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Don't forget it's Origins this weekend. So with con season in full swing, I don't predict much news.

Palladium doesn't go to Origins... not sure about Ninja Division/Soda Pop/Cypher/Rumplestiltxin.

I suppose in the meantime I'll just have to sustain myself on the misery of the Fallen Frontiers thread

 paulson games wrote:
I suppose in the meantime I'll just have to sustain myself on the misery of the Fallen Frontiers thread

What thread be that? Link please?

As for the quietness, a lot of it comes down to there being actual stuff for people to talk about, and the last update being passable. I think that, and the promise made last week ("The last bits of tooling are in process now, and manufacturing is about to begin. In fact, many items will begin manufacturing next week, with the rest to follow quickly after.") has some people holding fire, but if they do a Northern Gun (Nope, but next week fer shure!), or worse turtle up and wait until next week (We'll do better, we promise!), things will fire back up.

Personally, I can't see how they can make pre-GenCon for KickStarter release. 61 days, production still pending. Heck, we're only 3 weeks away from the one year anniversary of the expectant "Box Game and initial expansion sets should go to manufacturing within 45 after the Kickstarter." that got us a November, maybe October" release date. It's theoretically possible, but requires expenditures I'm not sure PB are willing to make. At least not for the KS masses.

When the announcement there'll be "limited numbers" available at GenCon for full retail sales, I expect there'll be some fireworks. Even though the decision will be made mid-July, I don't expect that announcement to happen until at least the week of GenCon. They've been very coy about it until this point.

For now, some, like me, are just waiting for PB to inevitably step on their junk, having set themselves up completely for the fall. They've been dicking around with no clue as to when production starts, for so long, setting a hard deadline like GenCon, is just asking for it. And yet there'll still be fans who think they can do no wrong. To each their own, I guess.

Morgan Vening wrote:

What thread be that? Link please?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/597844.page

They were funded by 3k-4K, then plunged back down under funding goal after flip flopping on material choices. The KS comments section is ablaze with fanboy arguing levels that'd make Palladium proud.

I'm not invested in either side, but it's interesting to watch the flames.

UPDATE: Robotech® RPG Tactics™ goes into manufacturing!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/875528

The kickstarter ended on May 20th, 2013 and they said they were ready to go to manufacture within 40 days roughly so they were only off by 1... unfortunately it was on the 2013 part of the date. In any case, plastic sprues are being short shot in china finally just for us! To mark this momentus occasion, I'll repost this since it is likely the only date that Palladium cares about...

http://countingdownto.com/countdown/palladium-s-gencon-robotech-mutually-assured-destruction-pact-countdown-clock

Unless they air freight backer orders over, I don't think there is any chance of those multiple semitrailers worth of minis getting to any significant portion of backers' hands by the con. I wonder when they'll announce the couple hundred they're airfreighting over to sell to gencon attendees while those of us who will be waiting likely a year for the full completion past the due date and were promised first delivery watch from the sidelines.

 warboss wrote:
Unless they air freight backer orders over, I don't think there is any chance of those multiple semitrailers worth of minis getting to any significant portion of backers' hands by the con. I wonder when they'll announce the couple hundred they're airfreighting over to sell to gencon attendees while those of us who will be waiting likely a year for the full completion past the due date and were promised first delivery watch from the sidelines.

My bet is on the week of. Announcing it earlier is gonna cause such a snitflit.

Some of the backers are pointing out a concerning issue. That the RDF stuff hasn't been shown. There was the component Valks PPP, and some form for the Destroids we saw at GAMA. But definitely nothing on the revised Spartan either. I'd be seriously concerned if some of this hasn't gotten to test-sprue, and the need to get started has been "Hope it works out all right based on the PPP's". Cause a mistep prior is gonna be a PITA to fix later.

But... but... they're doing it... for the fans! Who didn't pay them over a year earlier of course because the ones who already paid you a nonrefundable amount are no longer as important as evidenced by the Max/Miriya debacle. At this point, I hope they *don't* make it to gencon to sell the boxes even with air freighting over limited amounts. If they choose not to honor yet another promise to pledgers then I hope fate intervenes and stops them from voluntarily breaking yet another. Selling at gencon won't make or break palladium nor the game or the community but it would be nice if karma smacked PB right across their corporate toosh.

 warboss wrote:
But... but... they're doing it... for the fans! Who didn't pay them over a year earlier of course because the ones who already paid you a nonrefundable amount are no longer as important as evidenced by the Max/Miriya debacle. At this point, I hope they *don't* make it to gencon to sell the boxes even with air freighting over limited amounts. If they choose not to honor yet another promise to pledgers then I hope fate intervenes and stops them from voluntarily breaking yet another. Selling at gencon won't make or break palladium nor the game or the community but it would be nice if karma smacked PB right across their corporate toosh.

But...but... they're apparently NOT dishonoring a promise. They're not selling to distributors and retailers! Apparently selling retail doesn't count. And as Forar pointed out when that weak-as-crap argument came out, there's nothing stopping them fulfilling orders on their Webstore using that same demented logic.

I'm in the process of negotiating a transfer sale, and if and when that goes through, I'll gladly wash my hands of the PB clusterfeth. However, if it fails, and I have to receive the product, and get slapped around like I expect on the secondary markets, yeah, I hope they up and fail. All I've wanted since Spartangate was my money back. Nothing more, nothing less. But yeah, they'll be hearing it from me at GC if they're selling it first. It's too bad they fixed the Spartans, cause now my TShirt idea isn't as funny.

The sunshine fan butt cheek jeans are still a go though... Clearly someone is still blowing sunshine up Kevin's kiester.

As I've noted elsewhere, a couple of things hit me here;

They haven't said WHAT of Wave One is in production. All of it at once? One sprue? The dice and boxes? The lack of specificity isn't instilling great confidence.

And the store date has changed on their weekly update:

"Retail Release Date: In stores September, 2014."

Seems awfully ambitious. Would require them to have all of the backer boxes shipping from the warehouse (however many that may be) out the door in August at the latest. Bit of a tall order, given that they're relying on volunteer help, have Gencon to deal with (which eats up time before the event and usually involves some recovery time from whatever plague they bring back with them), etc.

All it'd take is one snag in shipping or customs to blow that rather optimistic timeline out of the water.

Or a small production delay. Or even two of their slave labor/volunteers deciding they don't want to be taken advantage of and that continued or possible future freelancing isn't worth free manual labor. Or something is systematically wrong with what is sent over from the factory. Or a flock of migrating pigeons take roost within a mile of the warehouse and they need to document it for posterity. Any number of things could derail it given the recent history.

So since their update last night said that full production has begun, and it will conceivably be 2 weeks to produce everything plus retail, that puts it leaving on a boat the beginning of July after it passes Chinese customs. A month on the ocean, a week in customs and movement to Michigan puts it at PB the week before GenCon at best. Pretty disappointing. Will be interesting to see what PB does.

Smart money says indignantly obfuscate and blame someone else

You forgot "And send out 2 BCs first so they can claim that they started shipping before any went on sale anywhere. "It's not our fault there's soooooooo much to ship, even though we reduced what we needed to send out by about 70%, and steel moulds are sooo expensive, we were lied to when we were told they were 3 for a $1, so we just HAVE to sell some of the stuff we have made so that we can afford to cut the steel for the next load. It's not our fault, really it's not!"

I think you guys are being incredibly cynical. All you guys do is bitch, bitch, moan. You don't see me doing that! Since when have Palladium not lived up to expectations, failed to deliver on promises, misrepresented (through either deceit or ignorance, obviously neither) the facts, or missed deadlines? Have faith, people! Palladium shall deliver!

Yeah! Only trouble is, on past experience they use I.S. Delivery services.*

*Infernal Skating, Inc.

If I don't have anything by the time I leave my house for GenCon, and they have them for sale at the con, they're going to fulfill my pledge at the Con. Their booth is the first place I'm going when the con opens Thursday morning. I'll have printouts of my pledge, my CC statement that they have my money, and anything else I might need to prove that that product belongs to me. Bought and paid for.

Also what i don't want is for them to ship everything out right before GenCon so that it's sitting on my front door for the week that I am gone to the con. I have a feeling this is what is going to happen though.

Morgan Vening wrote:
I think you guys are being incredibly cynical. All you guys do is bitch, bitch, moan. You don't see me doing that! Since when have Palladium not lived up to expectations, failed to deliver on promises, misrepresented (through either deceit or ignorance, obviously neither) the facts, or missed deadlines? Have faith, people! Palladium shall deliver!

Not sure if serious?

I mean, was that sarcasm (I hope) or a joke?

I...can't tell.

fruitlewps wrote:
If I don't have anything by the time I leave my house for GenCon, and they have them for sale at the con, they're going to fulfill my pledge at the Con. Their booth is the first place I'm going when the con opens Thursday morning. I'll have printouts of my pledge, my CC statement that they have my money, and anything else I might need to prove that that product belongs to me. Bought and paid for.

Also what i don't want is for them to ship everything out right before GenCon so that it's sitting on my front door for the week that I am gone to the con. I have a feeling this is what is going to happen though.

Much as it might feel nice to do probably best not if you've paid to attend GenCon (you don't want to miss the rest of it if security gets involved)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

fruitlewps wrote:
If I don't have anything by the time I leave my house for GenCon, and they have them for sale at the con, they're going to fulfill my pledge at the Con. Their booth is the first place I'm going when the con opens Thursday morning. I'll have printouts of my pledge, my CC statement that they have my money, and anything else I might need to prove that that product belongs to me. Bought and paid for.

Also what i don't want is for them to ship everything out right before GenCon so that it's sitting on my front door for the week that I am gone to the con. I have a feeling this is what is going to happen though.

Much as it might feel nice to do probably best not if you've paid to attend GenCon (you don't want to miss the rest of it if security gets involved)

I'd pay money to see PB kicking a backer out of the con. Stream it to the world, too.

 Alpharius wrote:
Not sure if serious?

I mean, was that sarcasm (I hope) or a joke?

I...can't tell.

Definitely not serious.

Just sarcasm so dry you could make jerky with it.

 Alpharius wrote:

Morgan Vening wrote:
I think you guys are being incredibly cynical. All you guys do is bitch, bitch, moan. You don't see me doing that! Since when have Palladium not lived up to expectations, failed to deliver on promises, misrepresented (through either deceit or ignorance, obviously neither) the facts, or missed deadlines? Have faith, people! Palladium shall deliver!

Not sure if serious?

I mean, was that sarcasm (I hope) or a joke?

I...can't tell.

Ahhh. Poe's Law. It's a force of nature.

Poe's Law - Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.

I thought I'd maybe gone too whackadoodle to not have it apply, but apparently not. That's both funny, and really really sad at the same time.

Welp, I'll be headed down to Gencon so maybe I'll drop by PBs booth as well and meet Kevin.

Sining wrote:
Welp, I'll be headed down to Gencon so maybe I'll drop by PBs booth as well and meet Kevin.

Be sure to wear your penitent robes when you pilgrimage to see Thulsa Kevin! Only the most devout get mentioned in his murmurs. Be sure to use lots of words like "perfect", "love it!", and "you can do no wrong" to get his attention. Only sacrifices of dignity and self respect will turn the Eye of Siembeda in your direction. Constructive criticism is not welcome and you will be cast from the Booth of Fan Friend Customers if you dare provide it.

Not sure of the validity of the claim, but the following was posted on PB's Facebook. I checked ND's page to see what he was referring to, but searching Facebook is like herding cats.

Rori Beedm - Just yesterday Ninja Division said that they still hadn't received any new sprues since the battlepods. This means either they're going ahead with the production of the battlepods and still haven't finalized the RDF stuff, or they're rushing ahead with the RDF stuff in whatever condition it's in without assembling a test sprue of it, or in the last 24 hours they received a package with the test sprues for the RDF stuff, rushed assembly and approved it. I'm not sure which is actually the case, but all 3 possibilities have me a little bit worried since a rushed approval could have missed something, doing partial production means having to wait until they finally approve the RDF stuff and then start another run for those sprues, and just pushing ahead with the RDF stuff in an unconfirmed state could backfire horribly.

So, take it with a grain of salt. But also, taking PB's track record to date into account, and it's not an unbelievable claim either. The fact that we haven't seen a single RDF miniature on sprue*, or better yet, assembled off of a sprue, is in my book, a big "Potential clusterfeth incoming!".

* Hey, at least we saw the Artillery Regult Sprue. That it's been 7 weeks, and they still haven't shown it assembled, well, that's just par for the course in sunny Palladiutopia. Where the farts smell like rainbows, and 99% of the people think it's going swimmingly.

Considering both Palladium and ND have raved and approved minis that looked like absolute crap in Robotech and Relic Knights respectively, I put more faith in that than any proclamation of "you'll love it!" from either. Seriously, how amateurish does your company have to be to believe something INCREDIBLY important to your million dollar campaign was sent in the mail and you didn't bother asking for tracking or follow up on it... for two weeks... only to find out that it was never sent. That is the level of "competent" management we've seen on this project and if they approved final sprues sight unseen AFTER seeing issues like pegs that don't fit and crappy divided parts then it fits in with the pattern that the two have established.

Yes, that's right... I believe random guy on the internet over PB/ND. Why? Because random guys using common sense and following an ESTABLISHED pattern of ignorance and ineptitude have been more accurate in predicting the course of this product since before crowdfunding started than the companies involved with all the power and information at their disposal.

Lack of RDF mech sprues or even a test print of the spartan has me wondering how finished things are, and how rushed it is to make it to production.

Either they don't have any test prints or test sprues... or have chosen not to reveal any as to avoid any further critique as they have no time to make any further alterations and revisions. Given that it took them ages to address the Spartan it does leave me curious if they did any final tweaks on the veritechs or if they'll be the same as the prototyped pieces.

I'd hate to think that they gave the greenlight without seeing at least a couple test sprues of the RDF mechs, and if they do have those sprues in why not include them in any updates? I'm still wondering why we haven't seen an assembled artillery pod as they've had it quite a while now? Seems less than forthcoming but why provide actual pictures when you can drum up a bunch of useless head spinning, jaw dropping, mouth watering buzz words for updates.

Given the glacial pace that the ks updates have been moving at it seems like there was a huge jump within a 2-3 week period, or their updates have been intentionally weak and unhelpful f tracking here the true progress was at.

Assuming a single mold; ~60k sprues in a week would require 10 seconds per sprue without a single delay, adjustment, maintenance period or other issue. That's for the big number stuff (Battlepods, VTs).

So either they need multiple molds of the big runs, need vastly more time (3 weeks sounds more realistic), or we're seeing just more blind optimism running headlong into reality.

Now, granted, said ND guy might've been rounding down (still hits an issue where '10 days' is still not very long for this size a run).

Also, as has been discussed; that's just for backers. Backers+retail is going to be much, much bigger, and between the extra costs they won't want to eat and the claims of "5 semi trailers" being vastly more than the backer run would require, something is going to have to give, and it won't be reality.

I'm guessing this was meant to placate the masses (things have settled down lately) and in a week or two we'll get a "woah, there've been a few snags, this is taking, like, soooo long! Yeah, backer stuff should go out in August, but if you're at Gencon...." kinda thing.

Though that last part is subject to some whims. Max/Miriya slid under the radar for nearly a month before anyone addressed the controversy, so I'm guessing they may wait until something approaching the last minute; enough time to get the word out and rake in cash from the resellers and devout, but not long enough for negative buzz to really build.

NTRabbit wrote:
Smart money says indignantly obfuscate and blame someone else

Morgan Vening wrote:
I think you guys are being incredibly cynical. All you guys do is bitch, bitch, moan. You don't see me doing that! Since when have Palladium not lived up to expectations, failed to deliver on promises, misrepresented (through either deceit or ignorance, obviously neither) the facts, or missed deadlines? Have faith, people! Palladium shall deliver!

 warboss wrote:
Be sure to wear your penitent robes when you pilgrimage to see Thulsa Kevin! Only the most devout get mentioned in his murmurs. Be sure to use lots of words like "perfect", "love it!", and "you can do no wrong" to get his attention. Only sacrifices of dignity and self respect will turn the Eye of Siembeda in your direction. Constructive criticism is not welcome and you will be cast from the Booth of Fan Friend Customers if you dare provide it.

Is everyone really sure this isn't the Heavy Gear rant thread... it reads so much the same?

Morgan Vening wrote:
* Hey, at least we saw the Artillery Regult Sprue. That it's been 7 weeks, and they still haven't shown it assembled, well, that's just par for the course in sunny Palladiutopia. Where the farts smell like rainbows, and 99% of the people think it's going swimmingly.

 warboss wrote:
Considering both Palladium and ND have raved and approved minis that looked like absolute crap in Robotech and Relic Knights respectively, I put more faith in that than any proclamation of "you'll love it!" from either. Yes, that's right... I believe random guy on the internet over PB/ND. Why? Because random guys using common sense and following an ESTABLISHED pattern of ignorance and ineptitude have been more accurate in predicting the course of this product since before crowdfunding started than the companies involved with all the power and information at their disposal.

 paulson games wrote:
Seems less than forthcoming but why provide actual pictures when you can drum up a bunch of useless head spinning, jaw dropping, mouth watering buzz words for updates.
Given the glacial pace that the ks updates have been moving at it seems like there was a huge jump within a 2-3 week period, or their updates have been intentionally weak and unhelpful of tracking where the true progress was at.

And again, some strange reason y'all are discussing the DP9 release process in the Robotech thread?

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Much as it might feel nice to do probably best not if you've paid to attend GenCon (you don't want to miss the rest of it if security gets involved)

 Albertorius wrote:
I'd pay money to see PB kicking a backer out of the con. Stream it to the world, too.

If only I had the $$$ - but then, while it might make -me- feel immeasurably better to backhand some certain personage a few times (or more than a few... but let's not get carried away too much with the daydreaming... or hold up the line for too long... ), there is the annoying problem of the effect being wasted when the person being given a reality check is unable to understand the amount and type of wrong they've done in the first place.