Poll: What would you pay for PDFs?

[Barry Kirk]

I would much prefer PDF ship cards to printed ones anyway.

The vast majority of the time that I'm playing SFB or Fed Commander, I end up driving somewhere first. It's a lot easier to pack my laptop then to pack a lot of PDF files.

I spend a lot of time on the road for my job, and printed SFB and Fed Com material is a hassle to carry, since I'm taking the laptop anyway.

Having all of my ship cards and/or SSD in PDF format is just a much more convenient format for me.

Also, and this is more general. Very often when people set up a battle, they use more than one of each type of ship. With PDF files, it's a simple matter to print out the ships you need, rather than purchase lots of booster packs in advance so you have duplicates.

Again, the PDF format provides flexibility. Another advantage to the PDF format is that should you decide to fight a scenerio and don't have the ship cards and/or SSD on hand that you need. It's a simple matter to print out the ones you need.

I know that I've been mentioning SSD as well as ship cards, and SSD's do have a major advantage over the ship cards in that they are easier to photocopy. It's usually easier to print than to photocopy.

Anyway that's my 2 cents

[Barry Kirk]

Having looked at the poll again, could we add another choice?

$1 for an individual PDF ship.

Sure if you bought all 72 it would cost $72 which is a lot more than most people are willing to pay for the set of 72 ship cards, but most people won't use every ship anyway.

This way you only buy what you need and the price per ship is a little higher.

Just a thought

[pinecone]

.

There could be a code in FCB2 for buyers to use to get the color PDF's if they pay a small fee. It could be made so the code cold only be used once.

Good idea.

Mr. Cole, have you considered this? If it could be done that would be nice, and you'd get one garunteec buyer .

[Barry Kirk]

Or if you buy the hard copy ship cards... Include a code with the PO that allows you to download pdf versions of those same ship cards.

Another thing, that would be possible with pdf ship cards that just isn't reasonable with hard ship cards would be for Orion ships.

Would it be possible to set up a PDF where you could have a drop down box to select the option mounts? Than print it.

That would be too cool. If not, there are a huge number of permutations for each Orion...

But the idea is to be able to print out an Orion that actually shows the weapons and appropriate charts rather than options.

The same could be done for expendibles like drones, fighters, and shuttles.

[Mike]

Whoever paid for Briefing #2 should be able to obtain the color files to print as needed. This would not cost ADB any more $$$ than they have already invested in the time it took to make the modifications to create the Middle Years diagrams. I do not see why anyone should have to pay for the same thing twice. If the color files are made available to players who purchased FCB2, their printing of those ship diagrams will not cost ADB anything. It will cost those players, however, in paper, ink, and time.

[DorianGray]

I second Mike's request.

Of course, its not gonna happen.

[Dal Downing]

Guys, you’re missing the point that was made earlier. By buying Briefing #2 you bought Black and White versions of these Ship Cards, not a Color Version. If it was sold with Color Cards instead of as a Black and White Booklet the cost would be $108 Dollars.

The reason for that distinction is the way ADB Business Model is structured. If ADB was to give up on selling their products through Print Distribution the price of PDF style Products would go up to make up for lost of volume. If ADB started selling or giving away PDF copies of their products they would lose Print Business because Suppliers and Game Shops would cut back on their orders. This would force ADB to raise the base price of their products that they sell PDFs for.

Now the Ideal that SVC has kicked around before that I like is to set up PDF material in such away that your Code ideal would become active only after a Set Number of Products were sold to cover the Developmental Cost. Now what that number would be, that would be for SVC to decide. It could be as high as 3000 units, (Just to pick a number) that have to be sold before he would release the Color PDFs of a Product. I happened to like this ideal because it is a win/win in my opinion. ADB recovers their Developmental cost so can stay in business (and make more products) and the Retailers are guaranteed a certain volume of sells.

[Steve Cole]

There isn't going to be a code in FCB2 because we already shipped it and have yet to figure out how to do this.

We continue to examine options, but it's complicated by a few factors. one being that I'm busy doing FCRRB and cannot do two things (things that take a lot of time) at the same time. Another being that people clearly want the cards not the PDFs and that means doing one of two things, short-runs at a local print shop (expensive, they would cost us over $1 each) or buying a color printer (which could be $1000, or $5000, or $15000 depending on what ELSE we want the printer to be able to do).

As for selling individual ship cards or individual PDFs, I don't think that's going to happen.

And if we ever see a single one of our sold PDFs on a download site we're never going to do another one.

[DorianGray]

What is this FCRRB? some goodie we can expect in the future?

A new expansion?

[wedge_hammersteel]

I believe that is reference rulebook 5

[Mike]

Guys, you’re missing the point that was made earlier. By buying Briefing #2 you bought Black and White versions of these Ship Cards, not a Color Version. If it was sold with Color Cards instead of as a Black and White Booklet the cost would be $108 Dollars.

The $108 price was stated by SVC to be for 72 actual color, laminated ship cards.

A set of 72 ship cards (color, laminated) would cost about $108 through normal sales

Perhaps I have missed something, but the ship diagrams in Briefing #2 are not ship cards. They are diagrams of the ship systems, etc. printed on pages bound in a book. That is a far cry from actual ship cards that people can pull out, put a dry erase marker to, and use to play the game.

My point is that the ship diagrams contained in Briefing #2 were done in color on a computer and are stored as files. They are already done. There is no more development necessary. What difference would it make if those who purchased Briefing #2 could also receive the colorized versions in a computer file and print them out much like we do with ships from Communique?

[Now, if they were released for free (which they won't), a lot of people who purchased Briefing #2 would be ticked.]

By the way, I recently received a complementary CD from a photographer of pictures from my son's wedding. I didn't try anything fancy, but I did attempt to copy those files to my computer's hard drive because I did not want to depend on the quality of the CD. I couldn't copy them with any technique I knew. Granted, I'm no computer genius, but whatever copy protection the CD has on it kept me, a casual computer user, from copying those files.

[Kang]

And if we ever see a single one of our sold PDFs on a download site we're never going to do another one.

As far as I understand it, this has always, quite rightly, been ADB's biggest problem with selling electronic products. The potential for plagiarism and piracy [alliteration unintentional ] is just too great.

[terryoc]

Perhaps I have missed something, but the ship diagrams in Briefing #2 are not ship cards.

The term used in FC for ship diagrams is "ship card" whether it's printed on card or not.

[pinecone]

If one person stole, but all the others bought, then what would be the deal?

And it's not like you'd be loosing suplies. You just wouldn't get paid for something you didn't pay for.

Note: I don't intend for this to be rude or confrontational. I'm just asking.

[Scoutdad]

pc: The problem is not the number of people who steal a copy, it's the fact that it occurs at all.

In order for the PDFs to reach unauthorized persons, the initial person has to allow them to reach the internet, usually by allowing a P2P (peer-to-peer) network to access the file folder they are stored in...
once this happens and a single, unauthorized person downloads them, you can never put the genie back in the bottle.

If no one acts in an untoward manner, then the PDFs will never reach a P2P network and can not be shared and we may have access to additional PDFs.