Brass said:Okay, let me get this straight - the rules you said were finished four years ago would take resources away from the rules you claimed were going to be finished seven years ago. If, as you announced, the Ironclad rules were finished, exactly what resources are they going to require that will cause WaS2.0 to be more behind schedule than it already is. Since the Ironclad rules were to be released thru Wargame Vault, most of the physical aspects (printing, binding, shipping, etc) of publishing don't pertain, so what's the problem?
We changed the way we do books - compare the last edition of Victory at Sea with the current playtest pack, and notice how much better the latter looks. That takes a massive amount of resources, relatively speaking, and meant that we went from publishing three or four books every month to one book every three or four months.
We also made the decision to not make Ironclad an ebook only release and produce it as a printed book. Link that to an increase in production values, and it puts Ironclad in an 'interesting' place. If you flick through the current playtest pack, you will see we are able to use a lot of photos for WWII ships, so we only need to produce new art for the 'what-if?' ships. Ironclad has a lot of vessels that need covering, and if we follow a similar format (and I think we should), that is going to suck up a lot of resources in terms of both art and graphic design. As this is where our current bottleneck lies (as covered in the last two State of the Mongooses), we have to be careful about which books we select to start preparing for layout and when. That is why WWII leap-frogged Ironclad.
However, I should point out that if you want Victory at Sea (WWII) right now, you can have it - the playtest pack is laid out and free to download. It is really only missing the historical 'background' sections. If Ironclad is more your thing, drop me a line (msprange@mongoosepublishing.com) and I will send you the completed manuscript to peruse and comment upon.