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Note that Catalyst does not own the BattleTech intellectual property. That would be owned by Topps. As such, they could be responsible for the removal of the Rommel tank. We really don’t have enough information to know who’s responsible and its not worth dragging this thread off-topic.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And it's only because of a bit of sudden onset brain-dead "presentism" that caused Catalyst to suddenly balk at the name after 40 fething years.

Has someone from CGL actually said something about this? Because it seems that in-setting Defiance is "refocusing the two designs into distinct roles", which would seem to mean both are still canon and in production.

It's just CGl hopping on the woke train. Fair enough, it's not as bad as other franchises that completely obliterate the lore and alienate the fans. Stackpole openly claimed that BT always was woke and that is a good thing. They also created lgbt+ characters and furries.
The Rommel has been purged, one can hope they don't find out who Kurita was...

 Garfield666 wrote:
Stackpole openly claimed that BT always was woke and that is a good thing.

Yeah, all that woke Yellow Peril.

 Albertorius wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And it's only because of a bit of sudden onset brain-dead "presentism" that caused Catalyst to suddenly balk at the name after 40 fething years.

Has someone from CGL actually said something about this? Because it seems that in-setting Defiance is "refocusing the two designs into distinct roles", which would seem to mean both are still canon and in production.

I recall reading someone from Catalyst commenting on the forums that the order had come from above. Probably Topps in that case because Randall and Co had a long time to erase Rommel, and never did.

M.

Ah well, this too shall pass.

I'm very interested to see what else they have planned in terms of stretch goals as mentioned in the update. I do appreciate they reversed course on what they explicitly said early on in terms of value, and not having any. If we hit 5 million, which seems likely to be soon, the Battalion pledge will be alright, and if we hit 7 million it might be down right acceptable. The Regiment pledge is no good, though considering how many people over there are saying they'll just have to buy two Battalions if they don't improve it, it probably doesn't worry them.

I don’t think they have any plans and are just randomly reacting to being shouted at. I’m not getting any real excitement from this campaign after the first few hours. They have made their money and are basically done. That’s fine, as long as the 5m mark gets met, but it feels like a bit of a shame as this could have been a much more interesting event over all.

Almost makes you wonder if they are stuck with a delivery time they can still meet, but if they get too much bigger, then they will have to start pushing back dates, which will lose them credibility.

 Flinty wrote:
I don’t think they have any plans and are just randomly reacting to being shouted at. I’m not getting any real excitement from this campaign after the first few hours. They have made their money and are basically done. That’s fine, as long as the 5m mark gets met, but it feels like a bit of a shame as this could have been a much more interesting event over all.

It really comes across like a Kickstarter planned by a group of grandpas, which probably it was. When they said they were expecting to get about the same amount of money as last time one has to wonder how they didn't notice 22,000 people signed up to their pre-launch page, or be able to connect the dots. And the fact that they made it a month long also was just a clear sign that they probably need somebody younger and more connected to the current day market working there. With the way it's still making money I'd now say $7 million doesn't sound out of reach though, their reactions to being shouted at seemed to be satisfactory for most.

I will say, this has put all the people saying BT is going to compete with 40K before long into perspective. This is a small company, and it's probably always going to be a small company. The game will grow as large as the act of just throwing miniatures at the market will make it, there's not going to be stewardship that takes advantage of the hype during the "new hotness" phase to borrow a phrase from the forum's founder. With all the 'Mechs from the Succession Wars and Clan Invasion made, and maybe big chunks of TRO 3058 and 3055, they'll have an evergreen miniature line even if they're not on the ICv2 list's top 5 for a decade, which will still be great and bring them a lot of success, but I think like basically every other game that isn't by GW it'll shine for a short while and then fade back down.

Information on the expected fulfillment date in the OP.

The most interesting thing Loren said was just the fulfilment stuff?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The most interesting thing Loren said was just the fulfilment stuff?

He couldn't be arsed to answer any questions after he dove into his giant pile of KS money.

 TalonZahn wrote:
He couldn't be arsed to answer any questions after he dove into his giant pile of KS money.

I wish he'd stop messing around and get on deck.

The initial launch had some great hype and build up, and now there is little excitement happening. Three more weeks of this followed by a couple days of geeing up the laggards?

Super exciting, so much wow!

 Flinty wrote:
The initial launch had some great hype and build up, and now there is little excitement happening. Three more weeks of this followed by a couple days of geeing up the laggards?

Super exciting, so much wow!

Sadly, the Golden Age of KS is over. These days, when I back a KS, I pledge for what I want, and ignore stretch goals and add-ons until the inevitable Pledge Manager.

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
The initial launch had some great hype and build up, and now there is little excitement happening. Three more weeks of this followed by a couple days of geeing up the laggards?

Super exciting, so much wow!

Sadly, the Golden Age of KS is over. These days, when I back a KS, I pledge for what I want, and ignore stretch goals and add-ons until the inevitable Pledge Manager.

I always found trying to follow stretch goals tedious, and my fav ks haven’t been ones that gave tons of goals. But a product I wanted and some extra in the box when it comes.
So I am happy with my place in this one.

 Garfield666 wrote:
It's just CGl hopping on the woke train. Fair enough, it's not as bad as other franchises that completely obliterate the lore and alienate the fans. Stackpole openly claimed that BT always was woke and that is a good thing. They also created lgbt+ characters and furries.
The Rommel has been purged, one can hope they don't find out who Kurita was...

Rommel has long been an acceptable person. He wasn't as clean as post war propaganda made him out to be, but the post war reconstruction needed a 'good Nazi' and Rommel was a solid choice. As for any dirt on him, no more than on most allied commanders of the time, he was less than perfect, but that is not an acceptable benchmark.
If people in the 1950's didn't have any problems with Rommel, we have no excuse, very few if any of us are WW2 veterans, and only they had cause to complain, not wokesters.

As for Stackpole, he was always proto-woke, but he wasn't indoctrinated to get where he is, unlike the average purple haired millenial who doesn't know any better. Credit where credit is due though, Stackpole's wokeness doesn't show though in his contributions to Battletech lore, he was professional enough to keep to the character of the series. But is seen in some of his other writings.
I dislike Stackpole intensely as a writer, but only because he cannot write credible intelligent heroes; but Mary Sues who take advantage of their opponents being force fed vast numbers of stupid pills, then gloat about being smarter than them while taking them down. He offsets that by being reliable, churning out stories on time and relevant to the franchise, he is also a good technical writer which is important when writing secondary fiction as the main character is always the setting. Stackpole is at his best when describing a technology in its time and place, whether it is an advanced bullet in slow mo, or a communications technology, or a bomb. I can see why he is the primary go to for Battletech fiction.


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Apple fox wrote:

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
The initial launch had some great hype and build up, and now there is little excitement happening. Three more weeks of this followed by a couple days of geeing up the laggards?

Super exciting, so much wow!

Sadly, the Golden Age of KS is over. These days, when I back a KS, I pledge for what I want, and ignore stretch goals and add-ons until the inevitable Pledge Manager.

I always found trying to follow stretch goals tedious, and my fav ks haven’t been ones that gave tons of goals. But a product I wanted and some extra in the box when it comes.
So I am happy with my place in this one.

It is long over. Star Citizen saw to that. And other overhyped products, maybe it is too much to hate on Star Citizen, but it is the nail that sticks out longest.
When a project becomes too successful there is a temptation to piss away the money.

KS is also a hotbed of scams, make a promise, flash up some good graphics, take the money and disappear after one update. Kickstarter will do nothing, they had their 5% already.

Fair points. I am just recalling my experience in Zombicide:Invader that kept my interest piqued to go back frequently and see how things were getting along. They had a clear engagement plan and I think it worked pretty well: they got the community involved and that helped keep the positivity flowing. It was nice, with the added frisson of excitement of how many extra models might be possible, and what pop culture reference would be next.

Stretch goals updated, see OP for details.

Finally, a plan!

It’s not a hugely generous plan on the plastic front, but it’s something at least. As always I’m entertained by the fact that there is a J Edgar hover tank

Now let’s see if this drives some actual engagement.

 Flinty wrote:
Finally, a plan!

It’s not a hugely generous plan on the plastic front, but it’s something at least. As always I’m entertained by the fact that there is a J Edgar hover tank

Now let’s see if this drives some actual engagement.

I dunno ; if we hit the 7M stretch goal, a Battalion pledge should get an extra 5 ForcePacks on top of the 6 pledge ForcePacks, if I'm not mistaken.

So that's almost as good as the "doubles" we had for the Clan Invasion KS..

Aye, the J Edgar is a nice little bit of wordplay.

I was a little confused by the comment on the update from someone claiming that... something makes Regiment worse. Is it just the fact that Battalion is getting the same bonus ForcePacks, so the gap between the two is shrinking a little?

I wonder what the complaint would've been if only Regiment and More Money Than Sense had gotten two bonus ForcePacks instead of Battalion getting them to.

Also, it seems a little odd we've not seen addition swag picks as bonuses for passing certain goals - I know it doesn't mean much to some, but I'm a sucker for a nice pin badge, and you'd think they'd be an easy win compared to designing & releasing a new ForcePack earlier than scheduled.

 Dysartes wrote:
Also, it seems a little odd we've not seen addition swag picks as bonuses for passing certain goals - I know it doesn't mean much to some, but I'm a sucker for a nice pin badge, and you'd think they'd be an easy win compared to designing & releasing a new ForcePack earlier than scheduled.

There was an awful lot of pushback on the swag with people wanting MOAR MECHS!!1!

True, but there's also been a fair bit of pushback on the audiobooks - it'd've been interesting to see what the reaction were if one of the $.5million audiobook goals had been replaced with a +1 Swag pick one instead.

Nice they added some goals, feels sorta unlikely this would hit 7mil but I guess we shall see!

 petrov27 wrote:
Nice they added some goals, feels sorta unlikely this would hit 7mil but I guess we shall see!

Kickstarters usually have a majority of their pledges made in the first and last two to three days of the campaign as can be seen in the Clan Invasion Kickstarter stats. $7m is doable, but $8m may be out of reach.

 Ghaz wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Also, it seems a little odd we've not seen addition swag picks as bonuses for passing certain goals - I know it doesn't mean much to some, but I'm a sucker for a nice pin badge, and you'd think they'd be an easy win compared to designing & releasing a new ForcePack earlier than scheduled.

There was an awful lot of pushback on the swag with people wanting MOAR MECHS!!1!

Those people are silly. We need more support vehicles and battle armor.

Trouble is they are asking for a lot of splatmechs that are quite niche.

There are hubndreds of them, Catalyst cant do them all, and every choice locks out an iconic design.

Thankfully we have all the 3025 and 3050 mechs now, but we are missing several iconic vehicles from 3026.

I'm not sure they'll make it that high.

The problem is they're not adding anything that makes you want to add money to your pledge.

You need to balance free rewards and new add-ons, and a few more vehicles that maybe appear at a very high stretch goal won't be enough.

It's something I guess. Last time around I didn't bother claiming all the digital books maybe this time the novelty of the audio books will make me care about it a bit more.

Anybody knows where I could find a list of what mechs are available in new plastic ordered by TRO? 3055 is my favorite, and I'd like to know the status.

M.