I have to agree. Tinbots as an idea are fine, but I don't like the execution. Ideally they should be sized to fit on the same base as the trooper they belong with.
I may be the odd man out, but even a 10% cost increase for extra arms might just tip me into the 'not buy' category. Although I do think extra arms would have been a better investment of box space than tinbots. (However to add hypocrisy to my words, I am a proud owner of Atlanta and her bunny bot.) I think what some people on this forum forget, is that we are the hardcore Infinity nerds. We care enough to visit a forum, and argue with people we may never meet. Hardcore nerds are more likely to want all profiles released, and all extras and goodies added, and will buy everything. But hardcore fans likely make up a small percentage of Infinity's customer base. If they are to be profitable, they have to target their business for the wider base. I for one would hate to see them release every profile as a miniature, because as soon as they do, officially supported proxying is dead. These are my man-dollies, and I don't like someone else telling me what I can do with them! Corvus Belli makes many miniatures I love, but some really miss the mark (PanO trauma-doc anyone?) Because they don't have every profile produced, even their official tournaments are very proxy friendly. I can grab some other miniature I do like(Avicenna), and proxy it for one I don't(Trauma-doc). As long as things are fairly clear, only the most pedantic of players would argue with me. Infinity has the convention of giving your opponent a 'friendly list' (which in all-camo cases is not so friendly) This may be an unpopular opinion, but I personally don't think WYSIWYG is necessary, or even all that beneficial.
The bunny was actually a weaponless G: Sync bot with when it was first introduced (Spotter required both the Bot and Atalanta to have LoF), so that actually had a reason to be separate.
I don’t see anything that says Tinbots are fire-sensitive. Although perhaps we should take this one to the rules forum.
Why do officially supported proxies have to be dead in that case? If it did in fact come to that, your issue shouldn't be with CB having all profiles represented by an official model. Your issue should be with CB's shit policy.
I really like that model. The pose is fantastic, though I can see why some would not like to have their doctor represented by a model which appears to be desperately flagging down a medevac for the the patient she is loosing. I generally convert a model if I think it would be cool, or if I want to run a full fireteam without them all looking the same, but for things like shotguns I am perfectly fine using a model with a Combi and vice versa.
Omg I see that I remember the tinbot albedo is fire sensitive, so now I remember it like ALL tinbots are fire sensitive!
In a perfect world, proxies should be officially supported, even if every profile had a model. However this is not a perfect world. It would be bad business to produce every specific model your customers need, and then say 'use whatever' Corvis Belli's rules department, and model departments are not in sync, and that is good for us the customers. Because they produced more profiles than they can models, they have sensibly made the official proxying policy very open. This is good for those of us who are choosey and/or like to get creative. It is bad for completionists. As a real world example, the well known 40k, use to have many profiles without models, and it was always interesting to see the scratch-built things the community came up with (some were better than others). However at some point they came to the policy that rules and models must be in sync. The result, many profiles were cut. It was easier to drop un-modeled profiles, then to produce models for those profiles. Now there is no way to be sure that Corvus Belli would do the same, but I know which way I would bet on. Yes there are some models that I want to see. But I hope Corvus Belli never goes down the road of WYSIWYG. I also know that I might be in the minority on that wish.
@Pen-dragon I'm really hoping against it as well. CB has a tendency to model unpopular loadouts and I have a feeling such a cull would hit the game balance even more lopsided than any codex creep ever would.
With the jump of JSA to NAA and some units getting significantly altered, the ITS proxy rules were relaxed. I don’t think we need to worry about CB going strict WYSIWYG on us.
We're pretty close to that now. Super-high-resolution printers (30um, or 0.03mm) are still running $10k, while 140um/0.14mm resolution printers are running $3k (resolution is expensive, and printing volume is the other really expensive part). 140um is the worst resolution we would want to make miniatures at close to Infinity quality. I'm pretty sure CB's printer is a 30um one. $3k sounds high for a hobbyist, but compare that to the total cost for a good airbrush setup: $300 for the high-end airbrush itself, a good quiet compressor is another $200, hoses+moisture separator+pressure regulator is another $200, plus the couple $50-$150 airbrushes you bought to learn with and you're close to $1000 for your airbrush setup. Yeah, I did a lot of arm-swaps in N1/N2 days. IIRC, you could arm-swap between the old Kamau, Bagh-Mari, and Akali to get all their weapons profiles then.
I'll buy the argument about magazines clipping stomachs, but I don't believe that's an insurmountable design/production issue. CB basing resculpting priorities based on sales is a fundamentally flawed decision imo. Take the Moran as an example. It has good sales despite being one of the worst sculpt out there. So an old model isn't getting a new sculpt because the profile is too good. That really seems like flawed logic to me, and it exacerbates an aesthetic disconnect within the Nomad range.
As Bostria says resculpt priority is done based on sales and a number of other factors including ITS usage, what else is in the schedule, sculptor's muse, planned profile updates, and so on.
Not insurmountable, but is it worth overcoming those obstacles or will the combined time, effort, material cost, packing cost, wear and tear, sculpting runs, sculpt evaluations, etc, result in high enough sales to counter the costs? Bostria answered that their numbers tell them, no it doesn't for a less complicated extra, so it stands to reason it wouldn't for an even more complicated extra (that might actually cost them sales because of it being easier to tailor armies.)
In one of the other recent videos, he also noted that sales are driven more by sculpt quality than rules/points/balance. I dare say they have a better understanding of their business than we do.
And yet they keep okaying some questionable sculpts. It's also a bullcrap answer as anyone with a lick of common sense could see. CB doesn't have a 1:1 consumer access at the point of sale.
