Editing Dropfleet Commander (section)

== The Factions ==
Four of the five factions present in Dropzone Commander are represented in Dropfleet Commander. The fifth faction, The Resistance, is introduced in 'The Battle for Earth' expansion released 2019-07-14.

=== United Colonies of Mankind ===
[[File:ucm_fleet.jpg|300px|thumb|right]]
{{Main|United Colonies of Man}}

The UCM is the standard [[human]] faction.  Olive green, sharp angles, wheels and tracks, lots of machine guns and [[railgun]]s, the usual.  They are twenty billion strong and all dedicated to retaking Earth. Their twelve main worlds are named after the Latin names for metals.  Aurum is the largest and most urbanized of these and their present capital. 

The nation is has a strange combination of a socialistesque political environment and a military-state. For example, there ''are'' politicians and they have power, but when push comes to shove, it's the military who holds most of the power. Not that anyone are really bothered by this; when you've been brought up with stories of the lost cradle worlds, among them the jewel called Earth, no one is gonna argue about too much spending on the military.

Their ships are named for cities on Earth, both real and legendary. UCM ships focus on wide arcs of fire with mass drivers and powerful lasers, and have generally tough ships.

=== Scourge ===
[[File:scourge_fleet.jpg|300px|thumb|right]]
{{Main|Scourge}}

Malicious alien brain squids who lead a fairly miserable existence without a host, they want nothing more than to share that misery with others by injecting their young into their prisoner's ear canals and making them a flesh puppet. They have a merciless glass cannon strategy and love blasting things with plasma. Those Scourge unlucky enough to mature past prime brainjacking age get permanently installed in a vehicle - or in the case of Dropfleet, a ship's command network.

The UCM doesn't understand how they communicate and coordinate; that's a big goal of the first phase of reconquest.

Their ships are named after monsters and other such evil spirits from mythology. Their ships focus on aggressive close up weaponry, all their frigates have the ability to hide in the atmosphere, and they tend to be faster and more fragile.

=== Post-Human Republic ===
[[File:phr_fleet.jpg|300px|thumb|right]]
{{Main|Post-Human Republic}}

Thanks to technology given by the White Sphere, the humans who escaped Vega IV have upgraded themselves into post-human cyborgs.  They are only three billion strong, but very powerful on a unit-per-unit basis, with clean lines, tan colors, and walkers as well as tanks.  The UCM don't like them because they think they're cowards, calling them "Abandonists", while the PHR don't like the UCM for being warmongering zealots.  They aren't directly governed by the White Sphere anymore, but they do trust it quite a bit, and nobody (not even the PHR) knows where it really comes from.

Their ships are all named after heroes or other similar figures of Greek myth. PHR ships have generally poor forward firing power but have powerful broadside weaponry and the strongest bomber craft, and are slow but tough.

=== Shaltari Tribes ===
[[File:shaltari_fleet.jpg|300px|thumb|right]]
{{Main|Shaltari Tribes}}

The Shaltari are extremely long-lived, having mastered the art of transferring their consciousnesses into new bodies.  When death of natural causes is no longer an issue, they simultaneously fear death and yet venerate war as the only pursuit worthy of respect.  People who haven't seen battle yet don't even get names. The various sub-nations of the Shaltari are named after the nations of Native Americans (of both continents), as well as nomadic and germanic tribes.

Their greatest technological advantage is that, rather than drop their troops using landing craft, they utilize teleportation gates. Troops are stationed on a mothership or a particularly large ship such as a battleship, and get sent to the surface via a chain of Void Gates, small ships that serve to link together the teleportation chain. In contrast to the Scourge and their homogeneous arsenal of plasma weapons, Shaltari weaponry is a mix of energized particle beams, focused microwave emitters, and unusual weapons such as gravity coils or ion bombardment.

Their ships are named for minerals or gemstones, and generally have good forward firing power and the best range along with the smallest ship signatures. They are on the fragile side, but can utilize energy shields to counteract that at the cost of lighting up their ships and making them easier to get into range of as well as sacrificing point defense.

=== The Resistance ===
{{Main|Resistance}}

In the chaotic early days of the Scourge invasion, many ships fled by blindly jumping out of their systems. Most perished, but over time some have gambled on returning to jump nodes that have been reactivated as the Reconquest has gone underway. Some ships are barely operational and are scrapped, while others have been maintained and can perform in active duty after being updated with more modern systems. These ships follow a similar philosophy as the old EAA vehicles present in Resistance armies, coming from an era of excess and over-engineering being valued over ease of manufacturing and repair. As such they feature very resilient armour.

The two largest concentrations of legacy fleets are the Vega Scrapfleet and the Kalium Kabal. After the conflict between the EAA and the fleeing ships that would eventually form the PHR, the disabled and damaged ships were instructed to remain at Vega and await repair vessels. As the Scourge invaded shortly after, no such ships arrived. Harvesting and repairing what they could to survive from the remains of the battle, a sizeable fleet survived and carried on. Some of the ships that escaped the Vega battle and formed the PHR are also still in active service.

Kalium was a colony that broke away from the UCM in the early days of their formation. After a series of civil wars and other such political struggles, an industrious and deeply authoritarian state formed named the Kabal. They continued to produce large numbers of legacy ships as they lacked the expertise to develop new designs, but given their totalitarian nature had large amounts of manpower available to them. Kalium ships are reported to feature powerful but unstable weaponry that can pose a danger to their crew.