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Now this is just a pet peeve that I'm sure many people will find insignificant, but IMO, alphabetical order is just about the worst way to sort lists of units (such as the points costs that were posted today).

I realize units can no longer be sorted by battlefield roles since those no longer exist, but I wish they'd at least find some other way to sort them according to their category, e.g. characters, battleline units, transports, non-transport vehicles, aircraft, etc. Also try to keep similar units close together in the list, such as Bike Squad/Scout Bike Squad and the various Baneblade variants, to make cost comparisons easier.

Again, not something super important... just an irksome detail for my autistic ass.

.

Alphabetical is a far sight better than the absolute mess most of the datacard pdfs are in.

That they don't match is frustrating.


The biggest problem with alphabetical in the points lists is their nonsense names aren't what I'm looking for. I can't, for example, find firewarriors. I guess (by process of elimination) that they're breacher teams now, but I thought that was for the short-range guns. \shrug.

Space marine characters are just a fight to find in both the points list and datacards.

Voss wrote:
… I can't, for example, find firewarriors. I guess (by process of elimination) that they're breacher teams now, but I thought that was for the short-range guns. \shrug.

Normal Firewarriors are “Strike Teams”. Breachers are the short-ranged variant that are probably the only unit in the entire edition where their main gun is out-ranged by their pistol.

I do miss the days when codex and battletomes were logically laid out. AoS has 4 role types and yet GW can't even get those in order; you get leaders interspace with troops and everything.


Honestly I've for a long time felt that somewhere in GW there's been a failing. Some editor that left or a new one that arrived which just resulted in them losing the ability to create logical flows of information in their documents.

Heck it might even be how they produce things; perhaps things are coming in in drips and drabs to the point where they never have time to sit down and properly format before it has to be sent to printers; or maybe the printer is doing it


Whatever it is there certainly WAS a time where GW could lay out a document logically and we are just not in those times any more.





Or heck perhaps the writers are laying it out and they are so familiar with the randomised layout structure that they don't realise the issues because they've been focusing on nothing else for weeks/months.

They could easily do:

"Characters"
"Infantry"
"Mounted"
"Walkers/Monsters"
"Vehicles"
"Artillery"
"Titanic"

And probably Swarms, as well, right?

And then put them in Alphabetical Order within that, or type order (ie. all Terminators together, all Farseers together, all Suit types together, etc.).

Could be worse. Could be the data cards where I can see rhyme nor reason for how they’re arranged.

The german ork PDF still uses the alphabetical order from the english version, so the first entry is the Kampfpanza (battlewagon) followed by Viechjäga (beast snaggas) and so on.

They got it right in the points list, though.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
They got it right in the points list, though.

I'd argue they didn't get anything right with that "points" list.

I suspect this is largely a case of "we've half-arsed the PDF construction because we're expecting people to buy the printed cards/the app."

I think this is actually a bit of a shame as a properly set-up and structured PDF, with bookmarks and navigational cross-references, would have been an extremely good way of presenting this information.

And I say that as someone who prefers non-screen materials for my gaming. Problem with the latter is, rather than putting these out, soliciting feedback, then doing printed versions of the updated cards, GW have presumably already printed the error-ridden ones so anyone who buys them is actively mugging themselves off.

 Nazrak wrote:
I think this is actually a bit of a shame as a properly set-up and structured PDF, with bookmarks and navigational cross-references, would have been an extremely good way of presenting this information.

Thank goodness for the Internet. All of my PDFs have full indexes/links to each individual card.

Not enjoying the alphabetical ordering at the moment, but I suspect I'll come around to it over time. Theoretically, this approach is better for finding things if you can't remember whether a certain dreadnaught is elite or heavy or whatever. But for now, I have to guess whether my dark eldar warriors are under k for "kabalite warriors" or w for just "warriors". And if I want to look at harlequins, I have to jump all over the place rather than having them clumped together in one spot.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Nazrak wrote:
I think this is actually a bit of a shame as a properly set-up and structured PDF, with bookmarks and navigational cross-references, would have been an extremely good way of presenting this information.

Thank goodness for the Internet. All of my PDFs have full indexes/links to each individual card.

Yep same; just mildly annoying to have to do it myself rather than GW spending like half an hour per index to put bookmarks and that in themselves.

ideally needs to be in a machine readable format, say XML, with a few style sheets to manage presentation for say on screen, for a colour printer, for a black and white printer, for a "condensed" format etc

Reminds me of when D&D's spell list went from being organized by class, then level then alphabetically the whole list was just alphabetized. I hated it, my wife loved it. I've been around long enough I can do either way, though I do slightly prefer alphabetized now.

Personally, I'd rather them alphabetized, but with some of the weirdo names of late (Strike Team, really?) it's going to take us all some time adjusting.

I think that is the real culprit here. People who've been around long enough to not be used to the new names. Like when exactly did Firewarrior Strike Team lose the Firewarrior? Or am I just remembering something that was never true? Doesn't matter because now the names are alphabetized, which makes sense when there are no FOC roles to group them by.

They could still group them. Put all the named characters together, the non-named characters together, the infantry together, the vehicles together, and so on.

I mean the game has keywords: Use them!

Which ones? The list of Keywords is very long.

Yes, they could have done Characters, Battleline, others, but would that have really helped?

Yes. It would have. That's what the whole thread is about.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They could easily do:

"Characters"
"Infantry"
"Mounted"
"Walkers/Monsters"
"Vehicles"
"Artillery"
"Titanic"

And probably Swarms, as well, right?

This would be my preference

And then put them in Alphabetical Order within that, or type order (ie. all Terminators together, all Farseers together, all Suit types together, etc.).

The only annoying part of this is when they take a unit and split it into two profiles and they don't have the same starting letter anymore. The Tau Fire Warrior example of Strike Team and Breacher team is a good example. Thus I propose instead of alphabetically for these categories we instead use Toughness

Alphabetical also has a bit of an issue with some armies, like Chaos. About 25% of the units are called "Chaos [X]". Then there are the "Heretic Astartes Daemon Prince". I get from a SKU standpoint GW want to differentiate loyalist/Chaos units or Daemon/CSM models, but in the points list that's specifically for that faction it's just clunky.

Then there's having to remember if my Necron units are technically "Canoptek" or not. It's all just really unwieldy.

I agree with the OP, but also...

... You can manually re-order the pages in the PDF to work in whatever arrangement makes sense to you. Kind of a pain, but for posts you use a bunch probably not a bad idea. Could even make your own TOC if you have the right PDF software.

So you prefer the random assed placement of units that they used to do?

It’s so much easier to find things now.

johnpjones1775 wrote:
So you prefer the random assed placement of units that they used to do?

It’s so much easier to find things now.

Only if you know the exact name of a unit - I spent several minutes trying to find some and gave up and just ctr+F to find the one word I was looking for. For a player that hasn't spent years absorbing all unit names that's a problem.

Pre existing game based conceptual categories mean that you are looking through much shorter lists to find something regardless of whether you know the exact starting word for their name.

Even just four:

1characters
2vehicles
3monsters
4Any unit that's not one of the above

pre divides the list into more manageable, searchable chunks. As those core keywords perform different functions (with monster and vehicle overlapping the most) and are used for different reasons in the game.


The force org chart wasn't just a design and balance tool, it was an organisational one that created a simple logical structure for searching things. I don't have a problem with the new system of building armies, but it has disconnected organisation from the list construction, simplifying one thing and complicating another.

johnpjones1775 wrote:
So you prefer the random assed placement of units that they used to do?

How was it random? Everything was grouped by type. There was structure to the list beyond alphabetical order. It was the very opposite of random!

 alextroy wrote:
I think that is the real culprit here. People who've been around long enough to not be used to the new names. Like when exactly did Firewarrior Strike Team lose the Firewarrior? Or am I just remembering something that was never true? Doesn't matter because now the names are alphabetized, which makes sense when there are no FOC roles to group them by.

It does matter, because there's no schema, and most of the modern names are meaningless junk data.
They aren't even fully alphabetized (or for Marines, don't even pretend to be), which doesn't even make sense if that were the one organizational scheme they were aiming for. Sisters end with Arco-Flagellants, for feth's sake! Most of their characters are grouped together, but novices and battle sisters are tucked in there after the faction's random eldar character.

Votann have one of the shortest sets, and its an utter failure from any organizational standard you care to pick. The characters are all first, but not organized beyond that (even skipping the special character, the order for characters is K-E-G-B). The bikes and vehicles are mostly at the end, but the Heavy weapon squad (Brokhyr) just sort of jumps right in there.

Dark Eldar are alphabetized, but that is possibly the least sensible faction to organize alphabetically, since they have subfactions that still sort of matter.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

johnpjones1775 wrote:
So you prefer the random assed placement of units that they used to do?

How was it random? Everything was grouped by type. There was structure to the list beyond alphabetical order. It was the very opposite of random!

Funnily enough, the Tau index is still organised by their pre-10th edition role. HQ, Troops, Elites, Fast Attack, Heavy Support etc.

Aren't named that, of course, but the layout is there.

for me a structure to the order matters, personally I'd have something like a broad "class" of unit

- character
- infantry
- light vehicle
- medium vehicle
- heavy vehicle (and not be too fussed which vehicle is where, its just for ordering the list)

then within each category further group, so say a Rhino is in medium vehicle, it is listed, and then all the rhino hull versions get listed as a group, the land raider maybe in heavy vehicles, again with all its variations together

ideally though its a pdf, with a contents list hyperlinked, then you can have a pure alphabetical list, a list by type, a list by point value, by however you want

For the index documents it would have been much better to have several bookmarked indexes that sort by different things. So one purely alphabetical one, one around certain keywords (like character, infantry, vehicle, titanic, and whatever) and perhaps some others as well. With a good indexing structure that should be pretty easy to make for a company the size GW is. But instead we get these minimal effort ones.

Incidentally, I'd also have done something with the flavour text and the like so it doesn't get included in searches. Just to make that process a little bit easier.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
The german ork PDF still uses the alphabetical order from the english version, so the first entry is the Kampfpanza (battlewagon) followed by Viechjäga (beast snaggas) and so on.

They got it right in the points list, though.

Oh that must be painful, having to look up the exact translation they came up with to get the exact alphabetical order too. I was annoyed at the Librarian with Jump Pack and Lieutenant with Combi weapon being - for some reason - sandwiched between the Assault Intercessor Squad and the Heavy Intercessor Squad amongst the Battle Line squads as opposed to alphabetically in the run of characters to start.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They could easily do:

"Characters"
"Infantry"
"Mounted"
"Walkers/Monsters"
"Vehicles"
"Artillery"
"Titanic"

And probably Swarms, as well, right?

And then put them in Alphabetical Order within that, or type order (ie. all Terminators together, all Farseers together, all Suit types together, etc.).

They could have (and should have) done the same thing they did in the App.

Characters
Battle Line
Dedicated Transports
Other

And they could have done something different in the app, breaking it down like you suggested - but whatever they did, it should have been uniform across the app, the PDF, and the MFM. The third unit the app should have been the third unit down in the PDF, should have been the third unit down in the MFM.

I, like many others, am acclimated to looking things up by their Battlefield Role. The elimination of this is going to take some getting used to.

Alphabetical by itself is no good. There are far too many datasheets. So, it would be best to still have some manner of classification.

I agree, what they did in the App should have also been done in the Munitorum Feild Manual and with one addition.

Epic Hero
Character
Battleline
Dedicated Transports
Other