Standby is now rather... weak. A unit can move between two buildings at range 1 from a standby unit and not be shoot at. It can move beyond range 2 and not be shoot at. It can shoot first then the standby is lost by suppression. It can enter in melee so no shooting.

what if the standby was more of an „interrupt” action, so you can use it during an enemy movement, (not just at the end of it) and eventually roll a 50/50 dice to determine who is shooting first when the enemy is shooting?

this way it will be more in line with the intended overwatch effect.

I'm confused by what you mean by being "now" weak, as far as I know it hasn't changed in strength since the game came out.

That said, it is an "interrupt" in the sense that it interrupts your opponent's turn, taking place between actions. Something to keep in mind is that Legion is intended to be relatively simple. If you allow for standby to trigger in the middle of your opponent's move, then they have to effectively move twice: once to the position where you trigger the standby, and then after your shooting to where they intended to move, setting up the unit each time so cover can be determined.

Also, in Legion there isn't a huge difference between shooting a unit on your turn or shooting them on their activation before that can fire at you. Suppression on the attacking unit doesn't modify shooting, so the 50/50 rolloff in my opinion doesn't add much beyond additional complication. All the actions of a single turn are representative of things taking place roughly simultaneously.

The now was as in forever

to keep it simple maybye make it just if any part of the movememt tool (including the size of the base sliding on it) is at range of the standby you can use your standby.

the dice is to see who shoot first, because if the enemy unit shoot first and you gain a suppression token, you can’t shoot with standby.

anyway, it is to find a way to use an interesting tacticaly action, which now do almosr nothing and is not logical with the flow of combat.

28 minutes ago, rafparis said:

The now was as in forever

to keep it simple maybye make it just if any part of the movememt tool (including the size of the base sliding on it) is at range of the standby you can use your standby.

the dice is to see who shoot first, because if the enemy unit shoot first and you gain a suppression token, you can’t shoot with standby.

anyway, it is to find a way to use an interesting tacticaly action, which now do almosr nothing and is not logical with the flow of combat.

How then do you determine cover when firing to a movement tool? You have to check how many of the defender's miniatures are in cover, and how many of your miniatures can draw line of sight. You can't determine cover at least without having miniatures placed, especially in the case of units containing more than one model.

I understand why the dice, but I don't understand why allow for the interruption at all. If you are taking standby to respond to shooting, then just shoot the unit. By definition they are in range already, and makes more sense with "the flow of combat" in my opinion.

Standby does have interesting tactical uses. The first situation I can think of is when you are facing Speeder units since the compulsory move triggers Standby. Fleet troopers in Standby are decent deterrents to flanking Speeder Bikes and Land speeders in my experience.

Standby also triggers before anything that would be triggered by the action, such as Relentless or Agile, making it a way to shoot Tauntauns before they get both Dodge tokens, or their free shot.

Additionally, you can use it to set up a situation where you will get to shoot at a unit that is currently engaged in melee. I had a unit consisting of a single Rebel Trooper engaged in melee with my opponent's Luke, and a nearby unit of Fleet Troopers. My opponent was using being engaged to keep Luke from being shot, so I set up my Fleets in Standby. Once Luke attacked and killed the Rebel Trooper, I was able to spend the Standby on the Fleet Troopers to shoot the now unengaged Luke.

Yeah I think standby needs to remain situational in its uses or you will end up with boring games where no one wants to move or do anything.

Its interesting and tactical the way it is, but its not an every turn action like Move, Attack, Dodge, or Aim

I think the important concept is that Standby is NOT Overwatch. Many games like Legion have an Overwatch rule where you can have a unit set up to cover a certain spot on the table and shoot at anything that moves through it. Or have units set up to shoot at any attacking unit before the attacker can shoot. Standby clearly is not intended to be that. And that is probably a good thing. Games with Overwatch rules can bog down with each side setting up in overwatch and then daring each other to make the first move out into the open. Standby basically allows a unit to 'save up' part of its move to use later in a turn if it gets triggered. It doesn't actually interrupt what the enemy is doing, it simply allows a unit to use the part of its move that it saved.

The only change I'm considering making to Standby is to allow a unit to keep its standby token from turn to turn as long as it doesn't do anything else. Not sure if that works or not.

The change I desperately hope FFG changes about standby is to make it to where when you gain a standby token you may ready an exhausted heavy weapon or maybe even all of your exhausted upgrades. This would make ion weapons more useable and make standby used more as well.

Vehicles that take standby can't get suppressed, so won't lose it.

3 hours ago, ScottWasburn said:

I think the important concept is that Standby is NOT Overwatch. Many games like Legion have an Overwatch rule where you can have a unit set up to cover a certain spot on the table and shoot at anything that moves through it. Or have units set up to shoot at any attacking unit before the attacker can shoot. Standby clearly is not intended to be that. And that is probably a good thing. Games with Overwatch rules can bog down with each side setting up in overwatch and then daring each other to make the first move out into the open. Standby basically allows a unit to 'save up' part of its move to use later in a turn if it gets triggered. It doesn't actually interrupt what the enemy is doing, it simply allows a unit to use the part of its move that it saved.

The only change I'm considering making to Standby is to allow a unit to keep its standby token from turn to turn as long as it doesn't do anything else. Not sure if that works or not.

That would be a cool rule. If you do not discard your standby token, then at the end of the round cleanup place a face down order token next to the unit for the next round.

2 hours ago, bllaw said:

The change I desperately hope FFG changes about standby is to make it to where when you gain a standby token you may ready an exhausted heavy weapon or maybe even all of your exhausted upgrades. This would make ion weapons more useable and make standby used more as well.

And then makes Refresh significantly less useful, since Standby would give much of the same benefit, (refreshing cards) but potentially without costing you an action. Which in turn would likely mean all the cards with refresh would increase in points.

10 minutes ago, Chickenpuppy said:

That would be a cool rule. If you do not discard your standby token, then at the end of the round cleanup place a face down order token next to the unit for the next round.

Only if you get the option of discarding the token at the end of the round. Otherwise standby has the possibility of costing you quite a few actions.

Hivemind:

Don't forget standby also allows you to move. I found this out when confronted by my opponent trying to setup his use of his master of evil command card...

Respectfully,

Gunny

Refresh is already basically completely useless. Hardly any units aside from death troopers and the FD laser cannon ever use the refresh action. Also, all the cards that refresh already cost too much IMO

2 hours ago, bllaw said:

Refresh is already basically completely useless. Hardly any units aside from death troopers and the FD laser cannon ever use the refresh action. Also, all the cards that refresh already cost too much IMO

I've used Refresh before to shed a suppression from a unit that doesn't really have anything else to do. There's no need for the action really at all if Standby gets the untap effect. Ion is the main keyword that causes a weapon to exhaust, and honestly effectively "Suppressing" (or completely shutting down if you can manage a second Ion token to be placed) a 150+ point model for 14-16 points is rather cheap. It's the action cost of Refreshing that really makes the expensive.

2 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

I've used Refresh before to shed a suppression from a unit that doesn't really have anything else to do. There's no need for the action really at all if Standby gets the untap effect. Ion is the main keyword that causes a weapon to exhaust, and honestly effectively "Suppressing" (or completely shutting down if you can manage a second Ion token to be placed) a 150+ point model for 14-16 points is rather cheap. It's the action cost of Refreshing that really makes the expensive.

The need for refresh would be exactly what you just said- to remove suppression from a unit that isn't doing anything. Also, the cost of the ion weapons is only worth it IF your opponent gets a 150+ point vehicle. The fact is that vehicles aren't being used much at all so ion weapons shouldn't cost too much so they can be used other than just ionizing enemy vehicles that usually don't even exist. I just find it thematically strange to not be able to reload a weapon while sitting there waiting for an opponent to make a move

1 hour ago, bllaw said:

The need for refresh would be exactly what you just said- to remove suppression from a unit that isn't doing anything. Also, the cost of the ion weapons is only worth it IF your opponent gets a 150+ point vehicle. The fact is that vehicles aren't being used much at all so ion weapons shouldn't cost too much so they can be used other than just ionizing enemy vehicles that usually don't even exist. I just find it thematically strange to not be able to reload a weapon while sitting there waiting for an opponent to make a move

You still have to balance against the vehicles (and now droids) because they exist in the game. They aren't taken now because of the lack of objectives where they can score points, in addition to hampering activation spam.

If you are reloading, you aren't prepared to fire. Think of each round as only being around 6 seconds, and the actions are all spaced out slightly in that same 6 seconds. Actions in game are not supposed to be real time.

Tauntauns can cover as much ground in 6 seconds as an imperial jet bike? Impressive....most impressive....

2 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

Tauntauns can cover as much ground in 6 seconds as an imperial jet bike? Impressive....most impressive....

I don't know what the actual conversion is supposed to be, so I just used the timing from D&D.

Regardless, of the time conversion, it's a game, not a simulation, so it's going to have oddities like that. The point was more that the each round is supposed to be some small subset of time, and all the actions within that turn take place in that smallish unit of time.

3 hours ago, bllaw said:

The fact is that vehicles aren't being used much at all so ion weapons shouldn't cost too much so they can be used other than just ionizing enemy vehicles that usually don't even exist.

This would lead to even less vehicles being used. If you want to use a weapon (that doesn't exhaust) against a different type of unit you can take the other heavy weapon option on your troopers (Z6, Flamer, ...). It looks like you want a weapon that doesn't exhaust, costs less and can ionize, which sounds very overpowered to me. Even the HH12 exhausts and it doesn't even ionize!

I don't want to be a ****, but I find it thematically strange that there is no air strike. Why not give every troop a radio with which it can call an air strike doing 15 Red with Impact 12, Pierce 8, Sharpshooter 3 in a 3 range radius? And since it's just a radio that you would need, it should be a 1 point Comms Upgrade. 😉

14 hours ago, bllaw said:

I just find it thematically strange to not be able to reload a weapon while sitting there waiting for an opponent to make a move

You actually think the fact that it's a turn-based game indicates that everyone is sitting around while one unit moves and shoots, then the next one goes? Are you incapable of understanding what an abstraction is?

10 hours ago, Mokoshkana said:

Tauntauns can cover as much ground in 6 seconds as an imperial jet bike? Impressive....most impressive....

No, Speeder Bikes are 50% faster given their compulsory move.

4 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

You actually think the fact that it's a turn-based game indicates that everyone is sitting around while one unit moves and shoots, then the next one goes? Are you incapable of understanding what an abstraction is?

Pretty sure I didn't say that so please don't twist what I'm saying. Do you understand what a standby is? It's "standing by" so you are waiting for an opponent's move. Normally everything's happening basically at the same time but with a standby the unit is waiting at least for a little while giving the heavy weapon time to reload. Wouldn't take hardly any time at all seeing as you can perform a recover action and reload a heavy weapon in the same amount of "time" it takes for a unit to aim a little better

2 minutes ago, bllaw said:

Pretty sure I didn't say that so please don't twist what I'm saying. Do you understand what a standby is? It's "standing by" so you are waiting for an opponent's move. Normally everything's happening basically at the same time but with a standby the unit is waiting at least for a little while giving the heavy weapon time to reload. Wouldn't take hardly any time at all seeing as you can perform a recover action and reload a heavy weapon in the same amount of "time" it takes for a unit to aim a little better

Assuming each action takes roughly half of a time unit, then reloading takes roughly the same amount of time as a unit will delay its action. So by the time the heavy weapon reloads, half the time unit is over. In order to make your variant standby "realistic" (which seems to be part of your stated goal) the miniature that is reloading should not be able to participate in the standby with either of their weapons since they're spending the entirety of the 1/2 time unit reloading. Legion's rule tend more towards simplicity than "realism."

58 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Legion's rule tend more towards simplicity than "realism."

good point. Impossible to make a totally realistic war game without it being so complex no one could play it. I guess making standby more complex would just hurt them game more than help

35 minutes ago, bllaw said:

good point. Impossible to make a totally realistic war game without it being so complex no one could play it. I guess making standby more complex would just hurt them game more than help

You say that... but yet the US military keep trying ...

It's more that after a certain point of realism, without computer assistance you end up referencing tables to determine what other tables you need to reference (What weapon is being fired? What's the weather today? Did the soldier eat a good breakfast?)

4 hours ago, bllaw said:

Pretty sure I didn't say that so please don't twist what I'm saying. Do you understand what a standby is? It's "standing by" so you are waiting for an opponent's move. Normally everything's happening basically at the same time but with a standby the unit is waiting at least for a little while giving the heavy weapon time to reload. Wouldn't take hardly any time at all seeing as you can perform a recover action and reload a heavy weapon in the same amount of "time" it takes for a unit to aim a little better

I totally misunderstood what you were saying and thought you were asking why they couldn't just reload when they were standing around waiting to activate. I apologize.

Only change i think I would like to see to standby is that you don't drop it till you hit your courage value of suppression. So for emplacement troopers, this is 2, and will make having units who take commanders upgrade more viable for standby actions (courage becomes 2).