Federation Commander

[mjwest]

A few quick questions on Shapeways I am hoping someone can answer for me:

- What are the shipping costs for an order? Is it by weight, flat, free after a certain order size? I didn't see anywhere easy on the website to get that info.

- I am still unclear on the level of detail available for the material used. Is there a quick rule-of-thumb to help make that clearer?

- Does anyone know when the Kestrels are current scheduled? It looks like I can find pretty much everything I want, except them. Depending on the answer to the first question, I might just wait for them to be available.

Thanks!
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[djdood]

- Shipping; I think it's by weight, but is pretty fractional compared to the costs of prints in the top-end materials, so I've never paid it much mind. The weight of these prints is trivial, compared to lead or pewter equivalents.

- Level of detail - I guess a quick rule of thumb like you're asking for is "you get what you pay for". It's literally true in this case.

The lower-cost materials, like Strong & Flexible yield perfectly serviceable gaming pieces, but they do have the grainy texture and lack of crispness that bothers some people. They are not as crisp as the legacy metal minis, but cost considerably less (especially at current metal prices).

The polished S&F materials sacrifice some more of the detail, to get a less-grainy surface (and can be dyed in various colors), again for a lower-cost than the detail materials. Useful for people who don't care for fancy painting and just want affordable pre-colored minis, ready to stick on a stand and play.

The higher-cost materials like the acrylics, Fine Ultra Detail (FUD), and Fine Extreme Detail (FED) cost considerably more. That cost does yield a mini with as-good or better detail than the legacy metal versions (in some cases, the legacy metal version was literally mastered from a FUD-equivalent 3D print and the metal copy sold was several generations-removed from that).

Personally, I only buy S&F prints for things I know will get handled a lot (a Fed CA desktop knickknack at work, hanging ornaments for my holiday tree, etc.). Minis I intend to paint and display/game with I order in acrylic or FUD, usually FUD. FED is often overkill. Black Hi-Def Acyrlate used to be an option (and was quite lovely), but was removed due to production issues.

- The Romulan KR is in final review on the legacy bbs, right now. Assuming success, it will go on-sale on 1-March.

The KRC command cruiser version is aimed at 2-April, with the KC9R and K5R following shortly thereafter (possibly concurrently).
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[mjwest]

Thank you very much for the answers!
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Federation Commander Answer Guy