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Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

So as it seems Hawk is back in business and running again after earlier issues; and since Firestorm is likely out of the count for a while I'm wondering about Dropfleet.

My main concern at the moment is that as I look at the models on show and the sprue (where they are shown) I notice that they have a lot of detail on the edge areas - lots of bubbles, ridges, crinkled sections and such. That and I'm aware that a lot of their ships are fairly small in size.

So I'm wondering if the high detail, small size, and large amounts of details on the edge areas makes for a nightmare in cleaning off the mould lines from the models and the hybrid plastic/resin that they use. Last thing I really want is models that take hours to clean or which never really seem to be as mould-line free as possible.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

The sprues are not hybrid material, but actual HIPS. They are easy to clean, although you have to be careful with some, like the Shaltari, so that you don't break the tiny spines and ridges when you clip the parts. The resin ships are similar in properties to Paulson's Mecha Front minis. I haven't had any that were time consuming to clean, although I have had a few oops moments with little spines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and the space station kit is amazing if you are into kitbashing.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/28 22:13:18


   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

The space kit is indeed amazing and probably the most diverse terrain kit I've seen around for any game.


Right now I'm sort of tempted to grab one of the limited edition battlecruisers before they vanish as they've got them up for sale until the 4th. Though I have to say picking jut one fleet is very hard as they are a great range all round. Erring toward Shaltari or PHR

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in gb
Highlord with a Blackstone Fortress






Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.

 Overread wrote:
So as it seems Hawk is back in business and running again after earlier issues;


earlier issues?

n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.

It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. 
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter






I heard that hawk went under.

what happened?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Scott-S6 wrote:
And yet another thread is hijacked for Unit to ask for the same advice, receive the same answers and make the same excuses.

Oh my god I'm becoming martel.
Send help!

 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I didn't pay much attention so I don't know all the ins and outs, but I think it was a combination of their KS fullfillment and business management issues. From what I gather TC combat now bought in and are running the company side of things whilst the Hawk founder is now working more upon game and model design.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Hawk was running into trouble fulfilling the kickstarter. We don't know the full ins and outs, but the net effect was that they were not fulfilling other orders at the same time.

They decided to partner with TTCombat for distribution and logistics, and TTCombat decided to straight up buy them out.

The only Hawk employees left are Dave (the former owner and designer) and Patrice (the artist). Dave is now free to do design work instead of running the company.

TTCombat just relaunched both lines on their web store and started shipping to distributors again.
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The sprues are not hybrid material, but actual HIPS. They are easy to clean, although you have to be careful with some, like the Shaltari, so that you don't break the tiny spines and ridges when you clip the parts. The resin ships are similar in properties to Paulson's Mecha Front minis. I haven't had any that were time consuming to clean, although I have had a few oops moments with little spines.



Out of interest did you ever see or get the two battlecruisers for Shaltari (KS and regular)?

I've been scouring the net and can't seem to find a side by side photo of those two ships.




Nobody = aye sounds like what I've heard. Glad that TTC stepped in to provide the financial support and take the reins over things. Rather see more companies survive and thrive than die off and DZone and DFleet do have some fantastic detailed sculpts.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

I only have the KS Shaltari BC. The retail cruisers are very expensive and Indecided I would probably prefer just to convert some plastics.

   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




My personal experience is not so great in general with Dropfleet.

I will support, buy, and play Dropzone, but dropfleet missed the mark.

Our group did the large pledge with all the add ons possible.

I did PHR, which for the longest time were broken in game - in a bad way. Vastly underpowered and nearly unplayable until resent fixes. By that time though, I sold it all off and got out of it.

It was not a good space battle game in general. Lots of planet invasion, but that was also poor. No attacker/defender missions. Why would so many planets with cities have no defense, and just letting two factions take them over...

Modling part for PHR was terrible also. The ships were in two halfs and you had to be mega careful on cutting off sprue parts or youd ruin the hair thing seem where both halfs connect.

The KS issue was frustrating, but ive gone through many and theres always lots of delays for minis.

I personally think it dropped the ball. I really want a space combat game with large fleets but a lot of options out there fall flat
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

Did anyone ever release the pure space battle rules?

   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I think Dropfleet does need a MKII rules release and there is, apparently, one in the works. The KS however held everything up in limbo and delayed things. I think that this year should be a strong year for them (and they really should capitalize on the fact that Firestorm is off the market at present, giving Dropzone a totally open market to itself for a while).


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3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in us
Abel





Washington State

Dropfleet Commander should be called "Take as many drop ships as you can and bum rush the objectives".

I like the space battle aspect, and the rules there are pretty solid. The game, however, is won or lost on the objectives. And the most infuriating thing is that what happens in space has no impact at all on the objectives, and the fight phase on the objectives, a totally un-intuitive and confusing mess, has nothing at all to do with what happens in space. Yes, you can nuke an objective from space, but you lose victory points for doing so. Only a few ships can actually shoot anything at an objective, and it's like shooting a pea shooter at a reinforced metal bulkhead. In case you haven't figured it out, the planetary combat is the most clunky, bad, and totally out of phase rules with the space rules. Its like it's own game. You can wipe out your opponent's entire fleet, but if you can't take at least one objective, you lose. So it leads to fleets built with 50-75%+ of your points dedicated to Drop Ships that rush the objectives, drop all their troops off, and then it doesn't matter what happens in space. The game is won/lost on the planets.

The game has a lot of potential, it just needs either a thorough scrub of the rules with errata/FAQ (which they have done for the most part, but...) or 2.0. I'm hoping for 2.0 of rules.

Kara Sloan shoots through Time and Design Space for a Negative Play Experience  
   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader





Albuquerque,, NM

 Tamwulf wrote:
it doesn't matter what happens in space.


That's not true at all. You have to have more ships of higher tonnage value near clusters in order to score points. Even if your opponent has troops on the ground if you have more ships near the cluster you score more points.
   
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SoCal

That sounds more exciting than an Excel spreadsheet.

   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 gruebot wrote:
 Tamwulf wrote:
it doesn't matter what happens in space.


That's not true at all. You have to have more ships of higher tonnage value near clusters in order to score points. Even if your opponent has troops on the ground if you have more ships near the cluster you score more points.


That depends on the scenario.

To control a cluster under Standard Scoring (troops on the ground), you have to control more sectors (city tokens) than your opponent. If you do, you score 2/3/4 VP for small/medium/large (2/3/4 sector) clusters. If you happen to hold one of the sectors of each cluster, you get 0/1/2 VP. The scoring you referred to is for Critical Locations, and you only get 2pts per cluster that you have more tonnage in low orbit than your opponent under that scoring method.

Therefore, unless you spend a lot of time bombarding sectors it's very likely that you can wipe out the enemy fleet in orbit, but still lose if they manage to drop more troops on each cluster.

Example: Take and Hold (the generic mission), has 3 large (4 sector) clusters and 2 medium (3 sector clusters). Both Standard Scoring (having troops on clusters) and Critical Locations (ships in orbit) are victory conditions. Assuming your opponent drops and takes all 5 clusters and you wipe out everything in orbit but his strike carriers in the atmosphere, you are looking at 18 pts for him (4x3+3x2) vs 10 pts for you (2x5) on turn 4, leading to a total of 36-20 on turn 6.

If you land troops too, and somehow manage to contest each sector, it changes: Turn 4 it's 18-18, 6 it's 36-36 (he'd still have 4x3+3x2 while you'd have 2x5+2x3+1x2) so in casual play it'd be a tie. In tournaments KP are used as a tiebreaker condition, so you'll win on that count, it just won't be a full stomp that you'd think.

Now, some scenarios do include variants like Critical Locations counting for double, and space stations that get treated only as a critical location. Bombardment also changes the VP for Standard Scoring (every sector you destroy reduces the size of the cluster, reducing its value), so it's possible to win by ignoring the ground game, it's just very very unlikely.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 gruebot wrote:
 Tamwulf wrote:
it doesn't matter what happens in space.


That's not true at all. You have to have more ships of higher tonnage value near clusters in order to score points. Even if your opponent has troops on the ground if you have more ships near the cluster you score more points.


Its very true...most missions don't care about tonnage. They don't give many points compared to holding the actual city sections.

Very excited for Dropzone 2.0, as in previews they show they are changing to game for the better. I cam only assume that either late this year or next they will do the same for Dropfleet
   
 
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