Federation Commander

djdood · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 5:41 am Post subject:

Dunno about the laminating paper, but I roll with scoutdad and the giant robot. I've got probably two dozen double-sided laser-printed and laminated ships cards and several dozen double-sided play-aids (large-size markers, movement cards, etc.). I use "spray adhesive" to stick mine together before laminating.
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Carthaginian · Lieutenant SG Joined: 13 Nov 2008 Posts: 157

OGOPTIMUS · Captain Joined: 10 Nov 2006 Posts: 980

JimDauphinais · Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2010 1:29 pm Post subject:

hacksaaw · Ensign Joined: 29 Oct 2009 Posts: 5

I just posted in another topic then saw this one, i was shocked at how extremly expensive the PDFs seemed to be. 50 for all the briefing 2 ships? which was 2 to 3 times what i was expecting they would be.

schoon9953 · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 10:27 pm Post subject:

hacksaaw · Ensign Joined: 29 Oct 2009 Posts: 5

Of course the labor costs remain the same, but the actual physical production costs do not. Plus you are eliminating at least one level of distribution( along with all storage and such costs).

I have no idea how much Steve Jackson charges for its services providing the server and sales front end for the electronic files.

My basic assumption is if a retail box sells for 100, the store buys it from the distributor for around 53, the distributor pays the game company around 45. out of which the game company has to pay the cost for both the physical components, soft costs( intellectual work, electricity, rent, and all the varied expenses of doing business) and profits.

If you eliminate the say 15 that is the physical cost of the components, you are left with the soft costs and profit.

Unless you are looking to cover some of the costs of warehousing( and other expenses from other products) and for something like Briefing 2 its understandable to want to shift some ongoing costs to the efile.

overall though, the actual cost before figuring profit of the efile is signifigantly less the book. The work to produce it has allready been done in producing the book but no i dont see paying several times the cost of the physical copy of the book for a electronic version that requires i spend the money and time to create ( even if its only the cost of ink and paper).

As a customer i see a signifigant disconnect there, for my own willingness to spend money, i would have bought a unified PDF for 25 that included all the ships from briefing 2. I refuse to spend 60. Just as i wont spend 2 to 3 times the price of a trade paperback for the kindle version.

Now if ADB is selling a high number of these at this price point, i would be both surprised and happy for them, i expect though that they would see enough additional sales to make greater profits at a different price point.

Jean · Site Admin Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 1732

hacksaaw, the fact remains that the price point we chose reflects the cost of the development time and is what we need to turn a profit. If we sold 60 ship cards for $25, then you'd be all over our case for selling 6 ship cards for $5 and that is what we need to charge for the Ship Card e-packs to make a profit. We cannot go lower.

This has been discussed numerous times and it is our decision.

With respect,

Jean
Wearing her Marketing hat
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Business Manager/RPG Line Editor
Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.

Savedfromwhat · Commander Joined: 23 Aug 2007 Posts: 657

What it really boils down to hacksaw is that wayyyyy more work went into briefing 2 than was expected. There were tons of ships in there. I was also disgruntled at the price point but after looking at the amount of work involved it does make sense for it to be priced as is. The real issue is that ADB UNDERPRICED briefing 2 and that is why we as consumers are feeling a disconnect where none exists. Personally I just bought the couple of empires we play in the middle years and called it good.

Darzoni · Ensign Joined: 20 Jul 2012 Posts: 5

I know that this is thread necromancy, but as a new FC player, I just wanted to offer my two cents.

I'd rather have the physical laminated ship cards than a PDF. They're extremely convenient, even though I wish there was a binder and sheet protectors that were sized to FC ship cards.

If some Print-on-Demand service can produce the ship cards like the physical ones are, I'd love to see an electronic version of them. Heck, might be really cost-effective since it'd mean the consumers are paying the printing costs directly.

How much I'd be willing to pay for a PDF would greatly depend on how much stuff is in the electronic version; preferably somewhere slightly cheaper than the physical product for a purely electronic product (PoD would be a different can of worms entirely I imagine). It's pretty aggravating as a consumer to look up a PDF version of a game and find out that the PDF version costs nearly as much as the physical $50-$60 rulebook. It's a bit different when talking about price points under $20, since the perceived values are dramatically different when talking about 6-7 ship cards vs. a hard-cover glossy-paper full color 400 page game book ("If I'm paying this huge price, it'd better be worth it" and so on).

For what products I'd actually buy as PDFs, well. I'd certainly buy the Captain's Logs, since back issues appear to be difficult to obtain in the flesh (so to speak), but that's already going on as I understand it, so that's awesome. I'd gladly buy a compilation/'Best of' of Communiques, if only because it saves me the hassle of figuring out which of the 70+ issues I need to open up. I'd gladly buy a bundle of cool scenarios to read and ponder about.

Now, that said, I'd probably really miss those nifty cover wraps that the actual products come in. I couldn't bear to toss the one that comes with Klingon Attack.

djdood · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2012 11:55 pm Post subject:

If you look back, up-thread, you can see a good solution for binder-storage of the FC ship cards (Rabco MC50 double-pocket sheets). Those are also discussed in more detail here:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1786&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=rabco
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Aabh · Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 5:43 pm Post subject:

Thread Necromancy... sorry about that...

I'm between jobs, I got laid off in February and now it's July and money is extraordinarily tight. I cut ANY corner.

My first choice when buying things for FedCom is going to a local store, because they are becoming scarcer and scarcer as time goes on, and I want to support a Colorado business. But the drawback is I'll buy extra things, Dice, counters, Magic cards, whatever. So I only do this while I'm employed.

Next, I'd like to buy direct form ADB. I'm very loyal to the company and I don't want to see anything hurt it, so I'll order things online. The two drawbacks THERE are time and shipping (time much more than shipping, if only there were transporter technology!). One of the plusses with it, though, is being able to talk directly with real people (You want to order 5 CC saucers, only? We can do that... Very Happy

) so weird orders can happen (Love for Leanna! Very Happy

)

When I'm really broke, though... but need to do something for a game tomorrow, I love having the pdf. I will buy the real laminated cards someday, when I am employed again and I can afford to do things, but for tomorrows game, when I need those weird Middle Years cards for that odd-out middle years game we are playing, this is the best option.

So I sort of find pdfs as an emergency option, when I'm out of money or need something very fast... but that means that I intend to get the "real version" at some point... so pricing it the same as the real thing will ultimately make me feel like I'm "double spending", but as long as it is less than the "real thing", I don't feel like I'm paying double (It's totally psychological)...
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Guy Davis

Paul B · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 240

Not sure if I responded to this long ago, but on the question on how much would I pay for PDF ship cards?

I'd pay zero, because I wouldn't buy it. Rather pay more for real cards than less money for PDF cards.

At this time I want convenience, and printing out cards and sticking them in plastics or getting them laminated is not convenient and it also looks cheap compared to the laminate cards that ADB produces and I generally want my stuff to all look the same and pretty so. . .

Even for battletech, I recently bought some PDFs in a sale but am thinking I would rather get those old books I bought on ebay in real print form than actually use the PDFs. Would rather handle real books or buy professionally-printed products that mess around with printing stuff out or taking it to kinkos or reading stuff on my computer.

jdemichele · Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 7:31 pm Post subject:

Based on other games, if I have the option of buying laminated cards or PDFs, my preference is laminated cards, but having color PDFs available at a reasonable price is a great option. I have a color laser printer and my wife has a laminator, so I have some flexibility there.
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cnuzzi · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 10 Jun 2017 Posts: 208

PDFs are so much better. I can literally carry my entire Federation commander collection in my pocket on a flash drive (with room to spare for a few movies). As for FCB2, I'm really disappointed that the PDFs are so expensive. I considered ordering it from ADB in print form, but the shipping costs are just too much. So I've just kind of given up on it, due to my less-than-optimal financial situation right now. If it was $25 for the whole PDF package, I'd get it, but I can't justify more than that. Maybe someday.