Port Slowdowns

By 1123581321345589144, in Star Wars: Armada

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I just got some news from a kickstarter I've backed:

I mentioned this briefly in my last update, but I thought I’d bring you up to speed on the situation.

There’s a labor dispute affecting US container ports. The situation has been brewing for months, apparently, but seems to have escalated significantly in recent weeks. It’s a complex situation, but the short version is this: Ports are currently operating at something like 25% of capacity, and there’s a lengthy backlog of cargo building up. (You can find some interesting photos of ships stacked up outside of Long Beach/Los Angeles here .) It seems unlikely the dispute will be settled in the near future, and even it is, it will probably take a month or longer for things to get completely back to normal.

Sorry if this is old news, or has been posted elsewhere. I figured it might be part of why Armada is so delayed.

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Yeah, things are bad here on the West Coast for shipping in general. Portland in particular has been in bad shape, and recently Hanjin announced it will no longer use Portland as a port at all, and will likely reroute its containers through Seattle or Longbeach. That means that 78% of the shipping through Portland's container terminal will now end up elsewhere, which will likely exacerbate the problems they are already having...Good times.

A couple of articles explaining the issue for those who care:

http://fortune.com/2015/02/06/america-biggest-dysfunctional-port/

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2015/02/what_the_heck_is_going_on_at_t.html

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The Puget Sound is clogged with container ships, too. It's quite a site to see them all just sitting out there.

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what an odd username.. 123581321345589144, also his/her only post.. I did not click on that link. don't trust anyone... the internet is the wild west.

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It's a legit link, just copy the sub link if you want to check it. It's just images of all the ships waiting to get offloaded.

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It's just the Fibonacci Sequence :P

Though, it's good to be careful. Smart web browsing is better than most antivirus programs.

Edited by 1123581321345589144
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that, my friend is the truth. browsing the internet is about as safe as licking a public toilet seat.

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Other ffg products have been arriving in the rest of the world before America and the statuses on the upcoming page seem to be driven by when they arrive in America.

This was first noticed with imperial assault being available in the UK over a week before it arrived in the USA. I got gates of arkham 2 weeks earlier, before FFG had finished releasing previews for the game. Just because a game is "on the boat" doesn't mean it won't be available to some people next week.

I reckon the post issue is having a couple of weeks delay to most products.

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So thats only one of the benefits of outsourceing everything :) .

Edited by madtulip
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So after just spending the last hour educating myself on the topic after only previously following snippets on the port slowdowns, I have some new questions. Who does FFG use to ship their products to the US? By who, I mean what freight line. It looks like many retailers, logistics, and supply chain managers are finding alternate ways of getting their product where it needs to be when it needs to be there, has FFG taken similar measures? Once we know what freight line is being used, what ports does that line commonly call on? Are they headed to Portland (and we were worried about Chinese New Years ;) ), or some other port affected more by the increase in traffic than by work slowdowns? Many questions here, but most of them will be answered by specific knowledge of the answer to the first, which is who is the supplier we should all be checking metaphorical arrival lists for.

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Hmm. Cool to see a good photo album to accompany what I've heard about what's going on over there.

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So after just spending the last hour educating myself on the topic after only previously following snippets on the port slowdowns, I have some new questions. Who does FFG use to ship their products to the US? By who, I mean what freight line. It looks like many retailers, logistics, and supply chain managers are finding alternate ways of getting their product where it needs to be when it needs to be there, has FFG taken similar measures? Once we know what freight line is being used, what ports does that line commonly call on? Are they headed to Portland (and we were worried about Chinese New Years ;) ), or some other port affected more by the increase in traffic than by work slowdowns? Many questions here, but most of them will be answered by specific knowledge of the answer to the first, which is who is the supplier we should all be checking metaphorical arrival lists for.

FFG will never voluntarily let this info out, rather large breach in security if they did.

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i was going to say the same thing as CobaltWraith in regards to re routing. alot of customers are having frieght routed through the cannal and received on the east coast. savanah and NYC have been busy. hopfully FFG will do that!

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The boats were already to sea when the big shut down happen. The other cargo on the same container ship has to go that specific port. FFG just cant order their shipping company to reroute because they want to get their product out. A lot of other companies are in the same predicament. We just have to be patient.

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We just have to be patient.

Well, we have to wait, but I'm not about to be patient!

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well...my uncle is in farming...and all of his crops are spoiling away... ...thank you greedy union...

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Why do these topics always turn to politics? This forum should be about the Star wars Armada game and that alone. If you want to go express your opinion that unions are greedy please take it to a political forum. Thank you!

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Because there is not much else for most to talk about. No rules even at this point to discuss as the PDFs have not been released. Until the game gets out of the delay caused by the aforementioned "greedy unions" there is only so much conjecture that people can discuss. Plus obviously it is a topic that interests people. You can always just ignore the discussion.

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if it was just put on the boat, as upcoming would have us believe, than they could have routed it to a different port. if its been shipping for awhile and the last batch went on the boat, that may not be an option.

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Boat is probably already sitting off shore waiting to be unloaded. There was 46 boats sitting last I saw.

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Yeah, i don't know the economics of international shipping. But based volume of container ships I see on my way to work every day. It must cheaper to weigh anchor for a few months than negotiate an offload in say Texas and then sail down through Panama or whatever. I'm sure waiting around for a longshoreman strike doesn't constitute a breach in contract on the part of the shippers.

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Yeah, i don't know the economics of international shipping. But based volume of container ships I see on my way to work every day. It must cheaper to weigh anchor for a few months than negotiate an offload in say Texas and then sail down through Panama or whatever. I'm sure waiting around for a longshoreman strike doesn't constitute a breach in contract on the part of the shippers.

It depends really, and comes down to the cost of letting all that product sit on the boats or not. It is beginning to affect the economy at large. There are companies that are working to re-route the ships down through Panama and then up to the Gulf Ports or the East Coast because of this now. There are also companies sending product via airlines even though that cost is very significant and probably way more than simply trying to get the ships re-routed. Sad really, to hold the entire country hostage.