howitzer

Yeah, I don't think boats sell that well as it's somewhat difficult to make a realistic yet playable boat, and the functions are often not very interesting. Works well for the small-to-mid size sets but not that well for larger sets. But they are being made to keep some variety with the otherwise very car and construction oriented Technic line. (Yeah, there's aircraft also, but nowhere near the number of cars and construction stuff).

And make a separate set of instructions and probably also change the structure for the motorless version, as motors and battery boxes are often integral part of the structure and not something you can just leave out. Also the driveshafts driven by motors would have to go somewhere else and have a knob for manual turning, otherwise there wouldn't be any way to control the movements. If there was a motorless version, it would require a significant redesing of the set, to make it properly functional with no motors - though I'm not sure if that's even possible, this thing is going to have a long cable and having to reel it all in manually would be painfully tedious at the best...

I'm not at all sure that the answer is the same for Technic enthusiasts and general public...

Yes. The Rusty part is very important, you'll fail miserably if you attempt to assemble it with a shiny new wrench.

If you imagine they were to release two versions of it, one with single motor and gearboxes and the other with C+ and full RC, each priced accordingly, I wonder which one would sell better...

That would probably be some leftover stock being sold away. I doubt they have been produced more recently than 2016 or so.

In 8462 the air tanks are just aesthetics, they don't serve much of a purpose in terms of practical usefulness. The inclusion of two such an expensive parts where they are not really needed is also a good indicator of the problems inside TLG in the late nineties, just before the company was in big trouble and nearly went bankrupt. I don't see much use for air tank in 42157 either, and according to Bricklink it has been discontinued in 2016 anyway. That's not to say it couldn't be brought back at some point, but at the moment it's not available in TLG's inventory.

Indeed, though the previously rumoured 1 hub and 4 motors would've been even more outrageous.

Yeah, previously that was the rumour, but according to Jim's info there's 6 motors and 2 hubs. That makes the price slightly more palatable, but unless there's also something else that's phenomenally cool, I don't see myself buying that (and maybe not even then, it's a lot of money.)

Yep, a fake it is. You should pursue all available means to get your money back.

I don't think there are that many people who both have enough money to casually dispose and are in such a hurry to get the new parts that they couldn't wait for 6-12 months or whatever it takes to those parts to start appearing in BL for a good enough price. I believe most buyers will want to have the set for itself, to assemble it and to play with it. Some or all of those new parts might also find their way into PaB in a few months, though there's no certainty on that. For the parts that do make it to PaB it's much faster to get them for an affordable price than from BL.

Sure, you do with your money what you want. Like Jim, I think the Liebherr will probably sell quite well despite the price. And as such, the price won't ever be too high, until the set no longer sells because of it. Not that I would get with that kind of price, it's far beyond what I'm willing to pay for Lego.

My usual local retailer has a pre-order price for the John Deere at 152,99€. Seriously considering doing a pre-order, but I want also the Curiosity Rover and it's not listed yet so going to wait at least few days more...

Catalog of finished MOCs would be nice of course, but I would very much like to see a catalog of useful discussions. Some of the most popular ones resurface now and then (like Axle collection thread) but others get maybe few dozen replies and then disappear into obscurity despite the very useful knowledge they contain. It would of course take a lot of manual work to sort these out and judge which topics are worthy of cataloging, which makes this kind of catalog hard to maintain. It would also be nice to have a catalog of official set discussion threads and reviews, though if you're looking for a specific set, those are easier to find with search functions or with Google.

Finally.

All of the sets mentioned previously are great and highly recommended. I would also recommend looking for second hand sets and maybe also mixed piles of Lego, especially if you're into GBC - with those you'll probably want to have a decent collection of System parts too. Buying second hand will get you more parts for less expense, if the expansion of your parts collection is what you're firstly looking for. If you want the experience of opening and building a set, then the only practical option is of course buying new sets.

Your link is broken.

It could be that the Liebherr is released later, in August or even September or October, so I wouldn't be so sure that we'll be getting any official photos that soon.

Not going to go that much into corporate politics here, but apparently they have done some crappy things to their customers with vendor locking, which causes severe problems for farmers. You can probably find out more with Google.

It could've worked for a while, but then all those people who are really into cars but not that much into Lego bought their one or maybe two car sets and then forgot about Lego. They won't abandon cars, that's for sure, but I hope they're going to expand the offerings of other kinds of machinery in the future. They certainly have the skill and resources to make awesome sets as they have proven with the Tow Truck, Airbus, ATV and now (probably) with the John Deere and Perseverance rover, now they just need to bring the focus back to these things that are at the core of Technic. Oh, and make those cars better too, the Peugeot shows some small promise I guess, but I hope there will be others with something more than those done-a-thousand-times steering+fake engine+simple suspension car sets.

Looks cool and it's great to get something that's not common in the Technic line with functions that are never seen before in an official set. A must buy for me.

Wow, looks great. A sure buy for me even if I don't like the license that much. I'm happy that we're getting every year at least 1 or 2 proper Technic sets to keep the line interesting. Without these few gems I would lose my interest in Technic entirely.

While that would be fun, I'm pretty sure they won't. At the best, you could expect to find boom parts in PaB to make your own extensions. --- While extending the booms in one way or another would be great, I assume that would also require replacing strings, as the set won't probably include long enough strings for extended booms...

Disappointing that you didn't photoshop some LA's and other bricks to the inside of the coat