Dropfleet / Dropzone Commander General

Gonna post the sprues the other user shared in last thread.

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>Naming ships after "where is that?"-tier towns in Britbongia when there's still no Mexico City or Rio de Janeiro class

UK Company, so a little local flavour is to be expected, besides you'd reserve the major metropolis cities for the battleships and carriers anyway.

I like to think of it as a challenge mode. Ill need someone to play shaltari so i can have honerable space jousting.

Hawk's names are reasonable. Those are shit.

Now lets be honest with ourselves, user...

>Mexico City
>Rio de Janeiro

Do you really think those places made it up to the EAA era? Do you really really? Really?

>"Next proposed class name... Mexico City"
>"There was a CITY?"
>"Yeah, why not Qattara Depression-Town while we're on a roll."
>"Gobi-burg... no offense, Li."
>"None taken. Manchester."
>"Ouch!"

Name a large metropolitan area that has disappeared in the last 200 years

Also, third world cities are growing far faster than first world ones.

None of those towns are real towns man. Those are joke names. Also, that's not an official list from Hawk, that's just something that someone photoshopped.

I mean come on, look at the Carriers. Bedrock? Cabot Cove? Hill Valley? None of this ringing a bell?

Most of the cruisers are named after bongland soap operas. Emmerdale, Eastenders, Coronation Street etc. Warmington on Sea is Dads Army and Ambridge is (I think) The Archers. Which is I believe the longest running Radio Drama in history?

>Jerusalem's Lot???

Maybe if they end up fighting a boarding action against Scourge Vampires it'll click...

This guy gets it!

I think I've worked this out. The light cruisers use the bits labelled Side Wings but in an above/below orientation, normal cruisers use the Side Wings as side wings with a top wing added, and heavy cruisers are like that but with a weapon on the top wing as well. Weapons always seem to be in identical pairs, except the top wing weapon on heavy cruisers which can be different.

If we assume any ship can have any gun on any ship (which obviously isn't the case, but what the hell) that's:
>5 light cruiser variants
>5 cruiser variants
>5 mothership and 5 carrier variants (they're normal cruisers with a basic core changed/added to)
>22 heavy cruiser variants (you can have triple particle lances or ion cannons, if you're wondering about the extra 2)
For a total of 42 cruiser variants from the sprue. Or if you make motherships and carriers out of the heavy cruiser design (i.e. 3 guns on a mothership or carrier) that goes up to 86.

This does of course include options like particle lance light cruisers and bombardment cannon motherships which are obviously ridiculous, though.

Are we going to keep these threads up until the kickstarter delivers?

Because I'm fine with that.

...The Orion has heavy guns?

We had constant threads for while the kickstarter was going, and that lasted a few weeks, so we can have this thread up for the few weeks until it delivers.

Also because these threads are fun and we need to incubate our nascent memes :^)

I wonder what the bulbous looking beams on the Aquamarine cruiser do.

Chart maker here, sorry; I had assumed that the prow cannon turret was heavy guns, but it's actually just mediums.

I'm redoing the chart's with admiral user's recommendations from last thread.

Sounds cool, although we may run out of new information to talk about. Depends when backers start getting books in hand, I guess.

Ah, drat. I got excited for a moment there.

So can someone explain at this point who these factions are and why they don't cover all possible roles on the field?

I'm having a hard time picking my army, but I don't play dropzone yet so that furthers the indecisiveness.

How are the mecha guys? I use to be an Ace walker pilot back in my day.

fixd according to admiral user's suggestions

They do cover all roles, it's just that not every faction has a specialized ship dedicate to that role.

For instance, the Shaltari (orange) have the best PD in the game (I think), but only the UCM have a dedicated PD ship.
Also, there's a lot of granularity in that chart, with "combat" meaning "sensor+signature" range and CA meaning "sensor range" combat.

Pick whatever looks coolest.
UCM: SPESS NAVY. Maintain formation, damnit.
PHR: SPESS MARINES. Brute force that shit.
SCOURGE: Every bad guy space fleet with 'pew pew' bolts of green shit. Also, stealth.
SHALTARI: Just-as-planned repositioning, long range stealth, and insane killshot lasers. Glass cannon.

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I keep forgetting that shaltari scanners don't just help the main guns, they also mean shaltari can launch CA attacks from out of range of the enemy's CA weapons.

UCM are the most flexible and pretty damn sturdy. Probably going to be the most forgiving to play as.

PHR slow but heaviest armed and armored. Every ship can potentially punch above its weight. Napoleonic naval warfare.

Scourge are close combat beasts and other fuckery.

Shaltari are probably going to be the most difficult to play as they operate on extremes. Best PD, shit awful armor and cant be used if they have their shields up. Largest sensor range and smallest signature but if you put up shields they light right the fuck up. Highest movement but focus on front/narrow arc weapons.

Pick what looks cool to you man, unless you want lore reasons too.

>Pick what looks cool to you man

Well that's part of my problem, I don't particularly LOVE any single faction. There's ship classes that look amazing to me and then they go up or down the scale and get worse

Small Scourge vessels are fucking awesome, but I really dislike the bigguns. The PHR have really cool middle weights, and the bigger the Shaltrari get the more intriguing they are.

I read a little bit of the thread yesterday and saw something about ship ratios, but wasn't exactly clear on if it was a specific gametype or not.

10 smalls, 5 middles and 1 or 2 huges?

Is there any deviation from that between faction? If the scourge are a swarm army for instance, I'll end up liking them, for instance.

>unless you want lore reasons too.
Yes, that would help out a great deal, actually. Would you be so kind?

this breakdown was helpful however, so thanks.

>10 smalls, 5 middles and 1 or 2 huges?
I think it was something around 15-20 frigates, 10-16 cruisers, and 0-3 battleships or battlecruisers.

That being said, that's just a balanced fleet; you could very well do a frigate-swarm Scourge fleet with a few supporting cruisers or battleship if you wanted to, depending on how the force-org chart is set up.

>Yes, that would help out a great deal, actually. Would you be so kind?

Basically, although I don't have my book with me:

>humanity finally unites under a singular government, Earth Authority Administration
>Shaltari show up, act all friendly like, and show humanity the locations of some really choice life-bearing planets
>these, along with Earth, became the Cradle Words, humanity's core worlds
>turns out the Shaltari were just buttering up humanity to fight other Shaltari for them, humanity says to fuck off, that faction of Shaltari shrug their shoulders and do so
>humanity begins expanding to less than preferable worlds as resource colonies
>suddenly, a super dense white ball falls from orbit and crash lands into SA; some egg-heads touch a few electrodes to it, it hacks SA's computer network, and hires some mercs to grab it an run away
>little while later, message is sent out (presumably by the little sphere) saying "yo, if you don't want your shit pushed in, come to Vega"
>people do, EAA doesn't want them to fuck off
>they do fuck off, become known as the abandonists, EAA fleet is crippled
>shortly thereafter the Scourge show up, jellyfish-looking bodysnatchers, and completely roflstomp humanity, taking all the cradle worlds
>90% or so of humanity is captured or killed, the rest manage to escape to the colonies
>flash forward a few hundred years or so, and the colonies have reformed as the United Colonies of Mankind (UCM), a military republic
>They're building up the invasion to end all invasions, and are preparing to fuck up the Scourge and take their worlds back
(cont)

So you are running into a problem we all have right now, We dont know the specifics of the force organizations.

So in Dropzone you have various battlegroups at different sizes of games. Use this and fiddle with it to give you a rough idea of what we will likely run into on release. solomonder.com/scoldzap/

So those ship numbers are given as a generic fleet at what would be ~1500 points. There are larger games at 2500-3000 points and likewise there are smaller games too.

UCM and Scourge generally rely on weight of numbers in the ground game.

>new humans call themselves the Post-Human Republic (the PHR), and their message boils down to "You aren't ready, if you attack now the Scourge will beat you"
>UCM realizes the PHR are the descendants of the abandonists, and tell them to shove their advice
>PHR shrug and fuck off
>invasion begins, is going fairly well
>UCM and Scourge are duking it out
>PHR are fucking around on the sidelines doing God knows what, attacking both Scourge and UCM
>Shaltari are fucking around on the sidelines doing God knows what, attacking everyone
>UCM is only attacking the cradle worlds as of now, they've leaft Earth alone since it has the mother-of-all Scourge fleets hanging around in orbit.
>Small Scourge vessels have been detected zipping off to parts unknown, and it's implied that they're about to move on to a new civilization.

(Not the same user that was asking.) Am I right in thinking the shaltari are a warrior culture, (with a sort of aztec/native american tribal leaning,) where individual tribes fight just because they feel like it, they don't really have an ulterior motivation as a race?

Much appreciated, my man

That's actually a lot bigger than I recall, but I realize there will be different ways to arrange point values and such.

I'm not a typical massive wargamer, but I have always wanted a cool spess game that interacted with ground forces, thus the draw of this IP. I haven't looked into dropzone commander really at all until I heard about dropfleet -- but I'll go seek out any information from my FLGS on how that plays in the local scene.

Biggest concern is falling in love with yet another game that no one gives a shit about because it doesn't have the GW, PP or FFG stamp on it.

I guess with that I'll standby for further updates.

One last question before I go.... Does this company have staunch WYSIWYG policies? Because I would probably undertake a massive modification job to my faction, whichever one I pick.

>Am I right in thinking the shaltari are a warrior culture
Pretty much; they have the technology for indefinite lifespan, where they transfer their conciousness into new vat-grown bodies, and some of their older members can live for dozens upon dozens of lifetimes.
Coincidentally, they also have a massive fear of death the longer they live, but are also proud warriors; Shaltari don't get names until they've become combat veterans.

As for the Tribes, as far as I can tell, it's half politics, half a game; they share tech with each other and don't necessarily try to utterly wipe the other tribes out, but they fight over political disagreements and the like.

It comes down to them being a warrior culture, wanting to perpetually keep their collective racial blade sharp and on point, and so fight against their only worthy adversaries; themselves.

>Does this company have staunch WYSIWYG policies? Because I would probably undertake a massive modification job to my faction, whichever one I pick.
Sort of, I guess?
WYSIWYG isn't that big of a deal with dropzone, since there are only a few variants of each unit, if at all. There aren't a lot of little gubbinz or upgrades to worry about.

Also, and this is a big thing, Hawk expressly designs a fair bit of their models purposefully for magnetization, especially DFC.

Nail on the head. The hedgehog ayyys are pretty much immortal and have massive war boners. Its like a whole species of hot-blooded animu characters.

If you live in Britbongistan you will be okay. Can't really speak for elsewhere. I grabbed up all the fleets for myself and friends as I dont have an FLGS anywhere near me.

>WYSIWYG

Not really, as long as things are clear on what is what and dont fuck with LOS everyhting should be okay.The models are decently easy to magnetize too.

>hedgehog
Is there any art of them out of their armour? I know they're said to be diminutive, but otherwise have no idea how they look.

There's some pics in the books.
They're little runty spiky dudes who wear fancy giant hats. And are dicks to each other.

Daww. Aren't they adorable.

Incidentally, this is why all their shit is native american themed. Racist human diplomats coined all that because the shaltari leaders wear headdress-like hats.

>None of this ringing a bell?
No, and I would be ashamed if it did

Will you distinguish between chin guns and broadsides for PHR?

It'd just be easier to post my collection of ship pics and their loadouts when I get back to my desktop, desu.

Which will be a week or so

The Christmas picture is better for this

>the Scourge show up, jellyfish-looking bodysnatchers

WTF I hate humanity now

Do you have it? I can never find it...

They're more like Yerks or G'ould really.

Got one of the PHR by any chance? I know they're cyborgs, but don't know how cyborg-y they are.

This is the best looking variant in the game, across all factions.

I fear that it will be mostly useless though. I can only see myself putting light broadsides on troop carriers, since those are the things that will be trading fire with frigates in low orbit.

Life is suffering.

No pic, but think Cylon infiltrators rather than 40k servitor; pretty humans in skintight bodysuits.

eat your servos out, famicom

That is not the Achilles though.

A ship, that with it's cruiser mounted Torpedo and double Heavy Gun Broadsides designed to punch so far above it's weight that it's like they added thrusters to the guy from Shadow of the Collossus.

BTL on the front though. I'm always a fan of that.

I don't have an official image, but this is the sort of thing you get pictures and descriptions of.

Many use bodies that can pass themselves off as beautiful humans. The most inhuman thing about them, apparently, is the way they move. Too precise and fluid.

IIRC their blood is black because nanomachines.

I like the Achilles and will be using it (if it's true that heavy 'sides have a lock 2+ against large ships I can imagine a lot of people will use super elite PHR fleets with tons of them), but I feel like the way the heavy broadsides protrude messes a little with the streamlined profile of PHR ships.

So very much integrated bodies, not flesh with metal bits stuck on. Thanks, that basically answers what I was wondering.

>heavy cannons
Reminds me a bit of this, what with their optics and everything.
youtube.com/watch?v=D1GdoUDBsaE

I don't know what either of those things are

>he doesn't know what Yeerks are
>he never read Animorphs as a kid

that typo will forever haunt me

Why are people so convinced that light broadsides will suck?

>Knights of Sidonia

mah nigga. Shame there'll never be a Season 2, shit was great.

I just loved all the fancy tech and pseudo-realistic space combat they get up in it.

Coincidentally, I always wanted a series about the galactic alliance of humanity vs the Hideauze from Gargantia; them fleet tactics, yo.

Shame the way the manga ended

anyone have the phase 1 pdf? The original shared folder is long gone

Haven't finished the manga yet, does it vary drastically from the show? Seemed fairly consistent so far, but really not that far in.

>captcha asks for billboards
>shows me shrimp

are you living under a rock? season 2 is on Netflix.

By season 2, I meant past what we've got now on Netflix. I binge-watched it a few weeks ago, so I guess I rolled it all into one season in my head.

I stopped watching season 2 two episodes in because my girlfriend and I promised each other we'd watch it together...fuck me that was months ago and I forgot season two existed until mentioned it.

>the joke

Already a Rio class cruiser, senpai

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>Mexico City or Rio de Janeiro
I'm pretty sure the UCM wants to name their cities after humanity's great and mighty metropolises, not shitholes from meme-tier countries.

>SanFran and Seattle
>not meme tier

...huh, I just realised the subtle texturing on her cheek and hands.

Oh shit me too.

Das cool.

>PHR cruiser sprue will finally give me an extra rail gun to make my second Zeus into an Odin

>what the fuck is this bitch doing
>I'm an 8 foot tall walking war machine of death
>stay still so I can pump you full of gauss rounds
>I bet the Elders never had to deal with this shit

>quote from guy falling back from
CQB

>your head

>how the fuck are they dodging microwave fire
>by my fancy hat, this is annoying
>can we use the firedrake on them?

are they shipping yet?

To name them in terms of Battlefleet Gothic factions:
UCM: Imperial Navy
PHR: Space Marines
Scourge: Orks (if orks were good)
Shaltari: Eldar

I think in about 2 weeks, and for those of us that are stateside, 3 or so days after that.

>Hollyoaks
>Emmerdale
um... where's Corry? Neighbours? Home and Away?

I'm working on a steamy encounter between a seductive older Basilisk and a naive young Atlantis.