Hi guys! Time and time again we (in my community) return to the age old question of how to play doors. I would like to hear your take on this?
RAW: you get in base-to-base with it and use the skill Activate. During resolution step it opens, meaning it takes a precious order before you can go through a door, making a window typically the easier way to move in and out of a building. My preferred house rule: XCOM. Unlocked doors can be opened as part of a movement skill. Unlocked doors can be opened or closed at the start of any skill declaration (be mindful of the All At Once rule!).
I used to follow the rules of opening them via a short skill, but that mostly resulted in people never using the insides of a building (or never exiting them, if they are hiding an obvious Lt. inside it). I just changed it to be the same way as declaring Prone, which means you have to declare to open it at the start of your Move declaration, with the only requirement being that you need to be in base contact with the door when you declare to open it. That way opening a door doesn't require such a disruptive amount of orders, so the way it goes is for example; Move 3", stop at base contact with door, declare open door as part of your next Move skill and continue Move another 4". None of this applies to any missions that includes the Armoury though.
If didn't play on tables with doors very often, but our normal house rule is, that the doors open when you move through it. You haven't to be in bdb at the start of the movement. It sounds cool if you have to open doors manual, but cause orders are an importand resource, it isn't worth most of the time to spent an order for that.
We generally play them as short skill to open at any point and resolve them as being open from the start of the order (much like revealing from camo) However I'm now considering an automatic doors situation since reading this thread, say a door auto opens with a model in 1", with the option to use a short skill to hold doors on open, also if there are more doors it makes more sense for the gadget program which locks and unlocks doors to exist.
'Star Trek'-style automatic doors are what we've been using locally for some time - so they automatically open and close as you move through them, and stay open if you stay in base contact.
I usually just deliberately don't put doors on the table I regularly play on where it would be an issue. That coupled with "you may draw LOF into and out of, but not through buildings" House rule makes it mostly a non-issue.
Just curious, are your windows big enough to fit an S2 through? If they aren't, is there some rule that missed that allows models to pass through holes smaller than their S template? I'm legitimately curious here; I've gone from going through windows all the time to pretty much never.
I tend to define windows as Narrow Access points, it allows S1-2 to move through but not S3+ Star Trek doors are a favourite rule of mine, though I haven't modelled the stage hands hidden behind the wall pulling a rope to open then yet :P
Ah, that's a good tip. Interestingly, the access width scenery item profile section doesn't talk about the height at all, just that an access is wide enough for a given S value to pass through. I don't personally like Star Trek doors at all, but my really bad experiences with them have been colored by other rules as well, so perhaps I should given them a try again.
This. Typically people make convoluted rules like having to go prone to climb through windows and so on. Personally I say "Small access point that ends your movement immediately when through". Makes it more awkward to move through than a door, but still very easy. Agreed. I personally think it makes movement too easy since most units that take up residence inside buildings do so to avoid being shot at and just get free hacking/jammer potshots or safe cheerleader orders. Having the doors be somewhat of a chore to close means it becomes a tactical consideration - star trek just makes any door even easier cover to take potshots from than a building crenellation and it keeps whatever puny secondary models hiding inside safe.
Star-trek doors. Otherwise people never go into buildings, choosing to go around. Could be partially because a lot of my buildings are on the smallish side, generally less that 12"x6", or 6"x6".
Going prone to go through windows doesn't even work (I've had that suggested to me too)! You can't climb if prone and you can't vault anything either.
We just play with activate. I once build the inside of a star ship out of Lego to go to the extreme. It worked well enough. But it took some games to alter the lists to the special requirements of the narrow scenery.
I talk it over with every opponent before every game, just like LOF through buildings and all the other super common houserules. Last year before a big tournament, I did super short 'interviews' of representatives from the many metas that were coming together. Exactly no two representatives had the same answers to 'how does my meta play doors/LOF through buildings'. A few people had more than one answer. There were several answers just for doors. Forgive me if I forgot some, but here are the ones I can remember: Short skill to open/close Move short skill (activate) to open/close Attack short skill to open/close One of the above, plus a restriction on 'only with the first skill of an order' One of the above, plus 'Lockpicker' program allowing all doors (even those with no Scenery Profile) to be 'Locked', when locked, the normal method of opening a door has no effect, but it can be hacked again to 'Unlock'. 'Star Trek' as described above 'Holo doors': Treat doors as a 2 dimensional Quasi-Eclipse zone. Anyone can move through them freely, but they always block LOF except to and from models whose base is in the doorway. I will say for the record that I think all of these are fine, and don't really care if there's never a 'definitive, official' stance. The game is just better if you talk to your opponent, so I kind of like having a thing or three that I should talk over before I start playing, especially with a stranger.
By default, I'd use the "activate" common skill. It's not something that usually comes up when I play, though. Most of the buildings I've played with didn't have doors that opened or if they did, nobody ever went inside them. Not since the old days of 2nd ed pre-ITS 3 turn hard limits anyway.