Because I misunderstood. You're saying that if it affects how you spend an order and whether declarations are possible for your opponent you need to tell your opponent about it? Then yeah Terrain skills are out.
On second thoughts, I'm not sure why 360º Visor would be included. How does the Active Trooper having 360º LoF affect possible AROs? For those Orders that don't include any Movement anyway.
Cheers! Follow up: I get why you would need to announce 360 Visor (or lack) as that affects reciprocal LOF (which changes whether an ARO exists). Why wouldn't you need to announce Hacker? Because it only affects the validity of the AROs and not whether the ARO exists?
Well, that's unresolved. This isn't the thread to debate it, so I'm just posting to note that this may not (probably not!) be true.
I think our posts crossed! I don't think 360º Visor should be included. Exactly. Being picky with wording, being a Hacker or not doesn't affect the validity of an ARO in the ARO Check step, just whether the Requirements are fulfilled in the Resolution step.
This all seems far more complex than just allowing all Automatic Skills just to be announced at Step 6 if relevant to Resolution, and having Stealth just prevent validity of AROs. Re: 360 Visors. Due to the way reciprocal LOF works there are (admittedly edge case) scenarios where a Trooper only has an ARO because of the 360 Visor.
I'm not trying to drag him into a "he makes such claims". I'm saying that the same loginc can be used for all those situations. Uh... if the skills have "deployment", then those skills can only be used at deployment (let's say Minelayer, for example, which you should not be forced to indicate it's use, else it reveals that camo as a troop and any camo in its ZoC as a mine...). That would be, from the top of my head, the only difference :S Personally, both me and all players I've faced since I started playing Infinity, have used the "Automatic means always on, if it also has optional I have to declare when it's OFF". Ok, I stand corrected in that case, but I still disagree the expenditure of the Lt order must be differenciated between Lt and NCO (when said NCO has been in a "private" state since the start of the game. If Patroculs has revealed himself and is now in marker state as 3 Pats, I see no reason to announce that he uses NCO to consume the order). Of course, if I spend a Lt order with a Corregidor's Alguacil, it's pretty obvious he's the Lt, but again, the rules specify that the status (expended or not expended) of the Lt order is public info, not "by which mechanic" is it expended. No, there are two ways of doing this with a unit in marker state (and, as I said before in this post, we play as ""Automatic means always on, if it also has optional I have to declare when it's OFF", else you spend more time reciting skills than playing). 1: "I move this unit, which is not using stealth, here". This declaration provides the info (the unit is not using stealth) without the specific info of the unit having, or not, Stealth. 2: "I move this unit here, it lacks Stealth". This declaration informs my opponent that the marker lacks the skill, so if the marker is a S6 my opponent knows it's a Sphinx and not an Anathematic (in Vanilla CA). I disagree (as I said before, it's more coherent to play with automatic skills always on, announcing when they are not being used). But also, I would add Terrain (specially Total). MMm The Active Troooper, during movement, has 360º anyway. It's gear for the reactive troop, I'd say. As for the reactive markers, the common answer is "this marker does nothing" regardless of what's under it (a Zero BSG too far to hit, for example, or a mine, specially if there is an ARO trooper ready to threat the active unit). I can't think of any situation in which I think you are talking about for example a Kanren (holomask) disguised as a Tian Gou (360º visor)? I think you can "save" the troop (but not the disguise) if you declare Dodge, since if it's inside the ZoC of the kanren you can dodge at -3 , and if it's outside you simply fail requirements. Anyway, the 360º Visor is Automatic + Obligatory, so declaring its use is redundant. In this regard, I miss an specification of when it's the "hackable" characteristic declared for a camo marker (both for Active and Reactive). While I understand that I might have disguised Patroclus as a Danavas hacker and when getting into an enemy repeater zone my opponent declares Trinity with all his KHD, I then can just move again or shoot the repeater and ignore such hacks (they would fail, after all, because of the requirements), I'm not sure of when I need to reveal that a camo is hackable or not (for example, a Zero KHD Vs a Zero minelayer).
Nobody has suggested your option 2. Could you explain why? This is not a sarcastic comment, I don't know what difference you think it would make. The bit you quoted was talking about Hackers being able to declare Hacking AROs against any Trooper, and then in the Resolution step you find out if the Requirements have been met. As above. You'll find out if the Hacking Program fulfils the Requirements in the Resolution step.
With stealth, the point is that you have to tell your opponent whether or not you're using it (and thank you ijw for answering that!). Whether you do that by declaring when it's used, vs. declaring when it's not used, is immaterial. The point is that your opponent gets to know. They don't get to know whether the unit has the stealth skill (since it's in marker state), only whether you're moving it using the stealth skill. In practice, the way it's likely to work is simply that if your opponent wants to know, when you move the camo marker they'll ask "is it using stealth?" rather than assuming that your lack of declaration implies anything one way or the other.
Because it adds 1'' when you cross that terrain, and there are several camos with and without on several factions; and again, Pat's doesnt have it (yeah, the guy is everywhere, because frankly is the unit with holomask that moves 6'' that comes to my mind the most) and can be disguised as units that have it (for example, a Pat disguised as Hawkmoor, moves 5'' inside a terrain zone; if I don't have to declare the use of Terrain, he remains "consistent" with the 4'' of move from hawkmoor and his 1'' from terrain, since Pat moves 6'' in his first movement). Yes, but my question was about when (or even if) I tell my opponent that a marker is, or not, hackable.
I honestly think it is better for the game that you tell your opponent if your unit is sneaking rather than relying on your opponent to ask or going by the assumption that a unit will always use stealth if available - the opponent may have Hidden Deployment units that you are not aware of that they don't want to have revealed by asking you or otherwise don't want to give information away that they don't have to. There were countless situations for us while playing the game during N3 when the assumption that it was always used made ARO generation and declaration a mess... This is reinforced, I think, by that it's often beneficial not to sneak even when you can. Anyway, that's my contribution to the side-debate. Carry on :p
So why do you want to add Terrain to the list of Automatic Skills that are Open Information when used? Which has been answered.
What program do you hope to use against a Camouflage Marker? You're not allowed to declare attacks against them and hacking isn't an allowed ARO against them.
Well he was talking about Markers not strictly Camo Markers, so Controlled Jump [emoji14] (yes I know, I'm not helping :p)
Yes, in the post I quoted it was just Marker, but in a post earlier in the discussion it was specifically Camo. Also, Controlled Jump doesn't depend on the Hackable trait (and for sake of completion: for Holoecho the answer is the same as for Fusilier Angus; you'll find out during step 6 if the Hack declared is valid or not, as IJW answered earlier)
Philosophically - that is I'm not disputing your interpretation, rather I'm discussing the ideal solution - why do you want any Automatic Skills to be open information when used (instead of only being open if relevant at Resolution)? NCO works perfectly fine as "I spend an Lt order on this Marker". There's not really any necessity for your opponent to know if it's an NCO or not. Stealth works perfectly fine* if you find out during step 6 if the ARO declared is valid or not. * For values of "perfectly fine" that are acceptable for Holomasked troopers. Indeed I argue that it works better that way in Non-Marker scenarios.
I definitely agree with this part of your statement. I think it’s better to handle stealth at declaration time since otherwise you could potentially bait out markers or hidden deployment models that don’t actually have AROs. However, I also really don’t like N4’s attempted solution to the ZoC premeasuring conundrum.
