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 zend wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I do agree the new stuff needs more ships. I get the real world analog of updated designs, but it’s not as visually exciting as “whoa, what is that!”. The prequels gave us a nice mix of course, with early glimpses of the Star Destroyer family of ships.

But…the Old EU has some bloody awful designs. Mouldy Crow looks cack, as does the K-Wing.

So swings and roundabouts really.

Not liking the Moldy Crow?

When they announced the official death of X-Wing I went and bought one for cheapo to put on my shelf next to my Kyle Katarn figure. Need to do the same with a few other ships I love.

Honestly post Mando EU had been just as bad if not worse than the old EU, and I can’t for the life of me think of any new designs besides Ahsoka’s T-6 shuttle. I’m not touching The Acolyte to see if there’s anything new in it thought, I’ll let people with more patience for the insufferable than I handle that.

It was nice to see the E-Wing in Ahsoka, wish it had gotten more screen time, but at least it establishes it's existence as canon.


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Billicus wrote:
In terms of Armada news, a group of players that have blogs and youtube channels have formed an "Armada Ruleset Collective" and struck a deal with Adepticon to manage another "worlds" (read: America) competition in 2025, so have positioned themselves as the de-facto stewards of competitive Armada play going forward. There are some token Europeans on the list too but it's overwhelmingly a Murica thing. Link to the announcement below.

Spoiler:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yh6uxzwc4es0klfs51s3w/ION_PR_240628final.pdf?e=1&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2ZnlRZSN4yOO3Vs8LzuevAaAClL9DfJYwWplrPvkrIplOka-BvBquOfdA_aem_N6Rm1GQDlwX6paZC0_calQ&rlkey=flb126oa2vkgdcpolqr0i8ylp&st=fuxomenx&dl=0

It's all a little fawning for my taste, with language like this:

"We are striving to maintain everything within the guidelines of the Atomic Mass Games IP Policy, and it is important to us that this is done right."

Who cares about AMG's IP policy if they're not going to produce the game anymore? It's not like you're monetizing this thing, do what you want.

People don't like getting sued for IP infringement (art, text, characters, ships, etc.), especially when you involve the House of Mouse (go ask that Florida Daycare Center about it).

AMG just doesn't want to upset Disney. They'll say whatever and players are free to ignore them both.

 Stormonu wrote:

People don't like getting sued for IP infringement (art, text, characters, ships, etc.), especially when you involve the House of Mouse (go ask that Florida Daycare Center about it).

If it's a non profit fan effort what's there to sue for?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Now, “find the lady” is absolutely true, but was addressed in 2nd edition.

One notable issue is that while this was addressed in 2nd edition, it wasn't addressed very quickly. Ships took years to get 2nd edition packaging and the nature of the upgrade made the 1st edition stuff pretty useless for new players. It's a bit of an outlier, but the TIE Bomber didn't get repackaged properly until last year.

Billicus wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

People don't like getting sued for IP infringement (art, text, characters, ships, etc.), especially when you involve the House of Mouse (go ask that Florida Daycare Center about it).

If it's a non profit fan effort what's there to sue for?

Still got to defend it. I guess one argument is that if a retired game based on a valuable IP is still being maintained by fans, any replacement game based on that IP is having to tempt those players to shell out.

Not saying it’s a good or even valid argument, but it is one off the top of my head.

 LunarSol wrote:
One notable issue is that while this was addressed in 2nd edition, it wasn't addressed very quickly. Ships took years to get 2nd edition packaging and the nature of the upgrade made the 1st edition stuff pretty useless for new players. It's a bit of an outlier, but the TIE Bomber didn't get repackaged properly until last year.

How did they address it? I'm genuinely asking as I didn't follow it. Were there no new cards in ship packs and all the cards were in the faction/update packs? Or did they just get rid of the rule that you had to have a legit card to play in their events?

Cards a ship could use could be found with ships of the same faction. Which did deal with the main criticism of Find The Lady, as you were no longer lumped with a model you wouldn’t necessarily used.

Billicus wrote:
It's all a little fawning for my taste, with language like this:

"We are striving to maintain everything within the guidelines of the Atomic Mass Games IP Policy, and it is important to us that this is done right."

Who cares about AMG's IP policy if they're not going to produce the game anymore? It's not like you're monetizing this thing, do what you want.

Why would it benefit them to be needlessly aggressive as a fan organization with no real monetary benefit towards not one but two multinational billion dollar companies (one of which is notoriously litigious when "protecting" their IP while simultaneously grounding it into the dirt themselves)? I think it's wise for them to abide by what I call the Revised Wheaton Rule: Don't be a dick like Wil. Why risk having to personally spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars defending yourself personally and the organization from an overreach by one of them if you can avoid it?


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Cards a ship could use could be found with ships of the same faction. Which did deal with the main criticism of Find The Lady, as you were no longer lumped with a model you wouldn’t necessarily used.

So you basically only had to pokemon/catch'em'all your own faction as opposed to all of them? That is admittedly an improvement but I wouldn't call it an overall fix personally but YMMV.

I don't really know what you're talking about to be honest, I said they probably don't need to worry about "abiding by AMG's policies", you've come in saying "how would they benefit from being needlessly aggressive", I just don't really get what you mean by that or what you think I'm suggesting they do

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Cards a ship could use could be found with ships of the same faction. Which did deal with the main criticism of Find The Lady, as you were no longer lumped with a model you wouldn’t necessarily used.

I don't know how much a big factor that really was. Would have only really been an issue for tournament play I suspect. For those of us who were collecting everything we could get our hands on, it didn't make a difference and for those who "had to have the card" for play, they probably went the e-bay route for the single card anyway.

Well, it was designed to fleece people. So it definitely was an issue.

But even if it wasn't the cards are just dumb from a logics perspective. Just make a nice book with the rules for "Rebellion" and "Empire" and what not. Make it shiny hardcover and colour or whatever if you wanna price it at a premium like GW does, or make it a black-and-white one if you want low entry to the game, and have all the rules that could possibly be used for that faction be in there and be the only rules-reference I need (including for official tournament play). Than you also don't need to bundle cards with the ships, making them cheaper to produce (and thus increase your profit if you keep selling them at the same price).

Codex: Rebels was never an option, faction books with army lists goes completely against everything FFG ever did with X-Wing. Most players I knew liked that it was self contained, even if you had to go card-hunting (or in our case, just print your own cards). Setup could be annoying, but having everything on the table in front of you at a glance was a huge selling point

 Kalamadea wrote:
Codex: Rebels was never an option, faction books with army lists goes completely against everything FFG ever did with X-Wing. Most players I knew liked that it was self contained, even if you had to go card-hunting (or in our case, just print your own cards). Setup could be annoying, but having everything on the table in front of you at a glance was a huge selling point

Exactly, the rules were a little booklet and even that I generally left at home unless I was going to a tournament. I liked the game because I didn't have to carry a pile of rulebooks around.

A codex format wouldn't work at all.

Bound books are just terrible from a play perspective. Even worse in a game where you use such a small percentage of the pilot options available and your upgrades would have to be in a totally different section of the book. Just constant flipping around searching for rules.




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 warboss wrote:

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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Cards a ship could use could be found with ships of the same faction. Which did deal with the main criticism of Find The Lady, as you were no longer lumped with a model you wouldn’t necessarily used.

So you basically only had to pokemon/catch'em'all your own faction as opposed to all of them? That is admittedly an improvement but I wouldn't call it an overall fix personally but YMMV.

They actually did start releasing card packs for upgrades. Legion started doing something similar around the same time. I wasn't following the game closely enough at this point to tell you how effective this was as a solution though.

 Kalamadea wrote:
Codex: Rebels was never an option, faction books with army lists goes completely against everything FFG ever did with X-Wing. Most players I knew liked that it was self contained, even if you had to go card-hunting (or in our case, just print your own cards). Setup could be annoying, but having everything on the table in front of you at a glance was a huge selling point

Why not both.

Sell
a) the ships
b) "Codexes" for people that prefer that
c) Card packs for people that prefer that

Everyone's happy?

FFG were a board game company, so they were never going to go with a printed codex. Much of X-Wing's broader appeal was in the board game space. People picking up the core set and occasionally extra ships as an "expansion".

(GW has that "broader appeal" category in terms of people who buy product just to build and paint, and don't engage with the games themselves hugely)

I wouldn't have appreciated them going the GW codex route (but more specifically in terms of rehashing 90% the same rules every 2-3 years with a new codex replacement). I was fine with the card upgrade system they brought over from the board game space but I'd also have been fine with a single thicker rulebook with the card option rules there as a single source and just referenced on the model card as optional upgrades. There are downsides to each choice though.

In defence of 2.0, FFG did address the issue of chasing individual cards pretty reasonably. There were no equivalents to the Autothruster upgrade pack (otherwise known as the Starviper) in 2.0. Needing the cards was obviously part of the business model, even in 2.0, but having a massive pool of cards at the start of the edition meant there were fewer new ones coming out with each wave of releases. In 1st edition, a new release wave would often contain 80%+ new cards, often not in large numbers per pack. In 2.0 they did a better job providing multiples of new cards in multiple expansions in the same wave.

The cards theoretically had a useful gameplay purpose in keeping all the rules you were using physically on the table, so you didn't need to refer to anything other than those when playing. In practice it wasn't always that simple, depending on the number of cards in use. Ironically, AMG made that much, much worse in their quest to make the game accessible, which is just another example of how much they didn;t understand the game.


Also, the "Codex" route wouldn't work so well, given how the game was basically in constant development and no faction was ever really "done" as they are in 40k. Sure, you could make it a living ruleset and keep adding to it, but given that the cards generally came with the ships that needed them in 2.0 I'm not sure how that would have been better. All but the most serious of tournaments I've ever attended were usually fine with printouts of your squad lists without needing all the cards. The rules for everything being freely available online meant it wasn't a problem to double-check a specific card if you were suspicious of a printout. That said, X-Wing has a much, much better competitive community than 40k with barely any of the cheating and related dramas that seem to pop up fairly regularly in 40k.

The app they released with version 2 listed all of the cards. There didn't need to be any books, especially when errata replaced the text on them.

But, having the codex book at least would give an opportunity to find it quickly, alongside the appendix of many keywords.

 LunarSol wrote:
Bound books are just terrible from a play perspective. Even worse in a game where you use such a small percentage of the pilot options available and your upgrades would have to be in a totally different section of the book. Just constant flipping around searching for rules.

Never had any problem using bound books for wargames in 30 years of playing them, even the original Aeronautica Imperialis which was based on the same ancestor as X-Wing and existed exclusively as two big hardbacks. It rather depends on the game system; a lot of "modern" design focuses on providing a dizzying array of stacking, comboing, overlapping auras and buffs and abilities and you win or lose based on how competent you are at "deckbuilding" your army and setting off those abilities & combos in the right order, and sure referencing all that in a book would be a pain, but plenty of games take a different approach and once you've learned the core rules you'll only be referencing the rules occasionally when memory fails or to resolve a disputed interpretation, from which perspective the CCG/everything on the table approach would be detrimental and limiting.

EDIT: And another thing comes to mind now I think of AI - people can still go and buy that book now on ebay and get everything they need to play the game(sans models obviously, but you could use paper chits if you were that desperate). Games that have a lot of "accessories" or spread their rules out over endless cards and dashboards etc inevitably become a right pain in the backside to collect often even while technically still in-print, but especially once they go out of production.

So, shapeways is down and word on the street is they have declared bankruptcy, laid off theor staff and are going out of business as a result of sime controversy which resulted in their investors pulling out days after they announced they were going public.

Big blow to those who were trying to get 3D prints of Mel's Miniatures designs, hopefully he makes his catalog more widely available through more affordable avenues

While I'm sad to see them go, I have to admit their business model post-introduction of the first gen affordable resin printers (Anycubic Photon and Elegoo Mars) was a bit bonkers. The quality was on par with what you'd get with 50um layer heights regardless of what the material said and the prices (even before their quite high UPS shipping was added) were not particularly affordable for the literal magnitude of product you were getting. Once I stopped 3d printing myself, I wanted to place an order there instead and noticed that the model I uploaded was SEVERELY downgraded in terms of detail automatically by their software even at the FUD highest level they were offering which was an added disappointment.

When I looked on ebay a while later, I saw alot better deals from people operating print farms in their homes on ebay than what they offered for the subset of models that I wanted printed that were unchanged from patron/MMF; those models were already pruned from their supports, cheaper with shipping than the base cost Shapeways wanted to charge, and I didn't have to wait literal weeks for them to be made/shipped like my three orders with Shapeways. They were a great option before the introduction of those resin printers but the value they offered dropped like a rock and they didn't adjust their business model the last time I checked (admittedly around a year or two ago most recently).

chaos0xomega wrote:
So, shapeways is down

It's working for me (in the UK), and the only place I can see reporting on it is Spikey Bits so I'm taking it with a bit of salt - but I agree it should have gone away years ago.

beast_gts wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
So, shapeways is down

It's working for me (in the UK), and the only place I can see reporting on it is Spikey Bits so I'm taking it with a bit of salt - but I agree it should have gone away years ago.

They've disabled the checkout system, so you might want to check that?

 warboss wrote:
While I'm sad to see them go, I have to admit their business model post-introduction of the first gen affordable resin printers (Anycubic Photon and Elegoo Mars) was a bit bonkers.

Yea Shapeways was obsolete 5 years ago, I assume any artist still using it to sell prints at this point must be psychotically afraid of STL piracy, you can literally buy a home printer capable of better prints for the cost of 5, maybe 10, 28mm models done by Shapeways. Them going bust (if this is even true) can only be good, at least for our niche, as commercial sculpts move to cheaper printers with better tech, which is literally every garage printing service.

chaos0xomega wrote:
So, shapeways is down and word on the street is they have declared bankruptcy, laid off theor staff and are going out of business as a result of sime controversy which resulted in their investors pulling out days after they announced they were going public.

Big blow to those who were trying to get 3D prints of Mel's Miniatures designs, hopefully he makes his catalog more widely available through more affordable avenues

Website is up, but looks like they are in financial trouble, selling off assets/hardware:

https://investors.shapeways.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/98/shapeways-announces-definitive-agreement-to-sell-software

And as of May 22, 2024 they have 180 days to file paperwork with NASDAQ or they'll be delisted as an operating company:

https://investors.shapeways.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/99/shapeways-receives-nasdaq-notice-regarding-late-filing-of

Hope nobody's waiting on minis from there....

Yeah, websites up but checkout ain't working, and staff have been laid off. There's discussion on pop goes the monkeys Facebook page about it, including some commentary from people w firsthand knowledge.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah, websites up but checkout ain't working, and staff have been laid off. There's discussion on pop goes the monkeys Facebook page about it, including some commentary from people w firsthand knowledge.

Ah, bother, they still owe me like $10. (being one of those too lazy to upload my STLs to other sites for sale).

Given their market position, it is possible that someone else will take the Shapeways name on, and dump the actual production aspect.

 lasgunpacker wrote:

Ah, bother, they still owe me like $10. (being one of those too lazy to upload my STLs to other sites for sale).

Given their market position, it is possible that someone else will take the Shapeways name on, and dump the actual production aspect.

The production aspect is their core business; what other markets do you think the name would benefit them in out of curiosity?

 warboss wrote:

 lasgunpacker wrote:

Ah, bother, they still owe me like $10. (being one of those too lazy to upload my STLs to other sites for sale).

Given their market position, it is possible that someone else will take the Shapeways name on, and dump the actual production aspect.

The production aspect is their core business; what other markets do you think the name would benefit them in out of curiosity?

.stl marketplace