Robotech® RPG Tactics™-License lost, the end is near!

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**CaptKaruthors**

Wow, are you a arse on purpose or does it just come naturally? You probably need to step back a bit and think before you respond. Hell, man, I even told you I wasn't on the Bash the Cap bus and you come at me like that...wow. Moving beyond you, oh so subtly, insinuating that I'm an uneducated twit I will respond;

I'm not insinuating anything. If you think that way, I'm sorry.

No, I in fact did not know of PB's release schedule issues, how could I have? The interesting games produced by them I already owned; TMNT, Robotech, and the PBRPG. I have no interest in Rifts or any other offering by them so my knowledge was limited to the fact that they produced the only Robotech-centric table-top game.

Their lateness and constant delays extended well past Rifts in to their other games systems. If you were buying the books at the time you probably dealt with it and either you forgot..or it didn't quite impact you the way this KS did. I'm not saying your an uneducated twit. Those are your words. Not mine. People tend to forget things they experienced. It happens.

Once you own every source book and core book there is no reason to pay attention to the company. I didn't bother with the second edition stuff, my books were bought back in the early 90s and still worked fine.

This part I don't understand..I too own "every source book and core book" but they still make books for all those game systems you described. I guess I'm guilty of following what they've been doing more closely than others. Again, you aren't an uneducated twit.

The Kickstarter project led me to believe that a separate company was handling miniature design and production and PB were just the money and IP, not the managers. With those facts in hand I happily paid out to have the only Robotech based war game ever produced added to my collection. The information provided during the campaign led people to believe that design of the product was already near completion and delivery would be on time.

And this is where my outlook differs from yours at the onset of the Robotech project. Once I knew that PB and to a lesser extent HG had their hands on the management and money part...I opted out. Never in PBs history has there been a successful partnership with another company. Not one. So I'm sorry that you were mislead into doing the KS when perhaps if you knew about their track record with working with a partner you would have not done it. The level of involvement of who was suppose to be responsible for what parts was/has never really been communicated to us. We've only heard PB's side of the story. ND has decided to stay mum on the subject..even going so far as to not even make mention of this game on their own website, etc. I guess we'll never know. What I do know is that PB has never once demonstrated a successful partnership in any joint project they've done.

When there were delays I was annoyed, but I'm a Kickstarter vet and just last month received delivery of a project that ran a year over past the due date. Now let me tell you why I'm not upset at that project;

They didn't lie to me.

There were updates on a regular schedule. The project creator made videos showing the current status. There were receipts shown proving the money was spent on the intended product. When there was a hiccup the backers were informed within days. If PB gave half a whit they would have done half as much and kept me loyal and quiet. Due to the repeated promises of a comprehensive update soon, without any pretense of actual delivery of said update, the company has turned me against them. I'm now vocal, I'm angry, I want updates on schedule and relevant to the project's current status. I do not subscribe to the weekly adletter so the last time I saw an update on the project officially and according to the Kickstarter TOS was 06OCT15 and that was a rules revision.

And you have every right to be angry. I don't like it either. I want updates to. The only thing I can tell you is that they did in fact complete their obligations to other crowd sourced projects...with the regular PB delays. Yes it's taking long, yes they haven't kept a realistic schedule. But they did deliver the product to their backers at the time. That's the best I can tell you. If PB doesn't deliver on wave 2 and whatever, I'll be the first to say I was wrong.

I don't want PB to go out of business. I want the figures I paid for. You can go ahead and enjoy playing with your group, I'm glad you have people who want to play. My intent was to run the game with my kids, but that's pretty hard when half the figures haven't been delivered. It's like playing chess without your queen, one rook, and two pawns. Can you do it? Certainly! The amount of strategy you have available to you is sorely limited, but you could play.

I understand your point. Believe me, I'd like to play with Gnerls as any space battle you play right now is heavily weighted towards the UEDF.

I would like to add that if you can't respond to me without insult(I consider us even now that I've sent that earlier jibe your way) then I respectfully request you respond to the thread in general instead of me personally.[/quoite]

This is my last response to you. I have no issues with you and I think i've said all I can in regards to your post.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lynx7725 wrote:
Snort. I read the update and went meh.

Think about it from a production perspective. PB said they have been talking to their broker or their manufacturer on the parts. Some issues here and there. And now PB is saying that they took a hiatus to work on other product lines?

Seriously, which plastic manufacturer would be willing to sit idly by waiting for PB for a few weeks? They would be pursuing other lines of work to keep their production running efficiently. If PB takes a break for a few weeks and not keep pushing the manufacturer, their "slot" would get taken out of the chain and pushed back, leading to a knock on effect of delays. Q2 2016 would be a generous estimate.

If I took the PB mentality to my work, my boss would have crucified AND fired me years ago. These guys are incredibly out of touch.

Agreed. However, theymay have switch factories that has capacity to do their project. We simply don't know. Most factories I deal with in China right now are clamoring for booking space before Chinese new year...so we have something in the pipeline before then. This will allow my company to see first samples by Jan 1. For items requiring tooling...it may be a little longer. However, our delivery date for this stuff is Summer of 2016.

**Forar**

Even with the "it would be ideal" bit of wiggle room, it does seem like they're putting a good chunk of eggs in that Q2 basket.

As I noted above, it'd give them something new to hopefully hock at Gencon, and even if they went with a discount again they'd still be getting more from sales than wholesale.

I'm going to guess it'll be their biggest opportunity to earn the best profit per unit of the year. It'll be about Hype(tm) and Buzz(c) and Taking Advantage Of So Many Anime Nerds In One Place For Four Days(r).

Note, I'm simply recognizing that it's a prime time to WANT to have things on hand. I am by NO MEANS stating that they'll actually pull it off. Simply recognizing that IF they were going to take the plunge (go get a loan, do a giant firesale to turn every last book and mousepad they can into hard cash, beg the Fan Friends for donations, whatever), that would be it.

If they miss Gencon, there's no reason to rush until Black Friday 4 months later, and if that's the case then RoW might be waiting well into 2017, as we saw with wave 1's shenanigans.

This stuff isn't done in a vacuum, it's not like they'll punch out tens of thousands of sprues and have them just appear in the warehouse, there's lead time; factory slot booked, molds milled (and I'm not in plastics production, but two dozen'ish molds seems like a lot of work, especially with the revisions they did in wave 1), shipping to arrange, etc, etc. Not a comprehensive list by any means, but until they start lining up things like that firmly, believing the hot air they spout just isn't sensible.

Again to look at wave 1; they were taking short solicit pre-orders roughly half a year before the December 2013 target. If they aren't reaching out to distributors/retailers by the end of the year, we can already pretty firmly call shenanigans on their Q2 target.

As much as they don't want to say anything, we have come to see that what they don't say, or what they say to others, can be just as important. Whether they want to give us firm dates or not, Alliance Distributions and other shops/companies have a need to know, and so the cat will be out of the bag eventually.

**CaptKaruthors**

Sining wrote:

Yes, this has happened before. With both Rifts: Lemuria and Northern Gun books. Guess what? Those books finally came out and the people that crowd sourced them got their books. So if anything, there is precedence that they will in fact deliver a wave

It's a lot easier to write a RPG source book than it is to manufacture wave 2 in hard plastic. I mean seriously, is that your best comparison? What a joke

Lolz. with the delays and the staffing problems they have? Writing those books took longer. Lemuria was pitched back in the late 90's and early 00's. It was finally completed via crowdsourcing several years ago. Lemuria took a while. Northern Gun was suppose to be one book..then became two. That also took a long time. My point is that everything PB does is delayed. But the precedence of delivering to backers is on the record. If you weren't around during that time you wouldn't know how long it took. It was painfully long. So the comparison remains. Does it make it right? No. It didn't then...and it doesn't now. However, people are assuming that wave 2 will never get completed. I'm saying...never say never unless there is irrefutable proof...of which..there isn't. So I guess I'm left with waiting and seeing like I had to with those other books.

**Asterios**

Lynx7725 wrote:
Just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, can someone summarize how and why ND was cut out of the picture? I wasn't paying attention at that point in time.

ND was not cut out of the picture, they were hired to do the designs and they have been done with that job since last year (yeah PB has been sitting on the wave 2 designs for a year), once ND's job was done their contract with PB was over and was not going to be renewed.

**winterdyne**

Lynx7725 wrote:
Just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, can someone summarize how and why ND was cut out of the picture? I wasn't paying attention at that point in time.

There's been no official statement from either firm on the matter.

As far as I can tell, ND's responsibility ended with the initial design work - the virtual sculpts - the majority of which appear to have been completed prior to the KS campaign. They've certainly not been notably involved in any way since the closure of the campaign.

It is unclear as to whether this extended to delivering production-ready files that could be used for milling, or if the delivered files were intended for a specific factory which for some reason PB didn't use.

It is unclear when ND's part was paid for or where the funds for that came from - presumably the KS campaign.

Edit:

Even to have a manufacturing slot booked for Q2 would mean that a substantial portion of the plastic Wave 2 models are ready to go - sprue layouts finalised, test shots done and tweaking of the milling / polishing underway.

Resin production of the pieces needed is likely to take several months, so you should take it as read that the master sculpts for all of those should be ready right now.

It is highly unlikely that Q2 will happen.

**Asterios**

Forar wrote:
Again to look at wave 1; they were taking short solicit pre-orders roughly half a year before the December 2013 target. If they aren't reaching out to distributors/retailers by the end of the year, we can already pretty firmly call shenanigans on their Q2 target.

actually wave 1 stuff was on pre-order about a year before it actually was released.

winterdyne wrote:
Lynx7725 wrote:
Just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, can someone summarize how and why ND was cut out of the picture? I wasn't paying attention at that point in time.

There's been no official statement from either firm on the matter.

As far as I can tell, ND's responsibility ended with the initial design work - the virtual sculpts - the majority of which appear to have been completed prior to the KS campaign. They've certainly not been notably involved in any way since the closure of the campaign.

It is unclear as to whether this extended to delivering production-ready files that could be used for milling, or if the delivered files were intended for a specific factory which for some reason PB didn't use.

It is unclear when ND's part was paid for or where the funds for that came from - presumably the KS campaign.

Edit:

Even to have a manufacturing slot booked for Q2 would mean that a substantial portion of the plastic Wave 2 models are ready to go - sprue layouts finalised, test shots done and tweaking of the milling / polishing underway.

Resin production of the pieces needed is likely to take several months, so you should take it as read that the master sculpts for all of those should be ready right now.

It is highly unlikely that Q2 will happen.

actually it is clear ND had posted on their site in response to a query to them what their job description was and that they were done, this was over a year ago, and ND posted that shortly after Wayne said he and Ninja John were still working on the designs, so odds are PB has ND in a NDA which also prevents ND from telling us the whole story, but they can get their point accross legally thru allaying the truth that can be told.

**CaptKaruthors**

Forar wrote:
Even with the "it would be ideal" bit of wiggle room, it does seem like they're putting a good chunk of eggs in that Q2 basket.

As I noted above, it'd give them something new to hopefully hock at Gencon, and even if they went with a discount again they'd still be getting more from sales than wholesale.

I'm going to guess it'll be their biggest opportunity to earn the best profit per unit of the year. It'll be about Hype(tm) and Buzz(c) and Taking Advantage Of So Many Anime Nerds In One Place For Four Days(r).

Note, I'm simply recognizing that it's a prime time to WANT to have things on hand. I am by NO MEANS stating that they'll actually pull it off. Simply recognizing that IF they were going to take the plunge (go get a loan, do a giant firesale to turn every last book and mousepad they can into hard cash, beg the Fan Friends for donations, whatever), that would be it.

If they miss Gencon, there's no reason to rush until Black Friday 4 months later, and if that's the case then RoW might be waiting well into 2017, as we saw with wave 1's shenanigans.

This stuff isn't done in a vacuum, it's not like they'll punch out tens of thousands of sprues and have them just appear in the warehouse, there's lead time; factory slot booked, molds milled (and I'm not in plastics production, but two dozen'ish molds seems like a lot of work, especially with the revisions they did in wave 1), shipping to arrange, etc, etc. Not a comprehensive list by any means, but until they start lining up things like that firmly, believing the hot air they spout just isn't sensible.

Again to look at wave 1; they were taking short solicit pre-orders roughly half a year before the December 2013 target. If they aren't reaching out to distributors/retailers by the end of the year, we can already pretty firmly call shenanigans on their Q2 target.

As much as they don't want to say anything, we have come to see that what they don't say, or what they say to others, can be just as important. Whether they want to give us firm dates or not, Alliance Distributions and other shops/companies have a need to know, and so the cat will be out of the bag eventually.

Agreed. The time to get this thing done is now. My work is booking with china factories right now to get samples before Chinese New Year. If they switch production methods...they may have a chance at hitting Q2. Who knows. But your assessment is spot on.

**CaulynDarr**

I think it's pretty safe to say the ND made some rookie mistakes when designing the miniatures for HIPS plastic production.

Not an insurmountable problem, but it probably required Palladium to manage the resolution. They would have either had to pay ND to re-design the figures, get a more expensive factory, and no matter what deal with another round of HG licensing approvals. To Palladium it probably went from being a push button money maker to actual work, and it looks like work is their kryptonite.

**Forar**

Asterios wrote:
Forar wrote:
Again to look at wave 1; they were taking short solicit pre-orders roughly half a year before the December 2013 target. If they aren't reaching out to distributors/retailers by the end of the year, we can already pretty firmly call shenanigans on their Q2 target.

actually wave 1 stuff was on pre-order about a year before it actually was released.

**Asterios**

Forar wrote:
Asterios wrote:
Forar wrote:
Again to look at wave 1; they were taking short solicit pre-orders roughly half a year before the December 2013 target. If they aren't reaching out to distributors/retailers by the end of the year, we can already pretty firmly call shenanigans on their Q2 target.

actually wave 1 stuff was on pre-order about a year before it actually was released.

Read what I said again.

The short solicit pre orders happened half a year before it was originally due, June/July 2013 as I recall.

I'm not talking about the pre-orders on their website, I'm talking about when they started reaching out to retailers through Alliance Distributions to line up who wanted how much of what, or so is my understanding of the system. That's not about consumers, it's about gauging interest with retailers.

There's no 'ummm, actually' about it, we're talking about two entirely different things.

no I was talking about pre-orders thru other sites, other companies and retailers were taking pre-orders a year before it ever came out, and PB's dropping the ball there kind of pissed off the wholesalers and such.

**Forar**

Asterios wrote:
no I was talking about pre-orders thru other sites, other companies and retailers were taking pre-orders a year before it ever came out, and PB's dropping the ball there kind of pissed off the wholesalers and such.

Again, you're talking about "a year before it came out", I'm talking about "before the original target date", they are two different things.

Yes, Miniature Market and CSI and Meeplemart and some others had the products listed long before they started hitting shelves in Nov 2014.

I'm still not talking about that. It's great you want to bring that up, but the way you worded it you seemed to be correcting me. If that's not the case and you're adding onto my statement rather than correcting, we need to be clearer in how we communicate or this relationship simply isn't going to work.

**Asterios**

Forar wrote:
Asterios wrote:
no I was talking about pre-orders thru other sites, other companies and retailers were taking pre-orders a year before it ever came out, and PB's dropping the ball there kind of pissed off the wholesalers and such.

Again, you're talking about "a year before it came out", I'm talking about "before the original target date", they are two different things.

Yes, Miniature Market and CSI and Meeplemart and some others had the products listed long before they started hitting shelves in Nov 2014.

I'm still not talking about that. It's great you want to bring that up, but the way you worded it you seemed to be correcting me. If that's not the case and you're adding onto my statement rather than correcting, we need to be clearer in how we communicate or this relationship simply isn't going to work.

I was going from the retailer perspective since they start taking pre-orders when they can start taking preorders and such or shortly thereafter and yes some of them were taking them out before Dec. of 2013 for wave 1, funny thing is nothing for wave 2, so either the wholesalers will not touch this with a 10 foot pole or even PB knows wave 2 is not coming out anytime in the next year or so if ever and are not even offering pre-orders, which makes sense that if Pb is just stalling for the backers to grow apathy and never deliver wave 2, they would not offer an imaginative wave to retailers since retailers will take them to court.

cause lets face it, if PB even thought they would have wave 2 out sometime within a year they would already be offering pre-orders.

**Forar**

Right, which is exactly what I'm getting at; they DID offer up SSPO's for wave 1 six months before the original expected delivery target. If we're 8 months from the next expected completion (note: see my previous commentary on the vagueness of just what state of actual completion they might or might not mean), then in theory they should be sending out SSPO's for wave 2 stuff in the coming months. They can waffle about what is and isn't being done all they like, if they want SCI and MinMar and MeeMar and TWS and various B&M stores to order up stuff, they need to reach out to them, or at least tell AD that they might want to start figuring out who wants what.

Since we haven't heard from AD yet (and with this many nerds involved, *someone* will hear about it eventually), it stands to reason that we're not even close. They can be silent to us all they like, they can't be silent to their own distribution network.

Thus, we can continue to take every date they give with massive doses of salt until someone pops in and can verifiably indicate that the distribution machine is moving into action.

Which, looking at wave one again, might not mean squat. I'm also NOT saying that "oh, once the SSPO's go out, we're close to done", I'm saying that until it happens, PB's full of gak about how close they are to production/delivery.

What they actually achieve in the months following SSPO's remains to be seen. Maybe they make it, maybe they don't. But until they make at least some cursory efforts with distribution, it's all hot air. With distributors in action (and potentially money lined up for advertising, which we know they're tight on), at least there'll be evidence they themselves (their often delusional selves) actually believe the gak they're saying, rather than simply telling us what they think we want to hear.

Every time they say "oh, it'll be in just a few more months", sure it buys them that time (lol, not really), but it also only stretches belief so far when we cross into a few months away from that and they haven't even begun the process.

**Asterios**

Forar wrote:
Right, which is exactly what I'm getting at; they DID offer up SSPO's for wave 1 six months before the original expected delivery target. If we're 8 months from the next expected completion (note: see my previous commentary on the vagueness of just what state of actual completion they might or might not mean), then in theory they should be sending out SSPO's for wave 2 stuff in the coming months. They can waffle about what is and isn't being done all they like, if they want SCI and MinMar and MeeMar and TWS and various B&M stores to order up stuff, they need to reach out to them, or at least tell AD that they might want to start figuring out who wants what.

Since we haven't heard from AD yet (and with this many nerds involved, *someone* will hear about it eventually), it stands to reason that we're not even close. They can be silent to us all they like, they can't be silent to their own distribution network.

Thus, we can continue to take every date they give with massive doses of salt until someone pops in and can verifiably indicate that the distribution machine is moving into action.

Which, looking at wave one again, might not mean squat. I'm also NOT saying that "oh, once the SSPO's go out, we're close to done", I'm saying that until it happens, PB's full of gak about how close they are to production/delivery.

What they actually achieve in the months following SSPO's remains to be seen. Maybe they make it, maybe they don't. But until they make at least some cursory efforts with distribution, it's all hot air. With distributors in action (and potentially money lined up for advertising, which we know they're tight on), at least there'll be evidence they themselves (their often delusional selves) actually believe the gak they're saying, rather than simply telling us what they think we want to hear.

Every time they say "oh, it'll be in just a few more months", sure it buys them that time (lol, not really), but it also only stretches belief so far when we cross into a few months away from that and they haven't even begun the process.

yeah like i said the fact they have not even started doing pre-orders for the wholesellers even says, PB is nowhere close to being done and their actual release date is at least a year away. if not more if ever.

all PB is doing is stalling for time till all the backers have grown apathetic towards this project and just given up. they will continue to do this over and over and over again and people like Capt. Karuthers who excuses PB for doing this saying its how they "roll" are just the reason why PB continues to get away with this, well the buck stops here.

**JohnHwangDD**

Lynx7725 wrote:
Just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, can someone summarize how and why ND was cut out of the picture? I wasn't paying attention at that point in time.

There is a rather long, involved pair of Updates in which Palladium throws Ninja Division under the bus:

As it turned out, none of us at Palladium Books nor Ninja Division were truly prepared for EVERYTHING to come.

Here’s just one simple example. The first container of RRT games is about to ship from China in July of 2014. As in, it will be ready to ship in 10 days. We are happy as can be. We assumed Ninja Division would handle the importing as Palladium has NO experience in this whatsoever and had informed them of this. Or if not ND, the Manufacturing Broker that Ninja Division brought in on this project. So we were left dazed and scrambling, again, when the Ninjas told us, “Sorry, you need to deal with this directly and on your own. We can’t help you, because we don’t know this stuff either and you need to take care of all the paperwork, we can’t do it for you.” They couldn’t recommend a broker, either; presumably because this end of the business was new to them too. When we asked ND if the Manufacturing Broker could handle it for us, they said, no. We later learned that the company could have done it, but apparently ND didn’t know that at the time.

That’s where Ninja Division came in. We spoke with a number of people as we moved forward to make Robotech® game pieces, but after speaking with John Cadice of Soda Pop Miniatures (and soon after, Kai, David and other members of the team that would become Ninja Division), we felt we had found the right group of people to make this game happen. They were supremely confident, smart, and self-professed Robotech® fans eager to embrace a project like this. The quality of the products they had produced themselves and in concert with other game publishers was excellent. Super Dungeon Explore was a hot new release at the time, Helldorado was another, and Relic Knights was being developed and looked fabulous. Both Carmen Bellaire and Tom Roache were ecstatic over the choice to work with these guys to make Robotech® RPG Tactics™. Everyone we spoke to, including distributors and industry people, agreed that Soda Pop Miniatures and Cipher Studios were the right choice to team up with. These guys certainly had the anime style down. Everyone seemed to have positive feedback about these “impressive new guys.” We liked them and liked what they had to say. They explained they had the knowledge, the experience and were ready to start work immediately. We just had to trust them. We did, so we took the plunge.

It was on!

Ninja Division got to work. Palladium Books ponied up $40,000 to get the ball rolling. It was a risk, because if the Kickstarter flopped, we’d be screwed. ND got the 3D sculptors sculpting, the game design and writing into development, key art and packaging into production, and other pre-production elements rockin’ and rollin’. Lacking experience with 3D sculpting and manufacturing in China, Palladium felt it wise to leave most of the technical decisions up to Ninja Division, with Palladium approving sculpts, artwork, packaging, etc., before it would be sent to Harmony Gold for final approval. The game rules we developed together, as we had very strong ideas about what the game needed to be, and what Robotech® fans wanted.
The Kickstarter

The guys at Ninja Division had the technical knowhow, the connections and the people to help Palladium make this product, now all we needed was the money to do it. And that was a problem.

When we started to get serious about Robotech® RPG Tactics™, talks naturally segued into how do we afford all this? Ninja Division estimated the cost to be between $550,000 and $900,000 to make the game and expansion packs we all wanted to see made. And not just enough to provide to the Kickstarter backers, but enough to get the game into the retail market. That was an impossible amount of money for Palladium. “Not if you launch it via Kickstarter.” That was what everybody was telling us, the Ninjas included. All of them were right.

It was my friend Jolly Blackburn, creator of Knights of the Dinner Table, who first told me about Kickstarter and that I should look into it. A couple weeks later, out of the blue, Carmen Bellaire began ranting about the value of Kickstarter and that it was something Palladium needed to look into. This was before Robotech® RPG Tactics™ was even an idea.

Carmen was the first to restart the Kickstarter conversation, saying we should fund the Robotech® RPG Tactics™ project via Kickstarter. That it would be easy. Tom Roache concurred. We were hesitant. It sounded great, but we knew it had to be a lot more demanding and difficult than it sounded. And it had to be done right to be successful.

Doing a Kickstarter and needing that amount of money was scary. Exciting, but scary. And Palladium had NO experience in doing one or knowing how to handle it.

Enter Ninja Division. At the time, Soda Pop Miniatures and Cipher Studios had done something like eight Kickstarters between them, and had the experience we lacked in all areas. The Ninjas said they could handle the Kickstarter 100%, from start to finish. From the graphics, writing and the video presentation, to the stretch goals and Q&A. This was a huge relief, as we knew nothing about doing a Kickstarter. We let the Ninjas run with it, sat back and watched in awe. Of course, we made some suggestions and did some editing, but this was Ninja Division’s show. We trusted their expertise and what needed to be done. And look as the result, wow. The Kickstarter was a tremendous success and there was much rejoicing.

But nothing is easy. I had big concerns about costs all around. I badly wanted to include additional shipping fees in the Kickstarter. Something that almost everyone does today, but back then, we were strongly advised not to. We were told that nobody (back then) charged shipping and that if we charged a shipping fee in addition to the backer pledge levels, it would severely reduce the chances of a successful Kickstarter. This was the subject of many discussions. I finally acquiesced, but it would be something that would haunt us later, as shipping worldwide would be in the neighborhood of $150,000 all by itself. Just for Wave One! Yeah, shipping is brutal, especially with the advent of “dimensional weight” – the larger the package, regardless of weight, the more it costs. The Ninjas said they factored shipping into the pledge levels, but final costs would be greater than their estimates across the board.

Remember that runaway train I spoke of early? When the Kickstarter ended, that train took off with us on it, and it immediately started to rocket out of control.

First, not knowing anything about Kickstarters, we did not realize the real job of managing a Kickstarter begins AFTER the Kickstarter is funded. We thought that when Ninja Division said it would handle the Kickstarter from start to finish, that they would be handling everything. Again, we didn’t know what “everything” entailed.

As it turned out, they meant “finish” as a successful funding. Again, not knowing exactly what’s involved and with miscommunication by both parties, Palladium did not realize it would be our responsibility to handle the thousands of emails and questions that would follow the successful funding of the Kickstarter. Remember, we were still figuring out and learning everything about Kickstarters, including establishing the BackerKit storefront to manage the pledges of our 5,000+ backers, among many other things. Consequently, something like six weeks went by without Palladium answering a single question or email on the Kickstarter page. It was only when one of the Ninjas reached out to Palladium, asking why were we ignoring the backers on the Kickstarter page, and the discussion that followed, that we at Palladium realized it was our job to manage the page. We jumped right on it, but by then, backers were frustrated and we had a thousand plus emails to answer, plus regular posts and updates to make. Like I said, it was crazy as that express train was rocketing down the tracks with more unexpected challenges and surprises to come.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/1255963

It's pretty sleazy stuff.

But this is the best:

Wave Two – by the end of 2015?

We want Wave Two out yesterday. Or even better, last year. That can’t happen. We are shooting for the end of 2015 and will do EVERYTHING we can to make that a reality.

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

**Forar**

Regarding Ninja Division, we also basically only know what PB says. They themselves have kept fairly quiet on the matter. Reading between the lines on (again) what they don't say and what they do, and PB's giant missives, it seems like they were hired to do X, Y, and Z, did X, Y, and Z, and PB thought/hoped they were going to do A, B, C, D, E, and F as well.

They did the rules, PB did a rewrite (surprising nobody). They ran the KS campaign. They did the figures for wave one, there was a file compatibility issue (as noted on ND's FB page, and much later by PB), wave one was made. They did and submitted the files for wave 2, through PB we know there's another file compatibility issue and simultaneously they're also still sorting out the sprues ('trimming the parts count').

My take has been that PB keep trying to demonize ND as not doing enough, but as someone who works with project managers on massive (read: multi-million dollar) projects, contracts need to *very* clearly lay out distribution of responsibility. If they wanted ND to do A-F, they needed to say so up front, or to adjust the contract (with both parties agreement and negotiated adjustments) to reflect what was missed, overlooked or plain out not known.

ND said on their FB that PB has had wave 2's files since late last year, so we're around a full year they've had them in hand and have apparently settled on (presumably paying for) the factory in China both re-creating the figures from scratch and adjusting the sprue breakdown. In my experiences hearing from Wyrd, apparently it's not uncommon to have someone in the factory who specializes in sprue breakdowns, they do that sort of stuff a lot afterall.

But it means we can't just nod and accept "oh yeah I totally believe they've had some guy on retainer for like a year making/fixing this gak".

And yeah, that final quote is hilarious. They are 6 months from delivery, they swear, they will do as much as humanly possible to make that happen! Then 5 months later: "oh well we're working on some Rifts books, we'll get around to it, just you wait!"

Way to put your all into this, donkey caves.

**Asterios**

Forar wrote:
ND said on their FB that PB has had wave 2's files since late last year, so we're around a full year they've had them in hand and have apparently settled on (presumably paying for) the factory in China both re-creating the figures from scratch and adjusting the sprue breakdown. In my experiences hearing from Wyrd, apparently it's not uncommon to have someone in the factory who specializes in sprue breakdowns, they do that sort of stuff a lot afterall.

yeah thats what PB did in regards to the UEDF sprues, the Zentraedi are the original ND designs while the UEDF was some bizarre nightmare reconfiguration done by some other party (see my Sprue signature theory).

on another note just ordered newer versions of my designs, still have to rework my Gnerl design which will take some time, have a new Cats Eye coming to me with a few touchups and a magnet hole affixed to it. also got me some more picknpluck foam trays for my minis i've been working on plus a new cut off tool for my dremel and some very fine tweezers for the decals on the way.

**warboss**

Shuffle off the responsibilities, cash the check, and then DON'T FETHING BOTHER TO EVEN GLANCE AT THE PROJECT WEBPAGE THAT JUST MADE YOU MORE THAN A MILLION DOLLARS FOR OVER A MONTH AND A HALF DESPITE *MULTIPLE* LOOMING DEADLINES DURING THAT PERIOD is exactly the Palladium style of management that has continued throughout the entire two years and counting post funding.

**n815e**

ND had their part to play in this, too.

**JohnHwangDD**

From all indications, ND did exactly what they were paid for. Otherwise, PB would be all over them for failure to deliver.

**Asterios**

yeah ND did what they were paid for then removed themselves as far from this disaster they could and doubt ND will ever work with PB in anything else ever again.

**n815e**

Ah, ND are the victims, too...

ND were the cheap contractors that were paid to produce miniatures because the quality that Paulson would have provided was too expensive. Every time someone writes "this should have gone to Paulson" they are acknowledging that.

Every complaint about the sculpting of the miniatures is down to them.

They were the "professionals" who didn't know that they programs they used were incompatible with China's?

ND were partners in this mess. It's funny how so many are willing to place every single thing in PB's lap. It's obvious that ND have their share of blame, as does HG.

Three blind companies
See how they're run
They all ran after the kickstarter fife
In each others' backs they try sticking a knife
Did you ever see such a joke in your life?

**Asterios**

n815e wrote:
Ah, ND are the victims, too...

ND were the cheap contractors that were paid to produce miniatures because the quality that Paulson would have provided was too expensive. Every time someone writes "this should have gone to Paulson" they are acknowledging that.

Every complaint about the sculpting of the miniatures is down to them.

They were the "professionals" who didn't know that they programs they used were incompatible with China's?

ND were partners in this mess. It's funny how so many are willing to place every single thing in PB's lap. It's obvious that ND have their share of blame, as does HG.

Three blind companies
See how they're run
They all ran after the kickstarter fife
In each others' backs they try sticking a knife
Did you ever see such a joke in your life?

PB's to blame cause they "hired" ND to do a job, if ND didn't do the right job then PB should have dealt with it, the fact PB didn't means ND did the job they were hired for.

**n815e**

Rick, it's all roses for ND and dirt for PB and to me that does not paint an accurate picture.

**Lynx7725**

Thanks for the ND situation update.

I don't think ND is totally clear of responsibility in the original problem. The contractual relationship between ND and PB is not fully known to us IMO.

However early teething problems is to be expected and to be honest it could have been managed into a PR bonus; RRT is hardly the first KS to have ran into "moving into mass production" problems, and most of us are likely to be sympathetic to growing pains and lessons learnt, had they been communicated to us.

So yeah, for me, sure, ND definitely contributed to the problem, but I came into the KS knowing that the companies involved won't have experience in plastic injection mass production. Some problems are to be expected.

The current crop of problems though, are nothing but PB.

**Mike1975**

Well ND created the problem by screwing up their numbers and assumptions on costs for the KS. Then left PB to deal with it. PB has not handled it well once the ball was passed back into their court.

It's like a crappy Offense looking really good and making good ground and then failing to make the touchdown and handing it off to the special teams who just can't seem to make even a 20 yard field goal for anything.

**Asterios**

n815e wrote:
Rick, it's all roses for ND and dirt for PB and to me that does not paint an accurate picture.

I'm not saying ND didn't probably err somewhere, but what it comes down to is PB is the one that hired them, its like if you hire a contractor to work for you and one of his employees screw up, are you going to blame the contractor or the employee?

**JohnHwangDD**

If you go back to the original renders, ND's work is perfectly acceptable. Sure, Paulson's work is "better", but it's somewhat more a matter of taste. Also, the RTT designs are true transformables vs Hasegawa-type single-pose.

Again, what makes you think that ND didn't do what they were paid to do?

**Mike1975**

Renders are not in any way comparable to the final work.

ND underestimated costs and promised more than they should have.

ND made the boxes way too big causing the need of additional shipping containers.

ND screwed up the files with the Chinese costing additional time and $.

Just for starters.....

And Yes much of this could have been avoided if PB had simply hired a PM and taken a more active roll. They blindly trusted ND and are paying the price.

**Asterios**

Mike1975 wrote:

And Yes much of this could have been avoided if PB had simply hired a PM and taken a more active roll. They blindly trusted ND and are paying the price.

but PB had Kevin to be the project manager who knows all things and is perfect in every way