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The Razor Crest looks like a fine model to me. It's just about perfectly sized, perfectly detailed, and perfectly playable for the price point, and very close to what I consider "true" minifig scale. I wish it had a few copies of the carbonite mold instead of blocks with stickers, though. That is a real disappointment there. I must say, though, that while it's a fine model it's an ugly ship! This comes as close as any set I know to matching the Star Wars set stereotype of "an ugly gray box". I was hoping for a new Republic Gunship this summer, with the rumors of a new Clone Wars wave, but obviously the Razor Crest fills that product niche this year. Guess I'll have to get the 2013 Gunship from eBay or Bricklink - after the most recent Millennium Falcon, Slave One, and X-wing, which all cost more than I'm willing to spend at the moment.

So sorry to hear about this. His was a life well lived that changed all our lives for the better, I'd say. Something like the minifigure does nothing to improve anybody's life in a practical or material way, but sometimes the most important things in life are just a smile and a friendly face - hello, everything is going to be okay. Sometimes, that little classic Lego man is the only person (so to speak) around to give you that smile and kind word, especially after a bad day at school. It's really entirely due to the minifigure that we have this rich ecosystem of building and play today, since it's such a brilliant piece of industrial design: just large enough to allow incredible detail, just small enough to be delightfully abstract; just realistic enough to be human without any stretch of the imagination, just abstract enough to be cute and funny and adaptable; large enough to interact with its environment via tools and accessories, small enough to fit into a larger built environment that's still small enough to be practical for play. And he had such a critical role in so many legendary sets, from the Galaxy Explorer and Yellow Castle to the Black Seas Barracuda and the Pharoah's Forbidden Ruins from Adventurers. Rest in peace - hope everything is awesome wherever you are!

What part is used for the front of the cockpit glass? The bulk of the canopy is obviously a clear cylinder panel, and the fairing behind the canopy is one of the dome molds created for the 60080 space shuttle, but I can't tell what the front of the canopy is. Edit - The canopy is made of two of the large clear panels most recently produced for the Ship in a Bottle. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=6059#T=C&C=12

Which ones were those sets rumored to be?

Eight out of forty sets in 2011 featured vehicles and/or dragons. Fourteen out of thirty-two sets in 2019 featured vehicles, dragons, and/or mechs. It's a whopper of a stretch to say that Ninjago didn't start out with a lot of vehicles, but I suppose it's true that the proportion of vehicles, dragons, and mechs to locations and spinners was higher in 2019 than in 2011.

The line in the sand, for me, is when you suggest that a fellow builder is actively in the wrong for not buying instructions from a source of inspiration, and when you suggest that reverse-engineering a fellow fan's model without paying for instructions is akin to stealing. That was the clear message I got from your first post suggesting that instructions be bought from Jhaelego for the privilege of reverse-engineering his model and improving upon it. That may not have been the message you intended to send. I also believe that it's a good thing to buy instructions for a model you want to build, so as to support the hobby and support fellow builders in the hobby. I do not believe it is stealing to copy a MOC without paying for instructions, as long as you still give credit where credit is due. There's nothing wrong with that. But there's nothing wrong with another 20-something living in his parents' basement and working at IKEA trying to build the models of the first 20-something from the posted pictures without paying for the instructions.

Nah, they understand completely. Quite a few set designers were active in the AFOL community before they got hired at Lego. Let's not start gatekeeping about who is a "true" or "actual" AFOL and who isn't.

That's another set I would buy without hesitation if it was produced. Unfortunately, TLG has rejected every 10K NASA or SpaceX project since the Saturn V and Women of NASA, so it's unlikely to be accepted. (The ISS doesn't count in that list, since it's a special case.)

What I would buy without hesitation: Thunderbirds, Space Shuttle. What I consider more likely to win: Winnie the Pooh, Anatomini.

Maybe this is a bit off topic, but after the dewback and the bantha I think the most likely form for a boga lizard is as a microfighter.

That's what I meant.

Unfortunately, the 10210 uses several molds that have been retired: the pre-2015 prefab hulls and masts.

^^ This topic hasn't been touched since 2012 and the OP hasn't visited Eurobricks since 2016, so you're not likely to get a reply. You could still try to reverse-engineer the build from the pictures.

You did say something about payment. Perhaps I should not have used the word "demand." That was too dramatic. But you should not have used the word "steal." That was too dramatic.

I disagree. If you're reverse-engineering someone else's build without buying the instructions, you should definitely give credit to the original builder when presenting your own model, but you're not "stealing the design" if you don't pay. In the Lego community, we share and share alike. If everybody started demanding (or thinking they deserved) payment for every time someone else liked their model enough to build it without instructions, the online community where we're happy to post pictures of our builds and see pictures of other people's builds would quickly collapse. Nobody could afford to post MOCs except those who set themselves up as merchants like BrickVault. Nobody could afford to build anything either. It's entirely fair for @Midlife-crisis to build his own Razor Crest reverse-engineered from Jhaelego's model. Goodness knows Midlife-crisis is putting in enough work on his own to make the model his own.

Mars Mission, Space Police 3, Alien Conquest, or Galaxy Squad? I voted for Alien Conquest. Mars Mission has an ugly color scheme and ugly faceless aliens, and there isn't a single really sleek spaceship in the lot. Space Police 3 has a nice color scheme, a fantastically capable flagship that still looks pretty good, and a rogues' gallery of alien villains that has a lot of personality. However, it loses some points with me because the single-seat police cruiser with jail cell doesn't have an opening cockpit. Galaxy Squad has some really neat bug aliens and very well-designed space soldiers: colorful and tough, with just the right amount of detail. The bug vehicles all look stunning and have impressive functions, and the single-seat starfighter for the humans is sleek, swooshable, and packed with functions. The other human vehicles are kind of chaotic, though, and sacrifice more form to function than I prefer - although they're nowhere near as bad in that respect as the Mars Mission vehicles. Alien Conquest similarly has a fun '50s B-movie style with some neat functions in the alien ships (and a Martian tripod!), but what really sets it apart from the others for me is the Vic Viper that comes with the Earth Defense HQ. It's just such a perfect swooshable little spaceship.

Three hundred and fifty dollars for an Ideas set. Five years ago we were surprised when an Ideas set cost seventy dollars!

Hear, hear!

Please stop projecting American racism onto a Lego play theme based on a classic Chinese novel that has nothing to do with American racism. Let's not make this more complicated than it needs to be. Let's not bring the horrible portion of the internet that is American racism into a discussion of an innocent Lego play theme for which we've only seen the logo. Please.

It's not uncommon for clone brands to get product lines to market before Lego. Last year Sluban's Mars exploration line was released before Lego's own version, though its ground base was more of a copy of the Playmobil version than of any Lego set. I was sorely tempted by those but I didn't want to buy from Ali Express.

Didn't a Creator Expert-style Fiat 500 make it to 10K on Ideas a couple years ago? I hope the creator of that project gets a free copy. EDIT: Here's the link. I don't think Lego needs to bend over backwards to avoid releasing, on its own and entirely of its own accord, sets which happen to be the same subject and same scale as projects that made it to 10K on Ideas, nor sets which happen to be the same subject and same scale as impressive MOCs from the AFOL community. That would be too limiting creatively: Bob: "Hey Alice, how about we do this for a D2C next year?" Alice (checks notes): "Nope, Caroline did it on Ideas three years ago and Dan did it on Flickr a year and a half ago, that subject is off-limits." But I do think it would be a nice courtesy in cases where a retail set happens to match a rejected 10K Ideas project for Lego to offer one or two free copies to the Ideas creator; it would be a relatively small increase in their marketing budget given the number of review copies that get sent out to RLFM sites. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/ca5c345e-bdae-4c3c-bc4b-05fb6b522f0f

That's true, but it's irrelevant to the question of whether the cars look good without stickers.

I wouldn't hold that against him. After all, @Raskolnikov is a pretty good guy and a pretty great builder despite his murderous namesake!

Edit - Should have searched Flickr before asking. The stickers for the headlights and hood are easily trimmed, and I might have enough small parts to substitute for the gold mirrors, but I might have to take a sharpie to that windscreen. What's the best method for removing printing from Lego parts? Has anyone built 76899 without stickers? The cars look pretty good, but I can't stand all the gold trim on the stickers and I'd like to know if the model looks decent without them. I wouldn't have to ask if it weren't for the printing on the windshield.

Destiny's Bounty is a flying ship, but from the leaks it looks like this version has a complete hull, unlike the 2012 and 2015 versions. If so, it should be easy to remove the jet engines and have an oceangoing sailing ship for the Creator pirate ship to attack. Two big brick built sailing ships in one summer!