So what I'm thinking of going with is this: place a marker for your IF impact point, then roll D5-1 scatter. That means a 1/5 chance of a perfect hit, then scatter of 1,2,3 or 4 inches, with an average scatter of 2 inches, which comes into the equation here:

One way of treating a miss would be to scatter D5-1 then D5, but there's a reasonable chance the second scatter will make the first less severe. So, we make the "miss" scatter D5+2 and D10+2 respectively. Maybe +1 would suffice?  That would make a minimum scatter of 2 inches.

Well, everything in Defiance works on probability of scoring a kill, given whatever underlying assumptions Demian was working with. So in that respect, half the chance to kill is half the chance to kill. Now all we need to do is hack the entire system and voila! Warzone!

Just to add to the discussion. There appears to be a loophole (assuming I'm interpretation correctly)if you will with Indirect fire vs direct fire AOE weapons.

Situation assume a vehicle equipped with IF AOE weapon has LOS to a unit more than 15" away of SI in medium terrain, Assuming the vehicle doesn't need to move

Firing as LOS AOE weapon:
To hit roll modified: -3 Terrain, Stationary +2

Firing as IF Weapon
To hit roll: select coordinate or as above , Stationary +2

Why wouldn't the player in control of the vehicle always IF, they basically get to ignoring the fact the SI is hunkered in medium terrain, the advantage becomes even better if the opposing army has terrain mastery or is in heavy terrain.

I do note on the scatter chart that it says " ..will therefor land at the highest point above it's determined POI", does that mean it's assumed at the top of the tree tops which could be taken as landing at level 1 or  even half level 1 6-12inchs above and hence would never do any damage to troops in forest for example?

??

The more I read them, The more I think the AOE and IF rules are to powerful.

Using the stock rules the POI can normally be nailed to with <1inch of were you want on your 2nd shot, as you've just measured out the location of your first shot. This becomes worse if you have 2 units IF'ing and it becomes worse again if you have say 2 mob units of 20 infantry IF'ing as a fire cluster on a base 4" template....

Using your rule above Sam should help, however my poor themed SI army with terrain mastery is in no way ever going to be competitive with a stock spread army of SI/PI. I have to hop from Terrain piece to terrain piece and then get blasted by IF fire which gets to ignore Terrain Mastery and Cover... 

I have no clue why blast templates aren't affected by terrain or slightly nullified by it, next time we play (Assuming I can get someone to) I'm  going to try affecting blast radius of AOE in terrain by the same modifier as movement light 3/4, med 1/2, and heavy 1/4. To represent bits of Shrapnel etc getting blocked by the terrain (Smoke/Radiological/Poison gas types will be unaffected by this rule).

Guess I could just be cheap and use the above tactic myself but then the game will degenerate into an IF fest and he/she who draws initiative first with one of their IF units wins...not exactly my idea of fun... :cry:

Still a little hard for me to say if they are fully overpowered but I do know you'd be a mug to not take the max amount of IF AOE weapons in fielded army, they provide a definite above avg hitting power for points spent and on SI no matter the advantages taken are brutal.

This again might be the point as it does provide PI with a distinct tactical and point advantage over SI. However I've always run under the impression an army of lower tech militia guys would stand an even chance of defeating a higher tech all robotic race type army due to the pointing system used. I'm starting to see this as less and less the case which is maybe the way it's meant to be.   

Adding aug can help but then I'm left also adding more points per unit fielded until in the end I start to question is my SI +2 infantry with a pile of Aug's really as effective as PI 0 AR unit with no aug and yet the point costs equilise to the same (or so close the 20-30 points less per unit is lost in an overall army)? Admittedly I'd have to do full on statistical analysis to work this out but on the face of it I'd have to think not. Raw armour power especially @ 0 is very effective and provides a visible tactical advantage.

Maybe it's not a problem with IF maybe the pointing system is overall is to tight ie not enough difference between SI/PI and vehicle stuff such that when you look at 1000 point field 50-60 point advantage is really lost due to the in ability to field anything in that 50-60 points.

Are APC's immune to AOE? I thought if they were caught in the blast radius the opponent would still roll a roll at -5 penalty, requiring an APC to have -3 AR to really totally avoid the potential for cluster fire just lucking it to death due to volume of d10's rolled. If this isn't the case and all vehicles get to ignore AOE, APC's will become mandatory for me.

Don't get me wrong I still like the rules especially moral/initative, It would just be nice to get some feedback from the designer on what the thinking was. I hate tinkering with rule sets as you can then unbalance something else causing even bigger problems.

I did have a quick game against Carb were the IF rules really fell apart, basically the only reason my troops didn't die 6 times over was that we played at 15mm movement so they were effectively very very spaced out. However if it'd been at normal movement I'd lost both units by the 2nd turn and 1 vehicle for his lose of zero of his units(My guys were all hiding inside medium terrain). This against the clone army who don't even exploit the IF rule, but just have a little IF as flavor.

I managed to build a nasty 1 shot braced rocket launcher which had a nasty range plus IF on 4" +5 which cost 9 points...I was trying to exploit the rules this gave max versatility load up with 1-unlimted number of shots through sidearm purchasing providing the troops carrying it with a massive intimidation factor after the first game. ie opponent wont know if there a 1 shot wonder or be raining death on them for 6 turns and hence potentially over commitment resources to remove them from the game. I was trying hard to abuse the rules.

I'll have to give it a shot, I'll see if I can talk Carb or someone else into another game, need to get a "real" table top built up so we can use proper 28mm movement. 

Yes I was hoping Terrain mastery and smoke would help negate the AOE effect which they do quiet well when the AOE weapon is used in LOS fire mode. Just when you fire it IF mode both those advantages are totally negated and terrain is negated leaving you effectively sitting in the open. Greater than 15" away if the targets in cover you'd never fire out of IF mode...unless of course it is meant to be exploding on tree tops (p42 the italics text in the little box at the end of the first column, which would help unless it was cluster fire ). Just seems overally harsh to have all those things negated by 1 fairly standard fire mode.

I'd be better of re-tooling the army, to remove the SR/TR spent on terrain mastery and sink it into  more adhoc % or more vehicle % or even a different tac advantage.
This would be a shame as then I can't really see the use of the terrain mastery tactical advantage it costs 3 TR to buy 15% of your standard 20 points and the advantage can be negated by simply firing in IF mode? None of the other tac advantages are as easy to defeat, as per other thread reservists are practically unstoppable and cost 1/3 the TR points :?: 

((it's starting to look like we are monopolizing this board ))

Do you have to reveal how many copies of said firearm your infantry are carrying?

I haven't looked them over to closely but phase weapons are another area I want to poke around in, I think plenty of scope there for interest although I'll avoid phasing bracing expanded weapons...