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 Yonan wrote:
Wouldn't it be pretty simple to do the C:SM army list once, copy it ~6 times then make the minor individual adjustments for each chapter? Having logic inside a single C:SM list to account for all the chapters seems needlessly complicated. A slightly larger list of armies to choose from is not a problem imo. You would need to apply updates to multiple armies instead of one, but that would probably be substantially easier than applying updates to a single list with more complicated logic.

Not criticising them or their choices btw, just discussing... as I eagerly await the SM update ; p

No. That would be a bad idea.

Imagine this: the person making the data file makes a simple mistake and sets Bolters to be AP2 weapons. Through the wonders of copy/paste they now have 6 files with bad information. bug report comes in, data file guy now has to fix that in 6 spots.... and that's an example of a "simple" problem. Hopefully as each little bug is found they remember to fix it in *all* the files.

My hat is off to those guys. I bought AB and am always happy when I get the notice upon launching it that new data files are ready. It's kind of like getting an unexpected gift.

 Kolath wrote:
Ugin, as filbert pointed out, the AB40k Maintainers have completely unrelated to Lone Wolf. They are a bunch of unpaid volunteers who maintain the 40k files out of the goodness of their heart.

Lone Wolf does absolutely nothing to support the rulesets for AB. This is the only way they avoid getting sued by GW.

How the AB40k maintainers avoid that risk (of GW litigating against them) puzzles me.

privateer4hire wrote:
How the AB40k maintainers avoid that risk (of GW litigating against them) puzzles me.

I believe they were hit with a C&D letter from GW, but the agreement was they would replace all the actual rules text with page number references to the books (which happened around the time they updated to 6th ed). It's a bummer to not have the special rules text (which was always useful to read for armies I don't play), but if it means they get to stay in business I'm all for it. I just wish there was a utility out there to easily update with rules text for your own personal use.

Hard to believe GW would allow even that much slack based on their alleged C&D rep for fan sites, tattoos, etc.

clively wrote:
No. That would be a bad idea.

Imagine this: the person making the data file makes a simple mistake and sets Bolters to be AP2 weapons. Through the wonders of copy/paste they now have 6 files with bad information. bug report comes in, data file guy now has to fix that in 6 spots.... and that's an example of a "simple" problem. Hopefully as each little bug is found they remember to fix it in *all* the files.

Like I said, maintaining multiple lists would probably be easier than maintaining one list with complex logic, especially as it's largely "find and replace". With complicated logic, who knows how things are going to interact - it'll require a lot more testing.

privateer4hire wrote:
Hard to believe GW would allow even that much slack based on their alleged C&D rep for fan sites, tattoos, etc.

Because all of that is enforcable by the law. There's limitations on what you can protect by law, and from my understanding as an unqualified armchair internet lawyer, game systems are effectively not one of those.

 daedalus wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
Hard to believe GW would allow even that much slack based on their alleged C&D rep for fan sites, tattoos, etc.

Because all of that is enforcable by the law. There's limitations on what you can protect by law, and from my understanding as an unqualified armchair internet lawyer, game systems are effectively not one of those.

This is correct. The only aspect of GW's games are the mechanics themselves that are "unique" to the game. Examples would be the turn order, hit and wound tables.

USR's are useless outside the scope of those unique mechanics, and thus hold no actual value as information in this respect. Unit costs are trivial by themselves, as are the stat lines(which is why they are in the files).

If anything, the stats and unit costs are MORE pertinent to the games than USR's.

I have it on very good authority that the changes to the current format of referencing page numbers instead of including specific rules was not done because of any legal high ground GW has, but more that arguing with them is very much not worthwhile for people who are doing this for free. The compromise was made after legal counsel.

You'll note, the WFB files do not do this, nor are they required to.

Sigh. This is so frustrating to read over. Let me PUBLICLY SAY as one of the 40k file devs.

The files will be done when they are done.

Really guys, we cannot get more specific than that. If I give you a date and miss it, you all complain. If I give you a date and meet it, everyone still complains because of the occasional bug saying. well why didn't you take longer to internally test??

It really is a no-win situation for us and I plead to you all to simply accept that we all will work as quickly as we can when given time to apply our work to this project. But remember that we all are not paid for this work, we have to(as others have said) purchase the books ourselves, Which coincidentally means we DON'T GET THE BOOK TILL YOU DO. We all have real-life jobs(some of which are full time or longer meaning 50 - 80 hours a week), we have families, that deserve our time also. finally we need to eat, sleep, have a little free time ourselves, etc...

Rome wasn't built in a day guys and gals.

168 Hours in a week
50 Hours real Life Job
56 Hours Sleeping (8 hours a day for the week)
10 hours time to eat meals(this is probably not enough time realistically)

That leave 52 hours. This needs to cover everything else, family, fun, bathroom, etc.. and data file work. Assume we really only get maybe a couple hours a day(best case) and realistically a few hours a week(most likely) to work on dev files, bug fix, beta test, etc...

Please note that we give time when we 'want' to give time to the project. None of the maintainer group owes the community the data files. Everyone is perfectly free to take what we have created in the past, copy it a bazillion times and tweak a couple spots and use what they created. As many have said, that seems to be such an easy fast way to do it. Please, by all means. Have fun.

As for official updated files. Again I say, They will be done when they are done.

This is also listed in the FAQ we have numerously pointed people to.

I dunno... that's sounds reasonable and all but I'm pretty sure you could make up some time here and there.

15 minute meals gives you back about 4.5 hours and you really only need like 6 hours of sleep a night max. So that throws another 14 hours in there.

That's like a whole extra day of doing work for free that you're wasting. COME ON!

Anyway, thanks for the work that you all do. I'll gladly accept anything from the AB crew whenever it drops.

Jlong - thank you for all you and the other files folks do.

Sincerely and honestly.

Anyone who does not like it is free to find either find alternatives, or help - I am sorry they somehow have expectations that do not match reality.

 jlong05 wrote:
Sigh. This is so frustrating to read over. Let me PUBLICLY SAY as one of the 40k file devs.

If it makes you feel better, it's also frustrating to read this over and over again when you're looking for an eta ; p


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looks like the Space Marines 'dex is added now yay! Doesn't include support for SM allying with SM yet though, which is no biggie.

YOU GUYS! The file is out!!!


http://www.ab40k.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2148&p=10069#p10069

My relentless stalking of the ab40k.org site has finally paid off!

Is it just me, or does it not include the option to select chapter tactics anywhere? Every SM unit just has a "Chapter Tactics" rule.

 Yonan wrote:
Is it just me, or does it not include the option to select chapter tactics anywhere? Every SM unit just has a "Chapter Tactics" rule.

and yet again, I reiterate that we just cannot make everyone happy.

Go figure

 jlong05 wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
Is it just me, or does it not include the option to select chapter tactics anywhere? Every SM unit just has a "Chapter Tactics" rule.

and yet again, I reiterate that we just cannot make everyone happy.

Go figure

Where do you figure lack of happiness in that comment? I was asking if anyone knew how to do it. You have a large chip on your shoulder mate. If I was complaining it would be:

"We wait *this* long for a crippled list that doens't even include allies or the option to select chapter tactics? Lame!"

I didn't say that, but it seems to be what you read. Would this have been so hard? "No you're not missing anything, that's how we chose to implement it. You can expect allies in the future and this is how we're implementing chapter tactics, we didn't feel it warranted the large amount of effort required for such minimal gain." which would have been perfectly reasonable if that's how you chose to go about it. "You can't make everyone happy"... lol.

 jlong05 wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
Is it just me, or does it not include the option to select chapter tactics anywhere? Every SM unit just has a "Chapter Tactics" rule.

and yet again, I reiterate that we just cannot make everyone happy.

Go figure

No, you cannot. That being said, I am very happy and grateful that you you guys have put in all this work. Thank you.

There's a manual patch to the new release here that fixes some unspecified issues.

Much thanks for the release. I'll grab it when I get home.
I don't care how much of it there is, it's all good.

As for the whinging, Project updates are your friend.
I looked at the AB40k forums last weekend, and I couldn't see any status updates.
Anything like, "We look to have a week's work ahead of us", followed by "oops, just 1 more week..." is better than nothing.

Whatever, I don't use an army these days if the AB lists aren't out. No biggie, as I have 2.

Not sure where I did something wrong so maybe some of you can help. Got the prompt from AB to download the newest version and I downloaded the patch. Nothing appears to have changed though. Pedro is still 3 wounds and 3 attacks, no grav weapons. Did I so something wrong?

 Bikeninja wrote:
Not sure where I did something wrong so maybe some of you can help. Got the prompt from AB to download the newest version and I downloaded the patch. Nothing appears to have changed though. Pedro is still 3 wounds and 3 attacks, no grav weapons. Did I so something wrong?

I don't work on the SM list, however I would suggest checking the http://www.ab40k.org/portal.php bug reports. I believe I have seen several emails on new reports. That may be there. If you still don't find it reported, you may try opening a bug report providing the details you have and see if either our SM dev or someone on our FAQ Test team can help work out the issue for you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yonan wrote:

 jlong05 wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
Is it just me, or does it not include the option to select chapter tactics anywhere? Every SM unit just has a "Chapter Tactics" rule.

and yet again, I reiterate that we just cannot make everyone happy.

Go figure

Where do you figure lack of happiness in that comment? I was asking if anyone knew how to do it. You have a large chip on your shoulder mate. If I was complaining it would be:

"We wait *this* long for a crippled list that doens't even include allies or the option to select chapter tactics? Lame!"

I didn't say that, but it seems to be what you read. Would this have been so hard? "No you're not missing anything, that's how we chose to implement it. You can expect allies in the future and this is how we're implementing chapter tactics, we didn't feel it warranted the large amount of effort required for such minimal gain." which would have been perfectly reasonable if that's how you chose to go about it. "You can't make everyone happy"... lol.

Apologies. I guess I did read that incorrectly if that wasn't your intention. As for Chapter Tactics and Allies I woudl check the http://www.ab40k.org/portal.php forums for any updates. I know that the Allies is not in specifically, but am not aware of Chapter Tactics as I do not work on the SM files.

 Bikeninja wrote:
Not sure where I did something wrong so maybe some of you can help. Got the prompt from AB to download the newest version and I downloaded the patch. Nothing appears to have changed though. Pedro is still 3 wounds and 3 attacks, no grav weapons. Did I so something wrong?

You want to choose the "Codex: Space Marines" list, not the "Space Marines" list which is still there. It looks like all the 6th ed 'dexes have "Codex:" before the dex name whereas the older ones do not.

 jlong05 wrote:
Apologies. I guess I did read that incorrectly if that wasn't your intention.

No worries, the internet can get to you sometimes hehe.

Speaking as someone who has been dinking around with data files for awhile, AB can be a tremendous pain in the ass to work with. It's really not meant to cleanly handle intra-codex alliances without a lot of hacks, and the amount of work required to make just one race functional is staggering. Add to that all the supplemental material the AB40K team is supporting, plus the various legacy framework and code they still have to carry over from 5th edition or earlier, and it's amazing they can provide anything so quickly, much less that it actually (mostly) works. I've been playing with my own independent 6th edition implementation for a couple hours a week since 6th edition launched, and still don't have a complete codex of anything working, so hats off to AB40K team.

Awesome! Thank you volunteers that updated it!

Since we're on the subject of the AB SM files, can someone with inside knowledge comment on why the following still happens in AB?

1. Bikers CAN upgrade to special weapons BUT they don't lose any other wargear (they should be losing a bolt pistol by exchanging it for a Chainsword in order to get access to the special weapons table) and
2. Sergeants in Tac/Scout/Dev squads cannot upgrade their Bolters to a Ranged Weapon/Melee Weapon list item via the Chainsword exchange?

For those not following, there's apparently an AB only opinion that this two way exchange (Bolter->Chainsword->Melee/Ranged weapon upgrade) is not legal even though the FAQ on 09/13 pretty much shows that that path is intended as it's the only way for Bikers to get access to special weapons and therefore that they intend that the existing path of exchanging bolters in Sergeants for Chainswords should allow Melee/Ranged weapons as well.

...my combi-sergeants are objecting to AB forcing them to carry around a Bolter along with their combi-weapon...

For some reason I cannot select allies when I choose space marine as the main origination chart

http://dl.dropbox.com/s/29e7y1j00v347m2/AB40K6v1_30.ab?dl=1

new version a few days ago

The new version seems to have added the new SoB codex. Can't tell what else has changed.

Here is the latest....

http://dl.dropbox.com/s/o2xrujnj3q2mh8p/AB40K6v1_33.ab?dl=1

The Sargents are still messed up. I can trade in my Bolt Pistol for a Combi-Weapon, but not my Bolt Gun.

 Anpu42 wrote:
The Sargents are still messed up. I can trade in my Bolt Pistol for a Combi-Weapon, but not my Bolt Gun.

They're not messed up. On pg. 159 of the Codex, under Ranged weapons and Melee weapons it states: "A model can replace his bolt pistol and/or Melee weapon with one of the following:" Since combi-weapons are under the ranged weapons list, RAW, you can only replace the Sergeant's bolt pistol with a combi-weapon. Does it make sense to have both a boltgun and a combi-weapon, no...but unfortunately, that's the way the rules were written, and until GW FAQs it, Army Builder is following RAW.