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 slyphic wrote:

The Weird - Scourge plasma weapons are now Kinetic weapons, despite the meaning of the word plasma and the description of how plasma works in the whole setting. But I understand why, they had to do something to start fixing E/K and this was pretty much their only option. Aside from dumpstering the whole mechanic.

IIRC the lore has long been established that scourge plasma is actually an energy based projectile. As in they fire a projectile which is made of energy but which has mass and acts as a solid, but explodes upon contact with another object.

Yep, TTC just casually deciding the setting doesn't matter because they wrote some bad rules.

Dropfleet 1st ed Rulebook, page 135: "Scourge ships make use of the same plasma weapon technology that has made their ground units so feared"

Dropzone 1st ed Rulebook, page 94: "Each plasma bolt contains a solid core, around which is suspended a ball of super-energetic white-blue plasma. On contact, the vast writhing energies of the plasma are dissipated into the target, causing horrific damage. Compared to kinetic energy weapons the range of these fearsome weapons..."

So their plasma weapons have a solid core surrounded by plasma, sounds kinetic to me.

Try reading those quotes again, like the part I bolded that says plainly and explicitly, in case you misunderstood the preceding sentence, that the damage is not kinetic, it's energetic.

Me: the book says this thing is red. It says it's not blue.

You: sound blue to me.

Except it doesnt say that plainly or explicitly.

I don't understand your confusion. Short of diagramming out the sentence and annotating the words with definitions, I don't know how to proceed.

What specifically in those excerpts makes you think the primary or majority of damage is kinetic instead of energetic?

The part where it explicitly says that it fires a solid core projectile, which by default produces a kinetic energy transfer, regarfless of whether or not its wrapped in plasma.

So you're just ignoring all the other words that explain the primary damage is the plasma, not the core.

I mean, by that unlogic, all kinetic weapons are also energy because they're heated by the acceleration.

I'm pulling the eject lever on this conversation. There's nothing of value to be found.

It doesnt explain that. Stating that the energy part causes horrific damage on contact is highlighting a unique aspect of the weapon system, its not mutually exclusive with kinetic damage.

I really don't get what the idea behind giving re-entry to the light broadsides. Shaltari into PHR matches seem to be completely one sided after this change, and I was already struggling quite a bit in the last games.

Shallies have it the worst, PHR now hard counter gates, but Scourge frigates are also getting the shaft. Being able to hide in atmo for a turn was pretty key to using them effectively, and absolutely essential to the poor Scyla.


I checked the responses I scraped from that last feedback roundup that was misconfigured, and there's no mention of PHR light broads whatsoever.

I thought we might be past the Lewis Clarke era of deliberately fething with the game to "drive engagement by disrupting the meta", but looks like that vile idea (which he brazenly states he got from working at GW) has taken seed with TTC.

Plastic Resistance Battleship, shipping in Sept, GBP45

https://ttcombat.com/collections/dropfleet-commander/products/resistance-battleship







Makes for 2 "Old Battleships" or one "Grand Battleship"

I want to buy it but I've not used the resin one yet.

I welcome the SDF-1 Macross super dimensional battleship joining the ranks of the remnant fleet

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Le Resistance is getting a new plastic navire de guerre.

Sorry I forget the English word.

https://ttcommunity.co.uk/articles-1/f/dropfleet-commander---plastic-resistance-battleship



Preorders Friday.

Battleship. Though Navire de Guerre just means a warship.
I know google translate will tell you that it means battleship, but it's wrong. It's not even a literal translation as literally it means "Ship of War"...in other words, a warship, so I don't know how google messed that up.

A battleship (as in, that specific type of vessel) is a cuirassé.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


Battleship. Though Navire de Guerre just means a warship.
I know google translate will tell you that it means battleship, but it's wrong. It's not even a literal translation as literally it means "Ship of War"...in other words, a warship, so I don't know how google messed that up.

A battleship (as in, that specific type of vessel) is a cuirassé.

What can I say, Navire de Guerre is what they called them in the Côte d'Ivoire navy. (he said confident that no one would be able to contradict him).

Seriously thanks, the one thing I did not expect from my lame dad joke was a lesson in the limits of Google Translate.

Dropzone Commander 2.7 Balance Update


Automatically Appended Next Post:

With the announcement of the next edition of Dropzone, we thought we’d put together one last update for the current edition. Just enough to knock down some of the more prevalent units and bring up some underperformers. While this update isn’t as wide reaching as ones in the past, we hope you’ll find some new life in the game while it’s in that weird in-between stage between editions.

Hopefully that will solve every player’s complaints and please every customer.

Only a phase short of rolling CQB back to v1 style. I'm guessing this is a soft touch attempt to get the few v2-stans onboard with the 'DZC Classic' rennaisance coming next year. Feels quite literally too little too late.

Whatever, I'm just sitting on my hands waiting for v3 and a game I can love again.

 slyphic wrote:
Yep, TTC just casually deciding the setting doesn't matter because they wrote some bad rules.

Dropfleet 1st ed Rulebook, page 135: "Scourge ships make use of the same plasma weapon technology that has made their ground units so feared"

Dropzone 1st ed Rulebook, page 94: "Each plasma bolt contains a solid core, around which is suspended a ball of super-energetic white-blue plasma. On contact, the vast writhing energies of the plasma are dissipated into the target, causing horrific damage. Compared to kinetic energy weapons the range of these fearsome weapons..."

To be fair, even with that description it still sounds like a kinetic attack and asserting that it's purely a non-kinetic weapon doesn't make sense.
If it's a projectile that is wreathed in plasma, that projectile is still going to punch into the target. In fact, I understood it that scourge plasma weapons work by using the solid core to penetrate the target and burn the target from the inside out with plasma, which seems consistent with in universe descriptions of scourge casualties. I'm pretty sure such casualties are literally described as burning from the inside out, with plasma bursting through their eyes and mouths.

So really, it's a hybrid weapon that uses both a kinetic delivery system and non-kinetic means to kill it's target. Similar to how a poison dart may require kinetic force to deliver poison (the real killer) into the target.

Compare this to Shaltari Microwave weapons, which I'm pretty sure have no physical component and are purely energy based.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

To be fair, even with that description it still sounds like a kinetic attack and asserting that it's purely a non-kinetic weapon doesn't make sense.
If it's a projectile that is wreathed in plasma, that projectile is still going to punch into the target. In fact, I understood it that scourge plasma weapons work by using the solid core to penetrate the target and burn the target from the inside out with plasma, which seems consistent with in universe descriptions of scourge casualties. I'm pretty sure such casualties are literally described as burning from the inside out, with plasma bursting through their eyes and mouths.

So really, it's a hybrid weapon that uses both a kinetic delivery system and non-kinetic means to kill it's target. Similar to how a poison dart may require kinetic force to deliver poison (the real killer) into the target.

Never said purely, predominately energy. In much the same way as your example; a blowdart is a poison weapon with an incidental kinetic component. What matters is whether it's more E or K, because there's hybrid option.

I'm going to post the full DZC plasma section here, because there's nothing in there to support the weapon doing any appreciable damage via kinetic impact, and plenty that speaks otherwise.

DropzoneCommander1e wrote:Plasma Cannons - These fearsome guns represent the core of Scourge anti-armour firepower. A single blast from one of these merciless destroyers can reduce a main battle tank to molten wreckage, instantly immolating its crew to ash. Each plasma bolt contains a solid core, around which is suspended a ball of super-energetic white-blue plasma. On contact, the vast, writhing energies of the plasma are dissipated into the target, causing horrific damage.

Compared to simple kinetic weapons, the range of these fearsome weapons is thankfully limited by the ability of the powered core to contain the plasma. The plasma cannon's limited absolute range and relatively low velocity is however offset by its ability to defeat all known forms of active countermeasures. This is because the solid core cannot usually be accurately located or indeed destroyed behind its shell of burning energy.

Plasma Rifles - These are the primary small arm utilised by Scourge infantry. In many ways, they function as miniaturised versions of the plasma cannon. The effect they have on living tissue is profoundly shocking to behold. With a much high velocity and rate of fire than the plasma cannon, plasma rifle ammunition usually penetrates the target before energy dissipation, which is subsequently immolated from the inside out. Injuries from these weapons are horrific and almost always fatal.

Dissipated into does not mean it happens inside the target, see the plasma rifle section for comparison. Same for the bit about relative velocity. 'Shell of burning energy' too. And then there's the short story Hawk published in newsletter #34 which describes the effects of a plasma weapon from a PoV inside the target - the plasma melts from the inside out, nothing about kinetic damage whatsoever.

Wouldn't kinetics still be implied though? It's still a big metal core being lobbed at a tank. There is still going to be an impact, and "relatively low velocity" just means it has lower velocity compared to conventional kinetic weapons. A bow has lower velocity compared to a firearm. It is still going to hurt when it hurts.

Then we have the case of the plasma rifle, where it explicitly functions like a firearm, complete with the projectile penetrating the target like your typical bullet. Even without plasma, that could kill someone.

I agree that the kinetic damage would be incidental and that most of the damage would come from plasma, but it is still not a "true" energy weapon.

I suspect they gave it the kinetic property to reflect that, to differentiate it from the likes of Microwave weapons, which unless I'm mistaken have no kinetic elements.

No, K is not implied. A big metal core lobbed at a tank that deals the majority of its damage with plasma is a plasma weapon, regardless of whether the low-v ball whangs the hull.

Would you agree they have Neutron Missiles misclassified then?

These weapons utilise a tiny but unbelievably dense quantity of neutronium, a compressed mass of pure neutrons contained at its tip. These munitions must be self propelled over several minutes of sustained burn as the core is simply too dense to be accelerate quickly by something like a mass driver or cannon. On impact, the sheer density coupled with tiny size of the core allows it to punch clean through an entire ship.

Neutron Missiles, damage type: E

Because if you're going to try to justify that one, I think we're done here.

They made the plasma weapons kinetic as a patch on their fethed up combat mechanics because Scourge had no others and would just eat gak up against factions with good E-saves. You don't need to suspect anything, they've been perfectly up front that the change was to improve game balance - they didn't say gak about lore accuracy.

Also... Microwaves are actually the most kinetic of all the energy weapons. They work by making the molecules in matter vibrate, producing heat through mechanical friction. But this gets into "everything is a wave" territory, which we can avoid if y'all will stop being so hell bent on justifying plasma weapons being classified as kinetic for some weird reason.

Yeah that does seem weird, why are Neutron missiles classified as energy weapons?
To me such a weapon sounds similar to a HEAT missile in function, which I think is still a kinetic weapon?

I actually had to look up the definition of kinetic weapons because I was trying to remember if explosives count as kinetics.
Apparently, explosives do not count as kinetic weapons. In fact, in strictly technical terms, a kinetic weapon is one that does not use non-kinetic means to inflict damage. Which would include explosive, thermal or radiological. The means of delivery does not matter, apparently.
Plasma would actually be a thermal weapon, as, well, you're using a superheated gas to burn targets as the primary means of attack. So by definition not kinetic, despite needing a physical means of transport.

HEAT rounds are kinetic because even though it uses an explosive charge, that charge is used to force a metal sliver into a target, thus relying on kinetic impact.

Neutron missiles are also kinetic I guess, as it seems to still rely on kinetic energy for it's payload? I don't know how just pushing it into something would allow it to tear through a ship, unless it uses an explosive charge to force it out upon impact, like a HEAT round. I suppose that as the neutronium is supposed to be very dense then it will exert a lot of force as per F=MA, but given how slow the delivery mechanism is the time to kill is probably not great. Kind of like just slowly pushing a needle into something.

Microwave weapons are not kinetic, as there's no physical element imparting kinetic force onto the target to begin with and it uses microwaves to deal damage. Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. So it's a radiological weapon.

TL;DR : Projectile weapon does not mean Kinetic Energy weapon. The more you know I guess.