BrookM wrote:
Gacha can be a hell of a drug to some gamers.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:
Episode 72

December 9th 2025
Guests: RJ Thomas, Shadowrun Line Developer; Ian KIng, Shadowrun Art Director



News:
-This is the last Newsday of 2025
-BattleTech
--MechWarrior 5 The Clans: Wolves of Tukayyid out. They played the trailer
--Mercs wave 4-5 is still waiting for Platforms to finish Leviathans Wave 2, they’ve got some staff issues
--Out now
---Aces: Scouring Sands
---Brush Wars: Operation Guerrero
---Holiday Hostility by Russel Zimmerman (free fiction)
---The Marshal Way by Geoff Swift
---Holiday ornaments, free with purchase of $45 or more while supplies last

Q&A:
-Any word on the BattleTech missions playtest? It’s been pushed back a week, the site will be updated soon
-Will CGL be at UK Games Expo in 2026? Demo Team will be, CGL depends on budget

Lorcan Nagle wrote:
Episode 73

Guests: August Hahn, Kung-Fu Panda RPG developer; Jason Hardy, RPG director





News:
-Out now:
--Aces: Scouring Sands
--Turning Points: Oliver
--Shrapnel 23
--Spotlight On: Jade Warriors
-Gothic salvage box restock and Kuritan forcepacks are in or about to arrive at the warehouse, out soon.
-Randall gave Rem some photos of the next BFM, they should be up on Randall or the CGL instagram soon.

Conventions for 2026
-GAMA
-Adepticon
-ACD Games Day
-UK Games Expo (tentative)
-Asmodee distributor show/Asmodee Nordics(tentative)
-Origins
-Astra (tentative)
-Vidcon (tentative)
-Gencon
-Nova open
-Alliance Open House
-Essen
-Gamehole Con (tentative)
-Pax Australia (tentative)
-Pax Unplugged
-Universal Retail Summit
-They’ll probably do some walkthroughs of anime cons this year to see if any suit for next year.

Other
-Rem is looking to do more content, especially on the YouTube channel. Maybe more interviews and content from cons


Q&A:
-How’s the direct to retail program going along? They changed their webstore and the warehouse late last year, and picking up from after all that is going well. They’re ready to do a smoke test when everything is in place.
-How about other Pax appearances? Pax East and West have been getting too small recently, Unplugged and Australia are still worth doing, though Australia of course has more financial concerns
-Any update on international store hubs? Rem is going to set up a meeting to get an update. She knows it’s still progressing.
-Any update on the Illician Lancers forcepack? Rem thinks it’s over at B&N already, so it’ll be in general release six months after that.
-Are salvage boxes going to be available in stores again? Yes, they’re somewhere in the reprint cycle, Rem will have to make sure
-When will the rest of the SKUs be up on the CGL webstore? Unsure, some stock may be waiting to move to the new warehouse
-XP Network integration with TND? Rem would like to set it up as an XPN event moving forward.
-Did you see the Prime documentary The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop? Nobody on the panel has
-Any status update on the Audiobooks? No update on BattleTech, A Kiss to Die For for Shadowrun will be out in Feb, Rem is the narrator for that one.

Hey MechWarriors!

I am Meical with the CGL marketing team. I just wanted to let you know that we are going to be shaking things up a bit going into 2026 in terms of our Kickstarter communication.

I, along with a small team, will be in the comments here and in the updates to do our best to help you with the information we have or we can find. I will also be working to provide you with more timely updates as we get information. The first of these will be out next week, but I have a mini-update to get you started in the meantime.

We are currently looking at Waves 4 and 5 in the US to start fulfillment on Monday, January 12th. Our shipping partner, Platforms, is finishing their set-up today and will be hard at work getting these last ~500 orders out soon. If we have more international news, I will have it for you next week.

Have a great weekend and make sure to kill the meat and save the metal!

Meical

Lorcan Nagle wrote:
Episode 74
January 13th 2026
Guests: Keith Hann, BattleTech developer, Aaron Cahall, BattleTech Assistant Line Developer





News:
-BattleTech
--Out now
---Scouring Sands
---TP: Oliver
---Tales of the Inner Sphere (Anthology of the 2025 free fiction)
---Honour of the Sword (free fiction for January)
--February
---Kuritan forcepacks
--March
---Force Manual Mercenaries
-Sarna did a year-end review and an editor showcase, they’re looking for new editors!

Discussion:
-Playtest for BFS: Aerospace and Missions will finish up on the 19th!
-Total Warfare has been the main rulebook for longer than all the other books (Almost combined!), and it’s really time to retire it.
-BattleTech as a product line is messy, there’s a lot of books that are considered “Core”, some of them duplicate info, and they want an easier on-ramp for new players to say “what do I need to play the game”
-The game is too big to have as a single book.
- There are a lot of rules revisions they feel don’t need to be playtested such as eliminating the 1 heat for each attempt to stand.
-One rule they put out and realised it was a mistake was the side table change. It turned out to be too powerful and too reproducible for a game with a lot of randomness. It ended up having a lot of knock-on effects like making fast jumpers even more useful and XL engines even more vulnerable.
-Keith thinks he might be able to tone it down and have it as an optional rule in a future book
-Missions is designed to give people an era, faction and tech level agnostic framework to play the game, without expecting them to know all the background material
-A lot of games have a scenarios section and it was really something BattleTech needed. Aaron was chatting with Jason Schmetzer about it and he was saying that when people are starting, fewer options are better.
-The missions section is intended for people who are onboarding from the introductory products like the Intro box and GoAC.
-Total Warfare at present really covers what happens after you’ve figured out the scenario and deployment, from when you first roll for initiative. You kinda need a GM to set the game up for the players
-Aaron talked about how his local group’s Discord has a specific section to set up games beforehand so they can get to rolling dice and aren’t showing up with a box of minis and some record sheets and then figuring it out.
-They’re still working to have the book ready for GenCon. Some sections are heading to edit this week.
-There’ll be 5-6 dev review and edit passes for each section of the book
-Just like with Total Warfare, there’ll be edits and changes and updates to the new book. They have a mechanism for that now. They want the book to be as good as possible out of the box, but it will remain in active development.
-The Missions section has to have constraints around the size of forces, number of maps, expected length of the games. And from there they started to think about how to design similar missions to be bigger from the ground up -more turns, bigger maps, more complications? So they’re looking at an advanced missions book as a spinoff
-There have been over 4,700 downloads of all five rules packs to date. The first one had the most downloads and the most feedback. They had 400 users on the playtest-specific mini-forum and there were over a thousand posts.
-Keith describes Aerospace at the moment as functional but it could be more exciting. He’s trying to balance them as being a threat but not too much of a threat. They’re still working on it, with a dedicated group who’ll continue to work on it till the last moment possible.
-An Alpha Strike revision will follow completion of the new BattleTech core book


Q&A:

-MUL 2.0 when? It’s essentially ready to launch but there are some deeper technical challenges that are still outstanding. Aaron says soon, but they have a better idea of soon than the last three times they said it.
-What’s Keith’s favourite thing from the missions pack? Combat Drops, he loves the idea of dropping units on the enemy’s head and wanted it to be more common.
-Will the core book allow linked missions along the lines of Chaos Campaign or Aces? No, the missions section is designed for pick-up/one-off games, and they’re going to leave campaigns to dedicated products that link into the story/universe more
-Will older books like Tukayyid get an update to match the new missions format? If they went backwards to try and retroactively update books they’d never have any new books coming out. Something like Tukayyid was a product of the time, just before they realised how big things were going to get and was very much made with the resources they had and the audience they expected at the time. Aaron could see a larger mission product or the MechCommander’s Handbook having notes or guidelines on how to update old products, but nothing more than that.
-Any update on the world-wide events? That’s more of a demo team thing. Last Aaron heard they had one ready to go but it’s a Mike Ciaravella question.
-Any update on international hubs? Rem is hoping to have the new sales people on TND soon to discuss
-Do we have dates for the Kuritan Forcepacks and Force Manual Mercenaries? Tentatively Feb 13th and March 4th
-Volcano and Glacier maps packs will be April/May? Volcanic is tentatively slated for May
-Will IWM minis be offered through the CGL webstore? No plans as yet. Loren has an interview with Sarna tomorrow, and one of the questions they’re going to ask is about IWM so we might know more when it’s published
-Will TND have any fiction writers on soon? Any chance of a novel roadmap? Rem’s not sure about writer guests in the near future, she doesn’t have an up to date roadmap for fiction right now. Phil, Jen and John will be on next week to talk audiobooks
-Any update on Leviathans retail? Tentatively March. Domestic fulfillment should be finishing this week. Australia has apparently begun shipping and the shipment is still en route to Europe. Rem wants to confirm this 100%. There’ll be an update soon.
-Mercs Wave 4/5 is getting ready to go. Apparently one package went out this week
-UK Games Expo is still tentative for a CGL booth, pending budget
-Will there be a restock of forcepacks soon? They’ve done a massive reprint recently, Rem’s not sure what was covered by it, where it is in production, what’s shipping and so on.
-Any word on the new BattleTech RPG? It’s on hold. They brought in an outside developer who did some work on it but it’s on the backburner for now.
-Any word on T-shirts and hats for the store? Not at present.

This premium variant uses new modeling techniques being employed to update all BattleMech designs. It comes unassembled and unpainted, with posable arms in ball-and-joint sockets. The shoulder sockets will accommodate the arms of future premiums in the same weight class for the ultimate kit-bashing experience.

Project Update #135: BattleTech: Mercenaries by Catalyst Games wrote:Fulfillment on Wave 4 and 5 - Domestic and International



Posted by Catalyst Games
Jan 16, 2026

View on Kickstarter
Hey there backers,

We hope you and yours are having a happy new year. We wanted to talk about fulfillment Waves 4 and 5 for US domestic and RoW.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Wave 4 and 5 Domestic:

Prepping for such a large number of skus proved a bit more challenging than our partner, Platforms, anticipated, but as of Monday, January 12th, Platforms has begun fulfillment of Waves 4 and 5 of the Mercenaries campaign! They are doing the smallest orders first to push out as many backers as possible in the opening days. ____________________________________________________________________________________

Wave 4 and 5 International:

We had communicated that multiple shipments were headed to the hubs, not only from the QML warehouses, but also our own warehouse to cover as many shortages as possible. While verifying shipment items, and with the decision to include Wave 5, we have another round of shipments to send. Any shortages from all Waves will be reviewed after fulfillment is complete so we can cleanly adjust

____________________________________________________________________________________

In the meantime, we are attempting to pull and curate a list of all of the items that needed reprinted for shortages/damages that can not be fulfilled from existing stock. We will be handling these reprint issues AFTER final fulfilment of Wave 4 and 5 so we have a clean list of what anyone outstanding needs.

To give you an idea of the remaining numbers, as of January 7th, Platforms had only 310 total orders that remained to be fulfilled in the US. This includes 275 orders from Wave 4 and 35 orders from Wave 5. Internationally, the EU and UK are waiting on 206 orders from Wave 4 and Australia is waiting on 27 orders for a combined 233 orders in waiting.

Additionally, while customer support has maintained reviewing and answering messages here on Kickstarter and through store@catalystgamelabs.com, we have redirected several of our team to monitor/respond to comments on the updates and in the general comments section as well. This way, you can get up to date information, have your specific information checked when asked, and ask any questions you may have.

If you have previously emailed us at store@catalystgamelabs.com, please check your inbox’s spam folder for our response. We have recently seen some of our responses get flagged as such.

While frustration is absolutely justified given the delays, please note that we will not respond to abusive posts or engagement. Please remain courteous, and we are happy to help.

Team Catalyst

-One rule they put out and realised it was a mistake was the side table change. It turned out to be too powerful and too reproducible for a game with a lot of randomness. It ended up having a lot of knock-on effects like making fast jumpers even more useful and XL engines even more vulnerable.

Anthony Scroggins wrote:Imp is an inevitability, but schedule unknown. Even when we do lock a list in, things get shuffled so much. Main victims on that being the WoB and Society sets announced years ago.

Lorcan Nagle wrote:
Episode 75
January 20th, 2026
Guests: John Helfers, CGL Executive Editor; Phil Lee, author and Shrapnel Managing Editor, Jennifer Brozek, author and “editor at large”


(note, technical issues mean the VOD is incomplete)


News:
-New releases
--Out now
---The Long Road by Jason Hansa - this should be the last book covering the happenings on Terra coming out of the ilClan trial.
---A question of Survival audiobook
--February
---The Strength of the Pack by Jason Hansa omnibus edition
---Without Question Audiobook
--Feb 13th
---Heart of Iron, a new romance novel by an established CGL author working under a pen name.
--Feb 18th
---Kurita forcepacks
--March 4th
---Force Manual Mercenaries
--March
---Silent Assets by Daniel Isberner
---Weapons Free (Battlecorps Anthology 3) reissue - new cover, corrected, re-laid out.
---Damocles Sanction audiobook
---Shrapnel 24
----Conclusion of Fortune and Glory by James Bixby
----A lot of the stories in this issue are themed around the psychological issues that come from being Dispossessed
--April (tentative)
---Legendary Mechwarriors II and III salvage boxes
---C-scale Mad Cat (packaging update)
---Clan Battle Star
---Illician Lancers
--Mercs Wave 4 and 5 are shipping in the US.

-Jean Rabe, a long-time fan and author died this week after a lengthy illness

Discussion:
-They’re planning to have one BattleTech audiobook out per month in 2026
-Shrapnel 25 is a double-sized issue - the last one for a while. It’s going to feature a follow-up to The Marshall Way by Geoff Swift
-Free fiction is mapped out for the rest of the year


Q&A:
-Any release date for A Treachery of Ravens? Not yet, they’re waiting on the draft to be completed
-When are the Wars of Reaving novels out? John was hoping to have the first book out for Adepticon, but they’re going to be pushed back. The third book is likely to be out next year
-When is Den of Wolves out? Loren is still working on it, he and Mike Stackpole need to get their schedules in sync to work on it together (Rem snarkily pointed out to him that they’ve been waiting for their schedules to sync up for 7 years…)
-Any news on the audiobooks Tex was working on? John needs to have a chat with him about that. It was going to be a trilogy, book 1 is wrapped so they need to get 2 and 3 into his work schedule
-Any word on getting merch on the webstore? There’s a bunch of stuff in the warehouse, notably lostech dice that will hopefully be added to the store soon
-Will we see any more Mountain Wolves fiction? Yes, Russell has a lot of stuff that needs to get onto the schedule. John thinks this year.
-When will we move past 3052? That’s a Ray question
-Any update on the comics? There was a SNAFU that just got fixed. Script for 1 and 2 are in, Eldon is raring to get going on the art
-How far out is the novel line scheduled? To early 2027. John wants to get even further ahead on the schedule to try and get BattleTech back into bookstores.
-Will we see more legacy merc units in the ilClan era? John noted the Lone Wolves and he didn’t know how old they were, he also mentioned the Lexington Combat Group as one he’d like to see, and there’s some upcoming fiction involving the Eridani Light Horse in a different way
-Will we see the Clan Homeworlds in the ilClan era? Not yet, they don’t have the right story yet and they’re off limits until they do.
Any Magistracy of Canopus fiction soon? There’s a plotline John would love to see picked up on in fiction, nobody’s pitched him a story there yet though.
-When will we see a forcepack release list past the Kurita forcepacks? They’re working on it, they need to get schedules on production of the components (packaging/art, minis and so on)

Lorcan Nagle wrote:Clan Battle Star was all Rem said. April is still all tentative so we'll hopefully have better details soon. Chris from Liya is next week's guest so he might know.

 cole1114 wrote:
Well, that's one way to announce a force pack.

Project Update #136: BattleTech: Mercenaries by Catalyst Games wrote:State of Fulfillment - Close Quarters is out!

Hey commanders!

We have some exciting news for this week! Let’s get started!

First, for all backers at the Paper Pusher level and up, you now have access to the first BattleTech audiobook in the campaign, Close Quarters by Victor Milán! This BattleTech Legends story follows Scout Lieutenant Cassie Suthorn of Camacho’s Caballeros, on duty for the Draconis Combine in the Clan Invasion era. Without giving too many spoilers for those who haven’t read it, this audiobook was unlocked when the BattleTech: Mercenaries campaign hit $6.5 million in pledges!

You can access your copy of Close Quarters by going to https://www.backerkit.com/ and finding your digital downloads on your backer survey!

After having followed up with John Helfers, the Catalyst Fiction Director, we have the other three audiobooks in process. The next will likely be the BattleCorps novella following the Crescent Hawks, Eclipse by Jason Schmetzer. After that, John and his team are working on the Tally’s Talons novella, A Splinter of Hope by Philip A. Lee and the Gray Death Legion novel by William H. Keith, A Rock and a Hard Place.

The Wars of Reaving trilogy is an ongoing project, with the first novel in-review at this time. The graphic novels continue to see progress, with Eldon Cowgur working on the interior.

____________________________________________________________________________________

North America:

Shipping for North American Waves 4 and 5 continues at pace. The recent winter storm shut down Platforms’ facility going into last weekend and they were able to reopen by Wednesday.

We’ve had some variable reports of people not getting shipping confirmation emails. We do know plenty of people have gotten them as well. We have brought this to Platforms’ attention, and they are looking into the situation. In the meantime, please check your spam box occasionally, as those emails may have ended up there.

____________________________________________________________________________________

EU, UK, and RoW:

We are currently waiting for shipments to arrive at our hubs in order to properly fulfill Waves 4 and 5 internationally. Any shortages from all Waves will be reviewed after fulfillment is complete so we can cleanly adjust.

For Ukrainian backers specifically. Last week, there was an issue that was accidentally brought to our attention by one of our Ukrainian friends, InferiorSTZ, as seen on Kickstarter. They wanted a follow-up on Ukrainian shipping. Upon looking into it, we gave them the wrong information by telling them that FedEx, who Platforms works with for fulfillment, was not shipping to Ukraine.

This is not the case. Our information conflated “dangerous” products, such as caustic chemicals, firearms, and the like, with what we are shipping, miniatures and books. FedEx is currently shipping products like ours to Ukraine. We apologize for the misinformation that we spread. All of our Ukrainian backers will be receiving their product, and Platforms has their information to send as soon as they get to those orders.

____________________________________________________________________________________

We are still working to build a solid list of any items that have been shorted and have not been corrected throughout the BattleTech: Mercenaries campaign. These lists will not be complete until AFTER the current waves of fulfillment are complete. This will include items that we have in stock that will need to be sent to backers, possible reprints, and other reallocations.

If you do have an issue with any damaged or shorted items in your order, please reach out to us on Kickstarter through the messaging system or through our customer service email at store@catalystgamelabs.com.

If you have previously emailed us at store@catalystgamelabs.com, please check your inbox’s spam folder for our response. We have recently seen some of our responses get flagged as such.

Please do not contact our partners about the status of your order. Our team monitoring Kickstarter comments and messages, as well as the customer service email at store@catalystgamelabs.com will be happy to help find your information as it is available.

Team Catalyst

Lorcan Nagle wrote:
Episode 76
3rd February 2026
Guests: Chris Frye (Liya International)




News:
-BattleTech
--New releases
---Out now
----House Kurita Command Lance
----The Long Road by Jason Hansa
----Close Quarters Audiobook is up for Kickstarter backers now
----Remains to be Seen by Bryan Young (this month’s free fiction)
---Feb 18th
----Kurita Ranger forcepack
---March 4th
----Field Manual Mercs
---April
----Illician Lancers forcepack, released to general retail in August
---April 18th
----Salvage box: Legendary Warriors


Discussion:
-Liya’s factory will shut down for Chinese New Year until the start of March
-Chris wanted to address some QC issues with Aces minis
--During one production run for the Thunderbolt IIc, there was a slippage, affecting 2% of the total production. They’ve redone the production run and it’s been shipped to CGL. .
--The Marauder IIc was packaged facing sideways in the box, and this lead to some distortion/damage of the mini depending on how much weight went on the box during shipping or storage. They’re redoing the box for future print runs to prevent this and a replacement run of the minis has been produced
--For both replacements contact CGL customer service.
--Liya are considering adding something to Snowblind to make up for this
-Chris shared some food photos, the Liya team know he loves his food and as they visited various partner factories, they brought him out for lunch and dinner every day. He had 2 meals per day and never ate at the same place twice. The food was so healthy he didn’t even gain weight
-Liya owns their own factory which handles plastic production and painting. They have production partners to create molds, the vac-formed trays (and candles), box printing, book and card printing (Leviathans’ card work was done in the same factory even though Liya passed on the minis production), dice
-Liya have a new website up, Chris lost access to the old one so he made a new one. This one is flashier and more video-oriented. He wrote a bunch of articles for the old one and nobody was reading them
-They shared links to recent videos on the Liya Youtube
--C-scale Mad Cat (new retail packaging)
--Comstar Command Level II (reprint)
--Second Star League Assault Lance
-Chris reiterated that the conditions for workers in China are really good, they make the equivalent of $20-25 per hour, they’re unionised and have good protections. Liya are going to be moving soon, the Chinese government has rules around the lifespan of industrial buildings and their current one is about ready to be decommissioned



Q&A:
-Will Chris be at GAMA expo? Yes, and Gencon. He couldn’t get a booth or exhibitor badge for Adepticon though
-What’s in the Legendary Warriors Salvage box listed in the news? The minis from the Legendary MechWarriors I, II and III forcepacks
-Mold lines have gotten better recently, is that due to experience or design? A lot of this is experience, going back to the mold production team around what’s an appropriate place to put them - they’re more used to organic designs
-Any word on timeframes for:
--Leopard DropShip? Rem’s list says June, Liya’s says end of June/July
--Gothic Abominations? Rem’s list says July, Chris thinks so too
--Celestials forcepack? It’s not on Chris’ list, Rem thinks it might be a couple of years out.
-How many Salvage boxes has Liya produced? Chris isn’t sure, but the minis total for Battletech is between 9 and 12 million. CGL have ordered 90,000 display units in the last two print runs, with 9 salvage boxes per unit, which is 810,000 boxes just there.
-When will Somerset Strikers be out at retail? A reprint should be on the water now
-Will the minis in Resurgent Empires be made by Liya and will they be compatible with BattleTech? It’s still in design so no decisions have been made about production. Minis might be compatible.
-Any chance of more detail on the release plan for the year? Yeah, they’re still working on the master schedule with the new sales manager
-What are the biggest delays or issues that can cause delays? IP/licensing approval delays things massively, like the Street Fighter II game they did minis for was held back a year by the approval loop. Second is outside environmental factors like tariffs. Some of their production partners have stock sitting in the warehouse at Liya waiting for tariffs to go down right now. Chris knows that Loren has paid out hundreds of thousands in tariffs to keep products flowing. There was also a shortage of shipping containers in China that delayed shipping massively that wrecked CGL’s schedule at one point.
-Chris has seen a handful of instances of containers being lost - he mentioned a shipment of Eldar grav tanks that fell off a ship
-ETA on a Clan Fire Star reprint? They couldn’t find it on their lists.
-When is the next Salvage box restock? It’s on the water now
-How long does it take for something to get across the water? 4-6 weeks on the water, then 2 weeks to get to the warehouse and into the distribution network
-Any chance of getting single minis or custom selections sold? Not under the current system, it’d be a logistical nightmare and likely wouldn’t generate enough revenue.
-Will the Union and Overlord DropShips be restocked? Both are on the water.
-What’s the new process for Kickstarter updates? Meical and CJ have been very busy on responding to queries on the project pages and working to get an update out every two weeks. Rem noted that Platforms lost a week to the bad weather recently which will throw schedules.
-When will the webstore be updated? They’re working to get new SKUs onto the store every week, and there’s a restock on the way
-What’s the status of canon characters for Clan Invasion? They no longer have the ability to run reports in Crowdox, they have to ask Backerkit to provide them. They have a ton of info but they don’t have the master report of backers from Crowdox, it crashes the system when Backerkit try to run it. They’re still trying to figure out a plan, whether they try and pull the data again or push forward with what they have.Once they get the current project cleared it'll give them more brainspace to work out plans.
-Is there much work in making a C-scale model from the 1/285th ones? It takes about 4-5 days on top of the normal process and they tend to do it in-house. They're hiring a designer and one of their jobs will be to add more features to the C-Scale minis.
-Any update on MUL 2? Getting closer but not quite done
-Are CGL going to UK Games Expo? Not this year. Rem is going to see if she can get over or send a rep to the trade shows that are on around then.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
It would really be nice to see things come back into retail, rather than just a constant stream of new stuff. New Stuff is awesome, but how about the mainstays of the game? I would personally love the Ad Hoc Star, but crap, man, something as Iconic and integral to the Clans as Elementals? Can we start actually being able to get those again?

Or, once again.....print some Total Warfare and Battlemech Manual books. Like, enough to satisfy demand, maybe? I'm tired of stalking the usual sites for going on 5 years now, and getting email notifications and when I check the site the SAME DAY they are already sold out and they stay sold out for months.

 BrookM wrote:
With the rules update coming I doubt we'll see a reprint of those books any time soon.

 ScarletRose wrote:
Just trying to wrap my head around the to hit modifier for moving targets was a huge pain.

Loren Coleman wrote:I don’t think it’s a huge secret. Yes, we’re going to do more aerospace fighters—ForcePacks and Salvage Boxes—and my guess is it’ll be how armor combat was part of the last Kickstarter. My guess is aerospace will feature in the next one, whenever the next campaign is. It just makes sense that we would do that.

Loren Coleman wrote:How much or what? I don’t know that—we haven’t really pinned down, but yeah, we’re going to do more aerospace. The whole idea is to bring back the combined-arms battle tactics and strategy, if that’s what you want. If you just want to play ’Mech on ’Mech, no problem. You want the whole shooting match, no problem.

Sean wrote:You said there’s nowhere in the United States that could possibly manufacture these products, and a lot of other companies were saying the same thing. Is that still true today as it was last year?

Loren: Yes. There is more high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) injection going on. We don’t use HIPS for our BattleMechs, just for a couple of the other smaller pieces. HIPS is more expensive for molding/tooling. There are some decent HIPS options starting to show up in the States, but it’s still not great. For the stuff we’re doing, the PVC blend and plastic injection we do for the ’Mechs… no.

I know one company is talking about it, but it’ll be a year or two before they even have a machine set up. It just doesn’t happen fast.

Loren Coleman wrote:We’ve got more DropShips coming out. I’m currently working with Liya to revamp the Elementals to take them to high-impact polystyrene to get better detailing. All these projects just take time. So when we have a product that’s working, we’re probably not going to mess with it for a while.

Loren Coleman wrote:There are about five containers of just reprinted ForcePacks and Salvage Boxes on the water or at the warehouse right now. So if you’re missing the Inner Sphere Command Lance or the Direct Fire Lance or whatever.

I believe we retired four ForcePacks total from the current line. Everything else got a reprint, and the four ForcePacks are retired; those ’Mechs will be recycled to other projects. So they will not go away, they’ll disappear in different products.

Loren Coleman wrote: Unfortunately, the best place to go for BattleTech is more plastic packs, more ForcePacks. And I say unfortunately because we are about maxed out at our capacity. We would love to make more, but we’ve got a large design team that can’t make much more than they’re already making. They do, I think, about four to five a month, and that’s their limit. So all those had to be spread out into the ForcePacks and the box sets and the Alpha Strikes and whatever else we’re going to do. I mean, there’s only so much time they have.

Liya would love for us to print more. They’re like, “We’ll print more, give us more!” We can only design them so quickly. We’ve tried creating second teams to make them, and we’ve tried two or three times, I believe, and it hasn’t worked out yet. Anthony Scroggins and Ray and all those guys that make up that team—it just works, and we haven’t duplicated it. We have not been able to duplicate that success yet. So that’s the growth area. We are just maxed out at our capacity right now.