I've been watching this forum - and the ADB ones - with intrest on this topic - but frankly venturing on the ADB forums in an effort to either defend, encourage or discuss many of the new Starline 2500 designs is a pretty grim prospect!
Very few groups of gamers like change very much (you can feel the nostalgia for ACTA: B5 here can't you? To be fair, it was cool..) but the 'Mine! Mine! Don't touch it!' comming out of some of the posters over 'there' leaves me a little intimidated and a bit less excited about the ACTA: SF project than I'd like to be.
When presented in the SFB / Fedcom / Federation & Empire art work, the SFU setting stuff looks good, usually - and a certain air of 'Retro' is both part of the appeal and part of the liscene - hek I like the SFU and I wouldn't have it any other way - but the Starline 2400 line always left me a little flat - I came upon it after I'd seen the Old B5 miniatures, after GW's BFG and so on, and the range just 'lacks Jazz' by comparison.
A lot of the sample CAD designs are more or less straight ports of the standard designs - and that's fine - just picking out the detail with the new material and size will make them look 'the way they were meant to' - and on the ADB forums they seem to 'survive contact with the enemy'.
But as soon as anything gets tweaked at all - the (vetod?) Command Cruiser design, the Dreadnough..a phaser port.. anyone would think it had been suggested we start painting the hulls pink!
If it looks in danger of causing a copyright breach, yeah - that's an issue - although I get the slightly mutinous feeling that the accusation of 'it looks like its Paramounts IP' gets thrown about at something that isn't liked when all else fails (Kidding, mostly..) - but shouting it down just because it doesn't look exactly like the Starline 2400 version or the artwork is nuts.
I also don't have a problem with ADB themselves going 'Its my IP and I don't like what you've done' - but it does feel a but like there's a lot of peer pressure going on to try and ensure nothing changes!
ADB agreed to leave the Starline 2400 line on sale right? So it not like anything is being 'taken away' - but it feels like we're going to get NOTHING but exact copies of the old models, in the new size, with clean CAD designed lines.
I mean, that would be okay, but there's not much magic or excitement in it - and there's nothing there to make people look at the 'Old' style designs and see the inherant elegance that was there to start with, because it will just be 'same old, same old' - People expect more 'texture' on a minature now than they did even a few years ago, people want to see 'scale' - you can convey that with very simple lines in art work but its hard to do with those same simple lines in a miniature.
You want the new range to be something that can stand with its head held high againt the Firestorm Armada resins and Mongooses own Noble Armada range - you want the new range to be something that makes people look at them and go 'Wow, I wish they'd re-imagined the new 'Trek Movie ships to look like *that*' - and I think the potential for that sort of success fades a little bit everytime we end up with exactly the same design we had before.
I want to be able to go down my local club with a couple of fleets of nicely painted new ships and get people going 'Ooooh oooh ooh where do I buy some of those and how do I learn to play that?!' not
"Oh Look, he brought his old tatty SFB models, hey, aren't those bigger than I remember?'
But I feel like if I say that on the ADB forums somone might cross the Atlantic and strangle me! (or at least like my comments might get another outburst of 'Mine Mine!' which only further discourages any adventure in desgin land...)
Very few groups of gamers like change very much (you can feel the nostalgia for ACTA: B5 here can't you? To be fair, it was cool..) but the 'Mine! Mine! Don't touch it!' comming out of some of the posters over 'there' leaves me a little intimidated and a bit less excited about the ACTA: SF project than I'd like to be.
When presented in the SFB / Fedcom / Federation & Empire art work, the SFU setting stuff looks good, usually - and a certain air of 'Retro' is both part of the appeal and part of the liscene - hek I like the SFU and I wouldn't have it any other way - but the Starline 2400 line always left me a little flat - I came upon it after I'd seen the Old B5 miniatures, after GW's BFG and so on, and the range just 'lacks Jazz' by comparison.
A lot of the sample CAD designs are more or less straight ports of the standard designs - and that's fine - just picking out the detail with the new material and size will make them look 'the way they were meant to' - and on the ADB forums they seem to 'survive contact with the enemy'.
But as soon as anything gets tweaked at all - the (vetod?) Command Cruiser design, the Dreadnough..a phaser port.. anyone would think it had been suggested we start painting the hulls pink!
If it looks in danger of causing a copyright breach, yeah - that's an issue - although I get the slightly mutinous feeling that the accusation of 'it looks like its Paramounts IP' gets thrown about at something that isn't liked when all else fails (Kidding, mostly..) - but shouting it down just because it doesn't look exactly like the Starline 2400 version or the artwork is nuts.
I also don't have a problem with ADB themselves going 'Its my IP and I don't like what you've done' - but it does feel a but like there's a lot of peer pressure going on to try and ensure nothing changes!
ADB agreed to leave the Starline 2400 line on sale right? So it not like anything is being 'taken away' - but it feels like we're going to get NOTHING but exact copies of the old models, in the new size, with clean CAD designed lines.
I mean, that would be okay, but there's not much magic or excitement in it - and there's nothing there to make people look at the 'Old' style designs and see the inherant elegance that was there to start with, because it will just be 'same old, same old' - People expect more 'texture' on a minature now than they did even a few years ago, people want to see 'scale' - you can convey that with very simple lines in art work but its hard to do with those same simple lines in a miniature.
You want the new range to be something that can stand with its head held high againt the Firestorm Armada resins and Mongooses own Noble Armada range - you want the new range to be something that makes people look at them and go 'Wow, I wish they'd re-imagined the new 'Trek Movie ships to look like *that*' - and I think the potential for that sort of success fades a little bit everytime we end up with exactly the same design we had before.
I want to be able to go down my local club with a couple of fleets of nicely painted new ships and get people going 'Ooooh oooh ooh where do I buy some of those and how do I learn to play that?!' not
"Oh Look, he brought his old tatty SFB models, hey, aren't those bigger than I remember?'
But I feel like if I say that on the ADB forums somone might cross the Atlantic and strangle me! (or at least like my comments might get another outburst of 'Mine Mine!' which only further discourages any adventure in desgin land...)
