/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General

Are you referring to K-day as the day Khell or whatever his name was, was outed for being a fucking pedo wierdo?

Yep, what a beautiful day that was. Never underestimate the power of weaponized autism.
And, for sake of correctness, he wasn't a pedo weirdo.
He was a furry pedo snuff weirdo.

>Anyone like Malifaux?
Sure. Completely different genre / tone / structure, obviously... but some of the similar appeal Hawk formerly had - creator-owned company, where the whole team top to bottom loves the hobby and really cares about putting out a good product.

Alternatively you can come join the weirdos over on /awg and play a homebrew hodgepodge of Epic, Bolt Action, DW, and DZC with miniatures from 16 different manufacturers that even sometimes almost looks like a cohesive force on the table.

>base
Base is usually a pretty rich field for this kind of stuff. Guarantee you there's at least some 40K and /hwg... and if you find those people, they'll often lead you to the more niche stuff.

Okay, let's kick off the thread with an unofficial version of the Facebook Q&A from the people who actually know what they're talking about.

Oh boy

Is the previous design/testing/release loop approachable in the new arrangement?

Are we asking you questions as well, or is it just the stuff from the facebook Q&A?

Keeping it to the Facebook Q&A at the moment, but I'll answer questions that I'm able to after these.

I wanna meet the UCM designer that was making the little IR goggles, and halfway through he's like, "You know what? I think this would look even better with a little metal nose on there."

Part 1

Q: In regards to the future of DZC and DFC, will you continue supporting the Hawk social media forum, Instagram and Facebook groups? If so, will you have a dedicated person we can interact with?
A: TTCombat fired that dedicated person. Social media will continue but the articles and other content won’t until they get Talons to write articles for them.

Q: Will Talon recruitment change?
A: Last I heard, the Talon scheme will be changed to cover all of TT’s games and the reward scheme will be changing to a quarterly thing based on points thresholds, but different rewards.

Q: How will Talons be involved in the continued beta testing?
A: It’s safe to say that until TT staff actually learn the games they’re going to be relying on Talons to playtest releases. They’ve lost a lot of experience and knowledge about the games and competitive metagame.

Q: Will invasion still happen?
A: Yes (DFC is in Feb/March) but who’s going to run it and answer the rules questions? Expect tournaments to change, they have a very different approach. The words ‘cash prizes’ were mentioned not days after we were talking with the community how that would damage the welcoming atmosphere events have.

Q: How often will we be seeing new units?
A: The last release schedule we put together had roughly four releases for next year, DZC and DFC. Not including the Kickstarter TT have decided will happen…

Q: Will we get to see a digital version of the rules and/or a living online rule book that incorporates errata?
A: We were planning on releasing the core rules for 2nd Ed. as a free digital download, no fluff, no art. As well as the stats for each faction’s units.

Part 2

Q: When will we see phase 3?
A: I would expect Q2 2018, and it won’t be a release like previous Phases. Mostly fluff and scenarios.

Q: Will there be a campaign system? Will it incorporate both games?
A: Yes and yes, released following Phase 3. It should contain new units, including the DFC units being previewed at the moment.

Q: Will DFC be getting named commanders, and if so, when?
A: We were planning on releasing some free Famous Commanders and additional units/scenarios using unused cruiser combinations, but don’t expect them soon/any time.

Q: Will there be more factions?
A: The next faction will be released in DZC and DFC, but not next year. No-one knows anything about it but Dave.

Q: Do you have intentions of creating monstrous units? Aren’t the Broadsword and Hades big enough?
A: Expect to see larger units as the Reconquest ramps up, but their quality depends on how much control Dave has over products at that point.
Q: Will we see a Resistance fleet?
A: Dave has categorically stated that Resistance will never be a faction in DFC. Where TT got that statement from who the fuck knows.

Have fun.

>Not including the Kickstarter TT have decided will happen…
Jesus Christ

>I would expect Q2 2018, and it won’t be a release like previous Phases. Mostly fluff and scenarios.
Would there have been any new units?

>Expect to see larger units as the Reconquest ramps up, but their quality depends on how much control Dave has over products at that point.
How much bigger? "Little bit bigger than Hades" bigger, or "is to a Hades as a Broadsword is to a Sabre" big?

>Dave has categorically stated that Resistance will never be a faction in DFC. Where TT got that statement from who the fuck knows.
PR intern for sure, just trying to make reasonable guesses.

As for some questions of my own I've been wondering:

Has Dave expressed interesting in making more collectors sculpts, like the 3-up Ares or the 2-up Beijing/Ajax?

If you were involved with DFC enough, were/are there more plans to expand the goals of the game to include more than just "land troops" and "kill more ships"?
Additionally, here's a few questions that have been nagging me, also if you were involved with DFC:
Is the Nickar supposed to not have Outlier and Scald?
Did the Ajax originally have split broadsides, and if yes, why was that taken away?
Was the Heracles/Minos every outfitted with different broadside guns than the heavies they have now?
Why was the decision made (if it still stands) that PD negates per hit of CAW, rather than per damage?

How long were the talks with TT going on?
When did they turn to talks about merging?
Was the plan originally for Hawk to remain independent and as it was, just under the patronage of TT?
Did you guys learn of the change in plans before you got layed off?
Did TT at least give you all a nice severance?

>Jesus Christ
My thoughts exactly.

>Would there have been any new units?
It might end up as just fluff, as the people who were pushing for narrative scenarios and were going to write then are gone now.

>How much bigger? "Little bit bigger than Hades" bigger, or "is to a Hades as a Broadsword is to a Sabre" big?
Unsure of exact scale, but they were referred to as 'Titans' in a 40k sense.

>My thoughts exactly.
Are they actually going through with the 36mm skirmish game?
>It might end up as just fluff, as the people who were pushing for narrative scenarios and were going to write then are gone now.
That's sad, but at least the story will progress.
How many new units might we be looking at in 2.0?
>Unsure of exact scale, but they were referred to as 'Titans' in a 40k sense.
Welp. I can see the Shaltari having some mass-9 walker, and the PHR having the type 5/6/7, but what the hell would the UCM or scourge have?
A NASA crawler for a tank? A proper giant wotw tripod?

I really, really hope we do NOT see Dropsquad. That market's way too saturated, and nothing about DZ Infantry battle is particularly distinct, compared to armored company fighting.

Not to panic, senpaitachi, but the whole "TT has decided" and the general "they're doing this, not me" I get from it alarms me.

Problem is that with how remote this base is I can't find anyone on base to play, even including 40k...

>Problem is that with how remote this base is I can't find anyone on base to play, even including 40k...
How remote we talking? If you're in guam, I actually know a dude there I used to game with. If you're stationed at... I dunno, Thule or something, you're probably out of luck (at the very least, shipping for new minis is going to be a killer).

On the upside, you could finally use that upscaled Ares you bought.

>It’s safe to say that until TT staff actually learn the games they’re going to be relying on Talons to playtest releases. They’ve lost a lot of experience and knowledge about the games and competitive metagame.
Unless the PR drone is actively lying there seems to be some employees that at least play, but that second part is still true and worrying. Employees playing DZC doesn't automatically translate into understanding the meta and definitely doesn't mean that management knows or cares how those players should be allocated.

>cash prizes
Oh get fucked TT. Not once in the history of wargaming has that shit ever been anything but a terrible idea.

When I think "a fun tabletop game with good sportsmanship" I think "cash prizes"!

Even with the game owned by TTC, I still want to fuck a Toulon

Toulon is not for sexual

Exactly! Whi doesn't love having every mistake or accident scrutinized like it's horrible cheating.

>unlikely friendship between fragilely optimistic Toulon and determined but awkward Calypso when?

>probably started with "I roll three sixes! I crippled the Medea! I save the day! Admiral will praise Toulon!"
>then "I used my ECM. Three normal hits. Medea armor saves. Good game."
>"...."
>"Please don't cry. ...Director, I can't get this baseline to stop crying. ...Should I pat it?"

Fairly new to all this. What happened?

During the Kickstarter Hawk ended up running behind schedule. A troll named Khell popped up and started complaining a lot about the delays and also about just about anything he could find half a reason to complain about. it was pretty reliable that if hawk posted anything Khell would be in the comments complaining about the delays and whatever else he could come up with. After several weeks of this an user went a sleuthing and found a furfinity or some other porn writing website that had a member named Khell. This Khell was into child gore and furry. Now even if you're okay with the furry shenanigans, that shit is a little discomforting. On top of that if I remember rightly Khell had on this account or a different one bragged about how proud he was to be a 'professional kickstarter troll'. This pissed researching user off, so he posted all this in a nice infographic that showed it all. the account name, the links between our Khell and the other khells, the whole shebang.

This would have done absolutely fuck all in reality if Khell had handled it with anything close to intelligence. Instead he lost his shit and, on top of this post, locked the porn account which had been in use up to a month before the event. We all rejoiced in a hilarious comeuppance on someone that had been shitting on the game we were all excited to play, and Hawk was super classy and privately messaged the user that had posted the message on kickstarter asking him to take it down to avoid any sort of long term problems. Great showing all around, and that day will always be known as K-day here on /dcg/.

This is Hawk's response.

Adding on to , Khell wasn't "just" complaining, he was doing it in the most malicious and high-functioning autistic way possible. Routinely calling for group legal action against Hawk, demanding that someone be fired, unironically asking for almost an entire (KS) fleet's worth of sprues in compensation, and just being, for lack of a better term, the KS equivalent of an entitled soccermom.

And yeah, it he didn't even bother sanitizing or sequestering his varying online persona, so he really deserved what was coming to him for that as well.

I'm at the 'lik, if you know where that is...fucking 1 week long customs wait to get anything...

So, as for those "Titan Scale" units possibly in the works, are you guys thinking Warhound size or Warlord size?
Technically speaking the Annihilator is already bigger than a Warhound when standing straight up, so that's a good scale already.

>inb4 the UCM gets pic related

Mate you need to get yourself a trip and some new proof. Right now anyone can call themselves HawkAnon and troll the general into self-destructing.

>impersonating HawkAnon
But who would do such a thing, user.

We talking something in that style or a literal Fatboy? Because it might be hard to deploy something that has trouble fitting in a troopship.

You're right, they should go for something more humble and restrained.

And of course, to be fair, the Fatboy probably has something along the lines of UF-1800s or whatever, all sizes considered. It's something like the size of a Santiago, but on treads.

UCM Mavor when

I'm pretty sure the Mavor would take up an entire 4x4 board on its own, user.

That's an idea, though; DZC battlemap based on a single UCM land factory.

The smaller units in SupCom such as the mech marine are like, bigger than the largest unit of DZC. A Thunderstorm is about the same size as a UEF medium tank, which is a speck compared to a Fatboy or a building like the Mavor.

The mech marine is literally taller than warstriders; the only things taller in the game are the Annihilator and Totem.

That could work. All the factions probably have some huge factories even bigger than Supcom ones, because relative to the units they make Supcom factories are tiny. They're basically just a nanolathe on a stick.

I've been waiting for that day myself.
Imposteranon has a point though. What evidence is there that hawkanon is actually what they say they are?

During the last thread they posted their hawk shirt and post number

To be specific, an employee shirt, not a talon shirt. I mean, any old Joe Schmoe (myself included) could have one of them.

>Technically speaking the Annihilator is already bigger than a Warhound when standing straight up, so that's a good scale already.
By height, yeah... a warhound is probably 3x or 4x the mass, though. Anny is tall but spindly. A warhaound would be way out of the weight class of anything currently in DZC... and so a perfect size for DZC.

Going to anything like GW titan proportions would be ridiculous for DZC. At 10mm, a battle titan stands 150mm - 200mm (so somewhere between a WMH colossal and GW's knight kit... but both of those are 28mm)

The thing with DZC is that all the equipment that shows up in the game has to be transported there and useful in that kind of rapid deployment/rapid escalation engagement.

No idea how they are going to square that circle, as much as anybody sane wants an Ore mk V in their knapsack to remove jellies.

>Ogre mk V

Anyone else find the station kits' quarter circle pieces a pain in the ass to make into a full circle? The notches and nubs on them in my kit really don't line up worth shit.

Pretty much. They'd need to construct an entirely different game (hopefully a separate one and not the corrupted shell of DZC itself), because such large units don't mix at all with the dropship emphasis.

I basically had to line them all up at an angle, apply glue, and then push and hold and scream at them at the center until it locked in place.

>Heavy equipment doesn't fit in a dropship game
That's a fair point, but nothing says it couldn't grow outside those roots. Maybe it ends up being a separate game, but re-using basic principles and minis.

You could even do it as an expansion where you have more of a pitched-battle setup for the scenarios, and those scenarios also modified the force org chart to allow for the superheavy units.

TBF, SupCom is at the opposite end of the sci-fi plausible scale spectrum from Dropzone. I believe it's officially classified as "LOL Scale".

True, but it's a different kind of LOL scale than 40k's LOL scale for instance.
Supcom stuff is definitely on the far end of superscience and is pretty much one of the most powerful sci-fi settings until you start getting into clarketech stuff, like with The Culture, The Xeelee, or The Downstreamers, etc

Supcom is pretty much actually just based off of two or three supertechs, actually. One, nanoscale fabrication. Two, very-efficient mass-energy conversion. Three, very-efficient remote energy transfer.

Everything else in the game follows from those three; atomic transmutation from energy-mass conversion, exceptionally strong materials that can actually support units of that size thanks to very fine manufacturing; mechs that can shoot their bodyweight in shells in only a few minutes, thanks to internal ammunition fabricators and energy->mass converters, all powered via wireless energy transfer.

The funny thing is, most of the ground battles described in the lore (apart from PHR shenanigans) seem to be about taking ground rather than hunting buildings for mysterious objectives. Hell, apart from the initial landings a lot of the ground battles don't seem to be dropship initiated at all, instead involving already-landed ground formations moving to engage the enemy.

Did you do all 4 at once or just 2 by 2? And did it become easier if you cut the pegs a little thinner?

For the first, 2 by 2 but I had to cut one of the nubs off completely. The second was all four at once, with a ton of lining stuff up before glue.

Fuck me, this is going to be a whole lot of fun to build...I bought 2 boxes to build one of all the sprues, and the other to build the ones for the missions...

>True, but it's a different kind of LOL scale than 40k's LOL scale for instance.
Definitely true, and I'm a SupCom fan so I also like it better. At the very least, it's certainly more consistent. But much like The Culture, the required tech puts it completely opposite something that's both hard-sf and fairly near-future like DZC.

Definitely.

Expect the new rules for Bulk Lander Zone Commander coming in 2019.

>that porn bot on the Hawk Forums
Lmao, only a week in and TT already dropped the ball on spam filtering.

>Someone on the reddit AMA: Also, will you still be working with Hawk Studios since it's acquisition?
>Andy Chambers: I haven't been in touch with TTcombat since the acquisition of Hawk, although as Dropfleet is my favourite miniatures game right now so I should really go stick my oar in (my regular foe Pete Haines has been prodding me to do so).
Not really news, but might as well repost it here.

I glued the halves together, then jammed the two halves into each other and stacked a gigantic pile of hardcover books on top to keep it flat while it dried. Barely did the trick.

You got a link to that Reddit ama?

Not that poster, but:

reddit.com/r/Warhammer/comments/7decnl/im_andy_chambers_ask_me_anything/

Only mentions of Dropfleet are him commenting twice on how it's his favorite miniatures game.

What sort of methods are best for basing infantry? Something like glue+sand doesn't seem like it would work great for the scale these are at unless I could find some very fine sand.

RESISTANCE IN SPACE WHEN?

Find the comm nerds.

Sand works just fine. Use that an most. Cut up sprues for debris

Your meme and your dream is dead, user.

...

Bravo, TT, excellent work!
If only there were a dedicated employee for moderating the forums!

>Spam on a forum
>TT IS THE DEVIL BECAUSE THEY FIRED A GUY

Get real.

TT already working to expose the game to a wider audience!

Mate, I have literally never seen spam on the Hawk forums before; let alone spam that has lasted two hours, let alone over seven.

>>TT IS THE DEVIL BECAUSE THEY FIRED A GUY
And yes, they are, because firing the Hawk team was an absolutely shit move for the game as a whole.

user, you need to make your trolling less obvious. Actual shills are professionals, they're held to higher standards.

Everyone already knows that TT fucked up, they don't need to remind themselves by yelling at you.

I think you're grasping at straws for shit to blame TT for.

Again I will ask to know the positions of the people fired. If they were "redundant" or could be filled in for by existing TT employees then I'm literally not surprised.

Sucks to be the folks that lost their jobs but uh... business is business.

>I think you're grasping at straws for shit to blame TT for.
I don't need to grasp at straws

>after the acquisition goes public, goes on record saying the following or something like it multiple times [Hawk will remain as it is, independent in terms of creating the games, but will have all business and logistics duties shifted to TT]
>literally fires over half the team a week later
>without warning
>when everyone thought that, if they were going to get fired, they'd have until the end of November
>behind Daves back and not even bothering to tell him "hey, you're about to have 5 less co workers"
>as well as shifting the remaining Hawk's duties to all of TT's stuff, rather than just DZC/DFC, which contradicts their earlier assurances that Hawk would remain as a semi-independent sub-entity

>already talking of new games within a year of DFC's release
>Cash Prizes at tournaments

As for the positions, I don't know where to find the exact positions, but all four of the guys that got fired were responsible for community involvement, play testing, and game design, with one of them being in charge of the Talons.

TT can't replace them because TT has no one with such a connection to the community, and TT doesn't make wargames so they almost certainly don't have anyone skilled enough to step in as core developers and play testers.

Even worse, considering the fact that Hawk was not in any financial trouble, TT had no reason to fire them anyways! Hawk would be bringing in the same profit as before the acquisition (give or take) and if the staff could get payed then, they could get payed after with no mark on TT's books.

>Sucks to be the folks that lost their jobs but uh... business is business.
No, fuck you, that isn't an excuse and you know it. While I'm still giving the benefit of the doubt until DZC 2.0 releases, I have absolutely no faith in them as a company after seeing all this scum and shit going down.

Liam dealt with the Talon program, Simon dealt with social media. As employees of a very small company they naturally did a bunch of other shit as well, most importantly helping Dave with game design.
But really TT will probably get someone to unfuck the forums with time, that's not the important part.

The important part is that both of them played the games regularly and knew the competitive meta, which Dave doesn't. Unless some TT staff can be trained and work directly with Dave or they hire Megamike or something, there's going to be problems, and even if it goes well things will be rocky for a while. If they're really retarded they might even decide they don't need to put anyone knowledgeable between Dave and the cesspool of Talons.

This is just the practical concerns, mind you. If I get into the part where they're disgusting corporate scumbags there's a lot more ammunition.

>Liam dealt with the Talon program, Simon dealt with social media.
Looking at the facebook posts, what about Scott and Darren? Sean apparently quit before TT (possibly) fired him, and I don't think I've heard about Chesney.

In any case, though, the only Hawks we know are still on the team are Patrice, Jordan, and of course Dave.

>If I get into the part where they're disgusting corporate scumbags there's a lot more ammunition.
Do it; thread's slow, anyways.

And, anyways, from what Darren said on facebook, the internal playtesting and dev team was composed of Scott, Liam, Darren, Sean, and James (who left earlier in the year). So there are literally no more playtesters who actually know the game there.

>Simon
Shit, I meant Scott. I think Simon left a while ago.

Dunno about Darren. HawkAnon could tell us but I'm not sure if he'd be willing.

>Do it; thread's slow, anyways.
k
I've seen this shit before, it seems a pretty classic case of a company expanding into a new area (in this case games with rulesets) and management thinking the same shit works for absolutely everything. Most suits absolutely despise trying any new methods that don't immediately make loads of money.
TTCombat moves product, it's what they do. Terrain is simple to design and everything else involved is shifting numbers. They don't know how to support a ruleset, but if your corporate culture is based around the execs thinking they know more about x than the people who make their living doing x (which is disturbingly common), then their bad decisions will always go ahead and its up to everybody below them to clean up the shit those idiots sprayed all over the walls.

Also they're lying shitstains who go behind their new aquisition's back to fuck up his working environment and sack his employees after saying they wouldn't, and rumours of shit like cash prizes for tourneys don't exactly help their image.

Their PR intern uses far too many exclamation marks as well, but I won't hate too hard on someone who is paid to essentially be a glorified meatshield.

>Their PR intern uses far too many exclamation marks as well, but I won't hate too hard on someone who is paid to essentially be a glorified meatshield.

their most egregious crime

...

Unfortunately now anyone can post anything under their name and people will probably believe it.

We are all HawkAnon

TTCombat is part of a jewish conspiracy to put gays in the water supply.

I didn't expect this when I sperged out about trips, I'm not sure why.

Please don't, it's nice enough that Hawkanon even gave us this info anyways, no reason to ruin it for the memes.

Fair point, soz.

>rusbots are still spamming the Hawk forums with porn
It's fucking 11 in the morning, do your fucking job, TT.

Testing, proof incoming.