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I'll give you some more background on my experiences with the metal caster.
Production molds that have all combinations inevitably cast disproportionately. For example, let's say that you have a war machine that requires 1 piece A, 1 piece B, 1 piece C, 2 piece D, and 6 piece E. Hopefully the production mold was cut with those proportions in mind. However, due to metal flow and such, perhaps piece D fails a little more often than all of the other pieces, while piece E always casts correctly. So after 100 spins, maybe you'll have 90 A, 92 B, 95 C, 160 D, and 600 E. So now we can make a total of 80 war machines, with various pieces leftover and kind of wasted.
In this case we spent only $40 for the production mold, but now we have wastage for every war machine, increasing per-piece price. Traditionally I have handled this by commissioning a second mold, either a second production mold for part D, or a combination mold that has more D cavities than the other.
A variant of this is when predictions as to what will become popular don't hold.
So, pretend I commission a production mold that is three-quarters Otter turrets, and one-quarter Monkey turrets, but Monkey turrets become preferred. In this case I will produce way too many Otter turrets to secure the Monkey sales. Or, perhaps I guess the proportion correctly but once again due to casting quirks I get fewer Monkey turrets than desired.
In summary, either I make a production mold for for every piece, and worry about upfront investment wastage, or try to make a clever production mold and force myself to either create more production molds, or have piece wastage.
Obviously this problem gets harder as piece count increases. If there were only 2 separate things to cast, 2 production molds would be prudent. But in this case, there are 8 pieces to accommodate (not counting the chassis, which will obviously get its own mold).
Last edited by Otterman on Thu May 20, 2010 6:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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But I'll abid by you decision O-man regardless ... 
