Various answers
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Garth: I don’t remember who said what back then, but there were so many comments I don’t doubt that somebody was right.
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Wayne: Tholian size. I run hot and cold. One day I think they’re fine and another day I don’t. And it doesn’t matter what Steve Cole thinks. I just know we’ve had a lot of complaints for 20+ years about them being small. They were made the size of some ships Zocchi had made 30+ years ago. With any product line there are always those who think it’s wrong and the silent ones who think it’s fine so they don’t need to say anything.
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Tom: There is no CB for the 2400s, so a 2450 CB would be a new ship, as fancy as the CC, but different in many details. You’re right that there would be no point if there were an extant 2400 CB (that’s why we didn’t do the 2450 CA, the 2400 CC was the same or better).
As for doing the HDWs, those wait on Will McC and he’s had some real life issues. As for the jumbo, that’s also a Will McC thing and has just recently broken loose. It should proceed according to previous plans without further ado. I do think that the HDW and Jumbo will sell better than a 2450 CB, which is why we never considered doing a CB. When somebody asked about it, I told them we’d need $400 in pre-order sales before we could proceed and I invented the Bootstrapper plan to give it a try.
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Kurt, we all know all about Kickstarter and spent years discussing it. There are some good points, and some bad points. Guess what, the bad points have made it impossible to proceed. Just so you know: We need to carefully pick the first one since if it fails we’d be unlikely to make a second one work even if better. Kickstarter is a moving target and reached the point that it would take thousands of dollars just to create the presentation, money spent before we knew if it would work. Items such as these minis would not be a good idea for Kickstarter. The only interested people are already on this BBS, so paying the Kickstarter fees and all of the hoops to jump is a waste. Kickstarter might be a good place for some entirely new very expensive Chinese-printed game with mounted boards, plastic toys, and decks of cards, but not for minis. We’ve already looked at it. Even if we had already done Tribbles on Kickstarter with success, we would not do a $400 miniatures project there. We would not need to. It will work here just as well. We only need four (or arguably eight, no more than that) investors, not hundreds. As for "stretch goals" the project is too small to bother, but I did offer an honor bar on the wall of honor.
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Starline 2400 is the existing 3788 scale minis going back to Zocchi plastics.
Starline 2500 is the Mongoose 3125 ships that have more detail and should have been done in 3788. Big mistake there.
Starline 2450 is a 2500 ship re-scaled to 2400 (i.e., 3125 rescaled to 3788). It is more complicated than dialing the scale and hitting print; Mongoose often has to resize key parts which would become too thin if proportionately reduced.
Starline 2425 is certain units like starbases which cannot be produced in 3125 or 3788. (A starbase would be over two feet across.) Given this scale issue, there is no point in doing two sizes (3788, 3125) since neither would be in scale.
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Jeremy: To clarify. Let’s say that a 2450 SparrowHawk would need a guarantee of $400 sales for a $10 ship. Let’s say four people each put in $100, in effect, four people guarantee to buy 10 ships each. We do the ship and put it on sale. On the first day, the four investors would have a choice to be sent 10 ships or to wait 30 days. If they wait 30 days and we have sold SparrowHawks to non-investors, then the investors would not be obligated to buy 10 ships, but only as many as it took to reach 40 total sales. So let’s say all four investors wait and we sell 24 ships to non-investors. Then each investor is notified that he only has to order four ships (16 divided by 4). He has a choice of more SparrowHawks, a refund, or other merchandise.
The reason for $100 investments and small numbers of investors is the banking laws. We could (some would say) just put the $10 SparrowHawk on the shopping cart and start production when sales reached 40 copies ($400). The problem is that these customers would then have to wait 60-100 days for the production engine to deliver ships, and credit card banking laws to do not allow us to hold your credit card charge beyond 30 days. Four investors who knew what they were getting into would wait 60-100 days and agree for us to hold their money, but 40 customers each investing $10 would include more than a few who simply didn’t’ grasp or remember (or changed their mind about) the "wait for it to happen" deal. We are proud of our shopping cart policy of not selling anything we don’t have (or don’t totally control the production of if we started taking orders a day or two early).
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Tholians: There is a school of thought that says we should just leave the existing Tholians alone and never do Tholian-2500s. They are a minor empire and do not sell very well anyway.
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Yes, CB is the US Navy designation given to the Alaskas, beautiful ships that had no purpose to exist. In SFB most empires use the term CCH or CH.
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