All that line-lasers do is establish LOF that can also be gathered by bending over and looking with your eye. Unlike your eye though, it makes it crystal clear for both players who can see what, with little room for disagreement, and a whole hell of a lot faster than eyeballing everything. You're not measuring anything, no distance is established, you're only checking LOF, which you're totally allowed to do. If anything lasers should be required when checking LOF, as they enforce LOF being public information.
Nah, it's just "closely watched by one of the 12 Bureaus that compose O-12, so it doesn't go off the rails" XD
The battles depicted in Infinity games, aren't "wars" technically, though. So - no "war", no "war crime". Nobody is technically "at war" in the game yet. It's all deniable black-bag jobs behind everyone else's back for the most part. Technicality, yes, but that's pretty much the job of the politicians to argue about technicalities of international laws anyway
That's an interesting point, @chromedog, we know that there is a recognised war with non-human civilization on Paradiso, if my memory serves, but is there still an International Committee of the Red Cross that can proclaim there to be a war regardless what the involved parties say?
Nah, he's talking about how all in Infinity are "black ops" done by elite teams, instead of full scale war. War, while not really declared, exists and is recognized as such in Paradiso, because otherwise the Myrmidons would not have been "spawned" :p
No state of war exists between the combined army and humanity. Nothing has been formally declared. They're nought but skirmishes with a SCOUTING force at present. When the EI brings down the full might of its forces, humanity will know war again. They will get to meet ELE and will bow down, put their head between their knees, and KTSAG. I'm under no illusions. Barring some kind of Gutier ex machina, humanity's "light" will go out unless they get their collective shit together - and given past behaviour, they haven't shown they CAN do this and the universe will be better off without them. #protomolecule.
You arent measuring anything, you are providing a means of confirming what you can already see with your eyes. Furthermore the rules only ban measurement for distance and template placement before certain points ergo regardless of id it is measurement or just visual confirmation using a laser sight is not premeasuring. those arguing against this are welcome to try and quote specific text from the rulebook
The LoF of any model on the table is open information and should be offered up without any inquiry by a courteous player. the fact that models by ITS regulation must have their 180 degree arc showing at all times is proof that LoF is public information. Using laser aids to determine exact unit sight is only a logical outgrowth of this regulation. Its not only beneficial to the speed of the game but is practically mandated by the requirement of seeing at least a 5mm square of a model's silhouette. Most laser measuring devices are smaller than a human head and can easily be brought into position with the models in question to verify something that a human eye still connected to a human head might not be able to get access to or might not even be able to be viewed by both players. Practically speaking it would be impossible to prevent a player from perfectly slicing the pie with one of their models anyways. As a model is moving a player could conceivably be checking their sight line by laser the entire time to perfectly line up to engage the intended target. No one will seriously make the argument that a player cannot know the sight of their own model. Now someone could make the argument that "you can't measure anything until after the declaration of a skill" and sure, I've declared short order move, now I'm going to take out my tape measure to determine how far I can go and break out my laser tools to determine what I can see while I'm moving, no conflict here, you're still checking your lines to slice perfectly. An alternative argument could be "you can't check lines unless its from one model/marker to another" and ok, lets break that down for a second. First lets acknowledge that a model may need to determine sight to more than just other models and markers; HVTs, objectives and even random scenery elements or open board spaces in order to set up a model to ARO with could all be things a player would want to know if their model has LoF to, but that's easy, that's just a broadening of terminology. What's actually being advocated here is that a player shouldn't be able to look at a table with any kind of precision, but really is that reasonable? Some tables might be too dense for a head to get to, the lean over the table would be to great, or there's some other reason why using a human eye would be impractical. Beyond there being no rule saying anything one way or another about using sighting tools on a table in general do you really want to play a game where you're contemplating moving a model to a place somewhere in the middle of a cramped table and have no idea what it will see, or a game where after initiative rolls you can't check what can be seen from your deployment zone? Any attempt to force LoF into hidden information just turns infinity into a "gotcha" game which isn't fun for anyone and would make every move painstakingly time consuming at high stakes tournaments. Furthermore open LoF helps both players identify when and which models have AROs to take and how each player can spend their orders without wasting orders getting somewhere only to find out that that ledge couldn't see that model over there. But that's just my two cents.
In the grim darkness of the far future, sportsmanship points will be awarded for throwing away AROs you could have taken and copping ones you could have avoided.
but seriously mac, come one, teh idea that looking at the table is pre-measuring and covered by a rule defining the lack of measuring distance is a joke
"B-b-but it's an important message and if we keep it to the containment thread it won't get heard by everyone!"
Using an eyeball to estimate distance vs using a tool to measure it. Using an eyeball to estimate a Line of Fire vs. using a tool to measure it. Obviously you guys don't want to believe the stance that has been presented, or the agreement of forum mods/original play-testers, but can we at least keep the disagreement to a more civil state? I tried to present a polite answer in this thread evidencing there was a debate, and that there are two views on the subject, and I'm being attacked for even that. It's just plain ridiculous at this point.
http://wiki.infinitythegame.com/en/Order_Expenditure_Sequence "7. Resolution: Players take measurements, determine MODs, and make Rolls."
