LOS and movement involving buildings?

By Dcal12, in Dust Tactics Rules Discussion

dustpic3.jpg

Does the wall that I have highlighted in red block LOS?

If it does not block LOS and Marcus was actually an enemy squad then they would get cover, correct?

If Marcus was not there, could OZZ 117 move from his square to the square the arrow is pointing at with only using 1 movement point?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Dan

Yeah, I'd very much like to know that as well. The buildings rules are very vague in that area.

we play it as blocking. you can't draw an uninteruppted line from dot to dot. seems pretty easy. my question lately has been can artillery fire at someone farther into a building than a doorway tile, and do they still get hard cover inside?

I say yes and yes.

The criteria for moving and shooting is that you can if there is an exit in the relevent side. So although there is a bit of wall blocking sight on the exit you can fire out of it, the small bit of wall does not exist for the purpose of the game.

Building walls count the same as external walls for cover, so counts as cover as LOS clips the corner and squads can move over corners.

If you do count those little bits of wall then LOS will be severly restricted.

Dcal12 said:

dustpic3.jpg

Dan

methinks:

Does the wall that I have highlighted in red block LOS? - only full wall of the building , front bits show direction of entry.

If it does not block LOS and Marcus was actually an enemy squad then they would get cover, correct? yes

If Marcus was not there, could OZZ 117 move from his square to the square the arrow is pointing at with only using 1 movement point? i would say no , iam quite strick with way of entering and leaving building by infantry especialy that they cover just by entering field count as structure .

for example Marcus would need to be in front of OZZ to C him or enter building

T hanks in advance for your answers . no problem

cheers

The problme is that the building rules are painfully vague:

"In order for a unit inside a structure to attack an enemy unit outside a structure, the attacking unit must be on a square that shows an exit in the direction it wants to attack ."

That reads like connecting the dots doesn't really matter. If the exit is "in the direction it wants to attack" that's good enough. It seems as if if the target is to the left of the building and the exit is towards the left of the building, and attack is possible, with no regards to connecting the dots...

Well, with the Revised Core Set rulebook, the issues concerning buildings were greatly clarified. While the rulebook didn't really address diagonal movement out of a "small entrance", I would think it is not possible. If it blocks LOS, then it should block movement as well.

LOS has been made quite clear. With large entrances it's the standard 45 degrees line, while with small entrances you really have to see where the line touches the wall. Simple in theory, but in practice, it's a very fiddly bit to establish wether you can connect the dots or not without touching the bit of wall around a small entrance, specially at long range. So I decided to draw the LOS and just arrive at a standard model to use as a guide. If I can just find a pattern for the widening of the LOS cone, I can just use that instead of having to try to connect the dots all the time. From what I gathered there are two sizes of Small Entrances, one wider entrance that is the most used, and a narrower one that just crops up occasionally.

For the wider Small Entrance, I arrived at this:

Range1.jpg

Which gives a pattern of 1-2-2-2-2-.....

For the narrower Small Entrance:

Range2.jpg

Which is a pattern of 3-4-4-4......

I think just deciding to adopt such patterns is a much easier and argument-free way of dealing with small entrances' LOS than actually connecting the dots during the game.

Thanks for that loop. I think we will just go for the 45' for every entrance for simplicity, after all, squads when shooting will be up against the wall and window when shooting not standing in the middle of the room.

90 degree arc works best. Why? Because in your example, the guy inside is going to the door and firing out and Marcus would be coming up alongside the wall. You must assume that the troops your models represent are actually doing things like taking cover and getting firing positions, otherwise who cares about ammo crates since every troop stands up with center mass above it?

Page 18 of the revised core rules clarifys the LOS rules for this scenario, Basically LOS does not exist. Loophole Master is correct in my opinion. In a way it could be quite good as it will stop people just sitting in buildings and will give the attacker some options if the defender hasn't set up their covering fields of fire properly.

As for moving diagonally out or in. My logic would be no you cannot and any building with these overlap walls stops this type of movement but I could be wrong. We do need some official clarification on this. It would also mean an enemy would have to expose themselves to reactive fire to try and take the shot/assault/CC etc.

Major Mishap said:

I think we will just go for the 45' for every entrance for simplicity, after all, squads when shooting will be up against the wall and window when shooting not standing in the middle of the room.

But what if you're dealing with a large walker? Will it be grabbing the wall as well? While walkers can't walk through small entrances, they certainly can shoot and be shot at through them. I understand that it's simpler to just go with a 45º line, but it is definitely against the rules and kinda takes away from some of the tactical diversity offered by the buildings.

I have sent a query to FFG on this topic so hopefully someone will show up at some stage to provide clarification on the issues. It does seem like they could do with putting to bed early before the revised core set arrives on the shelves.

Loophole Master said:

Major Mishap said:

I think we will just go for the 45' for every entrance for simplicity, after all, squads when shooting will be up against the wall and window when shooting not standing in the middle of the room.

But what if you're dealing with a large walker? Will it be grabbing the wall as well? While walkers can't walk through small entrances, they certainly can shoot and be shot at through them. I understand that it's simpler to just go with a 45º line, but it is definitely against the rules and kinda takes away from some of the tactical diversity offered by the buildings.

If a walker is in the building I can imagine half the wall being knocked down just so it can get its guns to bear anyway!

But the things is, the wall will not be knocked down. In this game walls are indestructible.

I was going to post this in the FAQ thread, but this is not really something touched upon by the FAQ, but the rulebook. And I know I'm really playing the "loophole master" role here, but I just wanted to draw attention to this interesting issue with the rules for structures.

Rules say:

- A squad is considered to be in Soft Cover when it is inside a structure and it is targeted by an enemy unit that is also inside the same structure.
- A squad is considered to be in Hard Cover when it is inside a structure and it is targeted by an enemy unit that is outside that same structure.

Fine and dandy. But what exactly does "same" structure mean? In the 1st SeeLowe scenario you have a big building that's comprised of 3 separate 3x3 tiles. Are each of these separate structures or are they the "same" structure? Logic would tell us that once you connect two structure tiles they become both the "same" structure. But then look at the example below:

Structures.jpg

Is this one structure or two? If we go by the above conclusion, it's just one. All of the squads are in the "same" structure. But then does that mean that both attack 1 and attack 2 offer only Soft Cover? In attack 2 the shot is clearly coming from outside, through the entrance, which would indicate Hard Cover, and yet it's still coming from the "same" structure, thus Soft Cover...

If we, however, consider the two tiles to be independent structures, then attack 1 wouldn't even be possible, since the axis squad is not standing on a square that shows an exit in the direction of the attack...

No answer to this one. Obviously option 2 should give hard cover as the example is exactly the same as if the shooter were not in a structure at all and the rules do not say to combine tiles to make one big structure, do they? But then again we played Seelow as if they had, there was zero discussion on this as it was intuitive to do so, didn't even think about it and this situation never cropped up.

That's a tricky situation.

I think I would consider #1 to be soft cover for both units. Shooting at each other through the same building, so soft cover.

For #2, it's hard cover, because they aren't shooting through the building, but into it.

That might not be the rules as written, but then, I don't think the rules as written cover this situation anyway.

felkor said:

That's a tricky situation.

I think I would consider #1 to be soft cover for both units. Shooting at each other through the same building, so soft cover.

For #2, it's hard cover, because they aren't shooting through the building, but into it.

That might not be the rules as written, but then, I don't think the rules as written cover this situation anyway.

Agreed.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. When you look at it you instinctively know what to do. Soft Cover for 1 and Hard Cover for 2. It's just funny that if you followed the rules, that wouldn't be the case.