Pistols and CC

I can estimate the page count because I know how much effort discussion and skill was sued to trim down the rules to their current stat.

Somebody want to prove me wrong, here is a "small" project, edit the rulebook to be what you advocate, it might work.

 

I wouldn't mind that. My page is rarely filled up with weapons. And we already have a new line for Stun Mode on MULTI (new compared to when Stun Mode on all multi was an optional rule).

Well, I guess it could matter in other tool where you have weapon profile under each individual trooper (in those tool, do they list the Discover profile on everyone ?)

 

I'm sure there's a fallacy describing this rhetoric, I just don't know the name of it, but it's a dirty way of arguing. Please don't.

The thing is, the end-product can still be made better - what we have now is not the best possible outcome. Now they also have more data to work on and more experienced editors to help them through it (if anything from experience from the first time around), plus if they play it right it would also increase the strength of the product and prolong the lifespan of it.

I think you're going to get Malifaux or Warmachine as top contenders. They, too, have issues (even if we ignore their respective balance issues), and are written in a much more each-unit-is-self-contained style where as Infinity is a set of rules where by large each unit can do nearly everything.

 

So you are claiming that using in Close Combat a weapon labeled with CC trait using the CC attribute is jumping between the rules?
And you need more clarification than THAT?

Are you serious?

 

Hard to say. In the case of common trooper with Pistol, Knife. If they are attacked in the back (enemy Move+CC) can't shoot and choose between fighting in CC (choice of Dam PH-1 Shock weapon or a Dam 11 weapon) or fleeing (like a PH Dodge or a PH-3 Change Facing).

Against dogged or exploding i'd go with Shock, otherwise pistol CC has better damage. That is for line trooper cheerleaders like Alguacile and such. Or even back field trooper like my Custodier, has the choice of Pistol or Knife.

Of course, if coming from the front (because you passed your Change Facing on his way in) then shooting at +3 is usually better.

 

Doubt there is, its quite common as an expression in my country to call somebody to make his hands dirty if they want to prove something.

In any case if somebody want to have a go and make fan edit of the rulebook and try to improve it, making it simpler, thinner, more efficient I am not against it.

 

The problem with that rhetoric is that it ultimately disrespects the one you are arguing with. I know it's common, but its purpose is to shame the other person into self-censure as if we're obliged to appreciate a piece of work just because it took skill and effort to produce it or that we're unqualified to spot flaws just because we can't produce something without flaws ourself. (Of course, it's easier to spot flaws in physical products than intellectual products, meaning the risk of perceiving a flaw that isn't there or misjudging the severity of it in an intellectual product is much higher, but I digress)

[not directed at psychoticstorm] In either case, I'm hoping that in the future we can have conversations about flaws (perceived or otherwise) in a less toxic manner, 'cause the toxicity we've had so far in this thread I haven't got enough cucumber or whatever it is I'm supposed to put on my bodily orifices to achieve "detox".

 

Hmmm... One could almost say that the well has been poisoned.

 

I think it would be clearest if they took the same approach as other weapons with multiple firing modes and made there be two lines for using your pistol as a BS weapon and a CC weapon. Then there would be no ambiguity about range bands burst values, etc. In fact, this is the approach I've taken in MayaNet.

 

That is not my intention to shame anyone, I have personally stood up to such challenges many times and sometimes I managed to do better, I mean it, if somebody has an idea of a better edit of the rulebook, by all means try it, if it proves better or has some better ideas we might borrow/ get inspired by it.

 

Hmmm, I think there's some subtleties getting lost here. Let's back track a little.

Corvus Belli are a company owned and operated by four lifelong friends who've spent their adult lives getting themselves to the point where they can do pretty much whatever they want with their company and their game. I'm often heard defending them in this respect - partly because they're very likeable people, but mostly because I respect, admire and very much envy their achievement.

However, as someone who did not get taught the game by others but sat down to read the rulebook himself, I found what everyone else who does that also finds (at least of all those I know who've also done it) - that the rulebook is strange, confusing and unnecessarily badly written. And yet when discussing this with CB's Directors in person, I discover those four friends do not see any problem with this at all....

Indeed, they actually think maintaining, correcting or updating the rulebook is almost irrelevant to the future of the game and say that 'writing FAQ's could go on forever to no good effect, and is therefore a waste of time'. So as much as I think the world of them, I know for a fact that they really don't care very much about the rules beyond what they've already provided us.

Hence the wiki is not updated with rules clarifications that IJW could easily provide, and hence PsychoticStorm has no better defence for badly written rules than telling us what - I have absolutely no doubt - they tell him, and it's no better coming from him than them. If there's a name for the argument it's almost certainly something like 'Associate of Corvus Belli Himself Disillusioned By Inability To Help Company Help Themselves Bitterly Challenges Others To Do Bettter"

They can believe what they tell one another when it comes to developing their games, so we get these amazing stories, graphics, miniatures and games; but they also believe what they tell one another when it comes to the necessity to make their rules understandable to normally intelligent people. Creative freedom cuts both ways and it's a pretty sorry state of affairs.

But as to whether or not anyone can do better, of course we fucking could. It is not a complex problem and there are any number of good blog writers, and others with outstanding writing skills - @Magonus and @colbrook to name but two who're easily capable of rewriting the rules in short order. What they lack is the free time to do so, and the support of the Directors and staff to clarify how the rules are supposed to work.

That would be as absent for those prospective writers as it is for IJW and PsychoticStorm now, and so doomed to certain failure; but it is a fallacious argument because it's not true that it couldn't be done were there the actual will to see it through from the Directors.

Finally, I apologise that this post is so long, but it's hard to disentangle complex misunderstandings, and understanding what the problem is is not the same thing as explaining it briefly - I'm sure a better writer could do better!

 

@Wolf I think it's sufficient that you learnt some of the N2 quirks first to appreciate both what they're trying to do and how far they've come.

I started book-learning N2 but didn't get to play until a little later when N3 managed to sneak a release in. It was a major improvement at a small cost of simulation.

 

This went a weird direction while I wasn't looking.

But yes, the biggest obstacle to doing a proper fan re-write of the rules is that you would be doing an immense amount of work all by your self, with no clue if your reinterpretations are even accurate, with the added difficulty that some base terminology needs to be added and defined to clean up some concepts.

 

Well, yeah. How far they've come is pretty amazing really. What I saw in 2012 didn't impress at all with a lot of unintelligible rules, ropey sculptures and cheesecake that we didn't want to put on display in the shop. Maybe they don't know how far they've come either, and don't realise theyve acquired a worldwide audience and a legitimately preeminent game on their hands.

However, this blindspot they have about the rules is a problem, and for anyone who wants to read, I've written a relevant anecdote below.

Spoiler: Story About Apple Neglecting Their Golden Goose

CB's attitude to their rules puts me in mind of when I worked for Apple in the mid Nineties.

Apple were essentially a hardware company who made their money because of their software. Their great-looking hardware only had value because of the operating system software that ran on it, and without the OS, they were just selling sexy boxes that looked great, but couldn't do any actual work.

And when you think about that in terms of business models, that's really not a million miles from Corvus Belli.

CB are essentially a miniatures company who make money because of their game rules. Without the game rules, they'd just be selling sexy models that look great, but with which you can't play any actual game.

So back in the mid-Nineties, Apple had great OS software that helped people get work done in short order, but it was getting increasingly old and creaky. Then in 1995 two big things happened - OJ Simpson made the news for having apparently killed his wife, and Microsoft made the news for having an operating system called Windows 95 that was apparently going to kill the opposition.

In fact Microsoft did this every couple of years, and geeks will know that recent CEO Steve Ballmer was always such a cheerleader of their stuff regardless of its poor quality that in 1990 he shouted himself into the operating theatre for surgery on his larynx. What he was shouting so injuriously was - believe it or not "Windows!" - as in Windows 1.0... the man defines 'diehard fanboy'

So Windows 95 really wasn't very good, but that was never MS' game. It didn't have to be good, it just had to be good enough, and they'd pretty much perfected the art of relentlessly working on stuff until it finally worked satisfactorily. The standard joke in every workplace of the day was that you never buy MS software until Version 3.1. Everyone knew they'd get there in the end and that Apple had to up their game.

Meanwhile it's worth saying that people forget how big Apple were back then - how good their products were, and how important they were in various industry sectors. These days, people just parrot the idea that their fall came about because they couldn't maintain their business on a 10-15% market share and the old 'VHS versus Betamax' story (which also isn't correct, but there's no time! )

There isn't much evidence that they couldn't maintain the business, because they'd been doing it for years (and even spent more on their R&D than Microsoft made profit in 1993!) and were by that time worth 10 billion - so it was hardly a company on the ropes. The problem is that by late 1995 they were releasing computers that just didn't work, and by 1996 you were hard pushed to keep an Apple computer operating for any more than 30 minutes.

Those great computers had been running print bureaus and design studios but they just didn't work any more, so if you wanted to say, print a magazine or produce some artwork, you had about 25 minutes to get it done before your expensive computer nose-dived taking all your hard work with it.

To this day when I'm working hard on something, I reflexively hit Command-Save at the end of every sentence. THAT was the problem and I know WHY it was the problem, because I worked for them with their highest level of support in that era, and my first publicly released software was an interactive guide you could install on your Mac to help you fix the operating system!

It didn't help much, because the real problem was that the 10 billion dollar company had an operating system software that didn't work any more and the Directors and senior staff were saying it didn't matter because they had a revolutionary new product coming 'soon'.

....Does that word sound familiar to anyone else? Just saying.

So let's recap. Apple were a hardware company doing very nicely thank you very much, whose boxes were great, but really only as good as the work you could do on them. Doing that work depended on the Operating System software, but the management didn't really care about the old OS and let the OS team get a little short-staffed, to say the very least.

A beer for anyone who can guess how many software engineers they had working on their OS in early 1996 - the number of people they had maintaining their golden-egg laying goose. Any guesses?

Spoiler: Number of Software Engineers Working on OS 7.5+ in 1996

Two engineers. They had precisely TWO engineers working on the OS versions above OS 7.5 in 1996. We met them. Both of them. We said 'Guys, the OS doesn't fucking work anymore!', and they said 'We know, we know; we're working as hard as we can!"

Incredible isn't it? A ten billion dollar company selling hardware that rested on the software that ran on it, but they neglected to maintain it, telling themselves it didn't matter, and thus allowing their golden goose to die through neglect.

[Edits for clarity]

I hope the hardcore readers enjoyed the story, the point of which is to illustrate that if you have a golden goose - be it an operating system for your computers or a rule set for the tabletop game for your miniatures, you should very much pay attention to its well-being or suffer the consequences.

To Alberto, Fernando, Gutier & Carlos

Gentlemen, please put a process in place for continually maintaining your rules until the only questions are from people who don't know where to find the answers that are already written. Everyone here is in love with your incredible game, but the rules need regular work; please don't kill your golden goose because you don't think it matters; we know it does, and on this one (perhaps ONLY this one), we're all in agreement!

Sincerely

The Denizens of the Rules Forum

 

Ah, yeah. That was the short version I was wanting to write, thanks Mac.
See I told you there were some decent writers on the forum.