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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?