Combi for hacking, and there should be, as there needs to be a risk to overextending the repeater network. Proportionally, increasing damage makes things riskier for *high* BTS hackers, not low-BTS hackers. It's the same reason why a Jotum gains more for being in cover than a Fusilier.
It's not a new trick, it's an old trick. The reason that it doesn't work for Jazz is because Jazz doesn't gain much from being in a fireteam *other than the tinbot*. Whereas under the previous fireteam paradigm, the Kamau needed that 5th member for the crucial +3 BS that put it over the top in FtF rolls. Moreover, Jazz could be tucked away on a rooftop prone and still have her effect; the Kamau had to have LoF to places on the board to project power. What this means is that sending, say, a Hardcase on a suicide run against the Kamau poking his head up *or* a fireteam member at ground level would often deal with the problem. Whereas with Jazz, she's not poking her head up, and killing the 5th fireteam member on the ground doesn't slow her down much. She actually can be more protected, and almost always is, as I explained.
Yes, but you have to kill two troopers to get rid of that. More now, actually. So a suicide run on the fireteam is less viable to deal with that.
I'm not arguing with that at all; I was just commenting on her having additional benefit from linking beside Tinbot.
They were hardly extinct, but a lot of people did whine about them being uselfess (while also whining about them being omnipresent and making TAGs and HI worthless). People either opted out of hacking entirely making them useless, or cried about them being worthless because they used AHD utterly incorrectly, which is something I always brought up in N3 hacking discussions. The AHD needed support, people kept running them out there to get their brains melted with out making sure the area to do so was safe by clearing out enemy hackers. it was basically the equivalent of trying to make a model marksmen rifle fight a linked sniper without knocking down the sniper first. They existed to clear the way for things like hackable units and AHDs, and ensuring you didnt have one god AHD ruling the table (guess whats happening now), their biggest issue was that Redrum was a horrifically over tuned program. Another way in which hacking has changed drastically is how they are used, in N3 it was often multiple hackers running around and doing stuff them selves and getting up close and personal with occasional repeater support making them be constantly under threat from multiple vectors. Now its more like one hacker (maybe two) just hiding out and working through a repeater net. I would much prefer going back to this and keep KHDs unchanged as they are. They were just as prevalent in late N3, they were a great tool for dealing with the top end ARO castle pieces.
