4 hours ago, Tlfj200 said:The real reason is we don’t need to trust them - play the **** game (or don’t) and experience it for yourself. THEN decide if you think it’s better. I don’t need the devs spoon feeding my thoughts - I’m a sentient, free-thinking person.
But muh agency! (In the non-unironic sense where apparently players don't want it.)
We had this discussion a couple days ago at my FLGS (one of the people there works at a company about the same size as FFG that also manufactures in China), and what we talked about is that manufacturing in China is still so much cheaper that there's no reason for them to move all of it to the USA, because they'd make so much less money.
However, what he talked about was that FFG is always a couple months behind and so they're perpetually out of stock of everything (i.e. how Destiny died), and they always have to wait several months after a product is ready before dropping it.
What this guy's company does is manufacture some stuff in the USA, so that they have some stock early on (usually just breaking even on that), and then fill in later with tons of stock of stuff manufactured in China (which they make massive profits on). That way they keep the customers happy while still making some money, and they can respond to changes in the market quicker.
Of course, the problem is that FFG is a large company that still thinks about things like a small company. They like their simple model of "order stuff, wait for stuff to be made and shipped, sell stuff".
Edited by KieransiRereading @Boom Owl's list made me realize that we did not emphasize enough just how cancerous passive mods were.
The new lone wolf with his once per round is a step in the right direction and demonstrates that FFG understands. Some are now worried about force which is similar (but almost restricted to once per round, except for that one turn where you need it 2-3 times), but it's still a clear downgrade, isn't it?
2 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:Rereading @Boom Owl's list made me realize that we did not emphasize enough just how cancerous passive mods were.
The new lone wolf with his once per round is a step in the right direction and demonstrates that FFG understands. Some are now worried about force which is similar (but almost restricted to once per round, except for that one turn where you need it 2-3 times), but it's still a clear downgrade, isn't it?
It's hard to overstate how big of a deal the toning down of passive mods is.
LW defender v tie swarm at range 1 1.0: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/alpha/?q=EwEAAgAQiAECMUAgBgjEAAIxAAA 4.311 damage
Defender v tie swarm at range 1 2.0: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/alpha/?q=EwEAAAAQiAECMUAgBgjEAAIxAAA 5.714 damage
That second one is before lone wolf, but now lone wolf is an actual resource to be spent - if you roll evade blank blank and have 2 hits coming in, do you try to lone wolf for the 3/8 to not need to spend a token, or do you spend the evade and save lone wolf for when you expect to need to focus later to make it a 5/8?
love the first sentence of the new article. I chuckled a little, then cried inside.
7 minutes ago, Wiredin said:love the first sentence of the new article. I chuckled a little, then cried inside.
They listen to the podcast!
7 minutes ago, Wiredin said:love the first sentence of the new article. I chuckled a little, then cried inside.
31 minutes ago, Kieransi said:We had this discussion a couple days ago at my FLGS (one of the people there works at a company about the same size as FFG that also manufactures in China), and what we talked about is that manufacturing in China is still so much cheaper that there's no reason for them to move all of it to the USA, because they'd make so much less money.
However, what he talked about was that FFG is always a couple months behind and so they're perpetually out of stock of everything (i.e. how Destiny died), and they always have to wait several months after a product is ready before dropping it.
What this guy's company does is manufacture some stuff in the USA, so that they have some stock early on (usually just breaking even on that), and then fill in later with tons of stock of stuff manufactured in China (which they make massive profits on). That way they keep the customers happy while still making some money, and they can respond to changes in the market quicker.
Of course, the problem is that FFG is a large company that still thinks about things like a small company. They like their simple model of "order stuff, wait for stuff to be made and shipped, sell stuff".
37 minutes ago, Makaze said:They've upped their in house printing capacity. So it wouldn't entirely shock me if some level of cardboard only items ended up being produced in the US. But I just don't see the models getting made here. China is just so much cheaper and at this point honestly more experienced/better at it that it doesn't seem realistic
1 hour ago, Wiredin said:the boat moves faster if there is no boat
1 hour ago, viedit said:Another rumor I heard was they lost a pretty good amount of product to the bottom of the sea from a shipping issue. Keeping it stateside would make turnaround faster in proofing concepts, you could get stuff distributed faster to North American market and you aren't as vulnerable to shipping issues. It also just looks good from a PR standpoint.
1 hour ago, Wiredin said:my LFGS told me yesterday that FFG was moving X-Wing 2.0 production to the USA due to QC issues from overseas. anyone else hear any rumblings on this? they felt that was the reason for the price increases.
You guys know how the first armada waves on release took around a year?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions
That happened. The wave was lost in an explosion.
Those recent RPG books that got delayed? They literally fell off of the boat, to the bottom of the ocean.
You move away from chinese manufacturing to not have to deal with chinese manufacturing.
2 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:You guys know how the first armada waves on release took around a year?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions
That happened. The wave was lost in an explosion.
Those recent RPG books that got delayed? They literally fell off of the boat, to the bottom of the ocean.
You move away from chinese manufacturing to not have to deal with chinese manufacturing.
Good to know. Been wondering where my RPG book was.
1 minute ago, Kaptin Krunch said:You guys know how the first armada waves on release took around a year?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions
That happened. The wave was lost in an explosion.
Those recent RPG books that got delayed? They literally fell off of the boat, to the bottom of the ocean.
You move away from chinese manufacturing to not have to deal with chinese manufacturing.
That's what insurance is for. Including, if desired, insurance not just on the cost of the physical product but on lost revenue.
You're also making the implication that US based manufacturing goes silky smooth with no delays or problems, I haven't found that to be the case. The problems tend to be a bit less "Get ***ed, and now for the rest of this conversation I'm going to pretend there's a language problem". But US companies that are anywhere near competitive on price are running on razor thin margins and due to high fixed costs have little to no wiggle room in their manufacturing schedules which means any inevitable problems cascade. Moving away from Chinese manufacturing certainly improves some issues like lead time but it hardly fixes everything and it comes with a significant price difference. Which matters to a huge degree in a niche market like this that has a semi-captive audience and a fairly aggressive soft cap on total market size.
53 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:FFG understands
I agree
48 minutes ago, Wiredin said:love the first sentence of the new article. I chuckled a little, then cried inside.
You found the mistake.
45 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:
You guys know how the first armada waves on release took around a year?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions
That happened. The wave was lost in an explosion.
Those recent RPG books that got delayed? They literally fell off of the boat, to the bottom of the ocean.
You move away from chinese manufacturing to not have to deal with chinese manufacturing.
This is a danger of doing business, period. We lost a year on completing a project because the N.American manufacturer couldn't get their product to the port on time. We had a very clear and limited window, and poof.
Dealing with some shops in China is a risk, sure. You expect quality short falls so that time and price creeps upwards, but it's still generally cheap enough to be worth the risks.
X-Wing 2nd Edition is a fun game.
8 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:X-Wing 2nd Edition is a fun game.
I agree.
1 hour ago, Makaze said:That's what insurance is for. Including, if desired, insurance not just on the cost of the physical product but on lost revenue.
You're also making the implication that US based manufacturing goes silky smooth with no delays or problems, I haven't found that to be the case. The problems tend to be a bit less "Get ***ed, and now for the rest of this conversation I'm going to pretend there's a language problem". But US companies that are anywhere near competitive on price are running on razor thin margins and due to high fixed costs have little to no wiggle room in their manufacturing schedules which means any inevitable problems cascade. Moving away from Chinese manufacturing certainly improves some issues like lead time but it hardly fixes everything and it comes with a significant price difference. Which matters to a huge degree in a niche market like this that has a semi-captive audience and a fairly aggressive soft cap on total market size.
I don't deal with our supply chain or Asia/Pacific manufacturing at all, but someone was recently telling me that international shipping crates on ships are difficult or impossible to insure. I found it a little implausible, but some of the AP business practices are so far away from NA norms that it wasn't unbelievable.
I do deal with our NA operations much more, and I'm not sure I've ever worked with a project that met deadlines and cost simultaneously.
2 hours ago, Kieransi said:We had this discussion a couple days ago at my FLGS (one of the people there works at a company about the same size as FFG that also manufactures in China), and what we talked about is that manufacturing in China is still so much cheaper that there's no reason for them to move all of it to the USA, because they'd make so much less money.
However, what he talked about was that FFG is always a couple months behind and so they're perpetually out of stock of everything (i.e. how Destiny died), and they always have to wait several months after a product is ready before dropping it.
What this guy's company does is manufacture some stuff in the USA, so that they have some stock early on (usually just breaking even on that), and then fill in later with tons of stock of stuff manufactured in China (which they make massive profits on). That way they keep the customers happy while still making some money, and they can respond to changes in the market quicker.
Of course, the problem is that FFG is a large company that still thinks about things like a small company. They like their simple model of "order stuff, wait for stuff to be made and shipped, sell stuff".
I think this is about the best we could hope for, in an ideal world. There's no way to figure out lost revenues on a game that failed launch because of delays between launch and subsequent content, and a solid business case should mitigate risk for any potential calamitous outcomes. Of course, if FFG really does work as a 'small company' mindset, who knows how formal their business case process is? If I were negotiating the license from the mouse's perspective, I'd expect solid assumptions on the production costs, timeframe, risk of loss, etc. that could potentially kill the game.
From the Asmodee perspective, they should know about potentially lower-cost alternatives, what are the risks they need to hedge against, make sure they're not locked into single-source suppliers, etc. Part of me says, "they've got to know these things." And then the other part of me says, "I work for a 20k person (in NA) company, and we screw these things up all the time." So I suspect they don't actively incorporate these assumptions unless/until it's cutting gross profit enough to threaten the brand profitability.
As a side note, relating to the red-faced type, the product managers I know insist that if you never run out of stock, then you're carrying too many warehousing costs and hurting profitability. Running out of things occasionally is actually considered a net positive, but the key assumption is that it doesn't take 6-12 months to bring supply back onto the market. We've actually shut down plants because it took 6-8 months to fill an order after it came in, which was entirely due to the supply chain. We just chose to buy materials we had previously made ourselves and cut a few months off the order time, which customers thoroughly appreciated.
10 minutes ago, PaulRuddSays said:I don't deal with our supply chain or Asia/Pacific manufacturing at all, but someone was recently telling me that international shipping crates on ships are difficult or impossible to insure. I found it a little implausible, but some of the AP business practices are so far away from NA norms that it wasn't unbelievable.
I do deal with our NA operations much more, and I'm not sure I've ever worked with a project that met deadlines and cost simultaneously.
For perishable stuff that's probably truish, standard terms don't include spoilage and due to the cascading port delays and international tarriff pissing matches we've seen over the last few years premiums on riders for that have likely gone up. Having said that if you want to insure virtually anything someone will write you a policy, it's just a question of whether it's at a price you find acceptable. For standard stuff though, marine insurance is fairly cheap. Between 0.3%-0.8% based on cargo value and freight costs. Lots of restrictions there, often things like rough handling isn't covered, you're responsible for making sure stuff is packed correctly. But it certainly covers things like falling off boats and explosions in ports.
The other thing that may be playing in is that China is trying to increase their share of the insurance/reinsurance markets. It wouldn't surprise me if they're throwing up some regulatory roadblocks to indirectly subsidize their industry, as part of one belt one road, by making it more difficult for non-native companies to write policy on things being shipped from there
speaking of insurance and fright delays.... where the heck is Saw's Renegades?! at this rate the question is which will show up first... SAW or 2.0?
7 minutes ago, Wiredin said:speaking of insurance and fright delays.... where the heck is Saw's Renegades?! at this rate the question is which will show up first... SAW or 2.0?
I’m throw a third option into the ring. SAW, 2.0, or the app?
X-Wing Insurance is fun
19 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:X-Wing Insurance is fun
When people told me that I wasn't playing X-Wing, I didn't think they meant it so literally.
Edited by PaulRuddSays45 minutes ago, Wiredin said:speaking of insurance and fright delays.... where the heck is Saw's Renegades?! at this rate the question is which will show up first... SAW or 2.0?
Some distributor said (unofficially) that wave 14 was delayed and 2.0 will show up first.
Whether this is a "China strikes again" type deal, or a deliberate choice? Who knows!
10 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:Some distributor said (unofficially) that wave 14 was delayed and 2.0 will show up first.
Whether this is a "China strikes again" type deal, or a deliberate choice? Who knows!
I wouldn't be surprised.
52 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:Some distributor said (unofficially) that wave 14 was delayed and 2.0 will show up first.
Whether this is a "China strikes again" type deal, or a deliberate choice? Who knows!
Maybe wave 14 was on Moralo and he forgot he didn’t have any charges left...