howitzer

Limit on part count is impossible to enforce, unless it's also required to provide a CGI-model or building instructions, which are tons of extra effort and prone to errors so I don't think that's a good idea. Weight limit would reward good chassis design but penalizes those who like to decorate their creations a lot so unless pure functionality is what the contest is aiming for, it's not so nice either. If there's a limit, I'm also in favor of either having limited amount of electronic components or specifying a bounding box, like the small car contest. Either way, I wonder if only the Technic hub will be allowed or also RI hub or Move hub? What about external sensors?

Of course there are such people, but TLG caters to practically every price level that can be expected from a toy company so there's something for everyone. There's also increased focus on adult customers who can afford the expensive sets, even if kids can't. Personally I could buy basically any set if I wanted to, but I carefully consider how interesting each set is in relation to its price, which leaves UCS (and mostly other) cars and motorbikes out as those hold little interest to me. But others have other priorities and it appears that fast cars are very popular, which makes UCS cars a goldmine for TLG.

That would be quite strange, as I've come to understand that the UCS cars sell really well despite their price. Last few years have also seen some very expensive sets so for me it seems the opposite: TLG is pushing the size and price ever upward rather than abandoning the very most expensive sets.

The Move hub doesn't fit into the current style of Technic building though, with its even width and mostly stud-based connections. Obviously a set could be built around it but I don't think TLG would stray so far from the studless building style. It's much more probable that it has the usual Technic hub with 2 motors.

Very nice, and practical too for knitting enthusiasts. I've seen some Lego ball-winders before, but not one like this.

This thing practically screams for a GBC-application.

Yep, these would be great. Sequential gearboxes and RWD configurations are nice and all, but all those things you listed are still sorely missing from Lego cars.

I don't think they were talking about pinholes, but rather the gaps between panels.

If you have photos, please note that they must be linked from an external site, Eurobricks won't host your photos. Many people use for example Flickr, Brickshelf or Imgur for image hosting.

Quite an interesting lineup, though not necessarily in such a way that I'd find many items to buy there. The Transformation vehicle and the ATV do sound good though, something to possibly buy.

While I'm even less a bike-person than a car-person, I must say that this set has the wow-factor going for it, with its size. I'm also expecting to see new long shock absorbers and possibly other new parts too (beside the obvious wheels and tyres). I don't think producing single-use parts like the wheels is a problem for TLG, they seem to be doing it almost every year, with things like the concrete mixer drum and various buckets. They'll make a production run of enough of those, then reassign the machinery for something else.

This seems to be the trend lately.

Oh, right, somehow I thought they were the same part but apparently not.

Sian wheel arches in black, that's nice.

Indeed, if it becomes a set, it's a day 1 purchase for me.

When I stop working on it.

Yes, what you say about priorities might be true. I imagine one important aspect of it is that System parts are usually useful over much wider range of themes than Technic parts, so even if Technic is a large theme overall, it's much smaller than System themes combined. But it's true enough that this is all speculation. Too bad the people working at TLG are bound by NDA's and probably can't give out much of specific info on how these things work. @SaperPL Thanks for your insight!

Magnificent work! The tail lift is really great, don't see those too often in MOCs. Gotta love those Duplos as cargo too

Yes, TLG is the world leader at what it does. But that still doesn't mean that they can design little-used elements all the time like there's no tomorrow. Even TLG has limits and they even they can't expand their production facilities endlessly, it has to end somewhere. This is what I suspect too, and also there's the fact that most (not all, there are exceptions) of Technic elements are only useful in Technic sets, while System sets have much wider range and potential. I think minifig parts are a bit of a separate category, as they are much more sought after by customers than generic parts, even if they are much less "useful". Vidiyo is of course an attempt to break new ground in combining smart devices and Lego, and as such has received substantially larger resources for development. Not that it appears to have been in any way successful though, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion. Funny though, that @astyanax seems to think that Technic is a small-ish theme while you seem to think Technic is a big theme for TLG. I always thought Technic as a bit of an oddball in all of TLG's offerings, and thus that it has a small but devoted fanbase, while themes like City and Friends and some of the licensed themes are much bigger. Combine that with the generally poor usefulness of Technic parts in System sets, and the result is that Technic really gets the short end of the stick. I don't think that introducing a part once makes later use any less "expensive" for TLG, more like the other way around. Ever expanding inventory means ever expanding costs, and to keep the costs balanced, sometimes parts have to be retired. But retiring parts is problematic in its own way, so they may want to keep the old ones in production rather than introduce new ones, unless there's a very good reason for doing otherwise. On the other hand, everyone hates having a part that is used only in few sets and then never again, as that will make the part rare and expensive in a few years. Some Technic parts are indeed used in System sets for structural and even functional purposes, but that selection is very small, and for example the studful frames ( 32531 etc.) should more properly be considered System parts, as they are not used at all in Technic sets even if they have pinholes. When we're talking about specialized Technic parts like those used for suspension and steering, they are mostly used very little if at all outside the Technic theme so it's no wonder that new such parts aren't introduced very often. We all would like to have more of those, but I'm sure it's really hard for the designers to convince the beancounters at TLG that those are necessary and should be produced rather than something else. As for the pliftarms, now that they have been introduced, I'm sure we'll be seeing them a lot more in the future years. I think that part had some serious structural problems and broke easily. It's not a particularly useful part either, so indeed it's something that probably should've never been seen the light of day. But even TLG makes mistakes sometimes, and we as customers should make it known to them (both in words and in money spent) when they do make mistakes. You're probably right in your last line, the influx of large sets depicting a fast car is probably just a result of profitability assessment. I hope they are not going to totally abandon interesting machinery though.

I'm in no way an expert, but TLG always has to consider the production capacity and all the other overhead that comes with a new part, it's a huge hassle for them. So the designer of a set must justify the new part extremely thoroughly in order to be allowed to use it in their model, and show that there are no workarounds. This is especially true to Technic models, where most parts are structural or functional, rather than aesthetic, so workarounds can often be found without compromising the looks - unlike in System models where certain new parts like animals or windshields are required as the model would have to be changed drastically without them. And then there's the minifig parts, which justify themselves by being extremely popular among the buyers. It has been noted before that the designers build prototypes of a new model in several different scales, and I imagine this was true also for the Raptor and in doing so, I'm sure they knew about the problematic limitation of current suspension/steering parts which would have either forced a larger scale or new parts for 4WD, both of which come with their problems. So in the end they settled for RWD even if that's not faithful to the original. Still, even if there were good reason for this design choice, as customers who care about these things we should be loud about our dissatisfaction and made it be heard that more suspension parts are really needed.

https://store.bricklink.com/TGS_brick?sID=1146015&itemID=262359928#/shop?o={"invID":"262359928"} Though not an option for you if you choose not to buy from elsewhere but your own country.

Yeah, if you're going to buy new parts for each new MOC you make, that's going to get very expensive very fast, and in that case being able to get cheaper parts can make a huge difference.

So getting 9 of them would set you back maybe 10€. Not an insignificant amount of money, but then you'll have 9 of them which are practically infinitely reusable, and considering how expensive this hobby can get it doesn't seem like a big deal. And most of the time you could use the LBG one anyway, which I admit is much cheaper at maybe one tenth of the price of the black one.

Limiting yourself to shops in your country surely limits your options and increases prices a lot but yeah, most sellers don't seem to have many in stock. But then, how many would you need anyway? It's not a super-useful part and unless you're building something that's both repeated a lot (like I can imagine could happen for example with GBC:s) and needs this particular part, I don't think buying them is going to make anyone go broke.

Yes, the black one is more expensive than the LBG one, but not by that much unless you want hundreds of them or live in a place where most BL stores won't deliver.