Data Sphere

During one of our last battles we had a doubtful situation:
Hacker A spent an order to shoot Hacker B which decided to ARO with Oblivion hacking attack.
Initial thought would be - Face to Face roll, but wait-a-minute: Oblivion's result is state Isolated, which does not affect shooting in any way. And in combat section of rules there's a statement that "If the Skills declared by the target do not affect the outcome
of the BS Attack, the attacker can make a Normal Roll "
So on second thought, Hacker A should roll a normal roll.
But what about Hacker B? Being shot DOES affect hacking very much. Should this be a normal roll as well or maybe an assymetric FtF - only Hacker B needing to roll higher than Hacker A, which would roll a normal roll. This would actually allow a situation in which both succeed - Hacker B gets shot AND Hacker A suffers Isotation state.
We've been discussing this among us, but as rules do not have any clear answer, we can't agree.

Hacking does not interfere with shooting. Both actions are normal rolls.

Why?

Because regardless of what happens I.E. one gets shot and hit and fails an ARM roll or the other gets Hacked and fails it BTS roll and becomes (insert state here) it all happens at the same time. So foreseeably both could be utterly screwed.

It would be a FtF if the hacker was trying to immobilize the shooter, as the two actions could cancel each other

VisOne wrote:Why?

Because regardless of what happens I.E. one gets shot and hit and fails an ARM roll or the other gets Hacked and fails it BTS roll and becomes (insert state here) it all happens at the same time. So foreseeably both could be utterly screwed.

Same question arised in our group's discussion.
If AROing Hacker would use Brain Blast or Gotcha! or Basilisk, which either deal real damage or Immobilize (which prevents all attacks), then it would definitely be a FtF roll. And the winner is considered to hit his target first, therefore the loser can't finish his attack.
In case of Oblivion, the result of success is an Isolated state - target cannot use hacking device anymore and becomes irregular at the beginning of it's player's next turn. But it doesn't influence shooting at all. Not now and not in following orders and turns.

And just in case you wondered - i was not participating in this battle, so i'm not defending my decisions. I just want to have this clarified as i'm using lots of hackers and anti hackers so sooner or later i'll be facing this kind of situation.

Ah yeah, hadn't realized that Hacking can be FtF with Shooting. Most people I know opt to reset as armor and other modifiers almost nullify the potential damage of a shot (as well as have less consequence since 2W on HI or 3STR on TAGs).

The reason for this is because when you move the hacker within 8" (within LoS or not) is when the opponent needs to declare their ARO, so if your hacker happens to have a Boarding Shotgun... Well that's the definition of "between a rock and a hard place".