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 RiTides wrote:
That said, yeah, they're being suspiciously vague about it :-/. "Injected plastic" allows for PVC, too, and "high quality" really doesn't mean anything. They keep mentioning GW, but in that case, they should just confirm to be using HIPS.

There's a horrible thought: assuming GW-style plastic means Finecast.

Went in for an eb boxed pledge but as has been said theres a fair few unknown let alone the known unknowns.

I'd like a definate confirmation of material in an update possibly with examples from the manufacturer they'll be using.

 Alpharius wrote:
RhodeIslandTides - I don't think Artemis' points or misgivings are out of line at all.

Agreed, I was just referring to the fish comment (and lol at your take on my handle lately!)

 AlexHolker wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
That said, yeah, they're being suspiciously vague about it :-/. "Injected plastic" allows for PVC, too, and "high quality" really doesn't mean anything. They keep mentioning GW, but in that case, they should just confirm to be using HIPS.

There's a horrible thought: assuming GW-style plastic means Finecast.

They kinda sorta ruled that one out, thankfully.

I still think it is more than a little screwed up that they haven't just said what the material will be, and/or what funding goals equal what materials.

Maybe I'm just a bit paraoid now after SW/Mantic/RK - but I see this and think...'restic'. <<shudder>> then Azazelx my pledge.

 Alpharius wrote:
RhodeIslandTides - I don't think Artemis' points or misgivings are out of line at all.

I really like this one - but if they cannot, or will not?, definitively answer this question before the end?

No way am I staying in.

It's much more about commitment and finical understanding than current intentions.

They may come out and say the plastic will be just like the plastic miniature kits you get from GW on the frame/sprue.

What if 8+ months from now they say they cannot deliver on said promised of hard plastic miniatures (Hips) and must change material to something more economically sound.

I'm not a fan of the scale, but if it ends up being the next great table top game, why not? But if they can't deliver on said promises because of funding, you are basically getting a dead game.


What is the price range to make a mold these days for plastic miniatures?

I have an old scale modeler's magazine that talks about how many kits a company has to sell before they break even. It's a lot.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
That said, yeah, they're being suspiciously vague about it :-/. "Injected plastic" allows for PVC, too, and "high quality" really doesn't mean anything. They keep mentioning GW, but in that case, they should just confirm to be using HIPS.

There's a horrible thought: assuming GW-style plastic means Finecast.

They kinda sorta ruled that one out, thankfully.

I still think it is more than a little screwed up that they haven't just said what the material will be, and/or what funding goals equal what materials.

Maybe I'm just a bit paraoid now after SW/Mantic/RK - but I see this and think...'restic'. <<shudder>> then Azazelx my pledge.

We need to create a group where we can discuss our horrors of such material.

We can call ourselves Restic Knights, in honor of the new horror that is to come.

I'm all in favor of said group creation!

 Alpharius wrote:
I'm all in favor of said group creation!

our logo can be a bloody thumb with stitches.

we will be both a support group and a group to warn the dangers of the material. We will be like AA and D.A.R.E.

I...love it!

And I'm hoping that we don't have to add "FALLEN FRONTIERS" to the 'list'.

 Piston Honda wrote:
What is the price range to make a mold these days for plastic miniatures?

Using WGF as a basis, around $20k in molding costs alone.. When I was budgeting out what we'd need to set as a goal for doing Brushfire plastics it was around $35~40k per 5 dudesman sprue of 30~35mm sculpt with multiple weapon and head options.

 Piston Honda wrote:
We can call ourselves Restic Knights, in honor of the new horror that is to come.

That's hilarious

I have proposed using the term for the game in general, but we should take that discussion over to the appropriate thread.

 Piston Honda wrote:
We can call ourselves Restic Knights, in honor of the new horror that is to come.

That there made my day.

They apparently have the design work done already, they still have 4 factions. If their tool provider can make tools of a sufficient size, they could theoretically make one mould per faction where half is the basic troopers, and the rest the leader and special models. Then to fulfill orders, they simply snap the segments apart from one another.

The sculpts also look like they could be made in very few parts. Most in two parts and many as a single piece. This does increase the amount of figures they can fit on each sprue.

At 90k GBP, I think they'll meet all their obligations even if they go with a styrene based plaster injected into a steel mould. I just don't know if there will be any money left over to actually launch future production and distribution, not to mention actually put anything in the pockets of the people who are working on this. They need to print terrain, print boxes, ship everything and pay for as yet unforseen expenses.

If they can actually bring this to fruition though, they might have a chance of building up a customer base through direct online retail after the KS is fulfilled and they're ready to sell their new line to retail customers.

The absolute worst thing they could do would be to promise one type of plastic and then deliver another. I'm not interested in supporting the KS but I am interested in checking out the product at retail afterwords. If it turns out to be hard grey PVC, I definitely won't be interested. Especially after hearing about how it might be styrene like GW. Not to mention the forum and social media fallout of disappointing your KS backers.

I had backed as the mini are gorgeous but I decided to pull my pledge today as it's just really unclear on a lot of things. The language barrier adds a lot difficulty, they can barely handle communicating with basic statements which does not bode well for the rules which typically have much more complex structure due to technical wording. Due to scale the game is going to be standalone, which is fine provide you have a workable rules set, which given the language gap I don't think will happen. It's UK based how hard is it to find somebody who speaks English?

Choice of materials is purposefully being made vague/withheld which isn't good, if you are launching a line you should know from the get go what you primary material will be. Even if you upgrade later to plastics make it known from the get go that the models will be metal or resin, with a possible upgrade, not "we'll figure material out once we get there". The concern here is that the materials and process has everything to do with managing the ks funds correctly. It does not instill backer confidence if you don't have a solid game plan in place for the material as budgeting everything else for the KS hinges on that.

Also as pointed out earlier the sculpts are being misrepresented, it may not be with harmful intent but what we are seeing are not products in the scale they are promising. They weren't being very forthcoming about the project scale and even when they were pressed for answers they still gave a somewhat dodgey scale. 35mm to the eye when they are clearly much taller than that. A terminator measures in at 37mm to the top of the head give or take and yet they come up to shoulder height to the FF models.

It seems much more like an Indigogo project that's almost there but not quite. It has some really amazing looking models but everything else they are doing doesn't instill much confidence and stuff just doesn't smell right, for that reason I'm out.

I'll reconsider things if/when it hits retail and I'm able to see a finalized product but there's just too many things that are shakey to consider purchasing in advance.


.

 Alpharius wrote:
RhodeIslandTides - I don't think Artemis' points or misgivings are out of line at all.

I really like this one - but if they cannot, or will not?, definitively answer this question before the end?

No way am I staying in.

I'm in the same boat. They need to provide answers before the end of the campaign. I figure they will, as they will know a few days before the campaign closes roughly where it will end.

 paulson games wrote:
It's UK based how hard is it to find somebody who speaks English?

I don't think that it *really* is UK based. You have to be UK based to use the UK Kickstarter platform, and it's very easy to buy an off the shelf UK limited company (it would cost about $150-$200.

That looks to be what has happened here. A quick search on WEBCHEK shows

SCALEGAMES LTD
34 NEW HOUSE
67-68 HATTON GARDEN
LONDON
UNITED KINGDOM
Company No. 08695795

Date of Incorporation: 18/09/2013

A google search for that address gave me This link showing "(749 companies also use this postcode, this is probably a mail forwarding service address)"

So my take would be that Scale 75 have bought an off the shelf UK company in order to access Kickstarter's UK side rather than being actually based here, so I doubt they have any native English speakers on hand. Of course it means that my points earlier about the money they receive being net of VAT for EU purchasers are definitely true as they will have to comply with UK tax laws via this company.

Frozenwastes,

It's not just about the size of the tooling. Larger tooling is a pain to change and more importantly requires much larger machines to run - not just to accommodate the tool, but because of the increased need for larger screws and bigger hydraulics.

Larger moulds require more energy to heat so that the plastic doesn't freeze before it has filled the mould, more cooling once the mould has filled, and bigger hydraulics to hold the mould halves shut against the injection pressure - which also has to be higher to fill the mould.

All this means larger machines are more costly to run, and there is a point of diminishing returns. Not to mention that you can get less machines in a given floor space.

So increasing the size of the moulds may not be an option, and even srtarting to design the moulds may well be a mistake if they don't know what material they are using. Diferent polymers have different coefficient of thermal expansion values, i.e. expand by different amounts for a given rise in temperature. So a mould cut for HIPS will be slightly different to one cut for ABS, even for the same components. Now the tolerances for this sort of thing may be greater than the differences between the materials, so there would be nothing to worry about.

richred_uk wrote:

 paulson games wrote:
It's UK based how hard is it to find somebody who speaks English?

I don't think that it *really* is UK based. You have to be UK based to use the UK Kickstarter platform, and it's very easy to buy an off the shelf UK limited company (it would cost about $150-$200.

That looks to be what has happened here. A quick search on WEBCHEK shows

SCALEGAMES LTD
34 NEW HOUSE
67-68 HATTON GARDEN
LONDON
UNITED KINGDOM
Company No. 08695795

Date of Incorporation: 18/09/2013

A google search for that address gave me This link showing "(749 companies also use this postcode, this is probably a mail forwarding service address)"

So my take would be that Scale 75 have bought an off the shelf UK company in order to access Kickstarter's UK side rather than being actually based here, so I doubt they have any native English speakers on hand. Of course it means that my points earlier about the money they receive being net of VAT for EU purchasers are definitely true as they will have to comply with UK tax laws via this company.

This is all dead on, the director of 'ScaleGames' is Spanish and lives in Spain. There is no UK team or anything, it's just a way to access Kickstarter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Piston Honda wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
RhodeIslandTides - I don't think Artemis' points or misgivings are out of line at all.

I really like this one - but if they cannot, or will not?, definitively answer this question before the end?

No way am I staying in.

It's much more about commitment and finical understanding than current intentions.

They may come out and say the plastic will be just like the plastic miniature kits you get from GW on the frame/sprue.

What if 8+ months from now they say they cannot deliver on said promised of hard plastic miniatures (Hips) and must change material to something more economically sound.

I've never understood this as an excuse really, it's not hard to find out the price of something 'before' you start promising stuff.

My educated guess is that a number of the kickstarters that say they have met unexpected costs etc simply haven't and tried to emulate companies like CMON with a fake low-end goal to get a hype snowball and the stretch goals rolling. The problem is CMON is a huge company who, if it ever happened, could simply produce the game themselves regardless.

if 90k isn't enough to make all of these miniatures they are offering in proper HIPS then they will already know this. If they think it is enough then they shoudl simply say 'This is the material we will make things in if we fund'. Anything else is flim flam.

 Piston Honda wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I'm all in favor of said group creation!

our logo can be a bloody thumb with stitches.

we will be both a support group and a group to warn the dangers of the material. We will be like AA and D.A.R.E.

And my ax!

Actually, it's more of a utility tomahawk, but it cleans restic as well as anything.


But I totally want in.

This update makes it look as if a lot of my existing terrain will work just fine:

Update #13

Jun 6 2014
Compatibility with other scenery
1 comment
13 likes

Hi folks,

We´ve been at a nearby hobby store (Thank you Goblin Trader) to take some pictures of our miniatures in different brands of scenery. We want to clear your concerns about compatibility.

Thank you!

-------------------------------------------
Scenery 1



Scenery 2



Scenery 3

Now if they'd only answer that pesky material question...

Conrad Turner wrote:So increasing the size of the moulds may not be an option, and even srtarting to design the moulds may well be a mistake if they don't know what material they are using. Diferent polymers have different coefficient of thermal expansion values, i.e. expand by different amounts for a given rise in temperature. So a mould cut for HIPS will be slightly different to one cut for ABS, even for the same components. Now the tolerances for this sort of thing may be greater than the differences between the materials, so there would be nothing to worry about.

You're totally right. Going into this project not knowing what material you're going to be working with is pretty crazy. There's definitely technical limitations they need to take into consideration in advance. How do you know how much money you need if you don't know what process you'll be using the make the product?

EDIT: I'm also not going to actively pay attention to these and wait for them to hit retail after seeing the multi angle shots of the Ares troopers on the table. The heads don't do it for me, I hate their guns and there's something weird about their hips wings. And the female ones have big boob plates just looks silly given the overall proportions of the armour.

FYI in the last Deadzone scenery picture,you have one of the riff/rift troopers standing next to a solid panel.

The measurement to the top of the line sticking out in the middle is 40mm exactly.

 Alpharius wrote:
This update makes it look as if a lot of my existing terrain will work just fine:

Honestly, I think they look ludicrously large on both sets of terrain. Hand rails aren't normally built at mid-thigh level.

 insaniak wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
This update makes it look as if a lot of my existing terrain will work just fine:

Honestly, I think they look ludicrously large on both sets of terrain. Hand rails aren't normally built at mid-thigh level.

They are in 40k where health and safety can go itself


Also I see that someone in the comments has asked for the creators to show a picture of the minis next to a ruler

I don't really have much of a stake in this argument, but some people are really reaching for reasons hate, more than the problems that are already there. Let's focus on making them fix what are the real issues first.

The reality is that you can plan ahead for a variety of materials, the use of which is dependent on funding levels. I have in my planning documents a breakdown of how much funding I'd need to make my game in a variety of materials. The plan being that for a future kickstarter to clearly list that if X funding goal is reached the material type for Y miniatures would be Z. Of course, at this point all the complaints means I'm just doing pure resin.

The only thing they're really guilty of is just not stating things like that, and scale, clearly up front. That's a big deal, but don't go making conspiracy theories about them not knowing what they're going to make miniatures out of at all. That's the kind of typical internet overreacting that causes more problems than it fixes as it causes the arguments to jump all over the place before the crowd can solidify on these few important topics that can be easily addressed.

I'm not sure what your point is...?

But, shouldn't what material will be used here be clear at the start, or by now?

In the last pic where he is shown facing the wall, the wall section comes up a little over half of the miniatures height. That section is 28mm tall in height (28mm is at eye level for a space marine).

Based on that reference the model measures 50mm in height. (not including the base which would push it up to about 53-54mm in total height)



I'm not disqualifying the KS due to scale, I'm fine playing a game with it's own scale, however there are a number of other concerns that I have due to the language barrier and some of the stuff doesn't seem properly transparent to me, not a good tone to set when launching a kickstarter.

So the accusations that the sculpts shown were 75mm sculpts photoshoped on bases and not what they intended to produce are now forgotten since the models are shown to be the real thing and we now focus on size and the quite valid (and only) question of material?

Yeah, what's a bigger deal than material is the scale issue to me.

At 50mm, the issues of "restic" are likely diminished anyway, it's just weird that communication issues are coming up.

To that I say: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Or rather, in this case, replace stupidity with not being a native English speaker, as well as being from a different gaming culture.

I also wonder if gaming culture is an issue as well. What's the gaming scene like in Spain? Perhaps they play a lot more games of various scales there, in general, as such a new game in a larger scale is not a big deal at all?

It just seems counter to any sensible person that they would want to actively hide any of that information.

edit: Anyone can make some weird accusations any time on the internet, especially with a void of other information.

It seems to me that most of the "butt hurt" comments regarding scale is because these models can't be ported over the WH40K.....my suggestion to those who feel that way is simple, stop repeating yourself, don't buy in, and go buy minis from GW vast range....duh?!?

I mean, just to be clear, this company isn't making WH40K, it's called Fallen Frontiers, so regardless of miniature scale, it works for the intended game.....WH4OK fan boys, I assume, were not the target audience!

I wouldn't mind, but the scale inaccuracies within WH40K are themselves savage to behold, why on earth would another miniatures company ever want to mimick it? Marines with no pelvis and shoulders that sprout from their ears is hardly a poster advertisement for human anatomy!

With regards to the scenery, again, the haters are gonna hate.....its clear from the photo is that the scenery is workable, and I find the in depth analysis of how these miniatures stack against the scenery laughable, especially when I see Space Marines placed in GW scenery that, if the scaling were anywhere near correct, the Marines would need to (literally) climb the stairs to ascend! Oh, and try and get 10 GW terminators into a Landraider.....yeah, that works!

A lot of the time, when people are playing wargames they have to suspend certain "realities" to help the game flow (see points above), there's no difference with these FF miniatures. They look well defined, and IMHO are considerably better for painting then the nearest comparison (Infinity Miniatures) which I find to be spindly, fidly, and a nightmare to paint and enjoy!

 Delephont wrote:
It seems to me that most of the "butt hurt" comments regarding scale is because these models can't be ported over the WH40K

There has been one mention of 40k in this entire thread, how does that constitute most?