icm

Supported! Thanks for splitting these into their own project. I know the full-size version is very well scaled to a minifig, but based on my own Lego habits I'd prefer to have these. They would be much better for idly rolling about on a desk as I read a textbook or do homework, which is how I usually play with Lego. Still, this project would be even better if, like Microfighters, it came with the same minifigs as the full-size version. (I do hope the full-size version makes it all the way to 10K, though. It's not only a nice model that would work well as an official set, but the presentation is impeccable.)

I imagine that's what the $50 and $70 "hero" and "villain" ships from the April wave are. They seem about the right size for a racer from Resistance, the hero and villain ships from all the existing movies have been covered pretty well, and Lego has a history of issuing a pair of mid-sized ships for Star Wars properties that seem popular enough for sets but too risky for a large wave - see The Force Unleashed, The Old Republic, etc.

We've had three Y-wings on sale at the same time: microfighter, System, UCS. That's about the same as the Slave 1 situation we're looking at, since the mid-scale build comes in a UCS/MBS set instead of being sold by itself.

Select all the relevant parts and click the button "Group as Sub-Model" at the bottom right corner of the build window.

So would I. I might end up copying this for myself sometime, if you don't mind. It's a very nice, compact, simple build that really looks the part.

Last night, I was all set to fire up Studio and start building a rover and Moonbase to go with the Watchpoint Gibraltar rocket, but then I googled "overwatch moonbase" and found out that Overwatch already has a lunar map with many rooms and several rovers. Those of you who play Overwatch regularly, what do you think of the Horizon Lunar Colony map? Is it important enough in the Overwatch community that we might get a rover, room, or base from that map if there's a second wave of Overwatch sets? @Digger of Bricks used the fanciful style of the upcoming Sky Police airplanes as a prompt to reiterate (in jest) his hope that a Lunar or Martian theme could somehow be made under the City banner; what are the chances of something resembling a Lunar or Martian theme under the Overwatch banner?

The ripples on the water of the second build are great. I wonder how they're built?

Just like this year's Arctic subtheme of City ... just plausible enough to fit in a City, just weird enough to feel strange in that same City! The last Airport subtheme was in 2016, so 2019 would be a plausible year for it to return ... maybe the set designers didn't feel up to a real Airport theme, so they did this instead? That doesn't account for the robber heliplane, though, that's straight out of Super Heroes ....

I think (hope) the jetpacks take inspiration from Yves Rossy's jet wingpacks. We're a long way from police with jetpacks despite Rossy's work, but there's just enough of a grain of truth in it that I'm willing to let Lego get away with putting those in City. Similarly, the 2015 Utility Shuttle and 2017 Jungle Air Drop Helicopter more closely resemble aborted programs from the 1980s than anything that's ever made it to flight test, but they're just realistic enough that I'm willing to allow them in my City. That robber helicopter, though - that's firmly in comic book land. I like the skid steer and the snow groomer.

The Brothers Brick just posted set descriptions for the Overwatch line, as released at the Blizzard convention. Apparently the rocket splits in two and the cargo hold in the back is meant for the gorilla bigfig. No pictures other than the ones that showed up at Target, though. I'd inferred the rear hold from the pictures, but I can't tell where the joint between the two stages is. It's a simple play feature, but it's no surprise given the presence of that kind of staging joint in many old Space kits. Lego seems to have been satisfied with the pre-ordering experiment for the 71043 UCS Hogwarts launch, because they're also accepting pre-orders for the Overwatch line. Good - a lot of people on the forums have been wanting a pre-order system for a long time.

Flickr posted a notice today saying that free memberships are now limited to 1000 photos, and if you have a free membership and more than 1000 photos you have until early 2019 to back them up before they're taken down. I wonder how many AFOL accounts that will affect. Maybe it's time to start thinking about migrating to a different standard photo platform?

It doesn't have everything there possibly is to know about a set, but Brickset.com will have the answers to 90+% of your questions.

See, that's the basic problem with most of these kinds of threads. As adults who buy a lot of Lego and maybe have children or nieces and nephews who like Lego, we know what we personally want to see in a Lego set, we have some idea what the kids we know like, and we can see which sets tend to be shelf-warmers - but we don't actually have access to anything but anecdotal evidence, so we don't really have firm ideas of what would or would not sell. Then we promote our dream themes on the forums as lines that would "sell themselves" with minimal marketing or investment. Take the idea of selling kits with "some connection to historical events" in a museum gift shop. COBI produces a line of sets based off real-world airplanes and spacecraft and sells it in the United States in museum gift shops. They even have a licensing deal with the Smithsonian Institution. I imagine those airplanes sell well in the gift shop, but I wouldn't necessarily count on them selling well on Walmart shelves. Same goes for a line of "compatible" sets produced by a company in my state - it's a line of pretty good builds of historically significant landmark buildings, and the quality is pretty good. They sell reasonably well in local gift shops, but they wouldn't make it in the general market. Finally, take the example of Overwatch. No doubt somebody on this forum has at some time asked why Lego wasn't making kits based off this enormously popular video game, because those kits would fly off the shelves. Well, now they are, and the complaints are pretty predictable. My point isn't to say that every production decision Lego makes is thoroughly backed up by market research and risk analysis, only to say that the argument "X theme made by Lego doesn't sell well despite heavy marketing, therefore Y theme that I want Lego to make would sell well with minimal marketing" is a bit tiresome.

Mods, please delete this post if it's totally out of place in this thread. That spaceship in the Overwatch line sure is cool. The general shape reminds me a lot of the rocket from the Mars Mission base, and the red tower looks like the best rocket service structure since the 1995 space shuttle set. I'll be really disappointed if it can't seat at least two figures and hold some kind of deployable vehicle like a rover, satellite, or mini-flyer, or have some other cool play feature, since it looks like there's plenty of room in the aft fuselage. It doesn't look like it comes with wheels or landing pads of any kind, though, which is a shame. However, the fact that we're getting this super-cool spaceship in the Overwatch line does reinforce the complaints of AFOLs who want a traditional Space line. We've had no shortage of cool spaceships since Galaxy Squad, but only a handful that have their origins directly and immediately in a Lego toy line: the Benny ship, the Systar ship, the Batman shuttle, and a few Freemaker and Yoda Chronicles ships. EDIT: There's clearly some kind of hinge in the mid-fuselage area, but there's a suspicious lack of play features on the back of the box. Guess we'll just have to wait for more pictures to see what's under the hood.

@Digger of Bricks I think the spaceship has some new slope parts that you've been wanting for some time.

I keep my childhood collection separate from sets I've bought as an adult. I think of it this way: if I want a vintage set, I can get it. If I want to build a creation from vintage parts, I can. If I want to build a new and improved version of a childhood creation, I can. But if I part out my childhood creations and mix them all up with parts I've bought as an adult, I can't get that childhood thought process back if I ever try to rebuild them.

BUMP: X-wing builds are a great way to track the progress of Lego construction techniques and parts palettes, since Lego fans of all ages have been building them since the Classic Space sets came out in 1978. Inspired by the recent Jerac build and by Inthert's X-wing V2, I looked through various image hosting websites to find the best minifig-scale X-wings of various classes that I distinguish as follows: Generation: Pre-set; uses finger hinges, 8x4 wedge plates, and Town canopies. Early Star Wars: uses click hinges and Star Wars canopies. First Star Wars remakes: wings use mounting style and rubber bands like official sets 4502/6212, 9493, 75218; generally uses Star Wars canopies Post-Psiaki: wings use center pivot with no gearbox; a wide variety of canopy styles Post-Inthert v2: wings use center pivot with gearbox; a wide variety of canopy styles Style: Set style: Main goals are sturdiness, simplicity, and play features; maybe slightly more refined shape than set Set mods: Main goals are improving the shape of the set and adding desired play features or removing disliked play features Fully custom: Main goals are accuracy of shape and proportion, but often includes features that the set doesn't have, like fully retractable landing gear Size: Small: No rigorous "scale model" is attempted; it just has to "work" with a minifig. Most gen 1 and gen 2 builds are "small." One or two gen 4 builds are as well. Medium: A rigorous "scale model" at an approximate scale of 1 stud = 1.2 feet. Some gen 2 builds; nearly all gen 3 and gen 4 builds; most gen 5 builds. Large: A rigorous "scale model" at an approximate scale of 1 stud = 1 foot. Examples include Dmac and Atlas, plus a couple more on Flickr whose names I don't recall at the moment. This build is a gen 1 fully custom small X-wing inspired by the childhood makeshift X-wing of Dan Nelson on Brickshelf. The idea is to be the best "small" custom X-wing possible using parts available to AFOLs prior to 1999. Features retractable forward landing gear and a cargo bay with belly hatch and cockpit access via a folding seat. Maybe I'll build it once I have enough builds lined up on Bricklink to make the price per part, including shipping, comparable with retail sets (8-12 cents per piece). Thanks for looking; hope you get a kick out of this little build. Pictures in first post.

Thanks for your replies. The main idea with this build was to see if a more affordable, better-equipped Imperial Flagship could be Bricklinked for less than the average price of an Imperial Flagship on eBay. That didn't work out, so I didn't end up getting the parts for this. I also think the stern castle is too high. For an official set like the Imperial Flagship it's fine, but once you're already in the price range for a good MOC you may as well build a good MOC, right? So that's on the to-do list for later, after I get an excess of X-wings out of the way. When I get around to it, I'll probably end up using a lot of your ships for inspiration!

I wonder if Forma is intended for the adult-coloring-book crowd. Perhaps the idea is to inspire people to design and cut their own skins out of cardboard or thin plastic, then color them and attach them as they please. The publicity shots for Forma even show a woman coloring in the skins with colored pencils, etc. It's not about assembling the parts creatively. It's about creatively decorating the skin - particularly the "ink koi" skin. Assembling the parts wouldn't take a couple of hours, but decorating the skin would. Coloring in the skin is also a more relaxing creative activity for a different audience than usual, because there's no need to make shapes and mechanisms work if you're not mechanically or sculpturally inclined. That brings in a different adult audience than usual and a different child audience than usual. I think that idea has a lot of potential, but they didn't express the purpose clearly in the video. As described in the video, it isn't any more "creative" than any other Lego set, because there's no prompt to do anything but follow the instructions. I don't expect to see a lot of posts about differently-colored Forma skins on Eurobricks, but I do expect to see plenty of Technic MODs and MOCs that take the Forma core and implement more realistic or complex movements underneath the skins.

I built a makeshift version of kit 6872 ("Lunar Patrol Craft" or "Xenon X-Craft") from spare parts and thought it was really fun and swooshable, but the set as released has some problems. The color scheme is ugly, the rocket is set so comically high that the ship would spin like a top, and the robot has nothing to do. So I changed the colors, moved the engine lower, and gave the robot a little bay so he can ride along and pretend he's R2-D2. This can't go toe-to-toe with my 1980s-style X-wing and TIE fighter any more than 70701 Space Swarmer can go toe-to-toe with the latest X-wing and TIE fighter, but at least it lets the astronauts at Moonbase Alpha blast any bug aliens out of the sky before they get too close. But those Classic Spacemen always have such big smiles on their faces - they'd just invite the bug aliens in for a cup of tea and they'd all be best buddies in no time.

"Deserve" is such a loaded word. There are plenty of projects that are brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed that don't make it to 100 in time because the project creators don't know how to promote them. Not every project that flops before the 100-supporter mark is a jumble of poorly matched parts assembled by a child and uploaded by a parent.

That's true to a point, but - The Ideas forms specifically say that there is no obligation to buy. If I were only to support projects that I personally would buy, considering my tastes and budget, I could only support four or five a year. More to the point, I often support projects that I personally am not terribly interested in because I see that they are well done and interesting to many people. My vote for a project like that, especially if it doesn't have a lot of support yet, is intended to make the project more visible to people who are more interested. For example, would I buy a set of four Lego dinosaur skeletons? Probably not, but I know a lot of people would, so I supported that idea so that the people who are interested in it can at least see it get to the review stage. That's my main criterion in supporting a project: do I want to see it get to the review stage? Not do I want this on my shelf. That means I will sometimes support a large group of projects of varying quality and similar subject matter or even a project that's objectively pretty bad, because I want something of that kind to get to the review stage. That means supporting every halfway-decent rocket or airplane and some very primitive builds based on an IP I like. As another example, I would absolutely not have bought the initial Saturn V submission. It was clumsy and ugly. But the set is fantastic. I don't know how I feel about a "mutual support group" for Ideas, because it does raise obvious issues of supporting projects simply because they've joined the group regardless of their quality. But I sure wouldn't call it a lie to support a project in that group that I wouldn't actually buy.

I like the idea of building Benny's command center with parts you already have, but I think the model in your August 17 post is a better fit with the walls of your base. That model looks like an integral part of the base's design, because its prominent vertical lines, shallow slopes just beneath the roof line, and flat roof echo the same lines in the profile of the walls and the 45-degree angles on the corners. This model is well done for what it is, but in context I imagine a story somewhat like this: Benny inherits the mansion of his great-great-grandfather Benjamin Star, who brought the railroad to town in 1885 and became extremely rich as a result of his rail empire (of which you've built quite a large sample). Ignoring the protests of the local historical society and the zoning board, Benny guts the mansion of its magnificent 19th-century furnishings and installs a bunch of mysterious electronic equipment. He razes the beautiful woodland park cultivated by his ancestor the railroad baron and builds his own little private spaceport in the backyard. Economic havoc ensues, but eventually everyone concedes Benny was all right when he plays some major role defeating some major threat from space. Does that sound like something Benny would do? Anyway, thanks for posting this build. Hope you get to build your favorite form of Benny's command center in real life without too much more delay. Have the parts for your Arctic-styled space base arrived yet?

The Bricklink sets won't be released until 2019, but I would be very surprised if at least one of them wasn't Space-themed. I would be mildly surprised if that Space-themed set didn't refer back to a classic Space set in some way. Of course, these won't be officially-numbered sets from Lego itself, but they're better than nothing. That said, all the wonderful Space-themed entries to the Moments in Space contest were outvoted by a kiddy ride at the mall, so you never know.

I forget the reference, but someone said recently in a semi-official capacity that weight is a more reliable indicator of price than part count. Perhaps, counterintuitive though it may seem, the bloated parts count and complexity of 42082 makes it more affordable/attractive/palatable to general buyers than a comparable kit that uses fewer parts and is simpler and more sturdy. For example, suffocation's RTC has about 3000 parts instead of 4000 and is simpler, more functional, and sturdier, but it weighs more and has more motors, so it would be priced significantly higher. If the RTC as released was suffocation's model, priced at $350 or $400 (accounting for the extra weight and motors compared to 42082's $300), how many people on this forum would balk at the high cost and perceived low value, and wait until it was discounted to $250 or $300 before buying? By comparison, the 42082 at $300 for 4000 parts is perceived as good value, though of course $300 isn't cheap by any means. Since the main idea behind the question "could the RTC have been executed at a much smaller parts count" is actually "could the RTC have been executed at a significantly lower cost", I wonder if anyone can build a comparable RTC at a much lower weight.