OK folks, I looked through the preview of this, and it looks good.

But, for those that bought it, is it worth it?

It's a nice way to get rid of that store credit they offered recently.

What's pretty odd is that the "acceleration" values (that act as tactical walking/running speeds for vehicles) are nearly the same for all drones. Which just seems wrong.
Either there is a groundbreaking errata around the corner redefining the meaning of these values, or somebody got sloppy.

Any good drones in there?

IMHO, just the Ares Air-Supply. Which is basically a larger Kull without stealth, but VTOL. Personally, I prefer to use a Nimrod cargo variant with it#s armor and weapons stripped.

Of course, all drones in there are either outdated or antiques, which means their device rating is dropped by 1 or 3 comparing ot normal models. But they are a bit cheaper.

I was hoping the Redball Express would make a comeback, but I guess this Ares Air-Supply will have to do (shitty pun, BTW).

This might be worth burning my voucher on. I'm not too excited about 10 Jackpointers and 10 Gangs is priced just over what you can afford with the voucher. Missions are great, but I tend to buy those 4-5 at a time in spurts (just about due for one I suppose).

Anyway, I'll probably grab this one, since it seems like the most useful product available. What else is in there?

Hm, I thought all those 1/3 and 1/4s were just limitations of the preview

But Wanjina looks good to me, normal mount + reinforced mount on wings for 12,500 is not bad.

It's just that: Old drones, antique drones and the options that define those two — plus some shadowtalk in reminiscence of the gearbooks of old.
Aside from the jackpoint intro page and said shadowtalk referencing the supplement "Mil Spec Tech" and "Border Runners".

Of course, 15 of those 25 pages are just the archetype combat sheets of the drones in the actual supplement.
So, is this worth seven bucks? Not really. But if you got your store credit to burn, it might be worth two bucks.

Are the old "generic" drones in there? Like there was a nameless anthroform drone to use as a base for vehicle creation at one point.




-k

Those were just part of the vehicles construction rules, I think. :/

There's got to be something wrong with the numbers - the "Liebre" large flying drone has Accel 1/4 but a Speed of 1620. I seriously don't think they intended it to be 50% faster than a fighter jet and take hundreds of turns to get to that speed.



-k

Sounds like I'll be waiting for the corrected version...

I broke down and bought it. Seems interesting, and something I'd encourage CGL to make.

Provided it's of better editing quality... Those Accel stats, ouch.

I know a lot of folks are down on digital documentation, but it's damn cheap to put out, and small batches like this allows for cash-strapped gamers (Like myself) to pick and choose what they want to get better than a big item that might have only one part that is needed.

And, for those that want everything, there's always bulk purchasing deals.

But there I am, dreaming I'm in a perfect world again... Back into my pit of depression I go.

This Old Drone will have to wait until the finances recover. I just picked up 6WA & Darkest Hour today. I also already spent the credit from Catalyst on SRM3-10 a few days ago.

Making digital only *content* is only less expensive if you pay the creatives less or make other compromises. Paying for content is by far the largest cost of most RPG titles I've ever worked on, more than twice the printing costs easily.

The customer advantage of "able to buy bite-sized pieces" is there, absolutely, and it's a great thing. But writers, artists, development -- still gotta get paid, OR you need to make creative use of older materials, re-using art, updating old text, etc., OR you cut corners and quality ends up suffering. And in some cases, several of those techniques are used.

Why am I saying this? Because I like paying our artists the same for an electronic project as I do a print project. Same for our writers. Same when I pay myself. And fans have to understand that it's almost exactly the same amount of effort to make these works -- they aren't "damned cheap" to make. They're just smaller bites at any one time -- both for publisher and gamer -- and they sell in far smaller quantities than a print book does.

Amen. Doing Dev work on Missions (And writing a couple myself now), there's a LOT of work being put in. 10-20,000 words is still 10-20,000 words, regardless of whether it's a Missions adventure or one of the Dawn of the Artifacts adventures. Art is still art, and if you've seen AAS's work in 03-11, you know we're not skimping on getting some quality art in our adventures. Same thing with the maps. I would KILL to be able to pay the guys working for me on Missions the same rates that they would get for doing "regular" freelance work. But the fact is, they don't bring in enough money right now. Being an eBook only eliminates a portion of costs...

If you've picked up any Missions adventures in the past, thank you for supporting us! If you're considering picking some up down the line, please do! More sales means we can get more support (and better pay) from CGL, which in turn means we can continue to try and put out a quality product.

Bull

I'm not saying I won't buy them....I will, eventually. Just not right now.

I wonder if the basic problem is that when people see the end price, they have no clue how the percentages work out. Perhaps if it said right on the "tin" what percentage of the price came from where, it would be more clear to people where the cost comes from.

See... I see it a bit differently.

Of course you are going to pay the creative people the same amount of money, regardless of whether it is a hard copy or a digital copy. But the savings comes in when you actually sell it. You have to make a digital copy before you go to print (Printers need the output data file after all). At that point, you SAVE all that money by NOT PRINTING the hard copy and just selling it digitally. No Print Costs, No Shipping Costs, No Warehousing Costs... Lots of money saved that can be passed along to the consumer by providing a lower price for the digital copy.

Digital SHOULD be cheaper than Hard Copy... Sometimes significantly cheaper, depending upon the page count of the document. The larger the page count, the cheaper the Digital copy should be in relation to the hard copy output.

Anyways...

I agree that Digital Content is less expensive than the hardcopy, and can be in many ways more conveinient. But, personally, I do enjoy holding the actual book in my hands.
And, not to sound like a skipping audio file, printing out the PDF does also cost me. Even when I check and get decent savings on paper and printer ink, I have to take into account all my costs. The last time I refilled my ink cartriges, the process didn't take & I was left with a leaking cartridge that nearly ruined my printer. Fortunately, I was able to swap out the faulty cartidge, & now I continue to recycle the old cartridges with new, correct ones. What little prnting I do I reserve for Resumes, snail-mail letters and cards & signs. In that order. I also use a number of unused print-out paper sheets that works just fine.

I am all in support of the writers, artists and others who create the RPG products that I have come to enjoy in all my years of being an RPGer. But I also have to take into account MY costs, and many's the time I've had to restrain myself from picking up a supplement when it first hits availability, in favor of making a 'round-trip' deal.
(Ex: I recently picked up both 6WA and DotA 3; Darkest Hour, along with a couple of other RPG books. Since I was already going into Brooklyn, Queens for my volunteer gig at the Prospect Park Haunted Walk on Saturday the 30th, it made more sense for me to confirm the books availability at The Compleat Strategist, reserve them, then pick them up on my returm leg from Brooklyn. Otherwise, I would be paying for 2 or more round trips to NYC & back. Which would have depleted my cash reserves too quickly. As it stands now, I have just enough to attend a Halloween party tonight.)

I think the issue is return on investment. Sure you might save a bit on printing, distributing and warehousing. But if you're paying the same cost page-for-page for creative work and your .pdf just doesn't sell in large enough numbers, the money you save on printing costs might not be enough to make up the difference.

But I also think we're seeing a paradigm shift, and the more gamers that embrace .pdf's the closer gaming companies get to seeing the benefits of .pdf only publication.

This is very true indeed...

The largest single item usually is the bookstore's margin. Over here that starts at 30%, large chains (Thalia has the worst reputation in that regard) can and will strongarm it up to the antitrust-mandated 50% limit. And even those 50% are just the limit for the direct discount the store gets from the publisher, prominent shelf positions or appearances in the christmas catalogue cost extra again.

But ebooks are often sold directly by the publisher, so...

This is actually not a given. I think that publishers _should_ do this ... but not all of them do.



The number of units a typical PDF sells is still few enough, and the price low enough (after the publisher's cut, if they are selling through a 3rd party vendor like DriveThruRPG), relative to what a print version would sell (Although products of the size/scope of This Old Drone would probably not succeed in the print/store marketplace for a variety of factors), that even without the overhead of printing, the actual profit is still low.

That's the German book market. How is stuff run elsewhere?

100% of the price came from "what the market will bear", modulo a fudge factor for everyone involved not being Homo Economicus.

Helpful?

~J

Not for knowing what you need at the time of printing, no.

That is somewhat depressing...



I can understand that, I guess... but it should change as E-Publishing expands...

Well, I certainly derailed yet another thread without intending to do so...

How 'bout them Black Devils?

Who?

Hopefully. Numbers are going up, from what I've seen. I'm in the middle of getting and compiling data from other publishers for my upcoming talks at NeonCon, but I think my mental picture of the market is pretty accurate from what I've seen and heard.

The future of publishing isn't "Sell one thing in one format to 10 people" -- it's partially "sell one thing in 5 different formats, 2 people buying each format."

Indeed...

I wonder if chaper devices that can display a letter sized page of text in, or close to, full size will help generate interest in pdf releases.

that, or the content needs a different layout as multiple columns do not work as well when half it is outside the visible area.

Sadly, devices right now seems to aim for wide screen video playback, not A4 or US letter display.

Hmm... Not sure if anybody else thought of this, but you now have all the old Drones statted out for 4th. Which makes it just a little easier to run the old adventures with the new rules.

OK, another good reason for purchasing this book.

"This Old Deck" would be another good choice, methinks...

I bought a laptop the other day. I'm a desktop user for serious applications (read, gaming ), but have really enjoyed owning a Kindle. So, a laptop whose monitor can flip around and lock flat, turning it into a tablet with touchscreen, gives me a reading surface about the size of a fullsize RPG book, and makes reading PDF's (flip 90 degrees, go to fullscreen) easy. That particular ability (tablet configuration) was a major influence on my decision to get a laptop, and if it works out well I may actually make the switch to PDFs for all but the BBB in the future. I've heard of many people using an iPad the same way; I opted for something that's got a lot more punch as a computer, but wasn't noticeably more expensive. It's a little larger and a lot thicker and heavier than an iPad, obviously, but that doesn't bother me; YMMV.

On the low end, these can run about $570, barely more than an iPad. Opting for more RAM, faster processor, Windows 7 Pro rather than Starter and a larger hard drive still didn't bump it up past 810 or so.

I make pretty extensive use of the existing SR3 and earlier books on the iPad, though I find it less useful for serious rule or setting investigation due to the overhead of switching between books.

~J

Yeah, that's part of the reason for going with a "real" computer (easy, low-load switching between processes)... and why I'll keep a hardcopy of the BBB at the table, in addition to the PDF on the tablet. If nothing else, though, y'all will likely not see many more posts from my workplace that include me mentioning being away from my books

I got my first Tablet PC in 2003, I'm currently on my second, it's about 18 months old. I use it as my primary computer for school and at the table for SR. Having the ability to read PDFs in landscape mode, switch back and forth effortlessly, and do text searches by pen makes it IMO better than a physical book in a lot of ways. I won't buy a book without also getting the PDF copy so I can minimize what I'm toting around to my sessions, especially since I often play Shadowrun, D&D 3/4, and Scion with the same folks.

I am keeping an eye on the archos 101 android tablet.
http://www.archos.com/products/ta/archos_101it/specs.html

i just wonder what impact the lower resolution will have on readability.

Not really, in this case—on both the iPad and my real computer, the PDFs are all displayed in the same process. It's the multi-window UI paradigm.

~J

So, anyone who wants to tell us something about the acceleration ratings?

In addition to the wonky acelleration rules....

Why does the MCT Hachiman have a reinforced weapon mount (Requires 6 body) on a body 4 drone?

Also, why doesn't the Black Knight, a micro tank drone have any weapon mounts whatsoever?

Waiting on official specs for the upcoming Dell Inspiron Duo, meself.


-k

Custom designed frame specifically built to handle the recoil necessary despite its small size/weight.


Because, while they're used and marketed as "Fire Support Units", they can be used for so much more. And, you know, they always nail you with those Factory Options that really should be Standard...

I bet none of the drones have cup holders, either...

The real reason the corps are known as evil..

A lot of drones from Arsenal have equipment which would not be legal according to the modification rules. But as CanRay said, those are modification rules, having more options when building a vehicle from the ground up sounds completely believeable to me.

Like scratch-building a sandrail and being able to chose your engine for it, no matter what the size of the body.

Like building something the size of a VW Bug with a Big Block Buick V-8 Engine in it, rather than trying to shoehorn one into a production model.

Typos--they're going to be fixed. But our layout guy, who has a day job at a newspaper, has to survive election day first.

Jason H.

"have a tablet PC and use it for PDFs" crew checking in.

although one thing I will give to deadtree versions, is the ability to flip back and forth between two pages rapidly, and skimming is much more rapid. at least until someone implements a pdf reader with those functions, and the hardware horsepower to back it up.

edit argh wtf.