12 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

They literally posted the full contents online shortly after announcing the product. If anyone was actually concerned about what would be included, they could simply look it up. Where is the deception?

It's true that they don't make much money if any on the core sets, and they are sold with the expectation that the customer will be so happy with the product that they will continue to buy what they have to sell. Regardless, FFG charges no more than industry standard on their products (something in the range of MSRP = 5x production costs, which is exactly how everyone else charges; it must cover the cost of the game's design, development, distribution, and licensing as well). They're not rolling in dough, and neither are their shareholders. They have significant limitations to their staff and development options, and while they certainly do have a huge volume of sales, a lot of the profit gets eaten up by logistics. Come on, this isn't EA, this is FFG.

A practice that they promised would not be continued in 2.0, and they've done a pretty reasonable job of executing on that promise (card packs have been delayed, which is disappointing, but we all hope they'll pick up the pace with those in the future). An example you didn't cite: Power creep also makes for larger profits since it keeps the new stuff selling, yet FFG deliberately and specifically rebalances old stuff to keep it viable. They couldn't do this in 1.0, but now that they have the capacity to do it, they're doing a very good job.

"The Advertised Number" is 2. No more, no less. Once again, the number of players who actually have more than 2 ships in one faction, that they want to get on the board, at the same time is less than 1% of buyers. For the sake of argument, let's suppose FFG specifically wanted to cater to those players with this kit. If they included 2 more bases, they would also have to include:

• 2 more resource trackers (or else it would be shady because they're actually not "fully converting" those 4 ships)

• Double the number of ship cards (there's only 2 per faction anyway; if they're accommodating for duplicates, you'll need those cards)

• Double the number of ship bases for the same reason

• Double the Hardpoints, Illicits, Cargo, and Crew (otherwise you're too limited in how you can equip them and you have to buy a second kit anyway)

• Two Huge ship Damage Decks (With 4 ships on the table at once, you'll probably run out with just one; besides, you're probably trying to accomodate 2 players)

If they didn't include all of the above, it actually would be shady for them to include extra plastic bases that you then can't use; they'd just go to waste.

And do you know what? That content list is almost exactly identical to the content list of 2 conversion kits.

If they had gone with that content list, it would have doubled the production cost, or at least nearly doubled it, so after you apply the industry standard markup of 5x, you end up with a price of $50-60. For the average buyer, that means we're paying fully twice as much as we need to, mostly for content that we'll never use . We'd end up buying conversion kits and then splitting them, but then we'd be shortchanged because there would only be one of each unique card and we'd have to decide who ends up with it, which is a losing scenario. For you, it means you get everything in one kit, for basically the same price as you'd get everything in two kits anyway. The only difference is that smaller kits are inherently more flexible. Bigger kits mean everybody loses because there's a lot less versatility in how many you buy.

Case in point: If they had done everything outlined above, that still just converts 4 ships. If you want to fly five at a time (or six, or seven), you then have to buy two kits for $50-60 each . Now instead of spending $60-90 you're spending $100-120, and ending up with a ton of stuff you don't need anyway. Smaller kits let you buy just as much as you need, and the price point they're charging for them is extremely reasonable.

This is outdated and untrue. It can make money in the very short term to be shady. But in the 21st century it's more true than ever that treating your fan base well is the absolute #1 most important priority for any business. It's about 10 times harder/more expensive to get a new buyer than to get a repeat buyer to buy again. People know how companies do business. There's tons of transparency out there, notably these forums, the subreddit, and boardgamegeek. Businesses that use shady practices to make money in the short term lose a lot of customers in the mid-to-long term.

FFG knows this, and they're improving their communications with the player base every month. More Tabletop producers should follow their example.

Hence i said "shady", and not "criminally liable for false advertising". much like the regular 2.0 conversion kits dont contain enough medium bases to convert the advertised contents, these dont contain the bases required to do what they claim, which is convert 5 specific ships. If I want to fly my GR75 and Cr90 against my Raider, I cant with this box... a few extra bases would have fixed that. and no ones gonna part out the bases cheap because their the most valuable part and the whole reason people need to buy multiple kits.

Im flabberghasted that anyone thinks corporations dont maximize profit in this way. like do you not understand corporate concepts like responsibility to shareholders and growth? The Executives of public companies can be fired, fined, or even held liable for failure to capitalize on growth opportunities. thats the mindset mega companies like azmodee and FFG work in. Like by all means buy their stuff, i do too, but youre an idiot if you dont think theres a team of cororate officers in a boardroom brainstorming how to get more of your money in sneaky little ways. the moral imperative to hoard wealth at all costs is literally the namesake of our cultural system, CAPITALISM, and that system is currently warped around the "Corporate Citizen" and his appetite. forget it at your wallets peril

15 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

Hence i said "shady", and not "criminally liable for false advertising"

You know, my flabber is thoroughly ghasted by your insistence that there was any shady or deceptive business practices involved with the company out right stating exactly what would be in the box. Miniature wargaming is a niche market. And not a particularly large one at that. There's a reason they are so dang expensive. And that's because the target audience is fairly small, thus the product needs to cost more in order to make a profit. The cost of X-Wing expansions and conversion kits needs to cover paying the workers, paying for manufacturing, paying any licensing fees to Disney (and you know there's licensing fees), and somewhere in all that there needs to be profit so the company can stay solvent. Sure, the individual ship bases might cost 20 cents each to manufacture. Don't forget to factor in how much just running the machine it's self costs. But how many are being made per batch? How many cards are made in each batch, and what is the total cost to make them?

Tell you what, try playing something like Mad Game Tycoon . While doing so, set your business in the game up to develop and manufacture it's own products. Then see how low of a price you can charge per unit while still making a profit. You'll notice that if you try charging just barely more then the production costs then it'll take time to actually develop a profit from a given product, assuming that product is selling. And the less you charge, the more units you need to sell to recoup development costs alone. It's rather eye opening, and games like the one I linked simplify things to the extreme.

Are there businesses and executives who are shady and will do anything to squeeze more money out of their customers? You bet! But claiming all businesses are that way is wrong. Businesses do exist who honestly want to do right by their customers. And from my experiences, FFG is one of them.

52 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

Hence i said "shady", and not "criminally liable for false advertising". much like the regular 2.0 conversion kits dont contain enough medium bases to convert the advertised contents, these dont contain the bases required to do what they claim, which is convert 5 specific ships. If I want to fly my GR75 and Cr90 against my Raider, I cant with this box... a few extra bases would have fixed that. and no ones gonna part out the bases cheap because their the most valuable part and the whole reason people need to buy multiple kits.

Im flabberghasted that anyone thinks corporations dont maximize profit in this way. like do you not understand corporate concepts like responsibility to shareholders and growth? The Executives of public companies can be fired, fined, or even held liable for failure to capitalize on growth opportunities. thats the mindset mega companies like azmodee and FFG work in. Like by all means buy their stuff, i do too, but youre an idiot if you dont think theres a team of cororate officers in a boardroom brainstorming how to get more of your money in sneaky little ways. the moral imperative to hoard wealth at all costs is literally the namesake of our cultural system, CAPITALISM, and that system is currently warped around the "Corporate Citizen" and his appetite. forget it at your wallets peril

From the box: "Contains the components to upgrade your huge ship experience from the First Edition to the Second Edition, including ship cards, upgrade cards, and ship tokens, as well as a new maneuver tool, new huge ship damage deck, and more!"

At no point did FFG claim they would outfit you to put 5 huge ships on the table at once with one conversion.

Of course they are making decisions with the bottom line in mind. We as consumers decide whether what they've offered is enough and vote with our wallet.

51 minutes ago, Faerie1979 said:

.

I dont think you get economics. Smaller customer base means smaller production run. not that you must sell your 1 bananna for $100 dollars while someone else can sell 100 banannas for $1 each to get 1 unit of success. obviously there are economies of scale, etc, but more to the point: Asmodee is not the little guy. Asmodee is the second largest game company in the world(after Hasbro) and sold for €1.2 billion recently. Theyre on the fortune 500 FFS.

Plus I run a manufacturing business myself. while mine is certainly smaller than Asmodee, ive kept it in the black for a decade and the economic realities at work are the same. So when I say that Development, production, and distribution at X-wing scale simply doesnt cost what you think, Im not trying to be rude. I just have a better window into the subject than you do

for example, consider gas powered chainsaw. its a complex machine with hundreds of precision milled parts, mostly steel. its designed and tested for safety in addition to the usual retail factors. it is produced in the same country of origin as an X-wing expansion, but with materials which require more effort and time to work. it comes fully assembled. it weighs 10lbs. this item costs more to design, source materials, produce, assemble, ship, and sell(shelf space has opportunity cost) than a CR90 corvette expansion, and yet costs LESS. think about that.

I have no moral issue with people making a profit from their labours, but I also have no problem with judging a company that gets greedy. I encourage you to check into factory production of printed cardboard and injenction molded plastics. its a fascinating window into how truly F'd up our global trade system is

@Vontoothskie, do you know how much FFG is having to pay for each production run? Cause I sure don't. Do you know how much they have to pay in licensing fees, for worker wages, and running their equipment? Cause again, I don't. What I can tell you from personal experience is that it can cost more for a small production run then it does for a large one. FFG does sell to a niche market. Which means they are fighting other bigger companies such as Games Workshop for a piece of the pie. I don't know how well X-Wing is doing when compared to Warhammer 40k nationwide. But I do know that locally, for example, there's 6 people who play X-Wing. That includes me and a friend I introduced to it while I was learning the game. There's maybe three times as many people who play Warhammer 40K in the area. Of course, that's just the people I know about. There may be more for both games that only play at home thus I'd never know about them.

6 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

look up the term "profitable deception".

I did. Did you? I maintain that a key element of it is the "deception" part, which doesn't apply in this case.

5 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

Hence i said "shady", and not "criminally liable for false advertising". much like the regular 2.0 conversion kits dont contain enough medium bases to convert the advertised contents, these dont contain the bases required to do what they claim, which is convert 5 specific ships.

Show me where they claimed to convert five ships at the same time. It's been known for quite some time by the community in general that the kits only had two bases, and I don't believe there was ever any attempt on FFG's part to claim otherwise.

5 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

Im flabberghasted that anyone thinks corporations dont maximize profit in this way.

I'm flabbergasted you think anyone thinks that. No one's claiming that FFG isn't trying to maximize profit (hence prior discussions of trade-offs and whatnot); we're just saying it wasn't done deceptively or dishonestly.

4 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

I dont think you get economics.

Oh, the irony of this statement...

4 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

for example, consider gas powered chainsaw. its a complex machine with hundreds of precision milled parts, mostly steel. its designed and tested for safety in addition to the usual retail factors. it is produced in the same country of origin as an X-wing expansion, but with materials which require more effort and time to work. it comes fully assembled. it weighs 10lbs. this item costs more to design, source materials, produce, assemble, ship, and sell(shelf space has opportunity cost) than a CR90 corvette expansion, and yet costs LESS. think about that.

Where are you finding a gas chainsaw for less than a CR90? The only places I could find with prices that low had descriptions which were suspect, and the chainsaws didn't look like they were "precision" anything, and appeared to be have a good deal of plastic in them; nor would I personally trust the safety testing of a gas chainsaw that cheap. And I 100% guarantee that your lowest-end chainsaws did not cost more to design, either in dollars or in hours.

4 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Where are you finding a gas chainsaw for less than a CR90? The only places I could find with prices that low had descriptions which were suspect, and the chainsaws didn't look like they were "precision" anything, and appeared to be have a good deal of plastic in them; nor would I personally trust the safety testing of a gas chainsaw that cheap. And I 100% guarantee that your lowest-end chainsaws did not cost more to design, either in dollars or in hours.

I'm going to assume the answer is Home Depot. And they are used. New ones sell for between $120 and $250.

14 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

I don't think you get economics.

Okay, I'll bite. Have you heard the term "Economies of scale?"

I'm a fledgling game designer. I'm working on producing my first game right now, which incidentally does involve miniatures. Plastic miniatures molding costs tons of money to set up the precision steel injection molds, anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the size and type of parts required. In order to break even you have to move three to five thousand units, using that 5x markup I mentioned earlier. Now, the great thing is that after you've paid off the setup costs, you can continue producing at an enormous margin. Maybe 20 cents does cover the huge ship base, maybe it doesn't. Regardless, setting up the machines to run that process undoubtedly cost them upwards of $2000. How many times do you have to sell a 20 cent item to pay that off? Ten Thousand! Do you think they'll actually sell that many huge ship conversion kits? This is why it's strictly false that the huge ship base probably costs "just 20 cents."

Why the 5x markup? Because of logistics. A board games retailer will buy it for about half of MSRP, and the distributor has to turn a profit too, so they buy it for about 40% of MSRP. That means that these huge ship conversions are being sold by FFG not for $30, but for $12. The retailer makes $15 off of them, and the distributor makes about $3 each. FFG makes whatever comes between the production costs and $12. Lets be conservative and say that they can produce these kits for two dollars . Now they're making $10 off each, from which they have to pay the Disney license (which surely takes something like a 10% cut, maybe $3), they have to pay all of their workers: designers, developers, modelers, artists, illustrators, graphic designers, translators, proofreaders, logistics managers, organized play facilitators, communications, management, etc., then what's left over is profit. I guarantee you that's probably under a dollar a piece. From that, FFG gets some for its investors, and some goes to Asmodee. I understand that you work in manufacturing, but FFG isn't charging primarily for manufacturing a physical product. The money goes mostly to the above specialized and skilled workers who rely on physical product sales to pay their salary or commission. Does your manufacturing company contract graphic designers, illustrators, play testers, organized play coordinators, or game balancers? Balancing a game is a much more nuanced and specialized thing than performing quality control on a chain saw. that comparison is akin to appraising the value of an artwork based on the cost of the paint, canvas, and frame.

Let's go ahead and compare that chainsaw to the Tantive IV. Once again, we have to talk about economies of scale. What's the global market for chainsaws? Maybe a few thousand? Now what's the global market for chainsaws? Tens of millions. Of course, there's no way a single provider is manufacturing all of those chainsaws, but at the same time, everything that goes into a chainsaw is pretty much a given. Not only do tons of people make chainsaws, but the parts that go into chainsaws could also go into dozens of similar appliances. One manufacturer can produce millions of one part, and the end result is that they basically don't have to think about design, setup, and tooling costs at all. The cost per item and margin charged over and above production is all they have to think about. They also have a ready market that's present everywhere and has to buy the product because they need it, rather than just buying it if they have the extra money and feel like it. Hardware companies don't typically take a 50% margin on the products they sell either because of the way the market for tabletop differs from the market for hardware. Even so, I've never, ever seen a gas chainsaw sell for under $100 at a hardware store except on clearance to get rid of stock (which often represents a loss on the part of the retailer). Typical pricing is more like $200-$300. If this theoretical business gets around this markup by using a direct-to-consumer or Fullfilled By Amazon model like many asian companies, then it's apples and oranges so the cost comparison doesn't remotely hold up anyway.

Conversely, when we look at the Tantive IV, FFG is doing something inherently new. They create the computer model themselves, then they have to figure out how to break that into injection-moldable parts, and how those parts will be held together. They have to ensure the fidelity of sculpt on the final product matches what's on screen and accurately fulfills Lucasfilm's demands and the fans' desires. They have to decide on a paint scheme and decide how it will be applied. The painting itself is at least as expensive as the modeling and assembly for initial setup, and it is certainly much more expensive per unit, as it can't be totally automated and requires line workers to hold the masks and spray the paint and apply the wash correctly. Initial setup for tooling for the Tantive IV is somewhere in the mid-5-figure range, just for the individual plastic parts. Setting up the assembly line to put the parts together correctly and assure quality, then to mask and paint the finished product, then to apply the wash evenly (which must all be done more or less by hand) adds substantially to the per-item cost.

I'm completely going to ignore the cardboard printing and plastic packaging costs because they're quite small in comparison to the plastic, just for the sake of charity and simplicity in my argument.

Once again, they're not selling these things for $100, they're selling them for $40 so the distributor can get $10 and the retailer can get $50. They probably break even after selling about two to three thousand, and after that they're probably making about $30 off of each (of which maybe $5 goes do disney, the rest goes into payroll and overhead, and so on and so on).

The board games industry is not a place where people go to get rich. Margins are low and overhead is high. Logistics are a nightmare and economies of scale are against us. If you want to make tons of money from shady practices, go into electronic gaming, especially mobile. You can Power Creep the heck out of people, force them to pay for the new powerful stuff so they can win, then sell them randomized loot boxes to level up the stuff they just paid for.

Look at Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes – THAT's a shady business model. People who seriously want to compete spend thousands of dollars per year on something that literally doesn't cost anything to manufacture, stock, and produce. The developers can literally write anything into immediate existence, but they still charge tens to hundreds of dollars for premium content that will be obsolete in a couple of months. That game is dying; more people are dropping out because it just stopped being fun a while back.

FFG is an excellent company that loves their fans and loves what they do; they're taking more and more steps to communicate with us and cater to our needs. That doesn't change the inherent realities of the business world; they have to make a living at the end of the day, or else they'd have to stop making this game and go do something else full-time. They're not exploitative, they're not deceptive, and they're not shady. They're not profit-hungry, and they're not trying to screw us over. These are the most absurd accusations against a gaming company I've heard in quite a while.

Edit: You know what? Never mind. Not that interested in the answers.

6 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Okay, I'll bite. Have you heard the term "Economies of scale?"

<snip>

Thank you, that explains things a lot better then I probably could have.

On 11/8/2019 at 12:50 AM, Vontoothskie said:

If I want to fly my GR75 and Cr90 against my Raider, I cant

True!

Two players. Two conversion kits.

As advertised.

This discussion is so over it's not even funny.

Well, I'd pre-ordered my upgrade set months ago. It came (in the UK) yesterday.

What a truly awful product. We buy our X-wing products as a family and game as a family (3 of us). We've multiple copies of most smaller ships from v1. My lad plays Imperials, I play Rebels and my wife is the Scum and Villainy. We only own 1 of each epic/huge ship (there are 5 in total). We've been waiting quite a while to have games with these ships using v2 rules. We play 3 way games as a family when we have a game night.

Now with the conversion kit, we're short of bases. Buying more conversion kits is ridiculous when all you want are 2 components of it; the bases and the resource tracker - neither of which are available seperately. I'm certainly not spending another $60 just to upgrade the 3 other ships I've alrerady purchased.

With this latest FFG cash grab, my wife's drawn the line on the finances. No more X-wing purchases. We can make do with what we have from now on.

The biggest shame is that the rules seem much simpler and improved over the awkward mess of epic v1

2 minutes ago, Gimgamgoo said:

Well, I'd pre-ordered my upgrade set months ago. It came (in the UK) yesterday.

What a truly awful product. We buy our X-wing products as a family and game as a family (3 of us). We've multiple copies of most smaller ships from v1. My lad plays Imperials, I play Rebels and my wife is the Scum and Villainy. We only own 1 of each epic/huge ship (there are 5 in total). We've been waiting quite a while to have games with these ships using v2 rules. We play 3 way games as a family when we have a game night.

Now with the conversion kit, we're short of bases. Buying more conversion kits is ridiculous when all you want are 2 components of it; the bases and the resource tracker - neither of which are available seperately. I'm certainly not spending another $60 just to upgrade the 3 other ships I've alrerady purchased.

With this latest FFG cash grab, my wife's drawn the line on the finances. No more X-wing purchases. We can make do with what we have from now on.

The biggest shame is that the rules seem much simpler and improved over the awkward mess of epic v1

Neat

Everybody so busy complaining about only two bases, no one complaining that it only has one huge ship damage deck, meaning players will have to share one damage deck for their huge ships.


Clearly, the conversion kit is meant to convert an entire 1.0 collection of huge ships for a single player, allowing that player to fly one or two (different) huge ships in a game. Own and want to fly double GR-75s.... whelp, two conversion kits for you!

44 minutes ago, Gimgamgoo said:

Well, I'd pre-ordered my upgrade set months ago. It came (in the UK) yesterday.

What a truly awful product. We buy our X-wing products as a family and game as a family (3 of us). We've multiple copies of most smaller ships from v1. My lad plays Imperials, I play Rebels and my wife is the Scum and Villainy. We only own 1 of each epic/huge ship (there are 5 in total). We've been waiting quite a while to have games with these ships using v2 rules. We play 3 way games as a family when we have a game night.

Now with the conversion kit, we're short of bases. Buying more conversion kits is ridiculous when all you want are 2 components of it; the bases and the resource tracker - neither of which are available seperately. I'm certainly not spending another $60 just to upgrade the 3 other ships I've alrerady purchased.

With this latest FFG cash grab, my wife's drawn the line on the finances. No more X-wing purchases. We can make do with what we have from now on.

The biggest shame is that the rules seem much simpler and improved over the awkward mess of epic v1

Did you guys throw your video game console right into the trash because you had to buy two additional $50 controllers in order to play 3-Player?

2 hours ago, Gimgamgoo said:

Well, I'd pre-ordered my upgrade set months ago. It came (in the UK) yesterday.

What a truly awful product. We buy our X-wing products as a family and game as a family (3 of us). We've multiple copies of most smaller ships from v1. My lad plays Imperials, I play Rebels and my wife is the Scum and Villainy. We only own 1 of each epic/huge ship (there are 5 in total). We've been waiting quite a while to have games with these ships using v2 rules. We play 3 way games as a family when we have a game night.

Now with the conversion kit, we're short of bases. Buying more conversion kits is ridiculous when all you want are 2 components of it; the bases and the resource tracker - neither of which are available seperately. I'm certainly not spending another $60 just to upgrade the 3 other ships I've alrerady purchased.

With this latest FFG cash grab, my wife's drawn the line on the finances. No more X-wing purchases. We can make do with what we have from now on.

The biggest shame is that the rules seem much simpler and improved over the awkward mess of epic v1

You buy two. That's how it works.

It's very simple: For those of you who are covering both teams, the conversion kit costs $60. For ALL the rest of us, it's only $30

I've said it again and again and again and again and again and again and again above. There would be just as many complaints if they had two more bases:

1. If they had four bases but only two resource trackers, there would be tons of complaints that it makes no sense not to provide enough resource trackers for the bases
2. If they had four bases and four resource trackers, there would be complaints that there weren't enough hardpoints and cargo to run four ships
3. If they had four bases and four resource trackers, and four of each card, there would be complaints that there was only one of each ship included
4. If they included four bases and four resource trackers and four of each upgrade and two of each ship, there would be complaints that there's only one damage deck
5. If they included all of those things, that is EXACTLY identical to buying two conversion kits, except you only get one of each unique commander. Now they have to charge $50-$60 for a product most of us will only need half of. And the result is that most of us will buy one and split it, leaving half of us short on all of the unique commanders. It's lose lose

This is the best possible way they could have rolled it out, full stop. It converts any two ships at a time, which is plenty for one player. You want it for two players you buy two kits. End of discussion. No one has refuted any of the points above. This isn't an argument it's just complaining.

2 hours ago, Gimgamgoo said:

Well, I'd pre-ordered my upgrade set months ago. It came (in the UK) yesterday.

What a truly awful product. We buy our X-wing products as a family and game as a family (3 of us). We've multiple copies of most smaller ships from v1. My lad plays Imperials, I play Rebels and my wife is the Scum and Villainy. We only own 1 of each epic/huge ship (there are 5 in total). We've been waiting quite a while to have games with these ships using v2 rules. We play 3 way games as a family when we have a game night.

Now with the conversion kit, we're short of bases. Buying more conversion kits is ridiculous when all you want are 2 components of it; the bases and the resource tracker - neither of which are available seperately. I'm certainly not spending another $60 just to upgrade the 3 other ships I've alrerady purchased.

With this latest FFG cash grab, my wife's drawn the line on the finances. No more X-wing purchases. We can make do with what we have from now on.

The biggest shame is that the rules seem much simpler and improved over the awkward mess of epic v1

Sounds like you need to have a conversation with your wife more than with ffg. They told you ahead of time what was going on. Additionally, that one final push is probably what you need - epic has lots of good 3-way formats in it. You could also try splitting a second kit with someone if you want more of a faction and they want more of another.

But because they didn’t cater to your hyper specific use case, you’d rather complain.

I really don't see the issue here. I mean, there's probably some **** good reasons why the conversion kits only let you convert 2 Huge ships at a time. And no, the reasons are very unlikely to be "Because FFG is greedy". They probably have a smaller profit margin then you might expect. "But it's only $0.20 worth of plastic and a few sheets of card stock" you say. But no, it's not only $0.20 worth of plastic and a few sheets of card stock. It's development costs. It's licensing fees. It's marketing fees. It's shipping fees. It's costs to buy the raw materials. It's costs to create new molds. It's costs to actually run the machines to manufacture the product. It's packing material costs. It's paying the various employees. All of which means that after distributes take their cut and retailers take their cut, profits are probably not particularly high on any given expansion or core set sold.

Mind you, I also fail to see the problem with just paying for more conversion kits if you need to convert more ships at the same time then one kit allows. I bought the Rebel Alliance conversion kit despite not having any 1st edition ships to convert. I did so just to get the upgrade cards while knowing full well that the ship cards, ship base tokens, and even the Large bases would be so much trash for me. I still considered it a good buy. I have one 1st edition Huge ship on the way, and am looking to buy one or two other ones. Over half of the conversion kit is going to be useless for me. I'll be able to use the CR-90's dial, the damage deck, the Imperial Raider ship cards, imperial upgrades, and maybe the title cards for the GR-75 if/when I buy one. But you know what? Even with the plan to only buy 2 1st edition ships, I still looked at the Huge Ship conversion kit and decided "Yeah, that looks like a good value for me." And I am building up a Galactic Empire fleet in addition to my Rebel Alliance fleet. I'm doing so not because I want to fly the Galactic Empire, but so I can supply ships with a decent variety when playing among friends and family who haven't invested in the game.

1 hour ago, ScummyRebel said:

Sounds like you need to have a conversation with your wife more than with ffg. They told you ahead of time what was going on. Additionally, that one final push is probably what you need - epic has lots of good 3-way formats in it. You could also try splitting a second kit with someone if you want more of a faction and they want more of another.

But because they didn’t cater to your hyper specific use case, you’d rather complain.

My hyper specific use case...

Yeah... they've produced 5 ships in total. Then changed the base size and only provided 2 bases as replacement. There's no other way to get those bases without buying an entire box of stuff that isn't all needed. That doesn't seem very customer friendly. Where I live, X-wing has dropped off to no-one since 2.0. Hence the family gaming now.

I can still play with the family, it's a good game, we enjoy it - just only two people at a time if we use epic ships.

Loss of future sales for FFG. Money saved for me, but hey... it's obviously just me complaining.

2 minutes ago, Gimgamgoo said:

Loss of future sales for FFG. Money saved for me, but hey... it's obviously just me complaining.

Don't worry about it. Apologists gonna apologist, and the FFG apologists here will basically stand on their heads and recite Ayn Rand in order to deny any validity of the criticism of FFG's most egregious choices.

The conversion kit is also intended for a single person. How many Huge ships are you expecting to field in just your fleet at any given moment.. One? Maybe 2? The intention was not "Buy one conversion kit, and you can use it to convert your entire collection all at once" or "buy one conversion kit and be able to supply Huge ships for everyone in the match", it was "buy one kit and you can convert the ships you are personally running in a given match."

Just now, Jeff Wilder said:

Don't worry about it. Apologists gonna apologist, and the FFG apologists here will basically stand on their heads and recite Ayn Rand in order to deny any validity of the criticism of FFG's most egregious choices.

Wow... bitter much? You seem to be ascribing malicious greed to the company, rather then admitting that the manufacturing costs are probably higher then you want to believe. You also seem to think that people pointing out that there was no deception in what the conversion kits would contain means those same people are yes-men (or women) for FFG who think Atlas Shrugged is some amazing truth and cornerstone which all society must be built upon. News flash, not every business is a mustache twirling evil entity. And not everyone who understands even the grossly simplified basics of manufacturing costs worships the ideologies of Ayn Rand.

See what I mean, @Gimgamgoo ? Apologists gonna apologist. It's just the way of things here. Just get in, make your points clearly and concisely (for the folks with critical thinking skills), then shrug and let it go.

1 minute ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Just get in, make your points clearly and concisely (for the folks with critical thinking skills), then shrug and let it go.

This should really apply to either side of an argument. The bickering is pointless... until the app has the points for bickering added to it, anyway.

24 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

See what I mean, @Gimgamgoo ? Apologists gonna apologist. It's just the way of things here. Just get in, make your points clearly and concisely (for the folks with critical thinking skills), then shrug and let it go.

Soooo...you are simply going to declare yourself right, and anyone with an opposing point of view is an apologist? There is no chance they could have a point?

Sooo... they announced ahead of time what was in the box. They had live streams, articles, and even on the box itself it listed what was in it. You bought it anyway.

So, how large of an enforcer did FFG send to force you to buy their product, bring it home, and open it instead of... not doing that and requesting your money back?

I can't imagine how intimidating that must have been.