On the use of terrain zones in missions

As far as implementation of terrain, my personal proposal would be to track down photos of @ijw's tables at his local club- Generally those had the right idea. Spore jungles that were white noise and jungle terrain, forests that are nimbus and low vis....

And all that generally well positioned to make it a bit less simplistic than "the middle of the table is now XYZ zone"

 

I would like to point out that not a single one of Haqq's profiles have Desert Terrain. Multiterrain does features heavily though with 7(!) profiles sporting it. Looks like I need to start pushing more terrain variety locally!

 

Heh, I didn't actually go back and double check that.

 

The Candy Cloud mission giving troops with Mountain Terrain a *bonus* rather than giving anyone without Mountain Terrain a penalty is also a step in the right direction, i think.

A lot of N2 units with specific terrain types got changed to just have Multiterrain instead. Not all of them, but many of the Haqq and Ariadnan units did for example.

 

Remember that multiterrain means you have your choice of one type of terrain (possibly from a limited set), so tables should probably have 2-3 different types of terrain.

Which makes terrain skills still matter.

 

I'm an advocate of terrain rules, but mostly for their selective ability to enhance or modify certain aspects of the game. Examples:

Have a couple of lanes for reaching objectives. One is more direct but is blocked by a terrain area. If you have a terrain skill, it's a shortcut. If you don't, it taxes you. Pretty simple, but acknowledges that terrain proficiencies exist.

Give sniper towers or other vantage points rooftop planter boxes that you can choose to utilize or not utilize. Being able to play around with low Viz, Saturation, etc can be very interesting for engineering face to face rolls. You can situationally create little zones like this all over the place... Incentivize players to bring Visors and use the zones for their ability to modify incoming or outgoing fire.

In any case, for terrain to enhance the game and not detract from it, you need to make the expectation clear that terrain will be present, incorporate that terrain well into the tables, and train players on the rules. That's a lot of criteria, but the rewards can be tremendous if you succeed.

 

Iv'e always found that the low vis/saturation zones make things slightly unbalanced. BaghMari become such a force to be reckoned with when actually fighting in the terrain they're designed to be fighting in.

Stacking the mods with anything with visibility skills ON TOP of the decreased burst makes killing them so much more difficult. like crazy more difficult.

 

All true, but then you start using other game tools to tackle them. Smoke them up and sneak a chain rifle in range, or hit them with a melee specialist, or use the big durability and high starting BS of a TAG or HI to bully them into submission. Or just bring a high-Burst Visor unit, which is already good to use against them because of their Mimetism, and remains just as good if they're in Jungle.

Honestly everything I just mentioned are already good ways to attack them, so the only thing that changes is they're less dangerous in ARO (Sat zones reducing Burst 2 to Burst 1 is big) and now you can't just throw an HMG at them and hope things go well. Additionally, players who brought diverse tools, or skilled pieces, are rewarded for doing so.

 

not to disagree with the majority of the post, but I thought it worth noting that Special Terrain areas only have infinite height when not otherwise specified. So, in terms of bodies of water, I would check with your TO, as Super Jump should allow you to jump right over them.
Though, Super jumping into and within the water would still restricted by the terrain rules, (the unit probably does not want to accidentally land on something gross and squishy hidden in the water.)

 

Personally I like things simple.
Give us only difficult terrain as opposed to jungle/Urban/Aquatic or any other.

One of the battle mats we used had this big park looking bit of green right in the middle, we often used that as terrain and it worked well. Up the sides however is good as well.

 

I guess the main reason why people don't add specific terrain-zone-types is that they play with a friend and have to set up their own table. And now what? Take the stuff I am (more) immune to or take the stuff my opponent has the right answers to? It always feels so biased...

 

Exactly. I stopped myself from suggesting something like that with any seriousness because I always felt like I'm trying to engineer a situation where my Govads would kick ass.

That, and also the fact you need a lot extra modelling to make terrain zones look justified.

 

The cost is built in to MSV. If nothing else every, literally everyone, should have low vis zones.

 

I doubt that those costs are given under assumption that they come up every Order.
You can compare that to Mimetism ofc, but basic mods are a bit cheap compared to some other stats, if anything.
The real thing, however, is that most Infinity communities played with no terrain rules by default for a long time and even then may not have problems with MSV costs in that environment considering camo is not that uncommon. So while you have a point, you'll probably have to convince people, suggesting rater moderate terrain zone placement.

If I was to place Low Vis on the table though... Rather than placing huge swathes of jungle, I would place some bushes / garden beds (natural / city tables) that may be in the way of a couple of important firelanes or cooling exhausts (industrial environment) for the same effect.
Heck, might as well go to town with scenario-specific rules at that point and make the latter interactive, with players being able to turn it on/off through Activate skill (with the button being elsewhere), Engineer (directly, or with a considerable bonus with a button) or Lockpick (through button or directly, but potentially remotely). I think such ideas were all over the place on the old forum.

Anyway, I think it's a proper thread to discuss also this: there was a lot of ideas about interactive terrain in the past, but have someone actually played with such rules (even though they are house rules through and through)? I guess it's an opportunity to make specialists more useful, or not. So what would be your considerations here?

 

Why would you think I meant that?

 

Perhaps I misinterpreted "everyone should have low vis zones".
If you meant "every table should have at least some of them", then yeah, maybe that's decent baseline. The main point of mine still stays, a lot of people has trained in terrain zone free environment and kind of assume that MSV is balanced around the idea that you take it as a mimetism/camo counter or sort.