"Assembly of new Robotech RPG Tactics figures" Topic

I backed this kickstarter and am worried they are too many pieces! but someone previewed them here and maybe they are not so bad?

link

Hope you like!

Those do look sweet. I'll probably buy into that when I see it at a store.

Nice! It's about time Robotech saw some hard plastic love!

hard plastic love!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA heee

*facepalm*

I am such an idiot sometimes…

Plastic injection, no less!

Still not released yet huh. Wow.

"Still not released yet huh. Wow."

It'll be released sometime this year. I'm in it for somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 USD or so. I've waited this long, I can wait longer. Besides, I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy in the meantime.:)Good to see the figures are shaping up rather nice, which make the wait worth it (IMO).

The issue is with the RDF mechs where the joins are along the flat front surfaces, and the early examples were poorly moulded so there was a lot of gap. And they did extra silly things like splitting open missile bay doors down the middle instead of having a separate single piece that could be glued/clipped in place.

Those designs were certainly not up to the standards I expect of plastic wargaming kits in 2014.

These battlepods on the other hand look to have been designed properly with single-part legs and the join for the pod hull nut running straight through the front of the pod.

Look at the legs and explain how they can be molded without being two piece? I can't see a single good way to cast them so that the seam doesn't suck, remember it's plastic, so 0 undercuts.

Does it suck, yes, but that's the downfall of hard plastic and working with existing designs, if they didn't have to follow the art they could have tweaked the design to make them cast easier.

Strangely enough, FASA (well, Ral Partha) did it--one-plus pieces--with those exact same designs in metal and later resin, and Catalyst Game Labs (though different designs) in plastic.

Remember, these are gaming pieces that are expressly supposed to be used en masse, not singular models in colloquial terms. They promised large amounts of poseability and extreme detail and right now I am seeing little of the former, and certainly no more (if not outright less) of the latter than I have in my Unseen BattleTech 'Mechs.

I also backed this KS. I thought it was supposed to deliver at the end of last year? I find it is best to forget these things and then be pleasantly surprised if/when they show up.

Failure16: regarding metal and resin, Palladium has explained (and this sounds right) that it's much easier to do complex shapes in a single-piece casting, because metal and resin use flexible molds (allowing for undercuts), whereas plastic uses rigid steel molds. That's supposedly why they had to break up the different parts this way.

For example, those two little ridges on the mech's shins: if the legs were in a single piece, the plastic would locked in the mold by those. (While a rubber mold for a metal casting would flex around them, allowing for removal).

Still, I agree this is not looking ideal, and surely it would have been better to compromise on a few details than have every piece being split right down the middle? They keep saying the fit will be better on the production pieces, but even if it is excellent, a seam will be visible short of filling and sanding each join.

I also backed this one, and have just resigned myself to patience, and hope that the finished product will be better than what we have seen so far.

The Regults look great though, so there is that.

Try the painted Glaug here
link

Rules Demo/Review
link

Ivan DBA has the right of it. The design as shown would be impossible to mold in plastic without a bad seam somewhere. The only way to fix this would be to remove or change the surface detail, which would have elicited its own set of complaints from people demanding accuracy in the sculpts.

I do suspect there are things that could have been done to minimize those seams, but that might have upped the total number of pieces per mecha, which is already drawing criticism.

I'm not sure there is anything PB or ND could have done to please everyone on this issue.

I can see myself buying some Ventraedi when they hit the shelves.

Ivan DBA, mdauben, I understand the physical/logistical necessities and realities of why things are being done the general way they are. But that does not change the gist of my argument: chiefly that other companies have managed to produced miniatures in the same scale as these (and of the same designs) and not managed to make them into what *may* be an assembly-nightmare.

Indeed, for just one example of how to ease assembly, look at Quaker's comment above regarding the missile pack.

All things considered, perhaps the limitations of the chosen material should have been more-fully researched and perhaps different choices could have been made. There is evidence that fairly complex and highly detailed mecha models can be produced in plastic (witness the premium 'Mechs in the last two BattleTech starter sets) without being dozen-piece models…for a game that all but demands there be (or at least is plainly geared towards) a score or more models per side.

I am a backer too. I imagined that I would be getting pieces commensurate to the quality and ease of my old Ral Partha BattleTech models (mentioned only as a reference point), but that appears not to be the case. However, we have yet to see any real production photos, especially of the Destroids, so only time will tell. Ideally, hopefully, certain issues will be resolved and the final products will be worthy of their touting. In any event, my own desires in the early days of the Kickstarter have certainly colored my views today.

Regardless, it will be nice when they are done, not so?

The design as shown would be impossible to mold in plastic without a bad seam somewhere.

While it would be impossible to have no mold lines, in a lot of cases it would be possible to make a part without the model seams. But instead of the the two part mold they have been using here, they would have needed a multi part mold. Might cost more, but it also makes the footprint a lot smaller, which would save money. Because even Ninja Magic have 0 experience with hard plastics, they didn't think of that particular possibility…

I've also seen better engineered model Mech kits, especially from Bandai, seams that are hidden by overlapping plates, etc.

Can't really blame a company that's a first time 'supplier' of hard plastic kits, but all that, it's impossible is just a load of rubbish!

Dreamforge did far better in that regard, but it seems that NoseGoblin is a more knowledgeable sculptor, who's more hands on and Wargames Factory China has better and/or more helpful engineers that understand the hobby and the product…

What I don't get is that a Space Marine has 10-12+ parts each, and you need a few dozen of those as well. Only the fighter mode has significantly more parts, but so does a SM sergeant…

It looks like there are a lot of folks that have never played with HQ hard plastics before, they are either familiar with prepainted minis (no assembly required) or are only familiar with the simpler metal Mechs…

Stop complaining, I ordered ~600 of these models and I'll be assembling those until my [s]beard[/s] goatee is completely white! ;-)

chiefly that other companies have managed to produced miniatures in the same scale as these (and of the same designs) and not managed to make them into what *may* be an assembly-nightmare.

And made them from expensive metal or even more expensive resin, or bendy pvc? I have some Macross Gashpons that have less parts and are from a hard plastic (but probably also PVC), but those are a LOT bigger (1/160 vs. 1/300, less fiddly mold), made by companies that have a LOT of experience.

witness the premium 'Mechs in the last two BattleTech starter sets

Erm, I have here a 'premium' Mad Cat and Battlemaster and they are still PVC requiring horrible super glue instead of godly plastic glue (that bonds far better by melting the two parts together). Lines aren't as hard as on a 'proper' hard plastic miniature. Don't get me wrong, these are still miles ahead of the old BT plastic crap, but they don't look half as sharp as the Regult Pods in the latest blogpost.

The Mad Cat is still a 6 piece model that is completely static. The Battlemaster is only 5 pieces and make Pinochio look like a dancer from Swanlake… The Robotech Mech can be build with few as 8 pieces and has options on the sprue to construct multiple poses and multiple variants. The BT kit doesn't even come close!

What I'm afraid of is that folks start complaining of 'horrible' model seams after assembling the minis with super glue… Those things are supposed to be assembled with plastic glue, if you do that properly, you won't have any seams. Because the melted/bonded plastic it is now one part, cut away the excess plastic with a sharp knife. If necessary, sand the service with a fine sand paper.

They assembled six Regult Pods in under an hour, ~11 pieces per pod. That's quite quick imho…

Edit:

Found some painted pictures up on the Facebook page of a Glaug Pod, absolutely no effort was made to hide the seams (which offend my OCD tendencies):

Found some painted pictures up on the Facebook page of a Glaug Pod, absolutely no effort was made to hide the seams (which offend my OCD tendencies)

I have to agree. Overall, I like the look of the miniature and the paint job shows it off nicely, but with all the complaints about the "horrible joints" for the last two months, you would think they'd spend the little bit of time it would have taken to clean up the seams on this display model. While they look bad, I certainly don't see anything that could not have been fixed with a little bit more prep work before the paint job. :-/