"Ad Astra Games Kickstarter funds!" Topic

Our AVID Assistant Kickstarter reached 100% funding with 25 days left to go! Thanks to everyone who is supporting this project--you've exceeded our wildest dreams.

The AVID Assistant Kickstarter

Blather, blather, blather for those who want to know about the Kickstarter:

This project is a computerized version of the AVID. For people who already play Squadron Strike and Attack Vector: Tactical, it makes managing multiple ships easier and speeds up play. It removes errors in orientation, and it moves some of the head-bendy conceptual tricks from your brain to buttons on a tablet or phone. For people who've tried to get other players to the table, the AVID Assistant removes all of "am I doing this right?" questions from newbies.

Risks? There's already a functioning, tested program. Ken and the development team put a lot of work into it, and it handles the three basic functions of the AVID, including heading changes (shown in the first image below), shooting bearings (second image), and mapping bearings to firing arcs (third image).

Congrats! I can't wait to try it out!

Congratulations! I remember chatting with you guys at your frst GAMA show, and writing a review for the (now defunct( Treefrog Publications website :-)

Good news.

I wish you'd run a Kickstarter for the larger, Traveller spaceship minis.

Would love to see a Gazelle Close Escort, and System Defense Boat produced, along with some other merchant vessel options, etc.

Any planned date on the Traveller Version of the rules yet?

I wish you'd run a Kickstarter for the larger, Traveller spaceship minis.

Would love to see a Gazelle Close Escort, and System Defense Boat produced, along with some other merchant vessel options, etc.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Perhaps you're thinking of a project from another company?

Any planned date on the Traveller Version of the rules yet?

We'll announce a date when everything is ready. Announcing a date too early means howls of betrayal from the Interwebs when things are delayed.

Congrats!

Do you have an estimate at where you'd need to be to have the Android port of the AVID Assistant included in the KS?

Do you have an estimate at where you'd need to be to have the Android port of the AVID Assistant included in the KS?

Ken is re-evaluating the stretch goals. The first stretch goal will be posted tomorrow. It will be added at the top of the Kickstarter page, with screenshots.

By the way, we have two backers at $350 USD+. We'll be posting some more information about the rewards at that level.

A few other stats:

93 backers
$5,146 USD

From the Freelance Traveller website, on Ad Astra products:

"Published Products – Ad Astra Games

Ad Astra Games is publishing Traveller material under license from Marc Miller.

Current products:

Games

Power Projection: Fleets and Power Projection: Escorts Combined Edition (under license/agreement with BITS)

Miniatures
•Beowulf-class Free Trader
•Pinnace Pack
•Scout Courier
•Imperial Fleet Box #1
•Zhodani Fleet Box #1"

The fleet minis are produced in a smaller scale.

link

Surely, you, or someone at Ad Astra are aware that you produce the larger scale Beowulf, Pinnace, and Scout/Courier miniatures, in metal.

I'd like to see a compatible scale Gazelle Close Escort, and System Defense Boat produced, to match them, if you are considering expanding those ranges.

I suspect a lot of other gamers, and role-players would like to see them produced, as well.

I wish you'd run a Kickstarter for the larger, Traveller spaceship minis.

It wasn't clear what you meant by "larger." The Free Trader, Pinnace, and Scout miniatures are not terribly large. More importantly, there is another company that is produce resin models of those ships that are physically very large.

Surely, you, or someone at Ad Astra are aware that you produce the larger scale Beowulf, Pinnace, and Scout/Courier miniatures, in metal.

Naturally. There's a difference between "larger" and "larger scale."

I wish you'd run a Kickstarter for the larger, Traveller spaceship minis.

Would love to see a Gazelle Close Escort, and System Defense Boat produced, along with some other merchant vessel options, etc.

I suspect a lot of other gamers, and role-players would like to see them produced, as well.

There are questions about whether producing these ships could be profitable.

Unfortunately, "Run a Kickstarter!" isn't a practical way to answer those questions. Kickstarters for completely original miniatures sometimes possibly maybe can succeed with really good concept sketches, if the sculptor is known. For any other miniatures, you need digital renderings, greens, or masters. That is a significant up-front investment. Paying our 3D artist for doing complete renders has been the bulk of the budget for several projects.

I suspect a lot of other gamers, and role-players would like to see them produced, as well.

This can be discussed elsewhere. Other forums indicate the opposite. However, nothing has been ruled out.

You know Ad Astr News ,
TO me you guys are coming across a little high and mighty and rude. Remember eventually we the gamers are the reason you have a company We ask questions and make suggestions based on needs. That is what the origins of Kickstarter was. A place for exploration. Now it seems it is mostly nothing but a place for pre-orders with little or no exploration any more. Add to the mix you want us to give a set amount of money each month to a project where based on your own admission we will probably never see any new miniatures is kinda to me sneaky and underhanded.
True most miniature are not going to make you a million dollars a year unless they are a hit out of the park, but some companies do keep a good amount of product available to the person wanting them. Your lack of grasping what the consumer wants based on just the posting on here and your own message boards shows why you can not be a very successful in the long run. I will continue to commit my heresy in using proxies for my Traveller space and land minis while using various rules for them.

charles popp, what the heck are you smoking, and when is Colorado going to legalize it?

But seriously, how did you derive any of your conclusions?

-Will

Ad Astra News is trying to maintain expectations within reasonable bounds.

The short answer is that Ad Astra Games is a one-man shop (And News is run by someone I pay in product).

I'll be announcing a Kickstarter for Squadron Strike: Traveller when the product is laid out, including the countersheets. Not before. I'm doing editing on the scenario section starting this weekend.

Yes, I know I could do that work while the Kickstarter is running…but the one thing I want to be certain of is that I can deliver on the products on the Kickstarter in a very short window. I hate pledging to Kickstarters and having products delayed by months or years.

I'd much rather find that the project had funded with three weeks to go, call my printers and get the print job going and be able to pack and ship shortly after the campaign ends.

Where does this leave Traveller minis?

There will be more of them on the fleet scale. The 3D watertights are ready to 3D print. We intend to have minis for every ship we stat out for SS Traveller on the fleet scale.

We'll also be working on the Gazelle in the Adventurer scale, but we're not ready to announce time or place for that just yet. We're asking you to be patient and recognize that this is a one-person-operation, and the thing I need to husband most closely is my time.

It does nobody any good if my efforts are scattered among 17 projects that are all at the final (ugly) 20% of completion.

Charles,

You know Ad Astr News ,
TO me you guys are coming across a little high and mighty and rude. Remember eventually we the gamers are the reason you have a company We ask questions and make suggestions based on needs.

We've been doing our best to answer questions that have been asked. Please let us know if there's something that we haven't responded to.

The question about producing "adventure class ships" has come up repeatedly. We hoped that we could give a more satisfying answer than just, "No" or ignoring the question. That's why we tried to explain why those ships are not what Ad Astra Games is working on right now by giving some brief thoughts about the economics.

That is what the origins of Kickstarter was. A place for exploration. Now it seems it is mostly nothing but a place for pre-orders with little or no exploration any more.

That's exactly the problem. Like it or not, the projects that get funded the most easily are Kickstarter are those with the most eye candy. The eye candy costs quite a bit of money, so if the Kickstarter fails, a tiny operation like Ad Astra Games is probably out of business. A brutal truth.

Unfortunately, we have to take Kickstarter as it is, not as any of us would like it.

Add to the mix you want us to give a set amount of money each month to a project where based on your own admission we will probably never see any new miniatures is kinda to me sneaky and underhanded.

Could you explain what you saw as sneaky? If there's something that's giving the wrong impression, we'd like to correct that immediately.

The Patreon is to allow Ken to buy enough ramen to be able to spend a little time each month creating new ships, scenarios, campaign rules, and the like. Some of those ships are for miniatures designed by Charles Oines that are available for purchase. Others are for the Traveller miniatures that are coming out. Is there something that we're missing that needs miniatures?

We may not have made it clear that the upcoming Traveller miniatures, the Kickstarter, and the Patreon are unrelated and are for different outputs. Hopefully, we didn't post something somewhere that gave that impression. The Traveller miniatures aren't funded by either the Kickstarter or the Patreon. The Kickstarter is to pay for the development of a play aid for tablets.

The Traveller project is explicitly for squadron-level combat with largish warships, and that's the type of miniatures that we're coming out with. If we've given the impression that we're involved with new RPG elements or something similar, could you please point us to that so that we can correct it?

True most miniature are not going to make you a million dollars a year unless they are a hit out of the park, but some companies do keep a good amount of product available to the person wanting them.

Are you referring to the Scout, Free Trader, and other small ships that we sell (and more that are out of stock)? Those were bought up from the manufacturer to try to keep them available, instead of having them melted down. One of the truths of small businesses (and very small businesses) is that money tied up in inventory is a cost, and the longer that it's tied up in inventory, the more it costs. If customers buy regularly, the inventory turns over and you can afford to refresh the inventory.

Your lack of grasping what the consumer wants based on just the posting on here and your own message boards shows why you can not be a very successful in the long run.

Unfortunately, our observations were based on a large number of message boards over years. Input from TMP is almost entirely in favor of smaller ships. There's be very little discussion of small ships on the Ad Astra Games forums. Other forums don't show a great demand. If you would like to discuss this, please start a separate thread. This thread has swerved way off-topic.

I will continue to commit my heresy in using proxies for my Traveller space and land minis while using various rules for them.

It's only heresy if Marc Miller says it is.

:)

As Ken always says, "As long as we're all blowing up spaceships, everybody wins!"

Thank you for the reply, Ad Astra.

No problem at all. I thought perhaps you were new, and didn't know that your company produces a range of Traveller ship minis, based upon your statement.

I own the Beowulf, and a couple of Scouts already, and would like to purchase some other Traveller vessels.

Also, I wasn't aware that you are a one-person operation.

I'm not sure what your "adventure-class" vessels are, but suspect they may be the mid-range sized vessels I'm talking about, that RPG'ers use (not the smaller, fleet-scale ones), e.g. the ones I already own.

I concur with your belief that you need good artwork/designs to get people to commit to a new Kickstarter campaign. However, while you may not have any 3D ready artwork completed that is watertight, and ready for production, the designs of the Gazelle and the SDB are so iconic, that I imagine people might commit to a Kickstarter for those anyway, from generic drawings already available, and in print, especially if you identify which ones you'll be basing the minis on (there are slightly different takes on the various models, depending upon the artists).

While we're at it, I'd like to mention the need for more merchant ships in the "adventure-class" scale, if that is the correct term as well. Again, I think a Kickstarter, or stretch-goal for those, in addition to the Gazelle and System Defense Boat (SDB) would be very well received by gamers (both wargamers, and RPG players).

Further, I suspect there may even be some fan-based 3D designs out there that are compatible with production, or that could be made so, shortly.

I'd love to see you at least try to put those into place, or perhaps run a poll to see if there might be enough interest in them to consider a Kickstarter, which could cover both the 3D watertight design artwork, as well as prototypes, molds, etc. too.

Kickstarter, to me, seems like the perfect venue to see if a project is viable. It never hurts to try, and you might surprise yourself at the interest.

If it goes unfunded, you really haven't lost anything, and the 3D art rendering, and the prototype and miniatures production can be handled by a third party, easily.

Which company produces the much larger, resin Traveller vessel minis?

I didn't know those exist.

Also, my apologies for jumping the shark, and hijacking your thread here. I really didn't intend to do that, since I thought my question/point was a simple one, and that I could get a pretty quick, yes, or no answer, and perhaps a future availability date.

I thought I'd seen a scratchbuilt, 15mm scale Traveller Scoutship. The flying Dorito design.

It was about 18" long and 12" wide, IIRC.

Yes, I've seen several versions of those, and they are quite nice.

Been wanting to build one myself, eventually, and even bought some of the materials to do so.

Had some scale drawings I was working on as well, since the height to length to width ratios of the plans are off a bit, height-wise. Sadly, lost those when the last PC died, so will need to recover them, when funds permit, or to try to recreate them.

I took some 15mm/18mm figs, scanned them, and photo-shopped them to help with the scale/size studies.

Mako: d20 Entertainment produced the large resin castings of the Beowulf Freighter and the others. d20 Entertainment and Ad Astra are talking about how to combine our respective expertise on the smaller minis for production; this is the hint I made earlier about the Gazelle: I will probably be making them for d20 Entertainment, in scale with the minis I already sell on Adventurer Scale.

I'll be happy to open up a topic on that when I get more details finalized and paperwork signed. d20 Entertainment realllly wants to do television shows, and they've got a lot of balls in the air, I've got a Kickstarter still running, and am trying to finalize layout on Squadron Strike: Traveller, while keeping a couple of other in the air of my own.

I GREATLY appreciate enthusiastic customers – you guys are why I want to break out of writing about computers and work on things I'm passionate about too as my daily bread and butter. So, apology appreciated, and no harm done.

140 backers, $6,614. USD Closing in on the big first stretch goal.