If Harmony Gold is sooo interested in money, why not give it to them ?
Sell the Marauder for MC only, and give 50% to Harmony Gold .
Hell, give them 100%, if you have to, as a sign of good will to both Harmony Gold and the players !
(Yes, I know, those employees are not going to pay themself. But remember: Sign of good will !)
The offer could look like this:
Dear Harmony Gold,
pleas take all the money we are going to make out of the Marauder-Sales.
YOu have to accept thogh, that we have no idea what amounbt of money this will add up to, as the customers will decide if they are going to buy a Marauder or not.
You might end up with making only a 100 $.
Take it or leave it.
Cincerly,
PGI
(Yes, I know I rather idealistic and naive, but so was probably the first person who ever tried to "cook" their meat before actually eating it; thank you who ever you were!)
About the design:
What Alex designed (see the sheet with the KingCrab on it, posted by William Mountbank somewhere on page 4 of this thread) is my personal favorite.
It even has the AC/5 centered, which in my oppinion is a must. I never really got it why FASA insisted on only 2 free slots in the CT; the Cannon is clearly mounted outside of the torso, so, what?
Go and install the Balistic-Slot in the left torso, but display every weapon mounted there as if it is mounted above the CT, please !
(I'd pay an extra 5 bucks if you do.
)
About "it does not fit into IS:
I disagree. There are far more... alien looking desings then that, like... for instance... the original Marauder, imho, consists mainly of legs.
*pages to his old Technical Readout 3025*
How about the Wasp ? (yes, I know: unseen)
The Spider (even the re-designed version for MWO look kind of alien) ?
The original Jenner looks odd, as well.
The original Stalker looks like the designer of the legs was drunk!
And don't even mention the Ostman-Mechs! Those are designs I clearly which I could unsee, but I can't!
But this is just my personal opinion.
But back to the topic.
It's as simple as that:
Either HG accepts they could get only a decent amount of money out of PGI, because only a certain number of the players would pay real money for the Marauder, or we are not getting it.
Or something that bears the name "Marauder", but simply is not a Marauder.