"Traveller License Stays with Ad Astra Games" Topic

We're pleased to announce that the Traveller license is staying with Ad Astra as we've become a separate business entity. This includes the ship miniatures and the upcoming space combat game.

Upcoming space combat game for Traveller? Ooooo! Do tell us more, please!

Soon enough, soon enough …

It does emphasize maneuver more than many of the other Traveller space combat games.

More miniatures?
If conventional castings are too expensive, could the license allow, or be changed to allow, a print on demand model for ships through Shapeways or some other 3D printing setup?

I think that print-on-demand has some different requirements for the models. Anyhow, price would scare a lot of people off.

How about plastic models so that we can afford lots of really large fleets?

We wanted to do plastic for our 1:350 aircraft miniatures (for Birds of Prey), but the cost of tooling is prohibitive. If we could sell them by the thousands, it would make sense. Otherwise, no.

More miniatures?

We have nothing to publicize at this time.

I have zero faith in this producing anything

Keep us informed. I missed the RAFM Traveller ships years ago and I've regretted it since. (Any plans for Space 1889?)

Others are hard at work on Space 1889, but not Ad Astra Games.

Good to hear.

Would love to see some more of the vessels produced in the larger scale, to match your Beowulf and Courier vessel, e.g. ships' boats, system defence vessels, etc.

tl;dr Hard to make money on adventure-class ships.

The problem with those adventure-class ships vessels is that people don't buy many of them. A gaming group of five to eight people might buy a single Free Trader. Who really needs a pack of three Lab Ships? The referee probably isn't going to pick up large numbers of each NPC ship, or too wide a variety, even if the group does a lot of space combats.

With this and print-on-demand, the cost of having the artist build the water tight 3D model is a big expense. If you don't see enough units to pay the artist, pay for the license, and make some profit, it's a losing proposition. For POD, the price point is pretty high, which scares off a lot of sales. It can be done, but it's hard. If you cast them in pewter you can put the price point a lot lower, but you also have a sunk cost in making masters, making the molds, and producing the miniatures. Gotta sell enough units to make a profit (game company owners are cheap to feed, but even they require some nutrition beyond Top Ramen).

This is where something economical like box minis or paper crafting comes in handy.
--
TAZ

I wants mah dang Tigress DN, dagnabit.

So is PP gone?

I think the way to make adventure class ships pay is to package them in a boxed set so people have to buy all of them at once. You could also reuse them as pawns for a board game version of the trading rules.

Let me ask two questions of Ad Astra

Would you be interested in doing a range of Traveller rpg / Striker figures? I think the interest level to do so exists if the line is done right.

Have you considered doing a kickstarter for plastics? Kickstarter really puts the access to customers and capital in place and might make some amazing things possible which would never have made it through the distribution and retail structure.

We wanted to do plastic for our 1:350 aircraft miniatures (for Birds of Prey), but the cost of tooling is prohibitive. If we could sell them by the thousands, it would make sense. Otherwise, no.

Well, I know that there's a good range of naval aircraft available from the plastic modeling crowd. But I think we're still short on land-based birds.

I'd be game for some 15mm Traveller minis, and maybe even some 15mm starship kits.

Power Projection isn't actually gone, but I don't know if they're planning another print run. BITS has just made PP available as a PDF.

I for one would like to see Ad Astra release the super tanker they mastered, as well as a Tigress. Perhaps even more, I'd like to see someone release the Planet-class heavy cruiser.

Regards,
Keith F.