there was a rather heated conversation about that a while back and TPTB's stance is that kickstarters are for when you have unused labor but need capital. if they do a kickstarter, they'd have to diminish their effort somewhere else since they don't have the workforce to divert to a KS project.
I'm not sure I would 100% agree on that, Kickstarters are really not about the funding of projects, its about marketing and bringing products to the attention of the gaming community. If you want to learn about Battletech today, you have to google "Battletech" and locate this specific site, its basically invisible otherwise as a product, in fact your more likely to find information about the PC game than the board game. Kickstarter projects immediately register with all sorts of social media groups and channels across the globe who are hungrly looking to investigate new projects and they have a strong affinity for nostalgia throwback games. If you made a Battletech kickstarter projects you guaranteed a huge amount of social media attention, its just how it works.
The thing about Marketing campaigns of any kind however is that you have to be ready for an influx of customers and I think this is where Catalyst Game Labs has a huge problem. The reality of this franchise is that it can barely handle the tiny, niche community that has formed around the game now. As soon as a couple of hundred new players arrive because of a new box set like the one we just got suddenly everything is out of stock and the game is back to being effectively out of print which right now is essentially the games status... aka, Battletech is out of print.
Beyond that however I think there is a lot that could be done with minimal investment. For example just creating some division and organization of the products and identifying what belongs to what and clearly directing players to material would be a huge boon.
Right now the entire book catalog is a jumbled mess that new players have no hope of coming to grips with. I'm a reasonably intelligent guy and after a week of research, reading and talking to people on this and other forums, I still couldn't tell you the difference between a Historical, Turning Point or technical readout book. I mean today I'm just trying to find A book (any book) that has Lance vs. Lance scenarios in the succession war era (where the box set is set in) so that me and my friends can run a mini campaign. That alone has created endless confusion where terminology like Campaign Operations, Total Chaos, Historical, Turning Point, full rules partial rules, combined arms games, regular games... I mean its a jumble of unstructured information that is impossible to decipher and what's worse is that these books all cross reference each other all over the place. You pick up a Turning point and the book is like ... ok you need X, Y, Z books and maps from A, B, C and D books, and F, G and H map sets.
In essence as already mentioned, the game franchise today is basically for people who already own everything only. New Players don't have a prayer in hell of ever fully absorbing this material even if they could get their hands on, which they can't.
So yeah, I understand the challenge of bringing the franchise into shape, Catalyst Game Labs has their work cut out for them, but it really needs a lot of focus right now because these box sets really aren't doing them any favors. New players get the address to the club with the box set, but they aren't given the secret password to get in and are left standing outside at the door.
I think one important first step for Catalyst Games is to refocus their attention on "New Players" and create products geared for taking them from that first introductory Mech vs. Mech battle, and create products that leverage that information into constructed progress. They also need to be a bit less greedy as well with their products. Selling stuff from the 1990's in 2019 is crazy. Their should be a lot of free material for Battletech... especially things like record sheets, scenario books and maps. Why are we selling maps? Its crazy to me... its a hexagon map on which the game is played and you are referencing them in 30 years of material... release the bloody things on pdfs for free... I know they are a business but it feels like their are so many pay walls to a game that already has so many problems with accessibility.
