Complex units/containership

[snowblizz]

Have you accounted for "complex units" i.e. those where many or all members can and will have different weapons and/or wargear?

[IBBoard]

There's currently (or will be) two ways of dealing with that.

Firstly is basic weaponry - if it's just a case of each person being able to take combinations of weapons then numbers of a given weapon can be chosen (rather than equipping all/none with it). Thinking about it, though, that doesn't take in to account the situation of a unit type that could be five to ten men as it might allow them to take six, seven, or more of a weapon.

Secondly is the "containership" idea that is currently targeted for WarFoundry 0.2. The idea is that it'll also be used for unit Champions etc and will represent some "main unit" concept that then has "additional units" attached to it. If you've got a Nobz Mob (as the best example I know of) then you could have a main "Nobz Mob" entry that costs nothing but contains a number of "Nobz Mob Nobz" that you purchase and equip individually. The only thing I can think of that I hadn't taken in to account there was imposing limits, but that can be added when we get to it.

If you've got any other ideas or comments on those methods then feel free to throw them in. Examples that are a bit more awkward than the Nobz Mob would be great as well.

[snowblizz]

Basically how its currently being done it in Army Builder then.
I haven't looked too deeply into the earleir posts. Being in IS not IT my eyes glaze over at the mere mention of data flow diagrams.
Fortunately there are few complex units, some other examples would be in the Tyranid army. The Tyranid Warrior units have a set of upgrades that can be chosen for all members and then a set which is picked individually. Though what e.g. AB does here is just count up the number of weapons in the unit and enforce each models ahs the required number (2) of weapons.
WHFB also have these complex units, Ogre Maneaters area a unit of individuals on the basis of their equpment at least.
While I'm thinking, this "container" thing will allow for "mixed units" i.e. units where there are different statlines/equioment etc. Essentially 2 different units combined into one. Both the Beastman army and Lizardman army has these currently.
A lot of units are nowadays "flexible" in the composition, they can count for different "slots" depending on some variables, usually equipment and cost.

[IBBoard]

It doesn't matter too much if your eyes glaze over at the sight of those diagrams - they're all out of date by now anyway (although they're relationship diagrams, not data flow )

Looking back at what I said, the basic weaponry option (for when people want to do it in a simple way) might be more workable already than I thought. If you use a ratio limit of "between 0 and 100% of troopers may take this weapon" then by rounding the numbers you can already handle the simple mixed equipment situation. The only thing it wouldn't cope with is more complex mixed equipment as "mutual exclusion group" (e.g. limiting a troop type to take X or replace it with Y or Z), which is what some units like Nobz would probably encounter.

I think I'm inclined towards the "contained units" as the normal way of doing it. There are three reasons for it:

1) Flexibility - you don't need any work-arounds for mut-ex groups on weapons
2) Power - you can handle things beyond Nobz Mobs and Nid Warriors. It would also be useful for Space Marine Command Squads where you get a command squad with any of Apothecary, Company Champion, Company Standard Bearer.
3) Story telling - if you've got something like a Nobz Mob and you've got each Nob as their own unit then you can name them and have them as their own character. A lot of gaming is about the story (for some gamers at least) so having them separated out would be very useful

As for it being how Army Builder does it, I wouldn't know as I've never really used it. Ideally I'd like to be able to have a plugin that can load Army Builder files in the same way as we can load Rollcall files, but I can see it needing quite a bit of work.


[edit] Topic split to make the discussion easier to find.

[snowblizz]

As for it being how Army Builder does it, I wouldn't know as I've never really used it. Ideally I'd like to be able to have a plugin that can load Army Builder files in the same way as we can load Rollcall files, but I can see it needing quite a bit of work.

It was meant as a compliment though.
FWIW Armybuilder uses XML 1.0 structured files (but they lack a schema), and can output XML type files that cna eb read fairly easily. I've actually managed to import AB XML fiels into Excel to create comp-checker. Not that easy as Excel can't handle the data natively, it looses some of the inherent relationships. But you use what you know even if its not ideal.

[IBBoard]

After a bit of digging around on their site I've found a schema for the rosters, but since those are the saved armies rather than the race/army book/codex data then it's the slightly less useful one

After you mentioned it I've taken more of a look at Army Builder. It had always been my intention to try to get support for the files, at which point knowing what it does would definitely be useful. So far my impression is that hopefully we'll end up handling things in what becomes a better way than Army Builder

The code is in place now to support contained units within the data files and within the main API, but not within any of the user interfaces yet. I think we should have tickets to record that it needs to be done, though.