Rules Clarification: How much hack can Hacker hack?

[HeatDeath]

Sam chimed in on the Discord:

no...Hacker does not let you fire someone else's weapons. Good try, though. 🙃

If you let Hacker fire an opponent's 1BP weapon, that means he can waste an opponent's dropped weapon ammo, which is just mean and not fun.

The dropped weapons thing is a real issue. You'd have to houserule against that, and sadly I can't think of a good thematic reason why Hacker could trigger 1BP guns but not 1BP droppers.

Still a fun thought experiment though.

[Spencer]

It was fun to think about this. Rules should improve gameplay, but they should also be logical. I want to know why something works as much as if it works.

[ianargent]

Airliners have already solved this problem, as have dedicated combat vehicles.

Multiply redundant data paths. A wireless connection isn't more reliable than that, it's just a data path that can be interrupted externally. The unavoidable single point of failure is each crew (and even then they're doubly redundant), everything else is gonna be triply redundant.



This isn't even a hard exercise in networking.

[Yenaldlooshi]

Follow up question for Hacker, and I hope Sam chimes in because this might needs is take; Can Hacker attack normally, then spend the 1 ace to fire the 1 BP weapon in what constitutes a 3rd attack, or is his ability just to allow him to fire the same weapon his driver might have fired?

[Yenaldlooshi]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

Unless specifically mentioned otherwise, a given crew member only gets one attack per turn, and the weapon must have fired already this turn, so I don't think it's repeatable.
]

I was thinking about this further; "specifically mentioned otherwise" is true, but it is on the card and it does cost ace. Isn't the Ace the limiting factor? Most Ace costing things can be done more than once.

Remember what Sam said about wasting dropped ammo if hacked by another vehicle? That could only really happen if you had more than one attack you could make by spending Ace, else you only waste one dropped shot. Has Sam weighed in on the the repeatability of Hacker's talent?

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by ianargent

Multiply redundant data paths. A wireless connection isn't more reliable than that, it's just a data path that can be interrupted externally. The unavoidable single point of failure is each crew (and even then they're doubly redundant), everything else is gonna be triply redundant.

"_Reliant_'s prefix code is '16309'." .:)

[Flowagemo]

I can offer a simpler answer for the confusion — the original wording did not use the word “fire,” because we never defined that as a game term. It said “attack,” which you can only do with a weapon equipped to your own car.

This is the result of someone outside of me and Randy adamantly insisting on language edits to make things sound more exciting without considering the reasons behind our original careful wording.

[Flowagemo]

And it was only intended to allow a weapon to be used twice in a round, not to provide the player with additional attacks.

[powellhall]

The reason you couldn’t fire the same dropped weapon twice…
“You cannot drop an item if doing so would cause the dropped item to touch anything other than the arena surface. There must be a gap equal to or greater than the turning key thickness between the dropped item and any other obstacle. The item cannot be dropped on top of another obstacle (this includes hazards).“
Can’t drop a mine on top of another mine?