WIP shots of the Fastline Simulation Sea Urchin

[Wikkus]

Are Sea Urchin's the same as these MCA's and MDA's?

Nope, the ones you linked are the cut down "megabox" bogie beasts; think of the default Eanos52 with the upper half of the box body sawn off.

Fastline have modelled the ZCA Sea Urchin, a four-wheeled, low-side wagon based on a re-bodied version of their excellent VDA van chassis.

HTH, Rik.

[stuart666]

Ive always thought these chaps made some nice looking products. Its a pity none of it is available on steam, because Id definately buy some of it. particularly the vdas.

[Kariban]

You're a strange duck, stuart... what's stopping you getting them from off of steam?

[ightenhill]

Have to admit I know where he's coming from.. I just clean installed the lot and its a real pain getting some of the stuff back..especially those sites where you dont have an account but have to ask for another email key.. In an ideal world your back up of course would have everything, but of course and it seems to have disappeared

[Kariban]

I burn everything off intermittently - nowhere near filling a dvd up yet.

[Wikkus]

Ooh, look, more

Rik.

[TransportSteve]

Ive always thought these chaps made some nice looking products. Its a pity none of it is available on steam, because Id definately buy some of it. particularly the vdas.

Hmmm, anything developed by 3rd party companies won't generally be available on Steam, unless, they have a contract/agreement with the Valve Corporation, and, or, RS.com. As was stated, i can't see any reason for not purchasing them directly from the vendor and then archiving them onto a CD or USB stick, like many of us have done.
As Fastline Simulation products are the absolute cheapest within Railworks, and highly detailed, all the money goes directly to them anyway, with no commission to Steam.


Cheerz. Transport Steve.

[Darpor]

Problem is, VDA's at £3 a pop, once all of the cuts are taken from Steam and RSC, what are Fastline going to make from it? It's unsustainable and would potentially kill them off. Giving the £3 direct to the developer and keeping a backup in storage is not only easy enough, but supportive and vital to their future development.

[transadelaide]

Problem is, VDA's at £3 a pop, once all of the cuts are taken from Steam and RSC, what are Fastline going to make from it? It's unsustainable and would potentially kill them off. Giving the £3 direct to the developer and keeping a backup in storage is not only easy enough, but supportive and vital to their future development.

I've said this many times before on many subjects - Darren is right.

If these vans were released on Steam, I would reckon the numbers of sales would not be large enough to make up for the significantly lower margin per unit sold compared to using a cheaper e-retail solution like Fastspring. It is a particularly niche product.

Ive always thought these chaps made some nice looking products. Its a pity none of it is available on steam, because Id definately buy some of it. particularly the vdas.

Hmmm, anything developed by 3rd party companies won't generally be available on Steam, unless, they have a contract/agreement with the Valve Corporation, and, or, RS.com. As was stated, i can't see any reason for not purchasing them directly from the vendor and then archiving them onto a CD or USB stick, like many of us have done.
As Fastline Simulation products are the absolute cheapest within Railworks, and highly detailed, all the money goes directly to them anyway, with no commission to Steam.


Cheerz. Transport Steve.

Publishing agreements are made with RS.com, not Valve directly. RS.com are the publisher of those third-party products when they are sold through Steam.

I doubt that whoever Fastline use (Fastspring?) to process their payments would be entirely fee-free, but the point is that there are many products which are very unlikely to achieve the kind of sales figures that would make a lower-margin publishing solution viable.
If that means annoying a small handful of potential customers who are excessively attached to the convenience of Steam then that's a business decision the developer needs to make, keeping in mind there is also a small but vocal minority who would refuse to purchase even a product they really want if it was only available through Steam.

I'm a huge fan of Steam as a distribution channel, but I'm also very aware that there are very good reasons that it won't work for everyone. That's why we have other options like self-distributing (like JT and AP do), using some other cheaper third party sales agent, or even the dubious approach of using PayPal and getting a link to a file sharing site. With the availability of free cloud storage solutions like DropBox and the price of external storage falling, it's now safer than ever before to go with one-time downloads, so the mechanics of distribution is now no longer a worry for me because I know I can make up for the lack of unlimited re-downloads myself.

[stuart666]

I would add, there is nothing WRONG with the decision these chaps have made. I can entirely see the margin is tight, and this way they make more money out of it. Entirely understandable, and I dont criticize them for that decision in any way.

Its just a fact that no matter how well you backup, chances are 6 months down the line when the hard drive fails and you THINK you have backed everything up, the thing you want is the thing you forgot to backup. Ive found this many, many times.

For all the flaws of steam, its the ultimate backup device. If you have a computer fail on you, all you have to do is wait for it to redownload again on you new computer. Its nice to have it all as one installation.

That said, after woodhead comes out, im really going to have to get those VDAs. They used them many times over the route on speedlink trains. But I will still say, its nice to have stuff either available on Steam, or already backed up on CD. If it meant paying a bit more for either method I probably would.

But hey, thats just me.

On a less contentious note, exceptionally fine work chaps, particularly impressed all all the hard work just put into the manual to make it look like a BR example!

[transadelaide]

Okay, so you would be willing to pay over double the price for the same product if it was released on Steam as well to make sure you get your convenient service and the developers get enough from it to buy a can of coke?

You could just buy it for the normal price, and if you have yet another HDD meltdown (use a better supplier of parts if this keeps happening to you repeatedly) AND your backup mysteriously doesn't have that item (use an automatic backup program) AND a friendly email to Fastline asking for a re-download didn't get a positive reply, only then would you need to purchase a second copy. If you did then purchase a second copy, only then have you spent the same amount as if they had released it on Steam, and if any one of those circumstances doesn't happen then you've effectively got a 50% discount.

Price is understandably a major priority for people these days, good evidence of that being the 12 page thread on payware prices we had over the weekend and the 10 page thread about the 50% discount vouchers. If given the option to purchase the same products through some channel other than Steam for half the price, many people would jump at it even if it had the most awkward installer.

[ightenhill]

Hmmm, anything developed by 3rd party companies won't generally be available on Steam, unless, they have a contract/agreement with the Valve Corporation, and, or, RS.com. As was stated, i can't see any reason for not purchasing them directly from the vendor and then archiving them onto a CD or USB stick, like many of us have done.
As Fastline Simulation products are the absolute cheapest within Railworks, and highly detailed, all the money goes directly to them anyway, with no commission to Steam.


Cheerz. Transport Steve.

Never understood this argument or position.. I find it rather bizarre.. All the differences in commission losses would be wiped out if not overcome by volume. How on earth does the average RW user even know who most of these third party devs are as the majority (sadly) never visit a forum...

[Darpor]

Never understood this argument or position.. I find it rather bizarre.. All the differences in commission losses would be wiped out if not overcome by volume

But you don't know this, it is all going to depend on the product, Steam doesn't necessarily mean that you gain "loads" more sales, regardless of the outreach it gives. Even more so than for a vendor such as Fastline that are concentrating on a specific era that won't appeal to a large majority of the userbase, a userbase that does have quite a high proportion of younger users who want the modern stuff they see today.

I don't really see the issue here to be honest.

How on earth does the average RW user even know who most of these third party devs are as the majority (sadly) never visit a forum...

Another one we don't know, but even the most basic of Railworks searches brings up the majority of them, even when not directly looking for them. On my own site, I can pull in all the search strings that people have used to arrive there, there are dozens of random ones that would have easily listed some of these third party developers alongside my site.

Given that the staff here often mention that 90% of people that visit here don't actually "use" the forums, it doesn't mean they don't look, in fact, there is always a healthy stream of guests viewing the forum. Couple that with the 90% most likely using the downloads section, they will more than likely visit the front page of the site which now covers most of the new releases from these independent developers.

[malkymackay]

How on earth does the average RW user even know who most of these third party devs are as the majority (sadly) never visit a forum...

Considering some of the stuff that flies about on forums, is that entirely surprising? Or looking at it another way, how do you know they are not visiting the forums, but just choosing to keep a low profile?

[stuart666]

Okay, so you would be willing to pay over double the price for the same product if it was released on Steam as well to make sure you get your convenient service and the developers get enough from it to buy a can of coke?

You could just buy it for the normal price, and if you have yet another HDD meltdown (use a better supplier of parts if this keeps happening to you repeatedly) AND your backup mysteriously doesn't have that item (use an automatic backup program) AND a friendly email to Fastline asking for a re-download didn't get a positive reply, only then would you need to purchase a second copy. If you did then purchase a second copy, only then have you spent the same amount as if they had released it on Steam, and if any one of those circumstances doesn't happen then you've effectively got a 50% discount.

Price is understandably a major priority for people these days, good evidence of that being the 12 page thread on payware prices we had over the weekend and the 10 page thread about the 50% discount vouchers. If given the option to purchase the same products through some channel other than Steam for half the price, many people would jump at it even if it had the most awkward installer.

Yes, and there could be a giant solar flare which destroys all computers on earth, or an infestation of HDD eating locusts. Lets look at the worst possible scenario shall we?

I repeat, its a way I like to buy addons for Railworks. I ACCEPT TOTALLY that they have their reasons for not doing it that way. Fair enough. No argument at all. I accept smaller suppliers CANNOT have that option to deliver via all forms of Media like Just trains but that doesnt mean its not a useful feature to give a product every way someone wants to acquire it.

Hey, its my opinion. Im not beating anyone over the head with it, and nobody has to agree. But I do find it curious that having a right to choice is somehow regarded as bad thing.