Stereo

Sort of, this ship has little "tongues" under the connections on the main body build to help support the cockpit, so you can't connect multiple of the set to itself without modifying that.

Yeah, with the much higher part count it's probably also important for the build experience that there's not too much "bag of small black pieces", I'm just thinking about the changes they made. Personally my 'big sets I admired from a distance' era starts with Blacktron II and Space Police so I probably have to wait 3-4 more years to get an Icon that I feel strongly about. This one I'm going to wait until I hear how interesting it is to build before I decide. I wasn't really into the non-fluorescent Blacktron II/Ice Planet cmfs so I'm not actually optimistic though.

Use of yellow seems off to me, so I looked closer and I think the difference is, the original never has any yellow elements wider than 1 plate thickness on the main body (though some of that is 2x2 tiles with black printed lines, which seem to have turned into yellow grille tiles... fine). The new one brings it up to 2 studs width in some spots. And it just kinda changes it from 95% black 5% yellow to 70-30 in some spots. I wonder how hard it'll be to add in Technic pinholes on the octagonal connection points, so City Space modules can be stolen and attached to it.

I suppose the most prominent example is 42147 Dump Truck in 2023 leading 42154 Ford GT and 42172 Mclaren P1 by ~6 and ~18 months, on Dark Blue + Bright Light Orange parts which are only in those sets. It would make sense that a smaller set has a shorter development time and uses the parts before the flagship they were required for. Though I'm not sure it applies to a $40 set using parts made for a $60 set.

Rebrickable has 60198 and 60337 retiring in December 2025, as far as I know they're using data from Lego.com that lists when sets are planned to retire. Though of course until it happens it's not certain.

There's a relatively new 2x4x1 windshield that's trans-clear and could fit into that second design, I don't know offhand how difficult they are to stack. Same concept as the 3x6x1 one that's in white at the top of that build, just smaller.

I was curious about whether it came with extras in the first pictures, cause none of the stills have them, but the 3d spin does show 2 extras when it's all assembled into a single ship. I don't think they actually fit, unless their underside has a way for the Technic pins to nest into each other - they're 4 plates + 1 stud thick, so 2 of them with the pins in the space between them would be 11 plates thick and not fit in a 4 stud wide hold.

I haven't built this exact set so it's only generic advice based on what I see in the instructons, but I believe it's intentional. When the boom is extending, the cord needs to unwind so the extra length of string to get to the end of the boom can be made available.

I would hope so, but they've used regular Green for all the other Aston Martin sets that use the same paint colour.

First I was excited for the multiple $60 sets, cause it's usually my favourite price range (60-100 or so) then I thought "second colour for the Corvette, second colour for the Valkyrie"... and that seems more likely to me than multiple distinct sets.

I have that piece in a half dozen colours with the same circle on the bottom and text style, so I think they're probably real.

Should be a closed form solution with some trigonometry I would think. In z-up coordinates, use the x,y position to figure out how much parallelogram skew is needed for each motor, which effectively shortens the second length in the arm, and that simplifies it into a 2d 2dof arm which I think you can just solve using a triangle with positions of 2 vertices and side lengths known. Though one of the images in this thread doesn't actually use parallel links, which would make it complicated (and probably not actually strictly 3 translation DOF, there'd be some rotations)

I can't see how tilting the engines works, the knobs on top are to spin the propellers and fold the claw away. Maybe just a manual thing where you angle them on friction pins? The rear one connects through a U-joint so it has fairly limited range, but the side ones could hypothetically point straight up and down.

2 and 3 already have axle/pin versions, not sure the benefit of being all pinholes for ones that short.

I think it's the other way around, the energy recovery system's always connected and the selector chooses the gear for just the engine. 20T gear at the differential to 12T under it, to 12 & 16 underneath the gearbox for 20 & 16 selectable on the engine, and then 12T above that for the ERS.

Probably pearl gold? Recolouring it yellow for just this set would be odd.

Actual car has a removable hard top between A and B pillars, the model looks like they might make it easy to do.

Is that a new quarter circle piece on the front, 2x2x2/3, to go with 11477 family of tiles?

Yeah, with the new style pistons they can't offset the banks, otherwise I might try it with the 1/2 thickness perpendicular connectors, with a 1/2 bush between them. I'm not sure what the actual angle is, if it's 45 degrees then #3 connectors would work but maybe not with the shape this is. A new 45 or 67.5 connector would be nice to have. Not sure if 45 overlaps the axles. Or a 6-way one that alternates axles and axle holes.

They have a premium feature that swaps colours in a MOC for you, I haven't tried it so I don't know how applicable it is to these sets with 2 versions.

That one's wrong, it's never been released in this mold version. the previous mold 41669 was in sets in 2019.

I did find mixing both those parts in dark blue a bit annoying in the Ford GT, though that's a worse colour for instructions. The 'standard' of using black for pin-pinhole and dbg for axle-pinhole helps with that.

I've reverse engineered a mid-size model ~700 pieces, but it was classic Technic style, everything visible, and I only did it cause there were no instructions available.

I think the engine's at least 6 studs wide (4 of those are cylinder blocks, something is in between them), gonna be interesting to get a more detailed view of what they actually did. The axle on the other side of the cylinder is probably a 4L with stop inserted from each side, so that handles stability fine, the pins just maintain the angle.

MGU-H is an electric motor attached to the turbocharger, when it's in "generate" mode it slows down the turbo to charge the batteries. It can also use "motor" mode to speed up the turbo if that's necessary. Turbochargers aren't actually geared to the engine, they work on exhaust gas. So it's 2 separate features of the model - a 2 speed gearbox (looks like 16:16 and 20:12) and a MGU-H that spins with the engine. I believe the MGU-H is represented by the medium azure 12T gear and small Technic wheels that sit in the V of the engine.