Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well, again it depends on how much faith you have in Scale Games, doesn't it?

It could be a cynical excuse to get out of costly comittments to HIPS. It could be a sign that they just haven't thought things through fully, and so are going with a blanket "it'll be good, promise" statement. It could be an eventual "screw it, we can't get the undercuts to work, we're making everything from hand-spun resin".

I think it's most likely to be: "we have some kind of additional funding source we are not willing to disclose as a private company, we haven't finalised any of our negotiations with suppliers at the most basic level, so things are subject to change, we realise that this route is going to take a ton of money, but we're anticipating that and please don't think that our first priority is going to be cutting costs."

I do trust them, but I can easily see why others might not - the track record isn't there, the funding doesn't quite add up for HIPS (despite being a very healthy amount - it's getting on for half of Kings of War's final total, and the models/rewards didn't really add up for that either!). I do think that they are genuine and passionate about the project, and that the worry is over naivety rather than calculated misrepresentation.

Just when I was feeling better about this one...

#2 and #3 above just pulled the rug out from under me!

1: Scale: The scale of our models has been explained on our Update # 4 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/986826251/fallen-frontiers/posts/862118). It was chosen for its simplicity for both painting and playing.

Also as we have already demonstrated our models are fully compatible with many of the scenographies, bases and games currently on the market.

Uh, no, they demonstrated that their models look silly on the two most common current terrain sets on the market.

2: Material: As initially said, our priority is to get the best quality. That is why we did not give specific information about the material at first.

After researching and discussing with suppliers, we conclude that the best plastic material for our product is HIPS, such a big production on this material requires a huge investment especially in tooling (molds).

Therefore we decided to declare than material would be HIPS used yet without compromising the quality of the design of the figures. We do not discard any option or material or supplier.

The idea is everything to be made ​​of the same material but we care more about quality than material and if we find that using HIPS quality is not satisfactory, we will seek other material that meets the expectations.

So... we said that we would go with HIPS, but we'll probably go with resin instead when it turns out that the models have to be completely resculpted from scratch for HIPS production, and that nobody is available to cast them within our project timeframe anyway...

3: suppliers: We have different options, both Asian and European. We do not even discard the option of self-production. They all have enough quality and productivity that our project requires.

Which would seem to translate into: We don't have a supplier locked in yet. So HIPS within 9 months is not happening.

Yeah an announcement filled with the same kind of vague non answers hasn't helped them at all.

£500 down immediately and they have now unfunded that last stretch goal.

I'm still totally convinced this'll overfund considerably. I just don't believe the 'considerably' to be anywhere near enough for what they are claiming, or rather what they are 'sort of' claiming but actually being wishy washy about. Therefore I am worried about yet more people being out of the funding pool in the future. After so many Kickstarter failures in one way or another that group of 'never again' people is growing by the month :(

As a consumer I prefer much more straightforward answers. I'd be totally fine with a "We will use the best quality materials we can afford at the time, if that turns out to be PVC then it will be the best PVC we can source, if we get more money we will upgrade accordingly". Some people are happy with the various PVC/Restic/PU/whatever.

I also wouldn't mind a "Oh and by the way, we bought a ruler, turns out nothing is 35mm to the eye after all, sorry about that"

Make £500k on an honest and straightforward kickstarter and I'll merrily shake your hand and enquire about trade terms. Have a Kickstarter filled with misleading terms and wishy washy non answers and I've had enough.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Someone mentioned it in the comments section and it got me thinking.

You could possibly fulfill this in metal. You wouldn't make any money but based on the amount of money they have versus what they'd have to produce it's squeakily doable maybe. The biggest problem is the size of the minis for metal, but if you brought metal production in house it could possibly be done imo.

I wouldn't wanna be the guy who has to cast the 40 thousand or so multipart giant metal models but if you just go by wages for a couple casters, some casting machines and the cost of metal you could possibly squeak it?

(Proper resin is out of the question, unless they bring it in house and work for free for months on end)

There's some serious 'ostriching' going on in the comments...

What a great wrap up to the material debate. Thank you for your hard work. Love the game and the scale.

Wrap it up by leaving it vague and open?

That's weird isn't it?

Especially as AB mentioned - they basically gave themselves a "Get out of HIPs Free" card with point #2!

I don't know why this is getting so much attention other than the fact that it's drama.

From the update text above, they clearly have now clarified/changed their position that they are NOT committed to HIPS. That means it's not going to happen. You have to know so far ahead of time if you want to use HIPS, or have such heavy resources to convert models to be castable in that material, that it's not even funny.

So, it's back to their having no idea what they will make the models from. Maybe it'll just be PVC? Regardless, I think this campaign shouldn't get so much press anymore, they are clearly in over their heads.

 RiTides wrote:
I don't know why this is getting so much attention other than the fact that it's drama.

From the update text above, they clearly have now clarified/changed their position that they are NOT committed to HIPS. That means it's not going to happen. You have to know so far ahead of time if you want to use HIPS, or have such heavy resources to convert models to be castable in that material, that it's not even funny.

So, it's back to their having no idea what they will make the models from. Maybe it'll just be PVC? Regardless, I think this campaign shouldn't get so much press anymore, they are clearly in over their heads.

Not sure if serious?

It seems you figured out exactly why this is getting increased attention...

Totally serious- I'm saying, now that they've clarified they really have no idea, I would think the attention would drop off.

For myself, I felt the same way about Gates of Antares. Once it became clear they had little to no plan, I stopped tracking it. But the thread would continue to get bumped by people speculating what their possible plans could be... however, in my case, once it's clear they have no plan, I'm really not interested.

In other words I wish this one would get less attention so that other things that have actual news would get more attention, when this one seems to be getting it due to LACK of news (again, similar to Gates of Antares before it... which eventually got less attention, as I'm sure this one will as well).

 RiTides wrote:
I don't know why this is getting so much attention other than the fact that it's drama.

From the update text above, they clearly have now clarified/changed their position that they are NOT committed to HIPS. That means it's not going to happen. You have to know so far ahead of time if you want to use HIPS, or have such heavy resources to convert models to be castable in that material, that it's not even funny.

So, it's back to their having no idea what they will make the models from. Maybe it'll just be PVC? Regardless, I think this campaign shouldn't get so much press anymore, they are clearly in over their heads.

I am partly to blame. In the past I haven't really paid much attention to Kickstarters other than ones I have a professional interest in. I've only backed one and I realised that a good part of that was what i mentioned above, horror stories of prior Kickstarters. Taking forever to fulfill, end product being nothing like what was shown in the KS whether that be because sculpts didn't match up to the artwork, materials used left much to be desired or whatever.

So I started taking more of an interest, especially as I have a vested interest in using the platform myself in the future. This one came across my path in a good way, via the blue painted Ares guy. Without any context I was shown it as a 35mm mini and I was instantly interested both professionally and as a consumer.

The more I looked, the more questions I had and themore questions I had the more I disliked the answers. I then replied to a thread in a big FB minis group and that got a bit heated, in a similar way to the pre-moderation of here. Accusations of jealousy etc. I got tired of repeating myself so put all my info in a thread on a forum I'm a part of (it's linked earlier in this thread). Because I now had this thread with my name on it people kept asking me things via pm on FB and other forums. So I figured why not get out there and get properly involved.

Had this happened previous I might very well be in similar discussions about any of those other Kickstarters mentioned as examples of disasters, it's nothing personal against this company or Kickstarter. In my research I've found that way too many Kickstarters get away with stuff like this. Just claiming things with no real way of anyone challenging them and KS comments are filled with mindless cheerleading. That's kind of weird to me. We use FB as a primary marketing tool and I directly answer any questions we get about stuff, privately or publically, as straightforwardly as I can. If I see false information on a blog or a forum about anything to do with product I do the same.

Kickstarter has serioulsy changed a lot of things about our industry, in good ways and bad. Things that would likely never have been made are now happily in people's hands, people who would never have got their ideas realised are now happy. But on the flip side so many people have bought things that they consider to be crap and feel like they've been conned. And for the most part they feel that way because there was no other viewpoints readily available, they were told things in marketing speak and only saw 'Yay, everything is amazing' type comments on the KS page. Why wouldn't they think so?

People need to start speaking up when they see something questionable. If it's legit they'll soon get an answer for their concerns, if it isn't then good for them, they might have saved someone some hard earned cash.

Sorry for being long winded, I do think that most of the stuff being said has already been said so in that I agree with you. In part that's why the odd comment from me is just a sarcastic jab. I don't see any real harm though in continuing just the single thread. I am actually still interested in watching it unfold

 RiTides wrote:
I don't know why this is getting so much attention other than the fact that it's drama.

From the update text above, they clearly have now clarified/changed their position that they are NOT committed to HIPS. That means it's not going to happen. You have to know so far ahead of time if you want to use HIPS, or have such heavy resources to convert models to be castable in that material, that it's not even funny.

So, it's back to their having no idea what they will make the models from. Maybe it'll just be PVC? Regardless, I think this campaign shouldn't get so much press anymore, they are clearly in over their heads.

With a number of kickstarters delivering questionable quality, and possibly more on the way, the center piece of this problem is the material called Restic or if you want to be picky PVC, as you know RiTides, my dear Brother.

SG has yet to be firm on any material choice. It's like asking a kid what toy they want at the toy store.

At first it was HIPS but they reserve the right to change the material to Metal or Resin if they did not get enough funds.

They never declared the target goal for this to happen.

When asked repeatedly they gave vague answers including flirting with the choice of Restic PVC.

Then out of the blue they said it WILL be HIPs plastic. When the prior claim from them was it will be HIPs plastic depending on how much they raised. Again, they never said how much was needed, but obviously was more than 90k, and currently they are only a couple of K above that.

Today, they have played the escape card saying they will use HIPs unless they find material does not suit their desired outcome.

In short they have no ultimate answer. When it comes to manufacturing, They are a blind man riding on a horse guessing where they are, at this point of the Kickstarter.

Lack of honesty and emphatic decisions being towed by disastrous prior kickstarters is what is causing such attention to this.

There is some overt pious bleed among the backers. It is one thing to be a fan boy of a company and love new releases and think everything is great. But this is a company that, at this level, is untested. And every comment they make or a comment someone else makes in support of FF yields a wall of +1s. It's like reading comments from a yahoo news article.

I don't want to back this thinking I am getting HIPS, then 6 months after, they give a BS reason to change material when in reality, the choice of material was picked a long time ago.
They made it so there is no accountability on their end, making it difficult to ask for a refund or reporting them to KS.

Alpharius is right about the lack of participation sometimes. It was good at the start but has kind of trailed off now. Since its a team I imagine its not always the same people who participate on the comments section. Which you can lose the flow of a comments section if you have different people. Having more video sessions like the one with Beeble babble was a good start but keeping up creator/backer participation like Jeremy from creature caster did would be even better.

Some things do concern me though but also understand its having faith/assessing risk in the campaign. (Just like Figone's Rocco backing only on art alone) Although struggle to think how they can sustain the £2 per High quality mini at the commander pledge(186 + 4 vehicles) . Which I already mentioned on the comments so did others If I remember. Since there is no sign of resin I will probably be out before the end as I'm not that interested in boardgames anymore with plastic mini's. Having a duplication of figures like JWOD did satisfying both the collector/painter and the gamer would bring in more backers probably.

Like many others here I'm in it to see how it goes to the end. Whether it crash and burns or comes through I don't know but my spidey sense says to back out with the hand I'm being played.

Personally I think Scale games are in for a lot of hurt, hard work and sleepless nights at this rate. (based on a total 0 knowledge of the industry)

The mere fact that this company refers to still being able to 'decide upon' making their models in HIPS at a later date is a huge red flag to me.

You cannot simply take an existing design/sculpt and decide to make it in HIPS without, in almost all cases, having to chop that model up into a billion little pieces to make it able to be cast in HIPS. If you want to cast in HIPS, you need to start down that road from the ground-up or go through extensive resculpting to make existing designs work for a HIPS mold.

And the amount of demand out there for companies able to take designs and create HIPS molds far outstrips the actual supply of such companies right now…so that means getting the designs for the tooling made not only takes a lot of money (as everyone knows) but it also takes a tremendous amount more time than it takes to get models made in other materials.

So a company that has not decided whether they are going to cast in HIPS or another material cannot realistically give a time frame for delivery, because it will change drastically depending on what type of material they end up using…that they don't seem to acknowledge this fact while simultaneously still saying that HIPS is a potential candidate is very, very troubling to me.

Hey Pilgrim

Yeah I dropped my pledge. I don't feel there is a point to reiterate the reasons as you listed the same ones basically.

I'm out, that last update was ridiculous. "Here are all the concerns everyone has pointed out. Here is how we continue to skirt around them".

This definitely goes to show how important preplanning in a kickstarter is along with a nearly full time project manager to be there and have the answer to backers questions.

you would have thought by now that there would have been enough failures and successes for people to realise this before jumping in and launching there ks.

if scale had taken the time to have everything planned out material wise and had a produ tion slot/ manufacturer ready to go once funded it would have made life much easier for them.

Hey BD

Yeah wondered where you went.

If it was the same mini's they printed in the pictures and it was a more smaller scale campaign just like the first kickstarter then I would think it would be more successful. Also would be more suited to me but I cant have everything.

I'm also wondering is a lot being lost in translation?

So what Pilgrim? you are in or out?

I'm in to the very end as I want to see how it turns out. Hoping something will turn up like that mysterious millionaire backer and some resin.

 yakface wrote:
The mere fact that this company refers to still being able to 'decide upon' making their models in HIPS at a later date is a huge red flag to me.

You cannot simply take an existing design/sculpt and decide to make it in HIPS without, in almost all cases, having to chop that model up into a billion little pieces to make it able to be cast in HIPS. If you want to cast in HIPS, you need to start down that road from the ground-up or go through extensive resculpting to make existing designs work for a HIPS mold.

While I agree this is a huge "run away screaming" red flag, I'd say that casting in PVC well would require the same chopping up. The difference is only that half-assing the PVC mould leaves you with warped and torn miniatures that an unscrupulous manufacturer can still foist off on their customers, while half-assing the HIPS mould leaves you with a jammed machine.

RhodeIslandTides - well, if this thread has become too bothersome, there's always that 'don't click on it option'! I can't speak for everyone, but my reserves of "attention" can certainly encompass a few wishy washy unclear Kickstarter campaigns, especially if I'm interested in them!

Pilgrim - Welcome to Dakka Dakka! I too was hoping to at least see them commit to 'real resin' as a fallback. They still may. But if PVC is even a possibility by the end, I'll be dropping my pledge down to the minimum and then waiting until retail.

Yakface - Well, I think they've just about admitted that it WON'T be HIPs at this point, but don't want to come right out and say it, as maybe it still has a slight chance of happening? And if they do admit it...

Well, the Kicktraq for this one is showing that the latest "Clear It Up" Update did anything but:

 Alpharius wrote:
Pilgrim - Welcome to Dakka Dakka! I too was hoping to at least see them commit to 'real resin' as a fallback. They still may. But if PVC is even a possibility by the end, I'll be dropping my pledge down to the minimum and then waiting until retail.

If they announced it was proper resin I'd still have concerns. Even if they funded at this level, without the last minute spike you regularly see in Kickstarters, that's 30-40 'thousand' large scale minis. High quality resin is the most expensive of the major casting methods 'per unit'. I've mentioned it before but to fulfill something on this scale for that money you'd have to do it all in house and it'd take a 'long' time just to make all the moulds and cast everything and you'd likely end up losing money and working for free for months.

if I hadn't already pulled out due to production concerns the comments on the ks now would have definitely made me quit.

Scale games should step in before somebody has an full on breakdown.

I'm happy to stay currently. It's not my intention to provoke anyone but it seems that questions cause some backers to snap. It is edging closer to a wait for retail situation for myself however.

 edlowe wrote:
if I hadn't already pulled out due to production concerns the comments on the ks now would have definitely made me quit.

Scale games should step in before somebody has an full on breakdown.

it's about to happen.

So at this point, it really is looking like PVC here then?

This one is in danger of pulling a "THON" (which went into free fall over scale concerns, not materials!) and backsliding badly.

It might become "Falling Frontiers" soon, if they're not careful.

Alph,quick, just start +1ing every thing, you'll be one of the cool kids!

Pfft Alpharius here 3 months and only now you are saying hello cheers though

Indeed that is saddening on the kicktraq as I was big fan of this in the beginning. Agree about the comments section though. oh dear.

Pilgrim - Sorry for the delayed welcome!

I guess we never crossed paths until now!

If I was Scale Games, I'd ask a few of the more vocal cheerleaders to relax and take a few days off.

At this point, like 17 days off.

That J.R. guy seems to genuinely think that there are no valid concerns, only the machinations of a cabal of evil anti-backers who are trying to undermine the project because it's the only way that they can feel anything any more.
Bananas.