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 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another question in the hope folk might know…

Do commercial premises receive favourable-compared-to-residential electricity costs?

Depends on where you live and the various laws.

My mom, now retired, use to work for a city here in the States that has their own power generation (hydro) and powering on a commercial factory could cost 20k from a cold start (this was my uncle's cost for his lumber mill back in the 90s in that same city) while running may be half of what residential is.

To understand why this is the case Electricity has to be generated on demand, it cannot be stored, so a large part about running a power grid is figuring out what demand will be and making sure you're producing just enough for that demand. If you make too little you have to buy from an adjacent grid which can be very expensive. If you have extra you can sell it to other grids but there not always a buyer available so generally all that is done via contracts with neighboring grids.

So back to that super high cold start up cost. Well that's expensive because all the sudden you have a wave of unexpected demand. So you have to go out and buy electricity from another grid -- which can be quite expensive. In most places in the US starting up a large commercial facility without scheduling it will get you into a lot of trouble. Even then, with scheduling, the location you're at may not be able to produce what you need at that time or requires them to bring on extra production and then scale back down an hour later (which is also expensive). So generally factories never fully power down unless they're forced too or do rolling starts where they spread it out over a long period.

Why it can be cheaper the residential is once your factory is running it's very consistent in it's power draw and easier to plan for while residential is always a bit of a guessing game. How many people are going to turn on extra TVs or PCs then they normally do and so on.

Years ago was working for a small city that was setting up its own utility. I was tasked with setting up the billing system for industrial customers. Was a copy of the major state utilities. A customer that used a steady load could pay less than a customer that used less power, but irregularly. Bill was basically $/kWh + $/peak kW. There were also charges for transformer size and other taxes, but those two fees made up the most. A customer that used say 100 kWh steady 24/7 for a month would pay less than the customer who used 10kWh for a month by had a spike of 1000 kW for 1 minute a month. The peak charge was designed to make up ~50% of the bill and for some it could be the majority.

Back to PP, main concern with the 3D printing is that PP has never had a good quality record. Their metal models were always infamous for mold slip and the quality of their PVC killed the launch of Mk3 in my area. People were literally throwing kits away after trying to assemble them. Will we be getting a wave of people showing their 3D prints with print shifts and similar misprints? Will quality be consistent between sites? PP had a bad reputation for not caring about model quality for a long time.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Releasing in a year of 10th 40k is probably a mistake

I mean, your choices are to either release the year of, the year before, or the year after a 40k edition as short as they have become.

 silent25 wrote:


Back to PP, main concern with the 3D printing is that PP has never had a good quality record. Their metal models were always infamous for mold slip and the quality of their PVC killed the launch of Mk3 in my area. People were literally throwing kits away after trying to assemble them. Will we be getting a wave of people showing their 3D prints with print shifts and similar misprints? Will quality be consistent between sites? PP had a bad reputation for not caring about model quality for a long time.

Really? I get the PVC stuff was bad but I've collect PP stuff since almost the start (for the OG d20 RPG) and have never had a bad metal model cast wise (some of the early stuff was poorly thought out for assembly) and their resin is top notch and arguably one of the best in the industry.

Well the gamer in me is glad they atleast are trying, i have not played the game since mk2.
However, owning a large mk2 cygnar force, and a medium mk2 menoth force, i am not shelling out for more models, so i will be waiting and see how playable Unlimited will become as it develops, sounds like it will be impractical whitout some house rules.

Legend'ing most of their product line?

Yeah, this is the Hail Mary indeed. Suddenly the Chaos Codex doesn't seem so bad.

I'm definitely in favour of them streamlining everything. I have a bunch of models but aside from one intro game of MkII or III (can't remember for sure) I haven't played since the original Warmachine release. I kept looking to jump back in and finding it too steep a learning curve with all the synergies and theme lists and the like.

So I guess I'll be waiting to see if this winds up being something I can play with the minis I have, or if I just leave them in a box until I find the time and a willing opponent to revisit MkI...

I like almost every part of this. As someone who's been keen on getting into WM/H for years but waiting for them to get their gak together for (gah - 13 years now) - this checks a lot of boxes off for me.

I'll certainly be willing to give it a try - which isn't something I've been able to say about a PP product since like, 2015?

I'd say I'm not real keen on the app - but I certainly understand it. I mainly don't like the idea of having to read fluff on my phone.

Hilarious that they finally realized metal is untenable what, 2 years after launching the last new game in mostly metal.

Also it seems like each faction will start at a $200 too, which seems like a decent deal for a small army in a box, but a steep buy-in for new players. I hope there's still some sort of $50 option for people that want to dip their toe in the water.

But I'm glad they're finally trying something to shake things up though - because they've clearly been run into the ground the last few years. So kudos to PP for finally thinking BIG for once. Even if it fails, at least they'll go down swinging.

Schmapdi wrote:


But I'm glad they're finally trying something to shake things up though - because they've clearly been run into the ground the last few years. So kudos to PP for finally thinking BIG for once. Even if it fails, at least they'll go down swinging.

Yeah, I will give them that. At least they are trying something new.

I wonder what they're going to do about the labour costs associated with mass 3d printing, and how they intend to scale production if this actually takes off.

Read the whole announcement. Blech. It's like they did targeted market research into everything I'd hate in a wargame. Looked at all the things I liked about MKI and MKII and designed the opposite. I see no reason to dig through my closet and pull out my Retribution or Circle armies, assuming I could even use them with the legacy announcement.

Hated the focus on Theme Lists in end of MKII and the focus on them in MKIII. Getting rid of factions and making it completely theme list based is probably necessary for the health of MKIV, but it's not what I want from the game. They went from bonuses in MKII to necessary in competative lists in MKII and now there's just no options to not do them with Armies.

One of the things I loved about Warmachine was the unit cards, having everything in front of you and marking off damage boxes was great. Armybuilder apps are fine for building an army, but as in-game reference tools I hate them. Infinity does it right, where you can make a list online and print out a physical copy, I HATED the games I played using War Room instead of cards. I'm definitely an analog wargamer.

Lagacy vs Prime sucks. Understandable, downright reasonable for the health of the game, but it sucks. It's one thing for a card game to cycle out old cards, but for models you built and painted and based, that's a hell of a slap in the face. Especially bad when the reason is "rules are hard to write, and we want to sell new 3D printed stuff"

And finally I dislike resin, both 3D printed and cast. It's too delicate, and I truly hate repairing and touching up finished models. I much prefer HIPS and PVC and Siocast. PPs early PVC was pretty bad, just like Mantics's early PVC was bad, but it got better in both cases. Steamforged has done great PVC for Guildball and D&D encounters, Battletech minis are sooooooo good in PVC. I've liked the Siocast Reaper and Infinity figs I've worked with, holds paint well and I don't have to worry about it shattering if it drops, which is increasingly common as I get older. I've really fallen in love with CMON's PVC in recent years, ASoIaF are just pretty much perfect for wargaming. I understanf the reasoning for PP switching to 3D printed resin, but that doesn't mean I like it.

I just don't see anything enticing about this announcement, certainly not enough to draw me back in. Which is weird, because they REALLY sound like they want to draw old players back in

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Legend'ing most of their product line?

Yeah, this is the Hail Mary indeed. Suddenly the Chaos Codex doesn't seem so bad.

You know that’s going in my sig? Not at all quote mined, full context. Honest.

As a long time WM/H player through thick and thin I can say, hand on heart that im aggressively neutral on all of this. It will come down to PPs ability to execute and that makes me very nervous.

On the one hand, all the bits about 3d printing, getting round distro issues, the quality of the new minis we have seen (in terms of materials/build quality) makes me very very happy and seems like the step that PP should have done ages ago.

On the other hand I worry that the way Mk4 will advance the story, change the aesthetic to “everything almost looks like neomechanica” and the way factions are changing spells the end of WM/H as I like it. There is also currently no real info on what Hordes factions will look like in the new Prime. What is happening to Trolls and Circle for example? If my Trollbloods come back with plasma rifles, im out.

I also get what and why PP are trying to do with the legacy and prime game types. But effectively you need to accept that after a certain point, any legacy models not in the prime game will be retired and not supported. And if that is almost whole factions then you will have lots of people only playing legacy or leaving all together. And if that the case, what was the point of a new edition?

Final concern is that this has already split the WM/H community (in good and bad ways). Does PP have enough traction and market share to weather that and will the new edition attract enough brand new players to replace the losses they will suffer? Im really not sure.

I’m on a hard stop of buying anything PP related until 2023 now until I know how this will all shake out. Im in watch and wit mode. Most of my locals have said that they expect they will just play legacy or Mk3 and not bother with the new bits. If that is the case across wide swathes of the community then PP may have just consigned itself to oblivion unless they can attract a entirely new audience

All sounds like a company facing their game going under and tries a shot at a very different business model.

Loved the metals but gave up when they started with BAD quality PVC at very high prices.
Last I had contact with PP products was with their range being sold in high discount bins at Salute.

No interest in whats coming whatsoever so yeah sad to see this happen with PP.
Best of luck I guess.

Schmapdi wrote:


Also it seems like each faction will start at a $200 too, which seems like a decent deal for a small army in a box, but a steep buy-in for new players. I hope there's still some sort of $50 option for people that want to dip their toe in the water.

Thing is, back in early to mid life of mk2 this was still considered a skimish game, then players pushed for bigger forces to compensate for the bad state 40k 7th edition was in, and thus turning warmahordes into an army game.
The 200USD 50p Starter contains 22 models, that is above the skirmish realm, and 75p/100p is 37/38 models, that is a small army in the scale this game is in. Plus, army game starter forces are usualy in the 100-200USD bracket.

They would need to add an even lower bracket of 25p and make it a viable gameplay realm outside the beginner stages, so that a 25p force would be as an example; 1 caster, 2 light jacks/beasts, one 4 man unit and one solo, and sold THAT as a beginner bundle instead of the 22 model bundle, for options at 100USD or below boxes to exist.

It wasn't just people compensating though. It was the natural evolution of a game where the armies kept getting more models and fans of those armies kept buying them.

If you've a game system that can only use 5 models a game, but you've got 30 models per faction that means the bulk of a persons collection isn't being used. That's fine in something like Magic the Gathering because a game or series of games might take 10-30 mins. In a 2-4 hour wargame it might mean you can only use one army a week.

So people wanted bigger games so they could put down more of what they had and what they liked.



IT doesn't always go that way - Infinity has managed to avoid it; but PP didn't avoid it. Honestly I think had their move into plastics worked and had things not hit a wall at MK3; I would imagine that we'd now be looking at a game that had become closer to a full wargame. Perhaps even a game mode that abandoned the caster system to allow for a much larger army focus - ergo multiple casts; powering jacks and beasts without having to use focus/fury (perhaps shifting that to a booster instead of the core) so that players could functionally run armies.

It's just Warmachine got half way and then hit a roadblock


As for steep buy-in price I think they are steep, but at the same time its keeping the SKU bloat down and it is honestly getting close to what GW charges for army packs and such (though GW charges that much for 2 armies that you then have to either play swaps with or sell on half of it ).

They aren't alone, Dystopian Wars, Dropzone, even Infinity has an expensive army pack now. The SKU issue is one where the market has grown, there's way more games but highstreet stores and distributors have not grown in kind. So a store doesn't want 100s of boxes per game to stock, the distributors don't want it either. So companies either have to all go super small skirmish; or they have to bundle things up into more expensive boxed sets for the highstreet and 3rd parties and then rely on that and/or direct mailing for individual or smaller sets. It 100% does put the entry prices up. In theory you might cope with that by doing what GW has done with things like Killteam and Warcry

 Overread wrote:
It wasn't just people compensating though. It was the natural evolution of a game where the armies kept getting more models and fans of those armies kept buying them.

If you've a game system that can only use 5 models a game, but you've got 30 models per faction that means the bulk of a persons collection isn't being used. That's fine in something like Magic the Gathering because a game or series of games might take 10-30 mins. In a 2-4 hour wargame it might mean you can only use one army a week.

So people wanted bigger games so they could put down more of what they had and what they liked.



IT doesn't always go that way - Infinity has managed to avoid it; but PP didn't avoid it. Honestly I think had their move into plastics worked and had things not hit a wall at MK3; I would imagine that we'd now be looking at a game that had become closer to a full wargame. Perhaps even a game mode that abandoned the caster system to allow for a much larger army focus - ergo multiple casts; powering jacks and beasts without having to use focus/fury (perhaps shifting that to a booster instead of the core) so that players could functionally run armies.

It's just Warmachine got half way and then hit a roadblock


As for steep buy-in price I think they are steep, but at the same time its keeping the SKU bloat down and it is honestly getting close to what GW charges for army packs and such (though GW charges that much for 2 armies that you then have to either play swaps with or sell on half of it ).

They aren't alone, Dystopian Wars, Dropzone, even Infinity has an expensive army pack now. The SKU issue is one where the market has grown, there's way more games but highstreet stores and distributors have not grown in kind. So a store doesn't want 100s of boxes per game to stock, the distributors don't want it either. So companies either have to all go super small skirmish; or they have to bundle things up into more expensive boxed sets for the highstreet and 3rd parties and then rely on that and/or direct mailing for individual or smaller sets. It 100% does put the entry prices up. In theory you might cope with that by doing what GW has done with things like Killteam and Warcry

I wonder what would be the status today, if when PP was popular, they started converting things to hips rather than dodgy PVC... I mean an army box set with good quality hips would probably sell quite well.

PP's fall was on multiple fronts, the PVC was one in a string of mistakes/strange choices/bad choices that led to their very sudden downfall. It was all those things happening in a short span of time; so fixing one might not have changed things all that much.

Then compounded by GW having an upswing at the same time.




Personally my hope is that this is PP doing a rescue of Warmachine. Accepting that they can't keep with what they've had and that they are currently a small firm with a big game on their hands and that they can't cope. Meanwhile their rescue game of Warcaster hit the wall that was Corona and has had a stunted start that likely isn't where it should be after 2 years. They aren't alone in that, but Dystopian Wars is bolted onto Wayland Games, so they can soak a slow period because they've got the store bringing in reliable income.

PP have their RPG, Minicrate, Apoc and such to steady their boat, but not in the same way as those all put pressure on production alongside Warmachine.



MK4 is the rescue. If it works out well and if these changes to production can be done smoothly it might well be what PP needs to start turning the numbers around and regrow Warmachine again.
I think many fans also recognise this; that range adjustments and such just have to happen for the game to steady itself and go from one of dwindling fanbase to one of growing fanbase; and that PP just does not have a massive pool of resources to throw at it like GW might to do a rescue.

Oh, dear... I had skipped over the section about the app, because I have no interest in it. So, the app is required to play the game, there's no physical rulebook and no access to unit rules outside the app... So, yeah, I'm out.

There's a lot of sense in a digital-only ruleset - printing and shipping paper books is very expensive - but going app-only is a step too far for this old soldier.

For one thing, upkeep of an app isn't free, and I think we've all had enough experiences of janky, resource-hogging, or unstable software to know what a pain in the ass that can be. With PP seemingly reduced to skeleton-crew operation, can it be relied on that they will continue to be able to hire folks to work on it?

On one hand it removed one of the more expensive elements for them, getting books printed, and lets them be more agile

on the other hand it may lead to lots more fiddling, change X, didn't work, change X again, didn't work, change Y instead, nope, change X and Y etc

and as you say app only stuff is a pain (and will the get both andriod, apple and desktop running well, or will they just put everything on andriod?)

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
There's a lot of sense in a digital-only ruleset - printing and shipping paper books is very expensive - but going app-only is a step too far for this old soldier.

For one thing, upkeep of an app isn't free, and I think we've all had enough experiences of janky, resource-hogging, or unstable software to know what a pain in the ass that can be. With PP seemingly reduced to skeleton-crew operation, can it be relied on that they will continue to be able to hire folks to work on it?

PDFs and digital Download could have been a good option to avoid the paper production.
I think that going app, 3dprint etc is their way to reduce production costs, so the skeletal team may even be further reduced once the physical production is deleted from the company.

I would hope that PP could look toward book printing after things take off again. I just think there's likely so little movement of their core Warmachine product right now and so much shipping mess that PP is basically almost back to small starter firm in terms of relaunching warmachine

Interestingly enough, just a moment earlier I wondered if Forgeworld should start selling 3D printed models, at least for part of the range.

jullevi wrote:
Interestingly enough, just a moment earlier I wondered if Forgeworld should start selling 3D printed models, at least for part of the range.

Lets just note that PP isn't selling STLs; they are simply using 3D print as manufacture. The customer will still be buying a box of models to put together from the highstreet shelf. The only real change will be you might have to adjust how you clean things up - going from mould lines to dimples on the model. The worst would be if their supports they use end up being chunky/damaging and thus creating a lot of marking. The second issue would be if parting doesn't account for things like high details and muted detail when facing the build plate.

jullevi wrote:
Interestingly enough, just a moment earlier I wondered if Forgeworld should start selling 3D printed models, at least for part of the range.

If they did that, I feel like the STLs would cost at least three times of what the actual model would cost if you just bought it from them. That just seems like how they would go about it.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

jullevi wrote:
Interestingly enough, just a moment earlier I wondered if Forgeworld should start selling 3D printed models, at least for part of the range.

If they did that, I feel like the STLs would cost at least three times of what the actual model would cost if you just bought it from them. That just seems like how they would go about it.

I didn't mean STLs but physical, printed models.

jullevi wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

jullevi wrote:
Interestingly enough, just a moment earlier I wondered if Forgeworld should start selling 3D printed models, at least for part of the range.

If they did that, I feel like the STLs would cost at least three times of what the actual model would cost if you just bought it from them. That just seems like how they would go about it.

I didn't mean STLs but physical, printed models.

Thing is that just doesn't work for GW. 3D printing, per machine, is slower than cast resin or metal and its super slow compared to injection moulded plastic. GW also has lots of casting machines and to get the same volume of casting from 3D printers they'd have to take up even more space with 3D printing machines. That's one big issue for 3D printing when you scale up - space and upkeep. You end up with a lot of machines to get the same throughput of production and that means more space and more staff to oversee those machines and keep them going. Not to mention that space ideally need to be temperature regulated (during the heatwave we've had several merchants had to simply stop printing because temperatures got too high to print and they couldn't afford to run or didn't have cooling systems in place).

PP are going for 3D printing because its going to let them setup local manufacture at a super cheap rate and their demand is currently very low. They just don't have the distribution infrastructure nor the upfront money to setup Siocast or other systems to make it work for them for the current sales rate of Warmachine.

It's a sensible move that hopefully is aimed at PP bringing Warmachine back on the up without loading themselves up with a lot of high debt and/or high running costs before their market, hopefully regrows.


If things go well they could even end up going back to cast production after the range recovers and gets high on sales again.

If things go well they could even end up going back to cast production after the range recovers and gets high on sales again.

If this works,* they have little incentive to change back. Why would they eat their profits retooling (again!), this time for a more expensive production type, and hope their new playerbase is willing to soak another change?



*and I honestly hope it doesn't work. Sorry, no malice, but this isn't a direction I want the industry to be nudged.

Voss wrote:

If things go well they could even end up going back to cast production after the range recovers and gets high on sales again.

If this works,* they have little incentive to change back. Why would they eat their profits retooling (again!), this time for a more expensive production type, and hope their new playerbase is willing to soak another change?



*and I honestly hope it doesn't work. Sorry, no malice, but this isn't a direction I want the industry to be nudged.

Why, if I may ask? Centralized production is clearly showing its issues, lately.

 Albertorius wrote:

Voss wrote:

If things go well they could even end up going back to cast production after the range recovers and gets high on sales again.

If this works,* they have little incentive to change back. Why would they eat their profits retooling (again!), this time for a more expensive production type, and hope their new playerbase is willing to soak another change?



*and I honestly hope it doesn't work. Sorry, no malice, but this isn't a direction I want the industry to be nudged.

Why, if I may ask? Centralized production is clearly showing its issues, lately.

I know you are talking about the industry but would just like to add that PP always had production and distribution issues since I can remember. Things sold out fast and took months to get to Europe after that etc.