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 Crablezworth wrote:

JWBS wrote:
I agree. The laments (both the "AT is dying " and the "NEED MORE STUFF NOW!!!") are both, at a minimum, quite foolish if not just straight up hysterical.

You know, hysteria is a great way of descricibing the emotional overreaction "real" at fans seem to feel if anything but praise is levied towards the game or its maker.

That's just an obvious strawman though, isn't it? Like, as if me saying "I think these concerns are highly overblown" is remotely the same as me saying "Man I'm so angry that people are criticising our beloved corporation and any / all actions undertaken by beloved corporation". You ofc are free to label anyone that disagrees with your takes as an apologist or whatever else you want, but that's not legitimate and likely won't convince many.

 Albertorius wrote:
The part that doesn't feel sustainable, honestly, is FW.

Their "boutique" resin minis are... crap quality, most of the time, crappier both the smaller AND the bigger you go. If they swapped out completely to GW-owned local(ish) printing hubs for all their FW catalogue, they would probably be much better off, and they'd avoid most of their current quality problems. Plus, they wouldn't need to worry anymore about stock, as it would be a PoD operation. And of course, shipping costs should be much smaller too.

This is true. Some of the smaller models are fine, but even then the quality control is really swingy. A friend and I got the same warlord weapon. His had a massive mold slip, mine was a bit warped but otherwise fine. His should have been rejected and recast at the very least, but they decided it was good enough to ship, and so he had to spend an extra two hours shaving things down and gap filling. That's not good, fun hobby.

FW Stormeagle: "Hey kid, build a square box ouf of these 4 bananas."

 Crablezworth wrote:
Has anyone heard anything yet about the banners in the next white dwarf? Dare we get our collective hopes up for physical component or will it be just rules? Anyone care to speculate?

I dont expect anything more than a guide to various titanic heraldry, what various symbols and kill markers mean and a guide to making your own with existing decal sheets. There is not going to be a plastic banner sprue, and likely not resin either. At most, a decal/ punch out card sheet. Its just going to be a fluff/conversion article.

Dire wolf in resin I am fine with as far as the future of AT goes. It's meant to be a non-standard model which is what the resin is for. The psy-titan is in resin as well and people dont seem to have an issue with that one.

Warmaster weapons swap is kinda stupid, but also probably the easiest way to deal with the balance issue of a carapace gatling combining with the plasma arms which would allow the warmaster to fairly reliably shield strip and destroy any titan it felt like within 30" on its own.

I'm still expecting the next plastic kit to be a two pack of rapier light scouts.

Man the problem with resin is that it takes the beauty of Titanicus and sticks it into an ugly, unpleasant medium. It's a crap shoot - expensive, poorly QA'd death sentence for the game. The more they shift to FW resin, the closer this game and any other is to death. At least, for 90% of the customers in this market.

axotl wrote:
Man the problem with resin is that it takes the beauty of Titanicus and sticks it into an ugly, unpleasant medium. It's a crap shoot - expensive, poorly QA'd death sentence for the game. The more they shift to FW resin, the closer this game and any other is to death. At least, for 90% of the customers in this market.

Agreed and people saying recognizing that trajectory is being negative or "hysterical" for not thinking it's a positive development. Shoot the messenger basically.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MajorWesJanson wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
Has anyone heard anything yet about the banners in the next white dwarf? Dare we get our collective hopes up for physical component or will it be just rules? Anyone care to speculate?

I dont expect anything more than a guide to various titanic heraldry, what various symbols and kill markers mean and a guide to making your own with existing decal sheets. There is not going to be a plastic banner sprue, and likely not resin either. At most, a decal/ punch out card sheet. Its just going to be a fluff/conversion article.

Dire wolf in resin I am fine with as far as the future of AT goes. It's meant to be a non-standard model which is what the resin is for. The psy-titan is in resin as well and people dont seem to have an issue with that one.

Warmaster weapons swap is kinda stupid, but also probably the easiest way to deal with the balance issue of a carapace gatling combining with the plasma arms which would allow the warmaster to fairly reliably shield strip and destroy any titan it felt like within 30" on its own.

I'm still expecting the next plastic kit to be a two pack of rapier light scouts.

Ya I didn't want to get my hopes up for much in terms of the banners.

The dire wolf being in resin means it likely has no customization for loyalist or traitor, I'm hoping I'm wrong on that, but seeing as they've announced selling it in 2 kits based on carapace weapon, if it is indeed the case that there are no options and not even a second un-revealed torso/arm weapon, I don't see how monobuild titans with like 1 option is a step forward from what we've become accustomed to. modularity. As for the psi titan, people had issue with it being out of stock often for long periods of time. Another problem with FW.

I agree the balance isn't great on on carapace gattling and dual plasma, but they could have honestly just limited that without having us pretend they're two entirely different units with no cross pollination. Could have just said you needed at least 1 cc arm to take the top gun or something to that effect. Still, the way they handled it's release was arrogant in the extreme in my opinion. I just don't like the idea of going from weapons systems and platforms, which is what battle titans and scout titans are, to incredibly fixed or artificially limited loadouts what the intent is clearly more commercial than balance oriented.


I hope you're right and we get another plastic kit and it is a dual rapier kits similar to the warhound box but scale 5. I want that to be true, I'm just no holding my breath. And the fear is even if we get plastic, it will be mono build or require a silly amount of box purchases just to get the ability to kit it out the way I'd like.

drbored wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
The part that doesn't feel sustainable, honestly, is FW.

Their "boutique" resin minis are... crap quality, most of the time, crappier both the smaller AND the bigger you go. If they swapped out completely to GW-owned local(ish) printing hubs for all their FW catalogue, they would probably be much better off, and they'd avoid most of their current quality problems. Plus, they wouldn't need to worry anymore about stock, as it would be a PoD operation. And of course, shipping costs should be much smaller too.

This is true. Some of the smaller models are fine, but even then the quality control is really swingy. A friend and I got the same warlord weapon. His had a massive mold slip, mine was a bit warped but otherwise fine. His should have been rejected and recast at the very least, but they decided it was good enough to ship, and so he had to spend an extra two hours shaving things down and gap filling. That's not good, fun hobby.

Mould slips are grounds for refund or replacement IMO. Warping is pretty easy to fix, air bubbles don't take long to fix with a bit of green stuff, but mould slips are too far.

Personally, I wouldn't want FW to go print-on-demand unless they made the products a hell of a lot cheaper or could achieve no printing lines. I'm already unhappy that my Arvus Lighters have printing lines on them. 3D prints need post work before becoming masters, and in this case it doesn't look like they've put in the effort.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

axotl wrote:
Man the problem with resin is that it takes the beauty of Titanicus and sticks it into an ugly, unpleasant medium. It's a crap shoot - expensive, poorly QA'd death sentence for the game. The more they shift to FW resin, the closer this game and any other is to death. At least, for 90% of the customers in this market.

I'm still pro-resin for making sharper details than plastic can achieve, which is nice at this small scale, but obviously if FW aren't putting in the effort to make that detail or have good enough QA then that's not great. And resin still allows for a broader product range, if GW release 10 products in a year of which 9 are resin and 1 of which is plastic, swapping to only plastic doesn't mean you get 10 plastic products a year, it means you probably get 2.

The biggest problem with FW for AT and AI, IMO, is beyond the QA issues many people just aren't willing to order specifically from FW and wait for postage. A lot of people just buy from their local store, or online from discounters, and the idea of buying direct from FW at their insane prices and still having to wait for shipping is off-putting for many.

And that's a problem when a decent portion of the range is FW, many people will just see that and be put off from ever starting the game.

Want to start AI and like Necrons but don't like FW? Too bad, either deal with FW or don't play... and many people will choose to not play.

axotl wrote:
Man the problem with resin is that it takes the beauty of Titanicus and sticks it into an ugly, unpleasant medium. It's a crap shoot - expensive, poorly QA'd death sentence for the game. The more they shift to FW resin, the closer this game and any other is to death. At least, for 90% of the customers in this market.

Let's remember that most of Titanicus' range (all of the major titans) are still in plastic, including many of their weapons. Same with many of the Knights.

So far, a lot of the stuff that's resin has been more esoteric options (mechanicum knights and the psi titan) and a handful of weapon upgrades, and the Dire Wolf, which they probably put resin because they just don't see it as a hot seller.

I'll be getting a few because Legio Defensor and the Dire Wolf go together like peanut butter and jam.

I remember the Psi titan being out of stock for a long time at the same time GW was out of stock of the plasma warlord, which the psy titan parts are bundled with

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally, I wouldn't want FW to go print-on-demand unless they made the products a hell of a lot cheaper or could achieve no printing lines. I'm already unhappy that my Arvus Lighters have printing lines on them. 3D prints need post work before becoming masters, and in this case it doesn't look like they've put in the effort.

Well, that or better configured settings, better resin and smaller layers. That will also help a lot. Even with a regular ass 2k, $200 desktop printer you can achieve some incredible detail with basically no layer lines, if you are willing to make the effort.

 Albertorius wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally, I wouldn't want FW to go print-on-demand unless they made the products a hell of a lot cheaper or could achieve no printing lines. I'm already unhappy that my Arvus Lighters have printing lines on them. 3D prints need post work before becoming masters, and in this case it doesn't look like they've put in the effort.

Well, that or better configured settings, better resin and smaller layers. That will also help a lot. Even with a regular ass 2k, $200 desktop printer you can achieve some incredible detail with basically no layer lines, if you are willing to make the effort.

I'd be curious to see what's possible, but from what I've seen even 8k printers and DLP printers have some level of printing striations and should probably be post worked before being turned into masters.

The model I got from FW where the lines are noticeable, I'd be happy if a model of that quality came out of my own printer, or if I purchased it for a few bucks from a small time creator, but for the money FW charge for models I expect something better than that.

Yeah you're not getting any sort of print thats free of visible layer striations for less than ~$5-10k minimum. You need roughly sub-25μm layer height resolution in order to go beyond visual layer lines, and theres only one printer that I know of in the sub-$2000 hobby printer range that can actually do that (Phrozen Sonic Mini 8K) without any sort of gimmick or strings attached (a few advertise similar capabilities, but only if you're printing at a small fraction of the actual print volume to do something small like a ring or whatever.

Really not getting what all the fuss is about, resin is a great medium and theres plenty of people happy to work with it. Frankly, outside of dakka I have yet to ever encounter someone who says "I won't buy this product because its in resin". As it stands, this is one of a handful of non-primary products that are being tooled for resin instead of plastic, I'm really not concerned for the future of this game. Most of what you need and most of what players will actually field are in plastic and I expect that will continue inh the future as well. 40k as had a very large forgeworld catalog containing hundreds of items for years and somehow that never put it on the brink of death.

To be clear, I can confirm that FW is NOT cleaning their 3d prints pre-master molding. The armigers ALL have parts of the supports remaining and incorporated into the master mold. Divots from them, little stems, all of it. It's small and I think a lot of older moldeler's eyes are bad or something (or we'd hear about this more) but they're all there.

Yeah, I think we can interpret the Dire Wolf release as a sign of the game's health, actually. They're still interested in and seeing profit in selling us more AT stuff. That's good.

And while we can't know for sure, I think it's a pretty good bet this one's in resin because of limited plastic support (something all the SGs deal with if you pay strict attention) and because it's more of a niche Titan. It's mostly been mentioned in connection with Audax, and I think it'll end up mostly being used by people playing around with all-scout or scout-heavy forces.

The DW almost has to come in at 250+. And at that price point, I'd probably rather have a Reaver for around 300 that's tougher with more guns. I'll be getting at least one DW for my Audax, but I don't see why I'd get one for my Praesagius unless I was being a completist about it (and I'm not).

Saw a pretty sweet Direwolf mod on instagram today, though it's 28mm scale and iirc the guy just designs and prints stuff for personal use. Look twice as good as the official model though (it's just a carapace weapon and a pair of arm guns to attach to the standard warhound).

JWBS wrote:
Saw a pretty sweet Direwolf mod on instagram today, though it's 28mm scale and iirc the guy just designs and prints stuff for personal use. Look twice as good as the official model though (it's just a carapace weapon and a pair of arm guns to attach to the standard warhound).

Yah I keep thinking the first person to come up with a dire wolf upgrade kit to the plastic warhound is going to make some people happy.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
I remember the Psi titan being out of stock for a long time at the same time GW was out of stock of the plasma warlord, which the psy titan parts are bundled with

The Psy-Titan is still showing 'out of stock' in the USA for me, unfortunately.

I've never seen it in stock, actually...

 Alpharius wrote:

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
I remember the Psi titan being out of stock for a long time at the same time GW was out of stock of the plasma warlord, which the psy titan parts are bundled with

The Psy-Titan is still showing 'out of stock' in the USA for me, unfortunately.

I've never seen it in stock, actually...

Shhhhh only good think, no bad think


Apparently the announced price increase will affect resin so the already not cheap dire wolf may be 5-10% more than expected/feared. I mean jolly good, hurray, nothing but positive vibes for gw and future realeas


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grimdark just released the first part of february's package. Really stoked on this one. The hermes are out now, the rest drops this weekend. There's a crashed version of the samson freighter.

This is just the lifter version, there's 2 more in the pack.

(this is a scale shot broncofish posted on facebook)





https://grimdarkterrain.com/product/february-2022-stl-package/

 Alpharius wrote:

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
I remember the Psi titan being out of stock for a long time at the same time GW was out of stock of the plasma warlord, which the psy titan parts are bundled with

The Psy-Titan is still showing 'out of stock' in the USA for me, unfortunately.

I've never seen it in stock, actually...

It was in stock very recently and for more than a day or two, lol. I got one. And yes, the interesting part was that the check slip in the box of resin bits was dated more than six months earlier. It was the plastic Warlord kits that they were apparently waiting on.

Which returns us to the conversation around plastic manufacturing bottle necks…

Shamelessly stolen from Instagram...

That's pretty cool!

That honestly looks better than the wolf chicken

That model that the author (from Instagram) is working on will be 28mm scale - he's also done an absolutely "Lance Hound" conversion in 28mm - a harpoon-armed Warhound.

 schoon wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

 schoon wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
Question, if the game is a winner for GW, why are they putting fewer and fewer resources into it?

GW made the business decision, for AT as well as quite a few of their other "small print run games," that they didn't want to carry stock for anything but a few core items. Everything else they would print only enough to meet initial demand.

This prevents them from having to stock too many SKUs and deal with excess inventory, which can be a real problem with smaller game lines. This is a common practice in other industries as well.

It was bad enough that they started to gain a reputation for not even fulfilling pre-orders, and thus their recent promises on some game lines to ensure that all initial orders will be filled.

And is that still the right approach with 3d printing where its at? IP is a less and less useful thing if you don't actually make stuff with it, someone else will. And they'll call it laser chicken and get away with it.

As odd as it may sound, yes.

By not overproducing and keeping inventory low, they avoid the costly cash flow mistakes that sink many hobby producers. It allows them to continue investing in new content as opposed to getting rid of stale inventory.

Is it also annoying to experience as a customer when so much of the line is out of stock - oh yeah, very.

But it ought to put them on good footing to keep producing new stuff, so long as they keep selling out of the releases they don't want to stock.

Having spent a lot of cash and time on Star Wars armada, you hit the nail right on the head. I'd say a lot fo the missing AT stuff will return in the near future.

 Padre wrote:
Shamelessly stolen from Instagram...

Ya pretty ingenious design, had gw just gone that route and made it a resin conversion kit for hounds it would be bee a lot more palatable i piggy backing off the hound design.

Okay I really need to fix my damn printer

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Okay I really need to fix my damn printer

Absolutely


https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/360/787202.page#11308454

Those are so cool!

Great that Grimdark are offering printing services (or a directory of them at least), actually makes them accessible to people that don't have a 3D printer.

 Pacific wrote:
Those are so cool!

Great that Grimdark are offering printing services (or a directory of them at least), actually makes them accessible to people that don't have a 3D printer.

Yah and there's not much lag time in terms of stl release and printers being able to it on demand in some cases.



Bits blitz design just previewed these on their fb page, work/salvage crew dudes. Excited to see those with the hermes.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Those are so cool!

Great that Grimdark are offering printing services (or a directory of them at least), actually makes them accessible to people that don't have a 3D printer.

Yah and there's not much lag time in terms of stl release and printers being able to it on demand in some cases.



Bits blitz design just previewed these on their fb page, work/salvage crew dudes. Excited to see those with the hermes.

So yeah...this just happened!

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/smallscale-salvage-crew