The tactical tip in speculative fire reads: "Speculative Fire with Template weapons can avoid MODs by Partial Cover, the CH Special Skill, ODD... by placing the Template so it is not centered on the target. You can use Speculative Fire to attack enemy troopers with CH: Camouflage, TO or ODD who are behind a Partial Cover. By placing the center of the Template behind the enemy, you can bypass all MODs from Partial Cover (-3) and TO or ODD (-6), replacing them with one single Speculative Fire MOD (and whatever Range MODs are applicable)." Does this also apply to enemies who have partial cover from all directions, e.g. sappers or models with nanoscreens? For these models, they have cover no matter where the template is placed. Does the tactical tip override this?
Spec fire doesnt apply the (-3) to hit due to partial cover if off centered, so if the blast focus is not centered on the model, then the ignoring of the Cover (-3) to hit kicks in regardless. Technically there is also no minimum distance which the focus needs to be "off centered" by, it just needs to be anywhere but the absolute center of the primary target. Furthermore, because spec fire is almost universally on blast weaponry, the template rules kick in and you dont get the (+3 ARM) to cover Either. Essentially end result is that sapper and nanoscreen have almost no effect on speculative fire http://infinitytheforums.com/forum/topic/44282-speculative-fire/ http://infinitytheforums.com/forum/topic/48782-speculative-fire-and-subsequent-issues/
Cheers daboarder. That's how we've been playing it, but was worth checking. For the life of me I don't understand why the actual speculative fire rule says to apply the cover mod at all given the tactical tip, but it is what it is. :)
Yeah it reads more like an old section that wasnt removed as other parts of the rules went through revision.
The rule reads as if they were planning on having something like Jammer be able to Speculative Fire through walls instead of straight up ignore LOF.
I think the idea behind that tactical tip is not targeting the model to bypass all the negative MODs to the original BS attack when attacking with impact template weapons (mainly grenades). For example, a TO (not in marker state) behind Cover with Full auto level 2 (-12) is quite hard to beat, -9 if you are in the +3 range. In this case if you are in LoF and throw a grenade centered on him with speculative fire, you will apply every single mod (plus -6) but if you don't center it on him you would only apply the -6 for speculative fire plus the +3 range (-3), of course the best idea is doing this out of its LoF to avoid getting shot. Templates by definition doesn't apply the Cover mods BUT in the case it's an impact template weapon, the attack that trigger them does apply the -3 to BS for Cover. Versus a Sapper/Nanoscreen for example, if you throw the grenade at them your BS would suffer a -3 for cover as normal (in that point you are throwing something not using a template), but if you use the speculative fire then the Cover mod is ignored (by speculative fire, as long as you don't center it on the model) and the Blast won't apply -3 ARM for being a template anyway. The tactical tip wording is more informal than the rules, you don't have to throw it "behind", with not centering it on the model you are fine.
