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Platuan4th wrote: (bar those that backed for product to put on shelves)
But that's the point though. The backers of the retail-pledge were supposed to be delivered with wave 3 after the regular backers.
Not every retailer backed at Retail. Some have been proven to cheat the system and just ordered extra on a more standard pledge to have it on shelves right away.
You know you're really doing something when you can make strangers hate you over the Internet. - Mauleed
Just remember folks. Panic. Panic all the time. It's the only way to survive, other than just being mindful, of course-but geez, that's so friggin' boring. - Aegis Grimm
Hallowed is the All Pie The Before Times: A Place That Celebrates The World That Was
29th October 2024
Guest: Kevin J Anderson, author on Star Wars, Dune, X-Files and a number of creator-owned properties.
News:
-Stephen Mohan’s death was mentioned
-Amber Cook, a former general manager at CGL also died this week.
-BattleTech kickstarter update last week didn’t make it out because Tyler and CJ were at Voltcon promoting the new Voltron RPG, the related time crunch meant they weren’t able to complete it.
-Mercs Kickstarter update: Items are still arriving at the hubs. US/Canada/Non-hub ROW are at 19,300 shipped or label created so shipping will be very soon. About 1,500 remain to ship. No additional update for international shipping.
-New/recent Releases
--40th Anniversary dice tray is up on the store now
--The following should be on the store on Friday
---Commander’s case
---Force Manual Kurita
---Technical blueprints
-Pax Unplugged is coming up in December. CGL will be streaming and will be announcing the next slate of products.
The chat and most of the Q&A was around Anderson's personal work.
Q&A:
-Any update on the Premium Wolverine and BattleMaster on the webstore? Rem will check with Talon.
-Will the glittery laser-cut dice be available after the Kickstarter? Unclear, Rem’s not sure if all swag will be released just yet, they’ll update closer to the end of fulfillment
-What to expect as Pax Unplugged? Surprises!
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
Just checking in for all international hubs: we continue to wait on shipments to arrive at the hubs. We've gotten word that some have arrived already, some are arriving in mere days, and some we are still waiting on tracking information. Things are moving.
For US, Canada, and RoW without hubs, over 19,000 orders are complete or in process (shipping label printed, but haven't been sent out yet). There are about 1500 remaining, including short-stocked items and retail for those regions (which will complete at end of fulfillment). So close!
Additionally, those backers that completed pledge manager or shipping was paid after the August 12th date are in Wave 3 and that file has been sent to QML to schedule fulfillment. That list is just over 500 backers. We'll update you when they are ready to start sending address verification emails.
Arano Coins have arrived to QML and those orders have been released for fulfillment if that was the only item missing. No further adjustments will be made. Art of War and Cookbook shipments are processing as well.
---------
Reminders:
Damages/Missing Items
Contact QML at the following link if you have damaged items, or if you believe a package/shipment has gone missing. This applies to all backers, regardless of country.
You have gotten more than one vehicle (as all potentially affected backers are receiving one additional salvage box) from Mercs salvage boxes
You have potentially defective miniatures (Please include a picture in your first email)
Late Backers
If you are a backer who backed via BackerKit rather than Kickstarter, and require support regarding your pledge, you can reach out to us using the following steps:
4.) If the pre-filled answer does not answer your question, use the "Still have questions?" button to send a support request to Catalyst. (Check your spam folder)
Store Credit
Backers who have not yet received their store credit, please message tbuckner@catalystgamelabs.com for this issue along with the appropriate email address to send these credits to. These must be done in batches and we will be sending them out as soon as possible
cole1114 wrote: Force Manual Kurita came out, seems pretty good!
Not even seen it up for pre-order from my usual BT online stores in the UK.
Wonder if it'll sell out all its stock in the US before a several year wait for a reprint to get to the UK/RoW.
Currently most played: Silent Death, Mars Code Aurora, Battletech and currently trying Warcrow and Infinity.
2024/11/01 15:05:37
Subject: BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
cole1114 wrote: Force Manual Kurita came out, seems pretty good!
Not even seen it up for pre-order from my usual BT online stores in the UK.
Wonder if it'll sell out all its stock in the US before a several year wait for a reprint to get to the UK/RoW.
They mentioned in Episode #30 of Tuesday Newsday (posted October 1st) that it was being brought forward from next year and being released at the end of October.
Flinty wrote:
cole1114 wrote: Force Manual Kurita came out, seems pretty good!
Is it much different to the old FASA Field Manual?
It's an update of the Combat Manual series (Combat Manual Kurita and Mercenaries) from 2016.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
2024/11/03 00:49:44
Subject: Re:BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
Some upcoming releases seen at Southern Assault IV. Contents of the Force Packs can be seen in this post from GenCon.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
2024/11/03 01:53:23
Subject: BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
Ccatalyst Game Labs wrote:Its more of a 'Rem travels a lot during the summer and fall months' than a frequency issue. When things calm down more in the winter and spring, the schedule will be back to normal.
As the Community Marketing Director, her job has her being the face of the company at a lot of conventions.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
2024/11/08 16:32:04
Subject: Re:BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
Ghaz wrote: From the Catalyst Game Labs Facebook page:
Ccatalyst Game Labs wrote:Its more of a 'Rem travels a lot during the summer and fall months' than a frequency issue. When things calm down more in the winter and spring, the schedule will be back to normal.
As the Community Marketing Director, her job has her being the face of the company at a lot of conventions.
As Community Marketing Director, she should do better at delegating tasks to others if she is gallivanting about...
Automatically Appended Next Post:
beast_gts wrote: Just got an Address Confirmation email from Gamesquest - I'm in the UK. Might actually get it before Christmas!
Good grief! Can but hope!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hah, so do I! You would have thought that might have been a good thing to mention on Tuesday...
Check your spam folders, peeps.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2024/11/08 17:41:07
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
Ghaz wrote: From the Catalyst Game Labs Facebook page:
Ccatalyst Game Labs wrote:Its more of a 'Rem travels a lot during the summer and fall months' than a frequency issue. When things calm down more in the winter and spring, the schedule will be back to normal.
As the Community Marketing Director, her job has her being the face of the company at a lot of conventions.
As Community Marketing Director, she should do better at delegating tasks to others if she is gallivanting about...
First of all, she's not 'gallivanting about', she's doing a part of the job she was hired for. Second, she's not really in a place to delegate tasks as she's not management, plus who's job goes undone if it is delegated to someone else? They don't really have a lot of choices since they only have a few full-time employees as most of the products are done by freelancers.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
2024/11/08 18:22:45
Subject: BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
Ghaz wrote: From the Catalyst Game Labs Facebook page:
Ccatalyst Game Labs wrote:Its more of a 'Rem travels a lot during the summer and fall months' than a frequency issue. When things calm down more in the winter and spring, the schedule will be back to normal.
As the Community Marketing Director, her job has her being the face of the company at a lot of conventions.
As Community Marketing Director, she should do better at delegating tasks to others if she is gallivanting about...
First of all, she's not 'gallivanting about', she's doing a part of the job she was hired for. Second, she's not really in a place to delegate tasks as she's not management, plus who's job goes undone if it is delegated to someone else? They don't really have a lot of choices since they only have a few full-time employees as most of the products are done by freelancers.
If your job title includes “Director” you are by definition part of the management. And part of my whole problem with the current arrangement is that CGL hasn’t hired in enough staff to do a decent job. Y doing part of her job, she appears to be unable to do the rest of her job. As a minimum they could get some entry level comms mook in to help her out. $12m, remember.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
Someone doesnt know that job titles in the gaming industry are often meaningless and negotiated terms to compensate for lower incomes so that those people can step into better positions in other industries latwr in their careers.
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
2024/11/08 19:47:33
Subject: BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
It's not just a gaming industry thing its a company size thing. The same job role in a firm of a halfdozen people can be (and often is) drastically different to the same title in a firm of several hundred.
Game industry is full of small firms, even smaller if you cut out all the short term/commission based staff. There's a good chance you end up doing stuff outside of "the norm" for your job role because its small and you have to be adaptive and able to pitch in on different things to get the job done because you can't just hire a dozen more staff or a specialist.
Unholy fracking crap, I just got a final address confirmation email (UK), which said any changes need to be done by the 11th, which would give an, at least, bare minimum potential shipping date (any time from next week onwards); it's not much, admittedly, but is maybe some sign of movement in the next few weeks...?.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
2024/11/08 22:36:59
Subject: Re:BattleTech 'Mercenaries' Kickstarter - THE WAIT CONTINUES (UPDATE #103)
International with Hubs: We've learned that most shipments have arrived at UK and Asia and are getting checked in. Both have started sending address verifications and are eager to get started! EU and Australia are largely still in transit, but we are expecting news any day.
The Australian distributor asked us to let you know that fulfillment will not be able to start in AUS until January due to their approaching holiday closures. As soon as the new year kicks off, they are excited to hammer these shipments out to backers as soon as possible.
Domestic, CAN and RoW (without hubs) continue to fulfill as short shipments arrive.
We have had a few issues reported where game stores have been able to order several Kickstarter items for pre-order. Each instance we have tracked down, and corrected the distributor's incorrect release dates. Those distributors are contacting their stores to hold those items until street date.
A few weeks ago, we communicated the release dates for the next several months. We keep pushing those dates every month dependent on the Kickstarter fulfillment news. We will continue to track erroneous releases, and correct the workflows with our partners, as we are committed to completing fulfillment before retail release.
Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
Kanluwen wrote: This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.
Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...
tneva82 wrote: You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something...
A company director in the UK and the US are not the same thing. It seems very likely that Rem would not be able to have the job title of Director in the UK.
1) It doesn't seem like too much "delegation" to ask a colleague to put out a 2 sentence e-mail saying "No firm dates this week. We'll keep you posted"
2) I was wrong and they actually did manage a weekly update. Which actually had useful news for people not in the US. Horray!
1) It doesn't seem like too much "delegation" to ask a colleague to put out a 2 sentence e-mail saying "No firm dates this week. We'll keep you posted"
Seriously? They've posted updates with actual news and have people complain about it being a 'nothing' update because it didn't have the news that they wanted. They would completely lose it over an update like the one you're suggesting. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
The only "actual news" that CGL have ever posted has been the numerical progress of QML's "wave" delivery. Even then the update provisions are so haphazard its hard for people that haven't received anything yet why that may be the case, especially given that CGL's comms up to that point were all hyper positive about everything being ready to go.
Update 43 - 25th April 2023 - "You can expect a minimum of one update a week between now and fulfillment - more when we have news to share."
This was never achieved, and I think is the core of the problem. Their comms have been reactive when problems arose and people started shouting about it, because they hadn't put the effort in to keep on top of things. There were a few points where flurries of updates were provided dealing with Backerkit stuff, but then updates were more like 2-4 weeks after the campaign closed.
Update 92 - 10th May - paraphrased as "please pay your shipping"
Update 93 - 5th June (4 weeks) - paraphrased as "we just about have everything needed for fulfillment"
Update 94 - 19th June (2 weeks) - Paraphrased as "We have run all our checks and delivery is about to start"
Update 95 - 4th July (2 weeks) - dealing with the vehicles problem (cleanly and effectively as far as I'm concerned) and update on digital downloads. no real complaints in the comments at this point, as CGL are taking charge of the issue.
Update 96 - 24th July (3 weeks) - This is where it starts to fall apart for me, as they state that UK and EU are just one bit of paper away from being able to go, but actually they suddenly admit that International hubs don't have everything needed. "Wave" and "Segment" start becoming used unclearly, and given that as of 5th June they had everything needed, people start wondering why its taking so long. 6k orders processed.
Update 97 - 8th august (2 weeks) - they were at a con and decided not to make the time to process the International hub issue. Implication that another 4k or so orders processed in the 2 weeks since the last update, but this one is pretty sparse on info.
Update 98 - 28th August (3 weeks) - Actually, International hubs are nowhere near ready, but no real timeline to resolve. US Segment 6 fulfillment, but with a total lack of clarity on what a segment was, or a decent tracker of progress.
Update 99 - 24th September (4 weeks) - finally a decent numerical progress update! Which is entirely spoiled by the fact that they screwed up their ordering such that all fulfillment basically shut down at this point, and with a very vague description of the problem and the likely timeline to resolve.
Update 100 - 1st October (1 week) - no real news, when they could have provided some firm progress on what was going on, or highlighting that more things had gone wrong.
Then the rest of the updates basically boil down to "we are waiting an undisclosed time for an undisclosed amount of stuff that we didn't order properly" alongside some good news on US fulfilment.
Again, if they had kept to their schedule of weekly updates, I think people would have been more forgiving as problems were highlighted in advance, rather than thousands of people having to continually post "what is going on and where is my stuff". I think they viewed the updates as a chore rather than a critical comms channel with backers, and resourced it accordingly. And given that we paid them $12m I don't think thats good enough.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
