Cypher-xv wrote:

The delay isn't what bothers me. It's the fact that the naysayers were right about PB employees or people associated with PB, when it comes to how they treat their fans. That is something that I did not want to believe. Unfortunately the weekends events have soured my perception of PB, ND. What brought this to my attention was that fact that several fans have this for their sig:
"I will boycott any books written by posters who make a sport of insulting other posters, insulting your customers is a poor way to earn sales".
That tells me as a customer that PB employees do go out insulting their fans on other forums. Maybe not to their face but indirectly.
Also it's deplorable that PB pissed away either backer money or PB money for what now seems like false advertising for RRT.

IIRC that sig quote is a response to two freelancers (or technically one freelancer and one wannabe freelancer) who go out of their way to conduct "best defense is a good offense" campaigns anytime criticism comes up. I'm not sure I'd consider that "employees" necessarily especially as the most abrasive "defender" is the wannabe. The moderation on their forums is actually quite fair and mild compared to the 4 alarm spicy responses you get from "fans" who are oblivious to anything that doesn't suit their 100% positive outlook. They truly live the 40k Imperial mantra of "Blessed is the mind too small to doubt."

Even with my decidely negative outlook on this, you can't technically call it a bust for customers until we get the figs/rules in hand. I'll maintain a small shred of hope that they'll pull this all of to my liking in the end but I'm already at the point where I don't think I'll go in on future robotech offerings even if the deal is as sweet as Battlecry/Blitzkrieg was. Macross is by and large my favorite and I'll have enough minis to use however I want in the era that I really wanted when this arrives sometime (hopefully) next year. Since I didn't go too heavily into it (see my sig), I should be able to make my money back selling the stuff if it turns out really badly. A well run campaign got me to buy and be interested in a Palladium offering for the first time in years but the subsequent handling has definitely repeated/reminded me what I stopped caring.

It's funny you mention HG about cracking the whip on PB. I posted a similar sentiment on one of their FB postings. To be honest what did happen during the 45 days?

I'm amazed that the update post is on its fourth page now. I'm sure in lil Kevy's mind it's still a dissatisfied 1%. It's frustrating as heck.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
It's funny you mention HG about cracking the whip on PB. I posted a similar sentiment on one of their FB postings. To be honest what did happen during the 45 days?

I'm amazed that the update post is on its fourth page now. I'm sure in lil Kevy's mind it's still a dissatisfied 1%. It's frustrating as heck.

Duh.. they figured out 75% of what they needed to do to set up the pledge manager. After an additional fortnight of 24 hours per day and 7 days a week of effort, Kevin demonstrated the pledge manager around the office and everyone loved it! I swear... I sometimes hear Professor Farnsworth's voice when I read the weekly updates. Good news, everybody!...

Good god man! Lela hurry up and load the packages onto the ship before we'er swamped with raging nerds frothing at the mouth! And when you get to planet nerd, have bender let everyone know that they'll love it.

Annnnd thanks to warboss that's how I'll read every future PB press release/update/news letter.

Though at this point it wouldn't surprise me for the RRT release date to hinge on a battle between the Harlem Globetrotters and a race nuclear powered mutant superhuman basketball players.

Hey Forar just so we'er clear. It's transform then move and shoot with the valks?


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Considering that people are still posting in the update section I hope that someone at PB/ND notices that's it's not a vocal minority now. I see post by folks who barely post if at all speaking up against the BS that lil Kevy post.

So that's what happens when you are not respectful on kickstarter update comments....

Joyboozer wrote:
So that's what happens when you are not respectful on kickstarter update comments....

Eh?

To what in particular are you referring? Some of the more... ah... vehement comments? The "white knights" springing into action (a term I hate when aimed at gender related issues, but seems perfectly fitting for fanboy/company issues)? The beta tester who took things way too personally (and bluntly, I have concerns about the feedback given by someone so emotionally invested in a project)?

Gonna need to narrow this one down a touch.

 Forar wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
So that's what happens when you are not respectful on kickstarter update comments....

Eh?

To what in particular are you referring? Some of the more... ah... vehement comments? The "white knights" springing into action (a term I hate when aimed at gender related issues, but seems perfectly fitting for fanboy/company issues)? The beta tester who took things way too personally (and bluntly, I have concerns about the feedback given by someone so emotionally invested in a project)?

Gonna need to narrow this one down a touch.

I think he was referring to WRRD's emotional, immature temper tantrum. When I see his anagram it sounds like (to me) Ward.


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Oh and Forar never mind MM answered my ?.


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By the way do you guys think PB or nd are paying attention to the comments being posted on the update thread?

Someone is, I can no longer post or see comments.

Guess the shows over. That and PB got the #%$& out of the kitchen.


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Wonder if the next update will be as interesting and just how long will it take to arrive?

Wait I can still see the comments. It could be on your end perhaps?

Yeah, I think I got reported and that's what happens.

What did you post?


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It can't be any worse than everything that's already been said.

I was unappreciative of Kevin and posted "hate".

Post it here. Since Mike is always leaving links back to this thread I'm sure someone there will see it... Eventually.

I kid of course.

My interest is totally piqued.

There've been some fairly vulgar comments made in support of PB, I'm curious how far one has to go in order to get their attention when providing, ah, less than constructive critique.

Wow, this went pear shaped real fast, lol.

I've said it before, I want RRT - I'm fine with the delay (to a point, disappointment is expected) for a good product.

There is a poster in the comments, "Skatman" I think, who asked Does the game even exist?

I had to laugh, then I thought - Does it? No molds, no minis, no rules or cards. Show us some stuff, something real to chew on and I think we'd all be less disappointed with the wait.

Also - someone got banned from the KS comments? Neat!

Joyboozer wrote:
Yeah, I think I got reported and that's what happens.

Now I really want to know what you said about PB an lil Kevy.


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 Forar wrote:
My interest is totally piqued.

There've been some fairly vulgar comments made in support of PB, I'm curious how far one has to go in order to get their attention when providing, ah, less than constructive critique.

It seems that some PB fanboies take after the fine example set by lil Kevy.




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Maybe he posted the critic by Ross Watson. Remember?
http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=607:palladium-booksr-weekly-update-june-7-2012&catid=52:weekly-updates&Itemid=183


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Sorry meant this
http://rosswatson.blogspot.com/2012/06/palladium-time-is-now.html

Imagine posting this in the comments section on the ks or at the PB forums.

I've been sayin' it for months now; toss us a stat card and/or character card per week, and I'll settle right down. If there are truly 130 cards (a number they've quoted several times), They could toss out one or two per week for the next six months and only get 1/3 of them out to us. One or two per month even.

I've heard it often said to writers; show, don't tell. Show me what you've done, don't tell me you've done it. Show me it's awesome, don't tell me how awesome I'm going to think it is, I can make that call by myself. Etc.

Well you can still post in the update section. I just saw another post. Just never seen one go this long.

What's also fascinating is that usually the vitriol spills all over the general comments. This time it's pretty heavily focused in the update comments. Comparatively the general comments are just Mike chatting with a couple of guys about tentative rules.

So I'm not the only one who noticed that. It seems that one section is for the "1%" and the other is for RRT.lol

Nevermind I was doing it wrong

Are you sure? I had no access to the comments until a few minutes ago.

Well I posted on the HG FB last night. I left a message for transperancy and better communication.

If we as backers all posted on HG FB and ask not demand change I bet we could all make this a better gaming experience and a better gaming community.

I hate to say it, but it looks like my earlier concerns were correct.

Man... I really wish Kevin Sembieda and Harmony Gold would both lose the rights to my favorite part of my childhood.

Cypher-xv, I honestly do not think they would listen at all. That is the thing that bothers me the most, they really don't care. I feel like (and yeah, that is super subjective) their generation of media/game production was coddled by easy profits and has no idea how to compete in a market with products produced by actual fans.

It's interesting to note that the latest update is at 202 post and only 32 likes. My sincer hope is that PB/ND, and HG finally notice it's not just 1% that are dissatisfied with the reckless way things have been run.

I'd also noticed the likes. While there are several repeat commentators, out of 5,400 backers a mere 0.5% approve (admittedly, 1% would've been funnier).

Those who 'liked' it can probably be ignored outright. Anyone so far stuck up the proprietor's rear end that they 'like' a 2 month delay is probably a lost cause, a fanboy/girl of profound blind loyalty.

Someone in the update section brought this up.

I don't mind delays either. I personally DO mind being mislead, fed spin, marketed too, however you want to describe the behavior that we have seen post-funding.
Honesty goes a long way, spin can die in a fire. Worse is when you get spin that is tinged with insults towards people with valid complaints (IE, kevin calling people who had beef with the convention exclusives childish) from the very people that were said to be taking a backseat in the project right up till it got funding.
I miss the days that ND was in the control seat on this one.

I wonder when Kevin made that comment about the backers that wanted con exclusives childish? I never heard of that. His contempt for us is outrages if true.

Yeah, I've been keeping tabs and I think that one is new to me.

If true I'm waiting for the eventual update where Kevin blames the backers for RRT not getting made on time or some other mishap. You know it's just a matter of time.




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Forar you are too funny. RRT 1.5 lol


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An your right Mike will probably be ready with his game before ND. Sans minis, wonk, wonk. :-p

 Cypher-xv wrote:
It's interesting to note that the latest update is at 202 post and only 32 likes. My sincer hope is that PB/ND, and HG finally notice it's not just 1% that are dissatisfied with the reckless way things have been run.

Nah, they'll just poo poo it away as the 1% malcontents (pun intended) will always complain and the 99% who stay quiet are all universally happy. Perhaps Kevin S. will secretly poll the kickstarter pledgers to gauge their happyiness... or has he done it already and we just don't know we participated yet again!!??!!

Get out of my head!lol


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Considering how things went downhill in the last update. Is this what happened when the funding for ng1 was complete?

Y'know, with all the frustration bubbling over at the delay announcement, there are two aspects I haven't seen talked about much:

First, Kevin claiming that they hope to start production by the end of this month. That feels like a platitude. Unless they've been given a "maybe, we'll see how our current run goes" by a factory, I can only assume these things (especially a project in the 650,000+ minis range) are booked well in advance. Not knowing a mere 3 weeks away smacks of more idle/desperate/unrealistic hope and best case scenario thinking. Which we're trying to get them away from, and have been for the last half a year (not to mention the last three decades, but that's another story).

Second, they mention NA boxes going out first, then tagging all the EU/rest of the world boxes, shipping them over in bulk for further distribution.

Given the raw size of the project, and the assumption that a solid number of their backers are US based, that sounds like it'll be weeks, if not months between the first US backers getting their boxes and Europe getting theirs. Maybe the EU/Asia backing was very large, but it sounds like even if North Americans do get their boxes in February, some will be waiting until March/April all the same.

I get that distribution can be complicated, especially when the campaign is heavily designed around people buying completely unique figure quantities (meaning each backer package requires a lot more attention to detail, and likely time), but I can only imagine how annoying it's going to be to live in the UK or France or something and have to wait extra weeks or months, depending on a number of factors.

Palladium seems to base their project management in a fashion similar to that annoying friend we all have.. you know the one... who is always late because he budgets his travel time based on midnight traffic with all green lights and no police going 15 over the speed limit... but he's coming over during Friday afternoon rush hour. When you call him when he's late, he'll always give you that "I'm running a few minutes late and will be there in 5-10min" line because it sounds better than the truth and he doesn't want to make you angry (despite the fact that his lies will be obvious soon enough... but by that time he'll be ready to blame an accident/school bus unloading/broken traffic light/unicorn in the street/whatever).

It's good for him that his loving girlfriend (the Palladium "super-duper fans") who always ignore his flaws is constantly by his side and ready to blame you for setting up a get together during rush hour so clearly it's your fault and he's not to blame for leaving 10 minutes before that time despite being 40 miles away and why did you set up the meeting so far away? What kevin S. picked it? Well he clearly did it for your benefit and you should be grateful that he showed up (two hours late).....

What's funny now is how it's the fault of the Chinese for celebrating New Years. Warboss is right about super duper fans. Their apologizing for PB again. Forar's comment about blind loyalty is dead on. I can't believe they still can't see the forest for the trees.

I'm pretty Zen on this one for the time being, chaps. I expected that the delivery date given was in all likelihood a load of bollocks given the number of models and then the pledge manager delays. Given that KS seems to be in charge again, and in standard douchebag mode, I'll just sit tight and expect my stuff in the middle of next year, then proceed to not back or purchase any of his subsequent products. Although I really did enjoy SC, Macross is still the "key" part of the Robotech franchise for me, so as long as I get my stuff by, say, June, I'll be content enough.

What sucks is that I won't have any more YF-4 squads till 2015 since it'll come out on a layer wave. I'll just have to make do with my one squad. Wish I had dumped the one or two vef-1 packs for another squad of YF-4.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
What sucks is that I won't have any more YF-4 squads till 2015 since it'll come out on a layer wave. I'll just have to make do with my one squad. Wish I had dumped the one or two vef-1 packs for another squad of YF-4.

Have you seen the YF-4 render? You're not missing much.


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 Azazelx wrote:
I'm pretty Zen on this one for the time being, chaps.

I had hoped the AVP kickstarter would get me excited about crowdfunded minis again but there is a complete lack of value in the pledges available there right now. There was an adage I remember reading about prepainted minis on a D&D site that said you can have nice variety, cheap cost, great quality.. pick two. I guess with Prodos, you have relatively on time delivery and good communication but little to no value compared with buying it at the retail level. Palladium opted for just one option (lots of value with battlecry).

Well, also remember what the Battlecry started with. It was a deal at day one, but not "omg $550 worth of stuff for $140" good.

A fairer comparison will be in 3 weeks when AvP is coming to an end as well.

I'm in for the bottom tier, and might just stay there and enjoy having my name in the booklet. If it covers S&H, maybe grab an add on or two, but in terms of the base game, I think I'll just wait for retail.

 Forar wrote:
Well, also remember what the Battlecry started with. It was a deal at day one, but not "omg $550 worth of stuff for $140" good.

A fairer comparison will be in 3 weeks when AvP is coming to an end as well.

I'm in for the bottom tier, and might just stay there and enjoy having my name in the booklet. If it covers S&H, maybe grab an add on or two, but in terms of the base game, I think I'll just wait for retail.

Which is why I specified "right now". Even at it's entry level value, Battle cry was a better deal and it included a mention of "freebies included". The warzone campaign have very few freebies and almost everything unlocked was unlocked *for purchase*. I don't expect the value to change much more than another 5-6 figs based on their previous outing which won't change my mind. Luckily for me, by eschewing early bird pledges containing some additional discount, I have nothing to lose by waiting till the very end like I did with Warzone. YMMV.

 warboss wrote:

 Cypher-xv wrote:
What sucks is that I won't have any more YF-4 squads till 2015 since it'll come out on a layer wave. I'll just have to make do with my one squad. Wish I had dumped the one or two vef-1 packs for another squad of YF-4.

Have you seen the YF-4 render? You're not missing much.

I like the render. Just hope ND refines it a bit.

 warboss wrote:
Which is why I specified "right now". Even at it's entry level value, Battle cry was a better deal and it included a mention of "freebies included". The warzone campaign have very few freebies and almost everything unlocked was unlocked *for purchase*. I don't expect the value to change much more than another 5-6 figs based on their previous outing which won't change my mind. Luckily for me, by eschewing early bird pledges containing some additional discount, I have nothing to lose by waiting till the very end like I did with Warzone. YMMV.

Gotcha. Good to know, as I didn't really follow Warzone at all. I'll keep my eye on this, and then decide at the end if it's worth $15 to have my name in the backers list of the booklet. As is, my crew has like a dozen games on the go (old favourites, newly bought and upcoming in the next year alike), so it's going to have to really wow me to get another $150'ish on my credit card rather than simply waiting for the usual retail discount my local shops usually have.

One card? They've got one card that's ready to unveil?
I'm guessing from Ninja Divisions Facebook page all their work was completed as they've moved on to other projects, so it looks like it really is down to PB having done FA.

One card that they already revealed largely unchanged (statwise... but mike morph can probably comment more accurately on that). I guess that means they've officially moved from 98% done last week to 98.01%! Woot! We're almost there guys!!

Ask and you shall receive. The new cards are lacking any circles to blot out damage or missiles that have been shot. BUT we are only looking at part of the card and not the whole thing. Also Aircraft no longer have the flight trait in addition to the Aircraft trait. They were kinda redundant. I think I will leave Flight as a trait though because there will be units that Hover and can fly (VF Veritechs) and units that can Hover but can't fly (ATAC's).

Other than that NOTHING looks different other than how the cards are set up.

Jesus... There are way too many hand to hand options on that card.

Yeah, I gave them that exact feedback in May on the KS comments and their forums but it had no effect. I wonder if the crappy LOS rules were left the same as well.

When I tried them out, the only ones I chose were the stronger attacks. Which means the same set of attacks without adding much to HtH, prolonging it when it doesn't need to. It seems counter productive if trying to simulate the show. I get that they want to shoehorn elements of the RPG rules into this. Of coarse I'm unfamiliar with this rules set so I can't make a final call yet. But if I can play 40k I can play this. It does seem like it could make mass combat a chore to run.

What worries me is when the community starts modifying the rules and post them online like many have done with the 40k rules set, start to get cease-and-desist letters from PB.

PB doesn't have the resources that GW has, the CnD letters will probably end there, in letters. They haven't had that great of a track record when it comes to lawsuits.

It is sad, but I can already tell this is going to be something where fan based rules are going to rule the day.

On an unrelated note, the HtH attacks are something of a mystery to me. I've watched a crapton of robotech and macross in my time, and while there was hand to hand combat, it was not anywhere near the majority of it. Hell, if you ran a kill counter I'm pretty sure that missiles (or ship based particle weapons) were king in the show on both sides of the conflict.

I never understood the focus on HtH in the RPG, and I am extremely sad to see it get the kind of real estate it is getting on these cards. The assault phase in 40k (challenges aside) makes perfect sense to me, this however is just weird and probably bloated. I'm sure most people will just pick the option that does the most damage and go with that, assuming they even end up in hand to hand.

Good point. That's exactly how HtH went in my game. Just the most powerful attacks. Most of my game was spent in HtH. Not much flying around unfortunately. I can tell this game will require more LOS blocking terrain than regular 40k games.

This may seem like a stupid question, but if there's an interest in minimizing hand to hand, wouldn't it be more sensible to keep LOS blocking terrain down?

Obviously there should be some kind of cover to advance upon one another without simply having gunlines form and deliver broadsides until the dice turn against one side, but the denser terrain, the more likely combat is to occur at close quarters, right?

Anyway, count me among those with minimal interest in watching clusters of battlepods stomp and kick destroids to death. I'm fine with there being an option of last resort, but at least with the factions we currently have, I hope it doesn't become the (astoundingly simplistic) way in which the game can be broken.

I did think of the same thing Forar. Jsut about all of the battles at the Demos have been city fights so LOS is extremely short and HTH likelihood high. In my games I neve once got into HTH with my units. I think all the HTH options will be nice but used only rarely unless you use a purely urban terrain. I even shrunk my city by 1/3 and took out a bunch of hills after the first or second battle to open things up a bit.

Guys come on guys, I play black templars! Of coarse I'm going to mix it up in HtH.lol

You can hit my Battlepod with your GU-11 on the head but I will still blow you in half with my guns

You're assuming that there isn't a penalty or restriction from shooting while in close combat which most games have.

The game hasn't come out and we already broke it. :p

The pre-release rules prohibit firing in HTH. Part of the reason the Battlepod swarm is effective I think the rules need to allow firing some weapons in HTH but with penalties.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
The game hasn't come out and we already broke it. :p

Oh, come now. The visible but invisible battlepods and valkyries crawling on their bellies broke the LOS rules in the game the day they were posted.

Awesome pic, I love it.

Palladium is known for producing a set format rule book.
Many different kinds mind you but little different in shape.

Ninja division probably did the designs and broke them down into components readily laid out for dies.

Never heard what was decided for the dies or how complete they are. Once this is done, timeline is pretty easy to figure out.

Wonder if they managed to make the cards "standard" so we can get sleeves (or if they have anything other than prototypes done). I really can see this different but "it should be easy right?" part of the build going pearshaped.

The rule book will do the usual, go through 4-5 revisions with the authors, get handed into Kevin, who will then say "this is garbage!" he will hack, slash and copy paste an all new format and rules within days of launch. None of the index will match the page numbers. He will then change the author to him with honorable mention of the other writers.

I am very interested in the alternate "fan base" rules, I honestly bet they will be better (if not monitored and ripped off shamelessly).

You know, I had all the first edition Palladium stuff, it was really good. After they started publishing new editions I stopped, they really lost their ability to innovate, White Wolf completely blew them out of the water back then and they have barely survived since.

I hoped this new venue would get them thinking of new ways of doing the business but it looks like their method has not changed. Let us hope they do not mess it up so bad they cannot get anything out for the other elements of Robotech or Harmony Gold can find a better place for their IP if they can get their people out of jail.

Here ya go

Meant to say I was interested to see if the fan based rules turn out better than what they publish.

Mike, you have set a high bar...

I don't think it's that high really. I just have played enough that a lot of the blanks are easy to fill in. Don't give me too much credit.

Although if Tactics comes out and the rules are not even close to up to par I will modify them also so that they are up to spec.

Although if I do I know that Palladium will not let me post them for you guys :(

Just post the rules for your 'Super Dimension Tactics' game instead.

Ha! I'm sure they's still try to come after me if all the hype is true. Funny with all the protection they try to place on themselves how it took me only a pair of hours to find all the 2nd edition rulebooks for free download on pdf

 Talizvar wrote:
The rule book will do the usual, go through 4-5 revisions with the authors, get handed into Kevin, who will then say "this is garbage!" he will hack, slash and copy paste an all new format and rules within days of launch. None of the index will match the page numbers.

Ho. Ly. Gak.

I just realized I'll have a Day 1 drinking game.

"Find all the places the rules were cut and pasted from other Palladium books."

It's been a decade since I played regularly and I've sold like 90% of my collection, but I'm pretty sure I went over that material enough to give it a solid shot.

As for the rules, I'm trying to keep my expectations low. I just want them to be Fun, Consistent and Fast, mostly in that order. A little inconsistency can be overcome eventually if they're fast enough and the game is popular enough to have a community that grinds through the sticking points. If it's consistent enough, speed will come eventually.

If it's a Rifts style mess of rules hunting and contradictory shenanigans, we might just have to start up our own little black market.

 Forar wrote:
If it's a Rifts style mess of rules hunting and contradictory shenanigans, we might just have to start up our own little black market.

I could just see the posting for a game at the local hobby shop:

"Robotech Tactics tournament using net rules 1.12B go to the usual Dropbox, if you do not know it, an employee can show you the way..."

 Forar wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
The rule book will do the usual, go through 4-5 revisions with the authors, get handed into Kevin, who will then say "this is garbage!" he will hack, slash and copy paste an all new format and rules within days of launch. None of the index will match the page numbers.

Ho. Ly. Gak.

I just realized I'll have a Day 1 drinking game.

Here's a head start on your friends (besides the obvious close combat extra crap). You can easily dodge 1, 2, or 3 missiles as if they were nothing and there is no difference between the number of missiles. Once that magical 4th missile is fired, you lose any and all ability to dodge. Why? Because that's what Kevin S. came up with in 1985 and there has been no need for change. Heck, if he is still able to wear the same parachute pants and rocking the Michigan Mullet hairdo while talking on his 12lb briefcase cellular radio phone, why bother changing the rules as they're just as modern! That's like saying TSR needs to update the mechanics of THAC0! pfft!

 Talizvar wrote:

 Forar wrote:
If it's a Rifts style mess of rules hunting and contradictory shenanigans, we might just have to start up our own little black market.

I could just see the posting for a game at the local hobby shop:

"Robotech Tactics tournament using net rules 1.12B go to the usual Dropbox, if you do not know it, an employee can show you the way..."

I hope not. At least at that time if the rules suck we can find a hidey hole to use to work on a really good set of rules, probably what it all was Pre_Kevin, and go from there. It would be just like Kevin from what I've read but total BS on Tom who has worked hard to make this all happen.

Mike1975 wrote:
Awesome pic, I love it.

Thanks. I'm not sure if they're only testing it with palladium RPG fans who don't look at how to break the rules (and as palladium 99%er "fans" they're used to finding glacier sized workarounds for rules issues so don't even notice them) but I picked up on that one instantly. The LOS rules are overly complicated (really... they're depending on a fixed "center" of a model that is unique for every single model type and must be defined on two separate planes/images in order to get the proper three dimensional location!?!) yet easily abused. Classic palladium unfortunately...

I immediately changed that to a % of the figure you can see. I use a camera to take a POV pic when needed. I just use a % of the figure that you can see. If people play with anal players than can be fixed too.

So if you cant shoot in HtH does that mean the daedalus maneuver is cheating?

No. The SDF1 was in HTH, so couldn't fire. The Destroids on the Daedalus were not in HTH, so could.

In macross frontier the sniper in the group gets to shoot into HtH. Hopefully one of the writers for RRT is a fan and incorporates it into the game. I doubt it tho.

Well, something positive finally happened for me regarding robotech (although its completely unrelated to Palladium). I've advanced to the next ranking track on Dakka and it matches my avatar. Yay me! Yeah, that's about the only good news so far. We'll see what happens Friday/Saturday with the "weekly" update since the sniffles excuse should have run its course by then and they should have a meatier update... unless someone contracted communicable diarrhea in the palladium offices of course.

They said they 'hoped' (I love the never ending butt-covering done to ensure they have as few actual definitive statements as possible) to have Squadron and Support cards.

I really hope that one or both of those have the possible Unit Upgrades on the back. They talked about those in the early days of the game, but I don't think they've really mentioned them since.

I'm starting to wonder if it's a feature that got dropped for one reason or another (too hard to balance, not enough variety, whatever).

Hopefully we find out tomorrow. If there's an update that is.

Maybe Obama should hire PB for his PR

Mike1975 wrote:
Maybe Obama should hire PB for his PR

I can only imagine how that would turn out.

From PB: Do you need Obama care? Of course you do, it's 98% ready were just waiting on congress to give final approval. Were in need of healthcare as well, so we want to make the bestest health care system out there. Obama care is superduper awesome and everyone in the Oval Office loves it and you will too. We'll have this out by Christmas... Maybe. As we get this done you'll be provided with frequent updates... Maybe.

With much appreciation
PB


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Quick update it'll be ready in time for thanksgiving.

Much appreciation
PB

About.

Fraking.

Time.

Nothing on production, though...

Maybe in the weekly cut and paste we'll see a little something.

But they did say they hoped to have word on production by the end of the month, so I won't start holding their feet to the fire for another week or two.

Gotta say the artwork looks great. Just hope the model looks as good.

Beautiful art work but....is there any card sleeve that big?

The artwork looks nice. I wonder if their version of laminated will be the Kinkos thick lamination that you can use markers on or just the barely glossy version.

Rod wrote:
Beautiful art work but....is there any card sleeve that big?

At a glance, there appear to be large enough 'hard top loaders' (think thick plastic, not really a sleeve, more a card sized mini case) and Ultra Pro seems to sell Postcard sized sleeves that are slightly bigger, though by enough of a margin it might not be ideal.

Personally, worst case scenario, my crew will just treat them like the old massive Malifaux cards and fire up the laminator again.

Wow. Way to fail on standardizing sleeve sizes.

Although MTG has large sleeves for the oversized Commander cards - those might fit.

There are plenty of things to criticize but I don't think a choice of non-standard cards is one of the most serious. Supposedly these things will be laminated so if they do a good job we won't need sleeves and there are some as you mentioned that might work..

 warboss wrote:
There are plenty of things to criticize but I don't think a choice of non-standard cards is one of the most serious.

Then how about this golden oldie.

http://geek-news.mtv.com/2013/04/29/robotech-rpg-kickstarter-2/

No update this week, I guess this weeks card didn't get finished in time....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, so more cards. They've apparently finished sculpting but no previews?

Wish they had pics of the sprue that's mentioned.

I'm pretty happy with card pics.

But then, I'm a crappy amateur and will be happy if my figures don't fall apart and catch fire the first time I field them, so what the sprues look like and more model pics aren't nearly as intriguing to me.

Also, we had all that Gencon prototype porn for sculpt hints.

Do you want my extra cards when everything is delivered? I might, might get to play the actual game in 8 years or so, but I probably won't need the extras from the Biohazard pledge.

The minis are what brought me to the yard.

 Forar wrote:
I'm pretty happy with card pics.

But then, I'm a crappy amateur and will be happy if my figures don't fall apart and catch fire the first time I field them, so what the sprues look like and more model pics aren't nearly as intriguing to me.

Also, we had all that Gencon prototype porn for sculpt hints.

I prefer real women

Shoot, anybody who does not want their cards I will take them and use them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not sure if I posted this here yet. Started a new Tactics Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

I just uploaded the Invid stat cards and REF ones are about 2/3rds done. I'm still playing with how to handle Shadow Fighters and Invid Protoculture Sensors. I also need to decide how to handle when a Alpha and Beta are combined.

Wonder what card they'll show tomorrow? If there is an update tomorrow. I would like to see sprue pics.

No idea, likely some more Destroids or Arty Regults, something already seen in a tournament. Maybe the stats for a Zentraedi Squadron of some sort?

Thanks all who have joined the FB page. It's gone to over 25 members in 4 days.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/1440349382851175/requests/?notif_t=group_r2j


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just added the majority of the REF stat cards to the FB page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

Look, Arty is a child's name. Can we use his proper name of Arthur Regault the Third. Sheesh, after all the efforts put into getting the birth certificate right, you'd think people would be more conscientious.

... sorry, just one of those things, like people who prefer 'shottys and nades' in their FPS's.

I'll be fine.

As for the update? Having now seen 1 Zentraedi card and 2 for the RDF, another Zentraedi card would make sense. I'm still hoping they include a character or two in this one, though a recent update mentioned something about the characters being under review from HG still, and we all know what THAT means.

Ahh, here it is: "The Character Cards are done and have been submitted for approval to Harmony Gold." And that was on Nov 22nd. Call it a hunch, but I doubt they approved however many dozens of characters there may or may not be in just 5 days.

Jeez, at least show us pics of the HG folks working to get the cards approved.lol

By the way I'm ebaying my macross pencil sharpners minis for those that missed it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/171183149377?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

 Cypher-xv wrote:
Jeez, at least show us pics of the HG folks working to get the cards approved.lol

There... happy now? HG hard at work.

If you worked at HG would you be in any hurry to take a look at something Palladium staff have been dry humping all week?

Joyboozer wrote:
If you worked at HG would you be in any hurry to take a look at something Palladium staff have been dry humping all week?

I guess not.

"What is this why I don't even... I need a stiff drink."

"Ma'am, it's 9 in the morning!"

"Latest update from Palladium is in."

"*gulp* Better make it a triple, this is going to be a long one..."

 Cypher-xv wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
If you worked at HG would you be in any hurry to take a look at something Palladium staff have been dry humping all week?

I guess not.

In before the inevitable misquote of "We showed the robotech stuff around the office and everyone made love to it!".

Guess no update. Too bad.

More important update from the local news, because Robotech has been delayed so bloody long it's probably going to arrive on the other side of the federal government lowering the boom on the tax free import threshold, slugging me with an extra 10% in tax on top. If Palladium had been remotely able to get their gak together, which I've now learned to my detriment they are totally incapable of going, it'd be arriving in December tax free.

Some people in a similar situation were saying in the comments that the tax increase isn't supposed to apply retroactively, so while it might be a bit of a hassle to fight them on it, a print out of when you paid for the item and perhaps even the original delivery target might help keep that extra 10% off your order.

It's worth a shot at least.

 Forar wrote:
Some people in a similar situation were saying in the comments that the tax increase isn't supposed to apply retroactively, so while it might be a bit of a hassle to fight them on it, a print out of when you paid for the item and perhaps even the original delivery target might help keep that extra 10% off your order.

It's worth a shot at least.

It's worth a shot but it didn't work for me recently. I preordered an RPG book on Amazon and it was delayed a couple of months.. which overlapped a new state law that forced Amazon to charge sales tax. Despite actually paying for it previously, Amazon charged me yet again for the tax prior to shipping.

Created a few Southern Cross and Invid Standees and posted a few pics
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

NTRabbit wrote:
More important update from the local news, because Robotech has been delayed so bloody long it's probably going to arrive on the other side of the federal government lowering the boom on the tax free import threshold, slugging me with an extra 10% in tax on top. If Palladium had been remotely able to get their gak together, which I've now learned to my detriment they are totally incapable of going, it'd be arriving in December tax free.

Welcome to my pain the last 20 years. Seriously, I don't think Palladium has EVER hit a projected delivery date for a product and RPG books are consistently delayed for years at a time. I was hoping that with Ninja Division running things it would be different, but for as well run as the KS itself was they don't appear to be doing much better on the actual production leg work. In truth I'm not actually THAT upset over it. Waited those 20 years for a proper Robotech minis game, I can wait a few more. Such is the plight of the Robotech junkie.

Plus its only Macross Saga. Now, if this was the MOSPEADA KS that was so heavily delayed, I'd have had a torch and pitchfork months ago.

Can PB get the rest of the eras out by the end of the decade? I feel like I just made the challenge to land a man on the moon before the decade is out.lol

No idea. We'll see if it'll be worth it for us as customers to have them do additional eras based on the quality of the final product. Going from 3d render to actual plastic model seems to be much more difficult for everyone other than DFG (who seem to be having massive delays but come out with very nice kits so the complaints are kept to a minimum... unlike Mantic who seems to put out variable quality ranging from crap to decent but relatively on time to early). I'm obviously highly critical of Palladium but I'll base any further purchases on my experience with the final product here. They've already in my book got aspects of the rules and the max/miriya gencon debacle against them but those are secondary concerns to the quality of the minis received. The former will affect the magnitude of any future pledges whereas the latter will affect whether or not is there a future pledge.

I did some to scale paper counters and placed pics on the Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/1440349382851175/1442421295977317/?notif_t=like


Automatically Appended Next Post:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.1442615172624596&type=1

NTRabbit wrote:
More important update from the local news, because Robotech has been delayed so bloody long it's probably going to arrive on the other side of the federal government lowering the boom on the tax free import threshold, slugging me with an extra 10% in tax on top. If Palladium had been remotely able to get their gak together, which I've now learned to my detriment they are totally incapable of going, it'd be arriving in December tax free.

The outcome of Gerry Harvey's circle jerk was to lower the threshold by March 2014, but this will no doubt be delayed somewhat since the Government tends to move slowly. It gives us three months on these endlessly delayed Kickstarters, though I'm going to be severely fethed off if I end up paying GST on things like Dreamforge that are running over a year late...
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/finance/tax/34749-gst-changes-flagged-but-shoppers-won-t-be-charged-this-christmas.html

Sadly, 10% won't actually make much of the stuff we import priced on a parity to overseas prices.

And RK and others...

Munster wrote:
And RK and others...

Which coincidentally has directly correlation to here.

Soda Pop/Ninja Division seemed to have bit off more than they can chew.

 cincydooley wrote:

Munster wrote:
And RK and others...

Which coincidentally has directly correlation to here.

Soda Pop/Ninja Division seemed to have bit off more than they can chew.

I thought the same thing. I figure RK is running late because of RRT and vise versa.

Yep, with RK they can blame RRT and with RRT they can blame RK. It wouldn't be such a joke if they could deliver one of them

I've added some info on the Tactical Briefing on the Facebook page. I plan on finishing up a briefing on each unit before the end of the year.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

Read on the PB site that PB had a pow wow with ND to get manufacturing details hammered out.

Cool.. what progress pics/dates/rules did they post to show they've done something other than a half dozen cards over the past 4 months?

 warboss wrote:
Cool.. what progress pics/dates/rules did they post to show they've done something other than a half dozen cards over the past 4 months?

Non of that stuff is shown. It's from a comment Kevin made in his blog.
From today's Murmur:
"Wayne and Jeff had very productive two hour telephone call with Ninja Division on some final pre-manufacturing details for Robotech® RPG Tactics, and seemed quite positive."

That was it.

 Cypher-xv wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Cool.. what progress pics/dates/rules did they post to show they've done something other than a half dozen cards over the past 4 months?

Non of that stuff is shown. It's from a comment Kevin made in his blog.
From today's Murmur:
"Wayne and Jeff had very productive two hour telephone call with Ninja Division on some final pre-manufacturing details for Robotech® RPG Tactics, and seemed quite positive."

That was it.

So..... Nothing.

Yeah, there's a lot of wishy washy weasely wordy action in that short statement!

I'm hoping this means for tomorrow's update that it'll say their about to go to production. Like before the end of the month.

 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, there's a lot of wishy washy weasely wordy action in that short statement!

Nonsense, proactive planning for the final preproduction strategy is serious work! Doesn't Forar have an ongoing drinking game that mandates he take a shot every time Palladium uses the word "final"?

 warboss wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, there's a lot of wishy washy weasely wordy action in that short statement!

Nonsense, proactive planning for the final preproduction strategy is serious work! Doesn't Forar have an ongoing drinking game that mandates he take a shot every time Palladium uses the word "final"?

I thought it was when 98% was mentioned.

Both are on the list.

Well my Final rules are about 98% done and posted up on the facebook page with the exception of space combat. The final standees are 98% done too but I can't distribute them.

The Tactical Briefing on all units is about halfway done and with the tactical briefing I'm making small changes to units as I go through them so that means that my stat cards are also 98% done.



https://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/groups/1440349382851175/

Couldn't resist

Me neither I'm buzzed now.

Mike1975 wrote:Well my Final rules are about 98% done and posted up on the facebook page with the exception of space combat. The final standees are 98% done too but I can't distribute them.

The Tactical Briefing on all units is about halfway done and with the tactical briefing I'm making small changes to units as I go through them so that means that my stat cards are also 98% done.



https://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/groups/1440349382851175/

Couldn't resist

We won't fall for that. You actually show weekly and even daily progress!

Forar wrote:Both are on the list.

Forar on the weekends when both a palladium press release and a kickstarter update devoted to robotech comes out.

City of Amsterdam Offers Alcoholics Work-for-Beer Program
December 5, 2013
By: Justine Goodman

Finally, a government policy we can get behind!


Photo: iStockphoto.com/ CREATISTA | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013

Are you an out-of-work alcoholic living in Amsterdam? Good news! The government would like to make you an offer: You work for them - cleaning streets and such - and in exchange, they'll buy you beer! And tobacco! And, just to really sell you on it, 10 Euros!

No, it's not just your lifelong dream job, it's a real program, and it is detailed in an article that appears in today's New York Times. The program, initiated last year by a government-subsidized organization called the Rainbow Foundation, is designed to help alcoholics, homeless people, and addicts get back on their feet by entrusting them with the responsibilities that come with having a real job, and giving them just enough beer to keep their gak together.

For those lucky enough to get into the program (there is a waiting list, because OBVIOUSLY), an average day begins with two complimentary cans of beer, followed by a few hours of picking up trash; there are two more cans of beer at lunch, then some more trash; and after that, another can of beer - or two, "if all goes smoothly," i.e., if you manage to get through the day without engaging in any knife fights. Each employee also gets half a packet of rolling tobacco, free lunch, and 10 Euros a day.

But the best part is that, this being Amsterdam, at the end of a long, hazy week, you can stumble over to the Red Light District and use your 50 Euros to buy hallucinogenic mushrooms, a fat sack of chronic, and 20 minutes with a toothless prostitute - without even breaking the law!

Mike1975 wrote:
Couldn't resist

i *hic* haet u

So we can clearly determine:

Palladium is nearly completing their pre-production planning which includes the tooling utilization planning and pre-design follow up items?

That would mean the customer demand logistics system fill planning will be underway to ensure the manufacturing cell line balancing and prioritization would get a head start.

I would then anticipate they are 98% complete in planning for unanticipated extended resource supply and a task responsibility matrix.

Since they are talking to Ninja Division I think then they are planning for unanticipated design feature challenge responses and a reaction plan from the supplier to ensure smooth feature exploit follow-up.

I am particularly excited by the challenge of customer product presentation and part pick prioritization. That would typically require a focus group to ensure a maximized perceived value for money. Logistic groupings for maximal regional efficiency will be a breeze for this experienced organization.

I suspect that the extremely efficient status releases are a means of pointing to the effort using maximum resources and no extraneous operations will distract them from the real time target goals that are carefully measured against the progress of the project.

Nothing to worry about! They will simply do all the right things, do a target gap analysis, restart non-conforming customer experience items, re-realize product experience objectives and perform on-the-fly product design realignment to further enhance a successful kickstarter conclusion!

I can't wait.

BINGO!

I had "efficient", "challenge", free space, "part pick prioritization", and "focus group".

Too... many... buzzwords...

*scanners.jpg*

So if you are only 98% drunk and I say you need to drink one more to finally be drunk.....does that obligate you to drink one more or two?

three more just to be safe,

or one strong sweet disgusting cider

Whatever's Comfortable!

No update till tomorrow. This is from the comments section from the last update.

Creator Palladium Books 42 minutes ago
Hey, guys (those who are watching this space, anyway). I really wanted to post an update today, but it's just not going to happen. I'm expecting to be in the office tomorrow, and will post an update then. Sorry, everyone. --Wayne

Press release went out on their website but it's the usual copy paste "we'll be submitting to HG.. approval in 2-3 weeks" rinse/lather/repeat that we've been seeing for the past 2-3 months.

Latest update:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/687814?ref=activity

Nice to see that dangling thread finally resolved, but I doubt there are many who really care about the paint scheme.

Given that it was a two week wait, a stat/character card or two would've been nice.

But at least it's something.

 Forar wrote:
Nice to see that dangling thread finally resolved, but I doubt there are many who really care about the paint scheme.

Given that it was a two week wait, a stat/character card or two would've been nice.

But at least it's something.

My emphasis. The original contest stated that there would be multiple WINNERS (plural) announced in the first week of June... At the risk of sounding ungrateful for this tiny scrap of hope, <=50% of the expected results 6 months late is a benchmark that I'm hoping they exceed significantly for the actual game release (that's the optimistic view). The pessimistic view is that this is a half assed update thrown out the door just to say that they had an update in the past two weeks... kind of like a junior high term paper written during the last period and only less than a full page triple spaced.

I don't know how to feel.

Glad that the contest is resolved, cool stuff.

The lack of... meaningful info has me feeling all torches and pitchfork-y.

Grumble. At least it and my G&G Battle board will arrive in May... maybe.

It feels like we'er being trolled now. Guess now we know how Jeff an Wayne spent their time with ND. They were busy deciding the contest winners. Bet you guys that we'll get the same next week (jazz hands). An if you complain the PB cheerleaders will spring into action. Just how their doing right now.lol

It's totally cool guys! Some fans have been waiting for decades for this to happen, so obviously all 5,400'ish of us should be totally patient with a project where the delivery date has been backsliding for the last two months.

No reason to get antsy at all! I'm sure they'll totally keep us in the loop to tell us in January that they're not going to make February either. That's like being kept informed! In a way! We should be thankful that they deign to cut and paste the same thing for over a month and call it information!

Totally the same! Just as good! Obviously we should just accept that they'll do what they say, and simultaneously expect it all to be more exuberance and enthusiasm and that it'll be out when it's good and ready!

And anyway, they already have our money! What are we going to do? Pointedly ask them uncomfortable questions constantly throughout the next KS campaign? Drop half our pledges on the secondary market, killing a good chunk of the demand as gamers become collectors of a few choice figures and pitch the rest for those who are still interested? Spread virally that regardless of how good their communication is during the campaign, that post campaign it sucks gak and to say that it'd be generous to add 50% to their delivery timetable and still say that was optimistic? That whatever fanboy glee they get from whatever pouncing they get at Gencon (assuming they are even ready for it) won't hide the fact that they've squandered good will and enthusiasm for months on end?

... now where did I put my torch?

Huh, looks like dealing with the valiant white knights in the comments has left me feeling a bit sour.

Hey it's worked for 30+ years so why change now right.

A few pics

Are they your models or Palladium's?

These were painted by someone else. The middle figures are Palladium Gencon versions and the ones on the sides are 1/250 mods. There is more discussion on the Tactics Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

Man oh man, those Quedluun Rau make me want to buy em by the dozen and use them as...somehting. Anything. Everything. Infinity TAGs? SM terminators or Centurians? Tau crisis suits? Christmas ornaments? Lawn decorations? Personal grief counselors?

Suddenly VERY impatient for this stuff to come out :(

 Rhelyk wrote:


Suddenly VERY impatient for this stuff to come out :(

Then good news! Everything is 98% done, and final approval from Harmony Gold is nearly done, about 98% in fact...

Dang you Evil Toast! We just got Forar to sober up!

Fat chance! He's been playing that game for the last 6 months, and been sozzled for 98% of the time since he started. He's been drunk for 98% of the remainder of the time!

Where did the transparent bases come from? Do they have the arrow markings on them like the standard bases?

Aren't they soda pop bases? I thought that's what they are.

I think he said they are Litko bases

I see thank you Mike.

The new update is up.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/692173#comments

They're 98% of the way there with the battle foam bag. And 98% of the way there with the engineering for the production run. Their rep had a 98 degree fever. (That was a stretch but I had to)

So.. the goal now is to just get the test run done by January which means that the real production run won't be for a month after that... add in slow boat shipping from china... a few weeks in customs and palladium's warehouse for packing... and we'll be lucky to get it at all in March.

rigeld2 wrote:
They're 98% of the way there with the battle foam bag. And 98% of the way there with the engineering for the production run. Their rep had a 98 degree fever. (That was a stretch but I had to)

Now Forar is going to have to drink 3 drinks and that will bring his blood alcohol level to .02 which means 98% of his blood will still be alcohol free. Oh wait, now 4 drinks........

 warboss wrote:
So.. the goal now is to just get the test run done by January which means that the real production run won't be for a month after that... add in slow boat shipping from china... a few weeks in customs and palladium's warehouse for packing... and we'll be lucky to get it at all in March.

What about Chinese New Year?

I'm thinking July.

And at that point you may as well call it Q4/Christmas 2014. I'm calling it now.

 Azazelx wrote:
And at that point you may as well call it Q4/Christmas 2014. I'm calling it now.

Optimist.

rigeld2 wrote:
They're 98% of the way there with the battle foam bag. And 98% of the way there with the engineering for the production run. Their rep had a 98 degree fever. (That was a stretch but I had to)

Are they doing custom trays, or just generic shapes?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 warboss wrote:
So.. the goal now is to just get the test run done by January which means that the real production run won't be for a month after that... add in slow boat shipping from china... a few weeks in customs and palladium's warehouse for packing... and we'll be lucky to get it at all in March.

What about Chinese New Year?

I'm thinking July.

Add in the fact that for me it's

Test run - January
Chinese New Year in February
Full Production run - March
Slow boat from China - April/May
Customs & Packing
US customers are looking at June/July
Shipping to EU, further Customs, and UK postal system gouges, mean I'm thinking optimistically at end of Q3/early Q4 next year anyway and an increase in the costs of my pledge around the 20-50% level. And that's if they can actually stick to that timetable.

God only knows what the Australians are actually going to have to do. I certainly wouldn't trust them to get it right if they say that they'll send the Aus packages direct from China.

 Balance wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:
They're 98% of the way there with the battle foam bag. And 98% of the way there with the engineering for the production run. Their rep had a 98 degree fever. (That was a stretch but I had to)

Are they doing custom trays, or just generic shapes?

The images in the update were generic squares.

"In other news, a local man has been diagnosed with severe liver and kidney damage, allegedly after reading a single thread on a popular gaming website. When interviewed, he merely slurred something about the number 98 and then threw up on the reporters shoes."

But really, between the user generated squadron and the BF bag that I'm guessing only a comparative handful of people actually got, it's like they're now working from a 'things that affect the fewest people are big news' stance.

As for delivery;
Q1 is definitely not looking good.
Q2 seems possible for us North Americans, but truly international folks may be awfully cranky.
Q3 seems fairly solid. There is no way on Earth they are going to miss Gencon 2014.

The current game is really a question of when they (again) admit to the backers something we already know; they're probably not going to make the current target date.

As for the BF bag itself; I've been playing with the tray creator, and while I'll need to have actual models in hand to really get the exact measurements I'd need, it looks like a custom case will be able to carry a rather sizable force. The custom trays themselves are pricey enough that I'm leaning towards a new bag to go with them, either a PACK 720 if I just want to carry one force at a time, or an XL1520 if I want to carry my entire collection with room to spare. That said, a 1520 with custom trays and S&H would be a hell of an investment.

 Forar wrote:
Q3 seems fairly solid. There is no way on Earth they are going to miss Gencon 2014.

They don't want to, I agree. I don't believe they'll make it, however.

At first I thought you guys were just being overly shamefully negative in here, but...

Bottom line: We're darn close.

I know you're all wondering how we're looking with regard to a release date. We've been trying to narrow that down, but the manufacturing rep was travelling, then apparently fell ill. We're having another conference call with the Ninja Division folks tomorrow, when we hope to get more concrete info.

Good thing this wasn't a Force Five/Gaiking/Grandizer/Starvengers/Godzilla/Gamera/Kaiju Kickstarter!

I somehow avoided Robotech, so the Nostalgia was week for me here - good thing too!

PalladiumTM... You may lose your job if your productivity goes down to zero for weeks every time because "of a bug around the office" but we keep them 98% of the time!

rigeld2 wrote:

 Forar wrote:
Q3 seems fairly solid. There is no way on Earth they are going to miss Gencon 2014.

They don't want to, I agree. I don't believe they'll make it, however.

Given that we just watched Relic Knights get hit with a 6 month shot and a "more work is needed... good luck" chaser, it's possible, but that'd get ugly.

Man, if they thought the whole Gencon Max/Miriya debacle was bad, I can't imagine the response to "Whelp, remember when we said we hoped to deliver early? Yeahhh... so we're actually going to need twice as long as we thought."

'Oops, sorry' wouldn't cover that kind of bad publicity.

And yeah, Alph, if you're not familiar with Palladium from their RPGs, their loooong running reputation is to promise the stars and fail to get out of the atmosphere. I was a fan/consumer of their stuff in the 90's/early 00's and lengthy delays were par for the course. Some books they were super excited to have lined up in catalogs for the near future back then just came out a few years ago. There's a lot of reasons for this that I won't bore you with, but it's generally half negativity/disappointment, half tongue in cheek mockery of what is now a literally decades old running gag.

They've seriously had listings in a catalog as 'coming soon' that took 10+ years to hit the shelves?

 Alpharius wrote:
They've seriously had listings in a catalog as 'coming soon' that took 10+ years to hit the shelves?

In there "defence", they usually stop bothering to hype the books after they're a few years late on the initial delivery date. Of course... since they never create a new edition that would invalidate their dated books and rules, you can still see the full embarassing glory of the original hype in alot of the books on the shelf that still mention them coming soon (a decade later). Only one so far (Lemuria) has made it back from the Netherworld of being hyped for years in the 1990's.

Wasn't one of the NGR books (orange with blue mech-dude on the cover) also delayed for a couple years?

rigeld2 wrote:

 Balance wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:
They're 98% of the way there with the battle foam bag. And 98% of the way there with the engineering for the production run. Their rep had a 98 degree fever. (That was a stretch but I had to)

Are they doing custom trays, or just generic shapes?

The images in the update were generic squares.

I didn't know if that was just the weight test they mentioned.

Well, I guess you live and learn. Despite my enjoyment of Southern Cross back in the day, I think I'll stick with the more iconic Macross stuff once it (ever) arrives and pass up on anything Palladium ever do again. The "assured" December delivery on this (Despite previous Palladium-fail) was the only reason I went in on it...

 Azazelx wrote:
Well, I guess you live and learn. Despite my enjoyment of Southern Cross back in the day, I think I'll stick with the more iconic Macross stuff once it (ever) arrives and pass up on anything Palladium ever do again. The "assured" December delivery on this (Despite previous Palladium-fail) was the only reason I went in on it...

From what I've seen, if you believed that, well...

As long as the game arrives by the time my son is old enough to play it, I can't get too angry. But I can snark it up. Oh boy can I snark.

What are the odds we'll have Mecha Front in our hands by the time Robotech Tactics ships?
I'm thinking .98ish.

rigeld2 wrote:
Wasn't one of the NGR books (orange with blue mech-dude on the cover) also delayed for a couple years?

Rifts World Book 5: Triax and the NGR

No idea if that was delayed in any fashion, I didn't get into Rifts until World Book 16 was on the shelves.

But it wouldn't surprise me.

 Alpharius wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Well, I guess you live and learn. Despite my enjoyment of Southern Cross back in the day, I think I'll stick with the more iconic Macross stuff once it (ever) arrives and pass up on anything Palladium ever do again. The "assured" December delivery on this (Despite previous Palladium-fail) was the only reason I went in on it...

From what I've seen, if you believed that, well...

To be fair, Palladium touted working with ND to shore up their inexperience in the field of mini production, and without delving too deeply into that pedigree that seemed pretty reasonable.

Of course, Relic Knights announcing a 6 month delay around the time the RRT campaign fired up should've been a warning sign to manage ones expectations, but they talked a good talk.

And then after the campaign ended they went silent for 2 months, aside from the usual weekly Palladium cut and paste. It wasn't until they wanted more money... ahem, wanted to get us to finalize our orders with a pledge manager that they started communicating again, though even with a recent uptick in both the frequency and relevance of the KS updates, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

If one were bored enough to read through the thread, they'd see a lot of people backing fully knowing that Palladium's reputation on deadlines wasn't great.

Doesn't mean we can't roll our eyes and tsk at them when they try to feed us yet another line every other update.

At this point I sincerely hope they manage to make the following series simply an expansion of the product line and don't have to go to Kickstarter again, because at this rate the comments will be an outright warzone between those who are justly annoyed by their poor communications and ongoing deadline running gags and the white knight fanboys who will defend to their last breath the honour and purity of the mighty Palladium.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
As long as the game arrives by the time my son is old enough to play it, I can't get too angry. But I can snark it up. Oh boy can I snark.

What are the odds we'll have Mecha Front in our hands by the time Robotech Tactics ships?
I'm thinking .98ish.

48/49 sounds about right.

Also, it looks like Wyrd is currently winning my personal "who delivers first" race between them, Palladium and Flying Frog's dungeon crawler boardgame. But to be fair, Wyrd's campaign finished in January and is anticipating a six month delay, whereas with Palladium I'm managing my expectations to be more in the August range (8 months), and FFP's first half to be at least vaguely on time.

Sort of a lumbering shuffle towards actually getting a couple grand worth of stuff into the mail at this point.

Their tactical error is the drive from southern Ontario to their office is surprisingly short.
May have to grab Forar and any other guys in the area and ask for a status update in person.
I will also ask for the $30 shipping add-on costs to be removed...

 Talizvar wrote:
Their tactical error is the drive from southern Ontario to their office is surprisingly short.
May have to grab Forar and any other guys in the area and ask for a status update in person.
I will also ask for the $30 shipping add-on costs to be removed...

Crowdfund this. I'm in for the $20 for Gas level.

LOL, for only $10 more in pledges you can get the commerative making of DVD "And everybody loved it!" where Forar and Talizvar try to find out in person just what is being passed around the office (besides germs of course).

Germs and a lot of axx kissing.lol

"So, how far along are you? And I'll warn you, you should choose your answer very, very carefully."

"Err... Ummm... about... ninet""NOPE WRONG ANSWER!"

So is that question asked with a bat or a whiskey in hand?

Maybe we should ask for $ support over at the PB forums. I'm sure you'll get $texas support.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hey Wayne's put up another mini update.


Creator Palladium Books 7 minutes ago
@Larry, I try to post info when I have it. Usually, at this point, if I'm not talking about the release date, it's because we really don't know anything new. As others have said, February is looking doubtful... UNLESS we can get things into production soon, which we are still trying to do (everything except some print assets has been delivered, and engineers are working on it). We just don't know anything solid yet. --Wayne

Mike1975 wrote:
So is that question asked with a bat or a whiskey in hand?

[Tony Stark]Can't it be both?[/Tony Stark]

 Cypher-xv wrote:


Hey Wayne's put up another mini update.

@Larry, I try to post info when I have it. Usually, at this point, if I'm not talking about the release date, it's because we really don't know anything new. As others have said, February is looking doubtful... UNLESS we can get things into production soon, which we are still trying to do (everything except some print assets has been delivered, and engineers are working on it). We just don't know anything solid yet. --Wayne

Well, it's still a little unrealistically optimistic, but it's a start.

I'd love for a Christmas miracle to happen and for them to manage to produce, pack and load like a million miniatures in 50 days, before the manufacturing facility takes a month long break or whatever it is that happens over there, but given that their opening bid was to hope for the test runs to be done by then, I think it's only a matter of time before they cough up a May/June'ish date.

I mean, if February is a complete loss like some guys make it out to be, and even with the vast generalization of 'a month' to produce 'em all and another month to ship them (for all I know they'll end up 2 months apiece) that's just getting the pallets to Palladium in like May. Add untold weeks assembling thousands of boxes and we really might be lucky to see this stuff in June (in North America), not to mention the rest of the world probably being in July or later (I can't wait to hear peoples complaints that they won't get their boxes for X weeks but can buy some stuff on ebay right this minute), with a big pile of it accompanying them in August to Gencon.

And this may even be an optimistic timeline.

Such a shame. Their staunch supporters remain faithful, but I can only imagine even their patience will start getting tested as we approach the year and a half mark.

The PB white knights will still say we'er wrong and PB is right. I've come to see that now, so I don't count them anymore. I just try an get along cause there's no point in getting into it with them. Heck I was on Jaymz new forum and one guy kept repeating the same BS over and over. There's just no getting thru to these guys. My guess is their loyal because in high school PB was their main companion. When members of the opposite sex weren't.

According to Wayne's post it looks like even they don't believe in a feb delivery. In fact he even acknowledges that the backers might be right. I think this is his way of crowd control for the inevitable news that February will be a no go either. It would have been nice if that was mentioned in the update, but it's a start, your right about that. No point in trashing PB if we want Wayne to continue interacting with us. This way when we have questions hopefully he'll chime in from time to time.

This thread and the Ragin Heroes one fulfills certain needs I have...

I salute you both, brave backers one and all, in the face of overwhelming odds!

A mix of "wow, still even remotely optimistic in the face of what is almost certain to be another half year delay" and "these frakkin' guys, eh?"?

Pretty much!

Plus there are more than a few laughs to be had in here too - kudos to all for keeping a sense of humor about them!

 Alpharius wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Well, I guess you live and learn. Despite my enjoyment of Southern Cross back in the day, I think I'll stick with the more iconic Macross stuff once it (ever) arrives and pass up on anything Palladium ever do again. The "assured" December delivery on this (Despite previous Palladium-fail) was the only reason I went in on it...

From what I've seen, if you believed that, well...

To be fair, I haven't followed Palladium since I was a teenager. Well, to put it another way, I've never followed them closely as a company, but I used to buy their RPGs when I was a teenager. The guys in the Robotech thread at the time seemed pretty confident in the delivery window at the time, so I went with them....

 Azazelx wrote:
To be fair, I haven't followed Palladium since I was a teenager. Well, to put it another way, I've never followed them closely as a company, but I used to buy their RPGs when I was a teenager. The guys in the Robotech thread at the time seemed pretty confident in the delivery window at the time, so I went with them....

The thread here?? I don't think confidence in palladium was a general theme at any time... it was more like "maybe they changed" and people pledging despite palladium's involvement.

 warboss wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
To be fair, I haven't followed Palladium since I was a teenager. Well, to put it another way, I've never followed them closely as a company, but I used to buy their RPGs when I was a teenager. The guys in the Robotech thread at the time seemed pretty confident in the delivery window at the time, so I went with them....

The thread here?? I don't think confidence in palladium was a general theme at any time... it was more like "maybe they changed" and people pledging despite palladium's involvement.

I think a lot of people bought in to the Kickstarter on the assumption that Palladium's role was mainly as an intermediary between HG and Ninja Design or whomever would be handling most of the heavy lifting of sculpting, rules design and support, etc.

Yeah, it was definitely a massive shift from the nigh-constant contact and updates we had with the various "Ninjas" running the show during the KS campaign, and the two months of silence that seemed to precede Palladium taking up the helm of keeping us informed (the snark writes itself here).

I miss the Ninjas.

It's definitely been funny/odd seeing how much and how little Palladium is doing being emphasized and played down over the course of the last 8-9 months. Depending on who/when they're talking, they're either doing little but offering the license and some rules suggestions, to doing a ton of the heavy lifting. One day they're instrumental to the project, other days they're just the go-between while HG sends them notes to pass along to ND like classmates in junior high (before the advent of texting, I suppose).

Edit: to be fair, of course, nobody expected them to keep someone working full time for months post campaign, but I don't think the 'creator' account has even posted in the general comments since the campaign ended. We've had entire cluster-shenanigans go down (Max and Miriya for example) where we didn't hear a peep from them for a good month until they finally addressed it in a slightly less copy and pasted news post.

I'm with Forar in wanting to see a post mortem of this project. Just to know what's really going on. I wouldn't be surprised to see another interesting article by Ross Watson about how PB handles kickstarter from one of his insider buddies.

Got some of my pics posted as examples of what the DZC terrain looks like plus they will post some more in a week with some of the standees so you can get a better look at how things look with the KS terrain.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554355176/games-and-gears-battle-boards/posts

For those that don't read the weekly press releases, here you go. It's not exactly swimming in anything more than usual, but again, it is better than that god awful cut and paste they had going.

That, sadly, remains intact further down the page.

UPDATE: Robotech® RPG Tactics™

As I noted in the opening to this Weekly Update, it may not seem like a lot is happening sometimes, at least from outside, but there is all kinds of stuff going on at Palladium Books. One of them is working with Ninja Division to get Robotech® RPG Tactics™ into manufacturing as quick as possible without sacrificing quality. We want this game out and in your hands more than you do! And we are making progress. When we have hard data, we will be sure to share it.

Here is a recap of where we’re at:

Palladium Books and Ninja Division had a highpowered conference call Thursday afternoon to plot the best course of manufacturing and release of products, as well as getting the last few details finalized.

-All miniature designs are finished and have gotten final approval from Harmony Gold. All are being broken down into sprues and laid out for manufacturing.

-Mold engineering by the factory to make the retail and Kickstarter product is close to being finalized.

-The rule book is done, laid out and approved.

-Game stat cards are done, laid out and approved.

-We are working out the last few tweaks and details for the Robotech® RPG Tactics™ Battle Foam bag. We got a package from John at Ninja Division a couple days ago. It contained prototype foam trays for the Battle Foam bag that is designed to hold a full Battle Cry worth of (90+) game pieces. Bottom line, we are darn close. We made some notes and will be in touch with the Battle Foam guys to make a couple of changes to the tray layout, so it can be sent into manufacturing.

-Tooling should be nearly finished, and test pieces run, before the Chinese New Year celebrations. We're still pushing to get the full production run done before then, but we don't yet know if the various engineering work will be done in time to allow for that. We hope to have more info on that next week.

-We want a first quarter 2014 release. Excitement is running high. We will get you details and release dates as soon as we know them ourselves.

A lot of things that are, supposedly, done. Final. Absolute. 100%. So hopefully we stop hearing further variations on the theme on them at least. I still think Q1 is highly optimistic even if they do get production completed by the end of January, but I'm past caring about it for the moment. It's better than we've been getting for a while, and that's enough for now. For me, at least.

At least the update didn't give you a reason to take a shot. Here's to sobriety.lol

In another thread, someone mentioned that Robotech's manufacturer was working with restic... Is this KS going to be in restic? I thought they said the minis would be hard plastic. Does anyone know more about this?

Cypher, Only if Forar does not read between the lines!

Palladium Books and Ninja Division had a highpowered conference call Thursday afternoon to plot the best course of manufacturing and release of products, as well as getting the last few details finalized. (We're 98% finalised, finally)
-All miniature designs are (finally) finished and have gotten final approval from Harmony Gold. All are being broken down into sprues and laid out for manufacturing. (Also 98% finalised.)

-Mold engineering by the factory to make the retail and Kickstarter product is close to being finalized. (About 98%, we estimate.)

-The rule book is done, laid out and approved. (Finally finalised)

-Game stat cards are done, laid out and approved. (Finally finalised)

-We are working out the last few tweaks and details (2%) for the Robotech® RPG Tactics™ Battle Foam bag. We got a package from John at Ninja Division a couple days ago. It contained prototype foam trays for the Battle Foam bag that is designed to hold a full Battle Cry worth of (90+) game pieces. Bottom line, we are darn close (98%). We made some notes and will be in touch with the Battle Foam guys to make a couple of changes to the tray layout, so it can be sent into manufacturing.

-Tooling should be nearly finished (98%), and test pieces run, before the Chinese New Year celebrations. We're still pushing to get the full production run done before then, but we don't yet know if the various engineering work will be done in time to allow for that. We hope to have more info on that next week.

-We want a first quarter 2014 release. Excitement is running high. We will get you details and release dates as soon as we know them ourselves.

So we expect Forar to be out of hospital and attending his first AA meeting sometime next September.

Maybe I am being a little harsh on PB here, but I never wanted a game out of this. I am a modeller, not a gamer, so I went in for the models themselves. I want my SDF-1 and character models as display pieces due to the nostalgia I have for the series itself and the fact that I owned the Robotech RPG back in the day.. and this non-communication doe nothing to make me want to back them further. I was also a RIFTS fan back in the day. Don't think I'll back a RIFTS KS unless the models are much better than I remember or shown here. I'm going to go back to my 1/35th scale Patlabor instead. Maybe PB should team up with Bandai and produce a 1/35th scale Valk?

Beginning to think my drinking game is now a conspiracy against me between Conrad, my local liquor store and my liver. Not sure what I ever did to any of them.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
In another thread, someone mentioned that Robotech's manufacturer was working with restic... Is this KS going to be in restic? I thought they said the minis would be hard plastic. Does anyone know more about this?

Far as I recall this'll be in ABS plastic. There will be a few pewter parts (the VEF-1/1D pack will apparently have a few that'll be simpler to set up) and some pieces that have been stated to be in 'resin' (the SDF-1, the bases and the objective tokens.

Yeah, the entire KS they said normal "hard" styrene... but all it takes is a single update to get PVC with all it's pitfalls and there frankly isn't anything we can do about it.

Does ABS work with plastic glue?


And Warboss, I'm 98% sure we will be getting at least one surprise update with regards to the miniatures' medium and/or quality. Makes me want to preemptively burn my Sedition Wars minis.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Does ABS work with plastic glue?


And Warboss, I'm 98% sure we will be getting at least one surprise update with regards to the miniatures' medium and/or quality. Makes me want to preemptively burn my Sedition Wars minis.

Yup, it works with ABS. Styrene is the plastic that before Mantic and KS muddied the waters and was just simply called "plastic" for 30+ years in the model making hobby and works with plastic glue.

I fully expect some problems and additional delays once they actually make something/anything considering how doe-eyed a grizzled old crotchety like Palladium has been during the PLANNING stages. Remember, we've got 4 months of delays from the revised October delivery date and they haven't even actually produced anything yet. In programming terms, these are the issues that they've run across before ever even attempting to run/compile anything. Scary, hun?

Guys we need to start a kickstarter for Forar. We can send him to the lush facilities that all the celebs go to for "Exhaustion". Hey he might even run into that rich kid who recently got away with killing four people while driving drunk.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554355176/games-and-gears-battle-boards

You know guys if you convert to dollars and figure price for an Early Bird per 2' x 2' section it comes out to $14.20. You can get a large pizza or a great burger, fries and drink for the same price as one board. Think how long that pizza will last!

Or one could more accurately state that a 6 by 4 board can be bought for ~$101 USD.

I wish I could justify snagging one, as that's a solid deal, but between the holidays and the $Macross Wyrd, Palladium and Flying Frog have tied up, I'm Kickedout for the time being.

 Forar wrote:
Or one could more accurately state that a 6 by 4 board can be bought for ~$101 USD.

I wish I could justify snagging one, as that's a solid deal, but between the holidays and the $Macross Wyrd, Palladium and Flying Frog have tied up, I'm Kickedout for the time being.

You're right. I was using the Euro not British Pounds.

Unlike the rest of the buyers in my local group I've lost most of my confidence in this venture which is really frustrating because I spent good money on this with hopeful expectations as well.

What frustrates me is the non-progress and what feels like PB pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining about the whole ordeal. I want to see finished models not foam and cards. Additionally, the fact that there were convention exclusive pieces but PB couldn't bother to send these to the backers as a good faith measure.

In all honesty, I do have fond memories of PB from my early RPG experiences, so I actually thought they'd make this work, but as time ticks on and there's no real progress, it really starts to worry me. It also confuses me to see all these people wanting the pledge manager reopened while waiting... so throw more money at a project that is seemingly stalled? How will that help?

Anyway, rant over, I'm just really hoping for the best and worried about the worst and wanted to be able to get it out without fanboys chasing me with pitchforks and torches.

According to PB they're supposed to have some info regarding how this production thing will or won't start by the end of the year.

So hopefully we'll at least have a vague roadmap in the next two weeks.

But yeah, I'm not particularly optimistic, but that's been a running theme for over half a year now, and my realism/pessimism hasn't gone unrewarded.

*jazzhands*

So... they'll have a 98% complete roadmap in the next two weeks?

Even if the game is successful I think I'm out based on how they're handling the kickstarter. Thankfully everything I pledged for is either useful in Battletech or a limited edition piece.

Macross is my favorite era by far (although I preferred to RPG during the now partly disavowed Sentinels era... but with my Macross era pilot and VF-1). Obviously, the final quality of what I actually receive will be the biggest determining factor of continued involvement but Palladium has since eaten away significantly at the good will and excitement that the Kickstarter generated for me. I'm not angry anymore like I was with the Max/Miriya debacle but I'm simply not excited anymore either.


@Mike: What size board have you been playing on? For the supposedly smaller "skirmish" scale forces, do you think 3'x4' is enough of a table space? Does that size give you enough room to maneuver but not be completely out of the action with the smaller model count forces in the skirmish side? Obviously the preceeding assumes that they didn't just drop support for that game type since the kickstarter.

Yeah. My crew snagged 8 boxes between us, of which 3 were earmarked for me. I was planning on selling off 1 to recoup some costs, but as the months and bullgak go by, I'm leaning towards making that 1.5-2 boxes (aside from some things I'd love to hold onto).

In the end it'll be a mix of things. How much crap we had to tolerate to finally get those boxes. How good the game actually is. How big the secondary market is (if supply is low and demand is high I might end up selling 2+ boxes outright and accept having to slowly pick up some things again in months to come, like if people are buying the non-Wave 1 stuff at double MSRP, I'd be crazy not to), etc.

I'm definitely not as enthusiastic about the second generation. Assuming they do another Kickstarter, I could see going in for whatever the Battle Cry equivalent tier is, if it exists.

I've seen it said in many places that in life you can get things Good, Fast and Cheap, but you only get to pick 2. Considering the Battle Cry seems to have given us a big pile of figures for around 1/4 MSRP, I'll totally say we got it Cheap. It definitely hasn't come quickly, so we're down to whether or not the end products are good to determine if, by that standard, it was worth it.

I mean, getting that big pile of models for ~66-75% off (less when actually buying from stores of course, though the LE's and non-wave 1 stuff might offset that significantly as well) is great, but against having that cash paying off what's left on my credit card instead? Tough call.

@Warboss: they said that standard play was generally on 4x4 and 4x6 tables. I've got a 3x5 at home that I might try some games on (15 square feet rather than 16, though it might enhance the power of some longer range abilities) but that also depends on how long games take and how high we play in points. They said that 300 points was generally a roughly hour long game, but my crew has been known to play casually enough and ponder/look up rules disputes so we used to have fairly looong 35 soulstone Malifaux games (also the 'standard size'), so I'm thinking we might end up on smaller skirmish games for the rare evening, and just throw down 2 vs 2 on the big 4x6 we play on when the weekend rolls around.

That's another part of what has influenced my views on the giant pile I have coming; if I'm unlikely to ever be responsible for more than 300 points of a force (be it 1vs1 or 1/2 of a 2vs2), why would I want to have more than I could ever stuff into a lineup? Sure, I want to have force building options, but I won't need 500 points worth of Veritechs, y'know?

 Forar wrote:
Yeah. My crew snagged 8 boxes between us, of which 3 were earmarked for me.

You...have a crew?



Are you the leader of the Jets or the Sharks?

Ironically I just mentioned West Side Story for the first time ever on Dakka last night over in the tourney subforum.

@Forar: I can definitely see someone with three battlecry pledges selling one but probably not more. Mike will probably be a much more accurate source of info but it didn't seem like most models were very durable and that the action tended to be more decisive in the demo videos. Two battlecry pledges lets you field a full unit of almost anything right away and I suspect that they'll unfortunately drop the smaller scale. Everything that has been told to us post kickstarter indicates that neither PB Joe ND knew what they were doing exactly despite the disclaimers and assurances.

 Alpharius wrote:
You...have a crew?

[Archer]Do you not?[/Archer]

 warboss wrote:
@Forar: I can definitely see someone with three battlecry pledges selling one but probably not more. Mike will probably be a much more accurate source of info but it didn't seem like most models were very durable and that the action tended to be more decisive in the demo videos. Two battlecry pledges lets you field a full unit of almost anything right away and I suspect that they'll unfortunately drop the smaller scale. Everything that has been told to us post kickstarter indicates that neither PB Joe ND knew what they were doing exactly despite the disclaimers and assurances.

With ~300'ish models coming, my thought process is basically "keep one card worth of everything (4/6 models, generally, more for the 'chaff' units we'll likely be fielding more heavily to round out forces) sell off the rest at retail'ish, buy at retail later as they release if I decide I actually want more of them", and leaving open the possibility that if FPA (as a random example) are going for $60+ per trio I might even kick over some of the extras I've got while the getting is good. Of course, if the demand is low or there are a bunch of resellers driving the price down to barely over what they'll likely be at retail, I'll revisit just what I'm willing to part with.

Other stuff I'll likely hold onto unless they're at some absurd/astronomical price points, such as the 6 Super VTs I've got coming, as I plan to use the extra pair of Super 1D's I snagged as an add on to be able to field a full 2 squadrons of those off the bat (my friends likely won't give a flip if they're not perfectly WYSIWYG as long as it's declared at the start).

Edit: A glance at my spreadsheet has around 300 figures coming, 120-140 of which are lined up for the secondary market, with the aforementioned notes of possibly more if the demand is high and/or supply is low, or the opposite if the market just isn't there. More Zentraedi stuff than RDF, as the latter are what I'm looking forward to playing. The Zentraedi units will just be for participating in larger scale conflicts, or potentially having skirmishes at my place on the occasional impromptu game night that sometimes pops up, where between minimal time, dinner and drinks we probably wouldn't be having more than a mini-game anyway.

And yeah, it's kind of frustrating how happy they were to smooth talk the backers how there wouldn't be any snags for reasons X, Y and Z... and now we're drowning in snags.

I'll say this much; if they have another KS, and if I decide to back it, they are definitely getting the third degree as to why this one won't follow the same pattern, and "like, we totally learned from our mistakes the first time, you can trust us, guy" won't cut it.

I'm really confused by your reasoning. Are you really expecting to be able to sell this stuff on eBay at above retail pricing? That seems very optimistic.

I'm expecting this game to go full Sedition Wars on the secondary market, with no hope of expansions. And that's not my most pessimistic forecast.

Nah, below retail.

But considering I paid ~1/4 MSRP, that isn't exactly a problem. Basically, if I can get $15-20 for a box that's selling for $24-26 online, and I effectively paid $7 for it, I'm still ahead.

And remember, only 6 figure sets are available at launch. I guess I'm somewhat optimistic that there'll be some demand for Ghosts/Lancers/Female Power Armour/etc; things that simply will not be available for potentially half a year or more, aside from whatever ends up on the secondary market.

As I've noted a few times now, if the demand isn't there or the supply is significant, it's not that big a deal. I'm hoping to recoup some costs, I had planned on getting a Showdown (2 sets) anyway. I ended up with the 3rd because their S&H scheme was "pants on head shenanigans", and it only effectively cost me $90 beyond the 7 sets my group was getting anyways.

Edit: to be absolutely clear, no, I'm not expecting to be rolling in cash selling off parts of a Battle Cry. But if I can't sell ~100 of these figures for $90 to recoup even that paltry amount, this game/series will have *serious issues*. As in, Robotech as a franchise will have likely collapsed into obscurity in the next 12 months. If I can get even 1/2-2/3 retail, even better. If some things see a spike in interest or have a low enough supply to drive the price up a little, it's just icing (limited edition figures and Wave 2+ stuff).

Edit 2: I should also note I've already had people message me on other forums where the secondary market has come up, offering to buy at retail cost or better for a few things. I'm not exactly flying this one blind here.

 Alpharius wrote:

 Forar wrote:
Yeah. My crew snagged 8 boxes between us, of which 3 were earmarked for me.

You...have a crew?



Are you the leader of the Jets or the Sharks?

When I saw this movie as a kid I tried some of the fight moves the next time I got picked on. I came home with a black eye.


I keep seeing sedition wars mentioned. What happened there?

Some delays, some models significantly smaller than expected, material isn't what was expected (but livable), communication was bad...

Sedition Wars poisoned me for any other miniature kickstarter.

rigeld2 wrote:
Some delays, some models significantly smaller than expected, material isn't what was expected (but livable), communication was bad...

Sedition Wars poisoned me for any other miniature kickstarter.

Same here, with the added detail of "that uses 'restic'", though I did go in big on "Deadzone", but that was mostly due to the hard plastic terrain.

Luckily it worked out OK, but it is always a very risky gamble due to 'restic' being involved.

I'm fairly new to miniatures gaming (just started playing Malifaux nearly 2 years ago), so while I'm familiar with pewter and ABS Plastic, I've had minimal contact with various forms of resin. Hopefully we don't get any materials surprises on this project.

 Forar wrote:
I'm fairly new to miniatures gaming (just started playing Malifaux nearly 2 years ago), so while I'm familiar with pewter and ABS Plastic, I've had minimal contact with various forms of resin. Hopefully we don't get any materials surprises on this project.

I hear you on that one. Having played miniatures games for about 20yrs myself I've seen all different materials up to & including a recent experience with this new trollcast restic alloy which I was not remotely impressed with tbh.

That's interesting, Red_Starrise- many posts I've seen from folks who finally get their models in trollcast seem to like the material. I have some models made in it, and think the detail is for the most part fantastic. I haven't yet tried converting them, though, so that may prove challenging. Also, it is not suited to very very thin features- but then, not much other than ABS plastic is.

 Forar wrote:
I'm fairly new to miniatures gaming (just started playing Malifaux nearly 2 years ago), so while I'm familiar with pewter and ABS Plastic, I've had minimal contact with various forms of resin. Hopefully we don't get any materials surprises on this project.

I thought the vef-1 was going to have resin bits.

Yup. Possibly some pewter as well. Apparently the bump to make it a 4 fighter set and include Super and VEF options was apparently going to be more easily done with specific additional parts on limited runs in other materials, since it seems that what we could get from the project is not necessarily what will be available at retail.

But dealing with a few pieces on 6-12 figures isn't nearly the same kind of anxiety as 150-300 of the things possibly being in a new (to me) material, especially given what I've heard from some about working with a few restic variations.

Edit: the fact that the second run of Miriya promo figures was purely in pewter makes me wonder if they'll just stick with that for the VEF/1D pack, rather than trying to mix and match at least 3 materials).

I think it was a waste of time making those promo figures. It's probably one of many reasons that RRT and to a point RK is delayed more than it should be.

 RiTides wrote:
That's interesting, Red_Starrise- many posts I've seen from folks who finally get their models in trollcast seem to like the material. I have some models made in it, and think the detail is for the most part fantastic. I haven't yet tried converting them, though, so that may prove challenging. Also, it is not suited to very very thin features- but then, not much other than ABS plastic is.

I'm not sure where the fault lay on my bad experience tbh. The models were very grainy & much of the facial detail was marred. The retailer did his best to make it right by giving me a brand new set which was marginally better so I figured easiest to just cut my losses & let it go. I seem to be the only one with issues with this company, these figures, & this material so who knows?

Was perusing some of the recent update comments and stumbled across something I thought you guys might find interesting:

Palladium wrote:@ Jason Harris:
“This endeavor already made them $1.44 Million Dollars; plus up to another 100% in backerkit bonuses. So with potentially anywhere from $2 Million to $3 Million already in their pockets - they don't necessarily have to rush to give a product that's already been paid for.”

I just caught this last night, and feel the need to respond and clear something up.
We are NOT sitting on a giant pile of money. After Amazon/Kickstarter fees (8-10%) and the usual 1-2% of backers whose payments didn't go through, the total wasn't much more than $1.3 mil. Then HG and ND get their cuts, and what's left over has to pay not only for manufacturing, but the cost of shipping the goods to all of you fine people (a LOT of whom are overseas). The BackerKit added to that, for sure, but a successful pledge manager is generally expected to add about 10% on top of the Kickstarter total. We did pretty close to that (slightly over). Nowhere near 100% (I wish)!
The bottom line is, we're not going to make much, if any, profit from this project until the game is selling in retail. And most of THAT is going to be put back into development and manufacture of future expansions.
--Wayne

So if they did slightly over 10% in the pledge manager period (I'm surprised it was only another 150k'ish), that'd put them up near 1.6m total, 1.45m after KS/Amazon's cut, minus HG and ND's cut.

Using UPS bulk rate boxes, even within the US is going to get pricey, and international shipping isn't pretty (though they dinged my group for $100 just to Canada, so it seems quite likely we paid our own way there).

Add in manufacturing costs, paying for for any artwork/renders/whatever that fell outside their existing contracts, plus materials, labour and whatnot, I'm sure it's all added up.

Not to mention the potentially 5k+ players who snagged various piles of models at a steep discount over retail. Some will buy more, some might never buy another, others might get friends into the game and drive further sales. That's a lot harder to even make a guess as to how it might wash out.

Doesn't change my view of things, but it is interesting to have a bit of a glimpse behind the scenes.

 Forar wrote:

Palladium wrote:@ Jason Harris:
“This endeavor already made them $1.44 Million Dollars; plus up to another 100% in backerkit bonuses. So with potentially anywhere from $2 Million to $3 Million already in their pockets - they don't necessarily have to rush to give a product that's already been paid for.”

I just caught this last night, and feel the need to respond and clear something up.
We are NOT sitting on a giant pile of money. After Amazon/Kickstarter fees (8-10%) and the usual 1-2% of backers whose payments didn't go through, the total wasn't much more than $1.3 mil. Then HG and ND get their cuts, and what's left over has to pay not only for manufacturing, but the cost of shipping the goods to all of you fine people (a LOT of whom are overseas). The BackerKit added to that, for sure, but a successful pledge manager is generally expected to add about 10% on top of the Kickstarter total. We did pretty close to that (slightly over). Nowhere near 100% (I wish)!
The bottom line is, we're not going to make much, if any, profit from this project until the game is selling in retail. And most of THAT is going to be put back into development and manufacture of future expansions.
--Wayne

Wonder what caused that knee jerk reaction?

Edit: never mind. Just woke up, time for coffee.

Sorry, I forgot to include what he was responding to initially, in case that was confusing.

People have been playing fast and loose with what they hope/think/assume Palladium made off the project. It's interesting to hear that, at least for many creators, a pledge manager is generally around 10%. Fascinating that the post-campaign funding might just wash out the chunk lost to Amazon and Kickstarter themselves.

 Forar wrote:
Sorry, I forgot to include what he was responding to initially, in case that was confusing.

People have been playing fast and loose with what they hope/think/assume Palladium made off the project. It's interesting to hear that, at least for many creators, a pledge manager is generally around 10%. Fascinating that the post-campaign funding might just wash out the chunk lost to Amazon and Kickstarter themselves.

yeah, around 10% is the usual pledge manager purchase amount.. then subtract the fee from Backerkit (Currently 1% of KS total), and the fee from Swipe (~3% of the charge)...

Do you believe them when they say only 10% extra via pledge managers?

I'm not sure I do, and not just because they are who they are.

 Alpharius wrote:
Do you believe them when they say only 10% extra via pledge managers?

I'm not sure I do, and not just because they are who they are.

Yes, I can believe they only gained an addition of about $150k.

While you & I understand about pledging later, most kickstarter backers, especially those that only look at the site because of a big name brand product, do not and will pledge all they will ever pledge then and there.

 Alpharius wrote:
Do you believe them when they say only 10% extra via pledge managers?

I'm not sure I do, and not just because they are who they are.

No, sadly I don't but we have no way of checking. These are the people who promised us that the vast majority of the work was done BEFORE the kickstarter ever happened with the minis ready to be produced within 40 days. The reality was they couldn't figure out the pledge manager for almost 60 to see *what* they needed to produce (let alone actually make it) and had nothing approved by Harmony Gold till 4 months after the fact but told us that October was looking pretty good for a release the day after the campaign ended. I can only base my opinion off of people who post in threads like this or in the comments but that segment (admittedly the die hards) seemed to have on average added much more than 10% to their pledges.

 warboss wrote:
I can only base my opinion off of people who post in threads like this or in the comments but that segment (admittedly the die hards) seemed to have on average added much more than 10% to their pledges.

I wouldn't do that, as it easily provides highly skewed results.

The kind of person who posts about the game on forums is invested enough (literally and figuratively) that they may well have contributed significantly more than 10% to their pledge, whereas the collector who just wanted a Battle Cry and maybe one or two add ons probably dropped their $200'ish before the end and hasn't done much more than glance at updates whenever they go out.

One only needs to look at the KS comments to see the self selection in action. Many of those who stuck around are also those who seem to have put in more than the average, doesn't mean everyone did so. For each person who went from a Showdown to a Reckless there are probably dozens who got a box or two and called it at that.

According to Kicktraq, the average backer contributed $270, meaning they likely got a Showdown or a Battle Cry with some add ons and/or international shipping. Bringing that up into the $300 range doesn't move that estimate much. Even if it was 11-15%, that's not a Scrooge McDuck pile of cash, and if it were more like 20%+ it seems like something they'd brag about a bit. Basically, I can't seem them underselling how things went a whole ton, especially with so many people who might potentially leak about a glaring inaccuracy. HG, ND, PB themselves slipping up, just too many failure points to bother cooking things too transparently if they're going to bother saying anything as they did.

Personally it makes no real difference if the 10% more is a lie or not. I'm going to get what I ordered and the faster I do the happier I'll be. I pledged for $500 and then added $270 afterwards. I wish I had added it all in beforehand. I could have used a few other free minis.

Dang Mike! I feel pretty paltry compared to my weak $475.

You guys both way exceeded my total. I just went in for Battlecry and planned on doubling my pledge or more but the Max/Miriya you can't get this convention only debacle made me reconsider. I got a single box (VEF) and decals instead.

I went too far, but I plan on waiting for the right time to sell a few of these off to make up some of the difference.

Our only hope, Mike, is that B_S doesn't flood the market. It'd have repercussions across the globe.

For those who don't bother with the comments (it's for the best), one guy apparently dropped ~$3,500 on this thing. He's crazy, yes, we know that. It's definitely not a healthy behaviour, especially given how he'll wax at length about the hundreds upon hundreds of unpainted and unassembled figures he's got in his house from other campaigns, not to mention untold games that are unplayed and books that are unread.

We're basically expecting to see him on the next season of Hoarders at this rate.

But yeah... let's just say that my friends and I probably overdid it as well. >.>

I did about $200 which isn't too much but it's starting to feel like money wasted that would have been better invested in Wild West Exodus. This entire experience of broken promises has very much put me off of any future kickstarters sadly. I too fell for the whole "all we really need is the capital to get everything boxed up and shipped" bs that PB/ND sold us and I'm really regretting it now. $200 is a decent chunk of change for a college student that had I realized it was this big of a gamble, I only live 30 minutes away from an Indian casino that would have been happy to take my money but there would have been a greater chance of return on my investment.

Unfortunately no one here is willing to buy me out and since I went in partners with a friend who put it on his CC so unless he chooses to get out of it I'm stuck and he's more than happy to wait it out with some misplaced fanboy-esque PB loyalty.

From the beginning I anticipated April delivery.
I had hoped for better but oh well.
They will not get me to do another kick starter since this was the only IP I was willing to wait for and knew I would have to. I am looking forward to not having much to do with them in future!

I dropped 1k.

That grinding sound you occasionally hear is me chewing my own teeth in the background.

I do have the 2 promo figs to keep me company though.

I dropped about half that, but it's starting to feel like I literally dropped it somewhere...

My Pre-Game Rules have been updated and I have a cost calculator for units depending upon their stats. Please check it out over Christmas and provide feedback. I want to redo all the stat cards before the 1st.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

My group ended up tossing in roughly 1.5k across the 3 of us, of which I was responsible for half.

So yeah, definitely not the biggest contribution out there, but it was a hefty chunk of change all the same.

Moreso, given that unlike US backers, $100 of that was tied up in S&H.

Jeez. I feel terrible for you guys. If I had put that much in, I'd be hounding Kevin whenever he left the Palladium warehouse. It really pizzles me off that PB treats fans and customers so badly.


Man, Kickstarter is turning out to be a real Monkey's Paw for all involved.

For those that missed it here's a podcast with one of the heads at ND. The RRT talks start at around 28:00 in.

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2013/12/21/82467/

I listened to the second half of their RRT talk. Nice to hear someone mention it and wax a little about trying to make it true to the series, but nothing new really dropped.

Still curious to see if they'll actually say anything in the next week about the updated timeline, or if "by the end of the year" will become "sometime in the new year", as has been SOP for this campaign.

So they have pre production models in hand. . . why not show them?

There might still be details to tidy up.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
There might still be details to tidy up.

Then I would argue that they DON'T have the prepreduction models in that case but rather earlier versions. Prepreduction models in my decidely amateur view are the models you get when your DONE tweaking... not when you still need to tweak things.

It would be nice to have a spreadsheet ( Yes, I love spreadsheets, I'm an Engineer) that shows all the units and the present progress of each individial unit. Explanations on the who what or where are not necessary.

Yeah, a warzone style table of what is done and what needs to be done (with a date) would be good and keep the company honest about the delivery date which is why there is no chance of it happening. It's easier to just keep stumbling along blindly (from an outsider's perspective) rather than being open and honest about the KS. Palladium is secretive bordering on paranoid so we won't get a preview of the full rule set in all likelihood either. They made comments either directly before or during the KS that they didn't want to release too much information because other companies may try to steal it... because.. you know... palladium is known throughout the gaming hobby world for innovation and industry professionals hang on their every word to see which way the future gaming winds will blow. /sarcasm

Yeah, they were outright adamant regarding releasing a rules pdf. Hell, they've been in publishing for decades, watched the rise of digital distribution (iTunes, Kindle, Steam, etc) and yet they still remain highly wary of even a few books going digital, lest piracy!

Don't tell them, but a buddy of mine went hunting for their Robotech stuff and snagged a file with pretty much everything they've ever written in one place. And that's not a "my buddy, wink wink" kinda thing, it's literally a guy I know. The few books I give a gak about owning are sitting on my shelves beside me.

If people want to pirate, they can, that genie is out of the bottle. Do they really think that their rules and unit stats are going to remain quietly tucked away post release? Who cares? I'm sure someone out there will play with quarters as VT's and washers as Battlepods, but the money in miniatures wargaming is in the miniatures.

It's late, I'm going to cut this rant off before I really get into it, but yeah, that's something else that baffles me (on the long, long list, mind you). Not that they wouldn't adopt new tech, I read the thread about how their layout process apparently belongs in the long long ago. But that they'd enter a field where the revenue source is known but fighting tooth and nail to keep the rules under wraps.

Hell, with a little extrapolation from the RPGs for all we know Mike already has the stats available on Facebook, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Fat lotta good their 'no pdfs' stance has taken, given that people may thus effectively be stealing from the future!.

 Forar wrote:
Not that they wouldn't adopt new tech, I read the thread about how their layout process apparently belongs in the long long ago.

Funny you mention that. In the latest murmur Kevin talks about having a holiday get together with the printer he's known for 30 years. So there buds and hang out from time to time. That might explain why PB won't update their technique for getting books out in a modern fashion. Basically he'd lose a friend if he were to update using new tech because the printer still uses the old methods.

They have started (according to their press releases) using digital publishing and layout a few years ago (starting with the robotech RPG books) but they're still making the books look exactly like the cut with scissors and pasted with glue versions made 25 years ago with the original robotech books.

See this really frustrates me. They won't even show us these preproduction models they CLAIM to have despite the doubts cropping up around the internet. I spoke to paladium myself via phone & they say we SHOULD see a real model in a week. I won't hold my breath for fear of suffocation.

It just honestly pisses me off that they refuse to show us anything tangible & then sic the fanboys on dissenters instead of just being honest about the whole thing.

We didn't even get an update this week. There was the weekly murmur talking about what the above poster was referring to.

I'm kinda curious about the backing levels some people have mentioned, from what I read many of the models are priced out at around $1-$2 per model when buying at levels of $200-$300 yet I've seen mention of people dropping $500+ and in some cases $1k or more. Just how large of games are you expecting to play? and do you realize how much stuff that's going to be when it finally arrives?


The reason I ask is that when I pledged on Zombicide season 2 at a level of $200 I had both prison outbreak and toxic city mall arrive and there's the better part of 200 minis in there and it was rather overwhelming. That reaction was based on them being single piece 28mm stuff that didn't need any assembly or paint etc, the robotech models are roughly double the size and aimed more at the true minis audience meaning they are going to need a lot of build time and storage care than just throwing them in the box.

I guess I'm just scratching my head wondering why so many minis? I certainly get love for the setting but even basic level pledges dwarfs the size of 40k apoc games in model count let alone the sheer volume of stuff that some will get for having gone hog wild with pledges in the $1k range.

I've played some pretty large games of battletech back in the game but even then I don't think we had more than 25-30 mechs per side at most and those games literally took all weekend.

Paulson, I can only speak for myself in this. From the info I've seen the game will best capture the feel at a decent sized force on each side. Since squadrons are about 10 models for the valkyrie I have to assume that the huge backers are looking to recreate massively epic battles plus also resell a good portion for somewhere between ks price & retail to turn a small profit. Especially with the potential to have minis on hand for newbies until FLGSs are able to acquire them from paladium. And last but certainly not least one cannot rule out the fanboy and shiny factors. Personally I've only bought in for half of the $240 level plus some extras that I deemed core such as super and armored valkyrie. So I'm out about $165.

But I'm still mad as hell at the seemingly lies and disinformation since funding closed.

In my case, it's because my friends and I thought we could save on shipping by buying in together (spoiler alert: they changed that after the fact, so we didn't save squat). 2 Recklesses (8 Battle Cry boxes, ~$1200 including S&H plus currency exchange) is across 3 people (3 boxes for a buddy, 2 for another, 3 for me), so that explains my end. Even at that level, most of us will only be able to field 1 full card of a number of things (example; a card of something might be 4 figures, each battle cry only gets 2, so 2 BC's equal one card).

Then there were a bunch of things that weren't included in the BC. If I'd bought in just for myself, I'd probably have stuck to a Showdown (2 BCs). That's $310 right there, plus a MAC II, VEF/1D pack, and an Armoured VT pack and suddenly I'm back up at $400-450 after the exchange.

That said, as I've mentioned before I think we're sort of a self selecting crew here. The kind of person who spends half a grand or more on the campaign is also likely the sort to be invested enough to seek out others to talk about it with. The average amount per backers was $270, and at a glance there were ~3,100 people who bought a BC, and ~1,300 who bought a SD, meaning something like 80% of the backers either got a box and some add ons, or two boxes outright.

And yes, there are some crazy folks who intend to recreate minor wars with them. I know my friends want to do some epic 'omg all the figures' battles, but I suspect that if 300 points is an hour long game and 600 points is and afternoon, then we'll probably do 1000 or something, and all the extra models just let us tweak our lists to have more of X or Y or Z figures on hand.

But believe me, there are other reasons I'm interested in moving some of my stuff on the secondary market; I don't think I really need 300 figures to play this. :-P

I went in for $1,010.

Yeah, I love Robotech and minis - it's so I can field anything. I'll have at the least 2 squads of everything.

I figured I'd buy it all now and just not ever worry about it again.

Also, 4 rulebooks helps, unless they're as error ridden as I expect.

Nice to see the PB love going strong in this thread. Attack of the fanboies starts in....

I went in for a showdown and extra Miriya, YF-4 squad, armoured valks, and two trainer valks. Tho now I wish I had bought one instaed so I can have an extra two YF-4s.

Before the ks ended I was going to give more cash when I realized I won't be playing epic battles. I prefer a skirmish style game for now. After 15yrs of 40k I'm not trying to start another game that's basically a parking lot for minis. I've just enough to have both sides on equal footing at a small scale. I tried the demo rules PB put out and the game slows to a crawl when you get into HtH. If the rules stay as is I don't see playing beyond the 600 point mark. It's like playing 2nd ed 40k at apocalypse scale. No thanks.

Kendachi wrote:
Also, 4 rulebooks helps, unless they're as error ridden as I expect.

Way to make PB sound like GW there lol.

Yeah! GW puts out products all the time!

 Azazelx wrote:
Yeah! GW puts out products all the time!

Ha you made me evil lol!

Well played, Az. Well played indeed.

Well guys, you know how much effort I've put into this so far so if there is anything I can do it will be making things are error free as possible and doing all I can to avoid new versions as the Southern Cross and New Gen stuff is released years down the line. I've already spoke about my concern for that happening and how to avoid that.

Which is certainly admirable as all get out.

But intending no offense, if one guy manages to build a better and more balanced game than the combined might of however many dozens of people worked on RRT and however many dozens (hundreds?) of beta testers who tried things out and gave feedback, we're in a lot of trouble.

Also, it's worth noting that your numbers came from the RPG, same as theirs. If it turns out that somehow the flaw is at least partially found there, whatever issues they have might well show up in your work as well, and we're left with a system that needs further updating/fixing and oh god it's Rifts all over again. :-P

 Forar wrote:
Which is certainly admirable as all get out.

But intending no offense, if one guy manages to build a better and more balanced game than the combined might of however many dozens of people worked on RRT and however many dozens (hundreds?) of beta testers who tried things out and gave feedback, we're in a lot of trouble.

Also, it's worth noting that your numbers came from the RPG, same as theirs. If it turns out that somehow the flaw is at least partially found there, whatever issues they have might well show up in your work as well, and we're left with a system that needs further updating/fixing and oh god it's Rifts all over again. :-P

There is a difference between getting good advice from playtesters and using it... a point that I'm unfortunately seeing reinforced this week in my dealings with Heavy Gear. Palladium knows that lots of people think their rpg rules need a drastic update but they simply don't care. I'm not involved in any robotech playtesting but I don't see how that attitude wouldn't spill over to their new genre just like their habits of tardiness and press releases not grounded in reality.

I'll happily use your rules over PB if they're more quality. If I ever get the minis that is. I just would like to see more honesty from the community as opposed to the boiler plate "hey it's all good. Don't tell us anything & keep dragging your feet *fanboy drool*"

All I can say is that there is a reason for some of the silence as some decisions are being made and some details considered. More information will be forthcoming in the next week or two.

Mike1975 wrote:
All I can say is that there is a reason for some of the silence as some decisions are being made and some details considered. More information will be forthcoming in the next week or two.

Someone sounds like he joined the playtesting....

It also sounds like the other shoe is about to drop as well. Maybe it's just the pessimist in me but the Feb date just didn't seem realistic the DAY they announced it similar to the October revised delivery date. From the tone of your post, I'd expect something additional as well like the announcement of split wave shipping on top of yet another expected delay (wave 1 will come in May, the rest TBD).

Constantly amazed at the amount of cash the wargame community can generate and spend on projects. We are a c

We're a c-what now?

cash cow? credulous? covetous?

Hey cool, we can add "in the next week or two" for big news, along with "by the end of the year".

2 waves seems possible but unlikely, as it'd eat a giant pile of money to send out that many packages twice.

I'm thinking a Relic Knights style delay.

'We have received the test models and they look super awesome! Everyone around the office loves them! Someone had to be given CPR, they got so excited!

So the only sort of awesome news is that we have our production slot, and between that being in March and shipping, we're expecting to have your packages out by Gencon, where we'll be debuting RRT to thousands of fans who are all super duper with a cherry on top excited!'

And then it'll go on for like another 2 pages about all the attention they've been getting and just sort of ignore the fact they just dropped another 6 months onto the timetable.

Maybe another stat card or something to tide us over.

A couple of things to remember, based on pledge numbers, ND was expecting to some where around 1500 to 2000. and a few extras, that where simple model modifications, and time to prep a second and third wave of models. Instead they now have more than double that in starter sets, and models that they probably thought they would have a year or so get cleaned up and shipped that they now have to get ready ahead of time.

We know that they have all the models approved for the starter sets. They have showed them at the shows. the issue is with all the extra models that they where not prepared for. Plus then there is all the extra stuff that is required to get new models into production, especially when a production company was not planning on make some of them right of the bat, I am sure the discussed all the models that they planned on creating, but i doubt they discussed being able to have all of this ready in a few months, plus there is always going to be some production delays. I mean really how can you not expect this, If you look at any other game, They do not come out with 90% of the game line with the first wave. You hold off on some of it to keep sales going over the year, and we are getting all of this right off the bat. Am i sad that i did not get my cool Christmas present? Sure, Do i understand they had issues. YES!. They have given a lot of good updates. (some not so good) At least they are giving us updates.

They had 1.4m in backing across 5,400 backers and still felt confident that they could ship 2 months early.

Whomever is setting their targets might as well just be throwing darts at a board.

Also we have no idea what they did and didn't have lined up in that original December target. They claimed to have the digital sculpts mostly done during the campaign. They claimed to have the book done, and the final final final final final rules were't ready for print for half a year.

Bluntly, I'm not feeling terribly charitable when it's not so much "ooops, we hit some giant unforeseen snags" and more "we sort of mis-represented how far along we actually were, and may have kind of expanded the scope of the project without somehow realizing that might take more time to ship, not less."

Well, I'm sure Ninja Division is no longer focusing on this or Relic knights as they're involved in the Mega Man Kickstarter.

I'm just trying to figure out what they'll move on to next that will inevitably delay Mega Man.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

cawizkid wrote:
A couple of things to remember, based on pledge numbers, ND was expecting to some where around 1500 to 2000. and a few extras, that where simple model modifications, and time to prep a second and third wave of models. Instead they now have more than double that in starter sets, and models that they probably thought they would have a year or so get cleaned up and shipped that they now have to get ready ahead of time.

We know that they have all the models approved for the starter sets. They have showed them at the shows. the issue is with all the extra models that they where not prepared for. Plus then there is all the extra stuff that is required to get new models into production, especially when a production company was not planning on make some of them right of the bat, I am sure the discussed all the models that they planned on creating, but i doubt they discussed being able to have all of this ready in a few months, plus there is always going to be some production delays. I mean really how can you not expect this, If you look at any other game, They do not come out with 90% of the game line with the first wave. You hold off on some of it to keep sales going over the year, and we are getting all of this right off the bat. Am i sad that i did not get my cool Christmas present? Sure, Do i understand they had issues. YES!. They have given a lot of good updates. (some not so good) At least they are giving us updates.

Your justifications here only enable them. If you're not prepared for the volume to be able to ship on time, you have two options:

1. Turn the faucet off and take the money you have and develop and print what you had planned.
2. Be honest about your backers and tell them that "X stretch goal will add X amount of time to our production timeline"

They've done neither.

 Forar wrote:
Hey cool, we can add "in the next week or two" for big news, along with "by the end of the year".

2 waves seems possible but unlikely, as it'd eat a giant pile of money to send out that many packages twice.

I'm thinking a Relic Knights style delay.

'We have received the test models and they look super awesome! Everyone around the office loves them! Someone had to be given CPR, they got so excited!

So the only sort of awesome news is that we have our production slot, and between that being in March and shipping, we're expecting to have your packages out by Gencon, where we'll be debuting RRT to thousands of fans who are all super duper with a cherry on top excited!'

And then it'll go on for like another 2 pages about all the attention they've been getting and just sort of ignore the fact they just dropped another 6 months onto the timetable.

Maybe another stat card or something to tide us over.

While I agree with the realism of the rest of the post, the earlier bolded part (my emphasis) is a bit optimistic. Potential future Palladium Update:



If they do split shipping, I'd be very surprised if the cost is not simply passed onto the end chump.. I mean consumer.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:

Your justifications here only enable them. If you're not prepared for the volume to be able to ship on time, you have two options:

1. Turn the faucet off and take the money you have and develop and print what you had planned.
2. Be honest about your backers and tell them that "X stretch goal will add X amount of time to our production timeline"

They've done neither.

Of course not... they've still got option 3. Exaggerate your current state of progress to get the megafunding and then trickle out successive delays to cover your own naivety/incompetence like spraying doggy poop carpet stains with perfume when guests come over. Then you just have your die hard apologists hold the line initially with comments about how the company has been in business and they know what they're doing (in response to initial worries about the project) and then later with "all kickstarters are late and I'm fine with the delay.. I can't believe you had the gall to expect it roughly around the release date!" (when it's obvious that the initial worries were indeed 100% correct but to point out that Palladium's problems are not because of Palladium.. again.. for decades). This is typically done by the same posters as it is more poignant if they do a complete 180 in their viewpoint as to defend the Maiden Siembada's honor.

 Alpharius wrote:
We're a c-what now?

Bunch of c- ?

C notes.

Mikes post concerns me, so after everything has been finalised they've realised they need to make changes?

In accordance with player preferences, the game will now be 1 side fully activates and then the other one does.

Instead of d6's, which people have hundreds of, we'll be moving to a proprietorially weighted D13 system. No, we won't tell you how they're specially weighted, but it involves pure fan enthusiasm distilled down to a fine slurry.

The UEDF/RDF will be renamed "Outer Space Maritime Soldiers". The Zentraedi will be renamed "Not-Gieger's-Aliens". We feel this will also appeal to players.

The models will have to be tweaked slightly. We estimate that these minor adjustments will take about a week, with another week to retool the molds, and another week to look at the new test run. (Spoiler alert: this work ends up taking 4 months, though the press releases that announce it will never change from the usual 3 week timeline)

Command Points will be renamed to "Spiritstones", because 'paying homage' to just one game wouldn't be fair.

The space rules will just be a rehash of X-Wing. Look, don't make this weird. The d13's will work just fine here too. Totally.

Something about Warmahordes, I've never played it.

 cincydooley wrote:
Well, I'm sure Ninja Division is no longer focusing on this or Relic knights as they're involved in the Mega Man Kickstarter.

I'm just trying to figure out what they'll move on to next that will inevitably delay Mega Man.

Do the delays on either project actually have anything to do with Ninja Division? I'm not into Relic Knights so I don't know, but it sure seems like they have nothing to do with RRT anymore.

If their sole involvement in the projects is as contracted miniatures designers, and they're done designing them, why should they be prevented from moving on to more work because the actual project operators are experiencing or causing their own delays?

NTRabbit wrote:
Do the delays on either project actually have anything to do with Ninja Division? I'm not into Relic Knights so I don't know, but it sure seems like they have nothing to do with RRT anymore.

If their sole involvement in the projects is as contracted miniatures designers, and they're done designing them, why should they be prevented from moving on to more work because the actual project operators are experiencing or causing their own delays?

I suspect as always that it depends on the implementation. We went from literally dozens of communiques from the Ninjas EVERY DAY during to kickstarter to almost none (maybe one or two before palladium claimed they'd pick up the slack?) in the 7 months since. Their facebook page only parrots info that palladium posts weeks to days earlier which is most of the time copy/pasted from previous weeks itself. If they had instead switched to weekly communication then maybe monthly till the project was quite literally being produced (you know... like how they SAID they would in the Kickstarter front page with that "regular" communication and all) and THEN officially moved on, I don't think anyone would have an issue. Instead, we get the ridiculous comments from Kevin S. that the kickstarter delivery is being moved up several months within several days of the funding closing.

To be pedantic, it was literally the day after.

As I recall, the campaign ended May 20th, and his comment about a possible early delivery was made on the 21st.

 warboss wrote:

NTRabbit wrote:
Do the delays on either project actually have anything to do with Ninja Division? I'm not into Relic Knights so I don't know, but it sure seems like they have nothing to do with RRT anymore.

If their sole involvement in the projects is as contracted miniatures designers, and they're done designing them, why should they be prevented from moving on to more work because the actual project operators are experiencing or causing their own delays?

I suspect as always that it depends on the implementation. We went from literally dozens of communiques from the Ninjas EVERY DAY during to kickstarter to almost none (maybe one or two before palladium claimed they'd pick up the slack?) in the 7 months since. Their facebook page only parrots info that palladium posts weeks to days earlier which is most of the time copy/pasted from previous weeks itself. If they had instead switched to weekly communication then maybe monthly till the project was quite literally being produced (you know... like how they SAID they would in the Kickstarter front page with that "regular" communication and all) and THEN officially moved on, I don't think anyone would have an issue. Instead, we get the ridiculous comments from Kevin S. that the kickstarter delivery is being moved up several months within several days of the funding closing.

Hasn't all of the (lack of) communication since the end of the project been from Palladium? How do we know Palladium didn't just say "Thanks, but we'll take it from here" before washing ND out of any further involvement. I recall reading early in the KS that ND were making this game themselves on behalf of Palladium, including writing the rules, which they sure aren't doing now.

Unless I'm mistaken the whole thing reads like ND getting a contract/license to do the whole game for Palladium to sell as their own because people wanted one and they didn't know how, ND ran the kickstarter successfully, and then as soon as it ended Palladium took over everything bar the sculpting and then said 'see ya later' once that was done, but continue to blame every issue that comes up on the partner they cut out months ago.

NTRabbit wrote:

 warboss wrote:

NTRabbit wrote:
Hasn't all of the (lack of) communication since the end of the project been from Palladium? How do we know Palladium didn't just say "Thanks, but we'll take it from here" before washing ND out of any further involvement. I recall reading early in the KS that ND were making this game themselves on behalf of Palladium, including writing the rules, which they sure aren't doing now.

Unless I'm mistaken the whole thing reads like ND getting a contract/license to do the whole game for Palladium to sell as their own because people wanted one and they didn't know how, ND ran the kickstarter successfully, and then as soon as it ended Palladium took over everything bar the sculpting and then said 'see ya later' once that was done, but continue to blame every issue that comes up on the partner they cut out months ago.

That's just it we don't know who is in charge of rules dev anymore. But according to Mike it seems to be coming along quite well. Although I'm surprised they still need play testers at this point since according to PB/nd the rules have been play tested for some time before the ks even started.

Yes PB is still blaming nd and Chinese New Year (how dare they take time off). Since this started and iv learned about the real PB, I've learned that this kind of thing is the norm for them. I recall someone mentioning that when he/she went to gencon they noticed there was tension between PB and nd staff. Off coarse this was put down as trash talk by the defenders but there might be some truth to it. My guess is Kevin saw the game might outshine his outdated rules and leave his books in the dust. So because he feels threatened by this he has probably taken over the task of writing the rules himself. This way he can bask in glory and continue to be king of the nerds.

Reply by: Joyboozer - click to view full reply 

72224

Robotech Kickstarter Funded at $1.44 Million! @ 2013/12/30 10:35:49

Post by: Joyboozer

So is the current theory that ND wrote a miniatures game, Kevin completely rewrote and and now been forced to realise he's made it unplayable?

Reply by: Cypher-xv - click to view full reply 

70376

Robotech Kickstarter Funded at $1.44 Million! @ 2013/12/30 11:04:32

Post by: Cypher-xv

Business as usual

Reply by: Mike1975 - click to view full reply 

78043

Robotech Kickstarter Funded at $1.44 Million! @ 2013/12/30 15:23:26

Post by: Mike1975

 Cypher-xv wrote:

NTRabbit wrote:

 warboss wrote:

NTRabbit wrote:
Hasn't all of the (lack of) communication since the end of the project been from Palladium? How do we know Palladium didn't just say "Thanks, but we'll take it from here" before washing ND out of any further involvement. I recall reading early in the KS that ND were making this game themselves on behalf of Palladium, including writing the rules, which they sure aren't doing now.

Unless I'm mistaken the whole thing reads like ND getting a contract/license to do the whole game for Palladium to sell as their own because people wanted one and they didn't know how, ND ran the kickstarter successfully, and then as soon as it ended Palladium took over everything bar the sculpting and then said 'see ya later' once that was done, but continue to blame every issue that comes up on the partner they cut out months ago.

That's just it we don't know who is in charge of rules dev anymore. But according to Mike it seems to be coming along quite well. Although I'm surprised they still need play testers at this point since according to PB/nd the rules have been play tested for some time before the ks even started.

Yes PB is still blaming nd and Chinese New Year (how dare they take time off). Since this started and iv learned about the real PB, I've learned that this kind of thing is the norm for them. I recall someone mentioning that when he/she went to gencon they noticed there was tension between PB and nd staff. Off coarse this was put down as trash talk by the defenders but there might be some truth to it. My guess is Kevin saw the game might outshine his outdated rules and leave his books in the dust. So because he feels threatened by this he has probably taken over the task of writing the rules himself. This way he can bask in glory and continue to be king of the nerds.

Just to clarify for everyone I think it was back in September that I sent PB an email via the KS site. I offered to help keep people motivated and do what I can in exchange for the actual rules and being able to post pics of games that I'd play with brief descriptions. I attached links to the games that I had played so far as well as the rules that I had written up to date to the email. Later I added the Facebook page.

After ~6 weeks (Mid-November) I got an email from Jeff Burke telling me that they were interested in looking things and that they would get back to me. At this time there were rumors about the rules not being completely done so I just put myself on sit and wait mode as far as PB was concerned. I received another email a month later saying to expect a call from Kevin S. I spoke to him before Christmas and I will hopefully be receiving the NDA soon so that I can get a copy of the actual rules.

This is a two edged sword. I will have the actual rules, can mess with them and see what I think and make my opinions known to Jeff and the PB gang BUT I will no longer be able to openly share with you all that I know from the rules. So I'm hoping to get a good look and then work with PB and Jeff to "share' a few tidbits on the actual rules here and there. This sharing will be completely dependent on their OK so take that as you will.

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