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Kilkrazy wrote:Despite what GW might like people to believe, materials costs of metal and plastic are a small proportion of the cost of models.

I was wondering about this the other day - if GW could make some sort of refund program. You return all your unused sprues and they give you a discount on your next purchase. I don't know how it would work, but it would be nice. After reading this though, they'd probably waste more time/money in the process of these refunds and in the refunds themselves than money they'd save reusing materials.

I, like others I imagine, thought that the materials were a majority of the cost (since the molds are paid for, I would think).

That extra pewter is such a negligible cost to GW it's probably not even factored into their operating cost.

Plastic on the other hand is pricier, hence why GW lately has been trying to cram sprues with as much stuff as possible.

cost of plastic go's up and down with th cot of oil seeing that plastic is a oil bast material.
and I don't think that the plastic is easy to remelt even metal has a big problem as part of the build up for metal and plastic is going vaporise.
so you would need to study witch parts of your compound you lose and put it back in the melting proses or you plastic/ metal wouldn't be the same probably of lesser quality.
that doesn't mater allot for plastic bottle of a tin can but I don't think you want your mini's to be made of a worse material . even know you can see the differences some litter than others.

Dodge
Duck
Dive
Dip
and Dodge?

Fateweaver wrote:That extra pewter is such a negligible cost to GW it's probably not even factored into their operating cost.

Plastic on the other hand is pricier, hence why GW lately has been trying to cram sprues with as much stuff as possible.

Perhaps this was meant sarcastically, but I just have to reply because it's completely wrong. Plastic is much much less expesive than metal.

The molds for making plastic kits are much more expenisve and GW has been trying to create kits with fewer unique sprues. However, the raw plastic material is a fraction of the cost of metal.

Not the plastic it self the mold they run in the area of $250k per mold so the more that can fit the mold the cheaper it is to produce models.

That's what I meant. It's pricier to produce plastic parts since the molds are so astronomical in cost vs molds for pewter

Economies of scale make up for it.

When you've got a kit like a basic troops or vehicle choice, you probably need to produce millions of them.

The extra cost of the injection mould is spread across all those copies, and ends up being really cheap.

That is why GW tend to use metal only for character figures and other small production run items.

Eilif wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:That extra pewter is such a negligible cost to GW it's probably not even factored into their operating cost.

Plastic on the other hand is pricier, hence why GW lately has been trying to cram sprues with as much stuff as possible.

Perhaps this was meant sarcastically, but I just have to reply because it's completely wrong. Plastic is much much less expesive than metal.

The molds for making plastic kits are much more expenisve and GW has been trying to create kits with fewer unique sprues. However, the raw plastic material is a fraction of the cost of metal.

I had heard that the plastic moulds last much longer than the metal ones do meaning they have to make multiple moulds for the metals. Is this true?

n0t_u wrote:The issue is that if they reused the left over pewter it could cause defects in the product. Some types can be reused without problem but not all.

It's not usually an issue. In fact, it is common with other metal miniatures manufacturers to do exactly that. Recycle their waste metal for another lot of castings - but they generally ship with less excess crud on their models to start with.
If you use a consistent temperature for the melting down of the ingots, then the offcuts shouldn't effect the result - besides, you are supposed to remove the crud and floaty bits before you pour.

Technically speaking, GW don't use pewter anymore. They use a lead-free white-metal (a family of alloys with similar casting properties, of which pewter is one of them. Essentially, pewter is a 'white metal' but not all 'white metal' alloys are pewter.) that has similar properties and may include metals that are no less toxic than lead - they just don't accumulate the same way.

All for them learning the three r's though.

Proper, grammatically correct English. Punctuation where it is supposed to go and correct sentence structure. Correct use of plurals for words ending in -ex would also help (one wonders if they say 'appendixes' and 'indexes" as well.).
Proper understanding of elementary arithmetic and how it applies to sentence structure. If you instruct someone to subtract a negative number, DO NOT BE SURPRISED when they ADD it. (Necron Monolith and 'weapon destroyed' results.).
Having their legal team read through the rules to look for loopholes and irregularities.
Followed by the legal team's three year olds.

Three year olds would probably do a better job of proofreading, too.

chromedog wrote:
All for them learning the three r's though.

Proper, grammatically correct English. Punctuation where it is supposed to go and correct sentence structure. Correct use of plurals for words ending in -ex would also help (one wonders if they say 'appendixes' and 'indexes" as well.).
Proper understanding of elementary arithmetic and how it applies to sentence structure. If you instruct someone to subtract a negative number, DO NOT BE SURPRISED when they ADD it. (Necron Monolith and 'weapon destroyed' results.).
Having their legal team read through the rules to look for loopholes and irregularities.
Followed by the legal team's three year olds.

Three year olds would probably do a better job of proofreading, too.

+1 for that, I totally forgot all about those. Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic, hahahaha yeah. We do wish. But if GW fixed all of their vague rules writing we couldn't argue about them anymore.

chromedog wrote:

n0t_u wrote:The issue is that if they reused the left over pewter it could cause defects in the product. Some types can be reused without problem but not all.

It's not usually an issue. In fact, it is common with other metal miniatures manufacturers to do exactly that. Recycle their waste metal for another lot of castings - but they generally ship with less excess crud on their models to start with.
If you use a consistent temperature for the melting down of the ingots, then the offcuts shouldn't effect the result - besides, you are supposed to remove the crud and floaty bits before you pour.

Technically speaking, GW don't use pewter anymore. They use a lead-free white-metal (a family of alloys with similar casting properties, of which pewter is one of them. Essentially, pewter is a 'white metal' but not all 'white metal' alloys are pewter.) that has similar properties and may include metals that are no less toxic than lead - they just don't accumulate the same way.

All for them learning the three r's though.

Proper, grammatically correct English. Punctuation where it is supposed to go and correct sentence structure. Correct use of plurals for words ending in -ex would also help (one wonders if they say 'appendixes' and 'indexes" as well.).
Proper understanding of elementary arithmetic and how it applies to sentence structure. If you instruct someone to subtract a negative number, DO NOT BE SURPRISED when they ADD it. (Necron Monolith and 'weapon destroyed' results.).
Having their legal team read through the rules to look for loopholes and irregularities.
Followed by the legal team's three year olds.

Three year olds would probably do a better job of proofreading, too.

I know the of take of metal thats why I mentioned the calculations and watch to add. but with plastic its harder .
and if you mean my spelling I am dyslexic and English is not my mother tong.
And if you mean gw you have never seen the dutch rule book its a disaster even rule book is spelled incorrectly.

No, I was referring to GW and their misuse of English.

For them, it IS their mother tongue and I've known Germans AND Dutch people who can use it with more fluency and proficiency (they can use it better).

You haven't seen Spanish games and their translations (or mistranslations) into English, though, have you. Makes the others look good in comparison.

Besides, Dutch is just misspelled German anyways.

(Dad was Hungarian raised in Holland during WW2. He spoke several languages fluently and one thing I picked up was that the Dutch really hate the Germans).

chromedog wrote:Having their legal team read through the rules to look for loopholes and irregularities

Pretty unlikely that this would ever happen, for 3 reasons:
1) Would you play a game that read like a legal contract? It would get rid of most of the issues, but be almost incomprehensible to most players.
2) Lawyers would add to the release time with multiple edits and revisions. Lawyers aren't quick.
3) Cost. Simply put, lawyers are expensive. A cheap, young associate will run at least $150/hour. Larger firms or mid-level attorneys and you're looking at $2-300 per hour. Big law firms have associates who start (fresh out of law school) at $300/hour.

It's just not something that makes financial sense for GW.

biccat wrote:

chromedog wrote:Having their legal team read through the rules to look for loopholes and irregularities

Pretty unlikely that this would ever happen, for 3 reasons:
1) Would you play a game that read like a legal contract? It would get rid of most of the issues, but be almost incomprehensible to most players.
2) Lawyers would add to the release time with multiple edits and revisions. Lawyers aren't quick.
3) Cost. Simply put, lawyers are expensive. A cheap, young associate will run at least $150/hour. Larger firms or mid-level attorneys and you're looking at $2-300 per hour. Big law firms have associates who start (fresh out of law school) at $300/hour.

It's just not something that makes financial sense for GW.

I think it was probably a joke.

That being said,
Quality copyeditors would be a much smarter investment. If GW wants to present themselves as "The Porsche of Wargaming" (count down until someone posts that "Hey guys, I'm a Porsche!" macro) then they should have better quality control, and correct (in terms of grammar, arithmetic, fluff and crunch) publishing is a pretty elementary step.

It was.

I was serious about the three year olds though.

They probably have a better grasp of English than the writers do (hell, Alessio Cavatore probably has a better grasp).

Mr. Burning wrote:Its a cost thing isnt it?

If that excess is cheaper to have on than the cost/time of trimming recycling or even revamping production then GW is still onto a winner.

Yet they still increase prices? Not a sound business strategy when the competition is growing and customers are cluing on that GW is not the ONLY model company out there...

Kilkrazy wrote:Despite what GW might like people to believe, materials costs of metal and plastic are a small proportion of the cost of models.

Exactly.