Dropfleet Commander/Tactics/UCM

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reconquest

With Battle For Earth out, dreadnoughts and destroyers now have official rules, along with the new monitors.

The new fleet builder made a lot of the community errata official. With that, a number of UCM weapons were linked or gained Squadron, adding a lot of power to the faction. It's definitely appreciated, but it won't change your overall strategy much.

Main tactics page

Why Play UCM

Railguns with forgiving firing arcs and damage-spiking lasers with narrow arcs cover all the basics of firepower

Your ships look like Mass Effect/Halo/(200X sci-fi franchise) rifles with engines

ECM shenanigans let you spotlight those pesky Scourge stealth ships before firing the Facemelter Beams.

Squadron rules encourage you to take groups of similar ships (Rio, Toulon, Osaka) to maximise firepower

You like the idea of blowing up enemy ships, (even the ones pretending to be space rocks!) with what amounts to an armoured, supersized ICBM with multiple warheads. With BoE and v1.3, the UCM are the definitive kings of Torpedoes

Special Abilities

Aegis (X): all friendly ships on the same orbital layer within 4" of this ship (including itself) add X to their Point Defense pool.

Detector: this ship may always use Active Scan orders even if their battlegroup chose a different order this turn. All Detector ships in a group may Active Scan, instead of just one.

Squadron-X: If X or more weapons with this rule shoot at the same target at the same time, one of them gets an extra d6 shots.

Ships of the Line

• Light Tonnage:
  • Santiago-class Corvette: A cheap corvette without any gimmicks. Bring them in large numbers if you go the corvette route, and get them into atmosphere as quickly as possible. Don't be afraid to attack enemy frigates as well as strike carriers. The addition of Squadron 3 gives them a bit more punch.
  • Lysander Stealth Lighter: The Normandy SR1 of the UCMF. The Lysander is similar to the New Orleans in the sense that it is a strike carrier, in that it has Open but trades half the hull and the Mass driver turret for a signature of 0", Stealth, Full Cloak, and a nifty rule that allows you to scan sectors regardless of Tonnage. Very good for an initial grab of sectors, or for a flank based sneaky insertion, just don't expect these guys to survive if anything catches them in scan range.
  • New Orleans-class Strike Carrier: Your bread-and-butter scoring unit, don't forget their gun. One New Orleans won't be killing anything, but four of them can defend themselves reasonably well.
  • Toulon-class Gun Frigate: Three baby turrets give these little skirmishers three 4+ shots each. A flotilla of these can sweep in to bully the enemy's back line and force a response from your opponent. Just watch out for chain detonations. Squadron 3 makes them even more of a threat.
  • Taipei-class Missile Frigate: When the UCM build a close-action vessel they go all-in, this little nightmare unleashes massive missile swarms...once it gets into range. Don't expect an opponent to let you do this after the first time he's seen it happen. Can be valuable for sheer distraction value - make sure the enemy has to pick between the Taipeis and something equally painful.
  • Jakarta-class Defense Frigate: The Jakarta's Aegis rule provides a Point Defense boosting aura to ships within range. Extremely useful against bomber-heavy lists and Close Action battlegroups, but useless against main guns and Shaltari Beam CAWs.
  • Lima-class EWAC Frigate: A little ship with a big claim to fame. As the only ship with the Detector rule, Limas can ping enemy ships with Active Scan regardless of their battlegroup's orders. Use this to light up targets with spikes and make burnthrough alpha strikes that much better. Keep in mind that they can remove Silent Running status on a 4+ as well. A word of warning, however, Limas can be a crutch for new players. They lose most of their usefulness after the first two rounds of the game so having too many in your fleet can hamper you in the late game. For groups with ships that don't need to go weapons-free to get the most out of their firepower (New Cairo and Osaka) you can take a Jakarta and a single lima and be just as effective as the Jakarta can active scan as well.
  • Istanbul-class Monitor: The Istanbul was Constantinople has 4" of thrust and can't go Max Thrust. Even with 10" scan, it's going to be a while before you can shoot anything that didn't zoom right onto your side of the table. It's going to be even longer before you get to use your bombardment gun on a cluster that isn't right in your deployment zone (It takes at least three turns to reach a midfield cluster). Use this thing primarily for defense.
  • Vienna-class Escort Frigate: With Aegis 4 it won't give you the same level of protection as a Jakarta, but the Vienna makes up for that with better armor and a neat little frigate-sized burnthrough laser. This is supposed to light up targets for the battleship it's escorting, but with the same thrust and less scan than a battleship I'm not sure how workable that is.
  • Havana-class Destroyer: The final version of the Havana features two light torpedoes (4 damage each) which cannot be fired at the same time. They can be useful for disrupting your opponent's formations. Use them to pin down an enemy squadron by forcing them to evade instead of e.g. drop troops or line up a Furnace shot.
  • Vancouver-class Escort Carrier: Two squadrons, Thrust 10”. Enough said. Breaks the UCM tradition of giving carriers significant guns on the side.
  • Kiev-class Heavy Destroyer: Bears Lock 3+ two damage mass drivers that can fire into atmo without penalty. Because subtlety is for chumps. Use it to slaughter Scourge frigates and laugh as PHR strike carriers crumple and burn (and probably attract a lot of fire in return, remember they're not cruisers).

• Medium Tonnage:
  • New Cairo-class Light Cruiser: Armed only with a Cobra Laser, this ship is literally hit-or-miss in combat but comes in twos or threes. A full group of these caps out at 18 damage and is nice for Flash spiking even if the dice gods hate you. The cobra laser averages 0.874 hits and 2.424 crits so on average meaning more than half the time you will be putting a major spike on the enemy. Additionally, 3 of these guys dish out 2.6 hits and a whopping 7.27 crits in a turn.
  • Osaka-class Light Cruiser: Carries a single set of heavy mass drivers. Wide arcs and high speed make this an excellent class for flanking. With the new changes, they gain the squadron(2) rule on their weapons giving a group of two around 50% more firepower on average when shooting at the same target. Important to note that the light cruisers only have a +4 armour save and have almost no close action attacks.
  • San Francisco-class Troopship: Big scoring ship with tough UCM armour and no frills. Don't rely on the wing turrets (though they are linked now), and use Max Thrust orders to make quick passes over your dropsites. Max Thrust is not a great choice for this ship. You can't drop the turn you use it, and it bumps up your signature. Yes, the San Fran has 3+ armor, but you need to keep your troopships safe for as long as you can.
  • Seattle-class Fleet Carrier: Has Launch 3 and a set of heavy mass drivers for a reasonable price, making this a popular workhorse for UCM fleets. These are great all-rounder ships. A group of three is incredibly versatile, guns for brawling, fighters for defence, and bombers to go hunting frigates.
  • Madrid-class Cruiser: The most cost-efficient bombardment ship in the game. A pair of these can turn even the sturdiest of sectors to rubble in a single volley.
  • Berlin-class Cruiser: Wing turrets and a laser make for a more durable Cobra platform than the New Cairo. Just don't expect those side turrets to see much use if your opponent is paying attention to your facing.
  • Rio-class Cruiser: Basic gun cruiser with a bank of heavies and two medium wing turrets at just over 100 points. Good at getting stuck in and holding a battle line, though unlike the Seattle it has to go Weapons Free to access its full damage output. The wing turrets are linked now, but that will rarely come into play. More important is the fact that the main gun has Squadron 2, encouraging you to bring these in groups.

• Heavy Tonnage:
  • St Petersburg-class Heavy Cruiser: Two Cobra Lasers. With some good rolling on Weapons Free, this heavy can cripple a battleship or delete a cruiser outright. If your opponent keeps their ships out of the F(N) killzone, it can take Standard Orders and divert power to a single Laser to boost its Burnthrough cap from 6 to 8 (this does almost nothing, on average it is a boost of 0.33 crits). Think of it as a sniper rifle with the option to go noscope. Almost never worth it. Just take the Perth.
  • Moscow-class Heavy Cruiser: All the guns. Two sets each of light and heavy mass drivers give it 12 shots in the front arc on Weapons Free. Good at camping over clusters in low orbit and daring other ships to contest them. Their need to go WF (mitigated with most of their guns now linked) and charge in means Moscows rarely survive the battle but they find it very easy to earn their points back in kills.
  • Perth/Avalon-class Battlecruiser: Proud bearer of the Wave Motion Cannon Viper Superheavy Laser. Faster and sturdier than a St. Pete and able to fire its more reliable handful of Burnthrough dice on Standard Orders, although it does take a Minor Spike for doing so. On average the Viper laser does 1.5 hits and 4.6 crits meaning on average it cripples a cruiser in one shot. Makes for a nice aggressive flagship.
  • Johannesburg/Atlantis-class Battlecruiser: Heavy turrets AND fighters sound potent, but the Atlantis can be a bit hard to use as the guns want you to advance aggressively but the launch assets make you want to hang back. A good cheap command ship if you don't want to spring for a battleship, the Johannesburg is best used aggressively as part of your battleline with her fighters defending friendly ships or making quick strikes against targets of opportunity. Linking most of the guns definitely improves this ship's prospects, much like the Moscow.
  • Rome-class Battlecruiser: The carrying case for a pair of UCM heavy torpedoes. 'Anon, don't torpedoes suck?' Tell that to the Battleship that a Heavy Torpedo just casually crippled. The Rome is built to do two things: Fuck the enemies biggest ships hard, them be a pair of Jakartas and a Toulon glued together. This ship lives and dies by its ability to deal with Flagships or other choice targets; it goes without saying that shooting the heavy torps at anything smaller than a Troopship is a complete waste of firepower.
  • Venice-class Command Battlecruiser: Expensive, without a big stick aboard, the layman sees this vessel as deadweight; what they miss is the ability for this ship to buff every friendly battlegroup that activates. Burn a command card when you activate a BG to do the following:
    • Fire an additional weapon, or to fire a single weapon when normally not allowed to do so
    • Add 4" of thrust to their thrust characteristic
    • Chamge Orbital layers, even if not allowed, (still costs 4" of thrust to go up a layer)

Easy examples of ships the Command net fixes are:

• • • St. Petersburgs being able to double BTL while maneuvering
    • Moscows/Johannesburgs/Beijings/Rios being able to go weapons free without the spike and maneuvering
    • All your vessels gaining up to 8" of movement on a Full Thrust order

• Superheavy Tonnage:
  • Tokyo-class Battleship: For when you absolutely want every last motherfucker on the ground to die. Loses the main battery weapons of a Beijing and kinda commits you to a bombardment-heavy strategy, but is very good at executing that strategy. Quite popular as a cheap battleship that brings battleship-grade HP and defences, if not the heavy firepower of her cousins.
  • New York-class Battleship: A heavy carrier with a huge launch asset wing (recently buffed to 7) and torpedoes. Torpedoes aren't that great at present but they're supposedly up for buffing in the next FAQ. You won't miss them with those immense hangars. Pair with a Seattle to have the smaller carrier launch defensive fighters while you gut enemy capitals with massive bomber wings.
  • Beijing-class Battleship: An all-rounder battleship with heavy firepower, equally heavy armor, and lots of different weapons. This last is the ship's weakness as it forces the ship to go on Weapons Free orders all the time to actually dish out the pain (this is less true now that all of the mass drivers are linked). Unpopular in the meta simply because the other two battleship classes are so useful, but the Beijing is still a mighty ship - note her increased scan range, which can give Scourge and Shaltari a very nasty surprise.
  • London-class Dreadnought: Wow that's a lot of guns. Like 44 non CAW shots. This thing should take a bite out of your enemy's fleet every time it goes Weapons Free. Unfortunately, it needs to go Weapons Free almost every turn to earn its points. Aegis 7 helps keep the free admiral alive.
  • Washington-class Supercarrier: Wow that's a lot of bombers. At anything less than a 2000 point game, that's all of your bombers. And you still have most of the London's guns (though you give up Aegis). At 450 points it's the cheapest dreadnought even before you factor in the free admiral. What's not to like?

Building a Fleet

Generally with the UCM you can either go for a gun-heavy fleet (Beijings, Moscows, etc) supported by launch assets, and trade mighty blows with the enemy on 3+s...or a massed burnthrough fleet with Limas sending targeting data to melt the enemy's face from a map away. Pick one and commit to it. A gun-heavy fleet has more place for a lone Berlin or some New Cairos if you have some points left over at the end.

Tactics and Common Synergies

UCM launch assets are the worst of any faction, but the Seattle is the most combat-worthy of any of the medium tonnage carriers of any faction. It makes a solid combat ship, with its launch assets bring primarily auxiliary damage, rather than its main feature.

The UF-4200 turrets are somewhat underpowered for a secondary weapon system, but are good for potentially bringing down two near-death targets, if you feel like gambling a bit. Only the Perth's and Battleship's double batteries of the 4200's are good enough to reliably kill off near-death (as in, one hull point remaining) targets.

If all else fails, say fuck it and send in a Madrid or a Tokyo to just bomb your enemy's ground troops flat. Also necesary depending on the scenario, unless you just want to spend all day chucking meager handfuls of 6+ attacks at the planet. (Protip: The PHR are better at this than anyone)

Your (combat) frigates are very good at killing other people's frigates. A UCM frigate swarm is quite a nasty foe, although it will die quickly. They are also very cheap compared to other frigates, but tend to be outclassed in one or two ways comparatively.

The Taipei Surprise (a squad of 4-6 Taipeis on silent running sneaking up on an enemy capital or supercapital) is amazing to behold. Accordingly no opponent will let you do it twice. But you can scare him into hilariously overreacting by keeping a few of them in your list and threatening to send them up a flank. Not quite as devastating as a Djinn swarm, but seeing as how the Taipei is the UCM's only source of effective CAW, suddenly bringing it out is a good way to take the local meta by surprise.

You have a strategy card that gives you a FREE RIO-CLASS CRUISER. Use it. Alternately, it gives you 3x Toulons. The choice between the two is whether you like doing more damage per turn on standard orders (Toulons), or like keeping that ship alive and get more out of scoring (Rio).

Limas go with absolutely everything; put them in your heavy firepower groups so that they can put some spikes on targets before your bruisers shoot; if paired with beam ships, try to only put a minor spike on the targets (but put it on more of them) so you can take more advantage of the beam's Flash rule.

The Saint Petersburg is exceptionally powerful, but lining up its beams on Weapons Free is difficult against a competent opponent. Your only recourse is to keep it alone in its own battlegroup and put it at the top of your activation stack against something that literally can't activate before it can (such as a battleship, or another heavy cruiser with some accompanying frigates). It's not impossible to use, but getting off more than one double-beam a game demands altering your activation strategy.

The Perth's Viper Superheavy Laser is the most power non-crippling weapon in the game; it is possible (with some lucky crippling rolls) to outright delete a light cruiser in a single round of firing. Technically possible to do the same to a normal cruiser, but not even beams will reliably hit their maximum damage.

Counter-Tactics

Just out damage them (Scourge and Shaltari): Out of all the factions, the UCM actually have the lowest total firepower on their gun ships, across all tonnages and classes. While they still do beat out the PHR on single-target damage, the Scourge and Shaltari will out damage the UCM on weapons free. Because the UCM are second only to the PHR when it comes to toughness, use this to your advantage and let loose on weapons free as much as possible; they will not be able to match you in damage, and if you prioritize targets right, you won't lose too many of your ships in return.

Just out fly them (Scourge and PHR): UCM have the worst launch assets in the game, and the Scourge and PHR, respectively, have the second and first best. The Hydra is an excellent and cheap source of many launch assets (the most point efficient carrier in the game per launch asset, in fact), easily allowing you to negate whatever fighters and bombers they did bring, with one or two launch assets left over to do with as you please. The Bellerophon is just pure cheese, and while not quite as point efficient per launch asset as the Hydra, comes with a UCM-equivalent laser tacked on.

One thing to always be aware of, however, is that the UCM are much longer ranged than they look on paper (due to Limas), and much more protected against CAW and launch than they look on paper (due to Jakartas); Shaltari players may find themselves unexpectedly in range of an angry pack of Cairos thanks to a Lima, and a Scourge player may be left with an impotent Djinn attack against some big target thanks to the power of twp or three stacked up Jakartas; 25 PD on a battleship is going to stop anything short of pure CAW or launch spam.

Common Playstyles

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