BattleTech: Mercenaries – CGL does a shipping booboo? Internet rages!

[dawfydd 11923xp 1]

No worries 🙂
And honestly the Alpha Strike and the CI boxes are a good shout – Alpha Strike might be my fave “game in a box” on the market right now for how much is in there.

[sundancer 42900xp 1]

Newest update on the KS page:

The Wait Continues

Hey all,

Just checking in for all international hubs: we continue to wait on shipments to arrive at the hubs.  We’ve gotten word that some have arrived already, some are arriving in mere days, and some we are still waiting on tracking information.  Things are moving.

So more waiting. Anybody still holding their breath? Can somebody check on them?

[tankkommanderParticipant 6411xp 0]

Looks like they have delayed both of the upcoming KS’s, and one of them has been shifted over to a new company name.

I’m not sure we will ever get out stuff before they go bust.

[limburger 21668xp 1]

@tankkommander got any sources for that info ?

//

They are suspiciously quiet about the “missing” items that these hubs are waiting for. Only the Arano (sp?) coin was mentioned and that has been ‘fixed’.

I’m starting to wonder if this is the same situation that Scale75 had when they reported “issues” when sourcing the airbrush sets that you could pick as part of your pledge. At least those guys later told us that they had ‘cash flow issues’, which meant that every expense had to be approved …

Given that we know that they are using (a lot of ) third parties for the stuff I am convinced that it must be a big ticket item and the one that I think of is the big Mad Cat model.

I hope it’s just baseless assumptions, but something isn’t quite right with CGL and they’re not talking to mere mortals like us backers about it.

Transparency is nice and all, but we all know how a lot of the backers will react when they hear negative news that is supposed to be kept confidential. We are not in the inner circle who gets to see the real sausage getting made.

[limburger 21668xp 1]

New Battletech update … posted by backers and now confirmed by CGL

– UK hub has received stuff and is sending email confirmations out to backers

– EU still waiting, but expected to start doing their thing ‘soon(tm)’

– Australian hub delayed to next year due to the holiday related closures that anyone could have seen coming …

Expect further delays as we are hitting the busy holiday season, but don’t expect CGL to understand that part of logistics 101.

[sundancer 42900xp 1]

To quote the newsletter:

International with Hubs: We’ve learned that most shipments have arrived at UK and Asia and are getting checked in.  Both have started sending address verifications and are eager to get started!  EU and Australia are largely still in transit, but we are expecting news any day.

Still not holding my breath. I’d be very surprised if anything arrives at my door from CGL before the end of 2024. But here’s hoping

[tankkommanderParticipant 6411xp 0]

Just keeps dragging on with very little factual info from CGL.

[jamescutts 6905xp 0]

Heres the full KS update

Hey there backers,

Here’s our update for the week:

All items have shipped from the manufacturers!

International with Hubs: We’ve learned that most shipments have arrived at UK and Asia and are getting checked in.  Both have started sending address verifications and are eager to get started!  EU and Australia are largely still in transit, but we are expecting news any day.

The Australian distributor asked us to let you know that fulfillment will not be able to start in AUS until January due to their approaching holiday closures.  As soon as the new year kicks off, they are excited to hammer these shipments out to backers as soon as possible.

Domestic, CAN and RoW (without hubs) continue to fulfill as short shipments arrive.

We have had a few issues reported where game stores have been able to order several Kickstarter items for pre-order.  Each instance we have tracked down, and corrected the distributor’s incorrect release dates.  Those distributors are contacting their stores to hold those items until street date.

A few weeks ago, we communicated the release dates for the next several months.  We keep pushing those dates every month dependent on the Kickstarter fulfillment news.  We will continue to track erroneous releases, and correct the workflows with our partners, as we are committed to completing fulfillment before retail release.

We’ll see you next week with more news.

source: BattleTech: Mercenaries by Catalyst Games — Kickstarter

I think thats a pretty reasonable update myself, it could have been a bit more specific on the estimated timings of in transit goods to EU and Australia but based on the previous update of them saying things are expected soon and us then seeing the initial seteps of UK (Norway and Switzerland) distribution with address confirmations I’d expect these would not be too far behind.

The Australian situation is a complete nightmare through, and for everyone including CGL who now have a major headache on their hands as if they keep the initial promise of no retail until after all pledges, we wont be looking at a retail release based off Aus until March at the earliest. Thats going to result in a lot of unhappy retailers who will miss christmas, a lot of unhappy distributors who have had stock sat around for getting on 6 months and also over christmas and a lot of unhappy fans who just cant get the stuff if they missed the Kickstarter.

Theres not much CGL can do about Australia either, their subcontractor, QML have decided to subcontract Atherworks for Aus, they are well know to have issues, and have a lot of ongoing KS projects, despite CGL not wanting to use them again QML have decided to so theres not much that can be done. Its probably also been hit by the delays, Atherworks where probably contracted for distribution mid this year, but the project delays now cause clashes they cant deal with.

I’d be reasonably happy saying I think you’ll get stuff by the end of the year sundancer and limburger, if the UK has it the EU cant be far behind, if it was sea freighted its probably the same ship that called at the UK first.

 

[limburger 21668xp 0]

@jamescutts yes in theory we could have it by the end of the year, but it is a very very busy time.
Local postal service are *already* behind in their delivery and we get at a huge surge early December (due to Saint Nicolas) and then another one near Christmas.

I’ve had a package need almost a week from customs to my door while it was in country.

And there have been a few kickstarters that had an extra delay when they were unloading in Germany because of a ‘surprise’ inspection by (EU) customs.

So while the actual distance is likely to be covered in a few days there’s plenty of additional delays that could still happen.

Delaying the retail until after Christmas is definitely going to hurt CGL. I kind of doubt those retailers are going to want to stock Battletech in the future due to all of this.

I know backers can get a little agitated if they don’t get “their” stuff before retail, but I’d rather see it at retail first.  There’s only so much that retailers are willing to do, especially when there’s more things with bigger margins and more reliability to be had. Anything that isn’t GW is already in a small niche.

[dawfydd 11923xp 2]

Yeah, Gerry hypothesized that very thing over in the Discord chat. I’m stoked to have had my notification email (and honestly kinda dreading the Regiment that’s inbound…) but the lack of concrete info for EU customers and the incredibly shitty news for Aussie backers really does suck.
I’m hoping once the majority of folks have their packages or know they are in the post temperatures might begin to cool down and we can get back to just enjoying the sheer volume of BT content we’ve been getting & have coming down the pipeline…..

[limburger 21668xp 0]

lack of concrete info has been an issue since day 1 of the shipping shenanigans.

Why is it that other crowdfunding projects are aware of all of their shipments down to the exact ships, but this one doesn’t seem to know if their own hubs have their stuff ?

It’s like some kind of total blind trust in the 3rd parties they are using for every bit with zero effort spent to keep on top of things that matter.

I really really want to know what exactly parts have slowed the shipping. I get the impression that they’ve been managing inventory to the exact numbers requested while failing add extra to account for losses or damages.
ie : they order exactly 10 items of x because that’s how much backers wanted. When something happens that results in only 8 arriving at the hub then they would order just enough to fill the missing bits.  And when things break they only ever order enough to fill the next gap. ad infinitum until backers accept that they will never get everything or they get lucky. The only reason for this kind of stupidity would be financial issues … (which IMHO are very likely given that they’re missing out on retail sales due to all of these delays that keep stacking up … ).

And as I said … retailers getting stuff before backers may not be fun for us as backers, but could be potentially lethal as it will hurt them even more long term (would you as a business trust a company that keeps delaying and delaying just to please a few customers that are unlikely to ever buy from you as they are getting ‘everything’ they need for the next year?).

I know it’s speculation and we probably won’t learn the details ourselves, but I hope for CGL’s future that they themselves learn valuable lessons from this epic disaster.

[dawfydd 11923xp 1]

What really strikes me as odd is that this has all gone to pot at the fulfillment stage. On past form most projects I’ve backed run into difficulties up to & during production, typically delays that end up screwing with booked slots for production and/or shipping (and in a few cases have not even gotten to production). I think you are possibly onto something @limburger, but I also suspect that the main issue has been the factory messing up – either the wrong product in the wrong boxes (I remember seeing at least one US backer report a lance box mispacked), or shipped to the wrong locations (which I’m hazarding a guess might be down to the shipping boxes being mislabeled in turn). All of which ends up compounding any waste shortages as you described occuring with no margin for error built in.

I doubt we’ll ever see a full & frank accounting of what occured to cause all of this, but I’d genuinly be fascinated to find out….

[limburger 21668xp 0]

factory messing up has been their fault as well.

you can’t exactly check if the correct content is in a box when there’s no outside reference and the ones doing the packaging are in China.

Add in a absolute minimalistic production run and any flaw in production magnifies itself at the consumer level.

It speaks volumes when they do mention two items (the wrong content for a blind box and the arano coin), but cannot give details about the rest of the mistakes that have been made …

[limburger 21668xp 1]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/battletech-mercenaries/posts/4250165

new update …

EU ships need +/- 2 weeks to port.

I really really wonder what is on that ship that it is holding back *all* EU pledges.

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