5 hours ago, flipperoverlord said:

With respect, my question is inquiring what people's thoughts are on how this change would impact the game for the better or worse.

And you received answers to your question. My answer is that I think it would impact the game for the worse by affecting situations, rules and interactions you didn't intend to. That wasn't disrespectful.

49 minutes ago, Thraug said:

The main reason Standby is a weak action (very weak) is due to losing the Standby token when you gains a suppression token. This was made infinitely worse when snipers were released.

Standby, even with range 1-3 on turrets and the upcoming Overwatch upgrade, was bad before snipers. Now, with snipers, and most players using 1-3 units of them, Standby is useless.

I can see some kind of troops or upgrade in the future that let you keep the standby even with supression. This kind of restrictions only adds potential variety in the future.

15 hours ago, nashjaee said:

A good chess player doesn’t say “en passant is a horrible move because it’s rarely used”, they ask “when should I use en passant?”.

So I just learned a new chess move, and I went to chess school for years as a kid. FeelsBadMan.

In case anyone is interested, I'm going to be playing some games in the next few days with these rule changes:

Standby allows weapons to be fired at any range (the movement part is still 1-2). Standby tokens get discarded at the end of the round.

The sentinel keyword instead changes the movement part of standby to range 1-3, and the unit does not discard the standby token at the end of the round.

I am just interested in how this plays. I'll let you know how it goes, and how good/bad the experience was.

Standby feels like a niche mechanic intended to lessen the effects of Zugzwang in legion, which is particularly important since the random nature of activations can lead to players being forced to activate a unit at the worst time. Specifically, it allows a unit in a safe, entrenched position to store an action for later when the alternative would be to let the action go to waste or move out of said safe spot. On the other hand, a game in which two sides hide in their fortified position for the entire game is not very interesting, so the rule is deliberately situational to encourage players to seek alternatives to using standby.

Standby is likely to have more play as more melee units are added to the game.

Why?

Because it can be used to prepare surrounding units to fire after a melee unit attacks and destroys the unit that it was engaged with, or disengages to avoid being attacked by your own melee beast of a unit. I have actually used this with Fleet Troopers to kill off Luke who was engaged with two Rebel Trooper models. One of the rare times I WANTED to fail defensive rolls.

5 hours ago, flipperoverlord said:

In case anyone is interested, I'm going to be playing some games in the next few days with these rule changes:

Standby allows weapons to be fired at any range (the movement part is still 1-2). Standby tokens get discarded at the end of the round.

The sentinel keyword instead changes the movement part of standby to range 1-3, and the unit does not discard the standby time at the end of the round.

I am just interested in how this plays. I'll let you know how it goes, and how good/bad the experience was.

I'd be curious how this turns out. Let us know how your games go.

Knee-jerk reaction: I think this will have a massive impact on the concept of activation order. Probably a negative impact, but still curious of the experiment.

Another thought: you've rendered the sentinel keyword meaningless on the FD cannons, so they might need a cost reduction or some other keyword to maintain parity.

2 hours ago, nashjaee said:

I'd be curious how this turns out. Let us know how your games go.

Knee-jerk reaction: I think this will have a massive impact on the concept of activation order. Probably a negative impact, but still curious of the experiment.

Another thought: you've rendered the sentinel keyword meaningless on the FD cannons, so they might need a cost reduction or some other keyword to maintain parity.

The sentinel keyword offers a buff that I outlined.

The sentinel keyword instead changes the movement part of standby to range 1-3, and the unit does not discard the standby TOKEN at the end of the round.

I had a typo in the original post.

33 minutes ago, flipperoverlord said:

The sentinel keyword offers a buff that I outlined.

The sentinel keyword instead changes the movement part of standby to range 1-3, and the unit does not discard the standby TOKEN at the end of the round.

I had a typo in the original post.

Well, for one thing you've now introduced an odd rules interaction allowing a Sentinel to fire multiple times during a single round.

Let's say the FD has a standby token from the previous turn and your opponent moves in range 1-3 so you perform your free attack action. You now draw a token from the bag and have to activate the FD. By the rules as currently written, the FD is eligible to take an Attack action or Standby action since it has not Attacked during this activation (the free attack was during a different unit's activation). Similar to how "Pulling the Strings" works.

Something to keep in mind, is that with proper positioning, you already can activate on Standby at roughly 16.06 inches, only 1.94 inches short of Range 3. How? Because of the rules update and how cohesion works:

Quote

A unit with a standby token measures range from any mini in its unit to any mini in the enemy unit that attacked, moved, or performed an action. However, when spending a standby token to perform an attack, the range of the attack is still measured from the unit leader of the attacking unit to any mini in the defending unit.

To be in cohesion, the non-leader models have to be at such a distance that the Speed 1 movement tool fits perfectly between the two models, but range for an attack is always measured from unit leader to the closest model in the target unit. Therefore, if you place a model in the unit in the direction of your opponent's units at maximum cohesion distance (which should be equal to the distance to a Speed 1 move of the unit leader), you can trigger Standby for a Range 3 attack.

(Movement chart for reference, all measurements in "front to front" so take into account the size of the base:

Base size: Speed 1| Speed 2 |Speed 3

27mm: 4.06 | 6.16 | 8.36

50mm: 4.97 | 7.07 | 9.27

70mm: 5.76 | 7.86 | 10.06

100mm: 6.94 | 9.04 | 11.24

All movements worked out in inches using measurements found on the forum)

On 12/10/2018 at 3:11 PM, flipperoverlord said:

Great points. Well thought out.

Just a thought experiment:

Standby works at all ranges. You said it would be game breaking, and I can think of some aspects of that. How do you think it would break? (This isn't a "challenge" ... Just a thought experiment)

Literally any time you move anything your opponent would get a chance to spend his Standby tokens. It might cause some analysis paralysis but then the game can already do that.

The main problem with Stand-by is that suppression tokens remove it, so its easy to simply shoot a unit to negate it entirely.

If it was changed to not be removed if you suffer suppression it would be better. Its not supposed to be super strong or a commonly used action, so the range 2 limitation is good(which also makes the turret's range 3 standby more valuable). It should be fairly niche.

On 12/9/2018 at 12:29 PM, flipperoverlord said:

Is this action any good? It seems really weird to me that I can standby with a unit that has a range 1-3 gun, but if I standby o can only shoot at range 1-2. Has anyone tried extending the range of standby at all? I'm thinking of trying it to see how it plays, as range 1-2 just seems horrible honestly.

Unless I've missed something. There is nothing in the RR that implies you have to only shoot 1-2 range. Sure, you can only be triggered at that distance, but what's to keep you from shooting at some thing else further away?

3 hours ago, crx3800 said:

Unless I've missed something. There is nothing in the RR that implies you have to only shoot 1-2 range. Sure, you can only be triggered at that distance, but what's to keep you from shooting at some thing else further away?

Good point, after re-reading the stand-by section, nothing seems to imply you can only target the triggering unit... although I'm sure is most situations you'd want to. But it would allow say scout troopers to split fire, with the sniper targeting a unit at range 4+ while the pistols shoot the target at range 1-2.

I think if it wasn't restricted for range and the loss of it from suppression tokens, it would become the default way to shoot.

But I would rather someone try it for 3 games and report back than endlessly debate it.

This is every disagreement on this forum. I'm played by whichever actor you think is the most handsome:

Now that ground Vehicles can standby, I'm curious if the ATST can apply some of this to shoot closeby and at a far off target with the mortar. Potentially surprising the opponent. At a minimum, if it's late in the turn, you might get the chance to add a suppression to a unit that would otherwise clear their token at the end of the turn.

3 hours ago, crx3800 said:

Now that ground Vehicles can standby, I'm curious if the ATST can apply some of this to shoot closeby and at a far off target with the mortar. Potentially surprising the opponent. At a minimum, if it's late in the turn, you might get the chance to add a suppression to a unit that would otherwise clear their token at the end of the turn.

Only if your opponent move or attacks with a unit within Range 2 and LoS of the AT-ST. Pinning before an activation can also be very effective, so in my opinion it is almost always better to just attack with the AT-ST than standby. A flame AT-RT guarding an objective around a corner, or waiting for a melee unit to finish off the remnants of a squad is a slightly more likely candidate in my mind.

3 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Only if your opponent move or attacks with a unit within Range 2 and LoS of the AT-ST. Pinning before an activation can also be very effective, so in my opinion it is almost always better to just attack with the AT-ST than standby. A flame AT-RT guarding an objective around a corner, or waiting for a melee unit to finish off the remnants of a squad is a slightly more likely candidate in my mind.

It's true. Just like your AT RT example, there would be a few reasons to hold back. Not many, not great. Just options, really. I'm sure the threat of a full barrage at close range might keep a unit from moving closer to an objective if it got too close to the ATST.

I've played some games with the new standby rule, and I really like how it changes the dynamic of the game. It promotes getting into cover first, which is a nice change of pace. I don't know if it's completely balanced yet, but my first impressions are good.

One change I'm making is limiting standby weapon usage to range 1-4, to keep snipers from being a bit too versatile.