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 Theophony wrote:
Maybe they will make a basic T.hawk, and then have a seperate kit to detail the interior, and possibly another kit to turn it into a T.hawktransporter . The interior detailing kit being separate could help lower the overall cost.

A bunch of conversion kits from FW would be almost guaranteed.

 cuda1179 wrote:
There is a pretty good reason I think a plastic Thunderhawk would be economically viable: The Ork Stompa.

Sure, it's not as big as the thunderhawk, but it is still pretty big and has some major volume to it, much like the Thunderhawk. It also prooved to be a commercial success.

Did it? Do you have any evidence? I actually always wondered if the Stompa made back the production cost. It's probably one of the cheapest GW big kits given the size and number of frames in the box.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
There is a pretty good reason I think a plastic Thunderhawk would be economically viable: The Ork Stompa.

Sure, it's not as big as the thunderhawk, but it is still pretty big and has some major volume to it, much like the Thunderhawk. It also prooved to be a commercial success.

Did it? Do you have any evidence? I actually always wondered if the Stompa made back the production cost. It's probably one of the cheapest GW big kits given the size and number of frames in the box.

I wonder that too.

Although it is worth noting that a Stompa is fairly close in price to the Gorkanaut/Morkanaut...which is fairly smaller.

 Azreal13 wrote:
The one with the waist mounted guns is a Storm Bird, the T Hawk is the little one on the right.

Whoops, thanks.

NP.

FWIW My Fire Raptor is also sat on the shelf by the TV glaring at me accusingly each day it is left in naked resin.

 Kanluwen wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
There is a pretty good reason I think a plastic Thunderhawk would be economically viable: The Ork Stompa.

Sure, it's not as big as the thunderhawk, but it is still pretty big and has some major volume to it, much like the Thunderhawk. It also prooved to be a commercial success.

Did it? Do you have any evidence? I actually always wondered if the Stompa made back the production cost. It's probably one of the cheapest GW big kits given the size and number of frames in the box.

I wonder that too.

Although it is worth noting that a Stompa is fairly close in price to the Gorkanaut/Morkanaut...which is fairly smaller.

That's because they stopped doing the annual price rises not long after it was released and it's never been reboxed afaik, so its still fairly close to its original release price from, what, 8 years ago now? IIRC both the Baneblade and the Stompa were £65 on release, but the Baneblade got reboxed with the Shadowsword sprue and a consequent price rise.

How big is a resin Thunderhawk relative to a Fortress of Redemption or Aquila Strongpoint?

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
How big is a resin Thunderhawk relative to a Fortress of Redemption or Aquila Strongpoint?

Google is your friend.

Thunderhawk....

the Thunderhawk Gunship measures 19 inches/480mm longand 17 inches/440mm wide.

Aquila...

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?392994-Aquila-Strongpoint-Measurements

The whole model is about 15.5 inches wide with the annex (although those gothic fins add a bit...)

Fortress of Redemption....

The main tower stands 14" high and the whole kit is 24" wide when measured annex to annex.

The fortress is longer...

 NivlacSupreme wrote:
The fortress is longer...

Longer than what? Longer than 24" or longer than the Thunderhawk?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
How big is a resin Thunderhawk relative to a Fortress of Redemption or Aquila Strongpoint?

Google is your friend.

Thunderhawk....

the Thunderhawk Gunship measures 19 inches/480mm longand 17 inches/440mm wide.

Aquila...

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?392994-Aquila-Strongpoint-Measurements

The whole model is about 15.5 inches wide with the annex (although those gothic fins add a bit...)

Fortress of Redemption....

The main tower stands 14" high and the whole kit is 24" wide when measured annex to annex.

I tried looking for comparison images but nothing popped up. Thanks for the measurements, that does help.

So a Thunderhawk costing somewhere in the realm of one of those wouldn't be terribly out of the question. It is smaller than either.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 NivlacSupreme wrote:
The fortress is longer...

Longer than what? Longer than 24" or longer than the Thunderhawk?

Than the Thunderhawk. I just think that's kind of strange.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
How big is a resin Thunderhawk relative to a Fortress of Redemption or Aquila Strongpoint?

Google is your friend.

Thunderhawk....

the Thunderhawk Gunship measures 19 inches/480mm longand 17 inches/440mm wide.

Aquila...

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?392994-Aquila-Strongpoint-Measurements

The whole model is about 15.5 inches wide with the annex (although those gothic fins add a bit...)

Fortress of Redemption....

The main tower stands 14" high and the whole kit is 24" wide when measured annex to annex.

I tried looking for comparison images but nothing popped up. Thanks for the measurements, that does help.

So a Thunderhawk costing somewhere in the realm of one of those wouldn't be terribly out of the question. It is smaller than either.

It's not smaller than the Aquila, and it's probably similar size to the Fortress of Redemption once you take in to account the bulk of the Thunderhawk, maybe slightly smaller.

But pricing wise, the Thunderhawk is probably not going to be outsourced to China like I believe the Aquila is.

I'm not sure about the Fortress of Redemption, is that made in house in the UK or is it made in China? Looking at an unboxing video it comes on sprues that look the same as GW's sprues. If it's made by GW in the UK then it's probably one of the best value kits in their lineup as far as size to price ratio is concerned.

It's going to be built in-house, or same quality as in-house.

GW will not gak on the plastic thunderhawk using a cheap plastic process that's for sure.

Screw it. I'll buy one.

AND USE IT TO GET MY CULT OFFWORLD MWUAHAHAHAHAAAAA

I need to finish my scratchbuild quickly... then I can get an official plastic version and see how far off I am...

morgoth wrote:
It's going to be built in-house, or same quality as in-house.

GW will not gak on the plastic thunderhawk using a cheap plastic process that's for sure.

Yeah that's why I asked whether the Fortress of Redemption us an in house kit or not. Anyone own one? Does it say made in China on it?

I own a Fortress of Redemption, but I don't have the box. It definately looks and feels like an in-house GW product thought. Same plastic, and a very GW-like sprue tree.

I just watched an unboxing vid of the Fortress, it does look very much like a GW kit and has 8 sprues....

....BUT, it's actually only made from 4 unique frames, only 2 of which are "large" sprues and the other 2 unique sprues are small/normal sized.

So because of that it's not going to be a good place to judge the pricing of a plastic Thunderhawk because it's the number of UNIQUE sprues that affect the production cost. And the Thunderhawk is going to require I reckon about 4 to 6 unique large sprues and a few extra sprues which may be large or small. So the production cost of the Thunderhawk is probably going to be close to double that of the Fortress of Redemption, even if the total number of sprues you get in a box is similar.

I'm not so sure that the Thunderhawk couldn't have many repeat frames.

If they made the wings the same left-to-right, and the tops the same as the bottoms that would help. That means one large frame could be half a wing, half a lascannon wing, one Twin-linked heavy bolter turret (and possibly any variation turret), the wing engine bits, and all the random hull bling. Repeat frame four times.

I'd say another 4 frames for the rest of the hull, tale, central engine, and weapons.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm not so sure that the Thunderhawk couldn't have many repeat frames.

If they made the wings the same left-to-right, and the tops the same as the bottoms that would help. That means one large frame could be half a wing, half a lascannon wing, one Twin-linked heavy bolter turret (and possibly any variation turret), the wing engine bits, and all the random hull bling. Repeat frame four times.

I'd say another 4 frames for the rest of the hull, tale, central engine, and weapons.

I'd expect more frames for the body. But that said, with how well known and widespread the Thunderhawk can possibly be, a good comparison of pricing and contents would be the Baneblade kit. While the Lord of Skulls contains 3 unique sprues with one of them duplicated, the Baneblade kit is 9 (?) unique sprues for the same price. And the Stompa is 7 unique sprues for 3/4 of the price. While pricing has trended upwards since the original baneblade kit came out, so has the parts density of sprues as well.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm not so sure that the Thunderhawk couldn't have many repeat frames.

If they made the wings the same left-to-right, and the tops the same as the bottoms that would help. That means one large frame could be half a wing, half a lascannon wing, one Twin-linked heavy bolter turret (and possibly any variation turret), the wing engine bits, and all the random hull bling. Repeat frame four times.

I'd say another 4 frames for the rest of the hull, tale, central engine, and weapons.

You could make the tops and bottoms of the wings identical but I think it'd be compromising the design to do so because of the weapon mounts on the bottom while the top side has the the mountings for the 2nd wing thing. You'd also have to make them symmetrical front to back when in plan view which on an aircraft isn't a good look IMO.

I also think you underestimate the number of frames for the hull and weapons. The hull is almost as long as GW's largest sprues and it's quite deep, 4 might be enough for the hull, tail, engines and weapons, but I'm thinking it'll probably be more like 4 for the hull and engines and another one for the tail and weapons (or some other combination), so 5 all up.

But even by your estimation by my count that's still 5 LARGE frames which is a lot more than the Fortress's 2 large and 2 regular frames and a lot more machining time.

As I said I reckon 4 to 6 large unique sprues for the main structure (wings, engines, hull, tail) and then another large sprue or maybe a couple of small sprues for everything else.

I thought the smaller lascannon wings mounted to the upper hull? Also, as for the weapons mounts, they could have blank areas on the wings. If on the bottom side cover with weapons mounts. If on the top side, cover with decorative panel/flaps.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I own a Fortress of Redemption, but I don't have the box. It definately looks and feels like an in-house GW product thought. Same plastic, and a very GW-like sprue tree.

It's not; I checked my box this morning and there's a "Made in China" sticker on the bottom. It's hard to see without being able to hold the kit, but the runners are also very flat compared to GW's more square-shaped ones that you find on nearly every kit. Most indicative of all is the lack of GW copyright info on the sprue itself. That said, it's still a very well-executed piece in "normal" HIPS and likely comparable to the work GW would have done in-house at the time.

GW has since become quite creative in how they lay out parts and some kits have absolutely bonkers part densities. We'll have to see if a Thunderhawk materializes I suppose. Have we heard any further rumblings on that point? Am I remembering right that GW's fiscal year ends in May and thus is that a possibility to boost the EOY figures since 8th edition seems like it might be a bit further out towards the summer? Or would we have had some news from other rumormongers about that by this point and thus May seems unlikely because we know about Death Guard?

Throne, some of those GW sprues are a NIGHTMARE to use. Like why even attach the 1mm but to the frame when you could just have attached the bulky part? And the sprue connectors always leave flash on the hardest to clean parts. FW is better.

The point about repeating sprues is a good one. GW could make the top and bottom of the wings symmetrical, and if they skip doing an interior the left and right sides could reuse a sprue.

Perhaps the hull and top plates could be repeated 2 or 3 times.

Certainly the left and right engines could be the same.

So it's possible they could keep the number of different sprues down.

But this is a showcase piece and lately even workman-like vehicles like the Taurox have had interiors. In fact I think all the vehicles since the 3rd edition land raider had interiors so I think we may not see any repeated parts.

 EmberlordofFire8 wrote:
Throne, some of those GW sprues are a NIGHTMARE to use. Like why even attach the 1mm but to the frame when you could just have attached the bulky part? And the sprue connectors always leave flash on the hardest to clean parts. FW is better.

If the 1mm part isn't attached to the sprue frame as well as the bulky part... how do you expect the plastic to get into the mould cavity to form the 1mm part? Don't forget as well as injecting plastic they are also extracting air to draw the material through to all parts of the mould. Pushing material into a sealed space is not easy or effective compared to pushing material into a vented space.

I do agree though, sometimes the sprue connection locations leave something to be desired. Smooth shoulder pad with a sprue point right in the middle springs to mind. I'm sure they are working on improving things over time, the current kits are already light years ahead of most of the older plastic kits.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
The point about repeating sprues is a good one. GW could make the top and bottom of the wings symmetrical,

Honestly I really think doing that would compromise the aesthetic

and if they skip doing an interior the left and right sides could reuse a sprue.

You mean make the interior and exterior of the hull detailed in the same way so the left and right are interchangable? I suppose you could, but it still means you have to machine both halves of the mould (you can't just roughly face it off with a large cutter, it has to be done with a fine detail cutter) and there's a limited amount you can make symmetric. The hull on the current TH tapers inward at the nose, and taper inward at the top near the turret, so those bits can't be made symmetric.

Perhaps the hull and top plates could be repeated 2 or 3 times.

Not unless they majorly change the design. The hull top plate narrows toward the rear under the main gun turret section, so the rear hull plates aren't going to be the same as the front ones unless you quite severely alter the silhouette of the thing.

It's these subtle tapers that make the TH look like an appealing flying brick rather than just, well, a brick.

Certainly the left and right engines could be the same.

Probably, still depends how they attach to the wings, you might end up compromising other parts to make them symmetrical..

I think overall you could probably make 1 maaaaybe 2 sprues repeats, but beyond that I think it'll come as a compromise and what's the point of building such a flagship model for your range when you have to make such compromises.

Well, I'm pretty sure those Rhino-sized doors will be the same on both sides

 EmberlordofFire8 wrote:
Well, I'm pretty sure those Rhino-sized doors will be the same on both sides

Which Rhino sized doors? I thought the only Rhino sized door was on the front.