"Robotech: prepare for the nerd rage" Topic

Palladium just released news about their Robotech miniatures game.

link

The TLDR version is that they realize the 6mm stuff is too small, and a royal pain to assemble to the point that it turns off many people (myself included*). The forces in other eras of the universe are smaller than mecha so they are contemplating on switching scales.

The only comparison I can think of is if Flames of War did Early War in 15mm, and Mid/Late war in 10mm.

Since I don't know any of the other backgrounds, tell me Macross and these other eras don't "mix"

*Personally, I might Ebay what I have and go to a larger scale if they redid what they already made in 10 or 15mm.

Good grief.

So, from what I see there, Kev wants us to believe that this whole clusterbuck was Ninja Division's fault. They sent 3D files that were useless to the Chinese factory, and had to be rebuilt from scratch. That ND 'said' they'd handle the KS, but then didn't proceed beyond raking in the funds. And no-one at Palladium realised that. And we should believe that no-one at Palladium knows anything at all about export/import. And they didn't realise the models would be so tiny and fiddly, even after they signed off on the models, the sprues, and the layout of pieces…

And now GHQ are involved. Lord, I hope they escape this without getting their good names dragged through the mud too.

As lovely as GHQ's miniatures are, they are not a substitute for new miniatures. 'Releasing' a bunch of existing 1/285 moderns and calling them "Earth Defenders" is a bad joke.

And even if someone is daft enough to be pulled into buying them, what will they do with them if the scale ups to 10 / 15mm??

And what compensation will there be for all of us who bought into the 1/285 stuff? Simbeda can claim that Palladium love and adore their Backer community, but I doubt we'll see a buy-back or credit offer.

Seriously thinking of going back to my 1/200 scale Nichimo kits and Gashapon.

They don't mix is the short of it.

Robotech is an amalgam of at least three different anime, and to be honest I doubt there's as much interest outside of the Macross kit. Having said that, I've an open mind to 15mm scale kit as I'm a 15mm sci fi kind of guy.

I would have liked Semenbeater to address the debacle that was ROW shipping, lots of jazz hands ctud in that missive. I like that they're communicating in detail, but there's no focus on the detail I'm looking for, namely wave 2 fulfillment and whether PB is going to throw anyone outside of North America under a bus.

Could have told them that, but they wouldn't have listened to me or for that matter the person who they were originally involved with more to the point.

For wargaming 6mm is a pretty good choice if the focus is on large stompy robots.

The Mospeada segment of Robotech is not really about large stompy robots. You know watching one episode of the story would have told you that. I feel sorry for all the die hard Robotech fans out there. What a mess.

I'm not sure why different levels of play having different scales is a bad thing.

I have epic 40K and 40K to handle really big battles with big stompy monsters and to handle large skirmishes.

I use Infinity for really small skirmishes.

I guess, if I were them, I'd just come out with another game and leave this as the large tactical scale game.

As expected from Palladium's typical poor planning. Anyone familiar with the series would know that a cyclone (motorbike mecha) would be tiny at 6mm. The original shows had nothing to do with each other so their respective hero mecha aren't in scale.

Also the minis being hard to assemble was because of incompetence at Palladium and the contractor they hired. Similar quality plastic mechs in 6mm scale don't come in a million pieces.

They claimed they needed so many pieces to get the full detail, but the huge mold lines from the poorly molded pieces are far worse than losing a bit of detail from having a single piece leg or arm.

@Pictors Studio

Multi-scale makes far more sense than going to 15mm. Cyclones are still tiny at 15mm. Mospedea should be 28mm. Southern cross would be okay at 15mm – 20mm.

The models they sent out are overly tedious to assemble but are quite nice when finished and 6mm is a good scale to simulate the large battles in Robotech but he is right about 6mm in doing the vehicles seen in the other Robotech series when fighting the Invid or the Robotech masters. The vehicles for the subsequent series would be very small. So I wouldn't have a problem if the scale for the first and beloved Robotech series is 6mm and the subsequent ones are 15mm as I wouldn't mix them in a game anyway. Each one of the three series were quite separate and I don't think any of the vehicles that appeared in one series showed up in the other. So 15mm would be okay in my mind.

> I feel sorry for all the die hard Robotech fans out there.

If they are not used to getting used/abused by now they never will be. The "Love Live Alive" repackaging should be proof of that.

I have been seriously thinking in getting game, but just kept getting second thoughts on it. I have to spend my money completing some that I had shelve for some t.ime

I need to find some proxies for the zentraedi battle armor types.

Then I think I'm done buying for this game.

Macross fans are rolling over with laughter.
No nerd rage going on with them.

And @ Rdfraf you should already know why vehicles from one series never showed up in the other.

This why I never bothered with Robotech. So many other cool stompy robots out there.

Sounds like typical Kev "blame-gaming"

The scale switch may also be a result of Kev looking for a scale with no competition that he recognizes.

If he thinks there's no competition in 15mm, he's in for a rude shock.

Hmm, Palladium blames everyone else for their problems then stands poised to make a sweeping ridiculous decision that would screw over it's playerbase.

Sounds like Palladium to me.

As cool as 15mm Macross would be, aren't there already quite a few 1/100 macross kits out there? I'm sure they could fill alot of gaps, but what exactly would be the point of shafting your existing customers only to replicate what's already being done?

Also, a 15mm macross game with the existing rules would need a much bigger table and alot more money.

Palladium has a lot of understandable hate directed towards them. Kevin is an idiot. He doesn't really know how to run a business. RPG or Wargame or VHS tapes. And he has an everyone else is to blame except him attitude. He always had.

SP/NJ/CMoN are not innocent companies and have screwed up kickstarters before, but in the end they did deliver (even if years late).

When I got into the Kickstarter, I was hoping I was dealing with Ninja Division and Soda Pop mostly because they have done kickstarters before and I was hoping they learned from their previous mistakes, but my trust level with them was on the lower side.

The "miscommunication" between them and Palladium is telling. I wonder if they changed the wording of their agreement to get out of dealing with Palladium/Kevin.

I think a lot of people placed way too many assumptions into this campaign. People who never played a wargame before, people who have only seen Macross and not Robotech, and people who play Battletech.

Those who wanted the 6mm Unseen Battletech Mechs have nothing to complain about. They have their mecha (unless they are waiting on the Monster)!

6mm is fine for Macross. For those who just want to play Macross, then once Wave 2 fulfills, they have nothing to complain about.

15mm is fine for Southern Cross and MOSPEADA. I can buy 1/100 Macross mechs if I felt the need, but I think that scale will work for both.

Now saying all that… Honestly, I am happy with what I got and I can wait for Wave 2 without expecting ANY further development in the game.

Palladium can finish Wave 2 and be done with Robotech and I will be happy.

I got a bad vibe from the email. It feels like the relationship between PB, ND, and the manufacturers in China is about to go south rather quickly at the end of the year- Wave 2 or no.

Since I don't know any of the other backgrounds, tell me Macross and these other eras don't "mix"

Robotech was "created" by combining 3 different, completely unrelated weekly anime into a daily-showing cartoon.

As cool as 15mm Macross would be, aren't there already quite a few 1/100 macross kits out there?

Not really. I haven't found a 1/100 scale Regult at all, for example, but there are probably two dozen different Valkyrie models available.

I'm sure they could fill alot of gaps, but what exactly would be the point of shafting your existing customers only to replicate what's already being done?

Depends on what you want to do with the game, IMO. The Cyclones (transforming motorcycles) would be great in 20mm or 28mm. I'd recommend 20mm to Palladium, because if someone wanted to mix in stuff there are lots of 1/72 scale Valks and other bots in existence. I would strongly NOT recommend that Palladium try to make anything other than decals for Robotech as opposed to complete 1/72 models, as they'd be competing against Bandai in 1/72 scale models. Yeah, the Bandai models are complex, but they can be transformable.

I'm expecting 28mm character models to use with the RPG, but 20mm character models wouldn't be a problem if you got a good sculptor (like Tony Barton).

Lion in the Stars

link

While 1/100 scale Macross kits do exist, they are all Valkryie. Very few Zentradei can be found, any will more likely be the Officer's Pod, the Regults are very rare and the powered suits are non-existent. And don't even think about the Monster.

I know there are or were Officer's Pods in 1/100 scale. I have had one for years, it's seen better days and has been neglected in favor of 1/144 scale Gundams and mobile suits.

This really does seem par for the course for Palladium. I wish that Harmony Gold had tapped someone like Reaper or Privateer Press for this game. We'd at least have miniatures and not 1/285 scale models with far too many bits.

I love Mospeada, but fear we'll ever get anything interesting to play in that era.

Those are damn pricey haywire, but thanks for the link

If anything, I thought Kevin was apologetic about this whole fiasco. It was an open and frank confession of everything that went wrong. The whole undertaking was more complex and involved than he or anyone at PB anticipated, from managing the shipments and transportation to the incompatibility of their 3D files to China's equipment.

The sheer number of parts for the Valks were dictated by China's molds since Kevin initially expected fewer parts:

"I felt we needed to keep the game pieces simple and easy to put together. No more than 8-10 parts, especially if we were to make the new Robotech® game and pieces appealing to a wide audience. I even rejected one potential partner, early on, because he insisted that to make the mecha highly detailed – the way fans insisted they wanted – the pieces would have to have 16-20 parts. That to me was not acceptable. Turns out he was right, especially via the manufacturing method we ended up using. I wish I had stuck to my guns on that small piece count and simplicity, but I'm getting ahead of myself."

"To complicate matters further, the engineers in China have to adjust the 3D sculpts further to take into consideration the manufacturing process and the types of metal molds that are required. That makes certain undercuts and details impossible, and requires different approaches and more numerous pieces to make the detailed game pieces all of us Robotech® fans wanted."

Still, he and PB should have put a lot more pre-planning into it rather than take a naively optimistic "learn as we go along" approach and expect immunity from Murphy's Law.

Southern Cross mecha would be small in 6mm-1/285th, but comparable to Dream Pod 9 Gears, so still big enough to play with, but YMMV.

link

Also, Mospead Alpha and Beta fighters would in 6mm-1/285th be quite big mecha, especially when combined.

Checking the like the Alpha fighter stands at 8.75 meters. which is a tad over 28mm (or not because another picture lists it at 12 meters, but still not that small).

A game of the gang riding around on their cyclone transformable motorbikes would look better in 20 or 28 mm. Link to size comparison:

link

The smaller Invid are like bugs, small and hundreds of them, but Mospeada is not really a wargame except during the invasion sequences where Earth is being attacked or invaded during the occupation.

All this stuff from KS seems rather unnecessary, because this was all obvious from the get go.

I was just seriously thinking about taking the plunge into RRT last weekend too. I have no interest in ROTM (Robotech Other Than Macross) so couldn't care less about what scale the other two series take, but 15mm does make sense since, as Kevin stated in his update, there just isn't much to model and paint when it comes to 6mm or 1/285 scale.

As for taking the plunge, I think I'll wait til Wave 2 is released next year (fingers crossed) before deciding on buying into this game.

I was doing some Googling and found this link about Kevin:

link

Not sure how true it is, but it does match up with what I've heard from other people that have worked with Palladium.

Well, I guess I'll be prepared to snap up some 'unseen' on ebay if things go completely pear shaped….

-Will

But seriously, I took one look at the KS, saw Palladium, and ran off as fast as possible. Still really glad that I did.

-Will

As a 1/200 scale Robotech Player I would like to start by saying…

We told you so!

Okay so if you are not blind from squinting your eyes to see those tiny parts or if you have not lost a few days crawling around looking in the rug for that lost microscopic part you can e-mail me at Drboynton@yahoo.com to arrange to play a game of the Mobil Soldier in Action Robotech adaptation when you drop by Eastern Washington this summer. You need to face the facts like big boys and admit that unless you want to develop arthritis and experience a loss of vision most of you are never going to be able to build all those KS micro mini masterpieces.

Meanwhile enjoy these links to my easy to build 1/200 scale Robotech Miniatures that I enjoyed building. If they would not have got greedy and just went with the classic 1/200 think what might have been…

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Cheers,
Mike

@ Haywire: Thanks for that, shame that I need *many* of those. $40 USD each is significantly more than I can afford.

Based on this comparison pic, I don't think that 1/144 scale would be big enough for the Cyclones. So 1/100 or 1/72 scale would be much better. 1/72 scale would be my preference because you'd be able to snag fully-transformable Valkyrie models from Bandai, and I don't think any of the Invid have ever been released.

This means that Palladium isn't competing against Bandai directly for most of the models.

Here's a comparison pic between a Destroid, Regult battlepod, and Cyclones, all in 6mm scale:

And here's a pic of 6mm and 15mm Cyclones next to a Valk in Gerwalk mode:

Here's another pic of 6mm and 15mm Cyclones.

6mm Cyclones? Conversions or what?

I had a thought though.

28mm and use the old toy Veritechs that actually transform.

OK I admit that's a bit crazy, but think of the fun!

;-)

Ages ago at a convention in Anaheim, California, I had a chance to meet Carl Macek and I showed him my Battletech boxed set and asked what was up?
He said, among other things, that he hoped FASA would get the gaming license for Robotech.

@The Black Android

Awesome impressive work.

@Coelacanth1938,

FASA doing Robotech was a pipe dream because of Battletech, but a company with more experience in tabletop miniature games is unlikely to bungle it to the extent PB did.

6mm Cyclones? Conversions or what?

3d prints, just like the 15mm Cyclone.

If Palladium went with 20mm for the Cyclones and human infantry, we could use the 1/72 scale Bandai models.

Cool stuff Black Android. In the one album there is a link back to a game that was posted on TMP some time ago using mods to the Mobile Soldier in Action rules. Is it possible to get those mods, I have the main rules.