From a realism perspective, I am not going to speak to combat because I never served, but the catch-22 "attacker can choose perfect action based on defense" exists widely in the world of sports, so I kind of don't get the offense taken to the idea that you can set one of those situations up. If you set a pick in basketball, there are essentially 3 options a defender has (Jump it, trail you, or go under). Whatever they pick can easily be read and has a counter that gets you open for a shot that they can't stop. American Football has option plays that you can't realistically defend alone. The existence of these mechanics is balanced by that they take set-up to do and that if the defending team works together, they can mitigate the consequences and even prevent the action. Same thing in Infinity, protect your buddies properly and the potential for this stuff blowing you out of the water goes way down. I enjoy a game where there is potential that I can get caught with my pants down but I'm rewarded for setting up well enough that it doesn't happen or if it does, I minimize the damage by how my team works together.
@Andre82 In order to keep the defender retaining some agency, but preserving a very distinct advantage for the attacker. It's about finding a good resting point, and from reactions from friends and acquaintances... well... let's just say situations where there's no AROs aren't very popular, even less so when the ARO doesn't matter. @Tom McTrouble eh... the set ups are kind of banal and dumb. To be perfectly honest, in my opinion if you want normal rolls, then don't trigger the ARO.
And yet that has been part of the game from the beginning. As you note, it takes a lot of work to set most of those up. Even Mutts need a couple additional orders to get within jammer/chain rifle range of the DZ. Exactly. Deployment&tactics (ie, player skill) mitigate the chances of eating a Catch-22 ARO. Hence my less-than-polite comment earlier. It's a little hard to avoid triggering AROs if you want to do something that affects the opposing models. By game design. Hell, N3 completely changed the old surprise-shot mechanics, where a shot from a camo'd model was a Normal Roll that you only got to react to if you survived.
Hit the deck or duck back, yeah. So I suppose you could call that a flubbed roll (failed to correctly choose direction to dodge). Yeah, that was the entire point of Shipboard Security Engagement Training (the one with wax bullets).
