Will said he wished he could do an oral history project. Everybody knows that sometimes when answering a simple question I get very deep into the background reasons why something was done. Unfortunately, there is no one place where these very deep background posts are archived, so they get lost in the cluster. From now on, when you see some very deep background post (hereinafter VDBP) remind us to copy it here. And if you see a VDBP from years gone by, tell us where it is and we'll copy it here.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 03, 2018 - 02:03 pm: Edit

We do not offer boxed sets of 3125-scale Starline 2500 ships. A marketing decision was made that we would let players build their own fleets buying individual ships.

The boxes are popular with store owners, who would rather sell a box than five packs. One stock unit, easier inventory.

Because of the pricing on 3125s (*) there is no way to discount the boxes so there is no need to do boxes. Just buy exactly what you want.

(*) In the first days of 2500 (3125 scale) Mongoose did not have a good grip on what it costs to make a ship. The result was that they did not realize they were breaking even (no profit) on packs and losing money on boxes. Once this was figured out, and ADB took over production and reset the prices based on the actual cost of production. That resulted in very high prices nobody would pay because we only get about a third of the retail price for something sold to stores. So we priced them for mail order only, giving us a reasonable profit and you a price you can afford. Because we're selling mail order only, we can skip the expensive blister packing, which often costs more than the metal ship itself. The reason that 2400 boxes show a discount is that's comparing one big plastic box to five or six little plastic boxes. The discount comes entirely from the lower cost of the plastic boxes.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 07, 2019 - 05:55 pm: Edit

WHAT OUR CONTRACT CAN DO AND CANNOT DO

Nobody outside of ADB (and not everyone inside it) knows the answer to that. Everyone outside of the core employees who has ever posted on this subject has been wrong, sometimes laughably so and sometimes annoying so.

Nobody needs to EVER post what ADB can and cannot do with the contract. If you see anyone do that (trust me, they're wrong) let me know to go delete the post. If you want to know if your project fits our contract/license or does not, email me as I am the only answer that matters.