howitzer

Part count is a piece of information we know though (assuming the info is correct) unlike its weight, so it's impossible to make any judgement based on weight right now. When the weight will become public information I'm sure there'll be a lot more other information also available, so at that point both part count and weight will become more or less irrelevant in terms of judging the set.

Sariel's presentation is great and he's skilled and knows a lot, but somehow I often tend to disagree on the conclusions and sometimes there's negativity which feels a bit unfair (though this is minor thing). I like reviews from Racingbrick a lot, as I often agree with @kbalage's opinions (after buying a set and seeing for myself) and I also love New Elementary's reviews, as their focus on parts is really interesting - and also importantly, those are text and photos instead of video reviews. I have no doubt though, that any of these reviewers present anything but their honest opinions on the sets, and it's almost never just praise, negative aspects of a set get mentioned too.

This is really cool! 42055 is my favourite set of the studless era, and it's nice to see it's possible to shrink it to a more manageable size.

Yes, but the cost of raw material (=oil) in the Lego bricks is almost trivially small in comparison to other factors. At the moment we can only speculate on the reasons behind the price, assuming it's even correct. While it will surely be one of the most expensive Technic sets ever (if not the most expensive), there's no reason to make judgments regarding its value until we have a lot more knowledge of what's actually in the box. Though, even if there's all the goodies such a set could possibly contain, the supposed price is hefty, no matter the value.

I mean, I can imagine stuff that in principle could justify the price. Something like a new hub with capabilities similar to the RI hub, lighting kit, extension cables, new metal hook, many many new frames and counterweight parts, perhaps a new motor with power similar to the buggy motor or at least PF XL motor, etc. But I don't think any of these will happen, except maybe the frames and counterweights.

Wow, if that part count and price are correct, there would better be some really fancy new parts. I mean, something like a hub with rechargeable battery with more ports than 4, lighting kit included, etc.

Building digitally is a two-edged sword, as mentioned here. It's really easy to make connections that are impossible to build in real life, but on the other hand, gyenesvi up there had a great argument for why digital building is good alternative to having a huge parts collection. You _can_ make solid and buildable stuff digitally, but it takes a lot of knowledge and care to design such builds. One notable difficulty in digital building is the fact that while any part is available in any colour digitally, many part/colour combinations aren't available in real life at all, or they may be really expensive/hard to acquire. So I'd recommend building only in white or something digitally and deciding the colour scheme only later, checking availability and price of each part, before making any purchases. Either way, at some point you're faced with the need to get the parts to build the thing in real life, which can get expensive fast if you're building big stuff, even if the individual parts aren't that expensive. So I'd recommend starting with small and fairly simple stuff and move on to bigger builds once you have skills and wider part collection.

Hasn't been updated for several years now. A real shame, as it is single greatest source of information about Technic sets online. Apparently Blakbird has moved on to other hobbies and hasn't been active with Lego for a good while now.

I don't think aircraft sets will become much bigger than they currently are, the wings or rotors will get much too big to be practical. Aircraft tend to have naturally much wider dimensions in relation to part count than other kinds of sets (except cranes with booms fully extended).

Yep, that's a really cool one, hopefully the execution lives up to the expectations. I wonder when we last got a Technic set that departed significantly from the usual racing/transportation/construction/agriculture type of sets. Maybe the Star Wars sets from 20 years ago?

Much cooler than I initially thought, with the propeller mechanism and all. But it's still quite ugly, I don't like the boxy shape that much. Thanks @kbalage for the nice review!

Inflation is surely one factor here, it's running at high single digits or in some cases even double digits, and TLG can't escape its effects. Other factors are stuff mentioned by @allanp as there may be lots of expensive parts. But we don't know much yet, so let's wait for better information before making judgements.

I think it's highly unlikely that the John Deere set is motorized. The price is indeed steep-ish, but if it has 4 pneumatic cylinders and related pneumatic parts along with Claas tyres, I don't think it's that expensive, accounting for inflation. I hope they include the short large pneumatic cylinders there, as those have been absent for a while and can't be bought at the moment from TLG.

No new photos today, but I finally decided to actually test the functions and found out that the M-motor is much too weak to drive the two pumps, so I swapped it for L-motor. It still doesn't have great power, but enough to run constantly. The pneumatic functions kind of work, but it appears that the small cylinders are too weak to work well. They sometimes extend/retract the landing gear and sometimes don't, unless given a small nudge to help the movement. I'm kind of bummed by this and I don't really know what to do about it. Perhaps the system is too leaky with so many components, but I don't know how to fix it. One obvious solution would be to replace the cylinders with larger ones, but then I'd have to do a lot of redesigning to fit them in, and I also don't have any short large cylinders, except those that are currently in 8868 (and thus old style). More powerful compressor would also work, but I don't have more pumps either and that would also require more powerful/dual motor, for which there's no space at the rear without, again, significant redesign. Anyone got any ideas how to help it?

Dunno, a product that didn't meet the expectations maybe? I'm not sure about the language difference, I'm not a native english speaker either, so it's possible that the word "scam" can also be correctly used for a product that is simply bad while not being marketed criminally dishonestly.

If you imply dishonest intent, then you have to prove it. Merely delivering a bad (but still usable) product doesn't make you a scammer.

@amorti, @aFrInaTi0n: There's always tendency to hype new products in marketing, and as a potential buyer it's prudent to take all marketing speak with a grain of salt, but I think the word "scam" involves dishonest intent, and not merely a product that doesn't quite meet up to the expectations. If BW3 were sold but never delivered and buyers wouldn't get refunds either, then I would also call it a scam. But they delivered a functioning product which did some of what it was supposed to do, while also not doing everything that was promised. It's entirely justified to call it a bad product or failed product, but calling it a scam is gross exaggeration.

7L flipflops are very welcome, I could already have used several in my TC24 entry. Too bad I'll still have to wait at least months before getting my hands on those.

Here's something I'd like to address in this discussion. To preface my comment, I don't have any Buwizz products, though I've considered getting one (but decided against it, due to cost and the fact that I don't really need one between RI hub and PF components). I saw some people commenting along the lines that Buwizz is a scam, but this is patently untrue. They have previously made functional, usable hubs with multiple iterations and delivered on the orders for those and many builders have used their products with great success. On the other hand it's obvious that there's significant shortcomings in their products and it's also true that they have failed with communication, along with some of the promises that they have made regarding future developments and fixes on issues. These are significant problems and dissatisfaction with the product is justified, but for me it still seems to be a gross exaggeration to call it a scam. I don't know the exact history of Buwizz, but for me it seems to be a product born out of enthusiasm and love for Technic, and desire to add something that TLG won't do out of their need to keep everything safe and durable. But developing this kind of product is a significant undertaking and for someone without tons of money or a huge corporation to back it up, it's going to be really, really hard. I'm not surprised that there has been promises that can't be delivered on and technical issues that can't easily be fixed. It's a tight rope to balance on between marketing a product that's interesting and wanted among potential buyers, and making it actually happen in a package that delivers on the promises while being not too costly to drive away the buyers. I don't know what's going on in their headquarters, but I wouldn't be surprised if the issue was that they promised too much in a too short timeframe and that turned into inability to deliver. Maybe there's also management or some other issues which have led to communication failures, but this is pure speculation on my part.

Now that you mention it, I actually got an email about a receipt for my order few days ago. Previously there has been about 5 days between the receipt and the package arriving, so perhaps it's here soon.

Yeah, they ship the bestseller parts and other parts separately, with bestsellers moving much, much faster than the rest. I made an order 21.1., with both kinds, and the bestsellers were delivered in a week or so and I still haven't heard of the other parts. They say it will take 28 working days maximum for the non-bestsellers to be delivered, which means there's still a little more than a week before that time is up.

I think it's a kind of too general and too specialized part at the same time. With the length of 15 has to be a part of the structure of whatever it's used in, but in those cases normal 15L (or whatever length is suitable) is probably usually used. On the other hand, the studs on the end make it useful only on rare circumstances, and most builders probably would try to find another solution first anyway. It's also probably not that common, being used only in 16 sets over the 18 years of its production, so I don't think many people have more than one or two of those, which makes it unlikely to be considered useful in Technic builds. Also, I'm not sure if pins fit into the holes properly, the normal liftarms have an expanded recess for pin to snap into, which this doesn't seem to have. It could work if it was thinner overall, but I don't think that is the case (can't verify though, as I don't have that part at hand).

Some new progress. After many build-disassemble-rebuild cycles I managed to get stronger and lighter structure for the hull shape, one that's also geometrically correct (I previously had a counting error in my supposedly pythagorean triangles so I had to rework those). I'm trying to maximize internal space in order to make room for a cargo hold, and I also want a lowering ramp in the middle as an access point. Somewhere in the rear, above the pneumatic hosing I'll build engines, and in front of that there should be a cockpit.

Your link is broken :(

Thanks! If you like hosework, I'll give you some more: