The 2500-series minis are being co-developed by ADB and Mongoose Publishing; they are being worked up in order to support
A Call to Arms: Star Fleet, but are usable for the likes of
SFB and
FC, too.
Generally what happens is that one of Mongoose's 3D artists works up a mould, sends it over to ADB for approval, and eventually (once a version emerges behind the scenes that is deemed worth asking for outside feedback on) a thread gets created over on ADB'S Discus board where people can post their comments/corrections/issues/etc. Once the final design is nailed down, it gets sent to be turned into minis.
Unfortunately, the first wave of minis ran into a few issues, mainly stemming from an attempt to do the entire line in resin, instead of metal. Looking back, that proved to be overly optimistic. However, the current production setup has the line in metal for all but the very largest of minis, like dreadnoughts and battleships (most of which are, or will be, in resin). The number of problems being reported since the switch "back" to metal has dropped considerably, and will hopefully be a good sign of what kind of quality to expect as the line moves forward.
Right now, there is a set of Orion Pirate ships which just went up recently;
Orion Battle Raider and
Battlecruiser, along with
a new edition of the Heavy Cruiser (which had had an earlier version of the WIP 3D file talked about
in an older thread).
The plan is to have the ships intended for the next
ACtA:SF book done a few at a time, so that the models (and rules) will be in a fit enough state for publication by the time the ink hits the paper. (Which isn't too far removed from how Mongoose had handled the second wave of releases for
A Call to Arms: Noble Armada, as it happens. Actually, the "high-low" metal/resin split had been done for
ACtA:NA first, too. Hindsight being 20:20, and all that.)
