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I really struggled with the game until I started using Army. It basically compiles it all down to a warmachine like card and makes it much easier to play. I don’t think cards proper really work for the game because of equipment load outs. You’d either need so many cards you’d struggle to keep things organized or the card would have so much extra data it would still be fairly confusing. Printing the list after building it let’s Army cut out everything you don’t have available.

Great, that's good. They have a way forward.

So now think of it this way. For infinity to prosper, it needs to grow.

Now imagine a new player trying to get into the game, or start a group, with the state of the rules being all over the place right now.

Even if everything is online, it's still extremely useful to have some sort of consolidated focal point for players to jump in at.

CB failed at this with N3, which is why N3 hasn't grown in the way they wanted.

N4 might just be a series of learn to play books, followed by a link to web resources, but that's still better than the unconsolidated mess of N3 from the very start.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Great, that's good. They have a way forward.

So now think of it this way. For infinity to prosper, it needs to grow.

Now imagine a new player trying to get into the game, or start a group, with the state of the rules being all over the place right now.

Even if everything is online, it's still extremely useful to have some sort of consolidated focal point for players to jump in at.

CB failed at this with N3, which is why N3 hasn't grown in the way they wanted.

N4 might just be a series of learn to play books, followed by a link to web resources, but that's still better than the unconsolidated mess of N3 from the very start.

Infinity has been growing by all accounts. The growth has always been slow, but it never seems to stop either. The rules are an absolute nightmare to start with. While they need cleaning up, I don't think cleanup, consolidation, and removing nested rules is going to make the game much easier to learn. I think the best way to make it understandable is to produce some high quality learn to play videos that walks people through various game concepts. Similar to what GW has been doing with the Becca Scott videos.

The "growth" has always been questionable.

 Kanluwen wrote:
The "growth" has always been questionable.

Hasn't the growth been really well documented?

 jake wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
The "growth" has always been questionable.

Hasn't the growth been really well documented?

The TLDR version:
Corvus Belli isn't a public company. They don't have to make stuff available. They can say their numbers are shooting through the roof and nobody can dispute it with hard facts.

Mugaaz wrote:

The rules are an absolute nightmare to start with. While they need cleaning up, I don't think cleanup, consolidation, and removing nested rules is going to make the game much easier to learn. I think the best way to make it understandable is to produce some high quality learn to play videos that walks people through various game concepts. Similar to what GW has been doing with the Becca Scott videos.

"Our rules suck. They should be cleaned up and consolidated. But let's not do that and instead create more external things and not fix the core problem."

No one's asking for just a consolidated rulebook guys. Of course videos and other resources are good things. Stop getting focused on the idea of only the rulebook. We're saying CONSOLIDATE and CLEAN the entire game so that there's one point of entry, one consolidated reference and rules point that tells a player how to play.

Look at the downloads page, there's:
0-12: Profiles and New Rules
Rules N3
Human Sphere N3 Rules
New Rules
Deadalus' Falls New Rules
N3 FAQ

A better example is the Star Wars Legion rules reference. One single document, updated and kept as one single document for every new rule that's released.

A wiki doesn't cut it by itself because it's only good for players already immersed in the game, it doesn't show players the whole of the rules, just individual rules.

 Vertrucio wrote:

Mugaaz wrote:

The rules are an absolute nightmare to start with. While they need cleaning up, I don't think cleanup, consolidation, and removing nested rules is going to make the game much easier to learn. I think the best way to make it understandable is to produce some high quality learn to play videos that walks people through various game concepts. Similar to what GW has been doing with the Becca Scott videos.

"Our rules suck. They should be cleaned up and consolidated. But let's not do that and instead create more external things and not fix the core problem."

No one's asking for just a consolidated rulebook guys. Of course videos and other resources are good things. Stop getting focused on the idea of only the rulebook. We're saying CONSOLIDATE and CLEAN the entire game so that there's one point of entry, one consolidated reference and rules point that tells a player how to play.

Look at the downloads page, there's:
0-12: Profiles and New Rules
Rules N3
Human Sphere N3 Rules
New Rules
Deadalus' Falls New Rules
N3 FAQ

A better example is the Star Wars Legion rules reference. One single document, updated and kept as one single document for every new rule that's released.

A wiki doesn't cut it by itself because it's only good for players already immersed in the game, it doesn't show players the whole of the rules, just individual rules.

Agreed. this is whats needed.

Monkeysloth wrote:
While I don't play, just like to paint the models, I've got a Warmachine card here. I can see the weapon's damage, range and special rules/effects symbols quite clearly. Then above that info, in a smaller text, is the weapon name. You can have your easy to find stats and still have the fluff. Then if you need to know what the special effect symbol is you look in one place in the rule book. CB stats block is just a name, that requires you to look elsewhere for damage, range and effects, then you have to look up in a different location the ammo effects which may require you to look up another location for a status effect. I don't see the appeal to that. Sure this day and age you can print out all the different charts and pages but you're still shifting between lots of pages to find info while most of that info can all be in one place.

And the dumb comment was towards CB's attitude towards their rules. If you're trying to get people to play your game, and thus by your product, why make it more difficult to do so?

The issue you're missing is logistics. Cards are difficult to update. Any physical thing is, but cards more so.
Having a list of weapons and ammo in the rulebook and having profiles refer to that makes the easy to update and use army builder we have now possible.

Plus the shared weapons fits the theme and feel and makes the details and rules common in skirmish games easier to communicate.

How long the list of weapons and ammo is a bit long for my taste though.

 Bladerunner2019 wrote:


Hacking and weapons lists need a trimming. There are too many similar programs & weapon profiles.
I know command tokens addressed some important balance issues, but it’s a clumsy meta tool.
It’d be nice if they could cut down on the number of tokens overall. You need so many damned tokens to play this game.

There seems to be a lot of weapons that are basically "combi-rifle but with xxx ammo". I would have thought that listing them all as "COMBI Rifle (std / AP / DA / etc)" would make things more straightforward.

The other thing I'd look at is the different levels of skills. Re-number them so there's no level 0, for one thing, and for those ones where level X has no connection to the others, make that a different skill entirely (for example, one of the levels of Marksman explicitly states it doesn't grant access to the other levels - make it something else instead for clarity).

Unrelated, but one thing I'd like to see is some brief discussion of the military formations of the various powers. As it is, we know of the various different units available, but there's nothing about the higher organisations; how many Zhanshi make up a squad, for example? and how are they armed? Are hackers squad- or platoon-level assets? We've got some colour scheme options in a couple of books but nothing more. Not really relevant to the game as such, but it fills out the setting in the same way that all the unnecessary background detail in early 40k really fleshed out the setting. Or perhaps that stuff's in the RPG?


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 LunarSol wrote:
I don't really like teaching with 100 point armies. I find too often that at that small a model count, losses just feel catastrophic when the order pool is trimmed so significantly. You also need to play on a weirdly narrow 2x4 table to keep ranges relevant but still provide adequate ARO saturation to "feel" right.

I've always demoed with starter boxes, simplifying things if necessary (for example, Operation Icestorm and Red Veil simplify those models armed with MULTI rifles down to COMBI rifles, ignore the invisible placement of TO Camo models and disregard hacking. If I were demoing to someone who'd never played any miniature game before in their life then I might go down to the progression in those boxes (start with three basic riflemen, go from there) but otherwise that's too boring IMO.

As for keeping on top of the game, I've been playing since before 1st edition came out (still got the little booklet that the 1st ed starter sets came with). I've never really gotten to grips with the Fireteam rules (I prefer the main faction army lists), and the hacking rules have always been a bit of a dark art. Although having Possessed a Jotum the other week, I'll need to read (and paint) more.


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 Bladerunner2019 wrote:

 Ronin_eX wrote:


In general a living rulebook would be the best way to go, but so long as the core book is feature complete (i.e. you can run sectorials without having to reference some other book or document) then it should be good.

The wiki is well maintained & linked to everything in the army builder.
That’s been the living rulebook for some time.

That's fine, except my gaming venue has poor wifi and iffy mobile signal. Keeping a browser open on my iPad pretty much drained the battery as it hunted for a signal for four hours.


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 Kalamadea wrote:
Counterpoint: Between the armybuilder, the Wiki, and the Comlog app, I haven't even bothered to bring a rulebook with me for the last year and a half, not even to tournaments. They aren't needed. Once you know the basics, it's FAR easier to look up the wiki by circumstance

I'm a fan of online and PDF rules, but I've found that it's quicker to leave the rulebook open at the index then flick to the relevant page than it is to use the wiki and wait for the page to load.


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 Kalamadea wrote:

Cronch wrote:

if you're just willing to use the readily available tools

It really doesn't sound much more enticing by saying I need to bring half a dozen sources beyond the book(s) to play the game. Like, at all.

You need 1 resource with 3 programs on it. That's it. A tablet or phone with 3 apps: Army, Comlog and EITHER Infinity Helper if you have no Wifi or a web browser for the Wiki if you do. That's it.

This is the first I've heard of the Infinity Helper app. It's not referred to on the official website (nor is Comlog, as far as I can tell) and isn't available on iOS.

If we're at the point where I need an Android tablet to play this game, then that should be made pretty clear right on the website.


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 Kalamadea wrote:

Kinematica is a perfect example of the complexity and nuance that I DON'T want CB to trim away, it's a great rule. You say it's situational and does very little. EXACTLY! But it's also something relatively easy to remember/check, comes on only a few units, and when it comes into pay it's EXTREMELY useful! Kinematica lets you dodge further in ARO, that's it. Level 1 is 1" further, level 2 is 2" further. On it's surface, not a big deal, but many of the units that have it are close combat troops, so when somebody is close, you can Dodge-Engage as an ARO, and oh look, you have a 4" reaction instead of a 2", which can be a tremendous difference. Or, they put it on fast models like bikes to represent their extra speed. It's difficult to dodge on a bike, but if you do, you're going to move further than somebody on foot. Makes sense. It's a mechanical rule that adds flavor to units AND it actually very useful to the models that have it. On a high Phys model like my Domaru, they dodge 4" on 14s! I have crossed half a board and gotten into close combat ON MY OPPONENT'S TURN because of Kinematica, it's AWESOME! But you want to cut it because it's "situational"? THE FETH?!

I agree that Kinematika isn't an obscure rule or one that never comes up (although the name's rubbish), but IIRC ARO Dodge used to let a model move half its 1st MOV value, rather than a fixed 2". That represents fast models dodging further without needing a Skill to show that.


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 Grey Templar wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Where is that written? I don't think I've seen that in the main book?

As mentioned, its ITS. Which the vast majority of even casual gamers still use in their garage games.

I've never looked at an ITS document, and neither has the majority of my local group. All, the "T" stands for "Tournament". If I'm not going to tournaments, then there's nothing of interest to me (or at least, there shouldn't be) in it. If it's a preview of a rules change, then incorporate that change into the proper rules documents.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

That's fine, except my gaming venue has poor wifi and iffy mobile signal. Keeping a browser open on my iPad pretty much drained the battery as it hunted for a signal for four hours.

The apps (I'm pretty sure there's an official one, but I use MayaNet) work in offline mode with most of the wiki stored locally so it shouldn't be too big of an issue.

Ah, now that I look it up, I see that finally MayaNet is available on iOS.

Still, the fact that these are all unofficial third-party apps and there's no mention of them anywhere on the official website means that CB clearly don't intend these to be a primary source of game rules. I'd never heard of MayaNet before, for example.

There's an official one apparently that's basically an offline version of Army. I know a few people I play with use it. I've just not tracked it down as it seems to be a self install kind of thing.

Only for Android or PC (and the PC version looks like it installs another app which runs the Army data files. It took me a while to find the icon in the Start menu because it’s not called “Infinity Army” .

The mobile browser version works OK, apart from not being able to generate a PDF of the courtesy list.

It's a stand alone program that runs on Windows or, oddly enough, Linux. I find it convenient. It does not update as quickly as the online version. It based on the electron platform, FYI. To get the mobile version, I had to sign up for the Beta? It updates on my phone and tablet, and is certainly convenient, even without a wifi connection.

I'm underwhelmed by the releases shown. Meh.

Maybe we'll hear more about N4 from the Interplanetario this week-end. I'm certain the CBeros will get earfuls about it from the attendees.

The Army Mobile app/site is what makes Infinity really work right now. Without the app/site, Infinity would be a super mess with rules scattered across way too many rulebooks and PDFs. The App/Site and wiki make Infinity approachable by new players and lets them slowly ramp up their knowledge of the game.

My real wish is that CB would make an iOS app (for my iPhone/iPad friends) and update their Kindle app (it does not have O-12 or Spiral Corps. yet).

-----

There are many things CB could do to make the game tighter and better (better organization would help a lot), but I do not want them to go full on "8th edition 40k". I like the complexity with Infinity and would not like it as much if that complexity were removed. I also kind of fear the ARISTEIA! dice are going to replace the d20... :(

Still, I am looking forward to the new edition.

Here's a simple improvement: Make armor saves successful on ties and just increase the damage of all weapons by one. That way the math for armor saves is more intuitive of quicker to calculate.

 Cannibal wrote:
Here's a simple improvement: Make armor saves successful on ties and just increase the damage of all weapons by one. That way the math for armor saves is more intuitive of quicker to calculate.

That is a good suggestion.

Has anyone brought up crits yet? *ducks*

Nope. But you can bring it up here, https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/779086.page#10537882 in our very own N4 wishlisting thread.

Have at it. But not at each other.

 Cannibal wrote:
Here's a simple improvement: Make armor saves successful on ties and just increase the damage of all weapons by one. That way the math for armor saves is more intuitive of quicker to calculate.

Every roll in the game has a target number and a binary "above or not" resolution, that includes armour rolls.
Why would you want to change that?

 The Infinite wrote:

 Cannibal wrote:
Here's a simple improvement: Make armor saves successful on ties and just increase the damage of all weapons by one. That way the math for armor saves is more intuitive of quicker to calculate.

Every roll in the game has a target number and a binary "above or not" resolution, that includes armour rolls.
Why would you want to change that?

It just makes the math a little more intuitive and a little quicker to do. It's easier to just subtract armor from weapon damage to get your target number than it is to subtract armor and then add one to get your target number. Is it a huge thing? No, but just changing "above or not" to "equal or above or not" would speed up the game in a small way while detracting nothing from the actual play and balance. It feels like a lesser version of when D&D went from THAC0 to D20. Same odds, easier math.

 Cannibal wrote:

 The Infinite wrote:

 Cannibal wrote:
Here's a simple improvement: Make armor saves successful on ties and just increase the damage of all weapons by one. That way the math for armor saves is more intuitive of quicker to calculate.

Every roll in the game has a target number and a binary "above or not" resolution, that includes armour rolls.
Why would you want to change that?

It just makes the math a little more intuitive and a little quicker to do. It's easier to just subtract armor from weapon damage to get your target number than it is to subtract armor and then add one to get your target number. Is it a huge thing? No, but just changing "above or not" to "equal or above or not" would speed up the game in a small way while detracting nothing from the actual play and balance. It feels like a lesser version of when D&D went from THAC0 to D20. Same odds, easier math.

You don't appear to understand.

Right now, every roll in the game is calculated and resolved in exactly the same way.
You want to make armour a special case.
That is bad game design.

Armor is definitely not resolved the same way as any other roll. Its the only one you're rolling high for instead of below a target number. In all the other cases you have your BS 12 and get to say "you need a 12 or lower" or something to succeed. With armor you look at your Dmg 13 and have to say, "you need to beat a 13 so you need a 14 or higher" which is very different when the rest of the game rewards you for matching the target number.

Yeah. That is one thing that always trips people up. Ties on armor rolls should be successful for nothing more than simplicity.

 LunarSol wrote:
Armor is definitely not resolved the same way as any other roll. Its the only one you're rolling high for instead of below a target number. In all the other cases you have your BS 12 and get to say "you need a 12 or lower" or something to succeed. With armor you look at your Dmg 13 and have to say, "you need to beat a 13 so you need a 14 or higher" which is very different when the rest of the game rewards you for matching the target number.

Armor rolls work the same way as other roles but switch the player. Instead of the attacker needing to roll at or under the target, they witch the roller to the defender (I believe to make the game experience feel better) and reverse the roll needed to higher than the target.

One of the major reasons I do not play this game is because I cannot pronounce the names of most of the units. They need to make it more consumer friendly.

The "armour" roll, is actually just a "damage" roll being made by the owning player rather than the attacking one.

e.g.

Hit by combi, damage 13: -3 for armour, -3 for cover, you need to roll 7 or less to cause damage. Switching players, the owning player wants to roll 8 or more.

It's amazing how just a perspective change can hoodwink in that way.

Perspective is pretty much all that matters when it comes to rules clarity

Smellingsalts wrote:
One of the major reasons I do not play this game is because I cannot pronounce the names of most of the units. They need to make it more consumer friendly.

This is a change I'd find disspointing. Most names have an origin or reason to be, and simplifying them into simpler english terms is no guarantee they won't be butchered to be honest