Some things come up so often that I wanted to have one public list of them, so that people can refer to the answers. In some cases, they're not good ideas, and in others, they are good ideas we haven't had time to pursue, and in other cases, they're things we already did.

I don't remember them all (email me if you remember one I don't) but over time I should be able build a decent list.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 01:35 pm: Edit

Some things we could do...

GOING TO GENCON: we tried, we lost money and found virtually no interest in SciFi products. We sent stuff for other companies to sell, and this did not show enough response for us to risk the high cost of trying again.

PEOPLE MINIATURES: We plan to , we want to, but two sculptors hired to do this didn't do it and a company that said (at two different Origins conventions) that they wanted to work out a deal to do this for us never followed up. It's expensive to do and the current market doesn't make major expenses a good risk.

SMALLER SHIP MINIATURES: We don't have the Elite originals to reproduce, they didn't sell th at well, we don't think we need them competing with 2400, and the current market doesn't make investing lots of money in sculpting and molds a good bet.

CUSTOM DICE: We looked intot his briefly and found no source that could produce the quantities we would likely sell at a price that made distribution possible.

DECK PLANS: Producing them in Traveler scale for anything bigger than a PF isn't practical (they'd take several tables). We are looking into producing the existing plans in an bigger-than-reference scale.

PLASTIC STARSHIPS: We have looked into this it is not practical. The start up costs would be a whole year's production budget and the minimum production runs would be more than all other product sales in a year combined.

CLICKY BASE: We have looked into this it is not practical. The start up costs would be a whole year's production budget and the minimum production runs would be more than all other product sales in a year combined.

LEANNA'S FIGHTING STARSHIPS: We want to dot his but haven't had time to pursue it. Sure, Neale did some great stuff but it's only part of what has to go into the book, and nobody has had time to create that stuff and we don't have time to check it.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 01:41 pm: Edit

More things we could do....

PDF VERSIONS OF RULEBOOKS: We plan to move into th is soon(ish).

PDF VERSIONS SSDs and ship cards: We just today got the first pack of FC ship cards onto e23 and plan to move into SFB and other cards soon(ish).

EXPANSIONS FOR STAR FLEET BATTLE FORCE: They are very expensive to print and we're worried that sales may not justify this. Even so, it might be a good thing to look into.

GOING INTO THE PRINT ON DEMAND AND DISTRIBUTION BUSINESS FOR OTHER GAME PUBLISHERS: We do this for Majestic 12 and may well start doing it for selected others.

DOING PRIME DIRECTIVE FOR d6, Savage Worlds, Fudge, Mongoose Traveler, and others. We want to and will as Jean has time.

A PRIME DIRECTIVE MAGAZINE: We don't have the manpower to do this until Jean arrives in 2013.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 02:02 pm: Edit

More ideas...

SALES CALLS: Telephone every game store and convince the manager to carry our products. Vanessa did some of this, as did Ken Burnside, when each worked here. They had some success, but it's a slow process, gaining one or two stores per day, after a four-hour day calling stores. We just haven't had the manpower.

SCALE MODELS OF SHIPS a foot or two long: We had a guy doing this, but he was a flake who took far too long to get the kits done, in one case nearly six months. If we could find a realiable source, we'd do it again.

PRESTIGE SCALE RESIN SHIPS about six inches long: We'd love to find a source who could do these, but when we took a few days to hunt people down and contact them, none of the production guys followed through.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 03:40 pm: Edit

Another idea

PAPERBACK BOOKS: I could do the second Romulan Book and the third Federation book any time I want to, but I've been busy. They sell enough to be worth doing, but not enough to do instead of something else. The whole idea was to get these books into stores that aren't carrying SFU but the game stores don't know they exist (and cannot see them in the clutter) and the book stores say we're not a book company and they don't know how to deal with us.