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 Alpharius wrote:
So out of an announced 24 books from 3 years ago, only 2 have actually been released?

Two during the period the catalog covered (late 2012 and all of 2013) of the 20-24 (it was roughly two dozen) that were planned/advertised plus the 48 page booklet. I think they got out another 2-3(?) plus an art book in 2014. Another 2 from that list are scheduled to come out next month; both had their limited edition "rough" edits without any art, spell checking, or licensor approval sold at their on site convention but I don't count those first drafts for sale as separate books. Basically, if you add up all the books published in 2013, 2014, and anticipated so far for 2015 they won't be even halfway through their "to do" list from late 2012. Just think if CB delayed Acheron Falls another 2-5 years and you'll get that warm sort of palladium customer feeling.

 Alpharius wrote:
So out of an announced 24 books from 3 years ago, only 2 have actually been released?

And guess what paid for those RPG books...

Merijeek wrote:Except the Invid could be in metal. Which has a much, much lower startup cost.

And the same could have been said for all the special character models we are waiting on in wave 2. They could all have been resin and finished before the majority of wave 1, and substantially cheaper, but PB insist that they are going to be IP models of the same mouthwatering quality we have seen before. So how 'limited' is this 'limited quantity' going to be to pay for full metal moulds?

JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
So out of an announced 24 books from 3 years ago, only 2 have actually been released?

And guess what paid for those RPG books...

And a GUESS is all it would be. Seing as no-one here would ACTUALLY KNOW what PB's finances were prior to the KS, what they are today, and what their income has been in the meantime. As long as they have an accountant [and it's only a guess on my part that they have one, mind.] that can show that their income for the period was greater than any remaining costs on those books, your statement falls flat on it's face.

And they can run that any way you want. If you ask what paid for the books, it was their income from other sources. [The KS funds paid their services, their wages, and everything else.] You ask about their overheads, their income paid for that. [the KS paid their wages, and for the books.]

 mdauben wrote:

 Forar wrote:
I checked the night that the webstore option was first available, and they had the limited edition figures and the GHQ stuff. No Invid at the time.

They have a whole long list of UEDF and Zentradi stuff for their "Wave 2" to produce before they even start on the Invid. I would not expect anything for that faction until late 2016 at the very earilest. I'd say 2017 is more likely before we see any Invid.

Don't tell me that. Tell Palladium. They're the ones who suggested in the Big Not Wave Two Updates that Invid might land in 2015 (or early 2016).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/1256008

The Invid could be coming soon to our RRT Backers. If you want us to, we are also considering releasing the Invid, Inorganics and Regent, later this year (or early next year?), along with the stats and a scenario book so that you have the Regent’s Invid as a new faction to battle the Zentraedi. This would be separate from the New Generation/Invid Invasion story line.

So Wave Two is totally a priority, but first let's talk at length about all the random gak we want to get you to pay us for in advance (again) first...

Nope, nothing shady going on there. 6 updates in 12 days, not a word of new W2 info. Can't see any reason to be concerned. None at all.

Please, I pray to all that is holy, may the fanbase withhold their dollars so that PB is forced to tell us what is really going on.

Bringing new miniature product online before wave 2 sure is telling me they have some money to roll around, no worries here.

They are dead to me except for wave 2, I cannot reward bad behavior... not one more cent, I am done.

Another crazy thing about the new convention exclusives is that there aren't any prototype/sample pictures and they expect people to just pre-order them, sight unseen by July 15.

The really scary thing though is that I've worked on major software projects that seem to follow Palladium's management practices with rampant micromanagement and favouritism, critical issues not addressed or ignored, smoke & mirrors misdirection of clients, etc. I can't help but wonder if this is just the norm and well run projects are an aberration?

 Talizvar wrote:
Please, I pray to all that is holy, may the fanbase withhold their dollars so that PB is forced to tell us what is really going on.

Bringing new miniature product online before wave 2 sure is telling me they have some money to roll around, no worries here.

They are dead to me except for wave 2, I cannot reward bad behavior... not one more cent, I am done.

The funny thing is that they've blown any sort of faith so badly that I think at this point only the true believers will do that.

I would have loooooooooooooooooooved to get some New Generation stuff. I actually like it as much as the Macross stuff.

But now? If I did want some...why the hell would I preorder? I'll get them the same time, if not sooner, and quite possibly cheaper, if I just order from CSI or MM.

Well.........I did JG52
JG2
One more squadron to go and its a work in progress
Work in progress besides working on another squad of Blood Spirit to my SM force

So lets see them squads

I certainly hope that trio of browncoats are malcontents!

Only sensible, assuming they aim to misbehave.

 warboss wrote:

Morgan Vening wrote:

At least they appear to have remained conservative with GenCon, it being the same size as last year. 2013, they had twice the booth size, and that drek ain't cheap.

I was under the impression that last year's booth was the mega sized but empty one (due to the trailer being stopped by customs). Two years ago I thought they had the normal sized booth with little demo night stand tables (at bar table height) but IIRC they doubled the booth size anticipating the gencon sales last year (months before the infamous vote that ratified the decision they already made).

I don't think so. Last year was the vertical (on the Gencon Exhibition map, similar to if not exactly 1129). The year before was I think similar to 923 running adjacent to the FFG booth, where they had a big border of tables with RRT on the west* side, and the RPG stuff on the east* side. Cause that was the only year I spent any appreciable time there, trying (and failing) to get answers regarding the VEF/1D situation. And that's when I remember going past at least a half dozen times, seeing one guy demoing RRT (with a reasonable crowd around him), one person dealing with the RPG's, and the remaining staff/volunteers sitting in a circle in the centre, chatting. It was definitely not a good look.

* West and east from the perspective of the map. The map's been rotated 180 degrees, with the Art Show actually being on the southern edge of the dealer's hall.

Don't forget the huge empty space in the middle where they had anticipated storing several pallets of RRT boxes.

Morgan Vening wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Morgan Vening wrote:

At least they appear to have remained conservative with GenCon, it being the same size as last year. 2013, they had twice the booth size, and that drek ain't cheap.

I was under the impression that last year's booth was the mega sized but empty one (due to the trailer being stopped by customs). Two years ago I thought they had the normal sized booth with little demo night stand tables (at bar table height) but IIRC they doubled the booth size anticipating the gencon sales last year (months before the infamous vote that ratified the decision they already made).

I don't think so. Last year was the vertical (on the Gencon Exhibition map, similar to if not exactly 1129). The year before was I think similar to 923 running adjacent to the FFG booth, where they had a big border of tables with RRT on the west* side, and the RPG stuff on the east* side. Cause that was the only year I spent any appreciable time there, trying (and failing) to get answers regarding the VEF/1D situation. And that's when I remember going past at least a half dozen times, seeing one guy demoing RRT (with a reasonable crowd around him), one person dealing with the RPG's, and the remaining staff/volunteers sitting in a circle in the centre, chatting. It was definitely not a good look.

* West and east from the perspective of the map. The map's been rotated 180 degrees, with the Art Show actually being on the southern edge of the dealer's hall.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=703:palladium-booksr-weekly-update-january-17-2014&catid=52:weekly-updates&Itemid=183

Join the Gen Con Palladium Team NOW – Gen Con Indy, August 14-17, 2014

Palladium is pulling out all the stops for the 2014 Gen Con Indy. We’ll have a larger exhibitor booth, special display, tons of product, many Palladium creators to sign books, and lots and lots of gaming events.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=698:palladium-booksr-weekly-update-december-13-2013&catid=52:weekly-updates&Itemid=183

Palladium is planning to make the 2014 Gen Con® Indy its biggest and best in decades. Our booth will be twice the size it was this year, and we’ll have the Robotech® RPG Tactics™ game and expansion packs, as well as many new RPG products.

They basically went all out last year because they were expecting pallets of stuff to sell at gencon (you know... the stuff that should have been going to us instead) and ended up with a big empty booth. If they've got the same big booth this year as last year's double sized one, I guess they're doubling down on selling that wave 1 stuff and limited edition metals.

 warboss wrote:
They basically went all out last year because they were expecting pallets of stuff to sell at gencon (you know... the stuff that should have been going to us instead) and ended up with a big empty booth. If they've got the same big booth this year as last year's double sized one, I guess they're doubling down on selling that wave 1 stuff and limited edition metals.

Went looking, and it appears you're correct. 2013, booth 1025, 2014, booth 1223. Maybe it was just lack of content in 2013 that made the smaller booth seem larger? I distinctly remembered that the entire edge closest to Fantasy Flight was mostly empty tables. Whereas last year, they had it much more spread, with the extra RRT content and the bigger game table.

But otherwise, I was wrong, and you were right. I know I'm not supposed to say that, this being the internet and all. But whatevs. Though I do think you need to be careful about using quotes from Kevin as "evidence". That's got the potential to bite you in the donkey.

Don't forget according to Kevin it also cost him 20k doing the gencon thing.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
Don't forget according to Kevin it also cost him 20k doing the gencon thing.

That honestly sounds about right. Its around $4k for us to do Gen Con (Booth, Crew, Travel, Misc Expenses), and that's just a single 10x10 booth.

I feel like those guys in the middle of the gencon booth with no product feeling shorted on money while having RPG stuff being fluffed up.

Morgan Vening wrote:

But otherwise, I was wrong, and you were right. I know I'm not supposed to say that, this being the internet and all. But whatevs. Though I do think you need to be careful about using quotes from Kevin as "evidence". That's got the potential to bite you in the donkey.

No worries and I appreciate it. I just remembered that they made such a big deal about it which was doubly ironic when they had nothing to fill that space beyond a Robotech order form on a table. Out of curiosity, do you travel from Australia to gencon every year? That's a heck of a gaming pilgirmage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Cypher-xv wrote:
Don't forget according to Kevin it also cost him 20k doing the gencon thing.

That I don't remember him saying but I believe you.. and I wouldn't be surprised if the lion's share was expensed on the ol' Robotech account despite the fact that they had nothing to sell there.

 warboss wrote:

Morgan Vening wrote:

But otherwise, I was wrong, and you were right. I know I'm not supposed to say that, this being the internet and all. But whatevs. Though I do think you need to be careful about using quotes from Kevin as "evidence". That's got the potential to bite you in the donkey.

No worries and I appreciate it. I just remembered that they made such a big deal about it which was doubly ironic when they had nothing to fill that space beyond a Robotech order form on a table. Out of curiosity, do you travel from Australia to gencon every year? That's a heck of a gaming pilgirmage.

Well, they did have the bigger gaming table (other than the 2' circulars), and a display area for the sprues and box display etc. Also didn't help my memory that I spent little time there, and actually missed it twice walking through. A friend pointed out that we'd walked past it, and I hadn't realized it. That may have contributed to me THINKING it was smaller.

As for the pilgrimage, started in 2004, missed 2005 (changed jobs and didn't have enough vacation time with the new), missed 2009 (bough and moved into the new house), but otherwise have been every year. Depending on transfers, it's anywhere from 23-33 hours each way. Usually get in the week before, and spend time with close friends living local to Indy, so I do get enough time to fully acclimatize before GC starts. After it finishes, I'm usually too beat to give a crap on the way home, and it's three days before I'm back to work. From what I can gather from past years, there's at least three other people who travel further (one from Adelaide, two from Perth). For Perth, add at least another 5-6 hours to those times. Bleh.

@Morgan: You're a dedicated gamer, that's for sure! I used to dread the 3 hour drive to Indy back when I used to go to gencon myself.

@Forar:

Uh, Rick? Cyclones are surprisingly tough for their size. I know it was reduced from like 200/250'ish in 1st edition to 150'ish in second, but I'm reasonably certain they're still significantly tougher than Battlepods (especially with that auto-dodge) in the RPG, and thus, should similarly be hard to kill in RRT (as the math for the latter is derived from the former).

Mike toned them down a bit and raised their defense to signify being harder to hit, and they don't move terribly fast/pack much of a punch compared to actual Destroids, but they're not 'glance at it and it dies' quite yet.

I'm at work so I don't have my books on hand (and they're 1st ed anyway), but no, they're really not as vulnerable as you'd think.

From the KS comments but I'm not logged in and don't remember my password at the moment. Ironically, battle pods get an autododge as well in the RPG rules. In fact, almost very mecha in macross gets it. Somehow, the initial forays by the earthlings into understanding robotechnology as well as the cheap disposable crap mecha given to cheap disposable crap soldiers like the zentraedi frequently have autododges... but the more advanced stuff the masters kept to themselves as well as the smaller, lighter, and more advanced REF veritechs don't. Yes, the 50-70ft zentraedi mecha are able to autododge whereas the alpha can't. Also, the standard battlepod, despite not actually being able to fly in an atmosphere at all, is 3x faster than any of the southern cross veritechs (Mach 9 versus Mach 2-3) in space that can fly in the atmosphere. It probably would have been up to twice as fast as the alpha/beta or VF-1 had palladium bothered to give them space flying stats.. which they didn't. And then there is the 25 year issue of tracking velocity using the speed of sound in a vacuum in which sound literally does not exist. The ridiculousness of the cyclone is only the icing on the cake. Somehow, when Palladium only had to keep track of TWO books, they couldn't get cohesive stat progression between macross and the shadow chronicles.

The guy who wrote Macross couldn't be bothered to see how his stats related to the only previously published book (Shadow Chronicles) and just did his own thing after spending too much time trying to model an anime space transforming robot force exactly like cold war US military stuff and Kevin Siembieda apparently couldn't be bothered to check it either despite micromanaging everything else because who cares about actual rules, right? That vermilion squadron thing I keep harping about in tactics? Yup, can't do it in the RPG either because 4 man flight wings. But hey, you have a complete list of military ranks along with alphanumerical codes for each... but no space combat stats for half the mecha.

I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy to get KS backers upgrading from the Macross-era stuff they already paid for. Need the better, newer stuff, and lots of it! $$$

Ah, I'd forgotten about other things with an auto-dodge. I haven't actually read the book cover to cover in over a decade, usually just pull it out to reference something from the KS discussion. Thanks for the reminder on that one, Warboss.

But I'm not crazy on the MDC stats, am I? Didn't you or someone say Cyclones got toned down from the 200 range (might've been 250 with enhancement from Rifts: Conversion Book 1) to the 100-150'ish range? And I could swear Battlepods were more like 50.

Because that's still a considerable bump in resilence for something 7 feet tall compared to something 50 or 60 feet tall (or however big BP's are, at work, no books, not googling that gak for a friendly chat, no matter how exacting some purists (not you) require ever single stat to be).

Also I'm glad I never bought that Shadow Chronicles book. It sounds like a real piece of work.

You're correct about the stats. IIRC the original cyclone battlers and sabers had either 200 or 250mdc (then another 50 for the pilot's body armor) and the pods were 50. They've toned that down a bit by increasing the pod MDC and decreasing the AVERAGE cyclone MDC but the most common cyclone (the 50 series battlers and beyond) are still 200-250 for a 7ft tall armor that doesn't even cover half the pilot (things like thighs are still sticking out) and the pilot's body armor is now significantly more which results in the end only a minor improvement in that regard (VF-1 total MDC to cyclone's). Ironically, palladium could have used their old pre-robotech AC (armor class) rules to account for that partial armor coverage.

Just a footnote, the autododge for most macross stuff and about a third of the southern cross stuff is ONLY a thing in the new rpgs, not the old. Ironically, the old stats were more cohesive than the new stuff in that regard (although the MD and MDCs were still odd frequently). Admittedly, though it was because they came up with the autododge rule for the first time specifically for the cyclone IIRC as I don't remember anything having it in macross or southern cross (although I might be wrong there). The obvious candidate of the Female Power armor definitely didn't nor did the supermaneuverable invid fighter bioroids. The southern cross stuff though did have a half way step where you could instead parry alot of stuff without using an attack with their big arm shields though.

The RPG stats are terrible for some things. I think the auto-dodge amounted to the +1 DF for the Pods giving them a DF of 6 and the FPA has Hover which, ironically, has nothing to do with Hovering. It's a -1 to strike for faster units.

Looking at the RPG though, 1st Edition the GU-11 could do D6x10 and a Pod could take 50. Now the GU-11 does 2D6X10 and the Pod can take 125. Which, in the end makes no sense that ANY units would need to be hit that many times to kill it. The Pods do 8D10 and a VT can take something like 350. So it takes 4 full damage shots to kill a VT. More like 8 normal shots. The RPG never represented the cartoon well. Most mini games do not. Just like that one Space Marine that can save on a 6 and live forever even when hit by a nuke.

Since RRT is under the umbrella of the RPG I'm trying to do the best I can to provide some balancing out. The cyclones taking way too much is just one thing. What about the Invid with their arm shields that can take a crap ton of damage? The arm shields on a Hovertank can take something like 600! We work with what we got. That is the best we can do unless someone is willing to deviate more from the books.

Ha, I like that last line Mike.

"PALLADIUM BOOKS® WEEKLY UPDATE - 2015-06-25 15:35"

Guess what is says about wave 2?

Only that the Micronian forces they are intending to publish will have no impact on Wave 2.
Copy-paste from last time.

So, think it official now they are not going to say a word about wave 2 till the guessed date arrives.

I think I should unsubscribe from this spam littering my inbox.

I need to log into kickstarter more.

Not just that, Talizvar! They have gone on, at length, that WE, the fans, WITH CAPITALS and bold letters and BOLD CAPITALS, can get in on this incredible offer, where for a mere $42, they will send us a strangely specific $84-92 worth of assorted random gak laying around the warehouse, in an effort to convert existing product into cold hard cash, which is no way feeding into the ongoing narrative that they are flat fething broke.

So there'll be an 11 day sale, and other single day or weekend sales! Who wants to bet that some of US, THE FaNs who ask for Robotech RPG Tactics™ will get a whopping $100 worth of product, in the form of a core box, in no way indicating that those are still wasting space in the warehouse and in dire need of returning to hard currency?!

Sorry, no autographs, meaning even those who want a personal connection to this company (for some reason) have to beg really convincingly to get even that modicum of personal touch!

Holy feth is this this excruciating.

But don't forget!

The Cost: $42.00 plus shipping and handling (usually another $10-$15), approximately $52-$60 total for most purchasers in the USA, about $15-$20 more to Canada. Shipping overseas is two or three times the cost to Canada.

You hear that! In order to get a minimum of $84 in product, US folks should pay up to 3/4 of that cost, and us Fans and Friends and FAN FRIENDS should pay up to... err, $80. And ROW can go feth itself, what idiot pays "1/2 MSRP" and then like $60 in shipping?

For $80 US, I can get, like, 6+ PB books mailed to me through Amazon.

No, it's not entirely fair to compare a *small company* like PB to a goliath like Amazon, but damn, that's just begging for charity at this point. As a consumer, it's not remotely a good deal for anyone but US 'fans'.

But it is a chance to feel that personal touch about PB.
Since it is in such short supply to enter a dialogue on Wave2.

You know how Kevin gets all paternal over his fan-friends?
I feel the same way where I want to save him from himself and us from him.

This is NOT rocket science and I would know because I was in aerospace "Will build rockets and missiles for food." Is my favorite T-shirt, theirs are lame in comparison. I made my own low melt metal gravity molds for fun for freaking sake, these guys pain me.

So yes, just like a good ebay scammer, mark-up the shipping costs cause you gotta make a buck: daddy needs a new set of molds out of china.

These aren't KS updates, are they?

Where are they being posted?

 Alpharius wrote:
These aren't KS updates, are they?
Where are they being posted?

We first see them in direct emails to KS backers.
Their main website have it on their main page as well:
http://www.palladiumbooks.com/
So you too can tune into the soap opera that is PB.