Dropfleet / Dropzone Commander General

Neat! So basically the Djinn is your "brawler" type of frigate, while pic related is a more general purpose combat frigate?

the Reverse-Grav Cannon sounds interesting, but what's the purpose of taking it if the gun is only "decent" and still has the inter-layer penalty?

It's also interesting that the Scourge are the only fleet with a dedicated planetary bombardment frigate, not counting the PHR's combination strike carrier / bombard.

>but now BTL's only can cause a maximum amount of damage based on the weapon.
Fair enough, so a "burn through - 4" weapon can only do 4 damage at max, for example?

>Furthermore crits do not cause each successive roll to ignore armor anymore.
Not going to lie, I'm a bit disappointed; I thought that was a wonderfully flavored mechanic that really drove home burn-throughs as being gigantic fuck-you cutting beams.

>I thought that was a wonderfully flavored mechanic that really drove home burn-throughs as being gigantic fuck-you cutting beams.

Yeah, but we trade it for getting that ability to ping ships with it in return.

Fair point, and I do think that will be more powerful than cascading crits.

Reminds me a bit of the Turians.
But more curved obviously.

>What drew you to the cyborgs?
Sexy, sexy tech gubbins with smooth armor plating. They remind me of the Aeon from SupCom.

>What Mechanics entice you the most to the game?
Sensors and signatures, they seem very interesting for a cover-less game system.

>What kind of mats are you going to play on?
Whatever I have available, but Ill try to use Hawk's maps.

Yes the the first question
As for the second, I missed the escape velocity rule on the scylla -- it in fact does not suffer any penalties for different layers even atmosphere

>It's also interesting that the Scourge are the only fleet with a dedicated planetary bombardment frigate, not counting the PHR's combination strike carrier / bombard.

But not surprising. Not only would they be the only ones that ever designed a ship with a comfortable assumption of uncontested orbital superiority, I can't see either of the human factions wasting an FTL drive on a bomb-ketch.

Sitting in the atmosphere and blasting the fleet with impunity. Hats off to every UCM and PHR crew that was given the order to "go in after that".

>As for the second, I missed the escape velocity rule on the scylla -- it in fact does not suffer any penalties for different layers even atmosphere
Excellent; this means it could hit targets in high orbit, from atmosphere, without any penalty?
I can see this being an excellent escort craft for strike carriers or motherships, providing good firepower against enemy ships trying to drop down to intercept them.

>your opponents face when you have the max amount of strike carriers and Scyllas, with the minimum fleet required that isn't your two win conditions

Kek; they're likely gonna get fucked hard by enemy frigates that can actually drop down to atmos (and later on, corvettes), but they're definitely going to be a decent counter against cruisers and capitals.

It'll be an interesting meta call. I really can't wait to see how the meta shapes up in areas, and how a counter meta list might pop up.

Yup, and I'm guessing that's a big reason Hawk invented corvettes and make them very efficient atmospheric hunters :P
Not sure if they'll just take up frigate slots on the final FOC or have their own special ones like scouts from DZC.
So much we still don't know, makes it all exciting.

Yeah, local meta will likely vary drastically as choosing what ships to use may not even be as drastic a change to *how* you use each ship.
Some areas might have an objective focused meta where players nearly ignore each other until they get to contested objectives -- others may just have huge brawls in the middle while strike carriers fight each other over cities.
And the Nuke the Site from Orbit rule will be interesting to see when and in what scenarios we use it.

I done did a thing, based on what admiral user has confirmed and guesses at the (revealed) ships themselves.

...

so, just to check, green means they have it, light green means they partially have it, red means unconfirmed or does not have it, that right?

Light green means they doubly have it, or moreso than usual; I figured lots of normal green would be easier on the eyes than lots of light green.

good thinking! Should the Charybdis be marked with light green on bombard then, since its been suggested its the best at that? Green obviously works for it, I'm just checking to see if that would be reason to make it light green.

Possibly, but I only marked systems as "light green" relative to their own faction's ships; for example, it might turn out that the Toulon is the worst general-combat frigate, but it's a focused general combat frigate compared to other UCM frigates.

This is mostly because I don't know the actual stats for the ships, yet.

fair. I find it kind of funny the Scylla is the only 'special frigate' but that's a definitely fair column to make for it considering what we know.

Man, non sequitur but I love all the Scourge cruiser names. What is the CA marker for? Close Action?

>What is the CA marker for? Close Action?
Yep! From what admiral user described, the Djinn gets a powerful close action attack. I assume that the Taipei (rocket pods) and Amethyst (giant microwave cannons) do as well.

Bump

I guess I could really just kinda go through and list what makes each ship distinct, I just keep forgetting what information people already know

might be time to just list everything, just for double checking and for completeness sake.

If you want to, I don't think anyone here is opposed to it.

Out of curiosity, are there any ships that haven't been spoiled yet? I haven't seen any painted models of the Perseus or Achilles either.

Depends on if hawk would be okay with it or not; do they have you guys under some kind of agreement, or did they just say "yo, don't give out hard rules and stats"

So i guess changes --
Jakarta has Aegis (+PD in radius) [green special]
Lima has Detector (no spikes active scan action) and is a rare choice [green special]

Since the Advanced ECM suite is unique to the Calypso I would probably just get rid of the ECM/ECCM column and put the Calypso and Opal into green special territory
Calypso is also a rare choice
UCM i would leave only the calypso and andromeda as red combat as all the other ships have a non-ca weapon

Amethyst should be light green CA
Opal is a rare choice
Topaz should be light green combat

What does the Calypso do?

I think it reduces the signature size of a friendly ship.

Id upgrade the hydra to light green carrier as it has carries by far the most assets of any medium choice, equals the bellerophon, and is only surpassed by the diamond class super carrier
of other note -- the shenlong, and raiju cruisers all have stealth (fire once during run silent until crippled) and partial cloak (all spikes are minor until crippled) and both scourge BC's have stealth and full cloak (no spikes until crippled)
The raiju does not have medium guns

The Orion does not have any heavy guns -- just medium front and sides
I would change the perseus to dark green medium and heavy -- light and heavy batteries on sides, a medium turret front

Give the turquoise and jet cruisers a light green CA -- the ion storm generator can alt-fire into an ion aura which is probably the most devestating CA weapon in the game, and each of them also have typical CA of their class

...

The calypso 1/turn can use the adv ECM suite when a friendly ship in 4" is targeted by an attack -- one weapon system that it is attacked by treats its lock as +1

Thanks admiral user, updating now!

>PHR prow turret counts as medium guns
Really? The barrels look about as big as the heavy broadsides, to me. Are they different in any way from the medium broadsides, besides having less shots?

nope, that's precisely what they are
I also apparently was mistaken earlier -- only light and heavy caliber weapons have the caliber rule -- medium batteries/broadsides/turrets do not have caliber medium, sorry to dissapoint

>nope, that's precisely what they are
Interesting.

>only light and heavy caliber weapons have the caliber rule -- medium batteries/broadsides/turrets do not have caliber medium, sorry to dissapoint
So in short, light cannons have increased accuracy against frigates, heavy cannons have increased accuracy against battleships (and maybe battlecruisers or heavy cruisers?), while medium cannons have the same accuracy against all targets.

Yeah, heavy caliber guns have caliber (H&S) so they are more effective against heavy tonnage craft (heavy cruisers and battlecruisers) and superheavy tonnage craft (currently just battleships)

Do light cruisers count as light tonnage, or medium tonnage?

medium tonnage -- light is just frigates and eventually corvettes

anywho gang, im about to pass out, but keep the questions rolling and ill answer in the morning.
Reconquer well you crazy commanders

Thanks for answering all these questions admiral user, I'm getting pretty hype (more than normal) now that I have some conception of what gameplay is going to be like!

For tommorow morning; how does partial and full cloak work? How does stealth work?
How do you cripple (or even damage) a ship that is cloaked or stealthed?

What are the rules for launch assets?

Random guy here, last thing I saw about cloaking had to do with spikes. Partial downgrades them, full prevents them, or something like that.

Wat dis? I'm new here but this seems like something I could jam out to.

Orbital space ship battlan, there was a decent quick and dirty summary last thread.

Dropfleet Commander is the second wargame made by Hawk Wargames, as well as their second game set in the drop____ commander universe. In it you are a fleet commander leading the fleets of the UCM, PHR, Scourge or Shaltari as you battle other fleets for orbital supremacy and deploy troops to the planets you fight over to take the planet for your faction.
Instead of the usual deal with space wargames, Dropfleet commander is a lot like submarine warfare. Many ships have infinite range weapons, and their only restrictions to firing is if the enemy is within scanning range. This is usually determined by both your own ships scan range and the target ships signature range. the signature will receive several 'spikes' if you take actions that heat up your ship, whether that's putting speed to thrusters or shunting power to weapons, meaning that if you aren't careful you can make yourself a massive target and can't fire back except at one or two isolated targets.

everything is pretty nicely summarized by and the posts linked to there, but that is the biggest set of hooks for the game.

Thanks I'll look into it.

Bump before sleep; keep the thread alive, anons.

Any reconquest phase 2 leaks yet? I want to know if the new Shaltari stuff is worth getting. Want to order the book and models I desire at the same time.

>What drew you to the cyborgs?
Looks mostly, the predatory fish analogy is a good one, but mechanics too. They're tough, which is always handy, but they look like they'll need some skill to get the best out of them, while not being as complex (and unforgiving) as the shaltari.

>What's your second choice? (Yeah, I know OP didn't actually ask that.)
Second choice would actually be the shaltari. I'm not a big fan of the spheres which spoil the profile of some ships, (sadly they're on every frigate,) but otherwise really like them. Their ships are sleek, but still detailed and interesting. Their light cruisers are especially nice (pic related). Am kind of nervous that I'm just not smart enough to play the fleet though, which combined with the fact I'd probably be partially converting frigates is pushing me toward PHR. Not a backer though so got a month or two to change my mind multiple times.

>What Mechanics entice you the most to the game?
There's a lot of strategy in activation, orders, signatures, and dealing with momentum (given some orders restrict turning) but once the shooting begins stuff starts exploding in a nice satisfying way.

>What kind of mats are you going to play on?
Whatever's available. Maybe just normal wargaming tables (painted green or desert-coloured) to start with.

>Everyone's playing PHR Edition
>What drew you to the cyborgs?

Don't play, but have been keeping track of the game; but everyone's playing PHR because they're the best looking faction by a huge margin. At best the other factions look okay, while the PHR look good.

From what he said last thread:

>Fighters: Add PD to whatever ship they're attached to.

>Bombers: Close Action attacks against a target.

What guns are on the Leo anyway? 1 Heavy and 2 Medium broadsides?

Have you seen the white and red color scheme on those scourge ships? It makes them look so much better imo.

Im getting to like them more and more

There's been quite a few people saying they want to see the ships in a different colour scheme before they judge. Seems the default ones aren't clicking with a lot of people.

Here's a question for those that are planning to play both DZC and DFC: are you planning to play the same faction in both systems? If not, why not - did you not like your own faction's spaceships/land units, or were another faction's just that much cooler? Would be interesting to hear if there's any faction in particular whose ships just aren't working for players of that land army, or conversely if Hawk have nailed the aesthetics sufficiently that most people are sticking with the same faction.

Speaking for myself, fairly new to all this so starting from scratch, I'm undecided between Shaltari and PHR for DFC, but like the Shaltari's ground forces much more than the PHR's. Therefore slightly leaning toward Shaltari for DFC - even if I'm not planning on getting any DZC in the near future it might be neat to stick to one faction for both games.

I dun made a strawpoll too:
strawpoll.me/10943705
If one fleet is drawing players away (there has been a lot of love for PHR in this thread, for example) it'd be interesting to see which.

Pic related, it's the starter fleets and army boxes side by side for comparison.

my group all play DZC and are all picking up dropfleet, we all like UCM, only unpopular fleet is scourge (even our scourge player doesnt like them, which is weird as I think they are better than their ground stuff)

I play UCM and PHR in DZ and will be picking up both fleets to accompany them and I will have a scourge full fleet to sell on, Most of my friends will have full of every fleet.

How do you guys build your dropships to carry your vehicles?

I got the starter set and am nervous to put anything together without screwing it up.

dont really worry about that unless you are a more advanced modeller, it involves using magnets, and then the PHR and Resistance are the only factions that lend themselves to it easily. Scourge almost dont neeed it as long as you model the tanks with boring poses, and UCM is very tricky to magnetize.

1 medium and slightly more than 1 light

how good is the leo? and the other ks battlecruisers

Well, we know the Basilisk for instance has a Cloaking device that means it doesn't suffer from energy spikes. Other than that though, we don't really know.

I play Resistance in DZC, so I'm SOL, unfortunately.

I kept hoping they'd a have a fleet of Firefly Reaver-esque ships, but it doesn't make much sense for them to have access to ANY fleet resources, let alone combat-capable craft.

Well, just from the weaponry, we can assume that the leo is going to be an excellent "escort" battlecruiser, in that it excells at shooting down both light and medium ships.

The Adamant class will be an interesting multi-role shaltari ship, as it's the only one with both particle lances and ion cannons / disruptors / whatever they are.

The Scourge Basilisk has a whole fuckload of lasers and a full cloak, so its entire purpose is pretty much to absolutely destroy enemy frigates.

The UCM Atlantis is basically a fleet carrier with a whole lot of guns, meaning it can go engage other ships while its craft are out doing its thing.

The UCM Avalon has a lot of medium turrets, allowing it to engage smaller vessels that try to flank its beam, while its huge fuck-off laser absolutely lights up enemy ships, and I think it gives your Avalon a minor spike too.

OK, back and armed with coffee and eggs!
All stealth-like mechanics only last until you are crippled
partial cloak -- all spikes you get are only minor spikes
full cloak -- you do not get spikes
stealth -- when running silent you can still fire one weapon
Since these rules are only available on scourge heavies, that limits the amount of crazy stealth stuff we'll be seeing on the board at once. the scourge heavies also lack the strong armor of the UCM and PHR, and the strange defensive tech of the shaltari, so hopefully this will be something fun rather than a disruptive thing

Ah, so there's no accuracy penalties to shooting at cloaked or stealthed ships?

I suppose that's fair enough; there is no true stealth in space, just minimization.

Are you trying to magnetize them? There are YouTube videos. UCM is notoriously difficult though.

So, somewhat complicated
in the roundup phase, after ground combat is resolved, you go into the launch asset subphase [those familiar with Star Wars Armada its somewhat like a very quick version of the squadron phase]
1)You determine who goes first DZC style, and alternate activating squadrons with launch capability between the two of you for each step
2) launch torpedoes
3) launch bombers
4) launch fighters [this means fighters can be launched to counter the bombers deployed]
5) launch dropships and bulk landers
6) Resolve the effects of all of the LA tokens

theres a lot of specific rules wrapped up in here, a ton of little situations, but some other things to know, but it is important to note that a ship gets a minor spike for launching strike craft or munitions.
Launch assets can target things outside a ships scan/signature range -- each ship has its own thrust value and thus has two ranges -- if its target is within its thrust value, its effect happens immediately. If the target is up to 2* thrust value, its token is set next to the target taking effect next round
Every race has its own stats for fighters, bombers, and torpedoes (no torps for shaltari)

How does cloak work with externally applied spike (eg flash) or spikes from critical hits?

if you think about it the accuracy penalty is existent in them not getting spikes,and thus only being attack able at shorter ranges

ah, sorry, didnt notice the second question
assuming you are attacking a scourge Basilisk Battlecruiser, and the bugger is staying in running silent mode and taking pot shots with one of its Occulus Beam Arrays. At this point to attack it (running silent and no spikes) you have to get within your own scan range. And while this is pretty far forward, the Basilisk has 3 weapon systems and has thus far been limiting itself to 1, and now since you are within scan range of the target, you may use your gun(s) and CA weapons -- this means that stealth ships are a great use of your Close Attack Bruisers.

How much launching can a hangar-equipped ship do?

Does somebody have the reconquest manuals?

I suppose you could find some mothballed ships from the pre-scourge period lying dormant in some kind of forgotten BSG Ragnar Anchorage sort of facility. But one can assume that these things were mothballed for a reason.

One can also assume that the scourge already blew those up, and that such ships would be far better off in UCM or PHR hands

Orbital Bombardment had some tidbits on their blog along with the informational video
--BUT Veeky Forums things its spam so googles!

actually a full medium broadside and a full light broadside, tragically not linked but broadsides normally aren't, usually only batteries

I want you all to know, this thread is making the wait for my Kickstarter stuff REALLY HARD.

No it doesn't

It's suffering that we must all share, user.

Then post the link, user.

Here's the only entry that mentions it, and it just says it's here

Translation: two medium and two light weapon profiles per side (PHR cruisers have two total weapon profiles per side)

What are scan and signature values for various ships? What exactly does silent running do?

All the ships of the same class in a faction have basically the same profile
It's from Hawk, masters of slow updates
Dropzone, while balanced, had no real mechanical hook to it other than activations, which was mediocire at best
The bases look more complicated than Heroclix, and smaller in size, with info that is transmitted nowhere else.

Explain, considering these complaints, why I would want to buy into this?

It might be hard for you, but for me it's Two kickstarter accounts each in for Commadore, meaning two of every starter fleet, double stretch goals, two of each Battlecruiser, and a few addons as well hard.

Gotta wave my kikestarter dick at least a little. Not sure why I wanted to spend $600 though.

>All the ships of the same class in a faction have basically the same profile
Modularity and efficient production fluffwise

>It's from Hawk, masters of slow updates
Fair point, but considering they don't fuck up balance (and constantly release errata and new units between updates), they don't need to update that often.

>Dropzone, while balanced, had no real mechanical hook to it other than activations, which was mediocire at best
Dropships and a system design expressly for urban warfare?

>The bases look more complicated than Heroclix, and smaller in size,
They're a circle with angle markings and a wheel in the center that spins. Literally 1 moving part that shows all pertinent information.
>with info that is transmitted nowhere else.
You would have to use token to transmit it otherwise, which is more annoying and fiddly than the bases.

>Explain, considering these complaints, why I would want to buy into this?
The models are cool? The game isn't everyone's cup of tea, user.

Ummm, i dont remember exactly which BC's are in the KS, so Ill go over ALL OF THEM!

UCM:
The Avalon is the cheaper of the two, but with a pair of Medium Turret mounds and a Viper Super Heavy laser, it is a terror to anything in that front narrow arc
The Atlantis is a smidge more expensive but with the a half set of the above medium turrets, 2 sets of 270* full heavy turrets, AND a small strike craft contingency, its a fairly intimidating swiss army knife [for a somewhat premium cost]

Scourge [remember, these guys have cloak and stealth]
The Basilisk is an interesting one, with the strongest side-arc firing in the faction [still nothing on ucm or especially phr though]. Its better at hiding in stealth, and so it is a more patient version, compared to the somewhat rediculous...
The Manticore. I see this one being a staple of scourge players and those metas that have space jellies are gonna have to figure out what to do about this thing [answer: bombers. all of the bombers] at range it can fire its scourge torpedo -- and these things are nasty -- they dont hit as hard as PHR and UCM, but with the corruptor rule, the target will eventually die, no questions asked [maybe not during the game, mind]. Other than the torpedo, it has a solid occulus beam array, and when things get close, it has a ton of CA power with its Plasma Tempest

PHR:
The Leonidas: guns. Weapons free this thing fires 20 shots out of each side.
The Scipio is a strange one just because it is SO similar to the Bellerophon Heavy Cruiser, and for ~20% more points you trade out the twin supernova laser for a set of full light caliber broadsides. Volume of fire is great, but I dont know if i see many players trading the cool factor for bunches of little guns, at least early on.

Shaltari:
The Adamant carries a pair of Disintegrator batteries on swivels and a pair of particle lances -- like the avalon it will be a monster to those in its beam arc, and when combined with the shaltari signature/scan it will shoot first unless you can cunningly avoid that narrow arc
The Mithril class is a lot more shaltari in my opinion just because its a weird ship. At range it will be frustrating with the gravity coils if it catches you in arc, up close it is terrifying with both an ion aura CA and a harpoon cascade CA, and when ignored it performs very solidly as a bombardment craft. Like everything shaltari though, hitting it with BTL's and heavy guns while its shields are down will easily cripple it.

>Leonidas weapons free is 20 shots each side
good god no one told me the orcs were showing up for a fight.

>Manticore and all that
oh man that thing sounds lovely, so excited to mess with that. Any chance we can get some info on the battleships themselves? I'd love to hear what those lovely trilobite battleships do.

>Plasma Tempest
So if the plasma cloud is the normal scourge CA, and the plasma storm is the upgrade CA found on the Djinn, Strix, and Wyvern, is the plasma tempest that, but turned up to 11?

>Modularity and efficient production fluffwise
Does not translate to an enjoyable game visually. Which is a shame - Hawk is traditionally good at aesthetic.

> considering they don't fuck up balance (and constantly release errata and new units between updates), they don't need to update that often.
They release approximately 2-3 new units in the two years it takes them to make a new book. That does not make a compelling game, and given that they already seem to be reaching for ideas on making new ships, it doesn't seem like this will be getting much support.

> Dropships and a system design expressly for urban warfare?
Dropships are just aerial transports, which a lot of other games have - shit, even 40k has those these days. The only ones that don't that I can think of are games without rules for planes at all. As for urban warfare,t hat's more a limit than a strength. Gods forfend that I should want to look for objectives or control points out in a forest, say, or literally anywhere else.

> The models are cool?
This is literally the problem, is that they are not. They get one cool design and then change a couple of apparently-aesthetic bits and call it a different one and repeat the process down the line. I WANT to like this. I still have fun with Dropzone, despite its sharp limitations. But I just can't see it.