Dropfleet Commander


Wargame published by TTCombat
No. of Players	2+
Authors	David Lewis and Andy Chambers
First Publication	2016
Essential Books	Dropfleet Commander Core Rulebook (1.1)

"It’s all fun and games till someone shoots back, Holden thought."

– James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

Dropfleet Commander (abbreviated as DfC) is a space combat science fiction wargame originally created and published by Hawk Wargames and now owned by TTCombat and a sister game to their 10mm game Dropzone Commander. The game is themed around using a fleet of spaceships to take control of a section of orbital space over a planet and drop troops from there into cities or other places of interest to control them.

The Game

What sets Dropfleet Commander apart from other space combat games is the orbital setting. Simply destroying the opposing ships is not enough; the real goal is typically to secure the planet below by depositing troops onto the surface or stations in orbit. But that doesn't mean that at times you may instead wish to destroy it all with orbital bombardment. These objectives are clusters of infrastructure containing cities, factories, military bases, or other more unique sectors. In the setting (or in a simultaneous or subsequent game with just a bit of house ruling), the troops you send down are engaged in Dropzone Commander battles. Ships can move between high orbit, low orbit, and atmosphere, although most ships will burn up and crash upon entering the atmosphere. Some abilities/weapons can only function on different levels or have their effectiveness altered targeting different levels.

The game typically takes place on a 4'-by-4' board that can contain orbital debris, space stations, or objects such as moons, large asteroids, or planetary rings. It features a simultaneous activation turn structure, with both players activating a battlegroup of ships at the same time, with the size and type of ships in each battlegroup determining player order. A big group with a large ship will have a much higher rating than a small group of a few light ships, so keeping the values in mind is an important component of list building. Once each battlegroup has activated, the round ends, with scenarios typically going for six rounds with scoring happening on the fourth and six rounds.

One of the prominent mechanics of the gameplay is how weapon ranges function. It uses the logic that in space and at the scale of the combat happening, the range on most weapons is effectively infinite, and the difficulty in hitting your target is more in finding it. To that end, every ship has two statistics: scan and signature. Scan is how many inches your ship can detect out to, and signature is how many inches your ship can be detected at. Combining the two gets you a firing range; a ship with scan of 8" firing on a target with a signature of 6" can do so from within 14". The end result is that a key factor of the game is deciding when to do things like firing all weapons or going silent, as signatures are modified by such actions you or your opponent take, increasing or decreasing the signature of your ship. Additionally, each faction has their own deck of command cards that have a variety of effects that can range from things like increasing the potency of your weapons to altering battlegroup activation order.

The rules are freely available on the Dropfleet Commander site.

The fleet builder, containing all the unit stats and points, is here.

The Setting

Humanity, united under the Earth Administration Agency after a series of resource wars and climate devastation are reversed by breakthroughs in fusion energy, begin to explore the stars with the development of their first foldspace (faster than light) drive. The device is highly inaccurate without a beacon, or node, at the target destination, and so early exploration is essentially random. Little success is achieved as a result, but pioneers explore onward.

In 2342, observing this and deeming mankind ready for contact, an exploration frigate is approached and greeted by the Shaltari. The Shaltari act as friends at first, leading the humans to a number of planets ripe for colonization that come to be known as the Cradle Worlds, but it's all part of an attempt to manipulate them into serving as cannon fodder in their wars with other Shaltari tribes. Humanity doesn't take this well when they find out, but the Shaltari tribe responsible, the Apache, seemingly shrug it off and leave them be.

In 2506, another alien thing found its way to Earth: a mysterious White Sphere, the size of a baseball but heavy enough to require the strength of two men to move. It defied study, and when it was inadvertently connected to a network, it locked all the doors and somehow escaped before broadcasting a message that humanity was doomed and should escape by going to Vega IV in one year's time. Enough people took it seriously that a civil war nearly broke out. In the end, the ones who went to Vega IV with the intent of escaping were given coordinates to jump to, and while a battle broke out between them and a fleet of ships sent to stop them from leaving, most managed to escape in the chaos. The ships that were crippled and unable to jump were left floating in the void over Vega IV, and hunkered down to wait for help after the survivors jumped, not knowing it was not to come.

Two days later, more aliens showed up on Earth and conquered it. With the fleet still wrecked from the battle over Vega IV, there was no contest. About one percent of humanity managed to escape. The aliens simultaneously invaded the Cradle Worlds, and so the only ones who got away were those who jumped to frontier colonies and managed to reconfigure said colonies' foldspace beacons to keep the aliens, since called the Scourge, from finding them.

Over the next hundred and sixty years, humanity rebuilt itself into the United Colonies of Man, with the eventual goal of retaking Earth and the Cradle Worlds. As they made scouting missions, they discovered that some populations of humans had survived on Earth and the Cradle Worlds, forming a resistance against the Scourge. Descendants of the humans who escaped from Vega IV showed up as well. They were technologically advanced and augmented by cybernetics, calling themselves the Post-Human Republic, and offered an alliance. The UCM demanded an apology for fleeing and wrecking the fleet in the process. The post-humans refused, saying that history had proved them right, and furthermore told them that retaking Earth would be suicidal at this point. The UCM told them in no uncertain terms to leave and not pester them, and twenty-four hours later, launched the Reconquest.

See the Dropzone Commander page for the details of the ongoing campaign against the Scourge.

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

Main article: United Colonies of Man

The UCM is the standard human faction. Olive green, sharp angles, wheels and tracks, lots of machine guns and railguns, 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

Main article: 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

Main article: 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

Main article: 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 article: 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.

Links

Dropfleet_Commander/Tactics

Gallery

UCM cruiser.
PHR cruiser.
Scourge frigates.
Shaltari frigates.
Scourge city undergoing bombardment.
Cruiser models for the four factions.
Battlecruiser and corvette models.
Models for the different types of locations your goal is to drop troops on.
Avenger model; one of the smallest ships in Dropfleet, built to the 10mm scale of Dropzone.
Modular space station kit. These are only examples, the kit can be built however you please.
Shaltari shipgirl.