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 Lynx7725 wrote:

My initial reaction to the new Stretch Goals was "Eh, they think 10k is enough to cut steel for 5 Skelebots + manufacturing? Optimistic aren't they?"

I doubt they are planning on steel molds. They are doing one piece minis out of PVC material similar to what CMON uses for Zombicide or Reaper's Bones line. Those can be done in aluminum molds and typically run around $2-$3k for the molds. You can fit 3-4 models in a mold that size so with the right company you can get low volume PVC stuff milled & molded for a bit under $1k a model. They don't last as long so you might get around 5k pulls out of them but they are far more cost effective than using steel cut molds. Even if this KS funds I don't think they'll be producing anywhere near enough copies that they'd need to worry about mold blow out.

HIPS plastic multi part models (like GW or WGF) need steel molds and is a much more expensive milling process.

If they were just going to do the miniatures, they could go the resin route - aren't those molds even cheaper than the metal ones?

However, without the board game, what good will the miniatures really do? There's already metal minis available right off PB's site as is.

Silicone molds for resin are quite cheap but they don't last very long, they only last about 20-30 copies so you are constantly replacing them and it's very labor intensive as they are cut by hand. A mold to do a 28-32mm mini might be $5-10 in material, or less but you spend a lot of man hours on making and replacing them.

If you use spin cast resin you can use vulcanized rubber molds which last for hundreds and hundreds of copies but the result isn't as good as stuff that's done with a pressurized/vacuum system. Finecast uses spincast resin and while it's improved it's still substandard to stuff like FW that uses the pressure/vacuum set up. Spincast resin does significantly cut down the labor involved and you are talking maybe $70-100 a mold vs thousands. Spin cast resin is just a slightly modified version of pewter casting because of the price it's usually why most start up companies have used spincast metal for decades. Metal also wears less on the vulcanized spincast molds so you can get several thousand copies out of them. (Resin causes rubber and silicone to age and wear out faster).

Has anybody asked what they're planning on for materials?

Surely, they must have a plan for that, as it's an actual cost!

They've just said "plastic" afaict. I've been waiting for someone there to ask for more specifics.

From their FAQ

Are you going to sell the miniatures with clear bases or in resin?
No. We are aiming to produce each miniature in plastic, and in one piece including its base.

My magic 8 ball says PVC since you can't do one piece models in HPS at least not if you want any of the poses or detail level they've shown. PVC will handle those elements just fine as it's boardgame piece quality. (Not wargaming style GW or WGF level minis). Zombicide and Star Wars Imperial Assault both use one piece PVC so it's not terrible but it's not all that great either. Bones has some stuff that's one piece but many of the models are multipart that are preassembled.

I'd ask for clarification on the material but I'm not a backer and apparently backing for only $1 means I'd be a dirty peasant hater troll and they wouldn't answer my question anyways


Oh and if this does fund I hope that they learn something from Sedition Wars, PVC has a pretty massive shrink rate of about 20% so if they don't scale up their minis approriately they are going to be rather undersized or end up with weird stretching issues. I'm sure that they'll be safe on that because they'd never stoop to using a cut rate manufacturer and whoever they use will certainly trouble shoot everything in advance for PB/RH.

.

Yeah, like Paulson said they will most likely go with PVC molds because they are cheap, problem is, you get cheap quality too, also Paulson remember they have the minis attached to the bases which is why I keep thinking of those plastic Army men you buy in bags for $1 at the dollar store, also Silicone molds would be crazy to do, those are ok for the home hobbyist, but not for making massive amount of minis.

Yeah the Rift games comment section is crazy... and I see that "Dakka Dakka Trolls" term used calling us out
means they have came here to read the things said about them.

Most of us realize that RTT is not Carmen's fight to battle; but he is fully aware of the problems it is causing.
Where is Kevin during all of this.. writing his next weekly updated of how juicy (Kevin's words not mine) his
weekly activities are going. but still no time line of where wave 2 is.
People have posted that the Rifts game is planned to bank roll RTT wave 2, then the profits off of it will produce it..
That is a rob Peter to pay Paul kind of thing.. and sounds really bad if smallest amount of truth to it. Trying to
balance something with a week foundation will never end well.

Putting that all aside and RTT didn't exist, would this kick-starter be a good bargain.. the sculpts are average
and linked to rifts only, the model count and quality of components are way below industry standard. The price
don't match with what you are getting..They say it will improve the more money they get... but what if they don't
that means a bunch of people bailing on the project the last day.

I don't feel that most people think Fantasy Flight and others are spoiling us.. we just can tell good from bad.

Heh you learn something new everyday...

Yeah I expect them to go with PVC, not HIPS. At $3K, aluminium molds makes more sense. Looking at that number though, it seems the intent is more medium term.

Hypothetically, if this funds, you get 5k pulls out of each mold, you fulfill the 1k+ KS sets; leaving 3k+ sets for retail copies and probably expansion sets. That's not a lot of copies left to turn additional profits so that you can get another mold done to continue production -- especially if you use the normal distribution channels, and thus cannot reap the maximum differences between cost and MSRP.

 paulson games wrote:

RH FAQ wrote:Are you going to sell the miniatures with clear bases or in resin?
No. We are aiming to produce each miniature in plastic, and in one piece including its base.

My magic 8 ball says PVC

I'd ask for clarification on the material but I'm not a backer and apparently backing for only $1 means I'd be a dirty peasant hater troll and they wouldn't answer my question anyways

Agreed. Zombicide-style plastic minis, but without CMoN's experience of designing for PVC shrinkage? This will end well.

RH won't even answer a $150 fan-friend if they're asking anything but softball questions.
____

 Genoside07 wrote:
Yeah the Rift games comment section is crazy... and I see that "Dakka Dakka Trolls" term used calling us out
means they have came here to read the things said about them.

People have posted that the Rifts game is planned to bank roll RTT wave 2, then the profits off of it will produce it..
That is a rob Peter to pay Paul kind of thing.. and sounds really bad if smallest amount of truth to it.

Putting that all aside and RTT didn't exist, would this kick-starter be a good bargain..

The fan friends should be careful what they wish for. Most of Dakka hasn't bothered to jump into campaign for the comments. I for one, won't touch it. It's toxic, and I won't be associated with it. But from what I read, it's just typical warnings and stuff. Nobody's going /b on them. But if they want real trolling, I'd imagine the hot-headed types would be telling Casey to An Hero from $1 pledges. And the cold-blooded types would create dozens of dummy accounts to pump the campaign over the top without any real money behind it.

If RRT took Rifts money, that would be fair, given that Palladium appears to have used RRT money to finish Rifts NG1 & NG2, in violation of KS TOS.

It's obviously not even close to a good bargain. Now, in theory, it could grow into the $100 pledge, but I doubt it. At least, not without the help of fake pledges to unlock SGs.

So someone on BGG is claiming that the KS is basically copying the shipping paragraphs from CMONs past KS and using that as their own.

"Backers beware - this is a HUGE red flag....even the refund policy is copy and pasted. I'd be very very wary of pledging for this folks.
Pay attention, and do your research.

The latest CMoN shipping quote was pulled from Rising Sun, but the Rifts KS shipping is a virtual carbon-copy of the shipping section from Rise of Moloch. "

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/25861987#25861987

If true, I have no idea why they would do that unless CMON is doing the shipping for them. I doubt they can hit the kind of bulkrate CMON has going for them

Eh, I don't care how much money Kevin got, he'd never use it to finish RRT Wave 2 - it would go to some other "worthwhile" project - like maybe Rifts soap.

I'm afraid I don't understand the warning over shipping. If his "research" was to copy C'Mon on shipping cost, as long as it's accurate I don't see it as a problem. I'd only see it as an issue if he can't get that price and it sits at his "warehouse" cuz he don't have the fund to ship it out ala Prodos.

In the end, if I were to find this game in the bargain bin, I'd probably take home a copy. Won't be backing it, though - to many unknown if's on the way to retail, they don't appear to have their ducks in a row for this campaign.

 Stormonu wrote:
In the end, if I were to find this game in the bargain bin, I'd probably take home a copy.

How cheap are we talking? $80 at 20% off? Buy one at full price, get one free?

I wouldn't pay $20 for it, although $20 is probably a fair price.

The warning over shipping suggests that the creator didn't do his research -- or any research -- about shipping, so there's no reason whatsoever to believe it would be accurate.

Of course, KS shipping estimates are never accurate, since the more SG's are reached, the more stuff there is to ship, and the longer projects are delayed, the more shipping costs rise.

Then again, if the project doesn't get funded or runs out of money, shipping costs won't matter...!

 Stormonu wrote:
Eh, I don't care how much money Kevin got, he'd never use it to finish RRT Wave 2 - it would go to some other "worthwhile" project - like maybe Rifts soap.

I'm afraid I don't understand the warning over shipping. If his "research" was to copy C'Mon on shipping cost, as long as it's accurate I don't see it as a problem. I'd only see it as an issue if he can't get that price and it sits at his "warehouse" cuz he don't have the fund to ship it out ala Prodos.

In the end, if I were to find this game in the bargain bin, I'd probably take home a copy. Won't be backing it, though - to many unknown if's on the way to retail, they don't appear to have their ducks in a row for this campaign.

I'm pretty sure CMON gets bulk shipping rates. Plus they get those rates based on the volume metric of their initial offering, which is different from the RIFTs own volume. And that's not counting in the bulk discount. I feel like Carmen may be understating shipping costs if he's just using CMON as a standard.

Sining wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Eh, I don't care how much money Kevin got, he'd never use it to finish RRT Wave 2 - it would go to some other "worthwhile" project - like maybe Rifts soap.

I'm afraid I don't understand the warning over shipping. If his "research" was to copy C'Mon on shipping cost, as long as it's accurate I don't see it as a problem. I'd only see it as an issue if he can't get that price and it sits at his "warehouse" cuz he don't have the fund to ship it out ala Prodos.

In the end, if I were to find this game in the bargain bin, I'd probably take home a copy. Won't be backing it, though - to many unknown if's on the way to retail, they don't appear to have their ducks in a row for this campaign.

I'm pretty sure CMON gets bulk shipping rates. Plus they get those rates based on the volume metric of their initial offering, which is different from the RIFTs own volume. And that's not counting in the bulk discount. I feel like Carmen may be understating shipping costs if he's just using CMON as a standard.

So you are saying they will have to charge more for shipping if they ever ship it, considering shipping rates are already lined up to go up next year accross the board of the big 3 carriers and who knows what the year after that will be like.

Asterios wrote:
So you are saying they will have to charge more for shipping if they ever ship it, considering shipping rates are already lined up to go up next year accross the board of the big 3 carriers and who knows what the year after that will be like.

Sounds right.

BTW, I'll just add that, even if backers pay shipping, that doesn't mean the money will be used for shipping. I've seen KS where the creator probably used shipping money to create additional retail product on the assumption that they would make enough money back to ship to backers. Robotech may have been one of them, although someone please remind me. I did read in the Palladium forum thread for gRIFTS that Carmen wants to make copies for retail sale (?). Assuming he has no more of his own money, and since money from KS funding doesn't explicitly covers retail copies (and often loses money), money reserved for shipping is tempting for creators to use to make retail copies at the same time as KS ones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another post by a Palladium fan.

Salamandros about 3 hours ago

I paid my $1 to keep up with the Updates on this project initially.
I liked Rifts RPG setting, the system needed some work. I really liked Heroes Unlimited.
When someone had embezzled a bunch of cash from Palladium, I went in person and spent a few hundred dollars on product in hopes that they wouldn't go under.
I backed the Savage Rifts project despite some hesitancy.
So when I come here and the $1pledgers are diminished, that doesn't sit right. I acknowledge that there was a minimal apology, buried in the comments.
This Kickstarter will probably fund, but man there re a lot of warning signs that this could be a dud. When you have close to 2000 comments, the Creator (or Collaborators) need to be active. They may have to answer the same question over and over, but that is just part of the deal.
They really need a consultant to help them get their act together

I think I quoted Talizvar before, but he clearly shows his love for Rifts.

Talizvar about 9 hours ago

Your motivations were never unclear but does not hurt to say again.
The staff and resources used unfortunately is so entangled it really is hard to differentiate your company from Palladium Books.
I would suggest a similar introduction of your associates and roles would help.
Then in broad strokes where the project is at and what is "the plan" as best you can reveal.
Unfortunately RRT is a shared burden by association.
I too loved Rifts and had many books that I gave to my younger brother.
I bought the fairly recent TMNT box which used to be a PB licensed product and reminds me of what your product could be. If you have not seen it please look, it too is around $100.
See what you can do to get those production values.
I wish you personally good luck.
Just please be careful of who you list as your "friends", I know something of your experience with my own past and you may have been maneuvered into this difficult situation.

well on the humorous side the project is already in the negative for the days totals.

With the addition of the cut and paste info, Information from Paulson Games, ( Which, incidentally had a successful run at casting, gaming, and production process.)
The project needs to honestly be pulled. There is no honest outcome that the project can hold water for less then $50,000.00 in a positive direction. (And I am being generous here.) I do not honestly even see this coming to positive conclusion, even if it DOES get funded.

No project management, no experience casting, no base material, but a hell of a lot of "Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams."

As Alpherius has said earlier, I am no fan of Schadenfreude, and THIS whole !@#$show is abound with it. Honestly, if you have a buck pledge just to gak around with these ... non professional game designer wanna-bees, just do them courtesy of pulling the trigger and put this horse down. The worst thing in the world, with the information at hand would be for them to fund this project and be "Successful".

As a gamer, I am offended, as a professional troubleshooter, I am in Gakking shock.

Asterios is almost correct, even though the discussion for shipping is lacking, as is the material that will be used to cast, the caster, the rules set, the boxing/ packaging, the rule book binding, the paper, printing, photography, components, the ..... etc.etc. etc.....

Information cut and pasted from a CMON project, more then likely having absolutely ZERO research into what exactly they cut and pasted. Molds, nonexistent. If anything, those figures from the pictures are test runs, or home slice. The rules- nonexistent. The maps, add-ons for "Rifts materials" look like a sale to unload excess printed stock of overproduction to lighten Pallidiums warehouse/ storage unit. The "Pleas for help", though, not at all having to do with the project, tell you that they are thin skinned "artist" types, lacking adult clarity and focus. The "Team" roster, also- lacking.

All of this, and the "Project" ( and I use that term loosely) supposedly needs 2 years ( 2019) to accomplish Completion of Project Scope...

And then there is Kevin's idea of "Help"....

" We don’t know whether he’ll return to game design and try to launch his company or the Rifts® board game in which he has invested everything. If not, that’s a tragedy of another sort, because Carmen has so much to offer. Before his suicide attempt, Carmen regarded game design as pure joy and tackled it with a childlike sense of wonder. All he wanted to do was to make games. After this, I don’t know.

I’m afraid this is not my most eloquent post. I am still shaken. I’m scared for him. Terrified. And saddened beyond words.

Please pray for Carmen’s swift recovery, emotionally and physically, and that Carmen is able to find the strength to once again follow his dreams and dare to try to make them come true. I want that not just for Carmen, but because he has a treasure trove of wonderful games locked in his imagination waiting to come out. Games that will bring joy and laughter to all of us.

I hope and pray there is a happy ending coming. Our love to Carmen and his family.

Kevin Siembieda

President, Palladium Books "

(From the Robotech Kickstarter page)


As a Dakka Dakka "Troll", I honestly fear for these people's sanity, and hope that they can take rejection better in real life, then in the confines of the safety of the Internet.

. I am watching a train wreck, and it is honestly not at all fun to see some of the !@#$ coming out of it. With absolutely zero skin in the game, the best thing for them to do, at this point is to pull the project, come back later with a solid plan/ project, and try again, without the additional baggage of Robotech, Palladium, and Kevin !@#$ing Siembieda snapping at its ass.

With "Support" like that, Pulling the project, and developing a serious project, plan, and product is the best course of action.

Just a trivia tidbit I found interesting.

gRifts has as of 5am Friday, 599 backers. 502 pledge level backers and 97 people at the Watcher level.

Palladium's FaceBook page, which at this point mostly consists of fanatical fans (either pro or con PB, they're fervent), had an advert update for gRifts on Monday. Since PB (or FB) disabled the "dislike" option, we can ignore the con PB fans. There are 959 likes for that post.

So, even amongst the most pro fanbase they have, and with almost 1000 fans liking it, barely half (assuming all actual backers are among those likes, an unlikely event) are supporting the project.

It's kind of a weird situation for Rogue Studios. Either PB is their only support base, or the percentage of PB fans who are willing to back, shrinks at a proportional rate to the number of backers from other sources.

Similarly, PB touts on their website that there have been 300K copies of the Rifts rulebook sold, and between 1.4M and 2M Rifts players (and that's apparently a conservative estimate.

So, these are the numbers.
People who liked the announcement, backed (at best), a rate of ~52%.
People who have bought the Rifts rulebook backed at less than 1/5th of one percent.
People who have played Rifts, backed at between 1/30th and 1/40th of one percent.

Just found those numbers interesting, given the anemic progress the campaign is making.

Methinks (hey Alpharius!) that the fanbase market isn't as big as PB or Carmen estimated. Honestly, it's performing well below what I expected. The running of the campaign hasn't helped, but when I saw it was going to be a 100K target, I figured it'd be close, if not past that already. That even if you use the average of the second through fourth day numbers (6K), it's still a week away from funding, giving them all the benefits of the doubt. And given the downward trend, I'm not even expecting that. So... yeah.

Some have suggested he scrap this campaign, take a breath, and come back with a more polished launch. But with the admission he's already sunk $40K into this, and license pressures making this even more costly, I'm not sure he can afford to. But I'm really not sure he can afford for it to fail, or as others have suggested, for it to succeed. If he's already in for 40K, and the costs on this are pushing breaking even on the ACTUAL funding, investing more for a retail market that just might not be there (aka PB's crapload of backstock of RRT), this really does look like he's thrice damned, barring some miracle. He can't back out and relaunch (too much debt), a failed campaign is going to impact a career in gaming, and a successful but mediocre campaign is not going to do his reputation any favors. And gods help him if it funds, and things go pear shaped.

In all honesty, I'm rooting for Carmen. But I'm not betting on him. He truly jumped on the wrong horse, and I honestly think that choice did more harm than good. A unique game universe might have had a chance, but honestly, the cost vs value of the project (and the general mishandling in days that took PB months to accomplish) would have had me passing regardless. So I'm not sure whether using the gRifts universe was a net benefit at this point.

What could he even have spent 40k on. He has several sculpts, some art and no prototypes. His game board currently consists of laminated paper sheets.

I would guess a very overpriced licence.

Aeneades wrote:
I would guess a very overpriced licence.

Does that sound about right? $40,000 or close to for the licence?

For anything that's associated with PB? No way

Sining wrote:
For anything that's associated with PB? No way

It's worth what somebody will pay for. Obviously Carmen didn't play hardball with Kevin, or he could have gotten the license for a lot less.

The figures shown at salute and in this thread are 3d-prints, and not particularly good ones. I assume some prep work was done prior to painting, but you can still see the layer marking very clearly on the glitterboy's gun.

Asterios wrote:
well on the humorous side the project is already in the negative for the days totals.

Spoiler:

I thought this wasn't real.. so I went to the site and entered the information on a couple of other kickstarters... just looking at daily backers data
Most kick-starters have a large amount of backers the first few days, then drop off to a few hundred add each day..then another large count at the end.
Rifts had a few hundred the first day.. then drop to around forty and yesterday they had a NEGATIVE THREE backers... that means more backers are leaving faster than adding...
Wow.. How not to do something... but it is their choice on how it's handled

See when Carmen came to the RRT forums, and then went ballistic I talked to him after that, I told him straight up he needs to put as much distance as he can between him and Kevin and PB, I told him he should come out with his own IP and design his own game that way he can do thing on his own time and his own terms, and it is better if he came out with his own system for his flag ship game.

But alas he went down the rabbit hole with Kevin and PB and its gotten to the point his only hope is if his project fails and does not fund.

 Genoside07 wrote:

Asterios wrote:
well on the humorous side the project is already in the negative for the days totals.

Spoiler:

I thought this wasn't real.. so I went to the site and entered the information on a couple of other kickstarters... just looking at daily backers data
Most kick-starters have a large amount of backers the first few days, then drop off to a few hundred add each day..then another large count at the end.
Rifts had a few hundred the first day.. then drop to around forty and yesterday they had a NEGATIVE THREE backers... that means more backers are leaving faster than adding...
Wow.. How not to do something... but it is their choice on how it's handled

Oh it is even worse now.

The number of backers is probably less important than the negative dollar value. If $1 accounts are purged or leave, that has no real effect on the KS aside from looking bad. Negative money, or static money, is REALLY bad. People abandon Kickstarters that stall because they fear they'll 'lose money' if the KS doesn't fund - yes, I know, it doesn't work like that, but also the project becomes more risky if it barely funds, or there is lower value in it if no stretch goals are reached.

If this Kickstarter stalls for several days, it's basically done for good. The Rifts fanboy market of backers is pretty much already committed, though the weekend will be telling. Momentum is very important.

Now its at a negative of $251 for the day.

Also this had to make me laugh:

Andrew Ferguson 3 minutes ago
@Graham maybe it's just the trolls bailing out now that they know that there is legitimate interest in the game. I'm hoping that RHs use the relative quiet right now to drive this KS forward.

seriously they believe that? seriously? ok if we take all the $1 trolls out they would not even match up to a third of the money they lost today.