Yeah, I agree. But one of the local TOs is very obstinate on this issue. Which is why I'm hoping for an explicit clarification from someone at CB.
The question in that thread: So would a Hacker in one of the areas be able to ARO hack any enemy Hacker that does anything, anywhere on the board? The answer: Yes. It can't get much more explicit than that.
Given that the answer is "Yes, they do." it's clear that the answer is only to the first part of that question, which you didn't quote here in your bolded text.
There is no clarification needed, that's the problem. I remember someone saying that if a question's been "sufficiently" answered by the community, CB staff generally won't bother. To bring this back to the point of this thread, these were two questions that were completely unresolved by the community. If your ornery TO can't see that being able to "...hack through an enemy Repeater..." and "...can perform hacking attempts...against any enemy hacker..." means both on active and reactive, then I'd get myself another TO... or the next time he tries to hack on the active turn through your repeater, tell him the rules don't specify that he can use a Short/Long Skill Hacking Attack through an enemy repeater, so he's SoL.
If that comes up I had certainly planned to bring up the contradiction. Not much I can do, I suppose. He plays CA too, so maybe he'll change his tune now that we have a killer hacker too lol. IMHO the "hacking area" entry in the rulebook should have an additional sentence clarifying this situaiton. ("If a hacker is within the ZoC of an enemy repeater, all enemy hackers are considered to be in their hacking area.")
I suggest everyone does. This guy is simply antagonistic and refuses to see whats plain as day. There's no helping him here, and not for the first time. Total waste of effort.
Maybe I've been antagonistic before. I'm definitely not now. It seems strange to me that there are people seemingly opposed to a rule being clarified, or irate that I think it should be. Like I said, I'm clear on what's going on - any extension of ability to hack by a repeater carries with it a concomitant expansion of hacking area. The issue is more that that's something I had to deduce rather than just read, and other people aren't deducing the same thing. And, unfortunately, nowhere in the section on Hacking Area does it imply that it can consist of anything other than the ZoC of the user or the ZoC of usable repeaters. Just the other week I played in a tournament where the TO (a different one than with the earlier issue) stated that Army Points and Victory Points were not the same thing, and that baggage only counted for the latter (and didn't, say, score you extra points in missions like Annihilation). That's a problem, and that needs to be clarified as well. In fact, there's *so many* things, at least in the English translation of the rules, written in imprecise or unclear language, that I think the rules need a complete rewrite. Not a new edition, but they need to be rewritten, and CB needs to actually pay attention to their use of bullet points and boxed text and so on with respect to what it means. I've never played a miniatures game with this imprecise of a rules set, I think, and I played 2e 40k. Maybe I'm seeing things with rosy glasses... but it's a really big impediment to getting new people into this game, which has so many other things going for it. I've had people give me the "seriously?" look after reading the first bit of the rules, and ask who proofread the stuff. For a new player it's discouraging because they can't trust the words they read on the page, and have to learn by trial and error over the course of gameplay what the customary rulings of the community are. For a player who goes to tournaments it's bothersome as well, as it's a crapshoot as to which way the TO is going to feel about any of the half-dozen (at least) issues that are ambiguous from the rules set. If I had known that the TO in my last tournament felt that way about Baggage and Army Points, I might have made a different list (with less Ikadrons). Didn't know 'till I got there.
While I agree that the rules need a complete rewrite, starting with the "you need to read the examples, since the examples contain rules as well which might not be mentioned on the rule they are an example for", there comes a point where it looks like the "I will ask any loophole I might conceive, and only accept official CB rulings" looks more like a DDoS attack than a legit doubt, and doing that enough times gives a reputation, which will colour every interaction thereafter. Yesterday, in a tournament, my partner wanted to do a Reset with his O-Yoroi while engaged in CC with my 3-points servitor Yudbot, because he had seen one of my troops move far away; While I could quote the rules, show him the wiki, and all that, I was in a hurry so I came with him to the Warcor, and that was it. Another doubt he had about retreat, we solved in a moment by checking the wiki. Bottom point: if you show the rules, and they refuse to listen, then say goodbye and let them play in their little bubble. It is not worth the effort to convince someone to look at the rules if they prefer to be in the right, instead of being actually right.
Given that this kind of thing happens at basically every tournament I've attended, it's an endemic problem with the rules presentation, and an issue worth addressing if one cares about the health of the game. Not exactly something that can be avoided, if it exists in literally every playgroup I've encountered. When you've got top-tier players being surprised by rules interpretations at the Interplanetario, you've got a problem (I'm not one of those people, as I'm not that good of a player and I've never been to the Interplanetario, but I've just heard mention of that). The reason I fired back on, say, @ijw 's citation of that question upthread, is I've already thrown those at the player in question, and those were the replies I got. In that case, the niggling part of the question that's unclear was not answered by the CB staff in question, and rather the answer was merely effectively "Yes, they are both friendly and enemy repeaters.", which didn't answer the question. Me saying "hey, this part of the rules could use a clarification" being followed by people saying "this rule is totally clear" and then linking me non sequiter or unclear information is not going to convince me that the rules couldn't use a clarification. People are still running with an alternative interpretation, so ipso facto the rules weren't written clearly or precisely enough. I think I'm in agreement with basically everyone in this thread about what the rules are actually supposed to mean in this case, the disagreement is on how effectively the rules convey that information (very, very poorly, in my estimation).
Don't drag me into that, both of my examples are of clear rules people did not read/experience enough, since the guy had been playing less than six months, and it was his first tournament. I already said my position about "FAQ for arbiters only" at the Interplanetario (hint: bad form from CB not having made those avaiable to all people beforehand), but there are people who insist on applying old rules (n2) or making messes of rules. My answer to those? Goodbye, I care nothing about competitive gameplay despite enjoying making lists as optimized as I can.
At some point, the problem is not the rules, but the person insisting on a position contrary to the rules after being presented with evidence from the rules explaining why they are wrong. If the TO in question is going to argue that a hacker in range of an enemy repeater cannot ARO against an enemy hacker whenever they declare ANY skill after reading the repeater rules that literally tell you every enemy hacker is fair game (not to mention many hacking programs have the ARO tag), then that's not a failing of the rules. There is also the problem that sometimes one set of evidence is incomplete (usually because the presenter thinks the other side should be able to read the implications on their own), another set is then later presented to complete it, but the other side decides to use the second set being incomplete itself (because it's assumed the other side would read both sets of evidence together) as an excuse to keep attacking the premise. Thus the argument goes round and round. I don't think anyone here is saying the rules are perfectly written (I certainly am not, as evidenced by the existence of this thread), but there actually aren't that many cases where the rules are so poorly written that an answer is impossible to reach (albeit, there are many cases where the answer is buried). Two examples of questions where an answer IS impossible to reach (or have not been answered already) are in the OP.
As the old forums are going offline someone with time and attention span should go through all the old dev answers and screenshot them for posterity, me thinks. Personally I'm lacking attention span of late :(
