To get by them they need to be shot or engaged. Engagement allows you to enter ZOC, and the 'zap attack' is the FF/CC scores. There's no reason to make them terrain then add special rules to that instead, just make them normal units with normal rules.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Hmmmm. Ok. As long as there's a special rule to stop them activating, taking BM's, needing to keep coherency, etc, I'm convinced.

I'd suggest removing the Scouts special rule in that case.

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Please note that the Passive rule now removes the ZoC from the Lightening Fields (as well as from several other installations that can't fight, but are targetable). It is therefore perfectly possible to drive or run through the fence, taking hits enroute as described.

They are units, in formations, in order to simplify the combat mechanics. As formations, it is obvious how to activate them, how to do hit allocation, suppression works as normal and it is clear when they can and can't contest and control objectives.

EDIT: Ninja'ed... They are Scouts to let them deploy 20cm from each other. Since they don't have a ZoC, this is the only effect.

See my post above. Having them as a formation that can activate and do things is too weird.

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Why would they not need to keep coherency? They need to chain to have an effect anyway. Why couldn't they activate? If there are enemies in 15cm range let than engage. Ignoring BMs? Make them Fearless, and you get no hackdowns, etc. The only effect is they couldn't activate. And Scout allows them to chain for larger distances at the cost of density of attacks. If anything spreading them at their limit would make them weaker. It leaves tactical flexibility.

They're immobile. They would have no shooting attack. They could engage units that were within their area of effect (15cm) anyway. They could sit and look pretty. They're not terribly useful activations.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Thanks. I still think installations works better mechanically as units than as fortification terrain - less special rules needed.



The Critical Infrastructure rule has a number of motivations:
- Motivated by gameplay: It ensures that the installations aren't spammable; Their effects never stack, and you can't get complete AA(TK) saturation.
- Motivated by background: None of the installations described are expected to be found within several hundred kilometers of a similar installation.
- Motivated by aesthetics: It keeps the battlefield from looking odd. The critical installations complexes becomes spaced out, centered around objectives. If they are simple garrisons, you can get a tight cluster of installations with long tails of auxiliary buildings linking them to the objective; I'd rather not see that.

as for them as activating units - I dunno - it means you can build a fence of them around an objective and the opponent will need to destroy* them all in order to control the objective.
*ie break the formation (overload the cogitators brain) and move up (and plant melta bombs)

It dosen't seem much different from an automated turret getting an actvation - it's not like they're going to be moving or shooting or doing anything but marshal.

@Sp2Mc - i thought you couldn't garrison more then 1 formation per objective anyway?

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Um, Passive also means that they can't activate. Formations without shooting attacks generally get that, since they can't do anything with their activation anyway, and it prevents the player from using them for delaying tactics.

Installations with shooting attacks can choose to Sustain or Marshal, as normal.

Currently you can get formations of them for just 50pts. My first step in building an army list would be to spend 400 points on purchasing 8 stalling activations so I could hugely outnumber my opponent's activations, and win my games with ease. Come on this is simple stuff, don't give armies cheap ways to spam activations.

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well, yes, but the only rule for garrison placement is that they are in coherency with an objective. So you could place your 2 (or 3, in friendly games) installations right on top of each other. I wanted them spaced out, and I wanted to allow the opponent player a modicum of control over how spaced out they get.

Replacing the objectives with Critical Infrastructure units seemed a simple solution - the buildings are obviously the objective for the enemy, and they are now spread out over the battlefield.

See previous post. Passive formations don't activate, for that exact reason.

I quite like the idea of critical infrastructure replacing an objective, in a similar way to Eldar Wraithgates.

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Your post seemed to imply you wanted them to activate, etc:

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That's the mechanic I stole, yes

.

I was just clarifying this as you posted.

I hadn't noticed they could be bought for as little a 50pts. Passive should work fine to fix the stalling, or maybe up the minimum to 6. At that point the incentive to max out on them to stall should diminish somewhat

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.