/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General

Can anyone tell me what the point of Praetorian Snipers is? Are they just supposed to be a single AA shot? Cause no one I play against ever has infantry man the walls. Ended up with like six bases of them in a trade and I have no idea what to do with them.

Got one friend who's interested, but he wants to play a game first before buying. Thinking I'll buy a second and if he's down just sell him one of the armies

Yeah that's a decent plan. You gonna split the terrain with him too or just keep it yourself and have a massive potential board setup?

Yeah looks like they're generally meant to pick off infantry. Their advantage I guess is their Small Arms AA shot uses their full range, which is ok I guess.

They also get that penalty to be shot at, so I suppose it's less risky to man walls with them.

Maybe its like Battlefleet gothic?
Since its from the same writer, it will be similar.

I read somewhere, that the writer intends to undo flaws he made in battlefleet.
I played it, but besides fleets have many similarities and some vague rules writing, i never felt there was a big flaw.

Can someone name the biggest flaws or game faults you encountered in bfg?

Nope, I don't get it either. They aren't even a cheaper way of unlocking more Exotic slots for proper praetorians because wolverines cost the same (and can get away without a transport, and can actually spread your SOI/spot for IF stuff, and have better AA).

I'd counts-as them as praetorians myself.

Ships the size of planets

Its not the same author. Chambers helped on the stuff but its pretty much Dave work - the rules are similar (very much so) to DzC (almost no modifications to lock value, crit on +2 lock and so on) I think Chambers could be here for layers rules (I wonder if they even add anything significant to the game) and the bread and butter rules that we dont know ZIP about - so how dropping troops acctually works

Yeah blame designers for hobbist depictions - It's like saying that sheltari can blow out small ship from the existence but cant shoot down torpedo that is the size of the same ship ...

It's in the rules, dude.

>Can someone name the biggest flaws or game faults you encountered in bfg?

Well, a lot of it got errata'd away over they years but on release:

>Fighters could be spawned infinitely as long as you didn't roll a double when trying to reload ordinance.

So you'd end up with massive chains of fighters spawning out of carriers. Was errata'd so you can never have more fighter craft than you have hangars

>...but don't Orks have variable size hangar bays from turn to turn?

Did I stutter?

>Eldar were solid bullshit with a 2+ save to everything that wasn't standard batteries.

Tempered by the fact that they had fuck all armour and standard batteries are many and plentiful. Also, no shields so moving through blast markers could kill them.

>Orks by contrast were woefully overcosted

Tempered in later errata but yeah, it was pretty clear they were being costed as if their variable strength batteries rolled 6's every time. Which was obviously wrong.

>Necrons were cheese the likes of which the Eldar wish they were

They also gave out double VP's for crippling and killing, so it does balance out.

All this UCM ships from previous thopic gave mu a craving

Would this list stand on its own in DzC or be tottaly boolshajt ?

Standard Army
Clash: 1500/1500 points
Standard Army
Standard Roster [1500/1500 pts]
Field Command [512 pts]
Phoenix: Phoenix(Lieutenant) [250 pts]
Falcon B Squad: 3x Falcon B [150 pts]
Hazard Suit Team: 2x Hazard Suit, Raven A(+Missile Pods) [112 pts]
Armored Formation [308 pts]
Sabre Squad: 3x Sabre, Condor [142 pts]
Rapier Squad: 3x Rapier, Condor [166 pts]
Legionnaire Corps [270 pts]
Legionnaires: 2x Legionnaires, Raven A [80 pts]
Legionnaires: 2x Legionnaires, Raven A [80 pts]
Eagle: Eagle [110 pts]
Expeditionary Group [276 pts]
Praetorian Snipers: 3x Praetorian Snipers, Raven A(+Missile Pods) [144 pts]
Praetorians: 2x Praetorians, Raven A(+Missile Pods) [132 pts]
Air Wing [134 pts]
Archangel Squad: 2x Archangel [134 pts]

I always thought in BFG (like DFC, in fact) the ships weren't to scale, the models were oversized representations on top of their flight stands.

But then the ramming rules don't really make sense.

Basically BFG just had somewhat wonky scale, much like basically every GW game.

Doesn't make it a bad game, I just get slightly spergy about shit like that.

They are. Dave repeatedly said as much.

The biggest flaw I can think of is that frigates were fucking useless. They were way too fragile, so spending any points on them at all was a wasted effort.

>At a glance you can tell which is which.
Yup. Even if you can't remember the class names you can instantly tell what a ship is equipped with and thus what it's able to do.

There main purpose is area denial zone turn one with their AA shots while searching for objectives. They are great for picking off high value infantry that do man the walls. Braves, Hazard suits, Flak Teams, Long Reach are all usual suspects, but some times it is useful to put even regular squads up there to deal with a threat. Snipers are supposed to just keep searching and holding areas and wait for opportunities, not really be active hunters.

I don't see much wrong with this list. FFOR says you can't have three falcon B's in one squad, but I don't know if that is accurate.

LT is kinda low for a commander.

Besides what was previously mentioned, I didn't like how the game was so gimmicky with certain mechanics.

Picking certain things like spamming torpedoes or fighters or Nova cannons was a viable tactic.

Still a great game it just needed a lot of improvements.

How are they supposed to search and man the wall at the same time?

>I wonder if the rules which dramatically affect combat and are necessary for scoring add anything to the game

What ship classes are you guys most hyped to run?

I really wanna use an Achilles. I NEED to punish my friends for using those kickstarter battlecruisers.

you mean -1 lock value is dramaticly changing the game ? And you and I don't know shitt about scoring - only that if you have more "tons" lol aorund objectives you get one point - but why you need those troops on the ground and how much VP you get for them in relation to destroying opponent is still pretty much in the wind - those rules werent ready when BoW viedeos were filmed user

Searching doesn't affect your actions, you can still shoot as normal.

>the rules are similar (very much so) to DzC (almost no modifications to lock value, crit on +2 lock and so on)
user, to-hit rolls are common amongst all game systems. That's like saying that DFC is pretty much DZC in space because they both use D6
Also, what's important to note is that there are no to-damage rolls in DFC, as well as weapons doing varying amounts of damage, rather than just one, or two on a crit.

>(I wonder if they even add anything significant to the game)
Why wouldn't they? They add a form of abstract topology and terrain to the battlefield, in addition to sensor/sig, that heavily effect how quickly ships die,

>and the bread and butter rules that we dont know ZIP about - so how dropping troops acctually works
But we do know how it works, we just don't have the hard numbers to look at.

>you mean -1 lock value is dramaticly changing the game ?
In a game run with D6, yes, +1* lock value is extreme.

> only that if you have more "tons" lol aorund objectives you get one point
What's funny about this? Ships come in different tonnages (light, medium, heavy, superheavy); the more tonnage you have near a cluster, the more points you get.

>but why you need those troops on the ground
Because that's the point of the game?

>and how much VP you get for them in relation to destroying opponent
From the standard scenario, you get a ticking +1 VP every turn for having more tonnage around a cluster. At the end of the game, you get VP based on which sectors and clusters you control with ground assets, and what exactly they are.
Destroying ships does not give you VP (except in some scenarios, I'd imagine); It'll most likely be a tie breaker.

>is still pretty much in the wind
No, it's not.

>those rules werent ready when BoW viedeos were filmed user
These are core mechanics of the game! In any case, this has been confirmed as much through the Admiral that comes through these threads.

Remember it's a double whammy, not only do you get fewer hits, you also get fewer criticals (or none at all).

there is no searching in DFC

Yes, its just a representation.

Thx, thought he is more involved.

Thx for answere user.
>fighters
Never had problems, but yes the revides made more sense.
But we never had much fighters on the table. Either they entered a fight or the fuel ran out.
>orks
Never played them, but i thought it was more like how many fighters they can start. Like how many cannons they can get firing.
>eldar
Didnt thought about that.
>Necron
Completly forgot the OP race.

Ok, it wasn really game breaking, but could be or got better balanced.
I can see what anons meant.

I never had any problems with frigates, they are rather meatshields, but they did some good damage.

Can see what you refer too.
I found Novas were rather useless.

The hit rules are similar - you have different rules in warmahordes (also D6es and Warhammer) If DfC is similar to any game other then DzC it would be AGE OF SIGMAR (fixed to hit roll and seperate weapon profile that gives you all the stats)

All that leyers do is impose -1 on lock - nothing more and on top of that if you score some critical - you can go down and burn - only that - seems to be a lot of crap for somthing so meager as 16.67% change band

Changing leyers is just tottal gimick without any sense what so ever

Honestly its not a horrid strategy but like everything in then plan does have some weaknesses -- namely if the enemy is using strike carriers instead of troopships, he can just go atmo the turn the torpedoes would arrive and the torpedoes just burn up on re-entry (the only launch assets that dont are dropships and bulk landers)
The other is that two huge ships racing up the board is pretty awesome, it does telegraph your intent pretty strongly, and if the enemy active-scans you after moving max thrust you'll have a major spike (max thrust +1, active scanning +1) giving you a signature of 26", likely letting him shoot at you with pretty much everything before the torpedoes get launched
Now if the rest of your fleet was keeping up, you could force some target priority problems on him. Things to consider when list building.

Silent running is a very good idea. The dragon sadly does not have stealth, but the manticore battlecruiser does, part of why i say its so scary (one of my favorite ships, since it does so well on standard orders or silent running). It only has one torpedo though.
actually, torpedoes (like all launch assets) have their own thrust value, and they can go double that -- this range is actually faster than the scourge battleship
Shield and armor work as normal against torpedoes like any attack

>The hit rules are similar
It's literally a simple "this is the accuracy of your gun, roll to see if its hits"
Whether it's "similar" or not doesn't matter, since it's as simple as can possibly be.

>If DfC is similar to any game other then DzC it would be AGE OF SIGMAR
Nice meme

>All that leyers do is impose -1 on lock - nothing more and on top of that if you score some critical - you can go down and burn - only that - seems to be a lot of crap for somthing so meager as 16.67% change band
Changing layers also prevents you from turning (that turn), and it's a huge decision on whether or not to pursue enemies up or down layers. 17% is a huge probability change.

>Changing leyers is just tottal gimick without any sense what so ever
List off all your grievances besides "+1 lock is negligible" then.

>Shield and armor work as normal against torpedoes like any attack
I read on the Hawk forums that the "to damage" step of the torpedoes, when they actually do hit a ship, has them rolling xDn, with each of those hits doing 6 damage (or so the forums say) and vulnerable to armor saves.
What special orders can shake a torpedo, and if they do so, is it shaken for good?

He was asking about DZC not DF

And how does launch assets work - you deploy bombers and then the launch phase you direct them at enemy and they fly and do dmg and then die or stay on board ?

You can roll to shake hostile launch assets (bombers, torpedoes) with a max thrust SO or change course SO. torpedoes only get shaken on a 6+.
if a torpedo is shaken -- it is shaken for good. Fluff-wise i guess this is getting the torpedo around or left behind enough that it wont catch up before it blows?

As for the rumored way that it attacks, I only know what happened it beta -- dave has confirmed that gravity coils have changed, other weapons very well might have too -- we'll all find out soon!
But in the beta torpedoes are basically a 2+ 6 damage attack with a page of rules that explains how they get launched, how they can be avoided, how long it takes, etc etc. Scourge torpedoes are just 4 damage torpedoes with the corruptor rule. From what Dave said last time on the video, I dont think that has changed.
In DFC, you roll armor/shields against each damage point, and armor does not function against any of the damage dealt by crits

>In DFC, you roll armor/shields against each damage point
Is this true for all weapons, or just torpedoes?

If I hit someone with a 2 damage cannon, would they roll two armor saves against it?

so the launch assets are completely handled in the launch subsphase -- you launch your bombers with a target in mind, you launch your fighters afterwords (potentially using them to counter enemy bombers) then all the bombers that have arrived on target (launched in thrust range this turn, or launched beyond last turn) make their attack, all the fighters that have arrived may be used as counters for that turn against enemy CA and bomber attacks. After a counter is used (fighters help against an attack, bombers make an attack) then the token is removed -- the asset returns to its carrier. The carrier is presumed to be launching all kinds of craft all of the time, so it has no limit on how much can be out at one time, just how much it can launch each turn (in essence though the limit is twice its launch value in strike craft, you launch everything at thrust * 2 one round and everything at thrust * 1 the next)

yup, and as a scourge / shaltari player I like that rule, keep multiple damage attacks from being so spikey

I've finally worked out what it is PHR ships remind me of. Coincidentally, I may have also finally picked a colour scheme for them.

Huh, that's really interesting.

At first glance I was going to say that it's no different than just having more shots at one damage, but having to make less to-hit rolls overall increases your chances of doing more damage.

Can you shoot down a torpedo with PD?

I also just realized, this makes crit-capable lock values HUGELY more important!
Going between orbital layers could change a 4+ to a 5+, and make a high damage weapon so much worse simply because it can't crit now.

nope
There's a lot of potential fluff explanations (we'll have to wait for the book to see)
But the honest answer in my viewpoint is that torpedoes wouldn't be good enough for their price and rarity if you could -- they would do less damage than a cruiser-class BTL to most targets they were designed against for far more points and one shot per game

yuppers!
And this is one reason why you generally want a balanced force -- you don't want to send you battleship slumming in low orbit -- it wants to do grand patrician battles against grand patrician battleships, where little problems like losing altitude and turning into a glorious fireball are less pressing ...but somebody has got to kill those frigates and fleet carriers, like srsly.

Ok so the main difference between Lock 4+ dmg 1 weapon and Lock 4+ dmg 2 weapon is That if you roll a crit (so 6) dmg 2 weapon deals 2 dmg at once and 1 dmg weapon needs to roll 2 6es for it. Basicly weapons with less dmg but more shots are more reliable but weapons with more dmg sting more on crits - am i getting hits right ?

oh and how do you note critical hits ? are thay all like one effect now and thats it (rise spike, lower leyer and so on) or like lower defence take away some weapons systems and so on ? How do you track this ? With pen and paper ?

>you don't want to send you battleship slumming in low orbit

The PHR spacefleet equivalent of Chad Thundercock should clearly have a battleship armed with light batteries and bombardment cannons in every slot

>FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUR TROOP SHIPS AND FUCK YOUR CITIES

Yeah; let's assume you have two weapons; one with lock 4+, two shots, and one damage, and one with lock 4+, one shot, and two damage.

The first shoots, and you need to roll two sixes in order to guarantee damage (1/36 chance), otherwise, you need to beat the armor rolls for both shots to do two damage.

The second shoots, but you only need to roll one six (1/6 chance) to guarantee damage; otherwise, it's functionally the same as the two one damage shots.

Although you're more likely to fluff your lines and miss completely with a single shot.

yeah, more damage makes the gun have those really good crits -- but missing really sucks
Honestly that just from the luck perspective
The 1 damage gun with 2 shots has one major advantage over the 2 damage 1 shot gun
You can split each shot at different targets so long as they are all in firing arc -- this helps explain the PHR light caliber broadside -- 12 shots is way overkill for a single, non-phr frigate (a phr frigate actually has a decent change of making it through that damaged but un-crippled, which is damn scary) but divided up and with a little luck you could cripple two or more frigates in a single salvo

can someone post those 2 cheat scheets for scourge and ucm from few threads ago ?

common misconception -- critical hits just mean no armor saves
crippling damage is when the ship gets special affects and extra damage after falling to half health or being hit by the dark matter cannon.
For that we've been using the tokens from warmahordes with a wet-erase marker to write the effect on them -- when the game releases I was actually gonna create a token set and print them out on cardstock for the different ongoing crippling effects -- I'll share those when i get around to making them.

Pretty much; more shots, less damage per shot is a better chance of consistent partial damage, while an equivalent in low shots, high damage is better for more likely complete damage.

so what we usually do (like the BoW videos) is just slide the dice that have crits into one pile, move the misses away, and roll armor with the dice that rolled regular hits -- using extra dice for multi-damage weapons

or hawk could do like steamforged did with guild ball and do a acrylic token set with those ? Or even the Privateer press way and some wet eresy faction like plates ? This would be so cool

Any more spill on faction specific weapons ? We know about Scald that rises the armour save (so harder to get it) We know about antimater cannon of phr that if hits you roll on cripple table, we know about burn through - that it rolls until it misses (or up to value) and gives target spike - and we know about sheltari ones that are auto crits - some more variety ?

I honestly don't see hawk making those
But I would be damn surprised if some enterprising third party didn't make them and hawk then pimps their stuff on their website.
In the meantime ill make some crappy printable tokens, then someone with a brain that can into aesthetics will make a better one, and they'll work until then.

I can buy that. I am sure it is difficult to balance it. It is just the image of a swarm of flak fire to try to stop one massive torpedo just sounds cool.

hrm, lemme think
there's the reverse-grav cannon on the scylla that fires out of atmosphere ignoring penalties
Its not much of a special rule but the Viper Super-heavy Laser on the Avalon class is one of two guns in the game with the bloom rule (get a spike just for firing it)
we're talking weapons, so not the support frigate special rules
PHR of course has the caliber rule on many of its guns helping them against their chosen tonnage of opponent
Shaltari has the Impel rule on its gravity coils which lets you turn a ship 45° -- and with those being changed from F(N) to CAW's i have no idea what those weapons are like otherwise now
Shaltari specialist CAW's from beta had far fewer shots than the competition, but with the CA(beam) rule they ignore enemy PD
that's all the ones i can see. It doesn't sound like many (Dave said he wanted to keep the base rules somewhat vanilla) but the differing firing arcs and ship stats do an excellent job of making each faction feel distinct.

Is there anything special about the Shaltari particle lances, or are they just powerful beams?

Kek, I see it too

how long is the typical 1500 tournament style game ? and is 1500 a tournament point format ? And how big the tables for 1500 are supposed to be ?

yup, and if torpedoes end up being too powerful, I could see them making an errata to make PD effect torpedoes but only on a 6+
OR if nature of the game makes the ships that fire torpedoes not worthwhile enough after launching them, maybe torpedoes double in limit value but then are always effected by PD?

Its really hard to say what the future will hold since we haven't played the final game, but there's tons of potential for new weapons in the future
PHR nanomachine swams that act as launch assets with only a single, short thrust value that can damage enemy ships or repair allied ones
Scourge incediary gels that start fires on enemy ships
a shaltari non-damaging attack that teleports warsuits into their ship, acting as the corruptor rule
UCM fixed cannons that fire different kinds of ammunition round-to-round
It should be exciting to see the game grow.

I'd watch for Warsenal to make something, they made dropzone templates and their main shtick is infinity tokens and terrain.

particle lances are front(narrow) weapons that ignore armor & shields -- they are the shaltari equivalent to BTL's -- very reliable but without the raw power of a BTL.

So they pretty much auto-crit on a hit? That's cool to hear.

This game does look pretty interesting I have to say. I'd probably pick it up if it wasn't for - not out yet and probably too late to dump cash into the kickstarter, no cash as jobless student, and just not sure on playerbase sizes in my area.

I think they're 2 damage per hit or 3 if shields aren't up.

And with the burn through laser it is so that if it hits on 3+ for example your first roll is 3 you hit you roll again you score 6 - its a critical so every dice that hits after this shoot is automaticly critical (so i rolled like 4 4 4 4) it would be 1 normal dmg that someone can roll deffence aginist and 5 critical hits that bypass armour (but not shields of sheltari if thy are up)

I think I saw Dave say somewhere that he wasn't 100% sure that 1500 was going to be the standard tournament point value, it depends on what people end up liking and how long games end up taking -- that being said, im guessing 1500 points will be standard if for no other reason that DZC players will expect that.

Its hard to say how long a 1500 point game will be since pretty much each time ive played has been teaching someone the game, so they have usually be much smaller games, and its pretty confusing with all proxy models so far.
DFC plays on a 4'x4' table

I'm still not sure where people heard that -- its never been like that in beta.
But it is possible that will be the case in the release version (i doubt it, 3 damage would be way too powerful -- just imagine getting hit by the diamond on standard orders and losing 9 HP with no saves allowed, and you are still out of range of shooting back)

They took the continuing crit rule out when they added the flash and limited Burnthrough rule I think.

>I'm still not sure where people heard that -- its never been like that in beta.
I think it was one of the BoW videos

I think it was in the Beasts of War video when Dave was showing off the Shaltari for the first time.

From the newest BoW video, it seems they kept it in.

...

And the 2nd one.

god bless you user

yup that was removed in beta, but as per
it appears to be back in, also think i saw a hawk person confirm that on the official forums

>plasma strike
>plasma storm
>plasma cloud
>plasma tempest

>storm and strike are identical
Wut?

In any case, I'm guessing Scourge CA comes in three tiers; cloud (frigate base), storm/strike (cruiser base), and tempest. Having those CA attachments bumps a ships load out to the next tier.

That's going to make the St Petersberg a complete monster with it's potential 12 damage BTL's.

I mean, you'd have to really set that up over the course of 2 turns, possibly with the Pete activating back to back so it uses one to boresight the target and the next to weapons free it, but yeah that's potentially monstrous.

... How were these painted.
Hoooooly shit I need a recipe. Are these just washes over a metal base?

I read somewhere the Hawk plans to do official color scheme how to paint videos at release.

Those were beta stats. Presumably some names were changed. UCM has the same deal with two identical missile bays.

>sword missile bay
>identical to shark
Kek

>plasma tempest
>up to 16 damage
[Scared]

And the Scourge have a light cruiser with those.

What happens if a ship goes off the board?

I belive it counts as being destroyed if the base would completely leave the table.