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nosferatu1001 wrote:
Morgoth - GW went down the China production route. Didnt work well, so why would it work better for FW?

Didn't it? I'm genuinely unaware of the reasons why production was recalled, could you enlighten us? Or was it another instance of GW punching itself in the face purely to maintain total control over all aspects of the business?

They could charge half for a reaver, made in China, but would still get undercut by the resellers, only this time not recasters, but using the original molds, on grey shifts. Making their job that much easier.

Pretty sure this is what happens on a number of kits already as a hangover from when kits were produced over there. If you genuinely think that there is still a living to be made out of undercutting FW if FW were to cut it's RRPs by half, what does that say about how badly overinflated their prices are now?

Not sure how you think that is a great idea. What businesses do you run again?

This is a fallacious and frankly juvenile thing to say, please try and do better.

They actually make a thing about being British.

Do they? I haven't really got that impression from reading anything they produce. I'm more inclined to believe it has more to do with what I mentioned WRT your first point.

It has value in some sectors to NOT have "made in china" on your stuff.

Maybe but I'd be sceptical this sector is one of them.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
It has value in some sectors to NOT have "made in china" on your stuff.

Maybe it's different in the UK, but when I think "made in Australia", I tend to expect better quality than "made in china" (though maybe not as good as "made in Germany" ).

Azrael - the reasons I was given was exactly as listed - issues firstly with production quality, secondly with copying. Will not name who I know this from, but I'm personally confident in the accuracy. Cannot help you though.

AS for counterfeit iPhones - saw plenty when I was last in China. Hell, they have counterfeit shops there.....

From memory, CEOs letter talked about it, and the boxes have it stamped on - or used to.

Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

All - Not any different here, really. Made in China generally results in some concerns around quality, with made in Japan and Germany generally ranking quite highly. Oddly one thing the UK is very good at is car assembly - why so many manu. are still producing here. We're just crap at runnign the companies

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Azrael - the reasons I was given was exactly as listed - issues firstly with production quality, secondly with copying. Will not name who I know this from, but I'm personally confident in the accuracy. Cannot help you though.

AS for counterfeit iPhones - saw plenty when I was last in China. Hell, they have counterfeit shops there.....

From memory, CEOs letter talked about it, and the boxes have it stamped on - or used to.

Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

All - Not any different here, really. Made in China generally results in some concerns around quality, with made in Japan and Germany generally ranking quite highly. Oddly one thing the UK is very good at is car assembly - why so many manu. are still producing here. We're just crap at runnign the companies

You will see plenty of counterfeit everything in China, nobody even remotely hopes to sell IP in a country that doesn't believe in IP, your argument is therefore moot.

You largely overestimate the work of designers (sounds like iPropaganda to me). Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Car assembly is done on UK ground because import taxes prevent it from being made elsewhere.

nosferatu1001 wrote:


Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

It isn't so fallacious to compare a company which makes miniatures, in resin, in small scale, with pretty uniformly high cast quality, that retains the most in-demand commission freelancers to manufacture their masters (which will cost orders of magnitude more than salaried designers, especially when we fairly regularly hear of how x model was originally developed by y staff member on their own time - costing GW literally nothing)

Yet...
http://www.mierce-miniatures.com/
http://kingdomdeath.com/

(And even these compete well in price with FW in many instances, despite having far fewer economies of scale to leverage)

The fact is, GW and FW fail in comparison to whichever approach you take, if you try and make a case for them as a high volume mass-market retailer, there are other companies doing it cheaper, or at a higher quality for a similar price, if you try and make a case for them as a boutique retailer, then similar applies.

As a rule of thumb, recasters are around half to two thirds of RRP from what I've seen/been told, so if you genuinely think that they could continue to make a living in the volume they sell charging ~£6 for 5 marines (which would be what it would need to be if FW cut their prices) then you're frankly deluded, especially where the genuine article would still be much more affordable, readily available and better supported.

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

It fits in well with the 40k setting.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

Yeah, because every Western economy is whiter than white when it comes to it's historical development. We just happen to live in nations where people are free to act like moral superiors because fate has decreed they're in a country separated from similar behaviour by a few decades. Nations in glass houses and all that.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

Cheap toys, fruit, phones, clothing, shoes, coffee, ore... The core-periphery system of trade is a bitch, ain't it?

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

You're so naive...
The whole world is made in China, every American or European company that you know basically just imports stuff from China, multiplies the price by ten and shoves it up your ass.
Bad companies fail, and "just moving to China" will not save them.

You're more of a slave than your parents were, the chinese guy is less of a slave than his parents were, and all you can do is point at him and say he's got it worse ?
There's a guy around here with a profile picture with a quote from Goethe that reads " None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Read it. again. again. again. and some more.

morgoth wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Azrael - the reasons I was given was exactly as listed - issues firstly with production quality, secondly with copying. Will not name who I know this from, but I'm personally confident in the accuracy. Cannot help you though.

AS for counterfeit iPhones - saw plenty when I was last in China. Hell, they have counterfeit shops there.....

From memory, CEOs letter talked about it, and the boxes have it stamped on - or used to.

Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

All - Not any different here, really. Made in China generally results in some concerns around quality, with made in Japan and Germany generally ranking quite highly. Oddly one thing the UK is very good at is car assembly - why so many manu. are still producing here. We're just crap at runnign the companies

You will see plenty of counterfeit everything in China, nobody even remotely hopes to sell IP in a country that doesn't believe in IP, your argument is therefore moot.

You largely overestimate the work of designers (sounds like iPropaganda to me). Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Car assembly is done on UK ground because import taxes prevent it from being made elsewhere.

I'll just add one thing to rebut, as the rest is too easy for others to rebut.

I work for a car company. What you posted about uk manufacture is unadulterated crap. Utterly so. Ford, Honda, etc all manufacture in the uk, and not elsewhere in the eu, for sane reasons. It isn't import duty. (UK actually has very low imprt duty for cars, hence why no ckd or pkd comes to the UK for final assembly. But hey, you know so much

Ford even used the UK as a global example for the focus mkii production run.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

I'll just add one thing to rebut, as the rest is too easy for others to rebut.

I work for a car company. What you posted about uk manufacture is unadulterated crap. Utterly so. Ford, Honda, etc all manufacture in the uk, and not elsewhere in the eu, for sane reasons. It isn't import duty. (UK actually has very low imprt duty for cars, hence why no ckd or pkd comes to the UK for final assembly. But hey, you know so much

Ford even used the UK as a global example for the focus mkii production run.

Ok, so maybe I was wrong, and maybe (maybe, because taxes are WAY more complicated than just what you see on the surface) there's another reason for cars being produced in the UK.

Ford... they can't even make a single good car, why would you take them as example ? Mercedes and every other good brand is still produced in Germany.


Besides, there are car factories all over the EU, so I don't know what you've been smoking but ...

A good reason to manufacture cars in the UK would be that the UK gives those car manufacturers better fiscal conditions, while having much lower barriers for selling from the UK rather than from their evil lair (japan for honda,...).

Apart from those that can't move (local business) and those that rely on extremely skilled labor (very high-tech, not cars or phones), most businesses that stay in the EU are there because they get great tax deals or because skilled workforce is cheaper here.



So either, we live in a world of fairies, the low education segment of the British Car Assembly Industry is the best in all the low education segments in the world, and you're right, and Ford and Honda should start shipping all their cars from the UK rather than their home base.

Or, we live in reality, where people take business decisions based on business outcomes, and there's a good business outcome associated with their presence in the UK, such as much easier / possible car certification lane, lower car sales taxes, and other possible goodies.

FIY the US has incredible taxes on cars, Mercedes there cost twice the price, and the Japanese had to compete with +100% taxes for a long time. I doubt the UK is so clean as to make no difference between local and remote production when every other country does.

morgoth wrote:
Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Really? How much do you think would be a fair price to pay someone for sculpting a titan-size model at FW levels of detail? When you answer, remember that:

1) Even ~$10,000 (10x retail price) doesn't buy you all that many hours of skilled labor, and this is something that takes a lot of hours (FW have stated that the design process for a titan takes months). You might get it for less than $10,000, but not for so much less that $10,000 is a completely unreasonable estimate.

2) Designing a viable model kit takes a lot more work than making a one-time sculpture. You can't just throw some stuff together and call it a day, you have to be aware of things like how the molds are going to work, how difficult assembly is going to be, etc.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

I don't think you have any clue how much developing electronics costs. You're paying teams of engineers at $50k minimum per year, millions of dollars in chip design, etc. Even the software tools used to design the chips costs millions of dollars. And that's just the hardware, add on millions more to pay for the software engineers, testing, etc.

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Really? How much do you think would be a fair price to pay someone for sculpting a titan-size model at FW levels of detail? When you answer, remember that:

1) Even ~$10,000 (10x retail price) doesn't buy you all that many hours of skilled labor, and this is something that takes a lot of hours (FW have stated that the design process for a titan takes months). You might get it for less than $10,000, but not for so much less that $10,000 is a completely unreasonable estimate.

2) Designing a viable model kit takes a lot more work than making a one-time sculpture. You can't just throw some stuff together and call it a day, you have to be aware of things like how the molds are going to work, how difficult assembly is going to be, etc.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

I don't think you have any clue how much developing electronics costs. You're paying teams of engineers at $50k minimum per year, millions of dollars in chip design, etc. Even the software tools used to design the chips costs millions of dollars. And that's just the hardware, add on millions more to pay for the software engineers, testing, etc.

1) I've followed sculptors, and no one sculpt in all the 40K universe cost $10K. You have no idea how fast those guys are, it's insane.
2) It does, but it's not more than one day of playing around in CAD
3) You have no idea. The A chips are just standard ARM chips tweaked a bit using the kit given by ARM, and even if the iPhone had cost one hundred million dollars (pinky on lips), which is dubious, they still made over a hundred billion dollars (pinky on lips AGAIN) on it so it's still less than one percent. And given how each and every next iPhone is just a slight variation on the previous one, and that all are just assembly of existing components not designed by Apple, I'd be surprised if it cost a hundred million dollars (pinky on lips) AGAIN for every last stupid model including the very bendable 6.

I'd echo the general opinion from what I've heard around the shop.

The main problem with FW models is that they're resin, which means they come with all the limitations of resin models like melting into puddles of goo at the slightest application of heat (like being in a hot car), and having endless casting problems. Of course, they gain the benefits of resin too (like finer detail), but in any case, you've got to work for it.

The main benefit to FW is that it's a GW subsidiary which means it has GW-esque customer service. As mentioned, I've known people who write in to say something is wrong and it's immediately (attempted) fixed immediately at no charge, while letting the purchaser keep the defective part. That no-BS attitude is always nice.

In a way, they're just a better-designed version of finecast, with all its pros and cons. Or, to put it another way...

mitch_rifle wrote: but they are very cool, which is what matters

I've'n't purchased forgeworld myself, but as I have a bit of skill with greenstuff, I wouldn't reject the quality of production out of hand.

morgoth wrote:

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

You're so naive...
The whole world is made in China, every American or European company that you know basically just imports stuff from China, multiplies the price by ten and shoves it up your ass.
Bad companies fail, and "just moving to China" will not save them.

You're more of a slave than your parents were, the chinese guy is less of a slave than his parents were, and all you can do is point at him and say he's got it worse ?
There's a guy around here with a profile picture with a quote from Goethe that reads " None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Read it. again. again. again. and some more.

Haha, took the words right out of my mouth. That being said, I like my Chinese made products. They seem to be of superior quality than most things made anywhere else. Japan quality is second to none too. It's pity..."made in the USA" used to mean something. Now, it just means that an arrogant overpaid under educated person used premium materials and assembled whatever item carelessly.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
I'll just add one thing to rebut, as the rest is too easy for others to rebut.

I work for a car company. What you posted about uk manufacture is unadulterated crap. Utterly so. Ford, Honda, etc all manufacture in the uk, and not elsewhere in the eu, for sane reasons. It isn't import duty. (UK actually has very low imprt duty for cars, hence why no ckd or pkd comes to the UK for final assembly. But hey, you know so much

Ford even used the UK as a global example for the focus mkii production run.

I don't know much about car production in Europe but I found this odd, so I googled. Apparently the UK is the 13th largest manufacturer of cars, behind:

China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, India, U.S.A., Brazil, France, Spain, Russia, Mexico, Iran.

If you normalise by population, funnily enough they are still 13th, but the countries ahead of them change to: Slovakia, Czech Republic, China, South Korea, Slovenia, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Spain, France, Canada, Hungary.

They're about equal with Hungary. It is interesting to see where cars are made. The only Western European Honda car manufacturing plant is in the UK, though the only bike manufacturing is in Italy and all other things come out of France or are imported from outside Europe.

Funnily enough, the UK Honda group is currently looking for employees for "quality"

I will say though, I don't really care if my products are made in the UK unless they are competitive on price and quality. Forgeworld have the sculpting quality bit pretty good (though it's hard to say they're better than a bunch of others, they're up there) but fall short on the price and casting quality.

morgoth wrote:
1) I've followed sculptors, and no one sculpt in all the 40K universe cost $10K. You have no idea how fast those guys are, it's insane.

Again, a titan-size model takes months to design and sculpt. This is direct from FW, as an explanation for why they haven't made a warlord titan yet (so they have no incentive to lie about it).

And you didn't answer my question: how much do you think is a reasonable price to design and sculpt a titan-size model?

2) It does, but it's not more than one day of playing around in CAD

If you think it's just a bit of "playing around in CAD" then you don't really know how the process works. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of FW stuff is hand-sculpted, not done in CAD, "playing around" is just a good way to waste money on a kit that is poorly optimized, costs too much to manufacture, and has too many casting problems.

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
1) I've followed sculptors, and no one sculpt in all the 40K universe cost $10K. You have no idea how fast those guys are, it's insane.

Again, a titan-size model takes months to design and sculpt. This is direct from FW, as an explanation for why they haven't made a warlord titan yet (so they have no incentive to lie about it).

And you didn't answer my question: how much do you think is a reasonable price to design and sculpt a titan-size model?

2) It does, but it's not more than one day of playing around in CAD

If you think it's just a bit of "playing around in CAD" then you don't really know how the process works. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of FW stuff is hand-sculpted, not done in CAD, "playing around" is just a good way to waste money on a kit that is poorly optimized, costs too much to manufacture, and has too many casting problems.

I can design and sculpt a titan in months, and I'm not a sculptor.
Titans are not much harder to design and sculpt than smaller miniatures because they lack a lot of the detail (in terms of details per square inch, it's clear that titans are worse than standard GW plastic).

Real sculptors, if you use your friend Google, you will see ask from $400 and up with detail quality that beats standard GW plastic.
If you were to ask them to design a low detail large size sculpt, like a Titan, it would probably cost you $2000-3000 at most.

Playing in CAD is actually not applicable to FW, they don't use anything modern, so adapting the pieces to the molds is probably done by hand, winging it and relying on their experience in casting, so yes I said something dumb, sorry.

morgoth wrote:
Ok, so maybe I was wrong, and maybe (maybe, because taxes are WAY more complicated than just what you see on the surface) there's another reason for cars being produced in the UK.

Maybe? No, you were wrong. CKD and PKD, if you're purporting to talk about car manufacture, you know these terms, yes?

morgoth wrote:Ford... they can't even make a single good car, why would you take them as example ? Mercedes and every other good brand is still produced in Germany.

Wrong. a) seen mercedes JD power scores during the late 90s and early 2000s? At one point they had THE WORST CAR out of over 100 surveyed models. b) not all mercedes, BMW and AUDI are made in germany. I'll give you a hint...I work for one of them. You'd be amazed where car plants are for German brands. and c) Ford do actually make some good cars - fiesta and focus are both very good carsa, s-max is class leading. etc. Leagues above Fiat, Alpha, etc

morgoth wrote:Besides, there are car factories all over the EU, so I don't know what you've been smoking but ...

I never said solely UK, you're just skipping over in your haste to poorly rebut

morgoth wrote:So either, we live in a world of fairies, the low education segment of the British Car Assembly Industry is the best in all the low education segments in the world, and you're right, and Ford and Honda should start shipping all their cars from the UK rather than their home base.

Car assembly is surprisingly not that low skilled - but you would know this, given youre an expert, yes?

Have you seen the lengths of apprenticeships ever? Or their content?

morgoth wrote:Or, we live in reality, where people take business decisions based on business outcomes, and there's a good business outcome associated with their presence in the UK, such as much easier / possible car certification lane, lower car sales taxes, and other possible goodies.

Cars have to be certificated in each territory. Location of production doesnt matter. Exporting out of the EU has one rate only - th eimport rate at the other end

Apparently skilled workforce isnt one of these business decisions.

morgoth wrote:FIY the US has incredible taxes on cars, Mercedes there cost twice the price, and the Japanese had to compete with +100% taxes for a long time. I doubt the UK is so clean as to make no difference between local and remote production when every other country does.

Erm, nope. Just priced up one, including local sales taxes. Same for BMW. Now if you want a place that is truly insane, go to China- an imported MINI costs the same as a locally produced 5 series.

just gonna add titans have more detail than just on the "surface" have you seen the insides of say thunderhawks, reavers, warhounds, or god forbid the inside of a Manta. iv seen a few of each that surface area isnt just the outside, there is tons of details on the insides etc etc as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
oh and if you REALLY want to look up a sales tax.

look at importing a bently to china.
ill give you a hint, if you buy one, you buy the govt one as well and they get change from theirs

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Wrong. a) seen mercedes JD power scores during the late 90s and early 2000s? At one point they had THE WORST CAR out of over 100 surveyed models. b) not all mercedes, BMW and AUDI are made in germany. I'll give you a hint...I work for one of them. You'd be amazed where car plants are for German brands. and c) Ford do actually make some good cars - fiesta and focus are both very good carsa, s-max is class leading. etc. Leagues above Fiat, Alpha, etc

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
just gonna add titans have more detail than just on the "surface" have you seen the insides of say thunderhawks, reavers, warhounds, or god forbid the inside of a Manta. iv seen a few of each that surface area isnt just the outside, there is tons of details on the insides etc etc as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
oh and if you REALLY want to look up a sales tax.

look at importing a bently to china.
ill give you a hint, if you buy one, you buy the govt one as well and they get change from theirs

Why would you buy a Bentley though, unless you're feeling hardcore American inside...

morgoth wrote:
I can design and sculpt a titan in months, and I'm not a sculptor.

Really? Can I see some of your work? I'm assuming you have some, and wouldn't be making claims about your ability to build a titan if you don't have some pretty solid scratchbuilding experience. I've seen enough first-time scratchbuilds to know that if you don't have lots of previous experience to show off your first titan is going to be garbage.

Titans are not much harder to design and sculpt than smaller miniatures because they lack a lot of the detail (in terms of details per square inch, it's clear that titans are worse than standard GW plastic).

1) Details per square inch is a terrible standard. Copy/pasting a bunch of skulls and purity seals all over a model adds lots of detail per square inch, but doesn't produce a good model. A large part of the difficulty of making a model isn't the physical creation of the detail parts, it's figuring out what detail to use, including things like which areas to leave blank. And that involves concept art, test models, etc, all of which take time and add to the cost of the finished product.

2) Titans are MUCH harder to design than a 28mm character model, simply because of the sheer size. For example, a 28mm figure has few, if any, structural concerns to worry about. A titan has to support its own weight with a reasonable amount of pinning work on the joints. A 28mm figure has a limited number of features (weapon, armor, etc), a titan has tons of different design elements to deal with. A 28mm figure can be sculpted around a default skeleton to get the basic shapes right, a titan has to be designed from scratch. Etc.

Real sculptors, if you use your friend Google, you will see ask from $400 and up with detail quality that beats standard GW plastic.
If you were to ask them to design a low detail large size sculpt, like a Titan, it would probably cost you $2000-3000 at most.

Can you provide a price quote from a sculptor willing to do a FW-quality titan for that much, or are you just speculating based on costs for 28mm character models?

morgoth wrote:

me wrote:Wrong. a) seen mercedes JD power scores during the late 90s and early 2000s? At one point they had THE WORST CAR out of over 100 surveyed models. b) not all mercedes, BMW and AUDI are made in germany. I'll give you a hint...I work for one of them. You'd be amazed where car plants are for German brands. and c) Ford do actually make some good cars - fiesta and focus are both very good carsa, s-max is class leading. etc. Leagues above Fiat, Alpha, etc

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.

Wow, so I correct you with facts, and this is your response? Pure troll.

2000s M-Class. Worst car you could buy, based on feedback from actual customers. Its why Mercedes had to put back in, and more, the money they took out of QC in the late 90s. Current gen e-class mid life upgrade cost them 2 billion, fixing isues from the first revision, and the convertible and coupe wont have the bodywork updates, as it costs too much. S class is a fab car, but the A class is just another hatch, the B class is ok, but sells well but with too little contribution. Theyre still lacking volume, hence why they're subvening so much - currently you can get a merc C or E for only 300 a month in the UK, throwing the cost of retail through the roof and reducing their contribution margin to near zero. But it gets their volume back, which is what is needed.

Focus and fiesta are not poor quality cars, you really need to take your head out from where youre sticking it, it isnt pretty. Oh, and you have a C220, CDI i presume? Quite a good car, interestingly peaky but low refinement engine, and gearbox (assuming auto) is still the 7 speed slush box, yes?

Oh, and car makers, or MAKER, from Munich? Audi are just down the road in Ingolstadt, and Mercedes is Stuttgart, so you cant even get that right.....

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
I can design and sculpt a titan in months, and I'm not a sculptor.

Really? Can I see some of your work? I'm assuming you have some, and wouldn't be making claims about your ability to build a titan if you don't have some pretty solid scratchbuilding experience. I've seen enough first-time scratchbuilds to know that if you don't have lots of previous experience to show off your first titan is going to be garbage.

I can give you a list of all the things I've designed and/or built if you like... modular terrain, LARP weapons, solid state NAS, thermal cutter (angled, for foam blade edges) and so much more.
But really, it doesn't matter. If I can build a shitTitan in one month, then a real sculptor with experience can build an awesomeTitan in two weeks.
Because that's how experience works.

 Peregrine wrote:

Titans are not much harder to design and sculpt than smaller miniatures because they lack a lot of the detail (in terms of details per square inch, it's clear that titans are worse than standard GW plastic).

1) Details per square inch is a terrible standard. Copy/pasting a bunch of skulls and purity seals all over a model adds lots of detail per square inch, but doesn't produce a good model. A large part of the difficulty of making a model isn't the physical creation of the detail parts, it's figuring out what detail to use, including things like which areas to leave blank. And that involves concept art, test models, etc, all of which take time and add to the cost of the finished product.

2) Titans are MUCH harder to design than a 28mm character model, simply because of the sheer size. For example, a 28mm figure has few, if any, structural concerns to worry about. A titan has to support its own weight with a reasonable amount of pinning work on the joints. A 28mm figure has a limited number of features (weapon, armor, etc), a titan has tons of different design elements to deal with. A 28mm figure can be sculpted around a default skeleton to get the basic shapes right, a titan has to be designed from scratch. Etc.

It's a terrible standard, but that's how you measure the work to be done, most of the detail on the big models is really a lot of copy paste.

There is no real concern with titan's structure, you can pin them with 5mm steel rod and you could pose them in just any pose even with the very heavy resin, I don't think it's that much of a challenge for a pro sculptor tbh.

 Peregrine wrote:

Real sculptors, if you use your friend Google, you will see ask from $400 and up with detail quality that beats standard GW plastic.
If you were to ask them to design a low detail large size sculpt, like a Titan, it would probably cost you $2000-3000 at most.

Can you provide a price quote from a sculptor willing to do a FW-quality titan for that much, or are you just speculating based on costs for 28mm character models?

Wow! I've never heard anyone say Forge World quality isn't good! I have a load of FW models from a Warhound Titan, to Tau flyers, Nids, etc and I have nothing but excellent quality, so much great detail! I was missing a bit and the customer service folk took care of me pretty quickly.
I am quite sure that if you buy something that isn't good quality that they will take care of you. Get off the fence and get some FW!

 Kelly502 wrote:
Wow! I've never heard anyone say Forge World quality isn't good! I have a load of FW models from a Warhound Titan, to Tau flyers, Nids, etc and I have nothing but excellent quality, so much great detail! I was missing a bit and the customer service folk took care of me pretty quickly.
I am quite sure that if you buy something that isn't good quality that they will take care of you. Get off the fence and get some FW!

Right away, let me sell my child's soul and I'll have the money to afford it.

They have good quality alright, it's just not on par with their prices.

Save up...

morgoth wrote:
If I can build a shitTitan in one month, then a real sculptor with experience can build an awesomeTitan in two weeks.
Because that's how experience works.

So who knows better: the FW sculptor (who gets paid to do this stuff) that says "titans take months to design and sculpt", or the random forum poster with no scratchbuilding experience who assumes it should only take a couple weeks because "that's how experience works"?

It's a terrible standard, but that's how you measure the work to be done, most of the detail on the big models is really a lot of copy paste.

No, that is NOT how you measure work to be done. It's an absolutely useless standard that has nothing to do with how complex or difficult to design a model is. In fact, if you tried to hire me based on that standard I'd tell you to STFU and stop wasting my time.

There is no real concern with titan's structure, you can pin them with 5mm steel rod and you could pose them in just any pose even with the very heavy resin, I don't think it's that much of a challenge for a pro sculptor tbh.

You know why? Because the person who sculpted the titan did a good job of designing it. Getting to a finished product that anyone with some pinning experience can pose and assemble takes skill and a lot of design work.

How much more proof do you need ?

Let's start with more than the zero proof that you've given so far.

Why believe a Titan costs 10K+ to sculpt and mold if the only reasonable examples point to 2-3 K ?

Because your "reasonable example" is based on a ridiculous assumption that a titan is only a little harder to sculpt than a 28mm character. You haven't actually provided any support for your $2-3k number, you've just assumed that it must be true.

Peregrine - or support for anything else theyve stated so far this thread.