It is designed around simultaneous orders, but this Catch-22 doesn't defeat the purpose. It's a matter of having to react to multiple things all at the same time. Yes, the BS Attack and the Comms/Hacking Attack are taking place at the same time, so you have to decide which of the two are you going to prioritize reacting to.
Gonna quote myself just to clear this up: To be clear, it's no different than now. You use the relevant stat to Evade the attack. A BS Attack with a jammer would be avoided by a WIP roll reset. The only change is the declaration skill name itself. By creating a high level skill declaration which encompassing both Dodge and Reset we prevent situations that deny us a chance to actually play the game and roll the dice. All while maintaining the integrity of this simultaneous play style. It most certainly does defeat that purpose. It creates a situation where i must make a decision and my opponent then gets to react AFTER knowing what that decision is. Their choice can completely nullify my choice. It's the definition of a sequence of events. Huh? The trooper coming around the corner is not shooting me with a Combi and Jammer forcing me to decide which i want to try avoiding. They can only make one action. The problem is they get to decide after I declare i'm avoiding gunfire or a hack that doesn't exist. How thematic is Infinity really? The current rules create a situation where we're resetting systems that are just fine. We're dodging bullets when no one is shooting at us. All this for some game play people consider rare to begin with?
I think the case that best and most universally illustrates the ease in which this situation can come up is the activation of a Ghazi Muttawi'ah. When a Ghazi Muttawi'ah walks into your line of sight within 8" of you with it's first short skill, you have some options. However, the active player can ensure that none of them will result in FTF roll. If you dodge, they can Comms Attack you with the Jammer. If you shoot or Reset, they can template you. If instead you could decide "no I'm not going to attack and instead the trooper will focus it's ARO effort into to protecting itself" with an umbrella 'evasion' skill, you are making a valuable decision between offence and defense. Yes, this makes Sixth Sense less valuable, but not useless, as you can chose to shoot in the case they don't attack you at all and intend to move again or throw smoke. Am I in favor of this change? Not necessarily... I think I prefer making sure the active player continues to have the advantage. In the above situation I feel like things become cleaner, however in the case of multiple simultaneous elements affecting an individual it get's murkier. Do you allow someone to declare 'evade' and then select which of the two defensive styles to take on, or do you allow them to roll against both?
Jamming is a BS attack and would be face to face... However, there are mutliple ways of bringing around the catch 22 using more than 1 trooper (excluding the ARO scenario) So how would your evasion skill work when faced with a mine and a hacking attack?
Ah yes, that would be only dodge for Comms Attack, and then template if they shoot or reset. I'll edit my post.
Worth noting is that shooting does oppose a comms attack, resulting in a F2F. Aside, the only thing this proposed change does is it removes decision making from the game. playing mind games and trying to out guess your opponent is a heavily integrated aspect. This shouldn't be a secret to anyone. creating blanket skills that always trigger a face to face die roll removes a layer of tactics and betrays the spirit of the game.
Yes. That's one of the main foundations of the Order Expenditure Sequence - you get to see what the reactive troopers are doing before declaring the second Skill of the Order. For example choosing to shoot anyone who's shooting back and ignoring anyone who is dodging, or declaring Discover against a marker, and if they choose not to react, shooting someone else with the second Skill.
Forcing opponents to choose in a no-win situation is the crux for how a lot of unit profiles operate. I don't particularly like it when a Tohaa unit walks around the corner and threatens me with a BS attack, a direct template weapon, a move into B2B to Engage, or a Symbiobomb. I hate it. You know there's a very high likelihood your unit will suffer a horribly negative effect, and it can be unopposed. Your opponent won't even take damage from it due to Symbiomates. But I also recognize this is a game mechanic that's deliberate and intentional. If the Tohaa player has orchestrated this multitude of options, and used the Orders necessary to get close enough to use direct template and Zone of Control tools, it's mechanically deliberate that he can choose from a multitude of best-case-scenario short skills. A Ghazi is cheap because he has to get really close to you, he's pretty vulnerable while he does so, it costs Orders to get him there, and all of his options are Burst 1 (so inherently risky.) Even a completely unopposed Jammer shot doesn't have a huge likelihood of Isolating even a BTS0 target. I think the disadvantages for trying to use this type of unit in the active-turn are built in. You can Catch-22 your opponent, but you're still dumping Orders into pursuing an outcome that still not statistically great.
Yes, fixed above, good call. I'm not so certain that it does to a great degree. You are making a meaningful decision between attacking the offending piece and accepting the potential consequences of taking the Jammer/shot, or deciding to attempt to avoid the attack without the opportunity of disabling the attacker. If your opponent can dictate that they will not be allowing you to make a FtF roll regardless of what you chose, I feel there is some value removed from making the decision in the first place.
While the choice of defending/offensive choice still remains, it is almost always chosen for you if you're taking multiple hits or if the active model has some type of visibility MOD. I feel as though there is a layer of depth to these decisions, say if my HI has higher ARM than BTS, or maybe my BTS is 9 and my ARM 3. This creates a nice distinct difference between units and how you play them, in my opinion.
You're not out guessing anyone. It's not like the active player already decided which attack to make and I choose to Dodge or Reset and then the attackers choice beforehand was revealed. That would be an example of a mind game. Recognizing my enemy is trying to reset systems that are working perfectly fine and shooting them in face while they do it is not a mind game. Are you saying the spirit of Infinity is to have troopers Reset systems that haven't been jammed? Is that military tactics? Is it standard procedure for military vessels to launch flares first just in case the enemy decides to shoot at them later? None of that is affected or changed. I'd love to see us stop ARO dodging only to watch the enemy keep on walking rather than attack. But I'm not here saying we should change that. Because doing so would be a drastic change to current game play. I've seen how people react to the simplest of changes lol. I'm saying we shouldn't make it worse without good reason. Dodge and Reset serve the same function. It artificially adds another layer to this problem that we don't need. Are you so sure it's deliberate and intentional? It's just as plausible there was no better solution and CB was forced to choose the lesser of two evils in order to keep both players engaged with every action. The no-win situation as it were. When it came time to add reset it's also likely they didn't see a better solution or see the potential issues it causes. It wouldn't be the first time CB has done such a thing now would it? I'm not here to debate if this catch 22 is fair from a point cost point of view. To me, those weapons already provide plenty of advantages. If they become too weak after my change, make them stronger. Either way, it's a separate issue that has no relevance. Exactly^ it's not as if we need to create a FTF either. We just need the decision to actually do something. Declaring Reset only to get shot in the face does nothing. Again, it feels pretty stupid thematically as well. Then that is an issue of game balance. If the choice is always so obvious, we need better options. Trying to Dodge an attack without the chance to kill my enemy better be significantly higher odds if i'm giving up the chance to wound/kill them in return.
I think it's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I'm on board with it. It kind of falls into the general umbrella of things to do with forcing zone of control AROs, which are always very contentious. As the active player, if you can force the opponent to commit to their ARO before they know what sort of attack you're making, you've got a big advantage. I'm going to ignore Ghazi in this discussion. If your opponent has both a combi and a hacking device, and they're behind you (but not in total cover), they can do the same thing by making you guess if they're going to shoot or hack, and then you have to change facing or reset. It's worth noting that both of these are AROs that can trigger only on ZoC activity, and that neither of them are meant to be terribly great options. If you were facing in the right direction and had LoF, a BS attack would be a FtF roll against either. I think you could make a version of Infinity that didn't feature ZoC shenanigans, and I think it would be an interesting and tactical game. But it's definitely not 3rd edition as it exists now. In that environment, a unified evasion skill would definitely make sense, though.
Reset avoids Comm Attacks Dodge avoids BS Attacks ??? Parry avoids CC Attacks ??? So why do we not have a Parry or appropriately named skill to avoid close combat attacks? The only explanation I've been given is dodging missiles and troopers is the same thing. I get that everyone is entitled to their opinion but... really? Agreed. I'm curious how you feel about my question above. If the situations created by having the Reset and Dodge skills are important... why don't we want a separate skill declaration like Parry for avoiding CC Attacks as well? I gave an example earlier where it creates the same situations as we've been discussing in this thread. No one else seems willing to bite.
you have a very narrow view of in-game interactions. When you're being forced between a Reset or shoot/ dodge or whatever – often times the damages and outcomes are very different from one another. It's interesting to weigh various odds of winning a F2F and inflicting more damage than going for the freebie and having a lower chance of inflicting a smaller amount of damage. These interactions are a lot more dynamic than you might think and bring a lot to the table. There is absolutely a guessing game between two people – it is not always the best option to go for the normal roll.
PH avoids physical attacks, WIP avoids non-physical attacks. Makes perfect sense to me, and there's no need to combine or separate them further.
But you can also avoid attacks using your BS attribute. Should we have another skill to cover that then?
Alright, I shouldn't derail my own question. So more seriously, you're avoiding the issue. If creating these no win situations is important to Infinity. Which is what being forced to decide between Dodge and Reset does. Why not force us to decide between Dodge and Parry? Imagine I move into base to base with the enemy. They can Parry and I shoot them in the face with a normal roll. Or they Dodge and I cut them with my sword on a normal roll. It's the same theme. Why should we have one and not the other? EDIT: Whatever reason CB didn't create two separate dodge skill declarations in the first place is probably the same reason they shouldn't have added Reset.
Is this assuming they have no LoF to shoot back, and couldn't they also CC aro as long as the attacker isn't using stealth?
