marketing/demand question

[rockyr]

Email sent. I do hope many others will do the same.

R
________
The big bang theory dicussion

[Steve Cole]

Yeah, the button works.

I got Dood's email but it really didn't tell me anything I didn't know and nobody else emailed so I guess nobody wants to buy individual cards.

[drwibble]

Well... I'd quite like either some individual cards or a pack of particular ships that interest me... like more than the one Fed CA I can buy in Booster #1 for example. I've probably already got more of stuff like police ships than I will ever use.

However, I don't want them if it is at the expense of breaking the ADB business model and stopping you guys develop more product, so it's all relative.

[rockyr]

Then there is the issue of having nice laminated cards for each ship in a squadron - say 3 fed CAs, or the (in)famous 3 Romulan/Klingon cruisers form the TOS, so getting single cards woudl be good for that, too.

R
________
Bravo

[Dal Downing]

Ok just throwing this off the top of my head. I am not a Game Designer and am not trying to tell anyone how to market their products. It seems people want more of 1 class of cards so they could run things like Cruiser battles with like 3 Fed CAs on one side and 3D7s (or if you follow the Hood history 1 D7 and 2 D6s).

What if ADB was to consider a variant on the old Battle Pack ideal and went instead with a Cruiser Line Box or Frigate Line Set or a Dreadnaught Patrol Line Pack just to make a point. These Line Boxes or Sets or Packs could include the 3 Ship Cards, the 3 matching Miniatures, and maybe a Small Cardboard Card that had, 3 1� Counters and 3 Half Inch Counters (if they felt like it and had room a couple of odd Shuttle or Ammo Counters on this Card could be a nice touch.). ADB could go even farther including a PDF Painting Guide and maybe (if they could find someone reasonable to make them) a Small Sheet of Waterslide Decals for the Minis in the Pack.

If this type of product was available would it satisfy the demand for more of certain type of Cards or would people steer clear of it because of the unpainted, unassembled Minis? Or would marketing this kind of a product hurt sales of regular Boosters? If such a Product Line was considered would it be practical or feasible to look at including the “B� Cards to make a true F&E Squadron available?

Of course I like the ideal but there may be a hole in my Logic you could drive an entire Armor Brigade through.

[Savedfromwhat]

Most of the ships everyone is going on about are readily available in a communique and if you simply buy some page protectors you can have 1000's of heavy cruisers, print print print till your hearts content. Not that it wouldnt be cool to buy individual ship cards, but it kinda ruins the whole idea of a product line, ADB could just sell everything individually like itunes, but alas there are quite a few less fans of the SFU then people who use itunes.

[Jon Lawson]

I would like to buy some freighters but it depends on what comes out in the booster.
5 Heavy, 5 Large, 5 Small thats $32.50

Any chance of a discount for multiple card purchases

[Jon Lawson]

Most of the ships everyone is going on about are readily available in a communique and if you simply buy some page protectors you can have 1000's of heavy cruisers, print print print till your hearts content

So far only the small freighter has been done in a communique (to squadron scale) out of the 'basic' freighters.

[Savedfromwhat]

svc usually does requests for revised ship cards, SVC can we get a revised large freighter

[Jon Lawson]

And Heavy Freighter

[Kang]

I'm still wondering what happens when/if a buyer of a product finds that a part of his set is missing. Surely there must be spares in stock?

[Steve Cole]

Battle pack: Ok, great idea, had it myself, and found out quickly why it won't work. First, you have to have a box to hold that stuff. You could use the standard 9x11 white boxes (lots of wasted space, but we have them in stock), but to make a special box would spend more money than the product would sell. Second problem is counters. You cannot do that. First, that would take a special die ($500) and second, you'd end up with a ton of expensive counters and I just don't believe these things would sell.

I am still waiting to hear what ships you guys supposedly want to buy. You want a third CA? Why? A squadron is two CAs and a CC. If you really want to use a third CA just mark out the extra stuff.

But, ok, if you what you supposedly want is a third CA and a third D7 I don't know that we cannot figure out a way to make that happen. I'll talk to Leanna, but still, no sales of "B" ship cards as the retailers would go ballistic.

We discussed the convoy thing before. Is there a topic for it? If so, would somebody find the topic and post in it so I can find it? If we did not have a specific convoy booster topic, then Mike West will make one and we'll discuss that item there so it doesn't get lost here.

[Steve Cole]

Oh, yeah, freighters. We did card 45 which had the fleet scale small freighters in Comm-39, which will release on 10 March.

We can do the other freighters in Comm-40 if somebody will remind me by Email about March 12th.

[Kang]

We discussed the convoy thing before. Is there a topic for it? If so, would somebody find the topic and post in it so I can find it?

Done. Or use the direct link http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... php?t=1609

[Wolverin61]

I discussed the thing about selling individual cards with Leanna. This is a complex issue and comes in multiple parts.

CARDS IN GENERAL: She remains concerned about "unbalancing the inventory". Can you guys tell me (by email) what cards you are so desperate to buy and how many you want? As noted, the high manpower cost of pulling such orders would mean each card would cost $2.50, a premium over the nominal cost of $1.50-$1.75 each.

FREIGHTER CARDS: She's also concerned that there may be no point in doing a "convoy booster" if the few of you who want more freighters just buy them. She suggested we define this booster and just go ahead and make it available by mail order.

BONUS CARDS: It defeats the purpose of having these if they're sold separately, and would cost us a lot of sales, far more than is logically justified. The stores just won't stock boosters AT ALL if we're selling the bonus cards separately on the cart.

Those are all valid points.