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Manchu wrote:
Try the same analysis on the other factions.

Aliens get 55 quid in the box (3x5 man units, facehuggers), plus predalien (10 quid) from one list, and an alien warrior unit from the other for a total of 80 quid in add-on value.
USCM get 15 quid in the box, 10 quid in sentry guns and 15 quid in a second unit. total: 40 quid
Preds get 30 quid in the box, 10 quid pred 'zerker, 10 quid female pred, 15 quid hounds. total: 65 quid.

if you like either aliens or preds, or USCM and slightly like some other things, going for one or more base boxes is a complete no-brainer.
Only thing I'm not sure about (and won't really bother wondering about until it makes sense, e.g. at the end, when stretches and add-ons are all revealed) is whether to get a 75 quid pledge, and a pledge for either 75 quid or some higher level, or to just get the 210 quid pledge. As it stands going for two separate pledges wins out, in my mind.

 BrookM wrote:
The retail version will have single piece plastics, which makes the retail edition more geared towards the casual players while this version right now is geared towards us table-toppers.

Which means less people will pledge. Wouldn't it have made more sense to cater to the larger portion of the fanbase now and use those funds for the hobbyist products later or have them as add-ons?

 Bolognesus wrote:
As it stands going for two separate pledges wins out, in my mind.

You're missing out on a lot of add-on money, and another set of In The Pipe extras doesn't outweigh that as far as I can tell.


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Visceral_Mass wrote:
Which means less people will pledge. Wouldn't it have made more sense to cater to the larger portion of the fanbase now and use those funds for the hobbyist products later or have them as add-ons?

I think probably not. The niche market customer is willing to spend more up front than the generalized customer, whose purchase will depend much more on retail-driven low price and of course impulse buying/immediate gratification.

Manchu wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:
As it stands going for two separate pledges wins out, in my mind.

You're missing out on a lot of add-on money, and another set of In The Pipe extras doesn't outweigh that as far as I can tell.

That depends on how many of the base box and stretch bonus stuff you want more of. I'm pretty sure that so far, for me it works

We've passed 170K by the way!

 Bolognesus wrote:
That depends on how many of the base box and stretch bonus stuff you want more of. I'm pretty sure that so far, for me it works

Sorry I'm a bit slow today, could you explain how?


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 BrookM wrote:
We've passed 170K by the way!

Pretty awesome. Assuming all losses in backers at the 155 level pledged up to 210, the 185k/170k goals could be responsible for as much as 84% of that. There's still a way to go before catching up to yesterday, however, much less Tuesday.

Manchu wrote:
I think probably not. The niche market customer is willing to spend more up front than the generalized customer, whose purchase will depend much more on retail-driven low price and of course impulse buying/immediate gratification.

I think you are underestimating the potential of the Aliens/Predator fans who are not hobbyists. I for one would have pledged for at least 2 boxed sets had they not been geared towards the hobbyists and I would have added at least 2 of ANY other items that were ready to play right out of the box. The customer that drives the sales of the action figures and statues and comics is where the true money is, not in the hobbyists.

Visceral_Mass wrote:
The customer that drives the sales of the action figures and statues and comics is where the true money is, not in the hobbyists.

We're not disagreeing on that point. But KS is not where you get to that market -- you get to those guys in discount retail.

Counting on resale value for the exclusive model you can't buy extras of, but I'll admit I'm kind of banking on several more stretch goals applying to lower levels as well.
Actually, doing the math, you're right (assuming we hit 185k funding @ 2k backers and then stop) assuming the pred zerkers don't go crazy in value afterwards due to not being an add-on.
Figure that really shows I hadn't done the math entirely until you called me on it, then

 Bolognesus wrote:
Figure that really shows I hadn't done the math entirely until you called me on it, then

Well as you point out, we don't have all the info just yet so it's not decision time anyway. For me, whether I'm in for a second copy really comes down to those tiles, which I know sounds odd but I'm pretty content at the 155 level otherwise (esp. with Christmas coming up and all).

Manchu wrote:

Visceral_Mass wrote:
The customer that drives the sales of the action figures and statues and comics is where the true money is, not in the hobbyists.

We're not disagreeing on that point. But KS is not where you get to that market -- you get to those guys in discount retail.

I disagree with that as KS is for funding, not a sales method designed to reach a specific market, such as hobbyists. Granted it can be used that way, but it seems like you'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you could have reached a larger group of people willing to help fund your project if you just broadened your project's appeal, especially when you were already planning on doing it any way.

Oh I know what you mean, regarding those tiles; I'd like some decent-enough set-up-a-dungeon cardboard for sci-fi purposes.

Visceral_Mass wrote:

Manchu wrote:

Visceral_Mass wrote:
The customer that drives the sales of the action figures and statues and comics is where the true money is, not in the hobbyists.

We're not disagreeing on that point. But KS is not where you get to that market -- you get to those guys in discount retail.

I disagree with that as KS is for funding, not a sales method designed to reach a specific market

That pretty well proves my point about mass market retail. But it depends on your market. Hobbyists have shown tremendous responsiveness to KS. What Prodos is doing makes perfect sense.


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 Bolognesus wrote:
Oh I know what you mean, regarding those tiles; I'd like some decent-enough set-up-a-dungeon cardboard for sci-fi purposes.

I doubt they'll be Spulk 2009 good but I am hoping for thick, coated cardboard. I'd also like to get a better view of the pieces to evaluate the detail and variety.

Still haven't gotten my mitts on spulk09 properly so can't speak to that but I'd be more than fine with Zombicide quality, from what I've seen of my ZCS2 delivery at a glance

Manchu wrote:
Hobbyists have shown tremendous responsiveness to KS. What Prodos is doing makes perfect sense.

Fans of specific licenses and gamers of all types have shown tremendous responsiveness to KS, it depends on the project's appeal. What would have made perfect sense (if funding the game is truly their goal) is having a project that appeals to as many people as possible instead of catering to a specific group.

Holy cow, look at those comments rolling in!But still little correspondence to number of backers or pounds pledged.

/goes and reads the comments/

Oh it was just backer drama.

Dammit Manchu, when I get paid I'll be going in for "If it bleeds"! Prodos combined with your logic will see me part with my monies.

I think seeing the tiles will be the main thing. 20 "Drones", 10 "Runners", and all the other gubbins will be sweet. Hopefully the boardgame scales well that you can combine two sets (or more) of tiles.

I wonder what stretch goal the main rulebook for tabletop play will be...

EDIT: Also when you sign up to kickstarter do you enter your full name as a "forum" name and your details are hidden or do you need to put your actual name first? (not that it really matters)

Visceral_Mass wrote:
if funding the game is truly their goal

Oh, right there's your mistake. This isn't about funding anything really, as far as I can tell. This is about getting resin multi-piece models to hobbyists on the way to retail.

The tiles shown so far still look like prototypes, so hopefully we'll get to see the actual final products before the campaign is over.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Dammit Manchu, when I get paid I'll be going in for "If it bleeds"!

Hold on cowboy! We'll only really know if 210 is the new sweet spot when we have more info on gameplay and component quality, IMO.

I don't think I entered any "real" personal details except for CC payment purposes at all.

Manchu wrote:

Visceral_Mass wrote:

Manchu wrote:
if funding the game is truly their goal

Oh, right there's your mistake. This isn't about funding anything really, as far as I can tell. This is about getting resin multi-piece models to hobbyists on the way to retail.

Not a mistake, my whole point is they could have made crazy amounts of money if they kickstarted the retail game as it would have allowed them to bypass the middleman (the distributors). Plus the extra money might have allowed them to offer those hobbyist figures for a little cheaper.

...someone kindly add an end quote tag before firing off his next witty retort, mmkaythanksbye?

Visceral_Mass wrote:
my whole point is they could have made crazy amounts of money if they kickstarted the retail game as it would have allowed them to bypass the middleman (the distributors)

That's far from clear. Plus they're obviously not ready to deal with retail numbers yet. KS can get big but it's not a lot, at least in terms of miniatures sales, when compared to retail on big IP products. AvP is a contender thanks to its name but a little company like Prodos has to do things gingerly.


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 BrookM wrote:
The tiles shown so far still look like prototypes, so hopefully we'll get to see the actual final products before the campaign is over.

Yes, here's hoping. I'm really, really hoping that a lot of this stuff is actually done but is held back by stretch goals we still need to unlock. I mean, that has it's own bad points but it's better than so much not being in good shape to show up close or talk about in detail.

Manchu wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Dammit Manchu, when I get paid I'll be going in for "If it bleeds"!

Hold on cowboy! We'll only really know if 210 is the new sweet spot when we have more info on gameplay and component quality, IMO.

Affirmative! Hope we'll get an answer soon!

Bolognesus wrote:I don't think I entered any "real" personal details except for CC payment purposes at all.

Sounds good, signed up and it certainly looks that way. Cheers.

There should be a single freebie pledge IMO and the company should reward bigger pledgers but keeping it simple and giving them multiples of the "freebie" pledge level. Pledging twice the freebie level? You get twice the freebies. The structure of getting benefit A at pledge level 1 but getting benefit B only at pledge level 2 which is double pledge level 1 when benefit B isn't twice benefit A because benefit C is combined with it is as confusing in the KS as it is in this giant run-on sentence.

I think it comes off as more confusing than it is because there's no graphic really laying it out yet and I know there probably won't be until at least 185k.

Huh. Thought I registered here years ago but perhaps it got purged. Or maybe I never did. *Shrug*

Been following this thread because this is how I found out about the Kickstarter (Was looking up good 28mm Alien subs when this post came up in the search). Certainly an interesting discussion to read day in and out, as it's been the most active of any forum I am on.

I just registered to make a quick point about why the Kickstarter is happening. I'm fairly sure it's been said in the comments by Prodos and it's somewhere on the page itself (I'm not interested in searching for it) that the Kickstarter is there largely to fund projects for AvP that would likely be 12-24 months down the line. Prodos itself is not a large operation (I certainly hadn't heard of them before now), so they probably can't raise the same amount of capital to start taking risks on these things immediately. Sure, it could turn out huge for them... but if it doesn't, that's a terrible loan to be carrying. To that end, I can understand why they are doing the Kickstarter.

On the comments thing: I've been following along rather intently, and this Kickstarter seems to have a LOT of people who are very active in the comments, including a guy who is actively trolling people by the name of Troy (Apparently he pledged $1 or something just so he could comment). So the comments section is rather unpredictable and active.

As for me, I'm trying to build up some capital to get that $340 (US) pledge. While I've put down my fair share of money for expensive figures, but at the moment I'm a bit short on cash. Given the add-ons they are tossing out, it's getting hard for me not to pledge. Admittedly they've had some mistakes in how they rolled things out (Some of the vagueness which is still around, Not saying there would be free stretch goals, not having a non-box pledge goal at the start, the recent kerfluffle about giving the higher pledgers a stretch goal just for them), I think they've shown a willingness to correct themselves quickly that makes me feel much better about them running things.

Oh, and if/when I do pledge: Is anyone interested in getting two extra tilesets at a discount? I build WorldWorks terrain, so I really don't need them. It would just be the tilesets, not cards, dice, or anything else.

Pity about that Troy thing, hopefully it's past. It'd be nice to keep that kind of anomaly out of the data.

I know what you mean about too good not to pledge. I'm wondering it that 210 mark will ultimately sound the same to me.

We really need some more media, whether vids or pics or what have you, to find out.

Ok time for more speculating then? Further stretch goals are an Alien mini, a game-based add-on, a Predator mini, a USCM mini, another Alien mini and then the Queen.

So for the Alien goals, we've been told that there's going to be a creature from the AVP arcade game. Of these, there's only two unique creatures - Chrysalis and Razor Claws. Of the two, Chrysalis is more likely since Razor Claws seems to be a one-off creature... plus the Chrysalis looks so much cooler. I imagine it'll be the last Alien add-on before the Queen... of course, assuming this is true anyway. As for the other Alien add-on, it's a bit of a mystery. If they don't dig into the EU more then I'd have to venture a guess at Chestbursters.

For the game add-on, it's almost certainly a hardcover rulebook. Fingers crossed for it being a free add-on since the rulebook doesn't seem to be included in the box...

The Predator mini is probably cloaked Predators in clear resin, since Prodos has said that these exist. If not then my only other guess is an Ancient Predator... although now that I think about it, that'd be pretty badass.

For the USCM, fingers crossed on a power loader. Holy crap would that ever be cool!