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Still prototypes though, and also he really just slapped those together and did as quick of a paint job as possible on that one. It looks good, could be better, still waiting on final product.

fruitlewps wrote:
Still prototypes though, and also he really just slapped those together and did as quick of a paint job as possible on that one. It looks good, could be better, still waiting on final product.

Nope, not prototypes. Production test models. There is a big difference between the two concepts. The first and foremost? The tooling is already done, and unless PB tells them anything, it's how it's going to be (and retooling costs money, so, seeing how very cheap they've been in everything minis-wise...). I'd suggest to get comfortable with that one, because it's most probably the one you're going to get.

weird browser double post... sorry.

Morgan Vening wrote:

 Davespil wrote:
So um... Does anyone know when we'll get our stuff?

It'll ship from Detroit sometime in June, and we'll receive it sometime in July.

... 2016.

In case anyone is wondering, I asked for a refund, I only backed for some exclusive models and at this rate I figured I'll never see them. Anyways, here's the response I got:

We share your frustration and apologize for the unfortunate delay. Palladium Books has been working tirelessly to bring Robotech® fans a superior product. Progress is being made and we are moving toward manufacturing of the First Wave of releases.

Please understand, as a Kickstarter backer, you have not purchased or pre-ordered a product. You have “supported a project” in exchange for a promise of a reward. That reward had an original estimated delivery date which has passed, but that date was always an estimate, not a guaranteed deadline.

By Kickstarter’s terms of service, we are obligated to deliver on the rewards we have promised, and we will do that. We are currently working toward doing just that.

As such, we cannot offer you a refund at this time. If the time should ever come that Palladium Books cannot fulfill the terms of our Kickstarter project, we will of course offer refunds, as we would be required to do by Kickstarter.

In the meantime, please be patient. We appreciate your support of the project, and your pledge will help us to produce a fantastic product that we think everyone will enjoy.

With Appreciation,
The Palladium Books Team

So basically, as long as we claim we're still working on it, no one is getting a refund.

Henshini wrote:
In case anyone is wondering, I asked for a refund, I only backed for some exclusive models and at this rate I figured I'll never see them. Anyways, here's the response I got:

We share your frustration and apologize for the unfortunate delay. Palladium Books has been working tirelessly to bring Robotech® fans a superior product. Progress is being made and we are moving toward manufacturing of the First Wave of releases.

Please understand, as a Kickstarter backer, you have not purchased or pre-ordered a product. You have “supported a project” in exchange for a promise of a reward. That reward had an original estimated delivery date which has passed, but that date was always an estimate, not a guaranteed deadline.

By Kickstarter’s terms of service, we are obligated to deliver on the rewards we have promised, and we will do that. We are currently working toward doing just that.

As such, we cannot offer you a refund at this time. If the time should ever come that Palladium Books cannot fulfill the terms of our Kickstarter project, we will of course offer refunds, as we would be required to do by Kickstarter.

In the meantime, please be patient. We appreciate your support of the project, and your pledge will help us to produce a fantastic product that we think everyone will enjoy.

With Appreciation,
The Palladium Books Team

So basically, as long as we claim we're still working on it, no one is getting a refund.

Well, its 100% true, Kickstarter terms clearly states it as well. 'Refunds' is a exception concept some projects offer, but by no means it was mandatory. I won't be expecting refunds anyways so late into the game when production is almost complete, meaning most of the funds are spent on the production.

And as slow as PB is with their kickstarter, they are still progressing along with updates to prove it.

As a counterpoint, some people have indeed gotten refunds in the last few months.

Yes, they claim to be on the verge of delivery, and yet we're already past another target/goal (production begun by mid/early May, it's the end of May and still no start). Wave One being mailed out in June is impossible, July is highly unlikely, and with Gencon, even August would take a minor miracle.

8-9 months delayed for ~1/2 delivery isn't exactly a remarkable pace, or an unreasonable thing to take issue with.

Edit: also, they asked for and received funding to create molds for 36 (at my count) figures.

Wave One consists of 12.

If they've run out of money making those 12, then the entire project is feth'd and we should start class action litigation now.

 Forar wrote:
As a counterpoint, some people have indeed gotten refunds in the last few months.

Yes, they claim to be on the verge of delivery, and yet we're already past another target/goal (production begun by mid/early May, it's the end of May and still no start). Wave One being mailed out in June is impossible, July is highly unlikely, and with Gencon, even August would take a minor miracle.

8-9 months delayed for ~1/2 delivery isn't exactly a remarkable pace, or an unreasonable thing to take issue with.

Edit: also, they asked for and received funding to create molds for 36 (at my count) figures.

Wave One consists of 12.

If they've run out of money making those 12, then the entire project is feth'd and we should start class action litigation now.

Did they go through their credit card company to get their money back?

What a mess.

Yes, I believe so. That or their bank. They wrote Palladium and told them what they were doing, got it back and Palladium basically said "whatever, we'll just give (presumably sell) your stuff to someone else".

Which, I suppose in hindsight isn't quite the same as a 'refund', but people have retrieved their funds and Palladium has indicated they aren't willing to fight/dispute it (which would probably be a losing proposition in terms of time/effort/manpower just to retain a couple hundred bucks here and there), but isn't a true refund from the company itself.

But the latter point definitely stands; if they're out of money with only 1/3 of the molds done, they're well beyond mere delays and 'oops, this is hard'.

Sadly, my banks here are total utter crap at customer rights. So that's not an option for me.

Update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/859848

I was going to ask a snarky question about the rulebook Mike, but I'll spare you.

July. Yeah, right. Production starting in 3 weeks (late June), 2 weeks of spitting sprues (mid July), a month on the boat (mid August), then they have to ship them.

Looks like they're going to have to airlift whatever they're going to want to have of hand for GenCon. Especially since I didn't even count customs time.

I think it's almost going to be near-impossible for PB to get them by July but then I realised this is PB and their estimated dates are pretty much worth nothing.

To be fair, they didn't actually say July this year.

Also, I would have preferred a spiral bound rule book vs perfect bound. Guess I'll just have to give it the same treatment I gave my Flames of War mini rulebooks.

vitae_drinker wrote:
To be fair, they didn't actually say July this year.

Also, I would have preferred a spiral bound rule book vs perfect bound. Guess I'll just have to give it the same treatment I gave my Flames of War mini rulebooks.

Kevin said absolutely this year. And he should know, eh....

Well, to be fair - Palladium have never had a book slip to a subsequent year.

right?


Right?

It is a tiny bit of progress so it's better than most of the second half of 2013 for the KS. There are some interesting comments about the mockup over on the KS in that they just photographed stuff we've seen in the past together to feign more progress. Sprues? We've seen it. Rulebook? Seen it at that demo. Dice? Ditto... etc. In the end, it still shows that the glacier is moving. Unfortunately, Palladium is inching the delivery date forward unrealistically yet again. Unless they air freight the stuff over, there is no way any significant portion of backers will get stuff in July which is the metric I care about. Palladium will be lucky to get anything over on a boat and through customs by gencon.

Once a week, take a look at "progress".
Backtrack to figure out what changed.
Identify progress as more "spin" than actual happenings.
Vaguely register the latest "target" date.
At some point curse PB, ND and Kevin.
Smile or laugh at similar backer comments/observations.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

Thanks all for at least making it worth checking on, it is great group therapy.

Pretty much.. but at least now both ND and PB are at least trying to show effort publicly. That wasn't the case for Palladium during the second half of 2013 and wasn't true for ND for almost a whole YEAR post KS.

 warboss wrote:
Pretty much.. but at least now both ND and PB are at least trying to show effort publicly. That wasn't the case for Palladium during the second half of 2013 and wasn't true for ND for almost a whole YEAR post KS.

Yeah, if only that public effort didn't appear to be so completely full of crap.

73 days to GenCon. Assume they have to strike work on the Tuesday (to pack and transport). That's unrealistic, but we'll go with it. So that's 71 days.

At least two more weeks until production can start. That's 57 days. And that's assuming the production company can start immediately (they'll likely want to finish the jobs already on the machine).

57 days to press 6000+ Battlecry's, and let's say a similar number of First Contacts for the first retail shipments (it's more, count on it). Get it through customs, then off the docks onto the ship. Ship it across an ocean, get it through customs, transport it to Michigan (at least another 2 days), check, collate, double check, and mail out 5300+ packages.

Yeah, unless they've found a way to completely skip a couple of steps (like air freighting), the timetable given at this stage is completely unrealistic. They already established from go on production, best case is 3+ months. (Production starts 45 days after KS ends, so early July, maybe start shipping out November, possibly October). Now, they expect us to buy less than two months? Yeahhhh.

This game is already dead to me. The second this stuff is in hand it's being sold to the guy who owns my FLGS.

DARE TO DREAM!

So for those of us that haven't been following the thread in its entirety, can we get a high level update of where their timeline sits and where it was original supposed to sit?

Based on the past few pages, it looks like they may be cutting GenCon close for any product?

 cincydooley wrote:
So for those of us that haven't been following the thread in its entirety, can we get a high level update of where their timeline sits and where it was original supposed to sit?

Based on the past few pages, it looks like they may be cutting GenCon close for any product?

As I said in the post a couple up, the timeline is they say July to start receiving shipments. I say unlikely (backed up by research and logic). GenCon's a possibility for retail, even more so if they air-freight stock. But I can't see how they can ship to more than a tiny fraction of backers (if any) before then, and there's currently an argument as to whether PB are breaking a promise (cause they've always been so honest and forthright) by selling at GenCon or even on their own webstore, before shipping to backers.

rigeld2 wrote:
I'm betting they fly some boxes over for GenCon and Wave 1 delivers in October.

I'm standing by this estimate I made in March.

rigeld2 wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:
I'm betting they fly some boxes over for GenCon and Wave 1 delivers in October.

I'm standing by this estimate I made in March.

Yeah, I think you might be too kind.

They'll do the typical KS-BS move of starting to ship a dozen or so packages the day before (Event) - in this case GenCon so they can claim that they "started shipping before GenCon, but so many orders, distance, postal service, out of our control, we thank you for your patience, blurf blurf".

So the update boils down to "let's pretend", nice

 paulson games wrote:
So the update boils down to "let's pretend", nice

Hasn't that been the ongoing theme?

Let's pretend we're further along than we apparently are (Production should begin in 45 days!).
Let's pretend bad news is good news (Good news everybody! You're only getting a third of what you backed in twice the time!)
Let's pretend it'll be on time when it's just completely unrealistic (for the fourth time, Dec, Feb, June, July).
Let's pretend it'll be quality miniatures (rather than 20+ year old tech).
Let's pretend it'll have a solid rules set (and it may, but excepting Mike and WRRD, most of us aren't allowed to see it).
Let's pretend they'll communicate with the backers (posting updates =/= communicating).
Let's pretend it'll be handled competently by professionals.

Everything since the Kickstarter ended has pretty much been "let's pretend".

To be fair, they are a role playing company, it's all pretending.