/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General

>The second mode is for when you remember that 4+ shields are more effective than 3+ armour against almost every gun in the game.
REALLY? I heard shields were good, but not that good, in a preliminary game I played the shield led to getting fucked four-ways to Sunday by bomber waves, although I'll admit that's just 1 game.

Mathematically, yeah. The only times 4+ shields are worse than 3+ normal armour is when faced with 5+ and 6+ lock weapons that cannot crit. Shields are fuckin crazy, man. And bomber waves are what that Basalt is there for, bombers are balanced around having PD to soften the blow. If you don't have that then even the best armour will still have trouble keeping up.

They can, but only two you're not likely to get full value from them. Three or four is the magic number

>want to take Taipeis in my list
>just can't justify it in the face of Limas, Jakartas, or more Toulons

The UCM getting a CAW focused capital ship of some description would be nice, it only to build a group around.

Bump for Beijing, the best looking battleship

Taipei are really pretty great. more than 2 Limas is too much, probably the same with Jakartas.

Toulons have at it though.

That is not the Demon.

>literally a space trilobite

Yes, and?

Also, the modular design on that model is really fun to work with from a modelling perspective.

Honestly, I kind of want to buy like three or four of them and make a super long bobbit worm dreadnought.

That's a really funny way of saying "Dragon," user. You even posted the wrong picture!

Here, allow me.

I dunno, I've tried both looks, and I just think the Demon looks the better of the two.

I still think the Daemon and Dragon should have Occulus Phalanxes for their middle section as well.

what could you give the Beijing to make it a viable gun BB on par with the (just updated) Daemon, Heracles, and Minos?

>bobbit worm
The Scourge do have a preference for the most horrifying of species.

Apparently you've never been on either side of a proper 4 ship Taipei murder pack. They're the only frigate (apart from Norleans I guess) that I'd build a BG around.

>baselines and jellies thinking they're hot shit
>laughing nanites

>not having a 99.5% chance to inflict a crippling roll per turn
Remove younglings

Nice guns.
There'd better be a Nanomachines command card in DFC, without a DZC community around it's my only chance to drop delicious meme slogans.

>(just updated) Daemon
This is news to me, is it in the errata?

No, no, I'm memeing about giving them triple occulus phalanxes. Their central section seems to be just too big to be a simple array, in my mind.

Scourge have secondary guns in the middle with primary guns on the side, that's how they work. They're like a reverse UCM in that way.

I've never seen a Beijing underperform, their weapons free is fucking brutal and the CAW is Scourge-tier fantastic. It's not that hard to line up the laser, especially since people don't fear it like they do the DMC. Maybe not quite Heracles tier, but it's hard to compete with a crippling gun. Different role too, Heracles is a sniper while Beijing is a brawler.

I wouldn't call the Array a "secondary" gun, user. 3+/2/2 is definitely a primary weapon. It's the equivalent of a 2x bank of 6400's, pretty much.

Basically, the Daemon has a primary gun, two heavy guns, and a beam, while the Beijing has a heavy gun, two secondary/medium guns, and a beam.

Secondary is relative. The broadsides of a Heracles are secondary weapons, while a Jade's garbage gun is still its primary. The point is that Scourge tend to have their bigger guns on the side while smaller ones go in the middle.

A wiki walk and youtube vid later, and I can say that there's nothing about this statement I don't like.

In the fluff, Scourge ships have very thick outer armour all around and squishy insides. The prow probably needs to be nothing but armour to survive combat, Phalanges may require too much weakening. (I fucking love the fluff in this game.)

Now the real question is keep the scourge scheme or try and paint it more biological?

Want to make a cuttlefish theme'd Scourge and coralline Shaltari.

It's a shame this is my first miniature game and first time painting; so I have no idea how to go about it and even if I did, it'll be shit anyway.

>googles coralline out of interest
jesus fuck user, that's a complex scheme. Have you thought about starting simply with a base color that's similar and adding to that once you've got a bit more practice?

Yeah, probably drybrushing would work, these ships just get me dreaming up so many schemes and I can't decide. I've thought of Protoss, Metallic version of the studio scheme (Bronze>Gold), Bone and pic related 'Magma' scheme.

you could always have a fleet that represents multiple tribes as their contribution to a warpath fleet. Build battlegroups that'll stick together and keep that battlegroup's paint scheme consistent while still getting to explore a ton of schemes.

Have no idea what Dropzone is, but got excited about "EXOSQUAD edition" so I went through the thread looking for EXOSQUAD bits....but there are none. :[

Sorry user, have a cyber mclargehuge as compensation

Sorry to mislead you, user. I just had EXOSQUAD on my mind when I was making the thread, because it's a god tier cartoon.

>all this 90s animation talk
>now I can't unsee colony drop in the OP

The contest was for best looking, not best on table, and I'm sorry but neither of you are going to win any beauty contests.

I wonder, is there any point in trying to ebay assembled ships?

>Strix has 2 PD each
I get that they're faster yhan Wyverns, but how do these things not get fuckef up by bombers the moment they get anywhere near a carrier?

Bombers only show up at the end of the turn, and by that time the Strixes' work should be done. In fact, they may already be dead.

And failing that there's always fighters. They have a 48" range.

Fighters are more or less a hard counter to bombers and shouldn't be underestimated. Each fighter adds +3/+4 PD to the defensive target, which means that on average each fighter removes 1 additional non-crit attack. It may not sound like much, but when you add this to a ship's PD and factor in armor, matching every 3 bombers with 4 fighters will very likely completely negate a bombing run.

Making all the UCM now, holy fuck, I thought trimming the Shaltari spines was a ball-ache, tiny fucking guns and antennae are pure cancer.

>thinking the UCM guns and spires are bad compared to the Shaltari
The Shaltari everything is pure evil, what are you talking about.

The light mass driver sprue connection was poorly conceived, it is near impossible to get it off without damaging the middle of it.

It was a while ago since shaltari, but atleast all their spikes are attached, desprueing was cancer there. Having to trim all the grav spikes spikes for 9 cruisers and 24x 2400s with a scalpel is pretty terrifying, the finish will be worth it, but I'm running out of material to watch to stave off boredom.

I love how the studio model is clearly a totally different design.

And I still have washing to look forward too.

Do you not wash plastic on the sprue? Gets that shit done in a quarter of the time.

I was going to say what about filings and dust... then I remembered with plastic glue it wouldn't give a shit. I'm retarded. Well, shit, at least it will be thorough. First real miniatures game, not counting dabbling in infinity.

This, the Beijing does fine.

It can't spit out as much rape as the Heracles, but, I mean, what do you expect? It's much cheaper.

....

This is what it must have felt like when a Cataphract first encountered stirrup-using opposition.

Ok...

It there anything /wrong/ with just saying the void-gates on the table are clusters of three on a single point, keeping track of thier signatures and damage tracks, and just moving them around like that?

Technically, "yes". There's an ongoing discussion on the forums about it, and the conclusion, RAW, is basically this.

>any one model CAN represent any number of other models of the same time
>RAW, however, the models of ALL ships must be on the table, as close as they can be to their actual position

Basically, you need to have all three voidgates on the table, but you can say that one particular voidgate is the location of all three.

Behold! Shitty Merchant Cruisers Made Of Bits now have a paintjob!

You think about making another version of the front ship with a single 4200 bank to represent armed merchant ships wandering into dangerous territory to deliver supplies?

also damn that paint job is snazzy. what color did you use for the orange?

Troll Slayer Orange from Citadel paints. These ships will basically be used as Space Stations that can move, pending a homebrew ruleset.

Is it just me or are torpedoes kind of useless?

As far as I can tell every torpedo system has the limit rule, a couple of counters (debris fields, getting shaken, getting scraped off in atmo), and still follow the basic armor rules. Being immune to PD is very nice, as is the not normally being able to miss, but it feels like the weapons were designed around being a guaranteed 6/4+ damage and then were explicitly made to not be.

Am I off base in thinking this way? Will torpedoes become more useful once we see dreadnoughts? Could anything make the scourge torpedoes not complete shit?

Right now torps need a boost. There are far too many points of failure and it renders the platforms that fire them weak.

The scourge torp would get a boost for hitting something bigger like a battleship.

Vastly improved range (24-48 at least) and the ability to crit just by rolling 1 or more above the needed to-hit score (sort of like the opposite of the Reinforced Armour rule) would be a good start.

2 more points of damage across the board would work also.

I don't think it's a good idea to give them straight up a light version of particle, but increased range and something to get past armor is definitely a good idea. Why not this?

>Penetrating
Successful armor saves made against damage inflicted by this weapon must be rerolled.

Sounds like a complication, user.

Just give them crippling, no other changes.

I mean, that's an option too.

Honestly, I feel like it'd be cool for the New York to get three torpedoes, but still be only able to fire one per turn. It'd do a lot to make it worth it as a combat ship, if torps were improved.

where do you get spare bases?

Leave the limited ammo for torps.
Make them range 24 instead of Range 18
Hit on 3+, always crit.. but misses simply come around for another pass the next turn (like they do now).

That'd make them much more usable.

New York doesn't need a buff to the torpedo system. It needs to have the strong CAW that the Tokyo and Beijing has, which is far more powerful.
Possibly an extra squadron couldn't hurt either.

Honestly, I wouldn't bother on the CAW, but I do agree on upping its launch by +1.

That idea that was tossed back a thread or two ago, about linking the flank 4200 batteries together on every UCM ship, is also a good one. It'd give the New York some decent direct combat utility.

I'm also still of the opinion that, even for their cheapness, the Beijing and Daemon can't really compete for the Heracles in terms of "is it a good idea to take this or not'

Ok, DFG, I've miscounted my frigates and need advice on what to build.

I thought I had enough frigates to build 6 Djinn, 4 Harpies 4 Charybdis, 4 Gargoyles, and 4 Scylla with 2 left over. But it would seem I only have 20 frigates instead of the 24 I thought I had.

I've already built 2 Scylla, 4 Djinn, and 4 Gargoyles. Is it worth scaling back on Charybdis and Scylla to build Harpies, or should I just fuck Harpies? Should I scale back on Djinn instead?

Alright, with your remaining 10, I'd build:

2 Gargoyles
2 Djinn
4 Charybdis
2 Harpy

3-4 Charybdis is about the minimum you need for them to be useful, so if you drop them, I'd instead build.

4 Gargoyles
2 Djinn
4 Harpy

You're going to need at least 6 Gargoyles, at the minimum, but 8 is preferred for versatility.

That's because the crippling ability is madness. Heracles and even Diamond would be a lot less effective without it.

You might as well just have 4 Djinns. 4 is the optimal number for a CAW frigate group imo. You can upgrade to 8 later if you want, but 6 is an uncomfortable place for them.

I wouldn't skimp on Scylla or Chars, either make 4 or don't make any. They only become effective in larger groups.

6 Gargs would probably be a better idea. It gives you some more options if you want to concentrate on objectives or go without a troopship.

Harpies are something you can afford to build fewer of, they're still decent in groups of 2.

Got a 4 Cruiser/12 Frigate deal on PHR, got enough bases for the 12 Frigates. Since each base sprue has 4 Frigate/4 Cruiser, I now have an assload of spare Cruiser class bases.

Goddammit Veeky Forums why do my gargoyle fins keep breaking on the sprue?

Every time I reach for a new frigate sprue at least one of the Gargoyle fins is busted at the tip! I'm being so damn careful with these sprues and the Gargoyles are what I fucking need to make!

I've had the exact same problem. A couple I was able to find and glue back into place at least but the rest are likely lost to the vacuum cleaner by now.

I've been consoling myself by thinking of it as battle damage.

are these the starter set gargoyles or the frigate box gargoyles?

Does it matter?

youtube.com/watch?v=TcB-pqA_CP4#t=13m9s

I can get enough of Dave interviews, his enthusiasm is infectious.

>just as I was about to go to sleep
dammit, user

At least you probably aren't avoiding study for multiple exams in the morning :^)

do ur homework user

be a good egg

>five seattles
m a d m a n

>glass fix incoming
Dave is truly best boy, hedgehogs can suck a dick.

An Atlantis counts as a Seattle, right?

--------------------------------------
.UCM 5eattle - 1248pts
UCM - 15 launch assets

SR10 Vanguard battlegroup (205pts)
1 x Atlantis - 205pts - H
+ UCM Vice-Admiral (80pts, 4AV)

SR10 Line battlegroup (264pts)
1 x Seattle - 132pts - M
1 x Seattle - 132pts - M

SR10 Line battlegroup (264pts)
1 x Seattle - 132pts - M
1 x Seattle - 132pts - M

SR8 Line battlegroup (177pts)
1 x San Francisco - 111pts - M
3 x Santiago - 66pts - L

SR6 Pathfinder battlegroup (192pts)
2 x New Orleans - 64pts - L
2 x New Orleans - 64pts - L
2 x New Orleans - 64pts - L

SR3 Pathfinder battlegroup (66pts)
3 x Santiago - 66pts - L
------------- dflist.com -------------

Sane man.

>even the worst fighter hard-counters bomber-spam

He seems to be the only Madrid-booster in the world, though. Which makes sense, he is pretty much her daddy- it's almost a law.

So would hydra spam be effective?

Running 700 pts of hydra sounds hilarious.

>700 points of Hydra
user, even at a battle sized game, 4Hydra costs 560.

Also, how many Hydra's can you even run at that points level? 3 tops? Which isn't taking troop assets into account either.

Now that I think about it, why aren't I seeing more Seattle-spam? It's like a more accessible Bellerophon.

Four; 5 launch per means four will bring you to 20 launch cap. Dropships and bulk landers do not count towards launch cap.

Different user- the thing about it is that I'm not certain the forward occullus (damaging as it is) compares to Bell's cap-6 burnthrough or Seattle's UCM heavy turret.

>tfw we will never get a Seattle with a beam instead of guns, because then it'd just be a lighter Bell

The 6400 is baller, user.

It is, but it's not a cobra. Not to mention the fact that it can't cripple anything bigger than a light cruiser per firing (if that), while the beams have a non-insignificant chance to hit their max damage.

I just realized; now that the Hawk website is updated, we can take the "where to get DFC" section out of the OP.