1 hour ago, CoffeeMinion said:

For the record, I'm actually pretty okay with both 2e itself and the way it's being handled. I don't like having chunks of my collection stuck behind the need for upgrade packs, but I get why it was done this way and for the most part I'm okay with it.

The real downside that I'm feeling now is that this totally kills my inclination to buy more ships in the remaining 1e era. Like I'd recently contemplated buying another Harpoon Expansion Pack to open up some specific build options, but now there's only marginal value in flying those couple of builds for the next few months versus just saving the money for later update packs and flying something else. Similarly, I was super stoked for the X-Wing and U-Wing fix pack, and the Reaper preview looked awesome too... but now suddenly the X and U fixes are going to come to me in the Rebel update whether I buy the standalone pack or not, and now I'd honestly rather put the $30 for the Reaper toward the $50 I need to get all the rest of my Imps legal in 2e.

Y'know what I mean? None of this is bad per se, but boy does it disincline me to spend more on X-Wing until 2e drops.

If you want V1 stuff...look to 3rd party resellers who just had their inventory made near worthless....you can have your fun over the summer on the cheap while you wait for V2

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

As someone who plays only 1 faction... I think the conversion kit is pretty fair. I don't think I would want more of any ship than it is present there... Maybe another ship, here and there, depending on how the game is going to look like. If the TAP is great, I might get a 4th one. But aside from that, I really think it is fair..

Look at it from another point of view.... if you only bought 1-2 ships of each small ship, and 1 of every large ship, would you be happy to pay 80$ to have 4-6 of every small ship

I don't think so. The conversion kit is a fair compromise between those who buy everything, and those who just buy a few.

It is true that at some point you can have too much in the box, however, one more dollar in manufacturing cost isn't going to raise the price by $30 in the end. I think one conversion kit would be enough for 90% of the list I would ever want to run but FFG does have cleaver ways of getting you to buy just one more. They haven't given out a detailed list of the components, so we shall see.

6 minutes ago, Mep said:

It is true that at some point you can have too much in the box, however, one more dollar in manufacturing cost isn't going to raise the price by $30 in the end. I think one conversion kit would be enough for 90% of the list I would ever want to run but FFG does have cleaver ways of getting you to buy just one more. They haven't given out a detailed list of the components, so we shall see.

I mean... Aside from quad TLT-s and various swarms, what list you can't run with it? How do you know those builds will be even good?

It seems support is more important than before... maybe you don't want to run 5 naked generics anymore, rather you would run a reaper or a lambda to support them.

I think it is fair. If you spent thousands of dollars on this game, I think it is not very fitting to complain about it being expensive. There isn't a solution that is going to make everyone happy. I think the conversion kits hit a good middle ground.

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

I mean... Aside from quad TLT-s and various swarms, what list you can't run with it? How do you know those builds will be even good?

It seems support is more important than before... maybe you don't want to run 5 naked generics anymore, rather you would run a reaper or a lambda to support them.

I think it is fair. If you spent thousands of dollars on this game, I think it is not very fitting to complain about it being expensive. There isn't a solution that is going to make everyone happy. I think the conversion kits hit a good middle ground.

We know next to nothing right now, about what squads we would want to run or the exact contents in the box. Thinking one is enough is just as speculative as thinking you need more than one.

Just now, Mep said:

We know next to nothing right now, about what squads we would want to run or the exact contents in the box. Thinking one is enough is just as speculative as thinking you need more than one.

As I said, I have less ships than in the conversion kit, I'm pretty sure 1 is enough

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

As I said, I have less ships than in the conversion kit, I'm pretty sure 1 is enough

Yep. I'm one TIE Fighter and 2 T-65s over what the kits cover and will have extraneous stuff. Between Saw's Renegades and the new core set I'll still be able to run four T-65s and 6 TIE Fighters. The conversion kits seem perfect to me.

1 hour ago, Tvboy said:

As long as every X-Wing player in existence (including all new players until 2.0 packs catches up to 1.0) buys at least any 2 conversion kits, FFG is going to make a **** ton of money off of us and probably couldn't care less that sales are going to drop between now and September. Those kits probably cost less than $7 each to manufacture and ship. 2e is going to be a masterfully crafted and calculated windfall for FFG.

I suggest you get more information on what punch board and printed cards cost. I bet the margins on the conversion kit are negligible for FFG after shipping and distribution costs and the MSRP includes maybe a 30% markup for brick and mortars.

I don't have enough Gunboats to fill the conversion kit. Guess I need to go shopping.

6 hours ago, Sithborg said:

Are you kidding me, I am going to shore up my collection when everything goes on sale!

This so much. But keep in mind, it will take some time till everything goes on sale, because it will take some time until everything is avaible as 2nd edition package. And until than stores will happily sell you 1.0 packs with minor discounts, so you can fill up your 1.0 ships based on what does fit into your already purchased conversion kit.

I guess I need more TAPs and Decis, right?

10 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

I don't have enough Gunboats to fill the conversion kit. Guess I need to go shopping.

You could sell more one of your spare gunboat conversions ... or all of them. No need to buy gunboats for you... I picked two FLGS clean for gunboats anyway. So I doubt that I can get those with a discount now anyway

8 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

This so much. But keep in mind, it will take some time till everything goes on sale, because it will take some time until everything is avaible as 2nd edition package. And until than stores will happily sell you 1.0 packs with minor discounts, so you can fill up your 1.0 ships based on what does fit into your already purchased conversion kit.

I guess I need more TAPs and Decis, right?

I am going over my collection and determining what I should get. Determine what is unlikely to get re-release anytime soon.

6 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Chinese manufacturing, only contains printed cardstock and plastic bases and pegs that are all the same, no models? I was under the impression that the bulk of the manufacturing costs comes from the model and the painting. What's your educated estimate?

5 hours ago, Mep said:

Just an FYI it cost between 1-3 cents to print typical gaming cards. I don't think $7 is a wacky estimate at all. However you also have shipping, tariffs and development costs as pointed out, and then customer service cost for replacing all the missing peaces. Also keep in mind if this is retail for $50, FFG probably sales it to the distributor for $25. If the manufacturing costs were any higher than $7 FFG would be in trouble with this product. All the real cost of that $50 comes after manufacturing or before. So thinking that a $50 product cost more than $7 to manufacture is pretty silly and thinking that $7 is the only associated cost is too rather silly.

Mep, your skipping a step.

As a general rule of thumb, price doubled at each step of the distribution chain, so retail stores are getting these kits for around $25 and FFG is selling to the distributors for around $13. So say that random $7 guess is accurate, FFG is getting $6 per kit to cover all those shipping costs, advertising, and the manpower of probably 2 years of development. So how many of those kits do they need to sell to actually turn a profit after those costs, which probably total several hundred thousand dollars?

a few years ago an artist friend of mine had a game designer joke to him how gaming is an industry where someone can literally make hundreds of dollars a year.

5 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Mep, your skipping a step.

As a general rule of thumb, price doubled at each step of the distribution chain, so retail stores are getting these kits for around $25 and FFG is selling to the distributors for around $13. So say that random $7 guess is accurate, FFG is getting $6 per kit to cover all those shipping costs, advertising, and the manpower of probably 2 years of development. So how many of those kits do they need to sell to actually turn a profit after those costs, which probably total several hundred thousand dollars?

a few years ago an artist friend of mine had a game designer joke to him how gaming is an industry where someone can literally make hundreds of dollars a year.

The "double the cost at each step" isn't exactly accurate. Works that way for some things sure, but the distributors aren't exactly making that kind of markup for nonperishable goods.

Yeah they are. Every game publisher I have ever talked to about it has mentioned how crazy high the distributor mark up is and cited that as a main reason why it’s so hard to bring a game to market.

Its also a big reason why kickstarted games are so popular with manufacturers, they can offer big discounts to end users and still make more money because KS is cutting the distributors out of the equation. (Though they are creeping back in because a big KS still needs pledge manager stuff and region friendly shipping hubs.

I'm in the middle when it comes to purchasing new ships.

Saw's Renegades just became a hard pass for me since the main reason I had planned on getting it was for the ability to upgrade currently owned ships. The conversion packs now do the same thing.

However, I'm now interested in picking up the few remaining ships that I don't have yet. TIE Punisher and E-Wing weren't very playable, but the conversion kits give them added value now.

Going over my collection, what I am looking at topping off isn't too bad. A Punisher, a V1, a TIE Aggressor, a Hound's Tooth, a Punishing One, an Outrider, a K-wing.

I'm currently thinking whether to buy a TIE Striker before the lists are released.

Oooh, a third Striker...

1 hour ago, Darth 2Face said:

Saw's Renegades just became a hard pass for me since the main reason I had planned on getting it was for the ability to upgrade currently owned ships. The conversion packs now do the same thing.

Unless you Really want Saw, the Two Tube brothers, etc. for 2.0 you can skip this expansion if you already have a U-wing or two. The Saw and Reaper expansions are going to carry 2.0 cards, punchboard and bases that you won't find in the conversion kit.

Think of it as Wave 0.

7 minutes ago, Force Majeure said:

Unless you Really want Saw, the Two Tube brothers, etc. for 2.0 you can skip this expansion if you already have a U-wing or two. The Saw and Reaper expansions are going to carry 2.0 cards, punchboard and bases that you won't find in the conversion kit.

Think of it as Wave 0.

That's exactly why I'm skipping it. All I would really be getting out of it once 2.0 drops are some unique pilots. I'll save that money for 2.0.

On 5/2/2018 at 12:28 PM, Tvboy said:

Chinese manufacturing, only contains printed cardstock and plastic bases and pegs that are all the same, no models? I was under the impression that the bulk of the manufacturing costs comes from the model and the painting. What's your educated estimate?

Actually the bulk of the cost is not the physical printing of the man hours spent in design, both graphic and game.

On 5/2/2018 at 3:29 PM, Commander Kaine said:

Printer ink is expensive, because the price is artificially inflated for us, end users. The material is actually extremely cheap. Look it up. It's actually pretty aggravating. Printer ink is pretty much the same as regular ink. The cartridge "costs" a lot. In reality, it is the Printer that is the expensive part, but printer companies ship the costs to the ink, because reasons. So you buy printers at a lower price, but ink at a premium...

I can corroborate this. In my country, 'generic' ink is extremely cheap, you just pay for a mechanism to 'patch' the printer with to have big tanks of cheap ink. Not to mention China exports products with lack of regard for safety, so it may contain toxic materials. Inkjet business is extremely profitable, and americans are taken for fools for their ink price.

On 5/2/2018 at 2:20 PM, Tvboy said:

As long as every X-Wing player in existence (including all new players until 2.0 packs catches up to 1.0) buys at least any 2 conversion kits, FFG is going to make a **** ton of money off of us and probably couldn't care less that sales are going to drop between now and September. Those kits probably cost less than $7 each to manufacture and ship. 2e is going to be a masterfully crafted and calculated windfall for FFG.

Even if the box only costs FFG $7 per box to manufacture, that doesn't mean they'll make $43 per box in profit. Far from it. First of all, the retailer who sells it to you will need to make a profit. A typical profit margin is around 50%, so figure the retailer gets to keep $25, and they pay $25 to get it on their shelf. But wait, that other $25 isn't going to FFG - it's going to a distributor. That distributor needs to make a profit as well. They'll want their own profit margin to be around 50%, so that's around $12.50 that they keep, with the other $12.50 going to FFG.

Based on that, it probably costs FFG about $6-7 to produce the box, with the other $6-7 being their profit margin. Which then needs to first pay back the company for things like payroll, rent and other business expenses before they are actually profitable as a company.

In other words, they'll need to sell a _lot_ of conversion kits for it to be "a windfall". Honestly, they're probably cutting their margins pretty thin to keep the conversion kit costs down, in reality.

21 hours ago, Mep said:

The "double the cost at each step" isn't exactly accurate. Works that way for some things sure, but the distributors aren't exactly making that kind of markup for nonperishable goods.

Every company I've worked for has produced nonperishable goods. A 50% profit margin is generally considered the minimum you need to achieve.

Just because something is nonperishable doesn't mean you don't have tons of other costs to account for. Warehousing inventory costs money, after all, and that has to be paid for with your profit margin. Payroll is usually the number one cost of any business, for that matter. Paying employees also comes entirely from the profit margin. Distributors are buying in bulk from the manufacturer, but then selling in smaller lots to the retailers, so you'd better bet they want a 50% or better profit margin to account for the fact that they might not be able to sell everything they buy from the manufacturer. The retailers have similar issues, so they definitely want a reasonable profit margin.

On 5/2/2018 at 3:11 PM, jonnyd said:

depending on which upgrade you're thinking about you are basically getting the model for $15 instead of $20 at a later date. Do you own 1 A-wing and are contemplating a 2nd? Great! Since you're going to buy the Rebel conversion kit for $50 anyway, you will need a 2nd actual model to fly 2. Go ahead and buy the $15 one now and save yourself $5 later. Not to mention you can also use that ship for the next for months in your lists anyway. And forever, really, since you also own the 1.0 content.

Well with the alt paint schemes going out of print sooner or later I would say find them first for cheap.