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I'm pretty new to the game (I've only played one full game, and at 150 points at that), and I'm still getting the hang of it, but I'm finding that sometimes, the books/pdfs throw me off a lot.

For example, I just bought the JSA Support Pack, as people has adviced me I needed specialists and because the minis are very cool. That's what I did yesterday:

- Assemble the minis
- Ogle the minis (DAMN, they're fine)
- Open the book, go to the Yu Jing army list. Look for the tokusetsus and those little cute drones.
- Oh, they aren't there. Luckily CB has already released a file with the whole army lists.
- Open the army lists pdf, go to Yu Jing. Look for the tokusetsus and those little cute drones.
- ...here, here they are .
- Oh, those tokusetsu look fine for the cost.
- And those little drones are only 3 points, cool!
- G: Servitor... hmm... let's go see what that does.
- ...oh, it's not in the core rulebook. Gah.
- ah, ok, Luckily CB has already released a file with the HS/CP FAQ. I'll open the FAQ pdf then.
- ...wat. It's not there either, only a reference to it. I need the HS rules, apparently.
- ...wat. The Human Sphere pdf is not in their page!!!!

I... well. I'd say that was not ideal. Kinda miffed, right now. I mean, I would understand it if this wasn't a new edition, with a freshly released rulebook... I can understand having the full army lists out of the book (actually, it makes perfect sense), and I can understand not having all the rules in the core set, of course (even though I loathe the practice...), but releasing the rules and army lists for free, but making you go through a dozen of hoops and files to build and understand a lists is... annoying.

Sorry for the rant >_>

You pretty much nailed it. A consolidated PDF with the HS and CP stuff, except the 220+ pages of profiles, would have been Ideal. As I understand it, the fellow who does most of their IT work, including the Army builder, V, is away. So we get to test our PDF editing skills.

Anyway, here is the Human Sphere PDF, http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/downloads/rules/%5Bes%5DRulesHS.pdf and here is the CP and other new rules PDF http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/downloads/rules/%5Bes%5DNewRules.pdf

All are on this page from the old site, http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/downloads/rules/%5Bes%5DNewRules.pdf. You may want to book mark it.

Un Saludo.

Edit: Oops, when you abbreviate Campaignaradiso to C: P you get C. I'm sure there is a metaphor in there somewhere.

Quite understandable.

Albertorius-
Yeah, I'm in the same boat too. New to the game, and half the Haqqislam units I now own aren't even covered in the physical book's profiles.
Even more annoying is that it doesn't even have the rules for some of the stuff my models have, like viral ammunition.
I got it, this stuff is available online, but still.
Oh well.

Cue someone coming here to say, "Oh but CB has said from the very beginning of N3 that they were going to botch this new edition's release! So everything's okay! It's your fault this the N3 release is messed up because you didn't go search their website to realize that it would be messed up!"

That was hilarious, Albertorius

I'm in the same boat, a bit. Just got my Tohaa back from the local painter who was working on them for me, and would love to play, but I don't want to have to go to so many sources just to get a game. Hoping one of the army builders gets updates released next week (Maya net) so that at least that hurdle will be past!

 Albertorius wrote:

- ...wat. The Human Sphere pdf is not in their page!!!!

Not to defend CB here, since I think this decision was the second worse possible way to do it (the worse way is to do the same thing, but electrify the floor first), but the old website is still up, including the downloads:
http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/downloads/

Still what a pointlessly missed opportunity...

EDIT:
Hum, completely managed to miss the links in Red Harvest's post. No the post. The links. Must be going blind.

Sadly it is what it is, I don't like having to reference multiple documents as much as anyone else, that mainly the reason I own a Samsung Note, also have a tablet I tend to load the pdfs up onto with bookmarks.

But the best tool I have found since I started wargaming was my noggin, the more you can commit to memory the less you have to look

Also I will PM Casey and see if he can add links to all the pdfs in his stickey.

Oh noes! This company that gives away all of its rules for free, saving you from having to fork out cash you could be spending on minis to buy their books unless you really want to hasn't yet published the free rules that I particularly want right now!!

Those evil, incompetent bastards. How dare they?

 precinctomega wrote:
Oh noes! This company that gives away all of its rules for free, saving you from having to fork out cash you could be spending on minis to buy their books unless you really want to hasn't yet published the free rules that I particularly want right now!!

Those evil, incompetent bastards. How dare they?

Yes, when a company use free rules as a way to sell more minis, people actually expect to get the rules they paid for, by buying minis.
I know, for one, that I would not have started playing Infinity if it were not for the free rules.

Also, since then, I bought Human Sphere and Campaign Paradisio, as well as N3. Ultimately, because the rules were free.
And, because of that stupid and pointless decision not to consolidate the rules, I paid for something that is, overall, significantly worse than it should have been.

 precinctomega wrote:
Oh noes! This company that gives away all of its rules for free, saving you from having to fork out cash you could be spending on minis to buy their books unless you really want to hasn't yet published the free rules that I particularly want right now!!

Those evil, incompetent bastards. How dare they?

Har Har Har, I know you are trying to be funny but lets not start any conflicts with those that not find that humorous. We have had a lot of issues with players taking up their grievances with how CB handled this launch up in the N&R Thread and I for one (and I bet Alpharius too) are pleased that we have a civil discussion going on down here.

The OP didn't know where to look (He is new) and Red resolved his question, if you have nothing meaningful to add, then don't, you can always use the official forums if you want to act that way.

This is looking like I'm not going to be able to avoid manually researching and writing up the profiles for all my stuff before games the way some folks do with 40k in this game.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
This is looking like I'm not going to be able to avoid manually researching and writing up the profiles for all my stuff before games the way some folks do with 40k in this game.

I know some people over on the official boards are already putting together Faction specific pdfs with all the unit profiles and Sectorial lists in one file, versus scrolling through the entire Unit Profile pdf.

As soon as the Army Builder has been updated then that will certainly make things a lot easier. Until then, what I would probably do (and I do this with every force I build, I have a memory like a sieve) is look through all of the unit profiles and special rules. If there are any I don't know, I copy-paste the rules into a word document for that force. Once I've read the rule in reference during a game, about 17 times, usually I remember.

But yes can see how things can be a bit awkward if you are new to the game (and, especially if you don't know about the different sources and think it should all be in one book).

Who knows, eventually CB might bow into pressure and fold everything into one mega-PDF and rule source? They brought the PDF release of the N3 rules months forward because enough people had commented on not wanting to wait, so I think it's a possibility.

Until then, I would be optimistic and think that at least it's not a case of you having bought a book, and then found out that your unit isn't in there, but you'll have to pay for some DLC along with it!

Saying that "they brought the PDF release of the N3 rules months forwards because enough people had commented on not wanting to wait" is fairly disingenuous.

Remember that the PDF was released because they were pretty sure NOBODY would have the book before the end of the year. The shipping companies really came through and ensured that was not the case, but releasing the PDF was the smartest move they could possibly do as damage control.

And really, saying that things will get a lot easier when the Army Builder has been updated is pretty misleading as well. It's not a question of people not having access to the profiles--it's the fact that right now finding the profiles in the PDF documentation they put out is a mess.
It really would not have been difficult for them to release individual PDFs for each faction for ease of reference.

And finally? The pressure isn't on CB to have "everything into one mega-PDF and rule source" but rather it is on them to have done everything in a FAR more logical manner.

And for the record? I do think that EVERYTHING SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN ONE BOOK. For the amount of money you paid for N3, it damn well should have had Fireteam rules, it damn well should have had all the weapons, all the factions, etc.

Keeping Paradiso and Human Sphere around was quite possibly an awful idea to do.

 Kanluwen wrote:
And for the record? I do think that EVERYTHING SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN ONE BOOK. For the amount of money you paid for N3, it damn well should have had Fireteam rules, it damn well should have had all the weapons, all the factions, etc.

I do think they should have done it as well. But, that would also lead Aleph and Tohaa players to, rightfully, ask why their fluff wasn't in the fluff book and why their profiles weren't in the hardcopy. And that would have made the book enormous, easily double the page count of what we have now. And I can say, as someone who works in the print industry (on the IT and production side), that book would have been at least 50% more expensive. Full colour, high quality printing on the scale they're doing is not cheap.

However, not doing it to the PDF's is a crying shame. They want the PDFs to be the 'living rulebook', so they should make the effort. Consolidated army lists for each faction, including that factions weapons - though I personally appreciate them consolidating everything into one 'army list' PDF, as I hated the old half dozen PDFs for unit profiles with some units split across multiple PDFs. Human Sphere and Paradiso rules properly updated and rolled into the main rules PDF, rather than this errata they ended up doing.

Basically, rather than make the hardcopy some monstrous, far too expensive tome that people will not want to carry around with them due to size, just do a good job on the online rules they hold up as the go-to rules for the game.

There are several army builders out there right now in the works alongside Army 5.

Aleph Toolbox: http://anyplace.it/ia3/ia.html
Imbue Games temporary builder: http://www.imbuegames.com/

Mayanet for iPad is in the works, as is an Android App (Name TBD).

There are spreadsheets to be found on the official forums if you dig a bit.

Hopefully one or more of those will help you put somethign together.

I used the Imbue Games version and just copy/pasted into a document and printed for the Dire States event I played in. It worked fine.

Some profiles have not been input yet, but those are either one man or spread out over a team operations.

Red Harvest wrote:You pretty much nailed it. A consolidated PDF with the HS and CP stuff, except the 220+ pages of profiles, would have been Ideal. As I understand it, the fellow who does most of their IT work, including the Army builder, V, is away. So we get to test our PDF editing skills.

Heh. Yeah, well, it is what it is.

Anyway, here is the Human Sphere PDF, http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/downloads/rules/%5Bes%5DRulesHS.pdf and here is the CP and other new rules PDF http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/downloads/rules/%5Bes%5DNewRules.pdf

All are on this page from the old site, http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/downloads/rules/%5Bes%5DNewRules.pdf. You may want to book mark it.

I indeed want to, thank you very much!... why CB don't have those files displayed in their new website is beyond me, though.

RiTides wrote:That was hilarious, Albertorius

I thought so too, after writing it over at hangouts to a friend ^_^

mrondeau wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

- ...wat. The Human Sphere pdf is not in their page!!!!

Not to defend CB here, since I think this decision was the second worse possible way to do it (the worse way is to do the same thing, but electrify the floor first), but the old website is still up, including the downloads:
http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/downloads/

Nice. One would think they'd have put those links at their new page, though...

Still what a pointlessly missed opportunity...

Absolutely... that's what new editions are for, people!

precinctomega wrote:Oh noes! This company that gives away all of its rules for free, saving you from having to fork out cash you could be spending on minis to buy their books unless you really want to hasn't yet published the free rules that I particularly want right now!!

Those evil, incompetent bastards. How dare they?

Yeah, I'm a bad man and should feel bad, right? Right.

Well, as I said in the OP, I'm a bit miffed about it because it's annoying. As for the rest, I said this there, too:

I... well. I'd say that was not ideal. Kinda miffed, right now. I mean, I would understand it if this wasn't a new edition, with a freshly released rulebook... I can understand having the full army lists out of the book (actually, it makes perfect sense), and I can understand not having all the rules in the core set, of course (even though I loathe the practice...), but releasing the rules and army lists for free, but making you go through a dozen of hoops and files to build and understand a lists is... annoying.

So yeah, I understand giving things for free, and I understand not wanting to give things for free (they are a company and they want to eat, after all). What I don't understand, though (or rather, what I feel annoying) is giving things for free but making their customers (current or potential) jump willy-nilly through a lot of hoops to get there. It is annoying, it is not user friendly, it is not newbie friendly, and it's just plain wierd.

So yeah, how dare they to do it that way, and how dare I to find it less than ideal! The bastards, we both!.

mrondeau wrote:Yes, when a company use free rules as a way to sell more minis, people actually expect to get the rules they paid for, by buying minis.
I know, for one, that I would not have started playing Infinity if it were not for the free rules.

Also, since then, I bought Human Sphere and Campaign Paradisio, as well as N3. Ultimately, because the rules were free.
And, because of that stupid and pointless decision not to consolidate the rules, I paid for something that is, overall, significantly worse than it should have been.

And then there's this, too. The rules can be thought of as free advertising for a company whose main business is making minis. And I already bought O:I and the core book, too, along with the artbook and a crapload of minis...

AnomanderRake wrote:This is looking like I'm not going to be able to avoid manually researching and writing up the profiles for all my stuff before games the way some folks do with 40k in this game.

Yeah ^_^. And there's also the fact that the game has a gak-ton of rules, too. Next time I play, I'm gonna copypaste every relevant rule for a mini below the stats, just so I don't need to flip through the book/pfds to get them.

Pacific wrote:As soon as the Army Builder has been updated then that will certainly make things a lot easier. Until then, what I would probably do (and I do this with every force I build, I have a memory like a sieve) is look through all of the unit profiles and special rules. If there are any I don't know, I copy-paste the rules into a word document for that force. Once I've read the rule in reference during a game, about 17 times, usually I remember.

Well, yes and no. As far as I see, the official army builder only prints out the stats and the weapons, so I'd still need to go and get all the rules in one place... so well, I can do that already with the army lists pdf. If the new one allows me to print out all the relevant special rules, though? That would be amazing.

Until then, I would be optimistic and think that at least it's not a case of you having bought a book, and then found out that your unit isn't in there, but you'll have to pay for some DLC along with it!

Yeah, at least the rules for all the units in the core are in the core, so there's that. Of course, there's also the fact that CB isn't yet selling minis of all the stuff included in the core, but have loads of minis that aren't and that don't have their rules there, so...

Kanluwen wrote:And really, saying that things will get a lot easier when the Army Builder has been updated is pretty misleading as well. It's not a question of people not having access to the profiles--it's the fact that right now finding the profiles in the PDF documentation they put out is a mess.
It really would not have been difficult for them to release individual PDFs for each faction for ease of reference.

And finally? The pressure isn't on CB to have "everything into one mega-PDF and rule source" but rather it is on them to have done everything in a FAR more logical manner.

Yeah, this. Simply put, I don't think I can understand the reasons or the logical thought train that has lead to this.

And for the record? I do think that EVERYTHING SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN ONE BOOK. For the amount of money you paid for N3, it damn well should have had Fireteam rules, it damn well should have had all the weapons, all the factions, etc.

For the record, I feel the same. New edition? Please make it as simple as possible to play.

-Loki- wrote:I do think they should have done it as well. But, that would also lead Aleph and Tohaa players to, rightfully, ask why their fluff wasn't in the fluff book and why their profiles weren't in the hardcopy. And that would have made the book enormous, easily double the page count of what we have now. And I can say, as someone who works in the print industry (on the IT and production side), that book would have been at least 50% more expensive. Full colour, high quality printing on the scale they're doing is not cheap.

I understand that, of course, but I certainly would have preferred if they had cut the army lists completely from the book and had put them up as pdfs (or as another book) if they had put all the rules of the damn game in a single, easy to reference from, rulebook. I'm not sure how much more text would that have been either, but I think that the end book would have been smaller that way, not bigger.

However, not doing it to the PDF's is a crying shame. They want the PDFs to be the 'living rulebook', so they should make the effort. Consolidated army lists for each faction, including that factions weapons - though I personally appreciate them consolidating everything into one 'army list' PDF, as I hated the old half dozen PDFs for unit profiles with some units split across multiple PDFs. Human Sphere and Paradiso rules properly updated and rolled into the main rules PDF, rather than this errata they ended up doing.

Basically, rather than make the hardcopy some monstrous, far too expensive tome that people will not want to carry around with them due to size, just do a good job on the online rules they hold up as the go-to rules for the game.

This would absolutely do, too.

ski2060 wrote:There are several army builders out there right now in the works alongside Army 5.

Aleph Toolbox: http://anyplace.it/ia3/ia.html
Imbue Games temporary builder: http://www.imbuegames.com/

Mayanet for iPad is in the works, as is an Android App (Name TBD).

There are spreadsheets to be found on the official forums if you dig a bit.

Hopefully one or more of those will help you put somethign together.

I used the Imbue Games version and just copy/pasted into a document and printed for the Dire States event I played in. It worked fine.

Some profiles have not been input yet, but those are either one man or spread out over a team operations.

Thank you! Those are nice to avoid adding stuff up, but there's still the problem of actually getting at the rules.

I guess I'll be waiting for a fan made consolidated pdf to come out then. I had one for N2 that re-ordered the rules to make them flow better and consolidated all the rules and equipment from all the books.

Didn't last edition have a rules wiki that connected to the army builder? Because that was the main way I remember learning the rules in the first place. I just hope that gets fully updated soon.

There is an N2 Wiki. Can't remember if it is connected to Army 4 or not.

Army 5 will have a built in helper. No clue what it will do regarding list building, or if it will have rules info also.

3dog wrote:
Didn't last edition have a rules wiki that connected to the army builder? Because that was the main way I remember learning the rules in the first place. I just hope that gets fully updated soon.

Yes that's what I spent most of the time on also. Pretty sure that the special rules were linked to the wiki when you clicked on the option, would be very surprised if the latest edition doesn't have something similar (or perhaps even more polished).

I was counting on N3 making it easier to convince my friends to play the game since they reorganized everything. Partial success, my friends found the game easier to understand, follow, and play but with the revelation that they would also need to download several hundred pages of pdfs in order to play the game all of them opted out. Corvus Belli really shot themselves in the foot with this one.

I'm not really sure why having to download some PDFs is enough to turn people off the game. I get all the complaints and it could've been handled much better, but the fact people are deciding not to play because you have to download some free stuff. It's better than GW where you have to pay for a bunch of books to play. It just seems like such a small thing to actually turn people away.

Sorry, sounds like some seriously ADHD gamers. Can't be bothered to download and read some free PDF's?

So, are they bothered with having to shell out actual money for multiple books to play any of the myriad other games out there in gamerland?

 ImAGeek wrote:
I'm not really sure why having to download some PDFs is enough to turn people off the game. I get all the complaints and it could've been handled much better, but the fact people are deciding not to play because you have to download some free stuff. It's better than GW where you have to pay for a bunch of books to play. It just seems like such a small thing to actually turn people away.

The ironic part there is a lot people will pirate the volumes of additional material for 40k.

Maybe if CB released the PDFs only as torrents these people would play the game?

Point is that CB didn't make it easy for people. Instead of giving us a single 100% up to date resource that would allow people to play the game in its completion, they gave us an incomplete product. Its not just a matter of downloading extra documents, its a matter of downloading, printing, and then carrying them around with you. Beyond that, the rules for CP and HS haven't received nearly the same treatment as the core rules have in terms of organization, layout, translation, and clarity.

People are going to complain no matter what.

If CB don't release the rules as a pdf, they're a money grabbing evil empire...

If they release them three months after the book release, they're forcing people to pay for a book because they can't wait...

If they release a pdf at the same time as the book release, they've screwed everyone that pre-ordered...

If they release a full pdf of the rules, there are too many pages to read...

Can you imagine the outcry if they just released a cut down set of rules?

And excuse CB for wanting to make some money from HS and OP books...

if they would just republish updated CP and HS id actually be happier, no need for so many pdfs

 ImAGeek wrote:
I'm not really sure why having to download some PDFs is enough to turn people off the game. I get all the complaints and it could've been handled much better, but the fact people are deciding not to play because you have to download some free stuff. It's better than GW where you have to pay for a bunch of books to play. It just seems like such a small thing to actually turn people away.

It's not the "having to download some PDFs" bit.

It's the fact that quite a few people who were interested in Infinity(but not interested enough to watch the hours and hours of Beasts of War "interviews") paid money for the N3 book--only to find out that they did not get a complete overhaul like what was being touted.

There's a reason some of the posters on the Infinity forum are starting to say "Because N3!" when it comes to some bizarre issues/missing rules, etc.