Dropfleet Commander/Tactics/UCM

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reconquest

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.

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.

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
  • 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.
  • 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.

‘’’Destroyers below are under experimental rules as of 4/26/18’’’

• • Havana-class Destroyer: Mounts a duo of the first instance of a “Light Torpedo”, which works as usual but does only 3 damage. Has now been upgraded to a full-size torpedo. Torpedoes are a bit meh but being able to have a squadron of lighter vessels launch a volley all at once makes them rather more 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.
  • Osaka-class Light Cruiser: Carries a single set of heavy mass drivers. Wide arcs and high speed make this an excellent class for flanking.
  • San Francisco-class Troopship: Big scoring ship with tough UCM armour and no frills. Don't rely on the wing turrets, and use Max Thrust orders to make quick passes over your dropsites.
  • 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.
  • 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 makes 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.

• 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. Think of it as a sniper rifle with the option to go noscope.
  • 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 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. 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 Atlantis is best used aggressively as part of your battleline with her fighters defending friendly ships or making quick strikes against targets of opportunity.

• 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 armour, 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. 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.

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 fist 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

Placeholder