Imateria wrote:
EDIT: This was aimed at Compel, nikooni ninja'd me on the positng.

I'm not too sure I agree with you on the PHR fleet, I think Calypso's will be excellent at keeping your Battle/Heavy Cruiser or Battleship alive for longer when facing off against Shaltari ships with multiple Particle Lances (Obsidian and Diamond especially), or UCM and Scourge ships with multiple Burnthrough weapons. I'd be more inclined to drop the Andromeda's for Europa's or Pandora's, I don't see a frigate with a single launch asset being a whole lot of use, especially when you've already got a Scipio and Ikarus.

And to be honest, I'm not that sold on the PHR Battlecruisers either, I can see a Leonides taking the place of a couple of Theseus thanks to the Linked broadsides and being a little cheaper overall, but I'd much rather have a Bellerophon than a Scipio and spend the saved points on more frigates.

 Mymearan wrote:
Am I too casual for this game?

 Mymearan wrote:
Played a game with the intro fleets (500p I think). First reaction: Jesus this game is complicated! There's so much to keep track up, from persistent damage effects that need rolling every turn down to damage on individual sectors, tables upon tables, and on top of this the core game mechanics are already quite complicated due to the number of different orders, all with differences in speed, turning, shooting etc, weapon ranges varying depending on what your opponents have been doing in the previous turns, etc. I mean it was fun and I enjoyed it but I almost got a headache from thinking. And we didn't even use any launch assets (fighters/bombers/missiles). And this was with about 7-8 ships per side, can't even imagine double or triple the amount! Am I too casual for this game?

 Tamwulf wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:
Played a game with the intro fleets (500p I think). First reaction: Jesus this game is complicated! There's so much to keep track up, from persistent damage effects that need rolling every turn down to damage on individual sectors, tables upon tables, and on top of this the core game mechanics are already quite complicated due to the number of different orders, all with differences in speed, turning, shooting etc, weapon ranges varying depending on what your opponents have been doing in the previous turns, etc. I mean it was fun and I enjoyed it but I almost got a headache from thinking. And we didn't even use any launch assets (fighters/bombers/missiles). And this was with about 7-8 ships per side, can't even imagine double or triple the amount! Am I too casual for this game?

I've had limited play experience, but I'll tell you that it only gets worse. Some of it is mitigated in the small ships with few hull points and not rolling on one of the damage tables. If you spread your fire power out doing a little bit of damage here and there, the game will take forever. Try to concentrate on a couple ships at a time.

When you add in the Launch Assets, it will just add a another phase to the game and make it take a bit longer.

One of the things that really caught me off guard was the ground combat. It's like an entire sub-game within the game. The more clusters and sectors on the table, the longer it takes. My initial reaction: You need at least two ships that can launch Drop Ships/cluster, along with at least one ship that can land Bulk Landers. Ideally, you should have one ship with fighters/bombers per group of Drop Ships/Landers. Finally, one ship with Bombardment will go a long way. Most of the scenarios are all about Victory Points via Clusters and Critical Locations. Only a couple scenarios in the book use Kill Points- killing the enemy fleet. Those are the only scenarios where you can win by blowing up the enemy fleet.

I was really looking for a game more about space combat then rushing to a Cluster, landing ground forces, and letting them fight it out for ultimate victory in the game. I still like the game, and it is fun. I just don't know how a tournament will work with 1,500 points of ships and only 2.5-3 hours of play time for six turns. If it's a three round tournament, you could be looking at spending 10-12 hours at a game store.

 Compel wrote:
A few comments scattered about.

One think to keep in mind Nekooni, is that Lima Frigates are 'Rare' choices, which means in smaller points games, effectively you can only have a single group of them containing 1-2 frigates. I also believe that in smaller games (I don't have the book to hand right now, cause making dinner), you're only allowed a single Vanguard Battlegroup, but it can have up to 2 Heavy tonnage ships in it (EG my Avalon and my Moscow). The other thing is, at skirmish scale, you're only allowed 4 battlegroups total. In saying that, I haven't pointed up your list there to see whether it was skirmish (999) or Clash (1500-ish)

 Compel wrote:
A few comments scattered about.

One think to keep in mind Nekooni, is that Lima Frigates are 'Rare' choices, which means in smaller points games, effectively you can only have a single group of them containing 1-2 frigates. I also believe that in smaller games (I don't have the book to hand right now, cause making dinner), you're only allowed a single Vanguard Battlegroup, but it can have up to 2 Heavy tonnage ships in it (EG my Avalon and my Moscow). The other thing is, at skirmish scale, you're only allowed 4 battlegroups total. In saying that, I haven't pointed up your list there to see whether it was skirmish (999) or Clash (1500-ish)

As for the Calypso, the thing with it is, it only nerfs the accuracy of one Weapon System once per turn, with a weapon system effectively a single 'line' on the weapons stats sheet. So a ship hits you with multiple particle lances, ONE of them gets a -1 to accuracy... Which for something like an Obsidian, means that it's hitting you just about as much as your typical PHR medium battery. Sure, a -1 accuracy is helpful, especially with burnthroughs. But dedicating an entire frigate to it, and it only helping once a turn? I'm not convinced. In saying that, I did include it in my list there anyways.

I've not tried out the Andromeda's yet, - I've only played the starter game with my PHR but I think the fighters would help at the very least discourage any Manticore / Wyvern style driveby's for them to convince to target another ship. But yeah, Pandora's do seem really neat and I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to include them instead.

I've got a good feeling about the Scipio, but yeah, the Bellerophon is really, really good. You could quite happily swap the Hector and Scipio in my list for a Bellerophon and Leonidas, maybe.
It's worth clarifying that the Leonidas has more HP than the Theseus. - In my starter game, my poor Theseus got one-shotted by a Moscow class.

 Compel wrote:
Special Rule - Advanced ECM Suite: Once per turn, when a friendly ship within 4" is being targeted by an opponents weapon, you may add 1 to one weapons systems Lock value for the remained of the turn. In order to be affected, ships must be on the same orbital layer as the Calypso. In addition the calypso can choose to target itself. This is cumulative with other advanced ECM suites.

So to do it twice, you're needing two Calypso's, so spending near enough the points for a Theseus class...


I'm not sure what ship you're referring to when you say 'worst of the 4' - The Scipio? Or the PHR in general. I mean, yeah, my gut instinct is that the PHR are kind of the weakest, Andy Chambers still seems pretty confident with them though.

str00dles1 wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Special Rule - Advanced ECM Suite: Once per turn, when a friendly ship within 4" is being targeted by an opponents weapon, you may add 1 to one weapons systems Lock value for the remained of the turn. In order to be affected, ships must be on the same orbital layer as the Calypso. In addition the calypso can choose to target itself. This is cumulative with other advanced ECM suites.

So to do it twice, you're needing two Calypso's, so spending near enough the points for a Theseus class...


I'm not sure what ship you're referring to when you say 'worst of the 4' - The Scipio? Or the PHR in general. I mean, yeah, my gut instinct is that the PHR are kind of the weakest, Andy Chambers still seems pretty confident with them though.

Hum, guess we played it wrong then. Its really horrible then... I mean its great to try to ruin an opponents Dark Matter Canna/ParticleTriad etc, but wow. Rather take more ships.

And yea, sorry I should have clarified. PHR is the weakest faction of the 4 at the moment.

Did Chambers post anywhere why he thinks they are still good.? Id love to know his testing data.

Like I said, one or two turns weapons free and people on either side of you is great, but it may only happen once or twice and your ships have to make it there and be able to live. 3+ Armor on everything is hardly a guarantee when so much is critting you.

Im pretty shocked the bigger ships don't have shields like the bigger walkers do in DZC.

My next idea is to take lots of ships and literally go straight ahead, being as aggressive as possible to try to get more side shots off

 Compel wrote:
At the 999 point level, I think you can take the battlecruisers, if you're not taking the heavy cruiser. - Broadly speaking.

It depends though. PHR Battlecruisers can be seen as 'better' Light Cruisers rather than 'better' Heavy Cruisers. So I could foresee a list that had a Leonidas but no Theseus.

I think 5-8 Fighters/Bombers is quite a lot, for the UCM at least. - That would mean taking 2 Seattles minimum, which seems like a lot.

 Compel wrote:
I'm not a fan of the Ajax myself, I tend to feel like you might as well try to rejig points to get another Orpheus instead. But since you have 2 already in that list, maybe an Orion? Lots of points tweaking needed though.

Andy Chambers" wrote wrote:The Crunchy bits
I was enjoying reading Adrian Beale’s blog where he does some number crunching on the ships from Dropfleet Commander: https://dzcau.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/standard-cruiser-damage-output/
The point he’s making is that contrary to current thinking the damage output for cruisers of one faction, the Post Human Republic, are equal to the others despite appearances. There’s also some good debate in the comments countering the refutation etc.
My first thoughts were ‘well of course they balance out in theory, I did the theory too’ but then it struck me that Adrian doesn’t know that, nobody knows that because I don’t talk about the crunchy bits very often, by which I mean numbers.
I’m no mathematician but back in the day Jervis Johnson taught me the value in rendering things into cold, hard statistics. It won’t tell the whole story of how a unit will work in a game, but it gives a solid and common starting point for comparing one thing against another even when they aren’t really the same.
So in this example for Dropfleet Commander I actually kept little damage output tables for the different ship designs we had in mind to ensure that I had a clear idea of how fighty they were. Here’s a fairly late one for the UCM Rio class cruiser:
1 Sys Max Avg Crit Close
2.56 8.0 4.56 24% +2.25
Note I haven’t checked this one against the current stats so it might be out of date.
‘1 Sys’ is firing one weapon system only, assuming the best one. ‘Max’ is best possible on Weapons Free orders, ‘Avg’ is what you’ll get with average rolls on Weapons Free, ‘Close’ is the average bonus damage for close action weapons when within scan range.
This was a useful guide when it came to looking at points values as well as general balancing. Dropfleet Commander went through a lot of tuning during its development. Early on cruisers used to have less hits (8) and their guns were on average one point less potent (say hitting on 4+ in the old and 3+ in the newer versions). Energy spikes were also +2-3” each but you accumulated an unlimited number of them until you shed them by silent running (i.e. never as we discovered in testing).
We ended up changing things because it felt like shooting could often be ineffectual and bringing in better hit rolls also made for more critical hits (very important because they bypass armour) so more action happening. To compensate the ships gained some extra hull points, although not enough to turn things back into a slugfest. Through the course of such relatively (on paper) minor tweaking the damage output changes were useful to track.
Naturally the raw damage output doesn’t tell the whole story of ship’s usefulness. It misses a lot of the nuances in the balance between speed, armour, hull, sensor range and fire arcs, let alone special capabilities like launching strike craft or bombardment capability in a ground-objective oriented game. It’s just a starting point and the rest of the game balance (in terms of unit stats) can be built out from there.
It’s perhaps worth noting that at the outset I statted up ships purely for what ‘felt right’ rather than in accordance with a pre-planned scheme, the numbers were a little off as testing showed (too conservative) but easily adjusted later. Morale of the story; don’t be afraid to mess with your initial stats, but do try and keep track of what you’re doing.

 Compel wrote:
Special Rule - Advanced ECM Suite: Once per turn, when a friendly ship within 4" is being targeted by an opponents weapon, you may add 1 to one weapons systems Lock value for the remained of the turn. In order to be affected, ships must be on the same orbital layer as the Calypso. In addition the calypso can choose to target itself. This is cumulative with other advanced ECM suites.

So to do it twice, you're needing two Calypso's, so spending near enough the points for a Theseus class...


I'm not sure what ship you're referring to when you say 'worst of the 4' - The Scipio? Or the PHR in general. I mean, yeah, my gut instinct is that the PHR are kind of the weakest, Andy Chambers still seems pretty confident with them though.

str00dles1 wrote:

 Compel wrote:
A few comments scattered about.

One think to keep in mind Nekooni, is that Lima Frigates are 'Rare' choices, which means in smaller points games, effectively you can only have a single group of them containing 1-2 frigates. I also believe that in smaller games (I don't have the book to hand right now, cause making dinner), you're only allowed a single Vanguard Battlegroup, but it can have up to 2 Heavy tonnage ships in it (EG my Avalon and my Moscow). The other thing is, at skirmish scale, you're only allowed 4 battlegroups total. In saying that, I haven't pointed up your list there to see whether it was skirmish (999) or Clash (1500-ish)

As for the Calypso, the thing with it is, it only nerfs the accuracy of one Weapon System once per turn, with a weapon system effectively a single 'line' on the weapons stats sheet. So a ship hits you with multiple particle lances, ONE of them gets a -1 to accuracy... Which for something like an Obsidian, means that it's hitting you just about as much as your typical PHR medium battery. Sure, a -1 accuracy is helpful, especially with burnthroughs. But dedicating an entire frigate to it, and it only helping once a turn? I'm not convinced. In saying that, I did include it in my list there anyways.

I've not tried out the Andromeda's yet, - I've only played the starter game with my PHR but I think the fighters would help at the very least discourage any Manticore / Wyvern style driveby's for them to convince to target another ship. But yeah, Pandora's do seem really neat and I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to include them instead.

I've got a good feeling about the Scipio, but yeah, the Bellerophon is really, really good. You could quite happily swap the Hector and Scipio in my list for a Bellerophon and Leonidas, maybe.
It's worth clarifying that the Leonidas has more HP than the Theseus. - In my starter game, my poor Theseus got one-shotted by a Moscow class.

I can only speak to PHR and im no expert only getting in 3 games in but ive tried a few things, and at least read as much material/reviews as I could

Over all, they are the "worst" of the 4.

The big issue, which is highly discussed on hawk forums is the broadsides are just crap. 1 or 2 turns of great shooting chance doesn't make up for the other 4 turns of not doing much. Most weapons not being good for Forward arc really cripples the faction. What the white sphere was thinking I cant imagine. Maybe the magic 8 ball is broken.

I am pretty sure Calypso is all of the ships weapons though. I don't have the book on me at the moment but thought RAW it was everything shot at it from a single ship. At least it also stacks, so doing it twice gives it 2 harder, etc.

Andromeda is really good if you take it in its own group of 4. It can swarm the enemy very quickly. I like them a lot. Still rather take Bellerophons but if you have space they fill it great. But only in big groups. 1 or 2 isn't going to do much

Pandora is also great. Big weapon on a little ship. These are also good to take in groups of 2-3. I haven't tried 4 of them but I want to. Flash is good to really light up the enemy.

It does feel mandatory to take 2 Bellerophons in any list. One of the best ships PHR can take.

I tried Leonidas, hes ok. Nothing amazing but his speed is good so it helps get him into position.

Hercules is really good, but I expect it as hes a battleship.

Still need to try more lists out before I fully give up on them til they are fixed, but as a whole they are disappointing.

str00dles1 wrote:


I did try the silent running first two turns, which did help, but to get into position where you can weapons free doesn't happen very often if you are play any bit competent opponent. They realize that's all your trying to do, so they can avoid it most often, while shooting their fronts at you. By the time you do get your double sides off, you get maybe a turn with only a few ships of doing it, before the opponent flies past you and your out of position again.

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
The only bad thing about frigate heavy is the cascading exploding damage that can occur. Fig 1 blows up and causes 2 damage to next fig w/in 3, crippling it. Then is takes a crit and explodes causing damage to the next one. I know it wont happen every time, but in my 3 games I've seen it happen multiple times.

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
The only bad thing about frigate heavy is the cascading exploding damage that can occur. Fig 1 blows up and causes 2 damage to next fig w/in 3, crippling it. Then is takes a crit and explodes causing damage to the next one. I know it wont happen every time, but in my 3 games I've seen it happen multiple times.

Stranger83 wrote:


With the exception of Shaltari you have the range on all other factions, if you're on silent running then you should be able to get your broadsides in range of the other ships BEFORE they get their front arc in range of you (and to get you out of silent running they have to active scan which gives them a major spike). Remember that the PHR don't do very well going head on, the side arcs mean you do much better spaced out, forcing the enemy to move their ships into arc.

Maybe it's different play styles, but I find PHR to be the strongest faction personally.