/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General

what is the time frame for V2 do they think. Going to try and get DZC going at my store but if it's going to get a new ruleset in month I don't want to start learning the rules only to get confused by that a month or two later.

Not sure. I get the impression the move has put everything on hiatus for the time being, so I wouldn't expect anything for at least a couple of months.

Is V2 going to have all of the (crunch) content from both Reconquests?

>mfw drop and shoot on Mehmeds
I'm hitting on 4's but boy when I hit

They can't enter Atmos. But the Dominion Heavy Bomber can, as referenced in the UCM Special Deck.
Those things are amazing. Eat hot death, as a New York carpet bombs 3 enemy strike carriers clean out of the sky.

>Dominion heavy bomber
>Archangel interceptor
>Seraphim strike fighter
DAVE
WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY OPHANIM

Nope. They'll be dropping errata for Phases 1 and 2 as necessary, but they're still separate books.

These are our new memes.

>Chad Cyberdick
>Bitching Out Khell the pervert
>UCM Rage Fueled
Now
>Dog Autists
>Space BSG wanna bees

WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD MEMES GONE
AND WHAT'S WITH ALL THE DOGS?
WHERE'S THE SPHEREWISE HERCULES TO FIGHT THE RISING HOGS?

Lets not forget the classic
>Are the models for this game prepainted?

Better not be talking shit about my war doggos

>"muzzle protection" shrouds the entire jawline rear of the front teeth
How the fuck is this edgy mutant dog supposed to clamp down on a limb or throat (basically the entire job of an anti-personnel dog) with a metal frame built over the length of its bite?

Looks kinda like the muzzle is meant to be removed before sending the doggo into combat to me.

>paint first batch of ships at underwhelming quality
>got airbrush and compressor to make future ships look better
>regulator won't stabilize below 30 psi and the airbrush hose is spewing air around the connector seal
>still haven't found anyone interested in buying into either game after a year of trying halfheartedly with half-painted models
/depressed chump general/

I''m actually for them

OMG

I forgot.

I have shamed my self.....

they already won ferrum you dunce

Does anyone have Dave's 5 Seattle list? I'm wondering if this variant might be fun.

--------------------------------------
UCM Se4ttle - 1248pts
UCM - 15 launch assets

SR10 Vanguard battlegroup (205pts)
1 x Johannesburg - 205pts - H
+ UCM Admiral (100pts, 5AV)

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

SR7 Line battlegroup (175pts)
1 x San Francisco - 111pts - M
2 x New Orleans - 64pts - L

SR5 Pathfinder battlegroup (130pts)
2 x New Orleans - 64pts - L
3 x Santiago - 66pts - L

SR5 Pathfinder battlegroup (130pts)
2 x New Orleans - 64pts - L
3 x Santiago - 66pts - L
------------- dflist.com -------------

how the heck does a fleet like this survive more than a few turns? It seems like it would get torn to shreds, especially since the Seattle's can't go any lower than low orbit.

The Seattle has a very powerful main gun. Lots of fighters and santiagos to help win sectors.

They've got a *good* gun, they don't need to break standard orders to use it, and close enough to get them without spikes is close enough to eat a wave of bombers.

>then Dave went and gave himself that "UCM bombers win the game by taking our strike carriers in atmosphere" card

>how the heck does a fleet like this survive more than a few turns?
Use the superior per-turn firepower of Seattles to do damage at range, keeping the guns for ships that get in closer.
>Low orbit
Nothing in the UCM can go atmospheric besides the Nawlins and Santiago anyways, so I don't really see what you mean? Bombers are excellent at popping frigates, and 6 corvettes will be a real bad time for everyone.
Some Limas would probably be a good idea, but Limas improve everything anyways.

fuck I'm an idiot, the Seattle is the fleet carrier. I thought for a second it was that troop lander cruiser and I was sitting there trying to figure out how the hell he was fitting that much infantry on all the objective, that or putting like 20 orbital lasers on the center point for shits and giggles.

Don't worry user, trips absolve you

...

Is Diamond + 2Ruby still viable for Shaltari in a competitive sense (as opposed to just for shits and giggles), or nah?
What do you guys think of their ships?

>BSG

Anyone play that new game, BSG Deadlock? Shit is pretty tight.

I'm splitting a DFC box with a mate, I'm getting the Scourge fleet. What's a good starting fleet? I was thinking:
Raiju (heavy cruiser)
Hydra (fleet carrier)
Chimera (troopship)
2x Gargoyle (Assault carrier)
2x Charybdis (bombard frigate)

Chimera probably isn't a great idea. Wyvern or Sphinx might be a better fit, gives you some more firepower. Otherwise seems good, though one starter is only really enough for intro games learning the rules.

ah, ok. Maybe I got the impression troopships were more important than they are at this level. What would be the next thing to expand with?

Has the delicious thigh man made a hedgehog shipgirl yet?

...

nope im still considering options on their design

there are some more PHR ships coming though as they got commissioned.

2 more Gargs. Other frigates can be whatever.
I'd have one Sphinx/Shenlong and 2 CAW cruisers overall. For the last ship I'd personally recommend another Hydra, but with one of each weapon type (2 in the case of plasma since they work best in pairs) you've got a good base so you can expand in any direction.

sorry, what's a CAW cruiser? and I don't understand what you mean by weapon type - I thought each ship of the same class had the same loadout?

Closes Action Weapons. I.e. the ones who shit 2d6+4 or whatever it is on the Wyvern. Scourge have the best CAW in the game, might as well as play to your strengths.

As for what he meant by plasma, no clue.

Personally, I'd try to pick up a battlecruiser when you buy more ships. Another starter is probably mandatory really. And this is just personal preference, but I like the ifrit. The burnthroughs for scourge are pretty awesome.

Don't forget scourgeface

Not that user, but in general, weapons in the game can be separated into three or four broad categories.

Guns: Normal, primary weapons; railguns for the UCM, occulus beams for the Scourge, mass drivers for the PHR, disintigrators for the Shaltari, etc.

Beams and Cannons/Lances: Like standard weapons, but restricted to the F(N) arc. Main difference between beams and cannons/lances being that beams are burnthrough (UCM and PHR lasers, Scourge furnace cannons), while Cannons/Lances are non-burnthrough (PHR dark matter cannon, Shaltari particle lances)

CAW: Close Action Weaponry, referring explicitly to that type.

In a sense, all ships have a singular, primary weapon system, and can thus be categorized based on it.
The Rio is a gun cruiser, because its main weapon are guns.
The Berlin is a beam cruiser, because its main weapon is a beam.
The Beijing is both a gun and a beam battleship, or more broadly, a combat battleship, because its primary weapons are both guns and beams.

A CAW cruiser, then, would refer to ships whose primary weapons are CAW; for the Scourge, this would be the Djinn, Strix, the Wyvern, and the Manticore/Banshee.

>As for what he meant by plasma, no clue.
Presumably plasma refers to Scourge CAW, as all their CAW is plasma based.
Plasma cloud/squall/storm/tempest/cyclone

Oh I see what you're saying! One cruiser with standard weaponry, 2 CA cruisers, the Hydra and the ships that person had already built gives him a cruiser with beam weaponry, cruisers with standard weaponry, CA cruisers and carrier cruisers. The 2 CA cruisers work best in pairs, and with one of every other major cruiser type you want you have a good base to expand on. Took me a bit to work that out, but it is solid advice.

Jungle Devil x Moon Victor smut when?

HET

...

Do you think Dave has ever been on /dcg/

I like to imagine he visited during the kickstarter shenanigans, realized this wasn't the place for him but was glad his game was talked about on places other than his forums.

Yeah, I'm fairly sure that someone leaked (or rather, found) that we had scans of the books after the initial shipping, so that must've drawn some attention.

Probably, and if not him a Hawk employee. We've been mentioned enough on the forums to prompt some sort of investigation. I doubt they lurk with any regularity though.

It's not the place a sweet boy like Dave should be hanging out anyway. We'd be a bad influence on the lad.

>We've been mentioned enough on the forums to prompt some sort of investigation.
Really?

A couple of instances of "Veeky Forums has scans of the Dropfleet books" is all you'd really need on such a slow forum, and that's without considering that someone at Hawk probably got told to look around the internet for DFC discussion since it came out.

I'm honestly kind of surprised how none of the scan databases get taken down across the generals. You'd think it'd be a pretty easy thing to do, as some get thousands of hits are blatantly obvious about. Hell the flames of war general has a fucking podcast that advertises their scan database and it's still up. It's the only thing that makes sense, pretty much every game forum out there knows that Veeky Forums is where you go to find the "innapropriate" info like recasting, chinese sellers, etc. There's no way the major companies, especially someone like GW, doesn't know about this kind of thing.

I honestly wonder if most companies look into this, realize that most of these people who "try before they buy" with the rules end up buying in, and just consider it a somewhat annoying positive that at least helps bring in more players.

I've gotten people into several different games by being able to say "yeah models and books are expensive, but you can at least download the books for the time being to get you going and then buy a physical book later."

Geedubs is a big corporation. Employees know about the scans, but they have no reason to tell their bosses and even if they did that boss would then have to tell his own boss, then some faggot at corporate would need to tell the lawyers to take action against a bunch bullshit he neither knows nor cares about.
If high command or the lawyers went to Veeky Forums there would be a problem, but as it stands I'm pretty sure those guys don't lurk here.

Smaller companies I think just know there's no point to stopping this stuff, and it doesn't cut into their sales that strongly. They don't want to come back every week to take it down again when it gets reposted.

This user has taste.

Quick, lads, what's the one ship you want for one/all the factions?

>UCM
>a mixed beam/gun heavy cruiser

>Scourge
>frigate with furnace cannons

>PHR
>combination carrier/bombardment ship

>Shaltari
>A smaller, cheaper mothership that only carries 2 infantry/armor; light cruiser equivalent.

>UCM
Dreadnought with quad cobra lasers. Or a dedicated CAW battlecruiser. Not sure.

>Scourge
Light troopship. Chimera should have been a light cruiser in the first place.

>PHR
An actual bombardment ship that doesn't suck. Fixing Ganymede would be good, but giving OB guns to a new class can't hurt.

>Shaltari
I dunno really. I feel like the priority should be fixing current ships. The light cruisers and smaller particle ships still need help, and the troop system needs to be cleaned up.

And I'm not sure about that smaller mothership. Shaltari troops are already dispersed enough as it is, if anything I'd want to make them stick together more so that killing off motherships hiding at the back is actually a viable tactic.

>And I'm not sure about that smaller mothership. Shaltari troops are already dispersed enough as it is, if anything I'd want to make them stick together more so that killing off motherships hiding at the back is actually a viable tactic.
I partly agree, but I partly don't; I feel like being forced to take only one class of mothership that has a primary weapon system tacked onto it is far too much of an investment for the average Shaltari fleet, and it really doesn't leave much room or space for stuff like Azurites and Basalts.

Just the baseline requirement of 3 motherships and 9 voidgates is 435 points, which is over 1/3 of a fleet's total cost.

In comparison:
8 strike carriers is only 256-312 points
6 strike carriers and 1 troopship is only 297-365 points
4 strike carriers and 2 troopships is only 338-426 points

More often than not, Shaltari lists will go up to 3 motherships and 12 gates, or even 4 motherships and 12 gates.

It may just be me, but making a weaponless, light cruiser equivalent of a mothership that can only deploy 2 infantry/armor for only, say, 70 points each would be an exceedingly welcome edition to the Shaltari.

Both could possibly work. Emeralds being more expensive 4 gate units would solve a lot of their own problems (Azurites being fucked over, high base price for Shaltari troops, etc) but the system as a whole being shitty is mostly the fault of Voidgates. Their chaining is the key issue (though the automatic long ranged defence batteries don't help either), and if that gets reworked a lighter mothership could be good.

I'd absolutely go for the Emerald being reworked into a 125 point ship that carried 4 units, or maybe even 130 points.

In comparison, having a cheap light-mothership with no guns, or just a single disruptor, would allow for far more granularity and less "dedicated mothership" groups.

...

UCM
heavy troopship, with either burnthrough or more dakka on top.

PHR
battleship with black hole gun and 4-6 launch, I never get to use the heavy broadsides anyway

>PHR
>heavy calibre CL

Anyone check out the blog post about tourney ship breakdowns? Not surprised for the most part, except for Atlantises... why are those more common than Avalons? Also, what? The Scourge bombardment frigate was more popular than the Djinn, the frigate that can potentially one-shot a cruiser?

I'd guess the lack of Avalons would be a result of everyone relying on New Cairos for all their beams. The meme of NCs being the best beam platform seemed to morph into "if you don't take at least 3 of these you're gimping yourself and no other beam ship is viable" disturbingly quickly.
Kind of surprised NY saw so much play, I guess people wanted to see how it performed post-buff.

Not surprised to see some weird fuckery in Scourge. The Scourge data exists to inform Hawk that Akumalisk needs to be nerfed into the ground, it's near useless for anything else.

I'd like to see the stats including troopships, especially for PHR. I'm willing to bet that Bell being more than a third of all PHR cruisers is a result of many others being replaced by more Orpheus.

As expected, very few frigates in Shaltari. A little surprised Topazes won by such a landslide, even though they're deployed in larger numbers than the other 2 frigates I'd expect it to be a bit more even.

Destroyers. 5 hull, maybe double the armament of a frigate, 60ish points, G 2-3. Maybe a single torpedo on some.

That's so silly. Avalons are truly the best beamship, with a powerful secondary armament and benefitting most from UCM's beam augment cards. Even UCM's mass driver augments turn it into a Moscow!
New Cairos are good and efficient, but so's their weight in Berlins for different reasons. But if we're talking raw numbers, New Cairos make sense since they always come in pairs or threes.

But yeah, Akuma/Basalisk needs to fucking get wrecked since it's by far the most powerful ship they have.

IMO, all battleships except Shaltari could stand to get 3 smaller sig. Sig9 UCM and PHR would go a long way for making their battleships as attractive as BCs, even if PHRs are already good.

UCM maybe, though I've found them to be pretty solid (aside from, ironically enough, New York).
PHR BBs are completely fine. I wouldn't buff them any further.
As for Scourge, Daemon is a fucking vicious death machine that is simply overshadowed by Akumalisk. Dragon is shit, but that's more because of its torpedoes than anything.

>you will never assure Shenlong that she's really a useful ship even though everyone keeps ignoring her for that bitch Akuma

I'd hate to see the Akuma/Basilisk get completely shit on, since it does serve as an excellent paragon of the Scourge's nasty ways.
I don't have any serious games with it under my belt, but I feel like the Daemon needs something to make it scarier once it gets stuck in to contrast the Akuma's consequence-free approach sequence. Unless I'm just assuming that the Scourge BBs can reliably get into close range and underestimating the 2+ plasma.

Just a heads up, War Store is having a clearance on some Dropzone and Dropfleet stuff. Not a large selection, but PHR and Shaltari frigate boxes are $20, Shaltari cruiser boxes are $16, and the neat little sector tokens are $30. There's s slew of DZC stuff on sale as well.

>an actual bombardment cruiser that doesn't suck

Quad bombardment cannons and double BTL heavy cruiser

When you have rules like

>Azrael Chainguns - Weight of Fire
>This weapon may choose to reduce it's Sh value by 1 and increase it's R(c) value by 6". This may be done multiple times.

Does this mean you can apply this effect multiple times to gain a cumulative effect, i.e. reduce Sh by 2 to increase R(c) by 12", and so on.
OR
You may use this effect multiple times in a mission, i.e. You apply the effect on the first turn, fire a normal shot on the second turn, and apply the effect again on the third turn.

>you will never trail off mid-sentence to watch as said bitch Akuma swagger by

If I'm considering getting into UCM or Shaltari dzc, what are good staters to keep an eye out for? Beyond, presumably, the faction staters.

The former, you can reduce it by two shots to increase it by 12".

...

For UCM:

Katanas and a ferrum are standard.

Falcon's are great

Hazard suits and mortar teams solid.

>Raven As, they're how you move most of your troops. This is the only thing I'll insist you get, Bears are no substitute for a proper light dropship even in casual games.
>Ferrum, they're the only thing keeping UCM competitive at the moment and will probably always be valuable
>Eagle and/or some Falcons, for air power
>Hazard Suits and heavy weapons teams. It pays to diversify your infantry, and both kinds of Praetorians are currently rather lacklustre
>You're going to need a command unit. Both Phoenix and Kodiak are valid choices, depends on whether you want to charge in the front and shoot people or hide in the back like a real hero.
Wouldn't recommend Katanas if you're getting the basic starter. They're currently slightly better than Sabres because of their demo capabilities, but those capabilities have a 0% chance of surviving into 2.0

>Spirits, see Raven A
>a bunch of Pungari, they're great for objectives and are basically Halo grunts
>Firedrake is big, bad and out of control
>decide if you want to focus warstriders or skimmers. If the former, get a Dreamsnare and either a Jaguar or a Leopard. If the latter, get a Caiman
>Panther if you're a fucking sicko with no honour who likes abusing overpowered things

...

Is this in an errata? I'd like to be able to provide evidence if I can, saves having an argument rather than playing the game

What's the current consensus on Charybdis and Scylla? Useful frigates?

Post buff they're pretty good, yeah. Char is great bombardment and Scylla can be real annoying in atmos.

Buff? When and where were they errata'd?

The rules update on the website. Both got 3+ lock on their main guns.

Shouldn't need one, that's the RAR, I can't really see how you could interpret it any other way but maybe that's just me

...

Hawk forums are slow, any PHR DFC idvice?

Activation Economy: Is it best spread units around or to have more of a mixture eg this battlegroup is my anti-ship
team, this one is my planet assets + bombardment, a third for launch assets etc?

Combined Arms or Min/Max: is it better to have a mix of launch assets, torpedoes, general guns and shenanigans in a list or to sort of focus on only one or two types of offence?

Spanish vs British Fleet: Again a mixture of tonnages or say focus on a swarm of corvettes or a squadron of heavy cruisers? Does this depend on your tactics?

Limited/Rare units: Are these usually worth taking?

Admiral Values: In DZC at the time I was playing (2 yrs ago) it seemed that max commander was the way forward - same in DZC?

What is each Factions Strength - is it UCM = generalist, Scourge = speedy + sneaky, PHR = slower + tougher, Shaltari = same WTFBBQBR0KEn as in DZC?

Big Bad Battleship Part 1 - in 1000+ pt games is it always/usually worth/necessary (I'm sure it's never strictly necessary) taking a Battleship?

BBB part 2 - Does a battleship inform your plan? Each one has its own flavour, so does it shift the focus a lot? IE scipio is vastly different in function to a Heracles. So if you take one, do you need to support it?

Calypsos are super worth it, I take 1-2 either they babysit troopships of they both escort my battleship if im up against an avalon or a diamond

>Activation
Battlegroups generally appreciate having one general "mission", since the BG can only use one special order at a time and they're technically supposed to stick to cohesion range. For PHR you'll want to consider the thrust speed of ships when grouping them so they can all get to where they want to be more efficiently.

>Combined Arms
Having a mix is nice, since the various factions have different innate resistances to certain attack types and others they can screw over with support frigates. e.g. PHR have high hull/armor but shoddy PD, leaving them open to bombers if you don't provide fighter support.

>Spanish vs British
That's mostly up to your preference.

>Admiral Values
You get bumped up a couple AV levels for free when you take an admiral on a Heavy or Superheavy vessel, so max AV is pretty common.

>UCM
wide arcs make them less dependent on tricksy navigation to focus fire, access to swarms of burnthrough lasers

>Scourge
glass cannons that hit harder at close range and generally appreciate Silent Running, fun submarine frigates

>PHR
slower but sturdier bruisers with excellent bombers and nice linebreaker options

>Shaltari
glass cannon snipers that love long range on account of high scan/low sig/fragile hulls, weird gate network deployment, neither of which is particularly broken after receiving a nerf bat to both kneecaps

>Battleships
Really depends on the faction. Shaltari have the best BB > UCM have a lot of BB variety > PHR BBs hit hard but are slow to navigate > Scourge BBs are not Akumas and thus are never taken.

Also seconding the Calypso. You'll want to build one for sure.
Attach her to an obvious target like a BB, battlecruiser, or troopship, keep it within single movement range of your other critical heavies, and set up to flip your opponent the bird whenever his big dick battleship (or big group of smaller gunships) goes Weapons Free.

Hey guys just had a 500pt game today and we had a weird question come up.

As you can see from the picture the center became a bit of a cluster fuck. Due to a turn 5 reactor detonation chain from a ram, everything in the center died, leaving a very confused Bellerophron virtually unscathed over the objective.

The problem was the UCM had double the points i did, yet not a single surviving ship. Who wins in that scenario? I've never played a game that didn't give tabling the win, but we couldn't find anything saying that in the rules.

Who would have won?

Objectives are king for a reason. You gotta always be honest and play the objective game or else you will lose. That's true even for tabling. After all, you didn't stop his deployed ground troops and the next wave of the fleet will have a ground foothold when they arrive.

Whoever has the most VP's wins; some scenarios give VP's for killing ships, but getting boots on the ground is the most important.