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Newest update, Update #133 is here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/770213#comments

Well that's just a piss poor way to cut up the mini/model.

Sure the missile options are awesome, but WTF on the split head?

The body is split, but the wings are static. You would think with a split body they could at least put a peg on the wings to allow extended/swept options.

Looks like 18 pieces for one Valk and I went Reckless + way too much.

I'll have to get my 2 boys putting these together slave labor style to get them all done.

Yep, I agree. While the missiles are awesome, why are the heads two piece? And I would have liked some swept back wing options.

If they were smart, they'd make the armies of the Southern Cross to match 40k scale. I'd kill for an entire IG army of that.

Maybe this game should have been called Robotech Gap-Filling Tactics.

 Swabby wrote:
Maybe this game should have been called Robotech Gap-Filling Tactics.

Nah, we need better than that. Use the novels for the title like:

Metal File

The File Nightmare

Symphony of Seams

Spackle in my crack?

 Salacious Greed wrote:
Spackle in my crack?

That might explain a lot.

 Salacious Greed wrote:
Yep, I agree. While the missiles are awesome, why are the heads two piece?

Looking at the parts I did a bit of a double take on the head. It's easy to look at all these parts large on your screen and say oh yeah the awesome details and we'll do it like this. But I think they may be forgetting that at 1/285th scale the head is about the size of a space marine's fist. That's going to be some very fiddly bits to work with.

I like highly detailed models but there's a point where over use becomes a liability on the model due to difficulty handling small parts and needing to clean prolific amounts of mold lines.


On another note the vanes on the two air intakes are pointed downwards when they should facing forwards. As they are currently depicted it'd obstruct airflow into the engines, which is fine for the gerwalk form but not so much for the fighter mode.

 paulson games wrote:
On another note the vanes on the two air intakes are pointed downwards when they should facing forwards. As they are currently depicted it'd obstruct airflow into the engines, which is fine for the gerwalk form but not so much for the fighter mode.

Shh, don't let the way real jets work interfere with their completely fake and illogical sense of design, as they're already so behind schedule, and, like you adroitly pointed out, have no sense of actually putting these fidly little plastic parts together. Actually have the air intakes look like they'd intake air, so that the engines would work? Wha?

Mike1975 wrote:
Here is one that I made the Glaug, MPA, and FPA to scale with what is found here and not with the RPG fluff.

The RPG is notoriously inaccurate... I'd definitely use the original sources for anything technical.

Well, after looking at Update 130 and some other things it looks like they did not go with RPG stats for the minis. Check the links
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/742521
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/728847


Automatically Appended Next Post:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/716024


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We are discussing some of the special rules on the facebook page. These come from official sources so in case you have not joined us you might be missing out.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

I'm waiting to see what the terrain rules look like. So get to it Mike.lol

Already posted terrain stuff on the Facebook page

Facebook?

Yeah, you have to be a member of the group to see it
https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/1440349382851175/

So join us.

 Salacious Greed wrote:

 paulson games wrote:
On another note the vanes on the two air intakes are pointed downwards when they should facing forwards. As they are currently depicted it'd obstruct airflow into the engines, which is fine for the gerwalk form but not so much for the fighter mode.

Shh, don't let the way real jets work interfere with their completely fake and illogical sense of design, as they're already so behind schedule, and, like you adroitly pointed out, have no sense of actually putting these fidly little plastic parts together. Actually have the air intakes look like they'd intake air, so that the engines would work? Wha?

I'm very disappointed so far. I'm usually optimistic about this stuff, but I just can't. Even the defenders can't come up with much praise because they know the quality isn't there.

It is very disappointing to see things that have no possible benefit for the consumer be sculpted in multiple parts (like tiny heads) whereas bigger things like wings and legs are monopose with substandard modelling possibilities. That of course doesn't take into account the ugly way they've positioned the parts with seams facing the front of the model instead of on the side or hopefully hidden away underneath. At least if I buy a kit of space marines (approximately the same size as veritechs), I get a variety of poses and don't have to deal with stupid things like helmets in two pieces and having to glue small weapons like boltguns together. It sure is great that they took those extra 8 months (from the October date) and counting to put the extra polish on the models and rules.

Regardless of what they do, if they don't actually post that they're cutting the moulds this month then I officially label the project in PallimboTM (palladium + limbo) as there is no feasible way that they'd get it out the door in June with Gencon looming.

Yeah, this last update is completely underwhelming. I really had to think about it. The Destroids seem to have a crapton of parts, for a model on a 30mm base. A Terminator comes on a 40mm base, and though these models will be taller, that doesn't mean I need tiny parts that are made up of 3 other parts. Has ND actually built any miniatures before unnecessarily making these Master-level models? Come on, if GW can manufacture the Space Hulk Terminators as mostly one part figures, you can't tell me that a destroid needs to have 20+ components? This doesn't equal poseability, as someone who cares far more than I do pointed out, they don't have knee or elbow joints, so there isn't going to be a ton of different poses for these. Yes, I can pose one with hands up saying "throw me the ball!", and another in the hands at the waist "constipated look".

I agree that the feet of the Battlepods will allow for a lot of stepping, running or standing poses. But the Destroids are overly complicated for a small model, for no real reason. I don't want complicated models. I want pretty models that I can play a cool game with. Less complicated models would lower your costs too. Give me cool models and stop around.

While I agree with most of your points, none of the space hulk termies were single piece. I do agree that we're seeing an extension unfortunately of Palladium RPG Rules theory in the production of the minis sprues... bloat with no rhyme, reason, or benefit. I see very little of the type of pieces that would lead to more modelling variety (like legs being split at the knee to allow bending) but instead see crap like splits sideways down the leg with seams showing right in the front of the model.

I think what we are seeing with the parts breakdown is partially cause by Palladium's lack of knowledge of the wargaming market and complete disconnect with what the buyer wants in a miniature. Basically they are attempting to construct the miniatures as though they were models similar to the larger Nichimo kits but trying to make them more modular. The issue is that at such a small scale modularity isn't really required, people always comment that they like modularity but when it comes down to practice the majority of their space men look just like everyone else's.

You can always tweak an individual model for a great dynamic pose but in practice most armies don't need anywhere near the level of articulation they are trying to incorporate. I also find a lot of the default poses to be very awkward, to me Max's battloid looks like he's posed mid break dancing move or having some sort of seizure. The pose is disjointed and it has no sense of weight to it which detracts from it being more dynamic. I'm not bashing the detail level of the sculpt, but I think the pose itself is terrible.

From a modeling perspective the mold lines are in some annoying areas, it's going to take a lot of clean up work to get rid of the mold lines on the front faces. I think they would have been much better off if they'd aimed for models with a piece count of about 6 pieces. That's basically same part count as a space marine, lower body (legs), upper body (torso), 2 arms, head, gun. It'd still offer a base level of customization and might serve to hide the mold lines a bit better and it'd help in the assembly end as the parts wouldn't be as numerous or fiddly.

I'd pitched the game models as being best suited for metal for several reasons, speed of getting models into production was the largest factor but it also would avoid a lot of the issues with having to split models as spincasting offers a much more simplified molding process with far fewer mold lines. But what would I know?

Yeah, I am saddened by the last two updates. I don't hold out much excitement for the delivery of this KS anymore. They've made this miniatures not too detailed, but overly fidgety to put together. Multiple very small scale pieces doesn't make me excited to see this game. Scraping the mold line off of a space marine helmet is ok. Putting a two part Mech head together and scraping the mold lines off is going to be frustrating.

They've effectively taken a giant dump and digitally designed it for the UEDF side. One piece legs, or even two piece like the dreadnought, would be far better. In fact, I think a SM Dreadnought has fewer pieces (not counting extra arms in the kit) than that Destroid does, and is twice the size.

 warboss wrote:
While I agree with most of your points, none of the space hulk termies were single piece. I do agree that we're seeing an extension unfortunately of Palladium RPG Rules theory in the production of the minis sprues... bloat with no rhyme, reason, or benefit. I see very little of the type of pieces that would lead to more modelling variety (like legs being split at the knee to allow bending) but instead see crap like splits sideways down the leg with seams showing right in the front of the model.

Warboss, I agree. I'm not looking forward to assembling the UEDF. But, as to the termies from Space Hulk, most of them you only had to add an arm to (in the most recent edition). So I count those as being pretty much one piece. And almost the size of the Destroid, which is only a tad taller I believe.

And if those are the markers lying in front of the figures, that better not be the end product....

I wish Kevin had not been so cheap and hired Paulson!

The Destroids are on 30mm bases? I thought they were on 40's like the Valkyries and most of the non-huge (50/60 mm like the Officer's Pod and MAC II, if I'm not mistaken) figures.

And yeah, when we start talking about 80-150'ish pieces just to build a single squad of Destroids or Battle Pods, I'm definitely starting to view my incoming list with a more and more critical eye.

"Force variety possibilities" are starting to take a back seat to "don't want to spend hours per figure just cutting them from the sprue and assembling them, okay so instead of 8 of *those*, maybe 4 will do instead..."

I mean, yes, sure, this is a hobby that requires a significant amount of time, but there are degrees present.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
I wish Kevin had not been so cheap and hired Paulson!

As I'd mentioned before it wasn't that I was holding out for a lot of money, this is speculation but I think what drove his decision is that he wanted a company to shoulder the development costs so all he had to do was sign of on everything there'd be no upfront investment for Palladium and their partner would do all the lifting. I think that the price point numbers offered by plastics were also something that dazzle most companies, it promises a huge return on the individual item cost but it requires a huge lead time for development and demands a more specialized skillset that what a more traditional process like metal spincasting needs.

I just wanted to clarify that point again as some of the Palladium fans have suggested that I simply asked for too much money and that's why I was dropped, which certainly isn't the case.

I was offering my services at a dirt cheap rate, but it seems that they likely wanted somebody to do all the ground work for free. I'm sure what they will end up paying out in a license arrangement with ND is many, many times higher then what I was looking for so that decision likely costs them significantly more money in the long run, but not needing to shoulder any of the upfront development costs or risks is a very attractive offer.

They likely saw potential to make a lot more money with plastics, but I don't think they fully understood what all was involved by going that route. Even most establish miniatures companies don't use plastics and with good reason, yet Palladium with no experience in the minis industry decided to jump into plastics with both feet so it's to be expected they'd be hard pressed to get something like this off the ground without multiple complications.

They can still get it done, but I think there were much faster and smoother ways they could have gotten the line launched.




On the mold line side I personally prefer to deal with mold lines that are of the raised variety as they simply need to be scraped down with a knife. A space marine head for instance doesn't require any assembly and the mold line is raised so it's easy to clean. If the part is made into two piece that require assembly you now have either seam line gaps which likely need to be filled rather then just scraped/filed. The other result is that you can have uneven pairing which results in one of the pieces being higher then the other. Sometimes you can fix uneven parts by scraping alone, but sometimes you have issues with both gaps and uneven parts which is a nightmare. For example I don't mind assembling GW infantry as all I need to do is a bit of scraping, but their vehicles are a pain as I often have to do a lot of gap filling in addition to scraping or filing.

While the infantry are multiple pieces they the individual components are more like a single part models in terms of their mold construction and how their mold lines manifest. Multipart components are another separate approach and it reflects in the pieces. They can certainly be well done and highly detailed but it impacts the amount of finish work a modeler needs to spend on his model, and most people working in 6mm scale stuff don't spend inordinate amounts of time on those models and typically put in far less time on their models then people normally working in larger scales.

Spending 6-8 hours assembling a 1/100 or 1/72 scale model kit is expected, spending an hour+ assembling a 1/285th scale kit is kinda insane.

.

 paulson games wrote:

 Cypher-xv wrote:
I wish Kevin had not been so cheap and hired Paulson!

As I'd mentioned before it wasn't that I was holding out for a lot of money, this is speculation but I think what drove his decision is that he wanted a company to shoulder the development costs so all he had to do was sign of on everything there'd be no upfront investment for Palladium and their partner would do all the lifting. I think that the price point numbers offered by plastics were also something that dazzle most companies, it promises a huge return on the individual item cost but it requires a huge lead time for development and demands a more specialized skillset that a more traditional process like metal spincasting needs.

I just wanted to clarify that point again as some of the Palladium fans have suggested that I simply asked for too much money and that's why I was dropped, which certainly isn't the case. I was offering my services at a dirt cheap rate, but it seems that they likely wanted somebody to do all the ground work for free. I'm sure what they will end up paying out in a license arrangement with ND is many, many times higher then what I was looking for so that decision likely costs them significantly more money in the long run, but not needing to shoulder any of the upfront development costs or risks is a very attractive offer.

They likely saw potential to make a lot more money with plastics, but I don't think they fully understood what all was involved by going that route. Even most establish miniatures companies don't use plastics and with good reason, yet Palladium with no experience in the minis industry decided to jump into plastics with both feet so it's to be expected they'd be hard pressed to get something like this off the ground without multiple complications.

They can still get it done, but I think there were much faster and smoother ways they could have gotten the line launched.

I'm sorry I wasn't inferring that. It's just these last two updates have been so underwhelming in the QC department that a happy go lucky guy like me is not happy with PB/ND. You've at least been giving insight into the process, which is more than I can say for PB/ND.

double post

 Salacious Greed wrote:
They've made this miniatures not too detailed, but overly fidgety to put together. Multiple very small scale pieces doesn't make me excited to see this game.

From the sound of things, they've made the models consist of more parts than the old 1/144 Robotech kits (four non-transformable kits - one of each VF mode, and one armored VF kit). And those things had swing wings on the fighter. I doubt that this release will be nearly as nice (even accounting for the scale difference).


On another note, imo plastic makes a certain amount of sense from a public standpoint. I've got a friend who I don't think has ever played a wargame, but I think he bought into the Kickstarter. Because Robotech. And I suspect that there are quite a few like him. I suspect that plastic might go over better with those sorts of people (many young boys build at least one or two plastic models, which means that they've worked with it in the past), though the massive number of tiny fiddly bits is going to cause problems.

I agree with Paulson about the hoky pose for Max. That's why I'm glad I misplaced the flight stand. At least standing it looks like he's been caught off guard.